Happy Halloween from Dreamland (cemetery)...

At dusk...

Well after sunset, only my laptop (you know, to blog this from) illuminates the sacred grounds...

I haven't yet run into any ghosts, zombies, or vampires.  I think they are all out on the streets now collecting free candy.  However, and I swear, I saw a totally black cat darting amongst the tombstones at dusk.  Oh well...  Hot damn, Roomya, my ghost-writer, just arrived to inspire me. 

"Hi, baby."  *smooch*  

Catch you all later.  Do have a safe one.

1) Ever been to someone's blogsite and they force you to login to Xanga to see their page?

2) Or you want to visit someone's blog and you know they have a Xanga tracker and you, for personal reasons, would rather stay under the radar?

I once wrote (actually rewrote and improved) scripts that implemented both #1 and #2.  Used them for awhile.  Shared them with others.  Then abandoned their use for myself.

The other side of the coin, which I now share with those of you not aware of it, is that you can avoid #1 and #2 quite easily.  One way: don't visit those sites.  Another way: use an "anonymizer" or "web proxy"" to avoid engaging the javascripts that bloggers load in their Look and Feel.  Doing the latter, you'll not only avoid #1s and 2#s, but all the other annoying, resource-hogging, time-consuming scripts that are rampant throughout Xanga.

I occasionally use an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) VPN (Virtual Private Network) anti-script access called Megaproxy.  It's $10 for 3 months, but you can try it free here.  There are others, too, such as Anonymizer, with both paid and free (upper right hand corner) versions.  Of course, the free versions are limited (usually to the amount of free surfing you can do).  But then again, this may be something you only want to engage occassionally and then the free versions are just fine.

And, in case your wondering, my Xanga tracker, which I hosted on my own domain and called the "cRacker-tracker", though not utterly sophisticated, had, and still has, a few distinct advantages over the many other trackers. 

First, it's not detectable by Got'em's xanga-tracker Sniffer. 

Secondly, the logs, in the latest version, are entirely non-public so that no one else can spy on you tracking on them.  For instance, the outsourced Xanga Anti-Stalker module which is in place on my blog but which I never look at, is viewable here.  If someone else has a Xanga Anti-Stalker module, you need only insert their username in the URL to see who they are tracking.  Even Got-Em's tracker, though seemingly password protected, can be circumvented by an unpublished alias URL.

Third, the final version of my  script was refined so that it was not liable to "tracker poisoning".  What's that?  That's when some miscreant copies your script and places it on any number of numerous other sites that get hits.  Your log then reflects not only your actual hits but all the other noise the script is collecting.  Matters can then get down to being like a whore trying to figure out who the baby's daddy is.

Though I work in Information Security, my best buddy has always said of me: "When it comes to information systens, he can break into things as well as he can guard them."

Hey baby, I'm your handyman.  But please, no request for codes.  I'm not "into them" anymore and find them abhorent.  And, in the end, if you can't trust, you won't be trusted.

"The best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission and win the war on terror," the President said, speaking of the war in Iraq, in his weekly radio address yesterday.

THE CONCEPT OF SUNK COST, well-established in the field of economics, means that the cost of past actions should not be considered in selecting the appropriate future path.  Specifically, sunk costs are irrelevant in decision making.  Again, the appropriate analysis requires a focus on the future, not past losses, and costs that differ among alternatives.  If you have poured $200 million into building a bridge and then suddenly realize the entire structure is sinking into previously undetected quicksand, you do not "honor" the bridge by spending additional resources to "complete" it.

Would withdrawing now be a mistake?  Well, clearly "staying the course" will not defeat the insurgency.  In fact, there is strong evidence from past conflicts that when a regular foreign army assumes a protracted occupational status in a country with a raging insurgency, the insurgency grows stronger and more nationalistic as the occupiers grow older and more entrenched.

Simply stated, the United States has no strategy for defeating the Iraqi insurgency.  Pres. Bush has said "Our strategy can be summed up this way: as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." 

Sorry, George.  Any even barely competent student of military matters recognizes that as a "withdrawal plan" and not a strategy.

We do not need a withdrawal plan or a timetable for withdrawal.  When you have sex, do you go at it with a withdrawal plan or timetable for such?  Of course not!  You'll know when it's time to decouple.  For sure.

What we really need is a solid strategy based on the principles of counterinsurgency and counterguerrilla warfare. 

