Additional blogdecs submitted to www.100words.net in June, 2005



I sharpen the pencil, but ideas won't come. I watch where I step, and miss the faces drifting by, humming, sighing, moaning. I lift my head and find my shoe mud-stuck in the past so I lean into the morrow. I hear the buzzing right behind my ear, but never turn fast enough to see it go by. Tell me it's a simple case, it's only going to stay for a while. I need to know there will be an end: a silent, subtle slide to stasis. I sharpen the pencil, and tell myself that I am making a point.

Much can be gleaned from perusing the books owned by someone who bought them though a lifetime for pleasure, and for work. This gentleman, I am told, faces a sad ending with dementia as exit stage, no spouse or children to gather up his memories. His profession was teaching literature, as is well evident by the classic greats: Faulkner, Hemingway, Melville and Chaucer. But he was also interested in Thomas Jefferson and the early Revolutionary War period, a devout Catholic, (as testified to by his choice of religious books), all things about Ireland, and, sadly, "A Study of Neurological Diseases".

Margaret was seated in a folding chair in the driveway as we drove up. She showed what she was selling and rattled a monologue: she is 83 and her husband is constantly in the hospital and she had fallen in the back yard and hadn't know who she was for awhile but is getting better now. But then she confesses that her husband is not sick but dead these past two years, but we seem nice and she is not worried about us. "Give me a call in a month to see how I am", she says as we leave.

Nature has a way of creating wonderful objects of Order in an intricate shell or a towering oak, and can produce as well heavy doses of Chaos, as the destruction force of a tornado or the debris field from a landslide. I find myself in Spring attempting to generate my Order to the Nature outside my door by carefully raking the Chaos from around sprouts of Nature's Order, and limiting the growth height of certain ground-covering plants to create a carpet. I and my like-minded neighbors find a kind of communal joy at the dump, disposing of our Chaos detritus.

I moved the waiting room outside
So the wind would spare my spirit.
I found a wren, a close confide,
And turned the trees to hear it.
And though I knew its song was through
A backward glance would wing it.
I tendered soft rain to ease the pain
And let all the dark clouds ring it.
A crystal voice prepared my name.
It bade me soon to follow.
The nagging worries also came:
The dark and fearsome hollow.
The silent seat, the open door,
The outside conversations
That lifts with heat the thoughts that roar,
"Hold fast, belay suspicion!"

A gentle tune came o'er the lea and tranced me but a bunch of growlers boogied on my day to trended, tired too-tall thoughts that "Hey, I haven't been this way for gnawing knuckles instead of mounding mellons for fruit flight fancies. Come on down to the level best at seaming slight entries in boxed bunches could call cold cukes to standard hangers-on. Fuzz out." Has been tried, trying to a has-been, trying not to be had, all over but overall a mitigating middle-gate to left or right hesitate but guess what, I've had it longer than living with plenty of parting.

I crawled up on my shelf again. It wasn't that the rocky firma was anything but safe. I just wanted to split my time and tide from what I knew was level on to brilliant hues of possibilities parted from ghostly tempered grays. I started to think that there were others out there who had a shattered past to share with simple bricks to join an arch of glory o'er. But all the clumsy nattering was word-drops a-clattering on the tin tops of ideas so thin and wispy that willows snicker that their passing would ever chance them to bend.

“PIN required” hisses late upon my restless pursuit where
Portals plaintively dim down desire’s caustic trail.
I need the way to pass unto my favor’s frenetic fare.
“Do not pass GO, you can not win but go direct to jail.”
My treasured me, I guard it well, I let no stranger in.
But truth it be that solely me knows what my heart entails.
So soft surrender must be had to ease this proxy whim
That cuts me back, but gains the lack of further password fails.
I give a pause, and sigh a sigh,
To feel the interconnection die.

The care and feeding of trees is far from a lost art, but the honored majesty with which we had formerly approached these rooted spires has dwindled over many decades to cold mockery of past vaunted praise. Longfellow's "spreading chestnut-tree" and Kilmer's tree "that looks at God all day", are flown fancies when trees are pushed out of the way, cut and harvested, chopped and shredded when amply sized. We trim them back from the wires, curse their sidewalk upliftings, and plant doomed saplings down city streets. They still exist as children's climbing challenges, in youth's still fading passage rites.

