Posts for June 19, 2017 (page 5)

      Father’s Day  

Dakoda sent me the first text:
Every day is another opportunity
to show you how much you mean to me
and how having you in my life
makes everything more wonderful. I’m thankful for that
and for you! Happy Father’s Day, Papa, 🙂 with a read heart in it.  

I text:
Thank you, Dakoda.
Your words mean the world to me.
A better world for you
is my wish for you.  

Dakoda wrote: Awe 🙂 with another red heart in it.  

Monifa wrote:
Happy Father’s Day, Rudy 🙂
with two red hearts for eyes.  

I write: Thank you so much.  

Ange sent a text: Happy father’s Day!  

I write:
Thanks, Ange,
I appreciate that and you.  

Susana sent me the next message:
Happy Father’s Day!!!
Hope it is a great one :).   

 Janice wrote:
Happy Father’s Day,
papa Rudy…
hope all is well.  

I write:
Thanks, Janice,
I’m resting
after being on the road for 32 hours
without sleep.  

She wrote: That’s a ruff drive…
Glad you’re ok still!  

Enchanta messaged:
Happy Father’s Day!
Love you!
How have you been?  

I write:
So happy to hear from you, daughter.
I’m as good as I ever am.
I’m about to join
the ranks of the unemployed.
Our UB grant was not refunded.  

Enchanta replied: Omg noooooo, with five crying emoji.
I’m so sorry to hear this.
Are you OK?
Is there anything I can try to help with?  

My message: I’m looking for work
in the States
& outside the country.  

Enchanta wrote: Loved I’m looking for work
in the States and outside the country.
Oh wow!
Outside the country!
That’s awesome!
I’ll keep my ears open.
Are you wanting to stay in education?  

I wrote:
Thanks. I have two Skype
interviews this next week
from schools in China.
South Korea and Japan have also
looked at my resume.
Yes education; it has been my life.  

Enchanta: Oh yes that
would be wonderful.
What great opportunities.
I know things will go well.  

I write: I’m hopeful.  

Enchanta: Well keep me posted
on how things go.   

I write:
I will.  

Enchanta wrote:
How’s the new
grandbaby doing?  

I wrote:
She is great.
She has to be
one of the happiest babies ever.  

Enchant wrote:
Loves she is great.
She has to be one
of the happiest babies ever.  

I wrote:
It is wonderful.
You have made my day.  

Enchanta wrote:
Love you!  

I write back:
Love you, too.  

Trudy wrote: Happy Father’s Day!!  
I write: Thanks.  

Kelli calls me on the phone:
How are you?  

I answer:
Tired.  

Kelli says:
I don’t suppose
you’ll be coming home
today…  

I say:
I don’t think Ethan or I
would ever want to be long-haul truckers.  

Kelli says:
That’s what I gathered
from him as well.
Just wanted to let you know
we love you.  

I say:
Love all of you, too.  

Susana wrote:
Rudy, can I come
and spend the night?
I have practicum tomorrow
and I don’t want to drive really early
tomorrow morning.  

I write:
Come on.  

She wrote:
I’m going to be there
late tonight.
Just now leaving.  

I write:
No problem.
Door will be unlocked.  

She wrote:
I have key.  

I write:
Ok, door locked.  

She wrote: Thanks!!

what scares me?

six A. M. screaming

on my street

a woman begs for love

drunk in her boyfriend’s car

like bee stings my heart

( I have allowed myself one rant this month)

Fishermen, loggers, carpenters, those
who put food on your table and mind the
Ten Thousand Things you need every day
but don’t usually think much about. In the
top ten jobs with the highest death rates
there’s not a fireman or cop to be found.

How about the next time a farmer gives up
his life trying to keep us clean City Folks fed
we have a parade of John Deere tractors
led by an F-150 driving slowly down Main Street
with a couple of teenage girls in the back
sitting on bales and slowly playing 
Amazing Grace on their fiddles, their
only uniforms new pairs of Carhartts
and not a goddamned bagpipe in sight.

THE CIRCLE

Trees and grasses help make the wind.
They move it, it moves them.
All makes a circle
–creations and creators forever bound
in the circle
round
and round…

Our obsessions lodge 

in our brains where

sensory details hand off to 

neurons and synapses.

Are they really in charge?  

Are we really in charge?  

Is anything in charge?

Wired with morning coffee and sugar, 

body’s daily dose of hormones

and vitamins, 

we rush to our jobs, 

our obligations, 

our commitments—

the dotted line.  

Every day we try soothing 

our frayed emotions, 

our frayed husbands/wives, 

our frayed children, 

our dogs and cats.

Our hands in the air, 

our obsessions run through us

like hens with their heads cut off.

Sin—the thing we’ve blamed 

for eons— is no more to blame 

than the hatchet. 

Idea from “Fitz Patrick Boisseau,” Michelle Boisseau, A Sunday in God-Years: poems, 2009.  

The
day
was not
at
all
re-
mark-
able:
no
dish
ran a-
way
with
a spoon,
the Man
in
the
Moon
came
down
not
too
soon,
and
the sky
failed
to fall
as 
origin-
ally
feared.

Last thing packed, the red
purse
you carried— all
this time,
one buck
still
tucked inside; they never got that. We wheel
you out same
door you walked
through.

Back to our schedules,
to WiFi, to our own 
sheets and coffee cups,
our water 
pressure, our dry air.
Sand in the crevices,
drizzling from our uniforms:
evidence that we ever got a break.

Sun tattooed into my skin,
slowly fading, 
setting.

of a golden deer
under chestnut trees
braided with light  

swollen with wonder
a pink rat and a mute parrot
ride his back  

home to the land of kindness
where the wind tastes like pears                                              

~ Found poem composed/modified from words in Maggie Smith’s poem “Apologue (I)”

————————————————————–
I want to travel the world
And freestyle with strange people;
Let them know, with a noble flow
That we are equals.

Full of good and evil,
Accepting and deceitful.
Painfully aware of life’s 
Fleeting heartbeat, mental. 

Vital instrumental,
Menial continual, 
Punching with words like birds
Flying into your temple.

Digging a deep dimple,
Injecting intelligence into 
This primordial American temple;
I’ll write it real simple.

Deliver very gentle,
Explain that life is assembly
And disassemble;
Comically accidental.

What does this resemble?
Extra existential experimental!
Currently turse, a turn for the worse,
So I grab my pencil & celebrate my potential.

Write a rhyme that is a protest monumental:
Truthfully transcendental;
Linguistic cylindrical tricks confront quixotic jurisprudential,
Aimed to slay ten confidential slithering presidental terrorist tendrils.