Rain pattering
in the darkness of morning,
thunder rumbles
a close and distant warning.
…
We settle snug
under covers sleeping slow,
dreaming visions
of whirling dancing ghosts.
…
You are my love
distance focusing night,
seer of vision,
starving lever of light.
By the kiss of the sun, the ocean sparkles like a million diamonds.
But still … she holds her hands on her hips and stares defiant into the ocean.
Parasols guard the coast perching wordless, like stoic mushroom soldiers.
Alongside the row of beach chairs sits, uniform in their green canvas.
Hotels and apartments follow the tedious edge in the distance along the banner of the shore.
——-
Whatever … the mountains off Peaks Snow Peaks stand aloof and shimmering.
I don’t know whether I distract him more … preening to the north or the west.
I really do look like mountains of this … but then I imagine mountains might look like me.
The contrast of the line, something special near the Shorty‘s Green, in about fifty yards.
Out blue … dark blue blue … Scott of Horizon sky up to the very very top of the tournament.
There it glistens
Blue haze descends
Makes man ready
To leave his mark.
In this place
Where love pretends
It pays to go to sleep
At dark.
The moon shines on
Her grey cold light
Postpones her rest
The earthly room.
Shadows fall
Without a fight
Eyes closed this day tonight
Too soon.
+++
I wrote this in bulk over my stroke. I “fixed it” over my mind’s renewal. I don’t remember what paused me so. I remember thinking that it was not done. But now it is. I only know that I am hear now. Full of mystery and creation. A little more open. A little braver to possibility unclaimed. Sometimes I catch myself in struggle. “Oh brave new world that has such creatures in it.” Oh Universe of light and space and endless time!!! — 😇 — SSW
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Was it yours
Is you ours
Has the turn coat
Wrecked our bar
—
Is you is
Is you ain’t
This guest of ours
Most sacrosanct
—
Oh the wheel
Does turn and vex me
Sem pro fie
This life reflects me
***
Its always a challenge this nasty earth doeth put upon out. I am grateful for love, the glorious light, the prayers of coming back and the shot at redemption of it all.
Posted in Fiction
“Anything’s possible”
The angels’ opening number—
Is it possible that any song
Has put more humans under?
+++
My planted flag unfurled it waves
Its fabric only wonder
The last night of the waning world
Craves sustaining hunger
+++
Emily — what’s come to me —
Another fumbling blunder?
“Anything’s possible”
Said lightning after thunder
—-
So I wrote this for my own prompt … btw I’m Poet of the Week… [golf clap] Thank you … thank you … that’s… really too much … you’re too kind. 😂 Seriously, a nice honor amongst my peer poets on the weekly prompt…week 23😉… hosted by The Skeptic’s Kaddish. https://skepticskaddish.com/2022/10/05/w3-prompt-23-weave-written-weekly/ They are tremendous. Always great poems every week. Big props to David, the intrepid host.
The prompt this week is to write a poem after reading a short poem by my favorite poet Emily Dickinson.
Superiority to fate
Is difficult to learn.
‘T is not conferred by any,
But possible to earn
A pittance at a time,
Until, to her surprise,
The soul with strict economy
Subsists till Paradise.
—Emily Dickinson
So log on to the Weave Written Weekly prompt and compete! I get to pick the winner … except it won’t be me! 😂 But it could be you!! 🏆What’ve you got to lose?!!
—SSW
It’s hard to describe the University of Chicago. You have to be there to really get the vibe. There are many beautiful American university campuses. Chicago is a gothic and surreal beauty. The place is all about gargoyles. It is a bastion of economic libertarianism. Barack Obama also taught law school there.
There’s no religious affiliation to the school at all. It’s an odd duck sort of kid that goes there. I considered applying there for undergraduate studies. I did not.
There’s no religious affiliation to the school. It’s not Catholic or Methodist or any other ic or ist. I think there is a cathedral, but it’s got nothing to do with any denomination. Something about the gargoyles and the closed off quadrangles and the stone and the trees . . . it’s mystical in it’s presentment. I truly felt the absence of a Christian God in on the grounds. The place was built by Rockefellor who must’ve been godless, right? It’s not as old as you might think. Dates back to 1890. It’s gorgeous though. I took my witchy brilliant daughter there for a campus visit a few years ago. She got waitlisted. I really wanted her to go to Chicago. I think she was right for it.
There was a bar in some hall at U of C. I think it was Ida Noyes Hall. The bar was in the basement. I forget what it was called. The Gargoyle Club? I don’t know. It’s not important. My peers and I at U of C that summer were just newly minted legal drinkers. Most of us were just 21. To call it a bar was a stretch. It was more like a dungeon that served beer.
