Sunday, November 23, 2014

Sketches - 48 (November 7th, 2014)

48.

Baby fever - whole days
of coughing sickness.

Jesse sips cool water
out of a sippy cup/bottle
bleary eyed, all the usual
baby movements droned
into a ponderous red slow
down, and cold/cool wind
gusts outside, creaks
at the windows and whistles
like fall fevered ghosts.  

Reminds me of being a
boy in the small town
library as cold weather fronts
came tumbling gusting over
the town.
.
I would check out Tom Swift
books, sometimes Hardy Boys -
              rarely ever finished reading  
              the books I checked out.

I was more interested in the radio
and riding bikes through alley
ways and cutting over people's
manicured lawns on my giant
purple fendered bicycle I
inherited from my dad - an
adult bike from the 60’s with
white wall tires - was a hell of
an eyesore but the best bike
I ever owned.

I’m 44 years old now - spitting
tobacco into an empty yogurt
container while actually both
fever boys sweat it out in
their bedroom across the hall.

Jesse’s tight cough and
Lowen complaining to go
downstairs.  Jesse tries
to make a speech ‘Ah gwah,
aah ah cootah, quah ma
da, ah , awwwwww’ (sip, sip)

Lowen is more direct -
      ‘I see a butterfly!’
      he yells delightedly,
      all eye-ears-enthusiasm.

Huge wind outside, window
creaks and giant engine
snarl flat bed weight
KAWAP-a-WUMP and tinkly
chain friction as a truck
passes by out on east
Cuming street north of
our ramshackle house.

Our mailbox out there too,
occasionally
stuffed with bills
and other bits and flaps
of semi-laminated junk.

Ash kisses on Jesse and
attempts a conversation
as he takes his tiny hand
(fever-hand and hot armpits)
says ‘mom’ as he touches
            her lips.   

Everyone’s sick today
         except me - sort of
         dodging the bullet through
         some miracle or other.

That is, until it taps me
on the shoulder and I too
will wake up with that tight
dry nowhere-cough feeling
        like a dog burning
        in hell.

(November 7th, 2014)

______________

Friday, November 21, 2014

Sketches - 47 (November 6th, 2014)

47.

‘God damn it Charlie’
my wife says quietly -
Charlie’s our over sized
house cat who nibbles
at some of the plants
in our bedroom.  Apparently
a plant at the east
window has been nibbled
down to little ripped  
weathered flags across a rigid
           pulpy stem.

Zoey plays with an art
game on the computer
sitting on our minuscule
medium sized bed,
and later on, my heavenly repose
onto that same bed when
sleep hits me, can’t keep
my weary head from the
pillow, initial sighs into
the bliss - flash REM state,
down into peaceful
           tranquil quiet dark.

Izzy (almost ‘5’ she proudly says)
watches Zoey play
on the computer, creates
mountainous rainbow triangles,
       impresses the hell
       out of Izzy.
‘After you show me you can let
              me try it.’ Izzy says.
There’s a poignant hopeful tone in
her direct mini-sentences,
               Izzy gets down to
               business.
‘Uh, blue, and purple, and I
          think some red will be
          good.’  She plaintively
          requests Zoey to show
          her.

Today my wife called in
sick from work and the
boys have been hacking
and coughing, sometimes
puking, their breath and
sweat imbued with that
warped thin metallic tang
of sickness indicative of
red-cheeked roaring high
fever.  It casts swollen
eyed spells, long stares into
space hardly normal activity for
a 20 month or a three year old boy.  

They've been sick all week.

Ash calls Mother India
after I gave the two toddler
boys a hell of a shower/bath
scrubble bubble glub, all
the honey soap and shower
steam - gets rid of that
sick smell, and now I’m almost gone
to pick up my wife’s order from
Mother India on Leavenworth, soup,
flat bread and the car radio/CD
player await albeit in the
single headlight Chevy Cobalt -
I’ll need to drive with care.

