Posts for June 7, 2025 (page 8)

Where two lanes have gone through an intersection for years and years,
now one ends in LEFT TURN ONLY
and where everyone has formed a wobbly quick-reflex line going forward,
a surprised car sits at the light with a blinker.
Do you help them get over
or force them into turning away?

They are

-an older gentlemen exasperatedly lamenting
getting lambasted for his use of a word
that wasn’t a problem to say back when times were different.
But times are different now–only one lane moves forward–
yet he feels he just can’t keep up with new rules,
new words, new pronouns, and no matter how hard he tries
he’s always in the wrong lane longing
to go back to when he knew what was going on.

-another who was born poor, stayed poor, never known
life that wasn’t survival from pay check to pay check,
all work, little time to learn, and this is what I believe
because it’s how Mom and Pop always said it should be,
finally catching a break and taking a step up in life,
earning a brand new appreciation for how much bigger,
how evermore changing the world is from the holler.

-a righteous person coming from church every Sunday
except they’ve taken the time to intimately know the Bible
and now suddenly the pastor and the people aren’t quite
the saints one used to look up to–how the world is full of individuals
coming from an infinity of walks through life and how
everybody’s relationship with God is their own, estranged
or intertwined, how nothing is gained by screaming you’re going to hell!
but not quite fully understanding of all the trans- and -sexualities yet
and still sensitive to vicious derisions from occasionally driving the wrong lane.

-or me, just beginning to hatch from conservative echoes
but still with Trump in my heart in May 2016,
attending my first open mic poetry reading
when the emcee goes on a rant about how Trump is the worst
and his followers all suck and everybody’s clapping
except for me
because they don’t know they just told me
you’ve already picked your lane, now lie
in that bug-ridden bed you’ve made.
Yeah. Would you go back?

We need to remember that the journey is long,
that there are some people just starting from places far away
with every intention to keep moving forward.
And while there will always be those trying to jump ahead in line
and those who will simply go another way,
many are good, if still working through a few persistent flaws
that every so often puts them into the wrong lane.

Do you help them get over
or force them into turning away?

Creaky are my youthful bones,

there’s blood in my shoe.
i never notice the pain
until it is done.

Four and a half billion years before my eyes.
It’s in the cracks of the sidewalk,
Aggregate filled with foraminifera,
Skeletons from the bottom of the
Western Interior Seaway.
The competition between the chittering grays and dispossessed reds at the park.
The hermaphroditic Barramundi fish.
The Taraxacum Officinal clinging to the black walnut tree in my backyard.
My arthritic shoulders from one hundred thousand hours of guitar playing,
Just a slender drop in the great sea of human physicality,
Which itself is a drop of quanta, a data point in the inky darkness of the universe,
A pale blue dot in the purifying radiance of one hundred billion suns.
It’s in the vaccines,
The cancer drugs.
The opiates that trigger dopamine receptors in your brain.
It’s in Progeria.
It’s in spina bifida.
It’s in cystic fibrosis.
It’s in the MCADD of My dear little one, look it up.
It’s not a myth.
It’s not a fable.
It’s not a fairytale.
It’s not literature.
It’s not The Greatest Story Ever Told, although it certainly is the greatest story ever told.
It’s rich.
It’s mind bending.
It demands my attention
Because it doesn’t care If I consider the evidence or not.
It never stops.
The Earth abides and waits
While we breathe 
And read
And talk
And eat
And fuck
And freak out
And laugh
And celebrate victories
And swallow the bitter tears of disappointment
And raise children
And grow old And stumble into dotage
And wither.  
It permeates my being and yours
So subtle and all encompassing
Both wave and particle
Presumed,
Ignored,
Spurned,
Disregarded.  
How marvelous it is to behold.

Your warmth is overwhelming, 
a wool blanket on June solstice,
yet the time has come to cast 
you off, my hazy memory of 
a dream that never was nor 
could be. 

You’re a scenario I should’ve
forgotten four, five, six years 
prior but let permeate wishes
and daydreams because my 
soul rests in a human body,
in imperfection. 

But for the path that unfurls, 
for my future in all senses of 
the word, I disentangle you 
from the worlds in the novels 
and my head, the ideas I had 
of you, the thoughts. 

Right now, I see 
            your eyes when the sun’s 
light renders an environment
a dimension of glittering jewels;
            your hair in dozens of strangers, 
the inky curls and platinum dye, 
the soft brown and braid of flames, 
the dark onyx and white wisps;
            your embrace scattered amid foliage, 
vines curling around buildings, 
stems intertwining to create crowns, 
to populate sprawling city meadows, 
colorful wildflowers circling graves; 
            and your words inside any motif,
blue skies replacing rotting ceilings,
fish sluggishly, surely pushing forward, 
a lone dragon stretching its wings, scales 
glinting not like a cursed, enigmatic fiend’s, 
but like obsidian and night, like nature. 