Will wiggled his toes, sitting on a rock next to the stream. He had rinsed out, squeezed out, and laid out his socks to dry in the sun on another rock, and watched the steam rise. The babble from the stream vacuumed years of worry-dust from his brain, and he picked up a stick and scratched a furrow absent-mindedly in the hard pan of the dirt trail beneath his toes. His journey was undefined by time, but he felt this was just less than half of the desired transit. He put on his socks and boots and trudged on.

I sent along a tattered picture, nothing that would give away little bits of inside slivers, caustic crumbling chips of clay that measure me. The tempting thoughts of ever-sounding life abounding, heart a-pounding pleasures mounding never having understanding of my random track abandon in the fashion of a handsome clever dandy in his splashy duds of fancy never fair in his demanding of an ever-gloating gander pass to glance of simple entry into splendor’s dark descending of the worried friend’s entreaty to the dreadful dotted ending. In sooth I sought a slender chance that ever I could dare to dance.

Take me to a weathered bleached-out shutter on a wind-battered salt cabin that sits among the mossy stones on the treeless hill. I rested there for three long days with nothing but rusted key and stubby candles for the light when sun was gone and stars were high. With nothing of the world of men to lure my mind this way and there, I found new sides of my wanton willful wandering to grow into discovering of many parts uncovering the things than can endure when nothing of the then and the now can be broken on my island shore.

Rested now, I squint my eye to see if any light comes through that would show me that a slight improvement would promise future views to hold. The light embrace of Time’s garnishment of Health’s deposits can stomp on any daily mood inventory, but lately, well just lately, the rub can render rash’s mark and touch-tender flinches on my vessel-mask. If one side senses what can be, will the other follow in the wake of falling patterns of pretense matters and sense of distance lost? I can’t wonder what will be when this is just minor nuisance in pain’s buffet.

Can you see me? I know it’s time we should be moving on. Can you hear me? It’s simply more than I can fake. Only simple things like this can lead us to a leaf-littered path than sends us through the ways we knew and into tomorrow’s unscripted acts and buried thoughts that bump down the silted, strained clouds that pass between what we know and can’t believe. You went with me, you know the days of which I speak. A muted gong marks the day’s departure. A far-off song of night’s approaching footsteps. The cryptic hieroglyphs of stars appear.

I sat down and counted the things I haven’t done. I wonder if they can be bought with yesterday’s time throwaways. There are things that can never be done. I will never again be twenty-one. But I passed year by year the ruts of daily patterns run toward never-questioned goals. I live the day. I never stray. A candle-light to the side is just a passing ship astride an endless sea of jetsam-tossed could-have-beens lost. I counted three. I counted ten. And then I stopped, and let it be. I measure more in keeping score the treasured memories of yore.

Will squinted as the sun reflected off the sheer rock wall to his right. He drank from his dwindling water supply, and evaluated the path behind and ahead. He knew the day was nearly gone, and he hesitated some to make the final surge toward the taunting peak ahead. It could be done and never one to think a task is too tall for his endurance in the search for reassurance, he singled out a far-off crag and made it his pointed aim. He sucked in breath and set foot after foot and lumbered up the mountain of doubt defeated.

Uncle Jakob wrote me about Aunt Ellie getting her hand caught in the combine and having the dogs look for it in the fields after sunset, and boy was it tough getting to the ER when the crick was outwashed and Billy had drained the battery on the Ford when he left the truck lights on before passing out next to the coop and the rooster thought he was a fox or somethin' 'cause he pecked at him until half his ear was near gone, and Molly, she ain't been near the same since she sat on that bumble bee...

Wild Willie Whiskers dropped the shot glass on the bar. He took a last assessment around the under-tabled interior of Lame Lemon Tavern and strode over to the faux saloon doors underneath the greasy exit sign passing through a portal to the Universe of the Outside. The streets were unwet, crusty and grimy. A steady, measured walk, purposeful, not urgent, focused, not grim, the defense system of urban aborigines - a battle-scent emitted to preserve oneself unbayed by predators. His shoe-clatter gave a faint echo in the down stairwell and a rapid three-knock and a slow two provided the password.

