Thunder and rain blot out the odd symphony

of airplanes and commerce trains –

this baptism not a redemption

but a mnemonic.

quaint conversations of the apocalypse over coffee,

weather patterns and the overall 

normal feel of August in an age

when very little feels

                                   normal.

–

Where are we now? This mess

they call middle age. This yard stick

shows up again and into the diatribe

of expectations, the list of boxes

needing ticked to prove

beyond the evidence 

that we

“Made it.”

–

Renoir\’s “Woman with a Parasol in the Garden” 

The “Ava Maria” in my ear

no focus

every thing swims in the currents

between Christ Crucified 

and Christ Ascended

and I wonder

did Mary bury her son

before he died?

Before Pilate

before the tree

before Gethsemane

before the Marriage at Cana

or was it then 

when she first saw the world

pull and his failure

to avoid drowning?

–

Getting there

That insistence to rush

a permanent prepubescent state

wanting to grow

up wanting to grow

a mustache wanting to grow

six inches wanting to grow

a man-sized prick only

to find all the hurry

waiting at the end

–

Every archway an echo of immortality.

Each piece of stained glass an eye of the divine. 

Christ Crucified in the west / Christ Ascending in the east

and even the damned play a role: the mad

wander the streets and every brick to the face

is a call.

–

airplanes take flight

crickets symphonize

fading moonlight.

The sun will be later today

than yesterday.

The air is thick with the coming storm.

Rain today and tomorrow. Some wind now. I don\’t mind rain or the raggedy yard. I\’m making peace with the hole in the roof until the rain ends and the roof is repaired. My ankle is healing, though my hip still aches from stepping in the sump pit, especially during the wetter winds.

Like today.

***

Was a time I\’d make myself see

the positive – that maybe

our capacity to learn will overtake

our need to make the world burn –

that we can rebuild out of these ashes

some ( ) thing.

***

Looks more like a rerun than a reboot

I\’m still a fugitive from too many apocalypses. Burning oil fields and floods and mountains on fire. Swine Flu. SARS. MERSA. West Nile carrying mosquitoes.

The first End Times galloped after me when I was four, tried to choke me in the night. The world was burning then, too. And it has been trying to kill me ever since.

***

It\’s difficult to tell whether the marketing campaign failed because the consuming public never accepted the death of the Kennedy Brothers. Or something deeper. Something more congenital. Something bred in the bones that, as the Bard says, must will out in the flesh.

***

Pale fuzzy globs born to be men but too fragile and sugar-based schlep and schmooze through the streets, dinosaur death reenactors, trying to conjure that hobble into being yet again, with new cheap packaging wrapped around the the same necrotic flesh.

***

Blame Nixon                  Blame LBJ

Blame Hoover               Blame the bomb

The true accounting won\’t make the final report

and what remains will be illegible

until unborn readers learn

the language scribbled

on bone dust.

***

Now\’s no time to retreat

to some fabricated notion of civility –

some Eisenhower inspired dream carried

forward by forgetful bureaucrats

who still copy Nixon on rain-soaked memos

and send them to the capitol of Arkansas.