Do not merely send regular troops out roaming in an attempt to hunt down and kill insurgents.  Sure, they will kill some.  But when the regular troops depart the countryside, the surviving insurgents return as heroes to the cause to kill, torture, and intimidate informants and suspected American sympathizers.  And they thus retain, even through bludgeoning tactics, the popular support they need.

In Vietnam, U.S. strategy seized upon the expediency of killing insurgents via "search and destroy" tactics at the ultimate expense of winning the hearts and minds of the people.  Seem familiar?

But why do we care about winning the hearts and minds of the people?  Because the people, in their houses and in the streets—and not the Iraqi politicians and police—know who and where the insurgents are.  If we win their hearts and minds, we gain their intelligence.  End of lovemaking.

But what, you might ask, does counterinsurgency warfare have to do with winning hearts and minds?  Without going into tactics, it's all about providing enduring security by staying with the people, among the people, almost as one of the people.  If people, long oppressed, finally come to feel genuinely secure and unthreatened by the possibility of insurgents returning after "search and destroy" forays move on, they will open their hearts, share intelligence, and the war will be won.  It will, however, provided even this strategy, likely take 10 years, hundreds of billions of more dollars, and thousands of more American lives to prevail.

There is one other option.  One that I have pondered and perhaps alone (until now in this blog) entertained.  

Make a strategy out of withdrawal.  Withdraw and allow civil war to ensue and take its course.  If the insurgent/terrorist forces gain the upper hand, they will transform themselves, as they must, into more easily targetable regular forces and established pockets of government.  Then reinvade, pound hard, and withdraw again.  Repeat and repeat until the insurgent/terrorist forces understand we will forever deny them legitimacy.

The initial "invasion' of Iraq (till the point where Pres. Bush declared an "end" to the conflict) took the lives of only about 240 American troops.  Any subsequent "reinvasions" would probably be much less costly in terms of lives and resources since we would be encountering an already self-battered enemy.  This strategy, too, might take 10 years, but only tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of American lives.  Of course, we would be writing off the supply of oil from Iraq for the duration.  But this, after all, isn't about (Exxon $9.9 billion quarterly profit) oil, is it?

Sunk costs, anyone?

I went shopping the other day at an Asian food mart with a friend and here's what we found:

Give your man a Halloween treat he'll really appreciate...

The culinary sequel to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson...

And for lunch today…a 20 once bottle of Cool Blue Gatorade.

 

No coffee/caffeine for over 2 weeks.  A beer yesterday.  A beer the day before.

 

By the end of today, I project that I will have worked 33 hours since (and including) Sunday.

 

This is a simple blog.  I’m purposefully refraining from getting deep.

 

Since I never get what I want, I’ve decided not to want what I want.

 

Ha!  That was easy!  Now, that leaves me free to go after what I need.

 

That might be a run in the cool rain later. 

 

Followed by even simpler reflections.

 

Do dream.

"Every man dies.  Not every man really lives."

 - Braveheart

Shhh!  You’re reading too loudly.

 

That’s better.

 

I’m thinking, actually making plans, about going skydiving.  Again.  It’s been many, too many years.

 

First time on the DZ (drop zone), I had gone there with a couple of work buddies (Wayne and Johnny) from UPS. Wayne was a hard-rocker party-type who liked to play practical jokes.  Johnny, on the other hand, was a macho sort of hillbilly guy, somewhat naïve but full of bravado.  Johnny was truly unique in his raw but amusing mannerisms.  One time while reading a book on break (I always did), Johnny grabbed the book out of my hands, flipped through all the pages, and sincerely remarked: “How can you read a book with no pictures in it?”  On other occasions, you could find Johnny during lunch break out in the parking lot doing stand-up motorcycle tricks on his bike—or sitting on his bike backwards and riding it—all to the applause of the crowd that would gather to watch his antics.  Johnny was also the one who sold me the compound bow that I was one day to master (and still have), warning me at the solemn moment of the transfer of ownership that “If you ever shoot anybody with this, shoot well and don’t leave him suffering.”  Anyway, we all decided on one off-day Saturday in the autumn to bike out to the Cleveland Parachuting Club and fall to Earth.  None of us had done it before so it was a communally virgin adventure.

