Category Archives: Poetry

What is life?

I want to share something.  But, I’m going through one of these myotonic-dystrophy episodes, where exertion brings on pain and.

Moving is exertion.  The days go by, and everything I write seems to suck.

My difficulty writing is part of my MD experience.  The highs, and lows, roughly follow my symptoms through the months.

So, this evening, I vaporized Sour Diesel.

Cannabis overcomes the inertia built into my symptom-cycle.

And Sour Diesel begs for music.

I fell asleep to Kaya.   Bob Marley’s ode to marijuana and rain.

 

My windows and doors are open.  A storm approaches from California.  Sometime tomorrow, we should have our first rain since November.

We are overcast with winter warmth.  My two cats, and the neighbor’s, are playing tag in the wind.

Throughout the yard and house.

 

I woke to the question.

What Is Life?

Black Uhuru asks.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X75h7gts31M

 

Something about this song speaks to me.

The experience of life is framed by contrasting interpretations.

The positive and the negative are both constants.

The choice is where to focus.

Tempe February

=== 6:52 PM ===

XB  Ooh.  I just snagged the writing table.

I love its suitability.

I’m surprised I am here this late.  But, only as I would have expected this day-to-play.  After a couple of blah-days, I could feel an energy, even as I lay in bed, this morning.  Perfect-days often beckon, in this manner.

And yes, I was achy.  But, not active achy.

Past achy.  On its way out.

And I was mindful again of food.  I squeezed a lemon into water.  Drank that, as my morning quench.

Then I picked some tomatoes from the garden.

These were planted in late September.  They matured into December, setting lots of heavy, green fruit.  And there it stayed, waiting for the days, to warm enough for red.

A few started turning in late January.

But, in a Tempe-February, spring is very apparent.  Weeds and peach blossoms.  In another month, we’ll be in full citrus-bloom.

And the tomatoes know it.  There’s a bunch of big red fruits on those eighteen plants.  Six cherry, six Champion, six Celebrity.  Every day I eat as many as I want.

Wen Ling kept asking me why I planted eighteen?

Because.  Every day I eat as many as I want.  Three, four, even five, big ones.  And another half-dozen cherries, as snacks.

This is the perfect time of year.  I can keep the windows and doors open, with temps so pleasant.  And when I get hungry, I just stroll into the back yard, through weeds, and look for the reddest ones.

A little sea-salt.  Yum.

And, dessert is blood-orange.  Studied, then picked.

I need to eat dinner. But, this reminds me.

Last night, I followed-up, what I wrote in my journal, about where-to-eat-dinner, by eating-dinner at Chillie’s.  Is that what I imagine I wrote?

 

I had the flatbread, a holographic-image of my hunger.  And a beer.

Home before ten.

 

Bed before two.  Just after one.

I thought I had cleared, my belching, before sleep.

But there was this one, final, statement on-dinner.

It haunted my morning.

 

It startled me.  I was choking.

I was awake.  And, I was aware.

I was choking.

 

I have been here before.  Believe me.

It’s annoying, when it happens, now.

 

So I recognized the presence-of-mind I was in.  Gradually, when these things happen.

Usually, after a food-combination, not conducive-to-sleep.

I am calmer, with each, stupid, incident.

 

Today, this morning, just before five.

I had the presence of mind to pray, to Meta-Mind.

For calm.

 

I sat.

Up, in bed.  Eyes closed.

Strange and true.

 

My inability-to-inhale contained a calm.

I just had to wait this out.

I just needed to meditate on the experience.

 

Breathing will resume….  Any minute, now.

 

My fault.

Eating breaded-goodness, with beer, before dreams.

A poetic, yet realistic, statement.

A foundation, for Conscious-Writing.

Conscious-Writing is Conscious-Thinking.

 

The above-two-lines should be written on my blog as, a poetic, yet realistic, statement.

That could be the title.

The words, trailing the first comma, of the first sentence, of this stanza.

 

Realistic, in the sense that.

If Know-One is doing it, someone should.

 

That someone should be me, because.

There seems to be, a need-in-the-field.

Of Conscious-Awareness.

 

But, if Someone is doing it, then I should first join.

Discover what they think.

 

Responses would be welcomed.

A few, brief, thoughts.

I have been quiet the better part of a week.  Possibly, the best week of my life, in many ways.

