Bradbury at the Library

 

I am sitting at a table on the second floor of Dublin’s main library.  It is a new building with an architectural flair that is futuristic in style.  Looking through the portals that pretend to be windows I see rooftops of houses and buildings that remind me of the ill-fated landings on Mars in Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles”.

The rocket lands and the crew is shocked to find what looks to be a small American town with houses that are connected to their pasts.  It is familiar yet strange and wholly disconcerting considering this is what they left on Earth only to find mirrored on Mars.  It is one of several connected short stories that comprise the book.

And it is pure genius.  Never mind it envisions Mars as having a breathable atmosphere.  It is told in such a way that we gladly set aside our incredulity to be immersed in something so beautifully bizarre, so magnificently melancholy.  “They made their way to the outer rim of the dreaming dead city in the light of the racing twin moons.” 

As is the case repeatedly throughout human history we bring our sins with us and spoil what we touch.  It is the myth of the rugged individual which fails to understand we are persons fully and essentially interconnected.  It is the first murder when Cain kills his brother Abel and looks to blame God.  We are our brother’s keeper, even Martian ones.

***

Memories of Moscow

 

There was no one to go with me to Russia

so I flew alone on an Aeroflot flight at the

invitation of a Russian friend who was a 

choral conductor and fledgling composer.

He lived on the edge of Moscow in an old

apartment with high ceilings and a hallway

full of bookshelves on which I found a small

book of short stories by William Saroyan.

During the day he would go to his work and

school while I wandered the city with young

legs primed for exploration and a packed

lunch to walk the necessary paces.

***

There was a beautiful gate to Red Square that

incorporated a small chapel having services 

so I paused to pray and spied a young monk

making an exaggerated sign of the cross.

Our Lady of Kazan church sat just past the gate

on the square’s edge and I saw a young mother

use a McDonald’s napkin to cover her head in 

order to gain entrance to an unfolding liturgy.

The singing was transcendent, the iconography 

covered every conceivable surface, and a 

priest used a horsetail whip to sling holy

water through a crowd of mysterious smiles.

The Gospels were brought out bound in gold

and held aloft with the intoning of prayers 

while two elderly women stepped forward and

bowed to provide their backs as a living lectern.

***

St. Basil’s Cathedral sat at the far end 

of the square in light, opposing the grimness 

of Lenin’s tomb which was tucked up under 

the wall of the Kremlin hiding from the sun.

My Russian friend spoke fluent Spanish but 

was less confident in his English when he 

tried to describe St. Basil’s to me and asked 

if I knew what the word “milagro” meant.

***

Renaissance Festival Flashback

 

January 8th, 2021

Seeing the shirtless guy with the hairy hat and horns repeatedly today in the media made a memory fall out of my head.

We took little Elias and baby Anya to the Renaissance Festival in southern Ohio several years ago for some family fun.  We spent the day walking through the large complex of faux-medieval buildings and taking in the sights and performances.  The jousting was a highlight as was watching little Elias tear into a giant roasted turkey leg.  

Wandering the substantial grounds we passed many a visitor in costumes from various time periods, oftentimes with fantastical elements woven in.  I remember a dashing silver-haired man likely in his 70’s who was clad in black leather with silver studs, a wide brimmed leather hat with feather, and a magnificent sword slung across his back.  He struck me as a dandified swashbuckler in a Japanese anime story.

Towards the end of the day we were hot and tired and took a break under a tree.  Under the same tree was a young man probably in his early to mid-20’s who had caught my eye throughout the day due to his costume.  It was a Viking-esque ensemble that included a fur-lined half-helmet with large horns protruding from the sides and built-in metal pieces surrounding his eyes.  It was all of a piece and allowed a bit of his hairy chest to protrude in the middle.  He also had an imposing battle axe in hand.  

I watched him remove the impressive head piece to allow his sweaty and bearded face some relief from the sun and heat.  It struck me that I’d seen him walking around alone and even now at the end of the day there was no one with him.  I sized him up as a reserved nerdy type who had created a magnificent character but with no one to share it with apart from the throng of strangers at the Renaissance Festival.

