a warm, golden
rippling blue
blue-yellow light
danced like a sprite
off the dulled, splintered
winter-worn window panes,
as stubbornly they opened
one by one,
onto the parched, dusty rooms
anxious
to gulp in the shimmer
& abundance of a misty
perfumed concoction
of salty
green grass
lilac & oxygen,
they filled brimming
with the sustenance
of springtime promises:
long, dark
withering winters
now but
distant
memories
is the lightning-strike
urge to purge
yourself of patience
when others see things
differently.
it pierces
the peace
like the unrelenting
anxious squeal
of a white-hot steaming
tea kettle.
imperious
pressurized
percolating
petulant,
demands your
perfect compliance,
yet
shatters to shards
‘neath the crush
of questioning
its teetering
tribal
duty-bound
logic,
& myriad
false
assumptions
Left
onto Impatience
Right onto
Intolerance Road
the Power to live
a creative life
lies in the ability to
actively make choices.
Choices centered
in a willingness
to be sure about nothing
in a willingness
to embrace a state of non-thinking silence
– just long enough
for inspiration to surge
& flow
spontaneously
into a conscious state
of gentle awareness
cultivated
by an attitude
of non-clinging curiosity
evolving heuristically
into a soundly reasoned theory
evaluated
for validity
& reliability
only by means of positive
internal
emotional response
Reasonable, isn’t it?
To simply express your preferred way of doing things, no matter how strong the preference, even when… bordering on demand, after all, if you can foresee the mess another is about to make when they cannot, don’t you have an obligation to help them avoid it!?
So right!
Things should never have to get messy; if only we could do things just as You have planned them, everything would go so much more smoothly!
Why fight the facts?
Neither better,
Nor worse,
Just different.
Vive la différence!
I love the ocean, really I do, I never take a vacation without it, so often when I buy personal hygiene products I like to buy things with names like Ocean Breeze, Sea Mist, Briny Breezes, Misty Sea and Surf for Men, etc., etc., this seems to temporarily fill my need for an ocean fix, but this morning my system seems to have hit a snag when eyes shut, wallowing in the sheer dreaminess of hot water running over my head and down my back, I grabbed for my ever-dependable, too-wide-to-grasp, family-size, Suave Ocean Breeze with Infused Sea Algae Extract and Vitamin E Shampoo, and decided to put it to my nostrils to take a long, deep, savoring breath when immediately I became anxious as a memory flashed on a summer-sweaty, hedonistically-devouring 3 or 4-year-old child gorging on a delicious blue popsicle after mass with my father, and my mother asking me in her sweet, calm, quietly hysterical tone, the one she reserved for small children to refrain from full-tilt scream: “Joseph, who gave you the blue popsicle?”, and “How the …. will I ever get those gd blue stains off your brand new (short-sleeve) white dress shirt?” Moral: Don’t buy Suave Ocean Breeze Shampoo, it smells like blue popsicles, or some kind of deadly Monsantoèsque sea weed, beach plum and propylene glycol mix, and what is that blue popsicle flavor anyway?
slips like a sword from its sheath
ever-so
superciliously,
from the cleverest of thin-lipped
serpentine smiles; people laugh.
Almost always, invisible someone
sobs silently.
What I love
⁃ most
about vacation
is just wandering,
wandering aimlessly.
it was this glorious,
get-outside-in-the-sun-Joseph!
picture perfect
beach day,
but I chose to spend most of it
inside,
well,
inside my Marriott Bonvoy
points-paid suite of rooms
with wall-sized
sliding glass doors,
⁃ slid wide open,
windows supervising
a luminescent
azure pounding ocean
just beyond their reach,
see-through sheers
flying like ballroom dancers
on lifts of briny breezes
⁃ watching movies,
dream-reading
old American
frontier romance fiction,
then shuffling,
begrudgingly
in a pair of well-worn contoured
black leather Berkenstocks,
like a too-tired snail
pulling itself, reluctantly
‘cross a sun-drenched
southern French
terra-cotta-tiled pathway,
a trail of glistening slime
regaling its wake,
every centimeter, a toss
between
all the closer
and just too far
to the beachside cafe
for a hardy
sea-side lunch,
then, when all is said & eaten
the awkward posse of successive
backward tripping steps,
⁃ back
onto the bank of elevators:
l-o-b-b-y l-e-v-e-l!
exhorts the whispy
electronic she-voice
14th floor!
a muffled murmur responds
from behind
the faceless
canteen issue
baby-blue
paper pandemic
surgical mask,
schlepping
an empty
black
nylon mesh
back-pack,
back
to my sunny,
breezy window-treated
rooms
for just a little bit more
Sunday
inside, ocean-side
beach-day wandering
⁃ DasVagabonder
For my 63rd birthday Jeff & I decided to take a shot (NPI) at golf! This was not a decision made as care-freely as it might sound. For as long as I can remember, age 4 to be exact, when after a certain 10-year-old uncle and his huddled gang of marauding 10-to-12-year-old buddies torpedoed a football at my chest while jeering me on to clutch it and sprint in a bee line toward the imposing, lone red maple, wide-stanced and broad-shouldered, its mighty chest proffered to proudly accept every hue of nature’s rainbow-speckled fall glory – a request I happily indulged like an eager-to-please puppy – and out of nowhere – BAM! – I ended up on the suffocating bottom of a pile of eight or nine 10-to-12-year-old boys – not as pleasant an experience as the more cynical among you might think. This was a defining moment, one that invoked immediate rebellion and a near life-long self-imposed ban on playing any kind of game involving a flying object even remotely resembling a football. Culprits have included: baseballs, tennis balls, basketballs, frisbees, hockey pucks, birdies, etc., etc., etc. I am happy to report, however, that I think I’ve finally found my sport! Never too late to find your flow, albeit a safe’ish, gentlemanly and leisurely game, golfing is a lot of fun, despite the tacit assumption that the occasional ill-intentioned marauding hoodlum most likely still lies stealthily in wait, cleverly queued in reoccurring ten-minute tee-time sorties, and camouflaged in colorful glove-tight, ergonomically yielding Lululemon active wear, just longing for the perfectly inopportune moment to lob a tiny, menacing, pimpled, neon ball aloft in my direction.
As she whistles and whips
and winds and howls
and deluges
her unwelcome pathway
Tropical Storm E
leaves a bright sopping
calm
in the wake
of her wistful passing
Musing Forward...Thoughts, Words by JF Toomey 