There was a bartender. A thin white haired man with darting eyes. His name was Rex. He served drinks and read Kafka behind the bar.
The Chicago Business Fellows were an eclectic bunch. I’ve been around some intelligent people in my life before. People who could run circles around me. Never so many at one time as that summer.
There was a fellow I’ll call Miles from Bowdoin. Miles was a drunk asshole . . . with photographic memory. He was a double major mathematics and economics. He was well-read his parents college professors. He was fat and loud. A big fan of hockey and baseball. Love the then Montreal Expos. Canadian baseball team! Not even a Canadian!!!
Yeah he was an asshole. But smart as fuck. He almost got kicked out of the program because some student from China caught him urinating on the elevator of the dorm where we were all living, the International House, and complained. How’s that for American diplomacy. Miles got a talking to. But he was allowed to stay. I’m sure he’s made a lot of money.
I told him one night after more than a few beers, “Miles, you are the smartest guy I have ever met.” I kept to myself my opinion that Miles could probably had out ten one hundred dollar bills and somehow piss five people off.
“Well Steve . . . then you have not met Rex,” he said taking a long drink.
“Rex? Who’s Rex?” I didn’t know the name yet of the thin white-haired man who tended bar in the dungeon.
Miles pointed to the thin man with white hair behind the bar reading Baudelaire.
“That is Rex.”
Rex as it turns out was a U of C ABD. That’s stands for a PhD, doctorate of philosophy, all but his dissertation. Rex never gave his dissertation because he was a drunk and just didn’t do it. He got sober and was fifteen years clean. So clean that he could work tending bar without falling into old habits.
“Really.”
“Yeah, I closed this place down last night with Rex.”
“He was drinking?”
“Not a drop.”
“You were?”
“Oh yeah, most definitely!” Miles laughed. “The bar closed at midnight and me and him just hung out talking until three. He was drinking club soda the whole time.”
Miles was quiet.
“Motherfucker knows everything. He’s read everything by everybody. I couldn’t keep up.”
Miles was silent. Then he spoke, “So you ain’t met Rex yet!”
It’s interesting when you meet someone better than you. I’ve never done well with it myself when it’s happened to me and Miles was having a moment. I took a swig of my Old Style.
“Don’t worry about it man.”
+++
There were stairs that led down into the basement of the Ida Noyes Hall where the bar whose name I can’t remember was. The walls were white plaster but they were not pristine. They were a sort of free speech zone for graffiti. All sorts of smart-person graffiti. Graffiti with jokes I didn’t even understand. And some that were banal but still smart person graffiti.
“Karl Marx sucks cock”
Someone had drawn a carrot between sucks and cock and written “your dad’s.” Someone else had drawn another carrot after cock and written “according to his needs.” Shit like that. I spent an hour one day reading all that graffiti just mesmerized. My favorite post was where someone had taken an HB pencil and made a spot the size of a thumb-print. Next to it, they wrote “lick this spot.” The graphite of the spot was smudged in one direction with tell-tale tracks of some tongue’s papillae.
The University of Chicago was a place that did not know fear.
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A friend of mine operates a wonderful blog called Skeptic’s Kaddish. He recently posted the attached.
How much posting is too much?
I wonder too. I’m also kind of wondering, why do I post at all?
I guess it’s because I want people to read what I write. For the same reason that someone finds playing guitar in their room all day not as satisfying as playing for people in a room … even if it’s a drunk honky tonk and half the crowd is passed out!😂
But how does one efficiently post?
Some bloggers are definitely better at it than others. One who is really good is the Daily Addict.
https://thedailyaddictcom.wordpress.com
Danielle writes everyday on some aspect of addiction recovery. She posts the same time every day content that is always fresh. Her posts are short. Usually less than 200 words. She’s been at it a little over a year. She had over a thousand followers. (I have about a hundred 😞😂) One post every day same time. She has a robust following. She always responds to comments. Even if you are not in addiction recovery as I am not you can always glean something valuable and inspiring from her words.
I’ve written before that I believe we are living in an age of poetry. Poems by their nature are short. They make good blog posts and are easily consumed. You can read them on your phone nicely where I think most people are these days.😂 There’s a lot of people writing poetry and it’s nice.
I started posting poems about a year ago. Previously I wrote and posted mainly fiction stories, memoir pieces, and essays. I would work assiduously on these entries putting hours of time into them. Numerous revisions. Then I would get something like 7 visitors and 5 likes.
