Sunday, December 17, 2023

migrating to Substack

Greetings! Thanks for stopping by.

I have migrated the blog and podcast to Substack. Please check out: https://honestchaos.substack.com/


Saturday, June 10, 2023

My People



My people
married their first cousins
and passed on crooked backs
and congenital deafness -
my people scraped desert island hills
into terraces
and pleaded with the earth -
my people gathered the rain
in cisterns hidden beneath their huts.

There was never enough,
and poverty only begets beauty 
and generosity 
in the movies.
It's only true children are fear
and jealousy.
And that is why my people 
set sail
and did not 
return.

Sunday, June 4, 2023

The First Day of Spring




The light and dark are equals
for this one day -
passing each other as they always do
in the halls of the sky at shift change.
What will Night do with his extra time
as Day takes on
her longer and longer shifts?
Does he have a hobby?
Like stamp collecting
or wood working?

And what has Day been occupying herself with
in her extra, off-duty hours
these last six months?
Has she been following the recommendations
of Oprah's book club?
Or watching all the Oscar nominees
while her colleague
watched the shop?

You have to feel a bit of sympathy for them -
they never get a vacation,
never take a week on some Caribbean Island
where the rum comes trimmed
with umbrellas and pineapple slices
or in a mountain lodge
curled up by the fire
with a blanket and cocoa.

Friday, February 24, 2023

Wisdom



An elder listens to you
without interjecting - 
they're not waiting their turn to speak -
and you
mistake their quiet
for having nothing to say.


Sunday, February 5, 2023

Friend from Childhood's Last Days


Would I recognize you
all these years later
friend from childhood's last days?
From bottomless time playing Atari
and banana seat bicycles 
riding over cracked sidewalks
late into summer nights?

How have you aged, with a
dad-bod belly and a receding hairline?
or are you just divorce-worn,
living alone
except every other weekend?

What have you become, 
what with your skills at Space Invaders
and your facility with the Rubic's Cube?

If you saw me,
would you know me?
Would we pull out two Huffy's 
from behind the shed of memory
and pedal off together once more
by the blue glow glory of the street lamps?

**

Saturday, January 21, 2023

at the edge of morning



It is the edge of morning and 
it is snowing and 
I am looking
through the glass pane of the bedroom window
into the woods -

the trees are looming black sleepers
at the edge of the yard,
my breath fogs my view for a moment 
as I lean too close -
and as it clears 
I see movement 
and a fox emerges, looks about -
and looks past me in my window,
utterly irrelevant.

I am struck 
by his burnt orange presence
as he carefully crosses the open space into the gardens
aware of scents and sounds
I would be blind to, even if I were standing next to him.

I wonder if he is really animal 
or spirit
in this half light 
crossing between worlds.

Saturday, January 7, 2023

Leonardo's First Flight



The grind of flying is like wearing shoes with
frayed laces in a crowd -
everything is about to fall apart and you
are about to be trampled by indifferent strangers.

Flying happens in a crowd and no one is present -
you are an obstacle to their destination -
and so trampling is done with indifference.

I think of Leonardo in an unheated studio
sketching by candlelight
on a sheet of paper that cost more
than a peasant's dinner -
he draws first in the free space of the mind
before dipping the quill he sharpened this morning
in the bowl of squid ink he bought from a trader
from Pisa last Tuesday.
He has the idea of flying machines in his eye
before he begins scratching out
a bicycle that has wings that beat
with each rotation of the pedals -
or a corkscrew sail
that turns the wind like a water mill.

What joy would be express
even on the taxi from the gate
his seatbelt secured over his robes
and his satchel of parmigiana and prosciutto
stored beneath the  seat in front of him.

He would have his face pressed to the window
as the ground moved faster than any horse
he could have drawn -
flanks sweating and feet pounding -
then the wheels would lift
and the ground would fall away -

He would be speechless
as he saw the world as the birds he drew
and dissected -
and as he passed into the belly of a cloud
he would believe he could feel
the presence of God, so long doubted,
wrapping around him.

He would look to his passengers for fellow feeling -
to see who was likewise transfixed and transformed
by the certain presence of angels
only to find them
flipping through inflight magazines
or downing tiny bottles of whisky
or watching videos on their phones.