Bottles

 

I’d blog in a bottle, if I could—

from the bottom of a quart of a lime-stuffed Corona I’d blog

while slurping it up inside out.

 

Never hit anybody with a bottle.

Held one tightly once, in a bar,  to better smash someone’s head.

But the offender smiled at the last instant and

my grip loosened as we shook

hands (with free hands) and laughed instead.

 

Never thought about collecting, owning bottles,

never considered them anything to prize or to display.

Initially thought of them just as containers—keepers of volume.

Until I found, as a child, filled with air

they shoot in a watery salute

like rapidly ascending submarines

from tub’s nether bottom to micro-ocean’s surface.

 

Always thought ships in a bottle were stupid

especially after my childhood sub-realization that bottles were ships.

Why would you ever put a leash on a leash?

Or lock combination locks in a safe?

 

Was always enchanted by the notion of messages in a bottle.

Came to believe that true lovers –distant- would always,

if practicalities permitted,

come(m)union with each other just so.

 

Had a message in a bottle wash-up in the middle of my night:

Love you my deer-whispering

god of all things

sensual.

 

After born of sunrise, dispatched a bottled-message back:

Your sensual deer-whisperer

wishes his sexy god-pleasing baby

a good morning.

I was just about, as we tightly cuddled,

hearts beating together,

to sweetly whisper to you in assuring breaths

of my forever enduring love when –

 

God barged in, took me aside, and said:

 

“Dude.  I just thought I should let you know—

all of life, the whole world, ended over 5 billion years ago.”

 

And He explained...

“You see, there was a supernova chain reaction

that enveloped all and banished matter right out of existence.

Now all there is is the Cosmic Glow of what had been—

It’s just a faint remembrance, this Golden Cosmic Glow.”

 

Cuddle (momentary) interruptus.  And then I realized,

as I melted back into what had been,

that we were just a puddle of shimmer

together in that Glow,

and all that we had ever intended for one another,

all our pledges of “never ever letting go of you”

had, my love, come true.

here.  there is a lesson to be learned.

 

a wisp of beer; a eord typed;  converstations overheard.

 

today, talking with a hook-up (I would say ‘friend’ but that reeks of xanga’s rather lame social networking), the conversation turned on “getting old”.

 

“What is old?”  I asked.  Then immediately furnished this insight from a most brilliant observer of all things vital:  “May my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living; whatever they sing is better than to know; and if men should not hear them, then men are old.” (e.e.cummings)

 

As a follow-up, I offered my timely analysis that “If  you don’t hear the birds, either you are old or all the birds have already died from bird flu.”

 

At that point (or shortly in the interchange thereafter), my hook-up recalled once observing two nondescript birds, clearly of the same unidentified species and similar in size, interacting with one another: 

 

“There they were—just doing bird things like chattering between themselves—and I just happened to be watching when all of the sudden one bird bites the other bird’s head off.”

 

“You’re kidding me.  It bit its head off?  Really?  And it was the same species?”

 

“Yep.  It just bit its head off.”

 

“Wow.  That’s sounds like a Black Widow spider consuming her mate after copulation.  Maybe the two birds just had sex…”

 

“Yeah.  And she didn’t want him sticking his little birdie dickie in some other girlie birdie.”

 

And just then, a eureka of a realization overcame me:  “OMG, she gave him head.  That’s how birds give head!”

 

haha. ha. ha.

 

The lesson: Birds do it.  I bet bees do it.   Why shouldn’t we…umm.

 

i will never understand how we lost that moment

—you and i—

though it was destined to slip away with the mortal trail of eventual discard,

so soon, too soon (it was and then) no more.

 

what use is a heart, they say, because it breaks?

i don’t know—it seems i lost mine long ago.

perhaps, if akin to cats, we had nine hearts,

breakage would become like a coffee cup shattered on the floor.

 

you held me inside you, you did, and i

your only heart swore never to forsake.

I put my ear to your chest and heard the thumping—

thus creature-raptured in our moment of inexpressible partake.