My poems, some clacked off in half an hour or less, almost instantly started performing way better in the “market” of WordPress visits and likes. I’m pleased that people like my poems. But I must confess that part of me is a little off put that these “throw-togethers” are what “the people” really want. I don’t consider myself a proper poet. I’m not like David of Skeptic’s Kaddish who eats and breathes poetry. He’s passionate about forms. You can learn a lot about poetry reading his blog. But maybe I are.🤣
But what I really want to write is not poetry. I love the short story form which reached its apex sometime before television and has declined since. The internet has done the form no favors. Or the smart phone. Who wants to read 4000 words on their iPhone?🤣 Not even me? I was probably born 70 years too late.
Blogs are great because they are democratic. They’re free and accessible. They just don’t cater to everything out there. You have to be specific, short and regular. These are strictures that no one ever imposed on Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Would these writers gain traction today? They probably would. They were too good not to succeed.
I’ve got a little thread of writing that I’m working on now. I’m going to how it goes over to break it up into digestible pieces.
I guess David and Danielle and I and everyone else who writes just really value knowing that some out there is listening.
I really don’t care whether I have twelve readers or twelve hundred. That people who I don’t even know read my stuff is kind of awesome even if it’s not that many. I just wish I could get what I really enjoy doing to a wider audience. I don’t think the blog or tweet or whatever form is good for that. 😕
— SSW
What was this era called? Is there a name for it? Grunge era? I dunno. Grunge music was everywhere but that doesn’t capture it for me as a name of the times.
It started Summer of 1991. It ended . . . gosh when really would you mark the end. Maybe 1998 when I got married . . . and left Chicago for good. Those seven years certainly had sub eras within the overall era. These were the Chicago years. Not exclusively all Chicago, but mostly Chicago. Years imbued by Chicago. If Ernest Hemingway had Paris I guess I had Chicago. Hemingway left Chicago to go to Paris! So it’s a ghastly stretch, but it’s me that’s writing about all of this, so I’ll have it my way.
The Chicago years started in a little town in Indiana where a little liberal arts school where I was a junior was. Trying to remember back to that year. It was a not a good time. Time has sanitized my memory of the history. Iraq invaded Kuwait in August of 1990. Iraq had an army of a million men. President Bush vowed that the invasion would not stand. But we were far from sure. One brother swore we were all going to be drafted. By winter of 1991 it was clear we were not. We spent January smoking bowls watching CNN cover the American annihilation of the Iraqi military.
I remember thinking that I wanted to be a Wall Street investment banker. I wanted to be a player. Seems funny now. But I did. There was a program at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago I got wind of. The program invited undergraduate students from liberal arts colleges, from all over the country to send a student to the GSB for a summer of business school classes. Anyone chosen was guaranteed admittance into the MBA program at U of C for two years after their college graduation. U of C had and still has a terrific business school. This sounded like a pretty good deal to me. My liberal arts college was one of perhaps forty participating schools allowed to send a delegate to U of C.
So I applied. Astonishingly to me, only two other students applied. The U of C only admits about ten percent of the applicants to its business school and these are usually students with outstanding GMATs and years of experience in the business world. This was quite a loophole I had found. I managed to be selected. The professor who was in charge of making the decision said to me. “Steven, would you like to go to U of C?”
“Yes sir, I would. Very much so.”
“Uh huh.”
“Will you promise me that you won’t waste this opportunity to spend the summer in Chicago?”
“Most definitely.”
“Will you go to ‘Andy’s Jazz Club’ and ‘The Gold Star Sardine Bar?'”
“Ummm. Ok.”
“I’m serious.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Then I’m going to let you go.”
+++
I met a girl pretty early that summer . . . like the first day of the program. She was a mousy little thing with mischievous eyes and heavy framed glasses before they were sexy. It didn’t last but a few weeks. Ended awkward. But I don’t know. She was one that mattered. When I got some really bad news about something a few months later, I called her. I’m grateful for her then.
That first day we met, I took her to a place I knew about on the Lake in Hyde Park called the Point. The Point was a little out-jutting, I really wouldn’t call it a peninsula but I guess it was. On a clear day you could see north up the whole coast from the south shore to where the skyscrapers began. You could look south and see the steel mills of Gary, Indiana.
I said there’s a cool place I’d like to show you. And she said ok. It was cool that day in June as it can be on Lake Michigan in Chicago and we were shivering not dressed warm enough. We sat down on the rocks. The wind was strong out of the north and the waves were crashing on the breakwater and spraying mist on us. Gulls struggling to fly, hung like ornaments in suspended animation. Heather looked at the gull and pointed.
“He’s not getting anywhere today she said,” then she looked at me.
I put my arm around her. “Oh no?”
Then she gave me a raised eyebrow and a smile . . . an expression I still can see in my mind. I kissed her. That’s what you did when you were twenty-one. Kissed women you’d met an hour before. But she didn’t seem to mind. I felt her fingertips curl about the back of my neck.
