Wires tangle Like lives Like loves. Electricity twists wires Like lies twist minds. Wires twirl into one another Like legs intertwined. Wires find each other Like the time Even on that first day You just know You'll be best friends Combined.
That’s my Instagram on the post. Follow me, please!
Leaves! I celebrate your splash of color Your delicate yellows Citrus orange Majestic Red I honor you, Because your changing hue Is the glory Of leaves dying. I will not forget your Verdant green Your spring and summer Wind dances Hushing and shushing together The brief glimpse of your Light underside. And trees I don’t blame you if You already shed your leaves. I’m tired too.
I throw the empty drawers Onto the pile in the dumpster. I turn away from the refuse, And look up at the family home. Somehow, still, my house. With the “Sale Pending” sign in the yard. I have a key for the Realtor's lock. I enter through the back deck door Like I always did. Into the family room that I visited So many times Dad’s been gone awhile. But the ghost of his recliner Still fills its emptiness. I say hi to mom Because she’s only been gone a month. Her recliner is still there, So I can picture her better I say “Hi” again, and then I say, “But you’re not here.” I walk through the kitchen Into the dining room. We have emptied the house so totally, That the few drapes And the one cabinet hanging in its corner Glare out against blank walls I turn to the stairway. The stair treads that mom hooked With her children’s profiles on them Are still there Secured with my father’s nails. I step on the silhouettes of my siblings, Myself. Up on the landing, I lean through the door Of my sister's room. Cable cords are in a snake bundle under the windows Hemmed back by hollow space. Still my sister’s room All these years later. I turn to Still my room. It is for a little while longer. And always The persistent bed and desk Hold their space in the past. The dresser with the record player. Ghosts of my clothes sloppying the floor. For a moment I am him. Or me. The me back then. Slipping out of my sneakers Without untying them. Dreaming my way out of a hated Cage. Scribbling high school poems Laments Eulogies. Records spinning On the stereo Over and over so the grooves deepened. Typing poems, to be given to scattershot loves. Hours long phone calls with scattershot lovers. Tangling my fingers in the coiled cord. Even the great escape to college Was followed by the return at each break Head hung like a parole breaker returning to a cell. I come back to now. I shake my head. Those small turmoils Were so huge. It was hard, sure, But it was so easy. Dreams I’m still dreaming Bloomed in this room. Achievements I only glimpsed here Have been accomplished. Talking to me back then I say: “I made you proud. A lot of your dreams came true. I haven’t done all you wanted, but you know: I’m starting to believe that’s part of the point.” I’m back on the stairs Descending through emptiness. At the bottom, I cry enough to feel like I got that part done. I pause in the family room. It is already changing. Becoming not mine. Not my families. Always ours. Not yet the new families’ always. For them A space awaits.
Before I start my reading the producer hands out figs.
One of my favorite Thoreau quotes is: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”
My castle in the air has always been my writing ambitions. Although I’ve done a lot of writing, quite often I replaced working for success with dreaming of it. In my dreams I have been terrifically successful: best-sellers, TV interviews, movie adaptations.
My reality has been much humbler: a handful of publication credits, 0 TV interviews or movie deals.
That is until recently. Publishing Tao of Thoreau through Amazon finally attached a tower of my castle to some foundation stones. Still a humble accomplishment, but at least a tangible one. And last month, September 1, 2020 to today, October 1st, I sold 32 books. I don’t know who is buying them; I’m pretty sure all the friends and family bought theirs earlier in the year, so I can only assume that these are people hearing about my book and purchasing it.
This is after an August where I barely sold any. So maybe something is happening out there. Maybe my book is catching on.
Strangers. Reading my work. A dream coming true.
This website is another part of this supporting structure. Again, the numbers are not world-shattering, but I love seeing my statistics. Even one visitor eyeing my work is wonderful. And I’m having fun challenging myself to beat the previous weeks stats.
My biggest takeaway is this: writing and publishing is making me feel joy. I’ve always enjoyed writing, but now the joy of this process is spreading to all areas of my life. I feel incredibly fortunate to be where I am in my writing journey, and I am so glad that you are reading this right now. Thank you!
Fingernail moon Beneath Venus. Two deer cross the road in front of a car The third puts on it breaks Back legs skidding As the car finally stops. Hang tail fox. Hazy orange sun That I look at directly.
As I stated in my last post, gray is the color of evil in my stories, not black.
This started as a recognition of the power of words, and the impact they have on our thinking. The white is good and black is evil dichotomy is very old, and probably predates white vs. Black racism. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t support this evil way of thinking.
This was incredibly well dramatized in a scene from the movie Malcolm X. While Malcolm was in prison, a fellow inmate had him look up the words “black” and “white”. While white has almost completely positive associations, black is defined with words about distress, crime and evil. Again, these things possibly developed out of inoffensive feelings like fear of the dark, or of the unknown, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t supported stereotypes and prejudice. Here’s the link if you want to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51USLgPWhgc
I really like the band The Killers, but there are lines in their new song “Boy” that bother me. I hope the lyrics “White arrows will break/ The black night” are not intended to be racial, but I can certainly understand someone interpreting them in that way.
Besides the potential problems with these opposing colors, I think it is also lazy writing. We’ve used these symbols for thousands of years – maybe it’s time to come up with a new way to capture evil. I am going to keep using gray.
I don’t know if this is going to be a poem or article. Maybe both. I’m trying to grasp the infinite abundance of our world, our universe.
Count the pine needles
I thought of that line as I walked through the woods, looking at the yellow blanket of pine needles on the trail and under the trees. Imagine trying to count them. It made me think about the line where measurements blur into the infinite.
Look to infinity
Relentless abundance
You are standing in it
Walking on it
Throbbing with it
Infinity is the disappearing importance of measurement
Of rulers
Of defining numerals
Measure me out
a teaspoon of thyme.
But make me the same teaspoon twice
With the exact number of grains each time.
I feel like I’m capturing something that I have been after a long time. These are elusive thoughts, though, and it takes time to refine them.
This spring I spread mulch with painterly strokes Or smeared hurriedly, abstraction in brown My canvas: Rooty humps around tree bowls Beneath blooming bush branches Along Flowering paths My palette: Earth, all the shades From mahogany to ebony. My motif: Circles and curves And deep loamy earth The contrast of browns and greens That beautifies the beautiful.
Mark Bozeman 