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

in a moment

there is the magic bus
we all ride on it
do you fear it?

one hundred English pounds!
too much!

Hang on Boudreaux
this might be a bumpy ride
loaded for bear
seen some pig too





I dont care how much I pay
the counting is done at the end

I told my woman how much I love her
for a clean kitchen
and clothes done and folded
a swept floor
chicken in the fridge
goddamit that counts for a lot
You ain't ever hollered because you didn't have coffee and a cup?

Ten years. I count them in tens these days.
I have the me I was then and the Me I am Now.
He keeps changing. Them I knew then are not here now.
But I still am. some are still here. threads in the tapestry.

joking with the Creator has its risks
I do it because I want my answers
I will do just like that minor prophet
stand upon my watch and ask the questions
awaiting my run at the gauntlet

Fr. Jim and Pope Francis
i wish there were more
and I hope more than I know
I can feel it
the compelling urge that drives us forward
the undeniable moment
decide to do the good
that you know
do it
never ever turn away
one tear
one dollar
one second in time

Visiting the Personality Cafe

wordsmith, beat out the keys upon your digitizer of thoughts
find some way to make the amorphous feelings get some root
that cur dog that barked at you when you offered it water
it drank it but only after you put it down and got back
getting closer only made it angry and afraid

all the old despair of ever understanding what cannot be understood
of gunshots to the head in a polar vortex moment when time ceases to be linear
rattling back at me as if it were a chained hammer come back around to swing at me again
the dust of a decade has settled on that relationship
the divorce has hardened me and the absurdity of human behavior
is in sharper focus and I don't like it any more then than I do now
even if I am sometimes entertained by it

wave on wave of emotions that I had rather not have
shocking moments of events unplanned and surprises unforeseen
there is no measuring the strangeness of this life

what if we do have an emotional intelligence?
what if machiavelli had it too?
the carnival barker surely does
and so the other temptations of this life
hoyt axton wrote the song and steppenwolf played it
and my sentiments are the same
though I won't name it in polite company
playing them like a fiddle, toying with their feelings
is a hard harvest 

I will stop thinking about it pretty soon
some other thing will come to interest me
but at the moment I would really like to know
and that means much more reading and testing


somewhere in my gut I am not sure I ever will
but it might prove useful along the way

hand of doom

Run rabbit run.
And take the sparrow with you.
Tell the snake to crawl away lest they also fall under my scythe of raining death.
Oppenheimer sat down beside the glass sand
of atomic apocalypse
and he cried
at the work of cunning minds and skillful hand. 
Fear of the yawning chasm 
overtook his heart staring at the chaos.
 All they told me to do was make grass green. 
They didn't tell me about tater beetles and sarin gas.

Shocking tales of life and liberty

Not really. Most of life is no more than what you make of it.
I got here same as you. On my own two feet.

That is called a tease. It got you in the door didn't it?
Seen a man called Fat Albert
BIGGEST MAN YOU EVER SAW!
beaten down old boy. Felt sorry for him
in his sideshow tent
I guess it is a lot like that
that chick up there on the stage
shaking what she got
trying to make a buck
she don't want to fuck you
she just wants to go home and smoke a bowl
and go to sleep after she has some dinner

Don't go see the judge before lunch
or late in the afternoon
all he will want to do is put you off if he gives a damn
or throw your ass back in jail if he doesn't
if they let you give him a Snickers
maybe, just maybe his blood sugar will cause enough synapses
to click well enough to see mercy

me? I'll settle for another taco and maybe some better days
a boss who isn't so full of shit it isn't rolling out his ears
and cannot bear to hear the truth
until he tells you he doesn't want to talk any more
good. I didn't want to hear your crap any more either

I had words and then I wrote it down

Happy Jack lived over there on the Isle of Man
banging drums and sand, couldn't stop Jack
couldn't prevent Jack from being happy
the waters still came on

ten years man, ten years
can you count all the dead? there are bones enough to do so
i can't count all the dollars
war on the cheap costs a helluva lot
whip their ass and take their gas never came to pass

ten years ago we let loose the dragon
rolled out the cage, unlocked the bastard and he roared
oh and how he did roar
the echoes linger today
nay, nay dear sir
the fires still burn

i once said I wanted Osama's head on a stick
a watery grave was good enough
i can handle that
that was last election cycle
and ten years later ten fucking long ass years
nobody seems to give a shit about that
nobody gives a damn
about a million dead
faces they never saw
voices never heard

there isn't enough whiskey in tennessee, kentucky, ireland and scotland combined
not enough weed in cali, british columbia and colorado all put together
to smoke out, drown out or fade into oblivion of mind
the blood we shed for no good reason

we owe a weregild

far more than we can ever pay
tears. tears and some half-assed syllables.