 

Of course, we all just wanted to just get there, hop on a plane, and jump.  But the club required first that an initiate undergo preliminary training and display a sense of responsibility about what was intended to occur.  Most of the training consisted of lectures and watching movies, but the most critical component of the training was practicing impacting the ground and rolling properly.  After demonstrating by jumping from a low platform (about 3 feet high) how to hit the ground with bent knees, roll and break one’s fall over five successive contact points (feet, knee , hip, shoulder, then other shoulder), the instructor had each of us do the same.

 

Wayne and I did just fine.  But when it cam to Johnny’s turn, Johnny protested to the instructor that he couldn’t do it.

 

“Why not?” the instructor inquired.

 

“Because I’ll hurt myself,” said Johnny.

 

“No you won’t,” the instructor assured. “Your buddies did it and they’re fine.  Just give it a try.”

 

“You don’t understand,” explained Johnny, “I’m wearing things that will hurt me if I fall.”

 

“What things?” asked the instructor.

 

And of course, since Johnny was a demonstrative kind of guy, his response was both a tell-and-show. 

 

“See here,” raising his left pants leg and revealing a bowie knife.  “And here,” pulling brass knuckles out of his pocket.  “And here,” pulling up his sleeve and disclosing a black jack strapped to his arm.

 

The instructor was aghast. “What the hell are you intending to do with all these weapons?” he asked in a shaken voice.

 

“Well,” Johnny responded, squaring off and looking directly into the instructor’s eyes, “when I get up there, if I don’t want to jump, you ain’t going to make me.”

 

ha  ha  ha—Wayne and I just burst out laughing.  Even the instructor was chuckling while assuring Johnny that he wouldn’t need the weapons since no one was going to force him to jump.  Johnny did, with our encouragement, put his weapons aside and practice his fall.  And after he passed the exercise grandly, we all suited up in our parachutes, headed

out, and boarded the plane.

 

Johnny said nothing in the air, until the instructor gave us the signal to jump and I asked him if he was going. 

 

“Well, I didn’t just come up here to fly around in the sky,” deadpanned Johnny.  “Besides, I don’t want to stay in this plane with this instructor one more minute than I have, too—I don’t trust him and I think he’s going to crash.”

 

And so we all jumped.

 

Breathtaking freedom!  Moments to never forget.

 

Once back upon the ground, we were all kick-ass celebrant at having completed our first jump, but Johnny was the most excited of all.  Running up to me like a little kid all-aglitter with excitement he couldn’t contain, he rusticly exclaimed: “You know, I’ve never been on a plane that I haven’t jumped out of.”

 

Wayne and I convulsed in belly laughter.  Johnny had said it all.

It’s the time of year here when some things just up and die.

 

 

Oh, not me.    I’m a man of the seasons.  And though I slightly prefer the scorching luminance of summer, all of the cooling seduction of the fall and the darkening detraction of the winter and the flower-floating forgiveness of the spring are never-ever begrudged by me.  In fact, I’ve never really met anyone else quite like myself that loves all the seasons so participatingly (outdoors running, lounging, blogging all year long),

 

  

so intractably (never looking back—only the faerie death beckons such and she I ignore),

 

 

 and so mystically (the seasons are a construct of man and merely a mental fuzz—climates live and grow with the likes of us.  If you truly love life, you’ll embrace all  the weather.).

 

 

 

By the way, if Xanga really wanted to make the 'login' better encrypted (read the Xanga headlines), they'd enforce SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), otherwise known to most by the urls which begin 'https://' (http secure). That's the only way to insure a truly secure login.  Otherwise, your password goes out onto the internet 'in the clear.'  And if someone's in the right place at the right time, they could use a 'packet sniffer' product like Ethereal to retrieve your password in passage. 

It seems that fewer and fewer real men blog Xanga anymore.

Perhaps, like many members of today's elite military forces who are increasingly leaving official duty to become soldiers of fortune for private military forces (PMFs - more than 60 firms are now providing more than 20,000 private soldiers to fight in Iraq, some making up to $1,000 a day), real men bloggers have, are, will move on to more momentous forms of personal expression than Xanga can afford.

That's the Xanga-was-a-training-school-for-real-men theory of blog devolution. Emphasis on was.

Xanga's always been demographically preponderantly female anyway. Two-thirds. Oh well, just a feeling and a theory!

I quit smoking when I was 7 years old. First cigarette. True.

