Father’s Day for me is the best.
I have another year with my Dad.
Some are missing their fathers on this day.
My heart goes out to them.
I pray they find joy in the day as they reflect on
happy memories, fun times, and advice – useful or not. Lol.
Every day with my Dad is a blessing.
I cherish each one and enjoy making new memories with him.
Happy Father’s Day.
I Love you, Dad.
I love my Dad
Now the serpent, Karl Marx, was revolting, more revolting than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He lay in the dirt digesting his massive meal, which he had eaten whole – you could see it outlined on his big belly.
He woke the woman and said unto her, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. You will unite in class consciousness against your oppressive God. There is no truth: only power.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. Once her husband woke, he ate. Then they seized the means of production, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths, which they did not have to buy from anyone.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day like some kind of bourgeoisie bossman making the rounds at a factory, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you going?” And he said, “Forward!”
If I stand beneath the chestnut tree
long enough, its plumes as tantalizing
as exposed flesh, I can hear more
than the joking, jestering mockingbird
whose high-wire vaudeville makes
me smile. I hear the buzzing of time
that passes like a swarm from pleasure
to pleasure, with luck making honey.
is a lesson to pass along to the ants,
the robins and sparrows,
the garter snakes and groundhogs,
the hound dogs and terriers,
the calves and ponies, the locust
and maple trees, the rosebuds
and irises, the city streets
and country lanes, so they can all
one by one turn to me and say
“No shit, buddy. Tell it to your own.”
So, I’m sixteen and my parents have hired this kid named Jeff Masso, a known genius at my high school, to tutor me in algebra. I can intuit that he is frustrated with me, not learning and not wanting to learn math, but he persists.
One day, he struts into my house, full of himself (curly black hair, black eyes, freckles,) and stops at the piano. He plays a few chords, looks up and says, “Dave Brubeck.”
Stars swirl on the ceiling.
The sky opens up, spewing fireworks of sound and I know there is a world I have never imagined and somehow, I must open myself up and learn it.
He might as well have said, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio…”
my first epiphany…
he touched the
keys and said, “Dave Brubeck”
changing my world in
one second of dissonance
I gaze at the myriad knickknacks mirroring
lands I’ve nuzzled my splintering stakes in,
lands renowned once only for indigo grass
blades pinning a grin in the face of
depression that Johnson would idly war with,
coal cramped into abandoned hills that
all but begged for a glazed hysterectomy,
warts you’d salve with tobacco, suboxone, and
swill that we all now know to call cancer, and
hill folk, hearty and hardy as hiccuping fairykin
whispering Appalachian murder ballads in
ears of a rasping ass; and, of course, that
Bluegrass strumming from guts of a
hare-lipped milk jug strung with rusalki hair
so dulcetly sullen and soulful a suite of sound
it could rattle the chalice of Christ from a
clown ruff ruddled with indigo blood; and the
blue-bloods, both cuts, cloyed and cultured or
nettled, neglected, afeared, and forgotten—though
now, these knickknacks, pillows confessing
Kentucky in phlox-blue comic sans, America
wattle-and-daubed from disfigured license plates, the
pre-shrunk t-shirts scumbled with emblems of
dainty dilettantes dredging mint juleps from
verdigrised horseshit strewn over shuddering tracks,
and, alas, these little gilt tea towels screaming,
Wildcats! and If it ain’t Kentucky, it just ain’t bourbon,
which urges my corn-cowled breastbone mutter,
If it ain’t bourbon then,
is it just not Kentucky—these knickknacks,
goldfish buoying up under garbled glass like
bird shit piled up over a rusted alarm box, shyly
abounding in Crohn’s-prone basements and
gleefully teetering tors of immortal trash that
rival those wiling sandstone scarps that
Muir preserved from becoming a water park.
Disparate thoughts have a way
of coalescing into crumbs of speech
that litter the floor.
I can’t find a way out without
a map and both hands.
Long after we leave,
the air remembers,
our breaths collecting
in corners to sweep up later.
The fan pushes mine
out of the way and it stays there.
I’m afraid to move, disturb
these piles like river mud
before I can make sense of them.
Ester Perel queries “Where shall we begin?”
The counseled couple takes a deep dive
Into the dark of trauma and infidelity.
Ruby-tinged hurt shaded with purple-green unhealed pasts.
“Where did you learn to live on breadcrumbs?
“I don’t really need very much”
I listen rapt for clues to my own practice or salvation- or both:
Small is safe
Unseen is unjudged.
Suddenly
the sting of tears and recognition.
A familiar cocktail of choice for the solo patron of this not-so-happy-hour of “ah-hah”
It’s all fun and games until a nerve strikes raw.
Dammit Esther.
We had copper-colored tin ceilings with pressed designs
in our family’s restaurant.
Nothing fancy. Remnants of early 20c. décor—
practical and barely noticed 75 years ago.
In a 21c small-town diner regulars stop tonight
before closing.
I watch a plump family of four slide into a booth—
grandmother, child, parents,
take turns going to the restroom
while a teenager scribbles their orders.
Two crisp middle-aged women enter
before closing,
pick up their orders and sit outside for privacy,
intense conversation.
A wiry woman walks in alone,
dirty blue jeans hang off her skinny frame.
From the counter I hear her say, “grilled ham
and cheese sandwich.” Then “I have no money.”
An uncomfortable waitress hesitates
just as a customer in work boots and baseball cap
at the counter slides a twenty toward the waitress.
The hungry woman smiles and nods.
This restaurant looks like it has greeted customers
for 50 years or more.
Young staff has no knowledge of the early years,
when the locals gathered and everyone knew one another.
I stare at the tin ceiling in this restaurant, long
for spaces filled with generosity, even for strangers.