Seen any hope or joy around?

I re-read an entry into this digital diary of sorts written about 2 years ago. I was out of a job and in the middle of having to move. It was a particularly bad time. I heard the other day that David Letterman gave an interview to somebody or another, a frank and open interview, in which he told of his struggle with depression. In his understanding of the condition he likened it to having 20/20 vision of the world. Seeing the world with a clear vision of how awful it really can be. Is this to say that those of us that are experiencing joy are somehow looking at the world through eyes that see less than they are capable of seeing? Or do they simply not choose to look upon those things that are terrible and ugly? Is truth beautiful or ugly or neither or both? Perhaps I am trying too hard to distill down everything into one lump that is either/or. Perhaps all of life is a mixture of good and bad. 

It is funny to me how I can find humor in odd spots and laugh at things that shouldn't be funny. Why did you laugh at that sir? I do not know, somehow it was funny at the time. I know a thing or two of gallows humor. Laughing in the midst of a horrific situation because at that moment there is no time for reflection. Laugh at the absurdity of it. Later we can be hurt and angry. Right now we have to deal with this situation. It isn't always funny. Sometimes there just isn't anything to laugh at and the absurdity of it all confounds me. 

Absurd random chance, both good and bad, happens to everybody. Whether we like it or not, this world is not under our control no matter how much we would like it to be. The best we can do is to control ourselves. I can't control the behavior of an ant. I can't even remotely eliminate them. Keeping them at bay is the best I can hope for. 

Keep the world at bay. That is probably your best shot at survival. Let's just deal with survival shall we? Thriving and growing for another day. Let's just stay alive first ok? This is the attitude of the cactus. It is part of why I admire them. Survival in a harsh and unforgiving land. If that prickly pear can withstand Texas every summer then I can too. If it can soak up the infrequent good rains that come its way and make flower and produce seed and fruit then it has exceeded expectations. I can ask no more. It is my task to make the most of the good times and slog through the bad. Survive, then you can thrive. 

Crushing Depression

I have heard the term before. I have probably seen it in other people. Now, I get to experience it for myself.

I suppose I can go copy and paste some clinical checkmarks to describe how I feel right now, but even that seems like a waste of time. I know them by heart anyhow.
1) nothing seems to matter. what I do seems to have no positive impact on my life. No matter how many resumes I send out or how much I polish my resume, there is no response. The things that I do seem to have no importance.
2)It is hard to be around other people. If I could lock myself away or walk off into the wilderness and abandon it all, I would be sorely tempted to do so. I can't because I am a dad and a member of a family that would break down the door or send bloodhounds to find me.
3)I have no desire to do anything. When I can muster up the energy to do things they have lost flavor and any impetus for me to continue doing them.

Ok, I am rapidly losing the desire to even write this down. Nobody will read this besides me and it sounds too much like whining. It is so hard to go out and look for a job that I know is not there. It is hard to see people that do nothing and have more money than they know what to do with. It makes me jealous and angry. I can understand why people would eat a bullet or down a bottle of pills or drive off a cliff. It feels like God has set me adrift. I can understand why someone would become agnostic or actively dismiss God entirely. Yeah, I might be saved into the Bosom of Abraham, but I might also be the starving leper outside the gate of the rich man destined to poverty my entire natural life and only after dying experience my basic needs of existence met. That prospect does not engender hope in me. The fact is that even Jesus himself said that the poor would always be with us. Perhaps the "us" is me. I do not think he was referring to the poverty of the soul. I think he meant what we generally understand as poor; broke, unemployed and without visible means of support. Elijah got sent to the poorest widow in town and her one son and then asked them to bake the last bit of meal they had and feed it to him. She has more faith than I do. Abraham was told to sacrifice his son and got held back at the last second. Job sat there and pondered his fate, argued with his friends and even was so bold to ask God "why". The answer he got was simply, sit there and take it, you're man and I am God. Not telling you why I do what I do or when I am going to do it. Gee, that makes me feel SO MUCH BETTER. Random chance is even more impersonal. At least the despondent believer can still cling to the idea that he might be saved from himself. The atheist believer in random chance has resigned themselves to the idea that very little in this life time is at our control or that things happen for any reason whatsoever.

Gone by the point of caring. some old bed i'll soon be sharing
Gloom, despair and agony on me. If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.

It is so tempting to curl up on the couch and shut out this day, but I have to come to grips with the failure of my life and continue packing up my stuff as evidence of it. I hate moving, even under the best of circumstances and these are decidedly not that.