FROM JAIL,
Once you start getting arrested, it can be the thing that you keep getting arrested more. It becomes hard to not be continuously arrested. I mean, that is what I am saying. Or what I mean.
I'm an arsonist, and I burn down outhouses. Always knock first -- if someone is in the outhouse, I go to another unoccupied one.
Sometimes I blow outhouses up, thus my getting arrested. Seems the cops especially don't like that. Or the community.
It was a germ of idea, it was funny, imagining an outhouse burning. Or exploding in rockets of flames. I thought about it for YEARS.
All those years I kept it to myself, and I'd laugh or chuckle, and sometimes and my neighbors thought I was mirthful. And I was, but they thought it was for life or the weather or having a sunny disposition that I do have as well.
I volunteered, I was on the village fire brigade, I ran for town mayor, I attended church and gave to charity. I raised three beautiful kids and my wife left me for the dentist in the next town over when the kids were out of the house.
And I burned HIS -- the dentist's outhouse -- down, first.
**
12
---
for Chung Tzu
Interplay of emptiness
Of how things are
And how they become
Wind is empty so are mountains
Wind pushes me
Mountains push me
Rain is empty so are thoughts
Rainfall tickles me
So do thoughts
Light is empty and so no-light
Brightness reveals
And so does the dark
It all plays through emptiness
Forgot to become or remembering
Impossible or always
this is the day oh striving hope
blessed for what is full of wanting and what is not
you are the phantom in every thought
and lighting everything else dramatically
searchlight of the mind sweeping
beauty found beauty lost
always more about to be
quickly comes and goes
imperishable encouraging
— —
CM Evans
*
long or short
the road is long
if i have no courage
they asked me
what is the opposite of faith
i said faithlessness
*
snow trailing flakes that i shoveled twice
it falls now with gusts of wind over snow i moved
a thing to see your work so gracefully undone
seems better in life to leave things undisturbed
99
facing the day with notes
go store
done
ret lib books
done
everything is going to be alright
thank you
..
The boy was there when the sun rose, in the first place the rays touched when it rose over the tiny town. Before his drunken father left, he would tell his son about the field at the very edge of town, where no one would go to ... and how in that field the sun's cotton candy would appear in the dew every morning. The boy knew it was a fantastic story, like all the others. Though he knew his fathers stories were all lies, they also were irresistible stories, full of whim and amazing happenings, miracles, angels, and unforgettable details. His father had that about him -- a flash, like lightening, laugher, mysteries revealed. The boy loved and hated his father, but above all he missed this unreliable love. A presence like a force of nature, like a storm, then gone. Or at any time, could suddenly reappear dirty, laughing, full of tales. So the boy brought a book with him, and a pencil, and he would write his own stories in the field at dawn, and he promised he would someday publish them, with a dedication to his father.
***
The fish twisted and turned on the bent hook. He crouched on the edge of the river, swore he would never eat meat, made the oath, but he was starving. It had taken him 28 days to find the wire, to sharpen it on one end, to purloin enough string to have a fishing line. He arose before dawn, walked with clasped hands, meditated at daybreak, noon, dusk. He was the epitome outwardly of humbleness, or service. The mist rose off the water, the only disturbance were ripples from the struggling. As he drew it in, he even felt a pang of deep regret for the poor fish, for all beings snared in suffering in this whole world.
When he had the fish (so pitiful wet cold and alive!) something in him made him let it go. Then the abbot sat down beside him.
**
Sickness kept him home the third week, but it was no more than what he imagined himself to be afflicted with. His heath was as good as it had ever been, he had no physical ailments.
He'd watch the sky from the tallest window in the house. The clouds were marching to the east, dizzyingly high. He would hear the watch ticking on his arm, the second hand getting louder on the watch side as it approached, then receded to the other side of the dial.
Later he was at the beach, looking for shells. He saw Candice there.
"I saw your daughter the other day." she said.
He exchanged small talk and then called his daughter.
They had brunch at a favorite restaurant.
"Dad, I am glad that you called."
He forgot everything he idly worried about. He was glad too.
For some reason the lonely halls and rooms of his mind where smaller, as she smiled.
As he drove home, he hummed a tune and wrote it down when he arrived home. The darkness did not oppress him, though he turned on the lights. Then he turned them off quickly, and saw the moon going up into the sky from the tallest window in the house.
He picked up the instrument, he played a violin solo to the moon.
A deer with her fawn heard the violin music, and came down the hillside, waited patiently for him to finish. It knew when he noticed, he would feed them carrots.
...
The ship was torn apart on the sharp reef. Was it ironic that it was my son's toy ship, a model of the sloop we were sailing in, dashed to pieces seconds before the full-sized boat followed it onto the coral? The churning surf looked like milk or masses of cream, the rending of the side like gunshots as the wood gave. I saw splinters shooting through the torn sails. The wheel shuddered then started spinning as if down a hill. All was falling sliding, grinding, and going up or apart. Off aways was the life raft, with my son, daughters and wife ... getting farther and father away.
When I awoke, an orchid rested on a spotless side table, a glass of water, some gauze. A Japanese doctor. I was trussed up in a body cast.
"Did they make it?" I asked the Japanese doctor. "Did they get away?"
He couldn't speak English, didn't understand.
---
A king ruled the state in the early days, and he was hated for it, even though his subjects expected him to be the ruler. They also wanted their own laws, and their own customs of non-royal rule. The king did his best to be a figurehead, but his subjects decided to throw him in prison.
Prison was actually better than living in the dilapidated castle that the commoners expected the ruler to live in. The king was quite happy, but eventually important people in the new government felt guilty on how they were treating the king, so the Chancellor and his cabinet offered to let him go into exile.
The king was sad, and moved to a small country far away from the land. There he became an excellent hat maker, and interior designer. The king really didn't have any other skills other than this. Later, when the king retired from his second career, and ran a little B&B by the mountainside, he'd wonder how his little country was getting along.
One day, he was surprised to see the Chancellor and half the cabinet coming down the road. They look very tired from traveling. Once they recognized the king, they were very surprised.
"Tell me how it goes in that beautiful little land."
"Wrought with famine, and pillage."
"How so?"
"We could not agree, after you left, and so we quarreled and fought with our neighbors, and with our own factions."
"Terrible news."
"You should go back, the people would have you rule again."
"A milliner, decorator, and inn-keeper?"
"We will advocate for your return."
The king thought carefully, and saw how the Chancellor and his cabinet were sincere. The king made the journey back to his land.
Once back in power, the people rejoiced. The king had the Chancellor drawn and quartered, head cut off and put on a pike, with all the rest of the cabinet. The old motto of the king's royal line was PRO PATRIA, but motto of the royal house restored, VAE VICTIS, was cut deeply over the gates of the newly improved castle, with the royal emblem of a smartly hatted knight crushing a serpent.
...
this place that we are
it might be the place
of all places places
the place place
white snow
white frost
glittering world
like spun sugar
10-19-20
oh you know, to go on
to write on
it takes courage and a bit of sut
stu
stupidity or stubbornness
even some humor don't you see
---
robert nye
wrote poems about fresh bread tears and the moon's hair
words about singing and bedeviling his wife
as a novelist
wanted to be remembered as a poet
think of all the vaunted things you want to be remembered for
would it be for silliness
imperfections and tall tales
or how numbers ideals and guns mowed down people justifiably
