Tag Archives: economics

2026, Day Book, everyday words, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, Prose Poem, psychogeography, the no-scape

birds of blind faith and chaos and memory

The red cardinal looks fat and unhappy, perched on top of the shepherd’s hook holding an empty bird feeder. We have broken faith, and the birds will remember. The grackles, at least, understand the chaotic nature of the world and have found other places to graze in a most anti-environmental fashion. Farmers don’t like grackles because they eat the corn when it’s green on the stalk and aren’t as sociable as crows to believe in crucified straw men. Farmers don’t like grackles for the same reason some people don’t like cats: grackles and cats act more like we are than we’d like to tell ourselves we are.  Thus, like the faithless in any culture, grackles are outlaws, but don’t take it personally, as one day the seed or suet will always be gone. The cardinal took off, but will return. They are birds of blind faith.

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2026, everyday words, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, the no-scape

The neanderthal finds scrap paper and loathing

Is this what a bird feels like remembering how to fly? Is this what a fish feels like remembering how to swim?

Jimi Hendrix on the cassette, pencil in hand, coffee and an apple. Organizing (or shuffling through distraction, depending on your point of view) I found the draft of an old story,  “Bump” based on a relationship that ended a long, long time ago, when I lived in Lexington, Kentucky. She once called me “a neanderthal with a college degree.” This was her way of getting in the last word before she went to find one of her long time fuck buddies who was also in a relationship. I remember thinking that since her version of culture included screwing all of my friends, I was fine with being a neanderthal. 

After a while wandering my mind’s geography turns sour and when I look outward, some shit bag has littered the landscape and left it to me to clean it up.

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2026, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Literature, spring, the no-scape

Its Own, Overpacked and Underexplored Continent

4.7.26

What then what?

Some mornings
all there is
is rage and them
that lit the fire
claim
they will not
own it
instead
they cry
calling themselves
burn victims.

4.8.26

I dreamt of my grandparent’s house on Bantam last night. My daughter and my wife were talking about moving in and who would take the master bedroom. In a dream state, the house is always smaller than I remember and I always take note of it, and I think about the large attic that was its own, overpacked and underexplored continent. I think to remind them about the central vacuum system and how the guest bedroom was an uncomfortable flotsam of furniture one of them will want to redecorate. The old horse barn, the large field, the woods I explored when I was growing up feel like distant lands and the front windows of the house are covered, like they’re boarded up on the outside except for a sliver of light. I wonder if the creek still runs through and if the walnut and apple trees still fruit on schedule. They are talking around me and I realize they are not aware I think I’m dreaming.

[Daybook 2026 // Spring 4.7-4.8-26]

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Mick Parsons
Mick Parsons
@rivercitymick

Poet. Essayist. Fictioner. Steamboat fireman. Bit of a grackle.

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