I quit drinking coffee 9 days ago. Haven't had any caffeine substitutes like teas or colas either. My colleagues from work have observed over that span that I've become much more quiet and unagitated in the workplace. They don't like it - they'd rather watch a wild man in their midst. But a real man is not necessarily a wild man, is he now?

I've been feeling the urge for the last couple days to take up the art of knife fighting. This after seeing the movie The Hunted for the first time the other night. Such appeals to instinct usually enthrall me.

Just wondering: When walking alone down an urban downtown street, do any of you ever punch trees, slap buildings, knock on windows, or shake stop signs?

I do. But not all the time.

Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.

- Alexander Pope

Not all FEMA-type bureaucrats lack vision.  Take a read from the Associate Director of the Department of Homeland Security's National Center for Food Protection and Defense.

FEED

1) Pick 'enter a url' at the dropdown arrow below.
2) Enter your xanga url, eg., www.xanga.com/fuck or whatever.
3) Click 'Go' and experience the true beauty of your blog.
(hint: for enhanced experience, close the left help box and reposition and enlarge the various browser view windows)

Above (IE viewable only): A potatoland.org anti-browser, FEED.

Non-IE browsers (or if the applet above is unviewable), click here.

For the FEED philosophy and a description of the interface, click here

Inspired by someone who likes *toys* It is now largely forgotten that the world was once catastrophically threatened with hysteria.  More dangerous than the post-modern threat of a nuclear cold war or perhaps the possibility even of pandemic flu, hysteria challenged humanity and drove the greatest minds to strive for innovative relief.  Does this claim sound hysterical? It isn’t.  (Well, maybe it is.  But then that would be consistent with this blog’s theme.)  Actually, in the latter half of the 19th century, there occurred a medical pandemic among women which was labeled “hysteria” with symptoms ranging broadly to include lassitude,  irritability, depression, confusion, palpitations of the heart, headaches, forgetfulness, insomnia, muscle spasms, stomach upsets, writing cramps, ticklishness, weepiness. abnormal fear, unexplained sweating, and excessive vaginal lubing (unprovoked sexual readiness)—in other words, almost anything.  It was, at that time, deemed that about 80% of women suffered from this critical “dementia.”   The medical  solution?  Hand massage of the vulva until the patient reached orgasm.  Yes, many doctors (all males) spent much of the latter part of the 19th century masturbating women who flocked to doctors’ office for the “cure.”  (Tragically enough, women who couldn’t reach orgasm so assisted due to a predisposition for clitoral orgasm—which wasn’t induced—were diagnosed as “sexually immature” by the likes of Freud and his brethren and constrained to years of unfruitful, even psychically-damaging, therapy to induce orgasms only in the vagina.  But that is another story…) You might think that this was a pie job (little jack horner, sat in a corner…stuck in his thumb, made her bum hum) for horny male doctors.  But actually, the doctors were generally extremely overworked, distressfully fatigued, and in desperate search of a faster, less draining solution to saving femininity, and thus humanity, since everyone was aware that “hysteria” would take down the pillars of civilization, if unabated.  But this was the age of the steam engine, the steamboat, and forays into canal construction.  Little wonder then that eventually a real man (Dr. George Taylor, 1869) would devise a coal-fed, steam-powered contraption called the “Manipulator”  for pelvic massages (paddle that pelvis, down that lazy river…)  Unfortunately, the dimensions and expense of this orgasm-assistant were such as to make it unpractical in all but very formal institutional settings. Yet, lo and behold, another doctor was thinking *small*  and devised the first battery-powered, portable vibrator (Mortimer Granville—1883), “good ole Mort”.  However, though a fantastic innovator, he was morally-stodgy in asserting that his invention was not for assisting female orgasms but merely for the excitation of men’s skulls.  Right, dude.  And condoms are balloons.  And handcuffs in the bedroom are in case you need to arrest a burglar breaking in at night.  (Didn’t he realize that once the women got a-humming that men’s skulls would get all the excitation they could handle??!!) Immensely popular from the onset, this invention, marketed as the Weiss vibrator, was almost as tremendous a relief to doctors worn down by vulva-throbbing as it was it was to the women “undergoing” this newest electromechanical “therapy.”  No wonder a recent study of female portraiture during the pre- and post-vibrator periods shows women’s post-smiles spreading wider by at least a quarter-inch. Fact: The vibrator was only the fifth household device to be electrified, after the sewing machine, fan, tea kettle and toaster, and preceding by about a decade the vacuum cleaner and electric iron – very suggestive of  women’s priorities at the time.

