Remembering Gypsy

Memories;

sitting at the kitchen table

with the Philosopher King,

that old, exiled gypsy...

I know you say that you are not photogenic

but your smile,

the way your eyes smile

in that sad way, fruit dying on the vine way.

Picturesque.

Smoking your cigarettes with the right hand

then the left hand

and afterwards the right again.

You would speak to the children

gathered around, sitting at your feet.

Words, 
words that were more than strings of thought.

Tribal spells from an age that will never come again,

the heart’s metal forged with unfiltered spirit

and brought forth imperfect, but perfectly fragile.

Those words would take shape, forming structures inside of us,

solid foundations,

to withstand the ravages of time and disappointment.

Winter is Coming

The knights of Spring, garlands about their necks

and blunt tourney swords in hand

the innocent youth,

having only known the warm kisses of maidens

and the sweet Summer Sun.

This season will pass,

Winter is coming.

A red comet streaks across the azure sky,

turns to blood once the sun has set

and tales dragons begin to spread across the sea.

What was once legend, stories of Grumkins and Snarks

leap from the pages of children’s stories

and into the woods beyond the Wall.

That great expanse of ice, once garrisoned as kingdom would be,

ready to defend, to hold at bay the gathering storm,

has become merely tradition.

A place for murderers and thieves as well as some second sons

and a few knights whom have no hope in owning titles or lands.

The true nature of it, a mystery to those black crowes,

standing vigil against the endless night.

They all speak the words,

“I am the sword in the darkness.

I am the watcher on the walls.

I am the shield that guards the realms of men.”,

but to what end.

Their needs are quickly disregarded by the rest of Westeros

in light of the Game of Thrones being played by so many would-be kings.

Let us pray their warnings are heeded

before that night which has no end engulfs the world

and Winter descends upon us all.

The ashes that hold memories

The old house of our memories home

smolders, now burnt.

It is just a hull, ravaged from the inside out

The first room to go, that sacred place

where she would sit in her recliner

peeling oranges in Winter time,

sucking the juice out and tossing the pulpy Rhine

only wanting the juice,

life giving manna that staved off

sickness during the cold Kentucky Winters.

This house,

Where generations of children were raised;

those of the great mother

and later her children's children.

The front is gone, the porch

where so many seasons

beans were hulled and broke

to the sweet sound or her singing

and the stories she would tell

of family, known by many only name.

The kettle that once stood;

a cast iron cauldron

where food was canned

and mutton made.

All gone.

The grapevine, that we all raided time and again

despite the sourness of the grape

and the consequent belly ache;

purple giving away to a vibrant green,

and the sour taste would

cause a curious puckering of the lips

and uncontrollable cringe

yet we would go back for another and yet another.

Memories:

the pop of the electric fence

and the way that electricity felt

as the youngest of us were tricked into

testing to see if it was on,

as the task always fell on the youngest

time and time again.

Memories:

Sitting in the backyard by a wooden picnic table,

digging through the soft mud

and making mud pies to cook on that old

wood cook stove,

that stood in the backyard for as long

as grand kids can remember.

The dying of her house,

like losing a member of the family.

From the youngest to the oldest,

we all ran barefoot through that house at one time.

When the sun went down

and He-Haw had gone off the air

we would crawl on top of feather beads,

chins tucked neatly under homemade quilts,

trying not to move, so that our warmth would

soak deep in the feather bed.

The house is now gone and with it

the paths worn by dozens of children

from the living room to the back rooms.

Never have I seen so many beds crammed in to such a small house.

But, as a child that house seemed immense.

And now, what is left, seems so small

and the relics we once held so dear have floated

to the sky, not quite to heaven, but at a height where they will never be seen again.

The tears we shed could have quenched that fire,

the memories remain but the rooms in which we made them

are now gone;

Cast iron skillets, Red Eye Gravy, the sight of grandma

eating crackers in her coffee at the kitchen table.

So many of us still run barefoot through those halls.

Dodging fly swats and that dreaded paddle

that sat just around the corner as a reminder

the fly swat was a mercy compared to what we could have gotten.

Memories, there are so many.

And those are just mine.