Yet one fateful day, I know that 
your face, recalled, will be a blur, 
your name the title of a melody 
half-buried, your quirks swept 
under a flood of new experiences, 
your mark’s depth undone. 

Though you eroded my senses 
like water, so too can the liquid 
cleanse my being of your grip, 
so too can it strongarm sediment 
to fill the spaces you left, so too 
can it start the tale anew.

 Hazard coal field resources are the best in the country.  

Taxes collected from the sale of liquor for April $2,249.897  

Blue Grass Fair begins Labor Day.  

Riots mark May Day around the world.  

Lexington to Louisville interurban trolley commences January 1, 1920.  

Kentucky has one third of the high schools it needs.  

House Judiciary Committee fears politicizing liquor.  

Prior to the war, liquor tax was $1.10 per gallon, now it is $6.40 a gallon.  

A single seam of coal in eastern Kentucky spreads across 8,000 acres.  

Lexington to Louisville round trip $.1.95 to see the Colonels v. Columbus baseball game.  

Miss Sally Bright, 421 South Mill Street, received a card from her brother – assumed dead.

Say it with Flowers, Michler Bros. Co., 417 East Maxwell     Phone 1419-Y  

Senator Underwood of Alabama blocks women’s suffrage.  

5 lb. pail of peanut butter $1.25  

May 24: Petrograd has risen against the reds.  

Ohio goes dry; wetcenters hosted farewells.   

All troops except regular start home July 12.  

Tell people what the League of Nations means; discussions have been too vague.  

Good bread at before-the-war prices: Downing Bakery Company     115 North Broadway  

5,000 strong cabbage plants, 1,000 for $5: Keller Florist     327 West Main     Phone: 354  

Strayed: from 148 North Hanover:  2 horse mules, reward: phone 3326-X  

School teachers’ salaries are a disgrace.  

1,100 to 1,200 pupils expected in the fall at the University of Kentucky.   

15,000 people in Kentucky died from the Spanish flu.  

A man may produce a barrell of beer for home, but a photo of the keg on his watch fob is advertising and will constitute a crime.  

Marshmallow crème kpint jar 30¢ /Van Camp’s Soups, all kinds, 10¢ a can   

Male Help Wanted: 500 colored laborers and miners with their families: U. S. Employment Office  

Buy Liberty Bonds!  

Dinner party for 30 Saturday at the Country Club organized by the younger social set.

Embroidered poplin dress skirt $3.98/Pink batiste chimese, lace trimmed 98¢  

Land: $5.40 and acre in Fayette County  

Female Help Wanted: Stenographer, Franklin Motor Car Company     276 East Main  

Doors close as June 30 nears, 97 saloons, 6 dealers, 7 wholesalers, and 6 breweries.

Women’s shoes $4 to $5: Finney’s Shoe Store     119 North Mill Street  

City, state, and national governments set to lose immense revenue from Prohibition.  

List: Black silk umbrella, silver handle; left on South Limestone car. Return to Herald.
Leader  

Massive unemployment predicted with Prohibition, over 100 business vacancies.  

9 million gallons of whiskey stored in the 7th Congressional District: Bonded warehouses to be locked and barred.  

Holding breath as June 30 nears.    

Notes:

-One word or two remains in contention to this day: Bluegrass vs. Blue Grass.   

– “Say it with flowers” was taken verbatim from a Michler’s newspaper advertisement in May, 1919. The slogan and Michler’s have been around for over 100 years.   

-“Timing is everything,” and the U.S. Congress missed the mark. On November 18, 1918, a week after Armistice, Congress passed a temporary Wartime Prohibition Act prohibiting the sale of beverages containing more than 1.28% alcohol. Originally, the act was intended to save grain for the war effort. Wartime Prohibition, which was passed when there was no longer a war, took effect June 30, 1919. Juy 1, 1919 was known as “The Thirsty-First.”  

– Point of reference: If you know where the Subway restaurant is on Main Street in downtown Lexington, then you know where Hanover Street is located. This is where the two horse mules “strayed.”  

– “Car” in the context of the lost umbrella means trolley car.

The windows wouldn’t roll up today,

On the school bus,

In the rain.

It was a day to remember,

At least they’ll say.

Backs were wet ,

and blue turned grey.

A deep stain memory

With a price to pay.

Their subtle souls

And soaked shirts

Hug to them

Like the memory will for decades.

tired 

*until the paycheck clears