about excrement

so, i just passed a business pickup truck advertising on its sides that it belonged to a company named "Doodie Duty", further described as a "premier pet waste removal" service.  um.  huh?

my reactions:
1)  har har, that is kinda funny.  doodie duty!  clever!  har har!  har.

2)  Hey!  there is far too much disposable income in this city/state/nation/world...no wonder there are riots and class wars and can we look again at that tax schedule, please?--, and

3)  humanity is getting farther and farther from "home", when it comes to living.  we remove ourselves from the un-pretty.  we outsource simple, any-child-can-do-it, ownership-responsibility related experiences to the point where it is anesthetizing, and are we/we are raising children who will not be adept at navigating the complex, ugly, and unwanted in their lives.  we are constructing a reality, when we can afford to, where we are able to and do refuse to look at the plain, the pain, the excrement, the difficult.

and those things--existing on a continuum running from icky (doodie and other seepage) to violent (war and "collateral damage") become remoter and remoter.  through distancing, we are also more readily willing to ignore the recipient body of our sightlessness or brutality.  it is so very easy to harm via dismissal or aggression, because we don't really understand, or ever have to see up close the effects and the consequences of our actions.  or lack thereof.

some ways we contemporary and american urbanized withdraw:  we take our ironing out.  hire cleaning services.  go to drive thru rather than packing a lunch.  drive to school rather than walk, when walking is a possibility.  hire dog walkers and gardeners and personal shoppers.  buy split wood instead of splitting it ourselves.  have our babies in hospitals (a human, and a product of this society, i say thank god for hospitals, compassionate and expert OBGYNs who kiss the top of my head and tell me i am beautiful when really i am a large whale in stirrups, and of course, epidurals.  call me a hypocrite.  i also like laughing gas).  we create circuses for our children at each of their birthdays, hiring the geeks, of course.  we hire people to mow our lawns, shovel our sidewalks, wash our cars, clean our gutters, paint our toenails, wax unwanted hair, deliver our groceries, alter our clothes--heck--make our clothes... .  we hire handymen to do insanely simple tasks that we honestly do not know how to do, and mother's helpers (in addition to the television) to give us a break from the needy people we are raising who must never feel bored and deal with that feeling constructively.  we send out fill-in-the-blank thank you notes instead of writing a few appreciative lines ourselves.  we buy prepared foods in boxes instead of ingredients, and "cook" by heating.   i am guilty.  and rather more often than not.

i am not admitting a discussion of economics here.  this is something else--i am talking about an entirely different point:

today, where food comes from is being taught in schools.
fish comes cleaned and without eyes from the fish monger, for the squeamish and/or uninitiated. 

we are disgusted by the very idea of hunting, tend to not eat food that looks like an animal (in english this comes down to even naming our foods ambiguously--pork instead of pig, beef instead of cow, etc., and what would Wharf say about that?) and are generally freaked out when we smell a farm or think about what's about to happen to that chicken being carried away by its feet.  we don't teach our children what real dying, death or dead people, or real killing or real violence look like, (nightmares are a bad thing), leaving them unprepared for the teenage world of epic violence that is trotting on down the road toward them--through video games and movies to their school lives, and then swirling out to encompass most aspects of this big blue marble.  by sanitizing so many dimensions of our lives and those of our children, we are, ultimately, creating a distance from some very real elements of our world.  for our kids,  we are creating an absence of experience which would inform the choices that they alone are going to have to make--and which are going to come their way.

i realize this list is limited, biased, and probably reflects much more strongly an urban tendency toward self-insuffiency, than a rural pattern of behavior.  also it is probably all old news.  also probably i sound hopelessly nostalgic and naive.  but call me those things:  i am not sure i like it when "self-sufficient" means "able to dial the phone".  because although we are in a world where technological advances (thank you, Steve Jobs--and that isn't sarcasm)  are making the impossible a smaller and smaller possibility,  we still are, after all, upright animals facing the need to survive in a world with others of our kind, if not of our ilk.  and though ironing is not diplomacy, and is a drag, and showing up at the round table neatly pressed will not help us make terrific decisions or take the time to reach positive outcomes, the ability to sit patiently and work through sweaty, potentially burning, tedious, mundane, rote and boring stuff--because it must be done--with some modicum of skill and/or grace, kind of is.