The well water was so cold, but you couldn't

drink a drop until grandma scooped out

all the germs from the water bucket.

My recollections are but a drop in that bucket.

And the memories go back, back before me

before my mother.

Back to when the house was built

and the youngest child was just a baby.

Mirrors and What to do With Them

A shattered looking glass, oft the result
of a decline in respect for the visage staring back.
Shattering a looking glass results in a fragmented
image that once gazed back from a perfectly polished surface.

All the time and effort mending broken glass,
a result of deceit.
Recovering that old aspect is foolish pride,
but what is a reflection?

It is simply the throwing back, by a surface of light
without absorbing it.
Reflection has no depth, no memory,
conscience or redeeming quality.

Reflection is a sideways, casting glance.
A vision to be interpreted, not taken in the literal.
The result of a shining lie
held in place for both subjection and objection alike.

Reflections are often more distortion than validity.

They show us what we want to see at times
while there are quiet and hard moments when they
show us an image we wished we had never gazed upon;
Dorian tricked and thus vanity meets reality.

Breaking mirrors serves no purpose
the mirror, only an instrument.
The true fractures occur not in the ephemeral vessel
but in the soul.
Beginning minute, undetectable; festering begins
with the emotionless ticking of a second hand.
They start when lies are used to construct a pseudo countenance,
innately more pleasing and grow when lies
take root and become a truth;  a truth inevitable as the season’s cycles..

The diluted self has no foresight, nor a desire to ponder past lives.
Self loses meaning, direction; becoming much like
“wandering stars for whom the gloom of darkness
has been reserved forever”
Lost; no rhyme nor reason.  
A heartbeat away from chaos.


So we mend what has been broken
taking care to patch the gaping hole,
so as not to offend or to reveal,
reveal any cracks in our carefully crafted masquerade.

The mirror is for the surface, reflection.
The back of the eyelids, soul’s introspection;
a much better gauge of the human condition.

Leave the mirror, forget what you see
focus on your hands, the actions taken during any given day.
Reflect on your promises, those you broke
as well as the ones you kept.
Reflect on your dreams, discard the clutter
embrace those filled with light, insight and
“consider the lilies, they neither toil nor spin.”

Energy

The I, the You
and later
We.
Forms that were still,
animate and breathe only to draw closer.

Expand, contract and release.

New energy weaves throughout and is thrown out.
Sunrise, sunset and balance.
The We softly sighs, in awe of the destruction and creation.

New matter.

A phosphorescent mass of limbs and emotion
moved half a degree to the left of center
and a step ahead of time and tides.

Flowers are for the Living

There are wilting flowers
hanging limp across a marble tombstone
petals are falling, covering the over-grown grass
in deep reds fading to black.
Blanketing the ground where
the body was laid down, so long ago.

Year after year the flowers come without fail
replacing the ones that have fallen into decay
becoming part of that hallowed ground.
Hues of grey and brown hang like a cloud,
the cemetery evokes a somber mood.
It is there, we speak softer,
walk lighter and remember
with unclouded thoughts the love, laughter,
and the loss of voices that will
no longer be heard floating on the wind.

The flowers offer a contrast to the solitude,
the brightness breathes new life into the gloom
and helps remind us that
beneath the overgrown grass and
the cold marble slab rests a body,
a body that once tasted the free air
and laughed with a melody
that reverberated through every dale and hollow
and loved, loved deeply
treasuring both family and friends.

That heart no longer pumps blood
to the body, the color is gone.
No rosy cheeks left to stand witness to Winter's chill.
Those lungs no longer have the power
to inhale the fresh smell of a first dew
or the strength to exhale wisdom gathered over the ages.

Though these things are now gone
the love lives on,
like the flowers we leave
year after year.

And it continues as long
as we remember to walk
the length of the graveyard
and leave fresh flowers.

The ritual is love removed from the realm of the idea
and made concrete by its action and repetition.

The flowers will always die,
as flowers must do.
It is the ritual that reminds us
the love never will.

