It got hot quickly today.  I got sleepy very quickly today.  I found myself locked out of 100 words again today.  I really cannot judge the temperature outside very accurately because I have the air conditioning on inside.  Perhaps I got sleepy because I am used to taking a nap at this time of day.  It is always a bit of a shock to find myself locked out at the beginning of a month.    It is frustrating.  I had turned the exhaust fan on last night and opened the windows to cool the house off.  I slept well last night. 

I find myself going to Ohio again this weekend.  It is my mother’s birthday.  I am not sure whether it was an impulse or a well-thought out decision.  If an impulse, it may have been a good one.  It just sort of happened over a phone call with my sister.  Frequently not enough happens.  I realize that.  Still, I do what I think I can.  It is so much like sleeping so much of the time.  Perhaps if I slept less and ate lest while I was there.  What else can I do?  There are limits to the available activities.

I am either not listening, or I am not explaining properly.  Perhaps there is not a dilemma.  There seems to be, although I cannot define what it is.  There must be a problem or dilemma.  Or I must surely find myself facing one in the near future.  If so, so.  If not; not?  You would think I would be more excited about it than I am, but I seem to be approaching it with a rather fatalistic view.  What is going to happen is going to happen.  It is like getting your work apron caught in the machinery of death.

I’ve been having insomnia.  I’ve been lying awake until 6 or 7 am on a regular basis.  It is annoying.

That is a long time to lie awake.

Yes it is.

I would have been back up by then.  A: nurse once told me that when I got sleepy I would go to sleep.

I guess that's true.

Seems to be.

This has been going on for a long time.

Explains yer sleepin' til noon.

Yes.  That and fear of getting up.

I am so conditioned to get up to work, I don't think about the getting up any more

The sun was blinding me.  I couldn’t find the keys on the keyboard.  Normally this would not be a problem, but I’m using a new laptop with a slightly different configuration of keys.  Getting up, I set the laptop on the floor and kick the power cord out of its side on my way to the window.  This is how it starts: the death of the laptop.  They just don’t last that long.

The sun was blinding me.  Perhaps it was trying to remind me that I should be somewhere else doing something else.  I’m not sure about these things.

You scare me a little.  Sometimes it seems that your purpose is to ensure that I achieve cloture with nobody.  It seems that no one will pass the test, will ever be good enough.  Yet in retrospect you have been correct.  I cannot think of a single time that I could call your judgment wrong.  Even in the current situation when my brain wants to go over it again and again and finds ways to skip convenient clues, I know you are most likely right on several counts;  you are right in ways that you do not even know about.

My daughter Amanda called this morning to report that she had “put Dallas down.”  Dallas had been that special family dog and hers since a puppy.  I suppose his death was a symbol to me how far my daughter had grown.  She asked if she could bring his ashes to scatter in the back, and I couldn’t think of a better idea unless it was to leave them in an urn on the oriental gracing the atrium.  I think that was always his favorite spot.  It seems that after all these years I have become curator of the family museum.

Maybe i'll buy ice scream and watch Mully and Skulldudgery.  What do people do anyway?   Entertainment?  Work?  Passion?  Art?  Sex? Sometimes combined in interesting arrangements?  There are other things too. 

You could categorize human activity.  The categorization itself would fall under the combination of passion/work and entertainment.  People go to great lengths to be entertained.  What is conversation?  Is it a new category?  Interaction? Play?  Companionship?  Those go on the list. 

Parallel play.  Interactive play. Parallel conversation.  Interactive conversation.  Do we add suffering to our list?  Parallel suffering and interactive suffering?   War?  The list of human activities is getting larger.

Aw heck, it’s raining today, but I suppose that’s got to be ok.  I don’t really have anything against it.  Already I have misplaced the mouse for my laptop.  I have way too many toys.  Clearly that is a problem.  I have found an application for my ancient Motorola droid phone that functions as a remote for my wireless music storage and streaming system.  It integrates lossless storage of all my cd’s and records, and retrieval of Pandora, Rhapsody, and a seemingly infinite number of radio stations.  The software cost me five bucks.  Needless to say I am very pleased.

It’s not what you think.  It’s probably not what I think either, except I am afraid it’s exactly what I think.  I specialize in those little itchy feelings.  People hire me to come around and have them.  “What’s your feeling about this?” they ask.   I’ll look around and find myself looking at a skinny twenty-something picking his nose and looking out the window.  The pretty blonde in the cubicle next to him is doing the hunt and peck on her keyboard.  “I think your project manager has been offered another job and you’re two months behind schedule and over budget.”

There don’t seem to be any

advisory boards that deal

with the

flesh-eating  situations I fall

Into

day after scorching

day

other than the usual

suitably embossed

double-sided

Itoldyousoyoufuckingidiot

So

Don’tcomewailingtome.

No.

I won’t.

