thinking of you over coffee

XVII (I do not love you...)


I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I do not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

remembering stonewall

today marks the 40th anniversary of the stonewall riots of greenwich village, june 28, 1969. this kicked off the gay civil rights movement at a time when homosexual sex was illegal in all states, save one. in seven states it was punishable by castration. we have come a long way since the dark days of police raids on gay bars but we still have much work to do. we cannot become complacent. the defense of marriage act must go, along with the military discrimination of gays. we must all act up and demand equal rights from the president on down! we must never forget where we have come from and those brave men and women that helped to drive our cause forward. so get out there and show some fucking pride people.

a little poetry

We Did Not Make Ourselves
by Michael Dickman


We did not make ourselves is one thing

I keep singing into my hands

while falling

asleep



for just a second



before I have to get up and turn on all the lights in the house, one after the

other, like opening an Advent calendar



My brain opening

the chemical miracles in my brain

switching on



I can hear



dogs barking

some trees

last stars



You think you’ll be missed

it won’t last long

I promise





I’m not dead but I am

standing very still

in the back yard

staring up at the maple

thirty years ago

a tiny kid waiting on the ground

alone in heaven

in the world

in white sneakers



I’m having a good time humming along to everything I can still remember

back there



How we’re born



Made to look up at everything we didn’t make



We didn’t

make grass, mosquitoes

or breast cancer



We didn’t make yellow jackets



or sunlight



either





I didn’t make my brain

but I’m helping

to finish it



Carefully stacking up everything I made next to everything I ruined in broad

daylight in bright

brainlight



This morning I killed a fly

and didn’t lie down

next to the body

like we’re supposed to



We’re supposed to



Soon I’m going to wake up



Dogs

Trees

Stars



There is only this world and this world



What a relief

created



over and over

my friend turned me on to the michael dickman's poetry and i am in love. this poem is beautifully nostalgic and wonderfully melancholy. it makes me cry. this evokes the feeling of childhood for me and the sense of enormous potential, waiting to be fulfilled. i do not think that we frail humans can ever live up to that wonder of what the world holds and all that we might one day become. it is that loss that i am mourning.

waiting for godot

i wonder when sitting beneath the tree in my backyard, attempting to remove my boot,and ruminating on suicide while waiting for godot(in this case the cable guy, dish network technician, ups, or any of the hundred other people that force you to be home bound between the hours of 8 and 5), who exactly it is that gets their appointment over with first thing in the morning so that they might be free to frolic? i have cleaned and re-cleaned my house while waiting and made forays into the miniature world of matchstick art. i built a french quarter out of matchsticks and fully intended to show it at my next art show but alas, it burned. it seems that new orleans, even a tiny version of itself is still prone to great conflagrations. we, the mites of this mighty metropolis are scurrying about in our own theater of the absurd.
and i got all that without even checking the morning paper, which i am sure will only reinforce my belief that the universe makes no sense. it is like the anonymous crack line in new orleans, that when you call, a recording tells you to leave your name and number and someone will call you back. alrighty then!

104 degrees

it was 104 degrees in the city of new orleans yesterday. that is not just breaking the records, that is bloody well shattering them and it is not even august yet. i am scared of august.
my air conditioner, which is a portable r2d2 unit, responsible for cooling the front two rooms of my house cannot combat this kind of extreme heat. consequently, i am sitting in cc's coffee shop in the quarter, trying to keep cool. it also helps me rehydrate since the water i consume at my house cannot quite keep up with the water that i sweat out.
i bought a pair of seersucker shorts yesterday and am currently wearing them. it pays to be fashionably attired in the wilting summer months. these are red striped and i am so enamored of them that i do believe i will be going back to purchase the more traditional blue ones.
i realize that my blogs have less and less to do with politics and more and more to do with the heat induced madness of personal ramblings. it is too hot to be political. politics gets me angry and that in turn gets me hot under the collar and damn but i am already hot under the collar. so i think for now at least, that i will sit here, sipping ice tea and chatting about the weather.

