Thursday, June 01, 2017

The barn of the rich man's son

I am sorely tempted to tell stories.
 I have a big account that is a problem.
 oh it has a host of problems.
too many cooks. way way too many cooks
with too many hats to wear
there is no clear line of demarcation
s between who does what and why
a 20 million dollar barn
there used to be magic mushrooms that grew there
and now I have to try to figure out how to kill the fairy ring
so they can trod down the Event Lawn
so I can regrow it again

a thousand dollars here and a thousand dollars there
who's counting?
i read of growing orchids in the desert
the hanging gardens of Babylon
what sorry bastard had to make them grow?
what wizards of green had to muster up their best spells to make trees grow
where they throw all manner of BS at them
the event lawn of Central Park gets a lot of traffic and trash too
man, quit your bitching

Friday, May 05, 2017

dialect:what we say and how we say it and where we came from


How do you hear it?
This meme. Well get to vocabulary later, but the sound of the voice in your head that read this picture of a muddy kid, what did it sound like?















I don't remember the first time I realized that people did all not sound the same. The words they used to describe their world were not the same as mine. Was it the first time I heard the language of the Latin? Was it when I heard it in my family? I do not really know. It is like gravy. I do not remember the first slurp of gravy on taters.

I have a dialect. I revel in it. I have cultivated it at the dismay of my father and paternal grandmother. I have had to suppress it to pass muster with the Fathers that graded papers. My idioms and folkways were not acceptable in a formal paper. I managed to disguise myself sufficiently that it was disregarded or overlooked.

I'll never forget when he brought back Crime and Punishment and put it in my hand.
Said, "somebody might need this for the final."
sheepishly I took it. shame and misery upon me.
the protestant owes another penance
it will probably involve being on my knees in the dirt
rooting out the worst parts of myself

I meant this to be about dialects and the myriad of ways we speak to say what we want
the vocabulary unique to regions, the forgotten and isolated bits of history that still exist

but i got distracted
and it is too big way way way too big
an hour of well produced video is insufficient
I keep wandering down the trail over on youtube
I go look around on Google
would Bing have something different?
it is never ending. There is a mine of epic proportions of people talking about how we talk!
look, just point that mouse over there to that search bar and get after it.
it is too big for me
it is too much.
all i can do is skip across the surface
i have too many plants and chemicals up in the gray matter to devote the necessary neurons
to this study. it is vast.
all i did was look at those of us that came from a few islands on the western end of Europe
and that goes on forever!
having to tie in the ones on the other side of the channel
or the ones that were here before Europe arrived
and the mix of those cultures together to result in something totally different but having parts of both
TOO MUCH

all i can tell you friends and neighbors
is we all talk the same
and we talk differently
we are still trying to express the deepest feelings
and most shallow chit chat
because that is what we do as humans
and the words we use and where we got them
are as varied as the winds
oh it is a big panoply of words and humans wrestling with them
and it fascinates me

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

here there be words

This was me.
Not so very long ago.
That hat is not nearly so white now.


Chuck Berry passed
so did James Cotton
and not so very long ago
there was David Bowie

and 2016 took far more than I want to remember right now
time brings me here again
wandering in the garden of Destiny
flipping pages in the book to find myself again

I was there. Now I am here.
Was it very long ago? I am not sure.


I wonder if I still have this cactus.
Maybe. As much as I like them they are
difficult and stubborn
and some winters do not see them survive
I am not terribly convinced it was the cold
but I digress in this musing of time and time after

I have given them away
some of them are still living in places I no longer go
left a bit of them here and there I suppose
I do not give them freely
I do not trust you always
If I know you are the sort of person that will
give a damn about it
i might consider it.

she asked me to rescue roses yesterday
i think I will be watering them every day
until they are standing tall when I get home
I know. I could have said no.
Was I going to refuse the kitten found in the vacant lot?
Didn't I get up in the middle of the night and feed it a bottle from a syringe?
yes and it sleeps on my face too sometimes
if i let her. which isn't very often
she is far too loud

sleeping now in the arms of tomorrow
so many minutes to make up a life time
choose them well my fried ns
we only get so many
and then we are done

i have dollars to give
I have time
and I have blood, sweat, and tears
they are not enough
this life requires all of me
the last bit of me left
and then I am done
but that day is not yet
no, that day is not today
or I sure hope not
i still got shit to do