I can’t even wail to myself.

I can barely understand the

mechanics of these things as I

watch them unroll

like some great asphalt

runner flying out over

an imaginary and perfect summer.

how is it you can comprehend

so much and be so powerless

to affect it?

you can actually see the butterfly wings,

the muscles straining

and are just hopelessly captivated

by their beauty.

I seem to remember you

In mid-step

always in movement

whether to lift a

favorite tea cup

to a shelf

or crossing a field,

legs batting flowers

down because you just

didn’t have time for the path.

It is late

In town.

You are brushing your hair out

of your eyes on fire

urgently explaining an idea

that has taken you

and a little foam

has settled on your upper lip

from the brew.

As I watch you move

seemingly unaware

as years climb up your back

only to fall away

and a little girl skips home

in the morning.

It seemed that I would try to write.  There was time on the schedule to write.  I had some hundred-words entries to catch up on.  I had assumed there would be no writing there if I approached the keyboard.  I seemed to have fucked up my life again, something that I do in an embarrassing,  sloppy and maudlin kind of way so that not even it leaves me much in the way of bragging rights.  But that was then and this is clearly now.  I mean the man said to not go gently no matter what.  It that what hails?

And now I am stuck in this damn valley between want and won’t and have to play out the drama.  You are begging the question, literally, why do I have to play out the drama, and it is a damn fine question.  Any investment involved is sunk cost.  I learned that in business school.  It does not bother me.  There is something else tugging at me and I know what it is.  I got lost in that valley and let something of me get away that I didn’t know was yet possible.  I guess I should be glad of that.

I got your funeral announcement in a big white envelope today.  The envelope scared me as did the tiny printing covering it.  The picture looked just like you somehow and I checked the date to make sure I had not been invited to a funeral a week after it had happened.  People do that.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it is just my family, afraid to have happen what might happen if I were to show up at a funeral and lose my dignity all of a sudden.  The date was four days off.  I thought about you and cried.  

It’s hot today, hitting close to 90 now in the afternoon with the middle floors of the house climbing to 80.  The lower floors are still in the 70’s, and I’m pretty sure I won’t need the air conditioning today or this week, so I’ll save electricity and work the cool air back into the house when the sun goes down.  I know I should be thinking about eating, but I’m not hungry.  The heat does that for you or to you.  Water is good though, and it is necessary.  I water the shriveled aloe plant on the back deck.

I finally had the septic guys back.  The last time they were out, it was in the middle of a rain storm and things looked bad.  The tank was near to overflowing and the south wall was falling away.  The tank at least would have to be replaced, and there was a 50/50 shot that I would need a new drain field.  Estimates for total damages were running from two to twenty thousand dollars, with the best-guess hitting in around 12 – 15.  I considered my options and did a re-finance pulling out an extra twenty thousand with the current rates.

There was something wrong as soon as the guys opened the tank.  The south wall seemed to be intact, pristine even.  One of them started checking the condition of the dry wells while the other pumped the double tank down so we could get a better look.  At one point one the taller thinner one with his head shoved down into the main tank hollered out, “You got some kind of magic going on here?”  His boss was looking at their notes from last summer and scratching his head.  “I don’t understand it,” he said.  “There is nothing wrong here.”

I’m going to be leaving a lot

Of people behind.

I’ve already done that.

You were mistakes?

Is that something I am

Allowed to do?

To say to think?

It is not what I feel.

I think that is one of

Those things

The language puts up

To trick us into thinking

That we have named

A thing and

Thus captured it

When we have not

Even touched

It.

I am going out into

The desert.

I’m going to chew

Cactus buds

And sun burn.

If I don’t fall asleep on the sand

I’ll come back with a new hat.

Ya, it’s a day like any other day.  My eyes don’t want to focus, and I have given up wondering why the money doesn’t run out.  It is supposed to be hot outside.  Of course it is not hot in here.  In fact the only problem seems to be this thing with me not being able to see very well, and that has been with me most of my life.  There is this pinkish haze covering everything, but if I look closely, it is not really there.  After some time you really have to start questioning your perception of reality.

It’s a day like any other day. 

The suns hot bolts of dry grass

Cover the lawn beneath careful

Feet crumbling where I really

Didn’t

Want to be seen.  But I was there walking down to the road in my bathrobe business

Suit.

There was this thing perched on top of my mailbox.

It was nothing.

A card from a man who cuts trees

Attached in such a way as to fool a man

With wiggly eyesight.

I brought it in anyway.  I saved it knowing

That yes, I had trees to be cut.

Trees to be murdered

In time.

It’s a day like any other day. 

The suns hot bolts of dry grass

I mean

I can smell

It like fresh cut

Timothy drying in a loft.

That heat

Droning on about you

Halfway around the world

Baking in

Dry grass,

Toothless greed,

Fish and poverty.