Cullah was as Cullah does. Spring McCullah preferred her nickname, it helped break off the past and time goes by tugs. Her mind wandered as she stared at the textbook and notes underneath the crackling glare of the desk lamp. She had studied enough for the test tomorrow, but she needed to be able to close her eyes and see the words on her eyelids. Playing a silly girl at day in the restaurant and a serious one at night school unsettled her, but she protected her center calm. Suddenly, she heard three knocks, then two at her outside door.

Cullah opened the door with her generous smile, giving expression sans footnotes. She half-curtsied sideways to let him pass, giggling. In he went then he turned and pulled off his hat. "Thought I'd drop by to see what was going by with you. Seemed last we parted you said I'd be welcome..." Prattling on, for no reason. She shifted two feet left, and a blue light glowed and faded behind her. "I want you", he croaked near whisper level. Regular colors returned to the room and Cullah took his hand and led him to the farthest recess of the flat.

Cullah had disappeared after guest deposit, needing evening-wear substitutions. Willie wondered whether she was yet a vegetarian, truth it be that it be she who must be so light on mother planet that destined she is to drift up to be the thinnest air. "Oh bother, where at hand to be when reappears she?" he mulled in the lull. Was he Willie Welcome? Evaluating the core of a woman's mood, he was "read 'em and weep". Too many moving parts. He went to the bed near the foot and he sat. He looked for a spot to settle his hat.

Cullah came back and all Willie’s smudged-up views twinkled away as he looked at her. She was a little plump in her waist showing it wasn’t an issue. So bourgeois. Her glasses were off, so at six feet away he was looking as good as he was going to today. "Can you kick off some tunes?", he said stumblingly stiff, trying to mellow-make the mood de jour. He was entering terrain dangereux, where revelations of signature music choices prematurely uncovers the yous known and unknown. His breath held until sounds swelled. Cat Stevens. It's time, he knew, to buckle up.

Entering the sanctuary muffled padded footsteps led me down to where the light was dim and standing stones seemed to guard as if the ancient Druids lay a siege on these untroubled walls. A pause of quiet signaled order to be seated on the floor or where the damp and dingy dark uneven steps of up down way deceiving make a later labored letting of my world-wracked body sitting to recline in measured, unrelenting time befitting this decorous setting. I temper now in stifled motion set in tune to true devotion of these robed gatherers of trials and time’s mysteries.

I got my problem all stitched up and waiting now for things to pass. It makes me somber just to think I wear another’s looking-glass. And when the light that travels through is left with clarity measured true it is a life whose light has gone that makes my valued senses strong. Take all of me, if I should sleep the way beyond this worldly keep, and scatter any worthy part of this bruised and beat-up husk, my mind’s abode. Although my mind I feel is me, I know that other flesh there be that calls itself the home inside.

I sit behind a desk and feed the hungry pixel farm and think that I have made more than a pile of dollars at the end of day. I’m making hay, but rain or shine I’ve just left characters behind. The numbers may be on the mark, and my displays of verbal spark may have a time, but time is not a friend to lasting past the coming end. You read a word or two or ten, and think that someone else had been where you have trod, and slept and swum. I call the words, the words won’t come.

Tie me down, I take it well. I would wander far too far if all my ways were without walls. I set a loop to come around and find its tail in time to tell the center of the thought I bring. I’ll never write a single thing that doesn’t have a part that’s true. You listen well, I know you do. But I can’t come as plain as day and show in unencumbered way piece by piece reveal of all that I have come to feel. Look beneath, take a peek. I take it well, I rest with peace.

Will set his pack down and leaned against the battered hatchback that brought him here to begin and complete the labored trek that only now he could declare as a finished and completed dare. He fumbled for his car keys and opened up the door to air out the ovened interior. Was it now how he thought he’d feel in making true his goal and show himself if not another that he could set his sights and see it all through? If the journey is reward, then the end is not the score but just a spot on sentence stop.

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