My farewell speech that I read for my cousin Scott at his funeral

For the most part I have used this blog space as a place to share prose with family, friends and acquaintances.  This will not always be the case as the blog begins to grow and as I grow with it.  A few weeks ago my cousin Scott passed away.  He was my childhood hero.  I idolized him the way small children hero worship Superman or Michael Jordan.  My hero was much more accessible and a hell of a lot cooler than any spandex wearing charicature drawn on the pages of a comic book.
My Aunt Wanda, Scott's Mother, asked me if I would say a few words at the funeral.  I was reluctant to do it at first.  I didn't know if I could.  I thought about it for a long time until I came to the realization how rare it is for a man to have the opportunity to share the stories of his childhood hero and to be able to offer a proper farewell.  Men are given many gifts under the sun and most squander their gifts our of pride or some other foolishness.  I am not much of a carpenter and I have no idea what strange magic causes an automobile to run but I do understand love and I have written about it and a thousand other things since I was old enough to put pen to paper.  I realized it would be an honor to share my words concerning Scott with his friends and family, and so I did.  The following is a copy of that speech.  I added some things as I went along and left out others but that is just the way the spirit moves us.  Life is never lived exactly as the script would have us live it and love has trouble being bound by lines and verses.  I wish more people could have known him, he was definitely one and only.

To Scott

During my Freshman year of college I wrote a paper about Scott, on the moments we shared, the things he taught me and the impact he had on my life.  When Scott went on, I dug the paper out and reread it.  From that paper I discovered two things: one, I was a terrible writer when I was nineteen and two, I had let time and distance obscure the profound impact Scott had on my life.  He introduced me to the genre of literature that shaped my young adult life; Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons, the legends of King Arthur and the histories of Greek Gods.  It was that spark Scott ignited that led me to major in Literature in College and gave me the drive to travel all over the country presenting papers on Arthur and his Knights.  

One of the most memorable experiences I shared with Scott occurred when I was fourteen.  On a humid Summer Night, Scott opened my mind to music, Philosophy and independent thought.  We sat on opposite sides of his living room, with the lights turned out and Led Zeppelin blasting on the stereo.  He spoke of philosophies and the love and pain behind music.  He brought “Stair Way to Heaven” to life, opened my mind and soul to the rifts Jimmy Page so savagely bled out from his guitar.  Thinking back on it now, the event seems surreal.  Like a scene from a movie.  We sat there for hours, digging on the music and I just listened to this amazing man talk.  To the soundtrack of Zeppelin, Scott wrapped me in his words and for a moment we were of one mind.  There was no other adult that I connected with when I was a child as I did with Scott.  By some stroke of fate, we had developed along the same path, separated only by age and circumstance.  By taking the time to talk to a 14-year old boy like he was a man, Scott changed my life forever.  I owe a large part of who I am today to that dude.


As I walked around the funeral home yesterday, flashing between intense moments of grief and lucidity, I watched and I listened.  I listened to Wanda talk about Scott growing up, and the struggles they shared when it was just the two of them.  I listened to Little Bobby talk of the admiration he had for Scott, for always living life on his own terms and having a strength that has nothing to do with muscle and bone.  I watched Becky, so much like the mother that raised her, talking to everyone and making sure everyone else was okay, while keeping her own emotions in check.  I shared a smoke with Christy, who told me about a brother who knew the secrets of her soul without ever a word being spoken, a brother who was her best friend.  Before the night ended, I heard the soft humming of an off key “Danny Boy” and watched an old soldier walk a young soldier to say farewell to a fallen son.

I heard countless stories about Scott, shared and retold by those that knew him best.  Listening to all these memories I realized that I was not so unique.  All this time I had been under the impression that I was the only one whom had been affected so deeply by Scott.  But, as I watched and listened, I realized that Scott had an impact on all of us.  Whether it was his free spirited days of heavy metal and hard loving or the dignity and grace which he showed in the face of unimaginable adversity after the accident.

Brother, I hate that we have to say good-bye so soon but good-byes always come sooner than we would have them come.  I consider it an honor and a privilege to have walked in your shadow  while you were on this Earth and though your Earthly body no longer casts a shadow that mortal eyes can see, I know you are walking towards those Pearly Gates free of the burden you carried for so long and I hope God sees fit to welcome you home with the most beautiful rendition of “Stairway to Heaven” you ever heard.