The sun shone brilliantly for the first time in a good many days today just after I finished running 4 miles in Dreamland.  Though hovering around 60 degrees, I still feel comfortable in my summer running garb of shorts and tee-shirt even now, after the run, as I sit at a picnic table on the lower balcony of Garfield’s Monument intending to enjoy some peaceful moments by myself.

 

 

How are we to be other than we are?  I ask you that sincerely.  You were most beautifully you and I was most courageously me.  But, it seems, that wasn’t enough to spin the world any more quickly.  Hundreds and hundreds of instances of love-giving, forever-promising, never-releasing.  But the one moment that would have made firm our intensity—first meeting—never arrived.  Well beyond disappointment was the failure of that disclosure to me.  Were I prone to depression, I’d yet be being tossed by wayward currents along the bottom of the sea.

 

You see what I wrote above?  I felt it personally.  But it also wafted through me transparently.  As if, the life I’ve lived has been lived by many before, as well as to be lived by many yet to come.  I’m like a late fall dandelion blooming in Indian summer: individually 'me', yet no allelomorphic surprise on the road to eternity.

I should write all that I can say.  But you would be shocked.   Yes, you would be dismayed.

 

Who is expected to insure the light?  Who is expected to deliver all from the night?

 

I have killed before.  But worry not: I specialized mostly in assassinating popes only.  Or rather, they bet the farm on me being something that I wasn’t.   And the devil covered—and they lost.  Because I was never the mother-fucking chick-banger, hell-raiser, dope-slayer, idea-monger they, back yonder, made me out to be.  I was a total innocent—practically.  And it was they consequently, and not I, that kissed the ass of eternity.

 

Okay.  You think I rant.  You think I rave.  You think…as much as any knave.

 

But I know what kept me alive—as amazing as it was.  I crossed the misty, a-faerie-called-death forest-cast boundary of Christian and pagan belief.  And saw psychic the death of two pontiffs (at least!) as a form of hyper self-pagan immolation.  Yes, the catholic church, not philosophically, but organizationally was (is) an anachronistic, archaic umbilical-ification dangling its potentates like expendable segments of afterbirth or wriggling worms to be snapped up by a hungry, diving death bird flying stealth through the night.

 

And still I run alive amidst the dead—trembling with elation.

A post or so down, I spoke about feeling very Presidential.  That's because I've been warning about the pandemic dangers of Bird Flu (Avian Flu - what I call 'Dinosaur Flu' because birds are dinosaurs ) since 2004 (1-14-2004, 2-22-2005, 3-22-2005, 8-1-2005) while President George has just hopped on the bandwagon.  I must admit that it's rewarding to see the long-warranted concern and vision that I once shared with only a small scientific minority now promoted to the highest levels of public discussion.  Seems like the slow and highly-criticized response of the Administration to the Katrina catastrophe may have forced George to become more realistic about other possible dangers at hand.  Welcome belatedly aboard, George.  (Now if I could only get him to refer to it as Dinosaur Flu.)

I've quit drinking coffee.  For a few days now.  I'm actually more awake and aware of my world without it.  My running, too, is more energized without the caffeine coefficient.  So all is good in that regard.

And I have cut-back my beer-drinking significantly, too.  I may just quit drinking beer altogether.   After laborious analysis I have concluded that it's not doing much enough for me anyway.  And the days of summer when after a long, hot run I could sit in the Sun and enjoy a few beers while blogging from Dreamland are doomed by the change of season.  So really I've no reason not to change with the autumn season and start drinking cider.  Hot, not hard, cider flavored with cinnamon. 

Ha - strangely, that's the first time I've ever mentioned cinnamon online.  I really love the sound of that word.  And, of course, spice is very nice.  So come on, Cinnamon, let me in (be my cinnamon girl.)

And a female guide came to me as I was stranded upon a lake on scattered floating debris last night.  I had gotten myself out there by carefully adventuring from one piece of scattered debris to the next—the pieces, seemingly of a shipwreck, were fairly contiguous though not precisely continuous.  So my footing 'out' was consciously tentative and studied. 

However, after venturing a good distance out,  the danger of drowning suddenly came upon me as the lake whipped up with gale force winds and the debris I was navigating started to toss and flip.