We broke the kiss. “Oh my god, it is fucking freezing!” She said. The gulls cawed in the wind.
“Yeah. Let’s go back,” I said.
As we walked back to the dorm where we were staying she put her hand in mind.
“Where are you from . . . originally?”
+++
So that’s the first little bit of what may spin out of this material. I met some interesting people. I gathered a lot of adversity and strength. I don’t know when I’ll come back to this story, but I’ll call the next installment “A Name to Give to the Times — Part II.” I’m not going to edit this stuff much. — SSW
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Steven S. Wallace 
Friday Great Lyrics #10— “Come as You Are” — Nirvana
I was young when Nirvana took over the world in 1991. It’s hard to describe how significant it was. Music felt and sounded a lot different after Nirvana than before.
I was in college and hell-bent on proving to the world what a bad-ass I was. We on the bike team all felt that way. We would ride road bikes on rollers or wind trainers sprinting in the bum room of my fraternity house in the winter blasting music on the house’s speakers we used for parties. We liked Guns -n- Roses, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, and … somewhat oddly a band called Living Color which had modest success but never really got going. They did have good energy. We liked anything that would help us ride hard on the trainers. But we LOVED Nirvana. Smells Like Teen Spirit was the energy track of energy tracks. 😂. That song is also a great lyric.
The life style! … It sustains us!! … Here we are now … Entertain us!!!
But Smells Like Teen Spirit is not my favorite Nirvana song. Come As You Are is.
Last week I wrote about Janis Joplin who died at age 27. It’s a notorious age for early departures for artists. Kurt Cobain was also 27. As was Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, and Amy Winehouse. Kurt’s was the most violent.
He was preternaturally good-looking, a gifted lyricist, someone who experienced a lot of physical pain in his life … he had stomach problems… I’ve had those before and they suck … and an addict. To be thrust into the spotlight of stardom as he was in 1991 must’ve been quite a trip.
Come As You Are – Nirvana – 1991
Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy
Take your time, hurry up
Choice is yours, don’t be late
Take a rest as a friend
As an old
Memoria, memoria
Memoria, memoria
Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach
As I want you to be
As a trend, as a friend
As an old
Memoria, memoria
Memoria, memoria
And I swear that I don’t have a gun
No, I don’t have a gun
No, I don’t have a gun
Memoria, memoria
Memoria, memoria
(No I don’t have a gun)
And I swear that I don’t have a gun
No I don’t have a gun
No I don’t have a gun
No I don’t have a gun
No I don’t have a gun
The first point I’d make about Come As You Are is how short it is. The words are short. Simple. Clean. Soaked in bleach. Honest. Nostalgic. Unsentimental.
It’s such a loving invitation on the one hand … come as you are. Whatever you’re wearing. However you’re feeling. Whatever mood you’re in. Whether you look good tonight or not. I don’t even care. Just come as you are. I won’t judge you. I just want you near me and with me. This is how I most enjoy and interpret this lyric and the song as a whole. It’s a song of openness. Welcoming.
But gosh, there’s a shit ton of darkness in Come As You Are too.
And irony. Come as you were. As if to relive the past. What if whoever is being invited to come as they were has moved on… isn’t the same anymore? Is it right to want someone as they were if they aren’t that way anymore.
But I think the voice understands that about himself. I think the voice recognizes its own selfishness and narcissism. Then again, if you see these qualities in yourself … have awareness of them … are you really selfish and narcissistic? No. Maybe you’re impeccably honest about what you want.
Words repeat in these lyrics. Yet they seem to mean different things. Come … As a friend, as a friend…. “Say something once, why say it again,” asked the Talking Heads. I’ve always loved that lyric. But here’s an answer, David Byrne. Something may not mean the same thing the second time you say it!!! 😂 Here it feels that way … that the second time the voice says “as a friend” it feels much different from the first. How does it really feel when someone says to you, “I’m coming to you as a friend?”
As an old enemy. What the hell is an old enemy?😂 Someone who used to be an enemy but isn’t anymore? Now a friend?! Or someone who was and always will be an enemy? I love that about these lyrics! The duality in everything. The unabashed self-contradictory meaning and tenor. Take your time, but you better hurry up! Come doused in mud … filthy … but also be soaked in bleach. Cleansed, but in a way poisoned!
The final part is so chilling. No I swear I don’t have a gun. I pose no threat. Something scary about the uttering of those assurances.
Anyway … here’s the song.
(Side-note … how good of a career has Dave Grohl had?! In Nirvana and Foo Fighters! Fcking-A!!!😂)
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Tagged Friday Great Lyrics, Kurt Cobain, Nirvana