Thirty / Thirty

7/30 (lol) things are so new anything could ruin them. so, recklessly, I carry matches, a torch // a flame and try to keep it from igniting everything. I imagine bonfires // I imagine their absence. I try to let that which wants to burn do so without my direction. I'm not certain what to call this: destruction, sure, if I let it be. Or, in a truer sense, warmth

“And you,” returned the prisoner, “who bade me to ask to see you; you, who, when I did ask to see you, came here promising a world of confidence; how is it that, nevertheless, it is you who are silent, leaving it for me to speak? Since, then, we both wear masks, either let us both retain them or put them aside together.” -Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask In the interim Cooler heads prevail We step down from the ledges Count enough sheep that we drift off The things we should have said Keep folded in back pockets Long enough for the ink to fade Like it didn't happen Though it once was a bone in the throat Sometimes the wrong kind of swallow brings the ragged raw to the surface Those days we salt our own wounds. We swear one moment if it feels like this we will not eat again And in the next can not believe we have ever felt so hungry

“O immortal gods! Where in the world are we? In which city do we live? What sort of state do we have? Here, there are here in our number, members of the senate, in this most venerable and dignified assembly of the earth, who think about the destruction of all of us, who think about the ruin of this city and even the destruction of the world.” -Speeches against Catilina by Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BCE I don’t know what to pray for anymore God bless everything To ask His will be done in a single brick will not keep a foundation from crumbling anyway God help us all And maybe if the news stays muted it will be all right for a day As though it isn’t the problem that’s the problem but the awareness of it For all the millions spent on lofty campaign promises and best intentions the insistence we keep our “under God” in the pledge and “in God we Trust” on our money that...

  When tyrants rule I will march for your name Riots as scissors in mouths So destroys the memorial Break past the barriers Destroys the dams Memories held in clenched fists gritted teeth Shake the fists that I love Hear roaring When despots lay resplendent Kick their fucking heads off

EARTHLING REPORT #5527 isn't it silly how their invincible die first?

Work, it consumes the day Who would have thought? Life drifted from one work day To the next, a life without play Remember when we were kids On the playground picking on each other? Play, joy, If only it were always harmless With the intent to make others laugh It was fun. We played baseball, football Dodgeball and bowling We played with dolls, stuffed animals We could craft an entire town out of mud But now, we bask in the glow of monitor light Pretending we are smart That we contribute to a better world That we are improving the next generation And we pretend that Dancing With The Stars Is more entertaining than a starlit sky That the Bachelor is more loving Than the human that sits beside us, or sleeps in our bed Do we contribute? Do we give more? Are we so exhausted from the tedious day-to-day That we dribble and drool in front of the flat screen? We are wasting our lives In the glowing in the pixels Pretending we ma...

in softness, another is welcome, sits near me until the toll is considered paid-                I'm not sure                what he thinks                I've become, except                for his- this time, I'm told you have to stop being so nice. you have to protect your cardinal gift

she's always here wandering around in that pink and white easter dress, crying the way only children know how: where is she? I hold her, say I am the closest we have ever come I haven't learned how to be motherless yet we haven't learned how to stop searching

“A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.” ― Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights The best way to make orange juice is to begin with a carton of orange juice and pour Some would call this cheating Some would say one must first slice and squeeze the fruit filter the liquid from the pulp  and the seeds Others would say you must begin with a tree Wait for the blossoms to appear the bees to pollinate the green fruits to grow from nothing to a ripe fruit and be sure to post periodic updates so everyone can be properly impressed But then would it not be more authentic to plant the seed in the soil and wait for it to sprout to nurture and prune season after season until the blossoms form and the oranges follow Surely this glass of juice would taste the best of all You can do it the easy way or you can do it right Or you can drink water and not second guess the decision

A Haiku for the Ages Just when you believe You have this aging thing licked You wake with sore hip

t/w suicide To understand Van Gogh is to perhaps be a genius yourself To buy the gun Van Gogh used to kill himself in 1860 is to perhaps be a rich person profiting and losing money over a gun, Not a painting A thing of beauty. But a quite unremarkable gun. Except that it was used in a suicide. Not just any suicide but Vincent Van Gogh’s and not just a shot to the head, No. Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in the stomach. $67,000 for an instrument of death found on a French farm in the countryside. Seeing a Van Gogh painting is seeing calculated melancholy What do you see when you see a rusted gun? Profitable suicide, Lucrative depression

Unhinged: Black Bird Paranoia It was an absolute accident Unintentional, random act of wounded crow One bird out of the tres’ into the fray Did I hit him? Or did he fly into moi’? The wicked bit of irony Is that Poe tried to warn us He told us about the raven to scorn us And we thought him stark raving mad! No one needed to conduct a deep study To tell us the Ravens, Crows And Blackbirds have memory Even worse than a curse that they tell the others And from one generation to another From one flock to a flutter They utter and utter and blame me for the harm Though the fault in unclear, isn’t it? Again, did he fly into me, or did I strike him? Or her? One crow, one bird A wounded leg only, but in the morning They are there to watch me get the paper Outside, a lonely walk down the driveway To the newspaper box, a murder gathers Gossiping, judging and driving me mad For decades, yes, decades they spy Eying, prying, glancing ...

What is the music of a wine glass breaking At what key does glass shatter? The music of destruction is the music of wasteland strolling through junkyards. I live my life digging up, washing broken things. What is the music of that kind of life Broken wine glass sounds like the summer sun sounds like dirty What a wasteland it is A junkyard in the ground That broken glass is something I can covet dating wine bottles from centuries past Whiskey bottles from churchyards What stories that tell of garter clips in a trash pile At what key does human life shatter What is the music of whiskey in a churchyard

Twain's Lament My Zen is the eighth My obsession sits just left of center Reachable in two On the perfect summer day The Bent grass is summer baked I am born and re-born in sweet July When I die sprinkle my ashes here On the crest, just inside the 1-7-0 An unadulterated view of the long eighth Of all, this is was the last crow’s caw And is now my everlasting Not by perfection. D-5W-7 chip Straight from the analogy our guides You came up short, should have been D-3W-P Now haunting my past-present-future Someday, the crow will call again here And it will be perfection. I will hit this crest, on in two, one in. Lay my ashes here And never lament what Twain called “A good walk spoiled”

Women in STEM fields have so much to thank you for. Here’s to many more

“To witness some queer, shy, misshapen, grey-headed, self-important, little discoverer of great discoveries, ridiculously adorned with the wide ribbon of some order of chivalry and holding a reception of his fellow-men, or to read the anguish of Nature at the "neglect of science" when the angel of the birthday honours passes the Royal Society by, or to listen to one indefatigable lichenologist commenting on the work of another indefatigable lichenologist, such things force one to realise the unfaltering littleness of men.” ― H.G. Wells, The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth If your opinion on the lectotypificaiton  of Aspicilia reticulata was a cheeseburger it would be stale fast food dollar menu stuck to the inside of the bag When you rail against the phylogeny of Micarea prasina  like so much talk radio conspiracy theory nonsense how will anyone heed the call to curb carbon emissions and slow the change in climate  We kick and scream the mewli...