The melancholy sight of this quiet loner tugged at my heart strings and so I walked over to him and told him how impressive I thought his costume was and wondered if he’d made it all by hand.  He immediately perked up and started talking about the various elements and how they came together.  As I’d suspected he was a bit socially awkward and almost apologetic about drawing attention to himself, yet eager to show off his creative efforts.  I just wanted to make sure that he knew that someone really appreciated the effort he’d put into his costume.

And then there’s the guy who helped storm the Capitol yesterday.  He was definitely costumed to some degree and was playing a role of some sort that was important to him no matter how misguided it may have been.  To be honest, that young man at the Renaissance Festival all those years ago helped humanize him in my eyes regardless of how angry his actions have made me.  Hating anyone is not really helping anyone and I hope he gets what he deserves, though I don’t pretend to know what that is.

***

GOD HATES FLAGS

 

Flags that whip 

people into a frenzy

and asks them 

to sell their birthright 

for a pot of power,

trying to be trendy,

to cane their Abel,

to strain what’s stable.

The civil war is

inside ourselves, 

the beam in our eye,

the need to die,

a misapplied label,

in anger unfurled, but

His kingdom is

not of this world.

You misread “the Word”

which is a person

not a book, look,

you become a thief

a clueless crook

who steals what’s broken

and believes that

love is simply a token.

***

 

If I whisper will you hear me?

 

If I mimic that still small voice

like a child following their Father?

Like a child wondering why things 

have to be the way they are?

Like a child wandering too far

but looking for the way home?

***

Watching the Waves

 

The ocean can 

swallow you whole

so you stand 

on the sand 

so as not to 

tempt or test it

as your thoughts

roll in and out

with the waves

or soar with 

the sea birds

catching the wind.

It is a sensation

that his hard to

mimic in the Midwest

so you do your best 

to take it in 

while you can.

***

Festival of the Five Senses

Seeing the unripened fruit of a persimmon tree 

on our walk brings back childhood memories of 

the Persimmon Festival in Mitchell, Indiana…

the smell of cinnamon and cigarette smoke

the thumping of kids running down a ramp

the pop of a balloon as a dart hits home and

the squeal that follows with a choice of toy

the shiny red glaze of apples-on-a-stick

the velcro sound of shoes on sticky streets

the calliope music winding through raindrops 

the subtle taste of persimmon ice cream

the bright lights on backdrops of black nights

…this full engagement of the five senses makes

for vivid memories of a time gone by when the 

world was smaller but also full of possibilities.

***

as a bird

 

If you see what I see

will you understand me?

It’s the hope of sharing

and the scope of caring.

It makes me feel free

as only a bird can be.

***

The Middle Way

 

The city was well behind us as we headed south on a lonely stretch of highway, cornfields stretching out into the distance, the sky a patchwork of clouds.  That’s when I saw the signs.

They were large and homemade with bright yellow backgrounds and irregular black letters, three in a row over a half mile stretch:

OLD FASHIONED 

TENT REVIVAL

SIGNS

WONDERS

MIRACLES

DENVIL CURRY

THE MAN WITH NO VOCAL CORDS

That last sign had a crudely painted red Youtube symbol on the bottom that indicated he could be found there.  I was intrigued by his name and my mind came up with the unfortunate  association of “Devil”.

A few miles later a more professional sign loomed large on a billboard “Lion’s Den Superstore”.  

What is it about rural areas that invites extremes?  Or are they actually two sides of the same coin: the exciting tent revival and a pornography emporium?  They both provide a kind of titillation and escape from the ho-hum and mundane, but on the most superficial of levels.  

I find it intriguing that you can find the idea of the “Middle Way” in ancient world religions.  I am most familiar with the ancient Christian teachings and practices of Eastern Orthodoxy.  I’ve heard it called the “Middle Way” or “Royal Path” which avoids excesses, ie,  things that feed the passions or our egos.  Unfortunately much of what passes as “Christian” in this day and age feeds both in vast quantities.  

Humility with love is the guiding light on this middle path and assists in avoiding stumbling or falling into the ditch of pride, self-centeredness, and self-delusion.

Ascend to Descend

 

Past the decorative niche of daring dreams

I wind up the spiraling stairs, spent in my soul.