(November 6th, 2014)
____________

 

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Sketches - 46 (October 28th, 2014)

46.

There is much money
to be made in a
silent but painful
aging process.

One minute, you’re there, next
minute, you keep scratching
days into the mind of a
           wall that was
           once your thinking
           mind.
.
Steer quick silver into
the fall winds, makes
those bones sore and lips
           whistle  

like freezing wind through the dry husks
of corn long since past,
      swaying rigidly
      over the bottom belly
      earth of cob-carcasses,
whips in the blue-numb
                  air.
             Smiles frozen,
                 tongues
                 stuck out
                 over chapped
                 lips.

So we sheer up and suck in
the gut of the day with
daylight savings time.
Back one creeping hour
           like God tapping
           on my shoulder.

A Sunday bath and minutes
from now a shave then drive
off to a three hour CNA home-care shift,
       a Catholic client and
       his wife, almost total
       paralysis of his left side
       from a stroke.  

(October 28th, 2014)
___________

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Sketches - 45 (October 28th, 2014)

45.

This is an age of forward
backward communication,
meaning we step forward in
the ‘catch-up’ of people’s
lives from all over the world,
pictures, youtube videos -
essentially everything real
in life now has a  
parallel digitized virtual life
beside it.

Problem now is, everything
threatens to become like
old forgotten reruns, and
we step backwards over and over
            and over again,
water by the ton spilling over
                  into blank,
                  forgotten as
                  ever.

(October 28th, 2014)
_____________

Monday, November 10, 2014

Sketches - 44 (October 28th, 2014)

44.

October is a curious month.
Yearly harvest gives it up,
        cool winds blow and gust down and out
        of Cascades and even
        further up through
        and over the Rocky
        Mountains, the bone skeleton
        tree branches tremble for it.

And the hiss-cage-roar
of the lawn mowers, the blue
thin plume of exhaust just
before stowing it all away
for another winter to collect
whatever winter-long twinkle dust
in the garage.

A month of giant impossible
moons flooded in rust yellow
light and candy wrappers
fluttering drearily down
small town street gutters
after all is shut down
for the night.

For several Octobers in
a row I found myself
wrought with untimely
          disasters.

But for some reason now,
that has calmed itself
          down.
     I suppose disaster
     still has time to leap in,

October hasn't quite
              gotten over itself
              yet.

(October 28th, 2014)
____________     

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Sketches - 43 (October 26th, 2014)

43.

Hot indoors - Sunday
evening and unexpected
sad Indian Summer taking
breath away, tobacco pipe
also thinning my lungs as
my 40 something belly threatens
to pop further over my waist
line.  I try to eat just right
but necessity nods and
shoulders and directs,
sometimes its just easier in that
fitful day end hot sun to
order drive thru,  
take in the fast food fries,
the salted greasy onion
                           rings -
slop grease melted
slice of American odd-yellow cheese
caressing the
ever peppered Don and
Millie's diner
meat shoved into
styrofoam
containers
and slid
across the
wiped over
dull-silvered
diner
counter,

snarling wisp of cloud in
an otherwise deep eternal
blue sky, eternal in its
featureless blue as I do
imagine in quiet evenings
such as this one, all traffic
noiselessly swimming, teaming
in quiet veins and arteries of
autumned streets past hospitals,
grocers, car garages and bars.

Gulp down a last swallow
of coffee before deciding
that now would be a good
time to deliver my daughters
jacket and daycare payment
check to my ex’s mailbox.

But this is truly none of
my real concern or your business.  I am
simply looking forward to driving
out in that cool black
October evening, let some
of that sweat coating the
roots of my hair chill out,
           light my tobacco pipe
          and puff giant
          white clouds of
          tobacco breath
          into the car, watch the 
wall of smoke zip out
          the cracked-open window.

There is much to realize
when the town shuffles by
fast enough to be meaningless
and there is only the radio and
                I,

sometimes a prophetic union, but
more often than not, frizzled sold
and done.

(October 26th, 2014)
_______________