In another world

Greeks hold up Germans

With queer looking shotguns.

Europe is so used to being

On her knees.

I feel sick

These days.

There is nothing to be done

For the simple reason

That I am not able

To believe in you

And you are not able

To believe in me.

It’s a day like any other day.

I’m sure it was.

It just felt different

Somehow.

My eyes creeping out

The side of my head that way.

Out of order.

Out of bounds.

Out of the way.

While that cool purple shadow

Crept across the lawn like some

Alien fungus.

Growing

Flowering fuzzy buds

Flinging sticky pollen pods

In reckless frenzy,

Shouting insults

As passersby,

Their children, dogs,

And their imported domestic-branded

Automobiles.

I had meant to write

Something else:

Something

That has grown small running naked now

Just over the far horizon on the inner dome of my skull.

Looking out my sister’s back door.

I see now the well-pruned crabapple tree

Planted oh God it must have been

Eighty

Years ago by my grandmother

When this house was that woman’s orchard.

I am a child sitting in that tree

A perfect limb curled out around

Holding me like summer mother

My own arm reaching out to pull

Bend and snap

One more of those fist filling

Knotty apples to

Knaw and chew around holes

Dimples

Nimble questionable spots

Bumps,

And suck the sour;

Dodging worms

And possibly worse.

Hidden oh so hidden in that

Green veil of leaves.

I have not been able to squeeze

A poem out of me today.

I did try.

I wrote six,

Maybe seven or eight

Of the little bastards,

And not a one came out right;

Twisted and deformed

But not enough I suppose.

It is like there is something

Not right inside me

Today

And just that little hint

Of a confession

Jiggles and slops it over

And I cannot move until it

Stills.

There are those who say

With smiling confidence that

You are not supposed to write

Every day.

But I know that when I don’t

Something is wrong.

It is a day like any

Other day.

Zombies are attacking

Motorists in Miami.

Spelled backwards

Miami is

I maim.

In Michigan

We are protected

By the frostline

From large bugs

Reptiles

And questionable

Predators.

We have our own but

They are smallish

Politicians who have to go

Elsewhere to grow to dangerous

Size.

Perhaps once in the Detroit

Steam tunnels

It was warm and moist enough

To nourish the kinds of things

One might find farther south,

But I thing all those must

Surely be gone

By  now

Having wondered by

Accident into some

Overgrown and snowy

Vacant lot.

It is a day like any other

Day

Oh yes I stab that day

Into the hot asphalt like a tomato

Stake into my mother’s heart.

It’s a day

Clicking off like the digits

Whirling

And snapping

On a gasoline pump

Blood’s body pulsing

Between your fingertips

The cannibal oil odor

Drifting from the fill pipe

Wafting

Standing on its own

Wavering

Reeling forward

To meet you

Eye to eye.

This reaper needs no scythe

It just waits

Until your number comes

Around

Watch the digits fly and

Wait for the heavy

Machinery mechanical

Sudden stop:

Your turn to die.

It’s a day like any other

When I suddenly turn left instead

Of my customary right and

Pull a shirt from my clean

Laundry basket

And take it downstairs

To iron.

I have not touched an iron

Since I used to iron your clothes

And I used to take such joy

In the pleats and panels.

And now opening the damn

Thing

I find I am opening that part

Of me that was given over

To you.

Yet I have been told to

Learn

To do things for myself

And this joy I felt for you

Must have been such?

It was a day

Like any other day

Except for my daughter’s tears.

And with that one line

I can relax because

I already know that this

Poem

Will join those thousands

That will never be read by

Anyone.

(My daughter would never accept

That I would publically allow that she had

Wept.)

And yet I love her for just that:

She cried because she

Was simply overwhelmed

For having tried to wrap herself

Around too many things

(One of them being me.)

It was just the kind of tears

That I might let fall on any

Other given day.

It was a day

Like any other day

Except for my daughter’s tears.

And with that one line

I can relax because

I already know that this

Poem

Will join those thousands

That will never be read by

Anyone.

(My daughter would never accept

That I would publically allow that she had

Wept.)

And yet I love her for just that:

She cried because she

Was simply overwhelmed

For having tried to wrap herself

Around too many things

(One of them being me.)

It was just the kind of tears

That I might let fall on any

Other given day.

Oh hell

It was a month

Pretty much

Like any other month.

I saw May clouds skimming

A damp steamy sky.

I was running the narrow path

Shoes turning sideways

Slipping in the ruts

In the smooth mud

Root-tangled

Sleepy moss waking and grabbing

At my legs

Deep and dark woods

My shirt flying dark and

Torn

Behind me

Against long beaded

Scratches on my side

Hard ivory manic fangs

Plush and playful paws

Leaping twenty yards

At a bound

Snapping crisp

Swaying  a mighty maw

Left and right in time to some

Barking calliope parked over the next hill.