"Don't look back, go on," is all she said.  So, trusting, I began.  And my footing 'in'—which I was envisioning not as 'back' to shore but 'on' with life—was nothing less than spontaneously instinctive, true, and non-reflecting.

I am here!  ha.  Thanks to my water guide, I have, perhaps, finally mastered the esoteric art of 'not looking back'.

I feel very Presidential.  Yes, I do.  Sitting on the steps of Pres. Garfield’s monument, drinking beer, tapping on laptop, sending blogs into outer space, I feel most majestic.  But I’ve poetry to write about things dear to my heart and troubling me.  So fuck the public service thing.

I’m never going to love again.  No, this doesn’t express my inner feelings.  This expresses my premonition about the way the world has for the last several years and continues to dispatch me.  Love is always just *this close*.  And then, with no warning and often little explanation, it goes away.  Poof.   Yes, some couples fuck.   My intended just *poofs*.  Of course, my intended may be just a construction of my imagination anyway.  Rumya (Rumi) is actually my sweetheart, of course.  And she says she's 'pissed' because she claims she has had writer’s block for the last couple of weeks and hasn’t been able to continue with my (our) ghost-written story.  I think she and I were just about to make love during the thunderstorm in Chapter 7…  O my god, I wonder if she’s about to go *poof* too?

Scribbled on a subway wall:
“Is there any intelligent life left on Earth?”
Scribbled underneath it:
“Yes, but I’m only visiting.”

The shadowy voice said: “Just punch it.”
So I punched it.
Then, feeling its influence upon my psyche, the voice urged: “Spit.”
So I spit.
Then the voice commanded: “Fuck me.”
So I punched and spit on it.

We do not dream dreams.
Dreams dream us.
But you can own them.
Dreams are only good if you own them.

The Sun is beginning to down each day noticeably—ever-thievingly—earlier here now at this point of autumn.  There’s no getting used to it—the season is shifting too quickly, most quickly just about now, and the seasonal remnants of summer are soon doomed to disappear.  Even a current quirky late spate of yet 80+ degree days now in mid-October here in the Midwest, too, will soon just be a memory.

 

But tomorrow is still a summer-holdout and promises to be a grand day for a picnic: lower to mid-80s, a fair amount of sunshine, with gentle refreshing breezes.  I’ll bring the bottles of red wine, cheeses, crackers, assorted sushi, and pasta salad.  O, and I’ll bring a light blanket, too, for us to lay upon.  And I’ll even pick the spot: somewhere under a tall pine that’s amidst obelisks upon the now grass-covered, once-glacial ridge of Dreamland serenely looking over the Lake of Erie—or—down from the ridge and onto the pasture aligning twin ponds; ponds where the water lilies tangle, the large orange carp are visible in the shallow, clear waters and the geese and duck care-freely still laze about—or—across from the upper pond and aside the lush low-lying meadows that court the stream (that feeds the ponds) and that’s down-water a quarter mile from the huge, majestic dam that was built to hold back a thousand-year flood that’s yet to come—or—in a shady, secret spot that Time has long forgot, much farther upstream and above the dam, at the waterfall where dreams, that once floated in the living imaginations of long-gone dreamers like surreal clouds, yet seem to flicker in the deep furtive rushing, swirling of the waters cascading downwards and then whitewatering a length of rapids before disappearing around a bend and out of sight.

 

It will be a magnificent day for a mid-autumn picnic.  I know it and would love to share the experience.  So…what’s up with you?

I

 

*jabs and points magically all about*
 a tentative 2-year-old toddler out

(glove on the other hand)
with his dad in the bleachers
enjoying a professional baseball game,
the last (perhaps) of the season.

*silently-lipped child-sorcerer incantations*

can’t distinguish between the assembled players on the field

and the boisterously jabbering fans in the stands—

and for why? there’s no reason.

 

II

 

it was nearly this time last year:

the sadness, heavy heart, the wanting so much to be a part
of something that had no parts.
now, in the moment, like an iron meteorite encrusted in the ground,

re-settled after a magnificently cosmic flight

and all is vaporized that is not found.

 

III

 

she was just like a suddenly blown-out candle
that had been set too near to an open window in the night

where a stiff autumn storm-gale, passing, snuffed her dim.

i struck (up) a match and offered, most innocently (ha!), to re-light her wick.

but she sensed the waft of a metaphorical come-on

and quickly cut my promethean gesture to the quick.