Somewhere above sits a bed of unburdening

where oblivion awaits my arrival at day’s end.

***

escaped / stopped

 

Light filters through the blades of window blinds onto the book I am reading and casts shadows.  A hole allows for a circle of light to encapsulate “escaped” and “stopped” on the page.  I’m not sure why it catches my attention, but it is more of a visual thing than a meaning thing.  Yet my mind looks for meaning in images, even those that appear to be random.  

Have I escaped or attempted to escape from something?  Did something stop me from running away as it were?  I can think of any number of things that might fit that description not least of which is an attempt to escape my poor choices in life.  I try to stay mindful of the ointment but there is always that black fly in the mix.  It is stuck, unable to die, unable to fly.

I wish to free it because of all the pain it causes and the despair it radiates in its dying, but it is indelibly fixed in all of the blessings that surround it.  I tell myself it’s part of what has formed me and that if I can discover the secrets of asceticism it may even be the key to fix what is broken in me.  But I continue to fixate on the fly and from that suffering follows.

***

The Anthro-botanist

So called Anthro-botanist Dr. A. Monk squatting amongst his subjects at the Topiary Park, Columbus, Ohio 

-Reuters

“It was truly a remarkable discovery” insists Dr. Aaroneous Monk who had simply crossed the street from his hospital for a lunch break.  What he discovered was the Topiary Park behind the city’s main library on Grant Avenue.

“I’ve always been interested in the interactions between the animal and plant kingdoms since I was a boy living on the edge of a small town in Southern Indiana.  Our backyard was contiguous with a field of wild grass running back to what was the beginning of cornfields stretching off into the distance.”

As he walked in the park he says he noticed many of the shrubs were humanoid in shape which was his breakthrough moment.

“A breeze came through and rustled what seemed to be a chorus of numberless leaves that sang to me in a way that I could understand.  And not only that, but mixed aromas of verdure invaded my nostrils and an overall feeling of fecundity perfused my awareness.  I was overwhelmed!  And then my pager went off.”   (he frowns)

From this experience he has created the field of “Anthro-botany” as a nexus of man-plant issues and interactions.  Field work for him includes wearing flora and standing still amongst the other plants for hours at a time, swaying in the breeze when appropriate, and wearing skin moisturizer that smells of lavender.

“I am becoming one with Brother Bush and Sister Sage.  I feel like I have found my true calling and can grow accordingly.”

The hospital could not be reached for comment, but it does not appear he is employed there anymore.  Brilliance is seldom understood, it would seem.

***

Cloud is King

 

The cloud is King

Biggest thing on the block

Floats where it will

Sometimes good for a spill

Makes me laugh

With its massive bit of floof

Would love to fly

And meet it in the sky 

Like a premature Rapture

Where the savaged 

are taken instead of the saved.

***

The Transcendence of Transitional Objects

He's a middle aged man with gray streaks in greasy hair, smudged glasses, a bit of a paunch, and lying in a hospital bed. The medical chart indicates he carries the diagnosis of "Schizophrenia" and other superficial details that tell me little of the man. I am surprised to find he is talkative and eager to engage, not typical for someone so labeled. I notice something peculiar.

He shares his bed with two teddy bears he has brought from home.  His voice and mannerisms are childlike and in sync with the company he keeps.  I begin my interview with an observation,  "I see you have some friends with you".  He lets me know that his mother discouraged him from bringing them to the hospital, "but I'm lonely and they help me feel good."  I nod sympathetically.

He takes one of the bears and hugs it tightly with his eyes closed.  "When I feel bad or lonely I do this and say 'please hug me Jesus through this teddy bear' and I believe He does."  There's a disarming directness to it.  I then remember his chart mentioning "terminal cancer" and tears well up threatening my composure, leaving me lost and looking for a transitional object of my own.

***

My Drinking is in the Past

 

Stepping through the time portal had seemed like a good idea at the time.  It was year three of the Covid-19 pandemic with gas prices climbing and inflation seemingly attached to its heels.  A visit to the Ohio History Museum was a welcome distraction despite the weird weather pattern that had swept in on that balmy summer morning.