 

now like drunken Li Po falling, drowning in a faraway lake

while reaching, stretching, embracing a watery reflection of the moon,

so am I transfixed by what of you remains:

a perpetual smile darkening to starlight much (so soon, too soon).

How tranquil and unruffled is Dreamland (Lake View Cemetery) in the evening at this time of year when the gates lock early and no other living humans are roaming about.

 

Yesterday, after running 7 miles, conceiving and recording the poem below, and watching the Sun set, it was time to leave Dreamland.  Since I was in the very heart of the cemetery, the normal road path to the perimeter would be about  a ¾ mile jaunt.  However, I decided to take a short cut (only ½ mile) through a patch of woods that hugs a stream in the valley of Dreamland.  I’ve often felt that, if indeed, such spirits as sprites, or water or wood nymphs, or faeries existed, it would be in this wood patch, along the stream, and at twilight/night that I would most expect to see them.

 

Well, as I walked along the wooded path, I suddenly heard some thrashing coming from the woods behind me.  Turning about and expecting to see a beautiful nymph?!  No, a red fox, perhaps, …  instead I encountered a fawn upon the path I had just traversed.

 

Grabbing my camera (after fully anticipating that the act itself of rummaging through my backpack to get it would scare the fawn away), I took a first quick snap and the flash detonated.  As you can see, the quality is ever so bad.

 

 

 

But the fawn didn’t flee.  So encouraged, I set the camera to available light (no flash) and started whispering to the deer—what else?—words of endearment, such as “Come here, baby.”  “Nice, baby.” at the same time as I attempted to approach it for a closer photo opportunity.  To my total surprise, this wild fawn let me caress it as would a touch-hungry kitty or puppy.

 

 

This stand of Dreamland woods at twilight/night is magical, I tell ya.  There’s a sublime hover of energy there.  And a timelessness devoid of fright.

it was you in the springtime I awoke to

(the slumber of dark months never having been my friend).

it was, in fact, Easter midnight when

on the margin of a shopping mall’s parking lot,

cars few,  but drive-in stars above abundant,

we cheered each other with edible jewels of enchanted strawberries

-ensconced in settings of 24-karat chocolate-

 and then moaningly bit in, licked our chops, and kissed

(or was it the other way around?)

and thus joyously smashed that still-wintering fast called Lent.

for when I then grabbed your ass

and wrapped you in my arms

and told you I never would (ever want to) let go,

it was the sap of springtime itself flowing freely from my lips.

(do click)

Some souls spend time's expanse in more awesome accomodations than most of us will ever get to live in.  Garfield's Monument.

I merely sit alone on the patio, drink beer, watch the Sun course towards its set, and write (but only when the mysterious whispers of intimacy touch my heart). 

 

I am punctured by your beauty,

whiplashed by your trancing radiance

that smashes like a solar flare against my fragile psyche.

 

how many times, in my verse, have I  surrendered to you?

how many times a night, in my heart, am I slayed and rendered?

I can never (sur)render enough.

 

I know what I must do:

I must fortify myself magnificently,

endow myself most intrepidly,

enhance my worth ever ingeniously,

and then dare to surrender again—almost worthy of your touch,

the closure, the hush of assimilation.

 

the moon shall not howl, the wolf shall not shine,

just as I will not live until you are mine.

 

Spring surprises Dreamland.  The awesome brutishness of disbelief  relents..

Hoping your world is as or is more beautiful than what your heart seeks to find. 

A Man’s Ditty, For a Lover

 

there are days when I feel like a genius;

there are days when I feel like a dunce;

there are days when I am so damn horny,

I’m sure Hell must be the absence of cunts.

but of all of the feelings I harbor

one stays constant day in and day out -

and that's the need that I feel to hold you

and make love to you, if only just once.