(i will not go into the general but stunting effects that current distancing trends in art--which lean toward censorship--have upon our development of an ability to discern, to form independent aesthetic sensibilities.  controls or attempted controls upon the literature we read, music we listen to, and films we see--and at what age we are allowed to do these things, make at least some realities far, far away, or even invisible--they are mind-molding and true constraints.  and i will leave off about how these blinders, as well, damage the up-and-coming from having a reasonable expectation for diversity, and reasonable ability to decide for themselves what they will find acceptable for themselves, and to be that, actively.) 

so:  a pox on those doodie duty people.  not least for making me actually think about and write the word "doodie". 

angelical fiend

tin can twisting.
crystalline tears.

                    to tell fools gold from true gold
                            stick a pin deep inside.
                                   crumbling or breaking
                                           are each a bad sign.

tin can twisting.
crystalline tears

rich temptation

a chamber cupped the
stolen reason, stolen
seeded seductive bloom

of ripened luscious, reclining plump
mortal apples that swooned,
and shone.  fleshy curves
and swollen pome:
                                                                                       
whispered rainfall
exposed rouge
the sonants of desire.

versed encounters.
scent,   fingers    tongue
opened to sweetness and
substance                  and

the inner forms ran juice
spoken with pillowed, spellbound sounds.
spun around the edges of fondness

betrayal and fidelity were
double hunger.  double thirst.
together composing the undersong
refrain: bite in         bite in to rich temptation.

cardinal wishes

you dim,



ephemeral flower

oh continue!

 and be

nighttime swimming

soft water at twilight
then black ink pooled.
pitch brushes wave brushes submerge.
soft water talking alone to the shore.            

soft water talking alone to the shore.  split
bonds feel bodied in cool.  be weightless.
howl razors and slash open the night:
cause the turbid sky to clear.  too
the moon      falling stars.  too those
grieving trees cant, their tips bleeding
sticky       weeping thickly.  sorrowing a
rapturous flow

soft water talking alone to the shore.  alone
to small pebbles dry dirt.  beam bright
midnight    evolving dawn     calling birds
and the blazing sun fervor hot day.
melt leavings.  melt spurn and dive
into sluice under surge
rushing swells
  
soft water talking alone to the shore.
freeze fresh and blue lips and blue hands.  feet.
fire dwindled   red died    rusted relics inside
ember and finally.  ash.  leftways abandon
and leftways just, bare and crackling.
and quiet

in this universe there are some things so dazzling. they can frighten me.

golden and blush

it is knowing golden and blush.  those.

earthy touch and tender        
storms and drifts and
petaled weather and
in the attic feel the quiver of
lush
blossoms unfolding inside.

turn yourself toward me

turn yourself toward me
with palms open
and exposed  

we will weave our fingers
together
make intricate tapestries   
we will hold

                    forever
in deep shade         we
remember

sultry tymbals calling

in her darkest dress
of pressed ache and fever,
she clung she embraced the willow
with naked aspect and
faded inflorescence.

blind but
emerged. from the dirt. exited with nothing,
leaving a yellowed space behind, and
the sap she had nursed from cracked cups.
the tunneling to next had been with small tired
claws and tarnished spoons.

pale and dedicated
she ground toward the singing
and the click, and ground toward the chorus,
the madly swirling chorus,
the deafening orchestral play delivered of 
the male, the male
made musical, enchantment
resonating from the airy space of his guts. 
                                    
                    identify the song, wingflick and follow. 
                    he sang.  she moved her wings.  sing wing sing wing.
                    closer and closer. sing sing wing. wing

                    the surge the waves of uncomplex. 
                    match mate up and down
                    a sauntering
                    a jauntering
                    a mechanized
                    mystery,
                    clocklike connection
                    ununderstood.

after the seduction
there are larvaed nests and
completion.  under the white willow
there is the braided shadow and beam
and she fastens to something bigger.

this is the brutalest cadence.

...and the greatest of these is love.

on a recent flight to germany i was seated next to someone whom i overheard saying, into a cell phone as we were waiting to take off, that no, cocktails had not yet been proffered, followed by a sigh of disgust.  i knew at that moment we would be friends.

we wound up partaking of many cocktails, and staying up all night talking.  finally the flight attendants were just handing the drinks to us as we approached the galley, so they could sleep on and not have to deal with the credit card machine.  which was handy, because these teeny tiny little drinks ran 7 bucks each.  anyway, often laughing hysterically, and between repeated tipsy attempts to name all seven dwarfs ("lumpy?") we hit upon many subjects of great import, including defining "the great love" of a lifetime.  naturally, in discussing this paramount topic deeply and profoundly, if not wetly, we elaborated with our personal histories, from our thoughts on our tender or disastrous first loves, to our older, wiser understanding of love today:  and of what constitutes the love of one's life.  (naming the kids as the great love didn't count--that's a cheater's way out.)

wonderful they are, confessions.  it was like being in the 5th grade again, lying in a circle in leah carter's back yard, playing truth and dare in our sleeping bags under the stars.  i have always loved the thrilling charm of that, but this time it was dare-to-tell-the-truth-every-time,  which is probably the adult version of the game.  not a lot of room to dance like a chicken in a plane, and everyone flying had probably already seen a naked body dashing about; bolder it is to truly reveal innermost selves.  sometimes revealing the truth is the riskiest tact.  (of course:  not so much when the witness is also fairly anonymous and is someone one will most likely--if one does not correspond and eventually go together to that jazz club downtown--never see or hear from again.)  so now, weeks later, i have not written to continue the conversation, but have been relaughing the night, and rethinking the subject.

should the love of our lives be our first love?  the person with whom we experienced our first kiss?  (no way on the kiss thing).  the first person with whom we felt that the "we" could last forever, except it didn't?  the person one marries?  first marries?  marries last?  the person who sets one free?

i have my ideas on this but since i am not sitting in a darkened plane next to a heretofore complete stranger, confessing, i hesitate to elaborate.  ply me with gin and tonics and call me the queen of arlington, in the realm of virginia, and i may change my mind, of course.  (it's been done before.) but, the question remains, and is a pretty one, for me.  if you have some insight as to the nature of what constitutes the greatest love of a lifetime, you can help inform the ruminations by sharing, completely anonymously, right here.  i like the memories that come to mind as i consider past/present lovers, and the ways they have influenced my life for the better.  or not (which person/people would not be in the running for greatest love of life or whatever we will call it--though, even if bitterer, there is value to be had from those cads, too.)

just that thought.  for now.  

prufrock's--or my--confession

a friend wrote this in closing:

sii sempre grande

and the trouble with my rusty italian or maybe my love of words or maybe just with me but here i go
is that in this case grande could mean "great", or it could mean "big".  now, these things are similar
but they are also different and each meaning could have appropriate and useful bearing, could be a secret message, synchronous and prophetic, a symbolic subtitle to help me make sense of the story of life right now, that i could recognize.  and treasure.

but, which grande.  should i write back and ask?  "did you mean big or did you mean great?"  and that is ridiculous and not just because either definition would be wholly satisfying.  so i should just choose.  but because each is equally satisfying as the other, and so there is no clear cut choice which should be made, i am left debating not only which meaning to embrace, but now whether or not i should write and ask, and in the end i realize through the insane focus on word meaning and forced fortunes that what i am really asking is:

do i dare to eat a peach?

and this is the crux of it.  as usual.  

instar

                                       he said:  i
                                       pushed back. 
                                       jostled, i thought:  well.
                                       that was a wise choice.
                                     

    
                                                       fall then stand and it's
                                                       all cyclical.  round around and round.
                                                       so push again.  see clear
                                                       through red eyes. 
                                                      
                                                       with slender authority
                                                       i coax and uncover me.
                                                       evolve improbably:
                                                       shoulders broad.  arms of every war.
                                                     
                                                       push out to the fixed rhythm
                                                       of a universe and
                                                       leave the feint subterrane--that
                                                       entire generation of it          so                                               
                                                 
                                                       past that lurid, climb.  crawl
                                                       to the white willows
                                                       moored and weeping by some water and
                                                       ablution      and ablution      and ablution.      then

                                                       listen:   there is a sky
                                                       and it is filled with
                                                       clean noise.  clean clicking clean clicking
                                                       at the end and at the start.
              
                                                      of the seventeenth year.

dream it

we were in austria
on the crest of something so high
and we looked out over mountain tops.
we saw:  our skirts were cascades

they were alps, and olympics.
there was a ma rainey sky
and those virgins' veils below.
snow and edelweiss and bitter cherry

and old streets i know.
brick, and black.  dream it.


time and maps blend, overlap.
we see the same things.
we feel the same way.