Being there was like being in a time outside of time where I could imagine I was back in my childhood or my grandparent’s time by wandering through impressive era-specific exhibits or even back to the late 1800’s at the outside village where traces of my family tree were disjointed and more of a brush pile in my mind.  Grandpa’s dad?  Vague.  His dad?  No idea.

Stepping out the back door of the museum I was met with a chilly wind racing out in front of a coming storm.  The village was a few hundred yards away down a gravel path that traversed a bridge.  I tried to gauge the situation by wind direction and location of dark clouds but what seized my attention was the greenish hue of the sky.

The reasonable thing to do was to go back inside the museum but I consider myself a bit of a risk-taker.  I set out in a jog towards the village until a sudden deluge of rain forced me under the bridge for shelter.  Thunder rumbled overhead shaking the wooden planks above me and a lightning strike hit simultaneously but was absorbed by the metal frame.

I felt a prickling sensation over my entire body and the hair on my arms and legs were standing up like the bristles on a brush.  The storm sped past and I was left trembling under the bridge with a loud humming noise in my ear.  When it did not abate after a few minutes I climbed back up to the path and was met by an inexplicable sight.

The path half way across the bridge was shimmering.  I approached it with a sense of heightened curiosity and found the closer I got to it the harder it was to move freely, like walking through a kind of thin jelly.  Something was off about the village from this vantage point and I’d read enough SciFi to know I was looking at a bona fide time portal!

***

Energized, I practically threw myself through fearing it would close and I would lose my chance of escape.  And sure enough the sensation ceased and I turned to find a horse drawn cart was bumping over the boards of the bridge.  The horse stopped abruptly and nervously pranced at my sudden appearance.  “Whoa, whoa, settle down” begged the driver.

I stepped to the side of the bridge and grasped the iron railing to steady myself due to some sudden vertigo.  The man turned out to be a boy whose eyes went wide when he saw me.  “Gee mister, where did you come from?”  I wasn’t sure if he was referring to my sudden appearance or my appearance in general.  I asked him his name.

“Josiah.”  I asked if he could take me into town and hopped into the back when he agreed.  “Where’d you get that funny hat, mister?”  I took it off to look at it myself and realized a baseball cap of this size would look odd to someone approaching the twentieth century.  I told him it was the newest thing back East and left it at that.

The streets of the village were bustling with what appeared to be period actors but I knew the Ohio History Museum’s budget could not account for this number of people and besides, they mostly stank to high heaven of BO.  I wandered in and out of the stores wondering at the various wares and ended my explorations at the inn.

The inn included a bar where I befriended the bartender who was bored and happy to hear my exotic tales of the future and provide the fuel of storytelling by filling my cup with whiskey.  Others wandered in over the course of the afternoon and early evening and my cup remained full as I described flying machines and speedy motorcars.

***

The next several days blurred as I drank by cajoling my new found friends into funding my new found habit.  My peculiar appearance and outlandish stories mixed with whiskey transformed me into a kind of visiting circus clown.  The innkeeper allowed me to sleep in the horse stables where I made more friends but of the equine persuasion.  

At about the two week mark there was a marked fall off of the regular customers and then the bartender failed to appear.  I helped myself to some of the bottles behind the bar becoming increasingly oblivious to the strangeness of my situation.  That night I stumbled back to the stables and slept a solid two days in an eery silence.

When I finally sobered up and had dunked my head a time or two in the horse’s water trough I realized the village was deathly still.  The parlor and bar in the inn was empty.  There was no one in the streets.  An abrupt breeze sent a suspended store sign swinging and the creaking noise startled me out of my trance as did the chill of the wind.

A saddled horse was secured to a post and I mounted it after untying it.  With a few starts and stops I got the hang of it and made my way down the dirt streets of the town.  “Ahoy!  Is there anyone there?”  The only answer was the loud caw of a crow coming from behind a house.  I circled the house and from my high perch I saw a body lying in the grass.

Two bloody-beaked crows were feasting on it and I promptly vomited off the side of my horse.  I recognized him from the bar.  After that I mostly found bodies in homes lying in beds with no signs of struggle or trauma.  In a moment of clarity I realized that I had brought Covid to this far flung place and doomed its inhabitance.