I did not have a great time of running in Dreamland yesterday.  My energy wasn’t right.  Uncharacteristically, I stole away early from work and got to Dreamland well before the regular closing hours.  There I found cars and cars of scene-takers driving around the cemetery taking in the bloom of springtime flowers.  Damn, the cemetery association even has posted signs for the “Flower Tour—this wayà “  And that’s alright.  My sense of psychic disagreement  had nothing to do with the flowers or tourists.  Just me on me.  I had a figurative bitter taste on my tongue. Or maybe my tongue felt stung and was numb and just imagining a figment of bitterness. 

 

Anyway, while running I remembered a book of poetry from my youth entitled “The Man Who God Forgot”.   Immediately I, for some goddesss-forsaken reason, transcribed that personally to myself as  “The Man Who Goddess Forgot”.  Well, that’s worth exploration, isn’t it? 

 

So I returned to Dreamland, after-hours, with laptop/backpack and a couple of beers, and sat on the stone patio of Pres. Garfield’s gothic medieval castle-like monument and birthed the following poem about “The Man Who Goddess Forgot”.  . 

 

the names on the tombstones might vie for my attention

if their need for recognition were greater than my own.

but they are eternalized (as near as can be) in granite

while I scurry about, forgotten, flagellated skin, agitated bones.

 

so though literate beyond repair,

I heed not of chiseled accolades, births and deaths,

but let the names of the dead blur as I sprint past—

too busy sucking my own never-guaranteed very next (maybe) breath.

 

realizing I’m already discarded by the Goddess in this life

like a connoisseur of a dog, with a great sense of taste, would a flavorless bone,

I am dangerous to the point of a return to the nameless void,

a sense of deep cosmic destruction churns inside of me.

 

but if I could love…  yes, if I could love,

and have a goddess-lover for my very own,

forgotten henceforth, perhaps, I would not pass

(if only remembered for a howling moment of rapture firmly clasped).

 

I hear that billions of goddesses strut upon this earth—

I simply want to be the most potent man yet alive

one of them—undoubtedly the most beauteous ever in my eyes—

has (and will ever know).

In the summertime, Dreamland (LakeView Cemetery) remains open until dusk to all visitors.  Only at dusk do the dual 20-foot tall ironclad gates get padlocked, keeping those out who are out and those who are in in, until sunrise signals the time of reopening again.

 

During the rest of the year, however, including these days of Spring, Dreamland closes its gates at 5:30 pm sharply.

 

Unlike past springs when I’d compliantly observe the posted hours, this Spring I have taken to running in Dreamland after-hours with virtually no other living human souls for proximate company.

 

My modus operandi: I hop a low fence at the dead-end of a old Italian neighborhood street to get in.  I run 4-6 miles.  I reward myself with a beer and contemplative moment (which may last anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour) afterwards.  Then I hop the fence out and rejoin the throngs of the living.

 

I crave the solitude provided by this routine since it affords me unique moments for self-discovery and sometimes even provides me with inspirational insights into some ageless unsolved mysteries (like why the fuck we are here), the nature of precisely what is, and the course of things to be.

 

I left a comment on MarnieMarnieMarnie’s post this morning that expresses what I get out of it most succinctly:

 

when i run in dreamland, i am alone, except for the grey geese and the red fox that share the running paths.  the company is interesting, self-challenging, and life-affirming.  but i don't ponder whether i like the company i keep.  it's not a matter of liking or not - but one rather of unconditionally embracing the world  thusly manifest.

 

When I do leave Dreamland, however, I also covet the company of the living.  For without the company of the living, there is no cavorting.  And cavorting, after all, is one of the reasons we are here.

This past weekend, on both Saturday and Sunday, I ran six-mile jaunts through Dreamland (cemetery).  But afterwards, instead of resting atop my favorite glacial ridge that provides a dramatic view of both the estates of the dead and Lake Erie (my current profile pic was taken from that vantage), I hiked on down to a wooded area that hugs a gentle stream that issues from Lake View Dam which is at the geographical heart of Dreamland and that constituted, at its dedication in 1978, the largest concrete-filled dam in the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains.  

