Shine

Posted on March 9, 2014 by randomyriad

In the backroom, through the trees

Light is falling from the sun

 Down the wind, clowns roll moaning

Manic roosters on the run

Madly Leaping, talons emblazoned

At their shadows, madly Crowing

growing larger in the lateness

soon to be winging on there way 

Can you ever be so sure?

No, my darling I am not the one

Who chases after sparkling droplets

flung out in waves through the darkness

to crash into our lonely stone.

I will not run through the orchard

beaming out my tangled plight

searching for the feathered fools

drowning in the pools of light.

 

  

Posted in capturing light, doodles, Flying and Falling, poetry, Wacky World, Word play | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Personal Event Horizon

Posted on February 18, 2014 by randomyriad

I came here to tell you

that I have no comments prepared

on the new direction my case has taken

 at the present moment.

I stand mute

With my empty dialogue bubble

And stare vacuously into inchoate

mass of unrelenting ambiguous static

That are my thoughts at this time.

I have reached a level of blankness that leaves me

Unable to react or respond to events that are

Even now unfolding in my vicinity.
I am here merely to observe and

Patiently await the next occurrence. 

My eyes are open, my ears hear.

I smell, taste, and feel

Whatever comes into the field of my senses is recorded.

I, however, cannot provide feedback, guidance or  context

For the mess of swirling color, sound,

somatosensory and kinesthetic input

That assaults my being.

 like a black hole, I absorb all stimuli

That stray into the range of my senses, storing

Vast masses of information

reflected into me from an undisclosed location

condensing and pressurizing

all into a density, so compacted,

that it can no longer hold its form

releasing a universe

Of mind into the infinite

vacuum of my life.

Stay tuned for further developments.

Posted in capturing light, mindworks, poetry, the end is the beginning, Wacky World | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

We Are All Strangers, We Are All Learning to Be Human: Short Fiction by Miranda July

Posted on February 17, 2014 by randomyriad

I just finished reading “No one belongs here more than you” by Miranda July. These stories, written in a naïve style much like Richard Brautigan but with Raymond Carver’s perceptive gaze, are about the desperation and exasperation of isolated human beings, as I suspect we all are at one time in our lives. She writes with a vividness and charm that often caught me off guard and made me laugh at things I take so seriously in real life. She does not stretch far for her characters. They are each a little odd but in gently slanted ways. She writes about fairly normal urban life but juxtaposes their slantwise take on the normal approach to the everyday problem of connecting to an often mean-spirited and sterile social environment. The way in which her characters approach and react to the people in their world is at times hilarious and at other times tragic. In each story, there were points where I was intrigued, laughing out loud because of her excellent comic voice and insight, and questioning how I interact with people, and in what ways their inner lives differ from the exterior persona we all put on. Most of us go around the world with such confidence in social structures that are all agreed upon, but nobody really questions why we agree on these values or patterns of normalcy. These stories, at least for me, cut through some of this epidermis to get at the guts, muscle, bone, and nerve of what is really basic to all human experience, the desire and need for connection of some kind with other human beings, the one thing that is so difficult to do in an authentic way, because it makes us vulnerable. These stories show at least a glimpse of what it is like to be a naked, vulnerable human in Miranda July’s mind, and it is really interesting and thought-provoking to see how they get through their days. I hope I am a little more compassionate and humble after having been in that space for a few hours. 

Posted in Check this out, developing relationships, Fiction, funny stuff, internal landscape, mindworks, my museum of inspiration, Other peoples words, Questions and riddles, thinking in words | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Stumbing Over This and Landing On That

Posted on February 2, 2014 by randomyriad

For the last year and who knows how long before I have been floundering around trying to figure out what the heck I will do with the chunk of life, I have left to live here in the wilderness of earth. I have been writing this blog haphazardly for over six years now through all of the ups and downs and in and out of crisis and calm, 6 1/2 years of writing is longer than I did anything consistently besides being married. I have not been very good at keeping a strong commitment to my writing or art lately, what with full-time work and studying to be a physical therapist assistant, as well as pulling myself out of the emotional well of the last year and a half that the separation from my wife threw me into. But, I feel like I am gaining my balance in the sunlight of a new way of living and want to be much more consistent about my blogging. So I hope committing myself to at least one post a week will work. I am sure it will and maybe even two if I am moved and do not have a lab weekend to contend with.

Anyway, I just finished reading Lucille Clifton’s “Blessing the Boats” her book of poems from 2000. I love reading women poets who can express so clearly and viscerally what it is to be a woman, because not being one, I am curious and intrigued. Lucille Clifton is so good at doing this as well as imparting so strongly her experience as an African-American, a human being, a literate person, a member of a family and everything else that is Lucille Clifton. I feel I have lived a little while in the mind of another, and that is what I look for in poetry. The title poem is one that really struck me as one I will use like Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” when sending anyone out to do the work of their life. Here it is. I hope it sends you out into the world bravely with a wind at your back.

Blessing the Boats

(at St. Mary’s)

May the tide

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out

beyond the face of fear.

May you kiss

The wind then turn from it

certain that it will

love your back.  May you

open your eyes to water

water waving forever

and may your innocence

sail through this to that.

Lucille Clifton

Posted in change, discovery and recovery, my life, my museum of inspiration, Other peoples words, personal history, poetry, thinking in words | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Wilderness Inside

Posted on January 2, 2014 by randomyriad

 

the wilderness inside

There is no escaping the wild.

 It is everywhere, in cars

and in airplanes at 40,000 feet.

Inside my head are vines of forgotten jungles

And microbes more ancient than the first people.

 

The wild is in the walls

The decay and generation, germination and death.

no inside or outside, only layers.  

No  life of order,

 only a prison of sterile artifice

built with false dreams of separation

That shatter invisibly with each soft breath.

Posted in Art in Nature, mindworks, poetry, thinking in words, Wild Life | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment