The Fall King

 

I am the Fall King 

regal, autumnal 

covered in the 

reds and golds 

of sharp-shaped

leaves yet crowned

with rounded ones

that glow in 

the magic hour.

***

The Caves

In a cave I may already be dead,

prematurely placed under the 

earth to wander in darkness.

I’ve had a long held fear of

being buried alive, yet the 

cool silence called my name.

As a teen we explored one 

hidden under a tree on some

farmer’s land, lowered by a rope.

I wore snoopy sunglasses just

for fun, as if it wasn’t dark 

enough, proving nothing.

Another time it was water-

filled passageways, clinging

to the walls, my flashlight lost.

Yet we continued on with 

only one flashlight between us

suppressing a flickering fear.

And then that time of crawling

flat, the ceiling touching my back 

squeezing me out of existence.

But then in the end there was 

always the sun to return to 

and warm us back to life.

***

“Where the Ditches are Deep”

This was a fascinating case I saw in the hospital several years ago of a man in his 30’s who had no previous psychiatric diagnosis, but had likely suffered from a psychotic illness complicated by drug use for most of his adult life. He was unique in the sense that he used drugs to see “real things” which to me sounded like hallucinations and paranoid delusions. When these types of things occurred apart from drug use he took that as further proof of the objective existence of the things he was seeing and experiencing. It was enough that he was perceiving them for it to be true and in the story below he seemed to suggest that other people saw these things too.

***

In his own words: 

When I was a little boy my mother would invite people over and do drugs with them in our house. They would start acting weird. One guy would be peeking out through the curtains and say “there’s someone out there.” Another one would be on his hands and knees trying to pick things out of the carpet. I wanted to know if what they were seeing was real. So when I got the opportunity as I got older I started using all kinds of drugs to try and see what they saw. I was not trying to get high. I wanted to see for myself if what they were seeing and experiencing was real. I want to tell you about something that happened to me so you will understand.

I was in a barber shop with some friends, well it was a tattoo shop, and Homey had some spice. He took a hit and then passed it to me. I took a hit and then passed it to Walter who was applying a tattoo to a woman customer’s leg. He then passed it back to Homey. Something changed and I saw Walter’s face looking down in shock at the work he was doing as the tattoo lifted off her leg and evaporated like smoke. He was real shook up and laid down his inking gun. He left the shop quickly and I followed him because I had seen it too. It was real. I found myself outside in a dark place where the ditches are deep.

I walked down the street and turned right at the corner. From there I could see my Grandmother’s back porch and my uncle was sitting on it. As I approached he was looking at me but not saying a word. The door was open next to him as if he were waiting for me to go in. I walked into the house and it felt like a dark form had followed me in. My Grandmother became upset and said, “What did you bring in here with you?” I suddenly felt like I was a little boy again and was in trouble, like she was going to spank me or something.

Then I noticed her little dog and I saw it transform into a snake creature and rise up. It came at me and I put my hands together like a fist and smashed them down onto the floor. The mirror, a glass coffee table, and the picture frames on the walls shattered from the force. It was real. I saw it myself. My uncle grabbed me and tried to hold me, yelling “What is wrong with you?!”

***

The most striking thing for me in this story that he told was his description of the dark place where “the ditches are deep.” This seems to me to be a telling metaphor of someone struggling with mental illness - whether depression, anxiety, or the inability to distinguish reality from unreality. In my psychiatric residency at Walter Reed it was described to me by a young African-American woman on the inpatient psychiatric unit who said it was like being trapped in a nightmare where “I don’t know what is real and what is not real.” Everyone goes off the road at times but for some the consequences are significantly more catastrophic. The ditches are deep indeed.

Cries in the Library

 

The baying of a wounded beast 

is simply the peripatetic cries of

a child in this largish library.  It 

must be in the vaulted main hall

as it echoes and resonates then

winds through porous spaces of

of rows and rows of books lined

on metal and wooden shelves to

find me sitting at a table with a

copy of The Martian Chronicles.

I wonder at its wounding, what 

makes it cry so inconsolably.

Maybe a trip to Mars would set

the child at ease but I’ve heard

it’s not the kind of place to raise

your kids, in fact it’s cold as hell.

Well, maybe just a journey in the 

safety of one’s mind then, OK?

But the ability to read is still far

off in this unhappy child’s future.

***

Anne says “Write at least one page per day”.

A page of prose, just for practice.  Keep on writing, keep on writing, keep on writing.  Ok, that’s cheating but I’ve still got a long way to go.  Anne Lamott said I should do it and that’s enough for me, but she didn’t say how to do it exactly.  Well, she may have said something about using memories but I don’t remember exactly.  Ho boy, I’m in trouble.  

This brings to mind a line from STATION ELEVEN that I love dearly and hits deep: “I remember damage”.  By the way, I started a new paragraph and I’m not sure if that’s cheating because it creates a blank line with no words.  Oh well, on we go.  What damage can I remember?  

The first thing that comes to mind is when I was four years old and we were living in Knightstown, IN.  We had some people over from church and there was an adult male who I really adored for his warm smile and encouraging tone towards me.  I think he was a bit older than my Dad.  We were in the front living room on a couch with other kids, probably his kids, and I had the honor of sitting on his leg like a bench as funny things were being said, people were laughing,  and I was in the sweet spot of feeling loved and accepted.  And then it happened.

I unexpectedly let out a four year old’s fart which surprised me because I didn’t feel it coming.  This man’s expression went from warmth and humor to anger and disgust in a split second as he lifted me out of his lap, “Oh you stink!”.  It was so sudden and so shocking I felt tears welling up and I ran out of the room, devastated.  I just couldn’t believe he would respond like that.  I’d never even seen him frown before.

Maybe this was my first experience of the loss of innocence in a wider world.  Sure, I knew my Mom yelled and was upset with me A LOT, but this man was something different or so I’d believed.  Some time later as an adult I told this story to my Mom and she said “Well, you did fart in his lap”.  But even so, I think about how I would have handled that situation and I’d like to think I would have made it into something humorous; something that would not have embarrassed the child or made him feel bad about himself.  It’s important to keep in mind that young children are emotionally fragile to a great degree and look to us adults to embody a kind of goodness, positivity, and stability in the world, not going off half-cocked.

So that was a memory and one of several pre-kindergarten ones.  I’m still writing and the bottom of the page is getting closer but not as close as I thought it would be after sharing that memory.  Do I need to find a second memory?  How about the time I was three and our back yard flooded with about two inches of water?  The grass stood up straight with the  support of the water and made the most peculiar of sensations on my chubby little feet as I walk-waded through it.  I could see the sky and the trees reflected in it like a giant mirror laid out flat.  It was magical, but this was also the house that held a scene of horror and it was a house we did not live in very long.

It was a summer’s day and my Mom’s Mom was visiting us.  They were going to take my older sister to the store with them and I wanted to go as well.  I was at the end of the hall in the bathroom when I heard the front door close and realized I was being left behind.  I finished my business as quick as I could and then threw open the bathroom door and ran down the hall as fast as I could.  I made a hard left at the front living room and barreled towards the glass storm door.  I hit it hard with both hands and instead of it opening  the glass shattered and I flew through it and landed on the concrete porch.  They came running back to see what had happened and found me sitting there amongst the broken glass with my arms cut and bleeding.

So that was that and this is this: one full page of writing under my belt for today.  And now that I think of it there are numerous memories of me getting hurt growing up from any number of ill-conceived actions and misadventures, but that is writing for another day.  

One page!  Done!  Thanks to Anne Lamott and “Bird by Bird” for helping make it so.

***

The Pandemic Blues

 

September 2021

These are stressful times and people deal with stress in different ways.

For some it is basically intolerable and so denial is used in great measure to hide one’s self away.  “Ignore it and it will go away.”  The problem with this is that there are real dangers that will not disappear if we don’t look at them and pretend they do not exist.  This is how one potentially sleep walks off of a cliff.

With so much insecurity and uncertainty in times like these there are also those who look for absolute assurances and certainties to steady their boat (it’s very similar to denial in that they are mostly illusions we create).  Everything becomes black and white.  One must be all right while others are all wrong.  It is easy to become impervious to any counterargument or information that contradicts our chosen absolute narrative.  This seems to be particularly true when it comes to our present political divide.  

It can be reassuring, but it is also intellectually lazy and opens one up to being unnecessarily ignorant.  And in the case of a pandemic, possibly dead.

***

Reading Anne Lamott

 

The hat, the cup,

the letter to Mom

The iPad, the book,

the lack of some-

thing to say, can 

Anne lead the way?

“Bird by Bird”

that’s the word.

Something she said

or so I’ve heard.

***

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.

***