Aside the stream, on both days. I watched the sun set and speculated upon the odyssey that I’m upon.  ‘Odyssey?”  you say.   Yes, that may seem like a strange and ancient way to view one’s course through life.  Stranger even than having a vocation, or “calling”, which was something that was supposed to be in store for all good kids when I was growing up.  Yet, indeed, such a sojourn I am upon.  And where has it taken me? 

As I stood in the dwindling sunlight last night tendering a beer, listening to the stream gurgle, and taking wilderness notice of the emergence of things-Spring,  I realized that becoming a real and entire man in this world is something I had just in-that-moment mysteriously accomplished.  And strikingly so in solitude and apart from any intense involvement in a relationship with a woman.  Yet not entirely apart from the influence of womankind altogether.   

And so I was led to reflect in-that-moment  upon all the relationships I’ve had with various women in the last several years.  Though all, in ways, had/have been somewhat intimate, none had/have led to the ultimate experience of sexually exploring each other in playful, releasing, reciprocal fullness.  In other words, all friends and no lover.

What was the significance, I pondered, of having had just female friends and no lover for years on end now? 

Lovers blow your mind.  Friends inform it. 

I have been specially informed for the last several years by many enchanting women.  As mentors-in-relationship, they have, upon this odyssey—my life, helped point me the way. 

I have now arrived in the very moment.  And find myself a man. 

What’s next?

A man should not speculate idly upon “what’s next”, upon where life may vicariously lead him.   Let him move simply and swiftly to action when the time for action comes.

I'm just learning about love and how to live.

But I am learning every day.

Don't ever imagine anything to be other than it becomes.  Never just fly with the imagination alone. 

Always start with the unimagined world (yes, there is such a thing, imagine that).  That is our thesis.  Ground yourself ever so materialistically in it.  You are gravity and gravity is all and gravity is down. 

Then summon the imagination to bring light to all matters and affairs.  This is our antithesis.  Your thoughts are then as light as a feather, a feather that's assisting a phoenix to soar into the eye of the Sun. 

Now fuse the two, the thesis of the unimagined world and the antithesis of the imagination into a synthesis of imagination-in-the-world, something that is not simply a surrender to stark reality or a conjured flight of fancy, but the infusion of vision into a world thus becoming.  And thusly you will discover that what you imagined to be, becomes.

This is my new philosophy.  It is entirely energy-driven.  It is (in)fusion.  Call it dialectical soaring.

Last night while waiting in a state of high anticipation in a college campus coffee shop for an important cell phone call and figuring it was a good opportunity to catchup on commenting around here, I accidentally spilled about 12 oz. of hot coffee upon my laptop's keyboard.  I wonder what the look on my face was as I watched green hard drive lights turn to amber and green power lights turn to red?  Of course, I immediately turned the laptop over to drain the keyboard, but it was too late: dying, red flicker, dying, red flicker, no flicker, dead.

When I got home, I took a hairdryer to it for half an hour.  That managed to get the power-on lights to flicker green, but no boot ensued at all.

Yet this is Spring, right?  A time for rebirth, renewal, and resurrection, right?

Well, damn it, I'm typing this post on that very same laptop right now.  It took all night to further dry up on its own and I further disassembled it and blow-dried the interior components this morning.  I'll tell ya: I've been fuckin' lucky lately. (No, not fucking in a lucky fashion, just 'fuckin' lucky'.)

Oh yeah, spilled some of that hot coffee on my own lap, too. 
*looks down, hoping for a similar miracle of renewal* 
fuckin' lucky!

“He’s back to the Net,” the voice declares.  A from-the-void voice.  A wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night voice.  An alluring, sexual-energy-compelling, seat-of-female-intuition voice. 

 

It’s true.  Was briefly in the real world.  Entirely.  Had a glimpse of beauty’s magnificence.  Had an expectation of doing something.  Something with someone intimate.  A vision of fun and freeflow.  A because-it’s-Spring-everything-might-and-anything-will-go moment (if a week can be a moment) of being crazy, impulsive, wild, and thorough.   Yes, thorough: erotically detailed, no juice unreleased, no passion unspent, no regrets, no repent.

 

But I’m back.

 

You say: “You jest.  You never left.”

 

ha ha.  I was the One.  I was the One.  Out there.  So deliciously prepared for us as we’ll never be able to imagine with imagination alone.  It would have been…what?  “Unbelievable” is much too mundane.  “Incredible” much too lame.  It would have been just us.  Just fully revealing gazes into each other’s eyes.  Just laughter so deep our bellies would burst.  Just hands-never-releasing, hearts-never-doubting, desires-ever-indulging ….  Us.

I'm feeling entirely energized for Spring this morning.  (It was rough being a cast-out dreamland warrior running through the Winter and I'm glad to now abandon that role.)  

 

Is every life not a story worthy of record?  I must believe so!  Otherwise, how can one find the courage to dance this dance of life?! 

 

So yesterday when I left my 'regular job' (govt.-type web security guy) and proceeded to go do some 'kitchen work' (side-job painting bedrooms, but in this case, installing the home wireless network, too), I had the opportunity to help a little old lady open two cans of chili.  Now that may not seem momentous story-wise, but you see, this woman is the mother of the woman I'm painting for and she has just moved in with her mother (in fact, I refinished an entire bedroom in anticipation of her move-in).  Well, her daughter wasn't home and mom wanted to prepare chili for dinner but had no clue how to use some new-fangled can opener.  So while I was wandering through the house with my laptop assessing the signal strength of the wireless network I just established, mom told me of her dilemma—that she had been trying for over an hour to open the cans without success—and she petitioned me for assistance.  It turned out that the can opener was indeed strange—cutting the top off from the side of the can instead of the traditional cut 'down'—and it had me confounded, too, for a time.  But I persevered.  And triumphed!  And I became an instant hero in mom's eyes:  supper, after all, could now proceed.

 

I was just thrilled to help and see her mom's eyes light up with "our success".  I guess this story is really mom's story over finding joy in little things, little victories.  As for me, a man almost never feels more manly than when mastering a foreign tool.  ha!

 

For some reason (not fully self-analysed), relating the little ditty above reminded me to remain mindful of the wisdom imparted by e.e cummings below:

 

"Life,for eternal us,is now;and now is much too busy being a little more than everything to seem anything,catastrophic included."

And they’ll all ask: “Well, how was it?”

And I’ll have nothing to say.

Spending the night alone drinking Dancing Bull wine in the cemetery, attuned to every creaking tree and occasional whoosh in clustered bush and expanse of monument-ridden grass, watching the stars re-constellate the fate of all, ignoring the ghostly gossip which is no more interesting than that of the living human variety, imagining a lover cuddled aside me on the grass under the tutelage of a moon-aspiring obelisk, I planting kisses first just above her right eye and then on her temple and onto her ear, there more kisses and soft licks purring and little nibbles and dirty whispers, fingers lightly tracing letters in intricate sensuous patterns upon her cheek, neck and shoulders, spelling out the words ‘love’ and ‘fuck’ in an ancient arcane cuneiformic ritual—feeling being more important than the meaning of the words to the mind, spinning her around, spooning and cuddling more for a time, and then kneeling behind her, reaching around and unbuttoning and slipping off her blouse, and embedding little rows of barely-touching kisses upon her neck and shoulders, then down along her shoulder blades and back, licking not her skin but only the tips of her soft back fuzz making her back tingle with the hover of my attention, my hands having held her around the waist firmly now massaging her between her ribs, slowly working down to her pelvis, roaming fingers scouting in loops of progressive circles the v-zone in her panties just above her genitals—ah, she’s excited as I’m excited and she begins to moan and moan and moan…

 

And they’ll all ask: “Well, how was it?”

And I’ll have absolutely nothing to say.