looking

below

my lower lip

to cul

tivate

a soul patch 

if 

i

can find my 

soul

everyday is halloween

the patch

i love me some halloween & all the things associated with the high holiday.  one of those things is the pumpkin patch.  when nick was a littler fella anna & would go to at least 2 or 3 patches for the season.  but now we save ourselves for only one, cool patch pumpkins, in dixon, about a half hour's drive west of sac.

that is what we did.  nick & i went to target to load up on water & victuals in preparation of our visit to cool patch.  why water & snacks?  because cool patch has one of the largest corn mazes in the united states.  the maze is sometimes fiendishly difficult to navigate.  we've been so lost in it that we thought we may never find a way out.  i remember one year we were the last to come out of the corn.  the staff were waiting for us.  i can't remember the time but it was pretty damn late.  we must've been in the maze for at east 4 hours.  i asked the staff how did you know we were still in the maze?  we count the cars & when we see a car or two in the lot we know that they are still in the corn.  are we the latest that you had to wait for someone?  no, some years we had to wait until 2 or 3 in the morning.

we like to take our turn in the corn at night.  start at dusk then when we are half thru it gets dark.  the rows get a little spooky & the map markers become more difficult to find but that is why we bring water & vittles & flashlights.  however, tonight was a little different.  the weather was unsettled.  a storm cell was expected to pass thru around 7.  but when i checked my weather app when i was in light to pay for our supplies at target around 5:30 it said the weather will be partly cloudy.

odd that weather.  it's not like it don't rain in california.  but the intensity of the rain these past couple of weeks is, well, weird.  a sudden rush of water then a relative state of calm & clear skies.  we kept checking our phones for a change in forecast as we drove to dixon.  we can see the massive storm cell to our right.  it was traveling southeast which meant that it would sweep over sac, davis & perhaps dixon.  1 inch pieces of hail was reported & the forecasters warned people to take shelter.

& when we were outside of davis & driving into solano country our phones let our a terrible shriek.

a tornado warning.  serious wtf!!!  the text reads TAKE SHELTER NOW.  unbelievable.  tornadoes do happen in norcal.  but this text scared the shit out of us.  shall we continue on or do we turn around & go home.

we took a chance & soldiered on.  when we got to cool patch it was dry but over on the horizon the storm clouds were huge & intense.

the patch opened for the season last weekend.  we know from past experience that the earlier we go to the patch & the corn maze means fewer crowds & a relatively lightly traveled maze.  tonight was no exception.  the patch was lovely.  according to our weather apps the storm was expected to skirt dixon.  so we got a cart & did some pumpkin shopping.

darkness was falling & time was running short.  we purchased our pumpkins & tix to the maze.  i took our loot to our car & asked nick to take the maze map & mark our trail.  when i returned to anna & nick the last of the daylight slipped below the horizon.  the storm cell was closer.  more people were leaving the patch.  tears of lightning hit the skies.  & yet the patch was dry.

the thing is once we crossed into the corn maze we were committed to seeing our way thru.  we knew we would be in the corn for at least 2 hours.  from the map the maze appeared to be even more difficult.  that storm cell, the lightning, was getting closer.

fuck it.  we decided to get lost in the corn for another day.  our tix are good until halloween.  just being at the patch was delicious while the threat of a massive storm cell with rain & 1 inch sized hail quickened our blood.  that was worth the drive to dixon.  we took a few more pix of the patch & anna snapped this pic of me & nick.

you can see part of the maze on the left.  the wall of corn disappears into the horizon!

we then pointed our vehicle east & back to sac.  the traffic was horrid.  stop & go.  while the storm cell hovered over the city like an inverted umbrella.  still, it was a hell of a night.

boo

after the 1st piece of pumpkin pie of the season i pat my buddha beer belly & say there is that lot of me & all so luscious

happy autumn equinox!

finally we have officially started my favorite time of year.  the light has changed.  the days are shorter & tho it is still pretty freaking hot the ambient feel of the air & wind are softer, luxurious, luscious.  & as i type i have the TV on to the Food Channel.  what's broadcast?  halloween baking shows!  you know how much i love me some halloween.

i took the day off & other than a couple of obligations i did very close to little to nothing.  sitting around & doing nothing is a restorative for me.  i did read & watch the news.  i was deeply moved to tears watching the climate activist greta thunberg speak at the u.n. today.  other news of the day. . .well, you all know the state of the shit we are in.

i insist on human fellowship & love.  i demand a poetics of life that include an ethics that encompasses the whole of our human being.  i wrote recently about eating ice cream & drinking beer here & now for there is nothing, i think, in death.  no afterlife.  no rewards.  not oblivion.  not a blank or an absence.  nothing at all.  that's not a depressing thought to me.  because as stevens said, death is the mother of beauty.  because life is short & finite it is supercharged with meaning, pain & pleasure.  i want them all.

but i want an ethics too.  a poetics of life & ethical behavior.  a poetics that encapsulates too catullus' odi et amo for we are flawed to the best of us.