Since my previous post, I have been in wheel-chair prescription-limbo.

It’s bizarre.  How strange our worlds?

Become, when insurance enters our lives.

It’s not my control.  It’s shared control.

In order to gain control, I have to learn how insurance companies think.  It’s what I imagine before.

The alien, suddenly, in my dreams.

And this has been possibly the best week of my life, because, for the rest of it, I have only been writing, and meditating on my manuscript. I am now in full book-writing mode.

Beam me up, Spock.

To a heavenly place.

Each day, when I begin to type.

Thoughts.  Not my own.

2014-02-01

Man.  I slept hard last night.  Long and hard.  Woke up in pain.  The whole day was a slog.  Then I ate a couple magic brownies.

San Fernando Valley.  Ocean grown.  Much like a blue dream, in my experience.

Now the ingredients of my snack buoy my thoughts.  And I must say, what a wonderful day!

Medical marijuana lets me write, on days I wouldn’t without it.

So.  In a sense.  Cannabis enhances my productivity.

Productivity is not service.

To The Man.

Productivity is the essence of living.

Artistic expression counts.

One.  Two.  No?

2014-01-30

The girl behind the counter just yelled energetically.  “I’ve got a yummy, yummy mango smoothie.”

A couple days ago, I read Found Poem — Tribute to Pete Seeger, composed of his songs and lyrics by Shawn Bird.  The poem was moving, and enlightening.

I was moved to leave a comment, and enlighten my ignorance.

Not sure on the exact meaning of a found poem, I looked it up.

Makes me wonder.  Is yummy, yummy mango smoothie an example of poetry found?

Perhaps when sung to the woman who paid.

2014-01-29

Lately, at home in the evenings, usually.  I think about my writing and where am I going.

Fog clouds my next couple-three steps.

In the story of me writing a book, I am just a little stuck.  I can’t decide.  Do I not understand what next I need to do?  Or am I having some trouble with the idea I am striving to communicate?

This is how it feels right now.  It’s not a loss of confidence at all.  It’s just a feeling of befuddlement.

Recently I wrote an absurd thought in my journal.

Just write.  Just get ideas down.

And yet, right now, it is so hard to do.

2014-01-28

=== 4:36 PM ===

XB

Yeah!  I got the writing table at my favorite coffee shop.  So called, because many write.  Here, over all the other tables.

I should be writing my timeline.  I had discussed it with the guy who evaluated my functional capacity.  Today he reminded me.  My timeline will help fill out his evaluation.

My timeline from my journals.  I have five years.   In them I discuss all my experiences.  Once I realized.

Their value.

Journaling keeps me sane.  I have found.  It works best if I pour my soul.  Lavishly, on the page.

And, that’s what I did.  Starting before it ever occurred to me.  Maybe I should discuss what I notice with my doctor?  The notion was vague, that the state of ship was amiss.

They cover everything from my thoughts on life and death, to the detail of each day playing out.  The ones worth remembering.

When I started using my cane.  How I thought.  Still.  That it wouldn’t get too bad.

Too soon.  It got worse.  And I discussed everything, from why I plopped onto the couch and fell asleep, right after work, to the pain that woke me in the middle of the night.  What else to do when I can’t sleep, but write?

And these journals also describe the sick days I took.  They agree with my former employer’s records.  How I never took many sick days until the last two years.  And how they grew in frequency.  And why.

I also have to write a cover letter for the evaluation report.  To the bureaucrats of the insurancy.  I want to make myself perfectly clear.

Don’t contest this any further.  You will lose.  You have no valid arguments regarding my case.

That’s essentially what it is.  Right?  Will my case stand up in a court of law?  That’s gotta be how they evaluate each one.  If we drop him, with the evidence we have seen so far, will the lawyers win?

In a suit?

So, my cover-letter needs to detail all of the evidence I have.  Just to be perfectly clear.  They will not!

It was the insight that allowed me to stop worrying about the situation.  My weakness is the strength of my case.

I need to spell it out, in my own unique way.  Because I am not merely providing the insurancy my evidence.  I am telling them how to see it.  Without ever stating my intentions directly.

I want the power of language.  Spoken.  Honestly to paint.  A picture in their minds.

I want them to see it.  From my position, they lose.

In a court of law, they have no case.  They will see it.

When I crush their collective will.