***

And days passed as I emptied bottles sip by sip until a wave of strong winds heralded another storm blowing in.  I was not in my right mind when I stumbled out of the bar and into the pouring rain only half noticing the peculiar hue of the clouds.  I made my way to the edge of town and noticed the bridge off in the distance.

Something that might have been hope drove me forward in the rain and booms of thunder.  I half expected to be struck by lightning which might almost be a reprieve from my isolation.  Before I knew it I was at the bridge and a crash of lightning knocked me to my knees.  My vision was blurring out but I crawled on like a man possessed.  

When I awoke the sun was beating down on my face and I had a pounding headache.  Someone leaned over my fallen form mercifully shading me from the sun.  “Are you OK dude?”  I forced my eyes open and saw a young man with a baseball cap and a Ohio History Museum t-shirt haloed by the sun.  I was back.

He helped me to my feet and I swayed unsteadily feeling a wave of nausea that sent me to vomit over the railing of the bridge.  “Dude, you can’t be drinking alcohol in the village.”  It struck me as morbidly funny as I envisioned the bar and my drinking buddies who were now long dead and gone.  I barked out a laugh and assured him, “My drinking is in the past.”

What do you see?

 

A circle, a line

a cross, a shadow.

A loop of loops

a red tube and arrow.

I see beauty where

beauty has no

business being, but

that’s what I’m seeing.

***

Portal to Hell

 

The portal to hell is a hole rimmed by steel

where flames feed on themselves and 

thrive on the wood of our poor choices.

It is a bottle neck, a choking point that

separates us from others, peeling off

those who in love try to offer support.

It is a journey of loneliness where 

flailing limbs cannot find helping hands,

arms pinned to our sides in descent.

And at the bottom, when all hope is lost,

we come face to face with Him who 

burns away our self-centered madness.

***

Reading STATION ELEVEN

 

Hammock sways 

on a gentle breeze

between sycamore

and maple,

the book open 

and steadied

on my stomach.

Ant weaves 

through leg hair

tickling me while

a squirrel chirps 

not ten feet away

in the branches 

above my body.

Mind wavers

between worlds

where pestilence

resets time, or not,

and I am one with 

what was and is

and is to come.

***

What is Left Behind

I think it is safe to say at this point that writing poems has become a habit if not a hobby of mine these past several years.  It’s likely no coincidence it began during my time serving as a medical officer in the Army with a deployment to Iraq.  It provided a kind of consolation in moments of near total isolation and high stress, necessity being the mother of invention.

But then I can jump back even further to my freshman year of high school in English class.  We had a poetry book project due that was supposed to entail finding images from magazines or other collage materials to illustrate 10 poems that we were to write and bind them together.  Trying to come up with 10 poems ex nihilo was proving to be too difficult after writing maybe 2.  That’s when my mind reversed the process by first finding and combining compelling images and then writing poems about what I felt the images were conveying to me.  This was the key to unlocking that particular project.  

Fast forward 30 years and this kind of reverse engineering has been a major driver in many of the things I’ve written whether poems or short stories or creative non-fiction/fiction hybrid pieces.  The image is the starting point and my mind draws a story or poem from it.  This has been my go-to writing prompt on many occasions.  That’s not to say I don’t write things first sometimes and then find images for it, but the process can be bi-directional.

So for those of you trying to find a good stress reliever or a way to better understand yourself and the world around you I highly recommend this type of writing prompt.  It will surprise you what your mind will find in images and how they can draw out some innate wisdom.

And here is an example of the process from yesterday.  I took this photo which I did not find particularly compelling but then I started to think about what it might be saying and out came a kind of morbid poem that is not very good, but it made me laugh to see “teen” and “keen” juxtaposed and I love the alliteration of “waking world of sleeping souls.”  

When I lie down 

for my last nap

and fail to awaken

what will be 

left of me in this 

waking world

of sleeping souls?  

A vintage metal sign

*DRINK Coca-Cola*

purchased at a

Flea Market 

when I was 

a teen keen 

to collect stuff.

A prayer shrine

made from

scrap wood and

leftover paints

during the isolation 

of a pandemic

hung on our fence.

But now they 

keep each other

company, hanging

on my garage wall

where they’ll likely 

remain until my 

efforts end.

***