& a poetics that interrogates received notions & wisdom, beliefs, superstition, etc etc.  keep our bullshit detectors tuned to 11 for the shit out there gets thick.

in the meantime, in between times, dig this beautiful, fucked up world we live in & all the people & creatures in it.  this is our only time on this planet.  we won't, i think, have another life to get it right.  besides, we are flawed creatures.  getting it right might not be the best way to think of things.  because getting it wrong is also part of our human being.

bring the whole beauty & horror of existence.  that is what is demanded of our poetics.

i demand a poetics of love too.

i demand the whole lot of it.    

the pain & pleasure

& the practice of
L=O=P=E=Z poetry

absolute music

i fucking love this song.  is it 50 years old?  i'm over 50 years old!  but what is half a lifetime when a lifetime is not so long enough.  at any rate, my brother from another mother jonathan hayes hipped me to this series of videos playing for change where musicians & singers all over our beautiful world sing & play together.  these are extra ordinary videos.  i shit you not.  our human being, in all its creeds, sounds, & shades bound & united by music.  i watched a few in this series & i swear to you, mi brothers & sisters & non-binaries, i cried tears of happiness & human fellowship.  because we are so able thru & by art..  absolute music.
   

r.i.p. dennis schmitz

one of my great teachers
you were [are] a kind & gentle man
excellent poet
w/ an alter ego named Rosco
who in red ink
could tear your poems
a new asshole
dead at the age of 82

life is short

life is short
             drink beer
                   eat ice cream
                                      because
                   there is no beer
            or ice cream
in heaven

quote unquote

maybe i overdosed on Sun Ra

--steve dalachinsky [last words spoken by the poet after he had a stroke after a reading of his poetry & attending a concert by the Sun Ra Arkestra earlier in the day.  dalachinsky died on 9/15/19 at age 72]

                                  mucho gusto, mi amigos

absolute music



i spent an enervating late afternoon driving thru & in my beloved city & environs where the traffic was thick & deep doing all manner of long put off clothes shopping [i will wear the same clothes for ever until they literally start falling apart at the seams]

but when i got home after going to the clothing stores & then grocery stores & working my way thru the california traffic anna asked if i heard that ric ocasek died

no i hadn't since i was listening to the radio show of one of my favorite electronica artists nora en pure

how old was ocasek i asked

75

wow i didn't realize that the dude was in his 70s

because like a great many people who love rock punk & new wave ocasek's band the cars bridged all sorts of sub-cultural barriers

punks headbangers new wavers et al loved them

& the cars dated back to my discovery & love of pop music

so go forth mr ocasek & let them brush your rock&roll hair

you lived a relatively long & rich life

you made some great songs

peace & love

do you remember. . .

my own memory must be going out the window.  i read stephen king's humongous novel it over 30 years ago when i was a screaming punk rock horror loving teenager.  i still am all those things, except the teen part, so when i woke up this morning & turned on the TV the 1990 miniseries adaptation of it starring richard thomas, john ritter & annette o'toole among others was on the Sy Fy Channel i, of course, watched a good hour of the miniseries.  what can i say but i love it.  sure it's flawed but this was the standard set for the novel.

i remember the novel i thought, fairly well.  i was a huge stephen king fan -- i still am.  i devoured his fiction & his non-fiction [king's study of the horror genre, danse macabre (1981) is a tour de force] when i learned to read at 16 [i mean read for pleasure & for life.  i was 16 when i picked up a book to read that wasn't assigned for a school project].

because of the miniseries re-broadcast i thought why not reread the novel.  nick has a copy that was published as a tie-in for the newest movie version of it.  i've not read king in a great many years.  part of the reason was reverse snobbery.  as in, i'm a literary person, i am a poet, literature is my life & i can't be bothered with popular fiction.  what a load of crap.  i'm at an age where i say that there are no such things as high art and low art.  there is only our lives in art.

