brief lovely life

tin drizzles over a sleepy house
a small quiet world
brief lovely life

little pause of night so sweetly
slips by asleep or else
toes tip across cold kitchen tile
hot black coffee drips
steam lifts a white mug to a tame tongue
to sit and be
in a room with no angles
noticing details of life

tin drizzles over a sleepy house
a small quiet world
brief lovely life




    

I used to not give the world so much credit. These days from down here I see a world full of people, seven billion I guess, mostly trying, as best they can, with what they have, and what they know. Trying for what? well,  that's a different observation. But I'll leave judgment be since I couldn't tell you what even one person's trying for including, me.

Writing through the block

What do you do when description falls flat; when the parched volcano sleeps. When lost letters drop dull wood in a brushfire of spelling accidents. What do you do when your hand thickens, a grandmother's heavy iron pot stirring numb starch to a slow, slow, stop. When you are feeding no one.

When apathy trickles, a wound of atrophy and a colorless hour skitters over an old moon face, a lodged rock, there by God and permanence. Shadows wander away beneath cloudy capes shuddering - things are partially as they appear and, not. It tricks me to think I can see through it.

It is this crescent belief that cannot be seen that chases me down like figments, through windless trees, to write on and on and wait.

child artist to adult reporters

a brilliant child artist crept lonely shades over a canvas wall
fine adult reporters swarmed his neck near the art price

one female statue eagerly asked him to describe
exactly what was going through your mind as

you created this - arguably your finest collection piece
to which his hands trembled a glass heart

understood what she wanted to hear
and greater what she couldn't

his finger lifted towards the brushstrokes his
voice replied 'that' and they hung on to get it

broke his only try with their notepad chuckle the
scratching word of what plain hid everything and nothing

The Other Social Network

Graffiti spray paint bottles dripped the first world wide

attempt.

Devils Disciples to Mara Salvatrucha.

Addicted expression outside lines of: proper and schooling.

Human web implosion inside urban economies lacking,

including: 

1 book split between 5 void bellies no bigger than

your own child's fist. 

You can't dial up virtual parenting.

I mean, 

even Jobs couldn't redesign disease or
compute his own cure.

They tattoo flesh and walls a social network why in the world would you do that. 

We're not talking junior mischief and thug crap kids these days, don't have 
anything better to do than 
destroy for fun.  

This is spilling of inhumane suffering starving for material
killing for family and 

attention.

Over pasta and salad news reports there was no warning. 

What a damn shame.

If the neighbor crying would step left we could compare

the scene to our neighborhood.

One safe meal and seven worthless miles away.
To shrink our lost world, we would...

Why don't those parents get the hell out of there. 

And when they do, don't come here.  

We other classes digitize our own uncensored graffiti postings

borrow endless walls and message boards

wars of word retaliating absolute nonsense. Communities of aliases to 

belong elsewhere.  

Group identification and categorization must only be a corporate 

marketing strategy. Only they get to throw up signs, call them: logos. 
So basically: only people who afford them can have instincts. 

The rest can have them once they prove consumer value.

One thousand online CSR oaths.

Empowerment, next generation, sustainability, etc. etc.
No need to destroy a thing because we'll do it for you.
Then you paypal us to fix it. 

Urban smiles in business suits advertise well. three hundredths of a cent per hit.     

Happy symbolism for the rest of us: 

We earned our own fortune of family since no one below us
proves we didn't. 

Still the other network flails tagged limbs in useless failure to start-up

despite igniting daily trafficking of: 

raucous midnight messages

help wanted boards

over a million hits 

statistics ratings

search bars

click click. 
click
:)  

  

What DID my dad do?

A parent's day job is a mystery no kid is trying too hard to figure out.

After years of childhood oblivion, I eventually paused to learn a few interesting facts about my dad's occupation: he worked at Ford, took leftovers for lunch, had a beat-up brown briefcase, designed stuff on large scrolls of paper. As for my mom, who went back to work as an x-ray tech when I was 9, all I knew for sure was that she wore a cool white coat, snapped pictures of bones, and brought home free poster board when my brother or I had a school presentation.

I never thought too much about any of it. Most kids don't. At least, not until they start trying to network for a summer job, and even then, kids care more about who their parents know than what they actually do.

But now as an adult, if I had to guess, I'd say it's because parents know - kids care less about what they do at work because they care much more about who they are at home. Because it's at home, not at work, where the real lessons and mistakes and silliness and all the good, deep stuff in life dwell. Because where you went to school actually says less about who you are than how many recitals you show up to or if that look of pride remains in your eyes, even when, especially when - they strike out, they miss, they come in last place. Because moms and dads know that children spend their whole lives trying to impress them and not the other way around. They know this because they are still the children of parents, too.

Kids never ask us for our parental résumé. Maybe they should. But imagine that. On our really off days, they might never hire us. And technical skills? Throw'em out the window. Can you build a fort? Can you do the chicken dance? How realistic are your animal sounds? Demonstrate three. Now six more. Everything's par except the zebra. Needs more bray, less squeal. Take him down an octave. Practice before round 2 interview. Now let's talk management: How do you handle stress? How do you handle stress when we scream? You scream too? You throw yourself, where - on the bed? On the floor! Okay you're fired. Fine one more chance - quantitative assessment: how many hugs per day per child? Kisses per day? Pieces of candy? Not bad. You've recovered from the zebra setback. Come back for round 2 after Dora's over. Grill cheese in the meantime. Please.

As for our "real" résumé, the only part of it that kids really care about is that last optional line: "Personal interests/hobbies." Here, kids do in fact care about what their parents do...with them (and, might I add - for them). 

In any case, it's not such a bad thing that our kids don't bother themselves with trying to figure out what we as parents do. It only reinforces just how beautifully their minds work - that indeed, and so rightly - our children are impressed by the greatness of our love, not the greatness of our title.

Now if only the rest of the world could measure us the same...