My accountant died last week.
By all measures, he was old.
He was a good man, worked hard.
Lots of accounting.
Late nights.
Tax season.
Estate planning.
Expense reports.
Actuary tables.
Every day, His whole life.
Until last week
When the final tally was balanced out.  

So, in light of the end of Roger,
Let’s consider some options.
Consider project management.
Consider the flow rates of effluent.
Besides accounting, it was one of Roger’s favorites.
Consider the application of dental sealants,
Consider the importance of OSHA compliance,
The joy of well-appointed urinalysis.
Think about the excitement of a good
Clean podiatric exam,
I know Roger did. 
At the funeral his Doc said he had the metatarsals of a 20-year-old.
Every day. His whole life.  
Still, you might want to consider some other options, too.

Think about Chet Baker playing Autumn Leaves.
It’s sublime.  

Look at Guernica by Picasso.
Maybe you already have.
I can hear the horses dying in the mud, eviscerated.
It blows my mind.
But I think Roger somehow missed that one.  

Spend some time reading Whitman. 
How on earth did that man live and write in 19th century America?  

And Charlie Parker’s choice of
Melodic substitutions in Au Privave
Are an expression of mastery, love.  

Listen to the analog recordings of
Segovia from the early 20th century. 
I can still hear his asthmatic wheeze,
The string squeaks when he changes left hand position.
So Intimate, so personal.
The gentle soul of the maestro In the pops and hisses of vinyl,
A window into prewar Linares, Andalusia.  

When he did my taxes last year
Roger told me he liked Lee Greenwood.
A window into postwar Branson, Missouri.  

Those are some of your choices, then, 
But the decision seems pretty obvious,
Don’t you think?
Go make art.
Make a living at it.
There’s money to be made.
Seriously. 
There is.
Will you become Chet Baker?
Probably not.
Will you become Picasso?
I hope not, the man was an ass.
But my God, he could paint.

But you WILL show the world s
Smething new.
A remarkable thing after 
four and a half billion years.
What ELSE is there?
As Vladimir Ilyich once wondered,
What is to be done?

Go bust your ass and don’t be a fool.
Stay sober, you don’t want to fall out of a window
Too high to manage gravity like Chet.
Dedicate yourself and study.
That’s what engineers do.
That’s what hygienists do.
That’s what accountants do.
You can, too.
Just like Chet.
Just like Charlie.
Just like Pablo.
Just Like Andre.
Just like dear Uncle Walt,
And just like Roger,
An example for us all,
Every day, His whole life.

L.A. skaterboy shrugs off flashbangs, flips off agents through teargas smoke.

Naked feet on the cold damp earth
Sharp talons turning the soil
Worms working the turf to bring fruit to my toil.
Bluejay calling waiting to break fast and glean
Another bloom met with surprise at it’s birth
This morning in June reminds me….
    ~~~~~That Mother Nature is Queen

                why 

am I

                        not

                        heart

broken
                            

Today I read an Appalachian
magazine from 1961. Those essays

about pollution, poverty, shit schools
summoning what miracles they can,

all the stone lungs, the hunger
and addiction, landslides and floods,

all the snake-tongued politicians,
all the red-necked mamaws throwing bricks,

those essay coulda been written today.
And my rage rolls in its waning hibernation.

Chapped and unsure,
The first tender press of lips against my own,
Chapped and unsure,
Out behind her granny’s trailer
Where we’d skip through knee deep vines,
Uncaring of what hid beneath.
The first one to trip goes down laughing,
Hard and giddy,
Til the second one inevitably follows the tumbling,
Hard and giddy.
I remember I wasn’t the first one to lean in,
Though I might’ve been the first to want to,
As tenderly and shy as a child wants.
We’d go back inside hours later,
Bloody knee’d and kiss bruised,
Pretending we ain’t know how we got so
Bloody knee’d and kiss bruised.
Hand in hand seems an innocent thing then
To two girls who ain’t got a clue
But will learn, as the church’ll teach,
A sin is still a sin,
Even when it looks like two lil girls,
A sin is still a sin.

He comes through the screen door and stomps his boots clear on the porch, washes his hands in the bathroom, bulls into the kitchen to take his seat for meat and starch and gravy and I watch him masticate my grandmother’s offering, gristle glistening in his mustache, and damn if I don’t see a particle—just a mote or two—of the crazy that’s coming decades from now, of the change from reins and iron to rants and innocence, of the ghosts he’ll share his dinners with and ask after long past their deaths, and I know it has always been there like a landmine, waiting to pop a scream of smoke into the sky and chew up my mother’s bones, that little germ of crazy that each member of the family has, like fingerprints with teeth that sometimes bite everything they touch and sometimes bide their time for a healthy vein to strike.

I split it open with my thumbs
not gently.
The skin resists then gives,
like something that’s held on too long.  

Inside,
a mess of red.
Seeds clinging to each other
in tight, silent clusters.
Little hearts stacked together
Innocent, unaware 
they’re about to be eaten.  

My hands stain.
The juice runs
not clean, not pretty.
It stains
like a heartbreak 
not all at once,
but in slow drops.

the world’s in motion

but we remain together

and always will be

(after an untitled and undated photograph in the portfolio, “35mm Black & White” by Joel Meyerowitz)

I heard the one right behind us in the treeline the moment we arrived
They quickly settled into a quiet cacophony, the overlapping hoo-HOO-hoo of two timbres

And it occurred to me, that while I had occasionally heard, or rarer yet seen, AN owl – that this was the first time I had ever experienced owls, plural
So, as I sat in the cold, still darkness, I savored the long moment for the special event that it was

Marveling at both their counterpoint, as much as how it barely carried over the noise from the cars on the road just visible on the ridge
Traffic heavier than I expected for a pre-dawn Saturday
While watching the moon reflect icy silver off the chokeberry bush