switching from cox cable

i am trapped here in my house waiting for the dish network technician to come and hook up my new services. he is expected sometime between 8 this morning and noon. i called around to shop for the best price and certainly hope that i made the right decision. dish network gives more for less. so we shall see. in the mean time i am bored. i should be cleaning the house but without the joys of central air condition, much of my house remains hellishly hot. the air condition in the living room is barely keeping these two rooms cool as we approach record breaking temperatures again today. so i am not cleaning but playing on the computer instead. i am forced to recognize that summer is not my super productive season. really, i just feel like sleeping.
i have a tour tonight. the taxi cab folks have been out in force checking our licenses and making sure all is on the up and up. i have been stopped three times now. i know of two tour guides that got their licenses yanked. as a result, i will be pulling in another shift come friday night, at least until he gets his license back. this works out wonderfully well for me as i always get a bit nervous come summer, when tourism drops off a bit. still, i am very optimistic about our dreaded season this year. the hotels are looking good and i think we can stay fairly busy right up until the heat breaks.
i have another appointment lined up for tomorrow at noon to interview a guy about his katrina tattoo. the more people we get, the more excited about the project i become. i think we might actually be able to pull off not only the book but also a documentary as well. so if you or someone you know has a katrina tattoo and a story, please have them contact me at faolnua@gmail.com
alright, it is time for some ice cold water.

hot

it is hot. it is sticky august hot. pasty little doughy tourists from canada and other gentler climes are passing out on my tours. the rest of obese america can be seen oozing down the steamy sidewalks of the french quarter, carrying big gulps and huge ass beers. their money aside, my tolerance for them goes down as the temperature goes up. they melt and stick to everything, sizzling like bacon in the sun.

the other day i was in the cemetery where it is at least 30 degrees hotter than the rest of the city and i swear, i think the soles of my shoes were melting. i could feel myself puddling up and i slipped into daydreams of beautiful bags of water dripping into my veins from an i.v. then the head ache set in and i rushed to finish the tour.

today, against what would have been the best medical advice had i actually sought medical advice, i ventured into the jungle of banana trees threatening to take over my side hall porch. i was armed with a machete. they were armed with root systems that plunge downward until they hit bedrock, which in new orleans is a feat in and of itself. i sweated. i hacked. i drank water. i slashed. banana trees fell. i grew dizzy. i drank water. a little before noon, i called for reinforcements via the axe and shovel. the banana trees solicited the aid of the sun which moved into an overhead position, getting me squarely in its sights. i fought gallantly but the banana trees won. now i am sitting in front of the fan, blood red, feeling every beat of my heart and thinking there is no hangover like the one the sun and heat can give you. my eyes are glowing and i no longer think it is possible to drink enough water to hydrate myself. i must recover soon, i have a tour tonight.

i am praying for rain. sweet rain, like a cool compress on feverish skin. rain and air conditioning and maybe an ice cold beer if i can ever get hydrated. see you in the inferno.

as smart as mold

in japan at the hokkaido university, scientists have discovered that a particular type of mold(that has no nervous system) is actually capable of negotiating its way through a maze in order to reach food located at the end. this begs the question of why our mayor, city council, and chief of police can't be at least as bright as mold? it really is worth pondering.

something to make you laugh.

a university creative writing class was once asked to write a succinct essay incorporating the following things: 1)religion 2) royalty 3) sex 4) mystery.
the winning essay read:
"My god," said the queen, "I'm pregnant. I wonder who did it?"
beautiful!

6 things to get off my chest

1.)why would SUNO appoint gill pratt to sit on their cabinet of advisers when she has been indicted on federal racketeering charges? really? i don't know why it amazes me that this type of thing goes on here but it still does.

2.) i am a pacifist by nature but peace loving nature has a limit. i am over north korea's saber rattling. let's just go in and blast their fucking nuclear plants and missiles to hell. look, there's a missile waiting on the launch pad...bombs away! no more missile. problem solved. next.

3.) the first day of storm season is upon us and still we do not have the proper funding to restore our disappearing coast line, which is our best defense against storms. hey, obama! you made some promises to the gulf states devastated by katrina and it is time that those promises were fulfilled. remember? yes we can but not without money!

4.) can we please stop giving labruzzo air time? he is a fucking nazi in disguise as a good upstanding christian fucking family man, who needs to get his ass kicked out of office. news flash: being poor is not a crime so let's not treat the poor as criminals by forcing drug tests on them.

5.) the plan to raise the minimum academic standards for athletes was defeated in the house. wow! the proposed bill would have raised the gpa from 1.5 to 2.0 in order to be eligible to play sports. really? they defeated that? we honestly do not expect more of our children than a 1.5 grade point average? my god! no wonder we are graduating functionally illiterate children. our priorities are screwed.

6.)california, you have let the country down with your failure to provide gays with the right to marry. since when do we allow the desires of the many to rump the civil liberties of the few? oh, wait, i was being an idealist again. it is a sad turn of events when the california supreme court upheld proposition 8, thus denying tax paying american citizens of their right to marriage. then again, i guess i really don't expect much from a state that elected arnold as governor.

i'm going to bed now.