king is beautiful writer who gets in the heads of ordinary people.  he does so with a relaxed prose style that sounds like the way people talk.  a movie version cannot get into a person's head like writing can.

but how now what about my memory?  sure there are moments of finer details that i didn't recall when i read the novel in 1986.  but what about the prologue?

i might be stitching together some of my memories but i remember a brief prologue at the start of the novel it.  these few pages show the origin of pennywise the dancing clown.  that malignant force on derry, maine.

again, i might have this quite wrong but i recall the edition i read in 1986 started with a few pages that had a craft landing on earth a few billion years ago when our planet was a muddy ball.  that craft deposited the entity later knows as pennywise who would not rise up until the town of derry was established.

but my son's later edition had no such prologue.  a quick search on the interwebs did not reveal that kind of prologue.  was that all in my head?

well, it's been 30+ years since i read the novel.  & i was reading lots of horror fiction at the time.  one of my favorites was the books of blood series of short stories by clive barker.  so perhaps i conflated another story or stories with it.  

i dunno.  it seems like that prologue belongs with pennywise the dancing clown.

but even if no, the novel is a great read.  but a committed read as it is well over a 1000 pages.  i don't remember how long it took me to read the book in 1986.  i'm sure it was well over a month of dedicated reading.  i do recall several late nights when i couldn't put the book down.

i may not finish the book this time around.  i know the story pretty well.  i know what pennywise the dancing clown is.

& yet, king is better than those moments of horror.  he knows how to get inside the heads of his characters & his prose style is a winning example of colloquial voices.  but that's the beauty of literature, & king is literary to the nth degree, literature gets to the heart of where we live.

first pumpkin of the season

learning to read

i just watched again a documentary on TV horror hosts
                                        AMERICAN SCARY [2006]
& a film critic said he learned to read

on account of horror movie hosts
                                      come again?
well he was so excited as a 5 year old

to know the time & date of the next broadcast

that he learned to read the newspaper listings
                                   to know the date

quote unquote

the day accomplishes itself with its
                small failures & annoyances

Its pleasures mount gently toward evening
walking many strange streets toward

home

--paul blackburn ['uncharted' the selected poems of paul blackburn; 1989]

the other side of summer

now that we are at the ass end of summer it is tempting for me to take stock of the past 3 months of hot weather & lazy days.  hot weather we got [still getting] but lazy days are long past me for i have the ordinary adult responsibilities that we are all tasked with.

have i done all the things that were on my summer to do list?  no; but that is life.  i've lived on this earth, thus far, for 5 decades & many of those things on my list, such as going to the drive-in movies [yeah, you'd think that a man who so loves the drive-in theater & movie experience would practically live at the sac 6 drive-ins] but i've logged so many nights there that i can relive the experience in my head.  also, youtube is chock full of drive-in intermission shorts [i do so fucking love these ads] that i can have a shot of the drive-in experience every time i log on to the interwebs.

plus i've done a few new things too.  e.g. a family kayaking trip on the cosumnes river to watch the local colony of bats take off in the evening.  it was a beautiful experience.

nick is growing up, & fast.  he started high school last week, a freshman, & i'm still wrapping my head around that fact.  yesterday he was a baby; today he is in high school.

anna & i logged as many weekends at the pool that we could manage often in the company of our great friends b, c & their son j.  we did so today & yesterday.  the weather was ripe for it: 100+ F.  where else would you go when the weather is so hot?

what else?  well, we are now swiftly synching toward my favorite time of year: autumn, & halloween.  the light in northern california is already changing from a hot blue to a warm golden/brown.  what van gogh could've done with such light!

& soon on to another year.  2020 looks & sounds like the future date in a sci-fi movie.  where the hell are my protein pills & jet pack & 2 hour work day?!

keep it groovy, brothers & sisters.  these are times that try men & women & non-binary souls.

peace & love

quote unquote

What do you think of immortality?

henri cole:

I don't understand this question.  Do you mean "immortality," like Keats's "Here lies one whose name was writ on water"?  If so, I think one is forgotten almost immediately after the earth is tossed back into the grave and the mourners turn away.  Life resumes.

So then why write?

henri cole:

For the completely selfish pleasure of composition, which for me surpasses the trumped-up pleasures of eating, drinking, and sex.  Since I do not write to teach anybody anything, it's a completely selfish act, but it gives me a sense of equilibrium and a reason for existence.  Nothing gives me as much pleasure, when I'm doing it well, as writing. 

--henri cole [the art of poetry #98; paris review 209]