If I be true and sail a sea from false,
Til old’s so old it has forgot its self,
And storms have razed the ragged mountains tops,
And rains reforested the Amazon,
Then let memory,
From mind’s mad, muddy river make
An inland sea for my veracity.
When they have said, “As true as north, as south or east or west,
As drop to puddle,
Water to its fall,
As stream to lake,
And river to the great ocean.
Then let them say, to flash flood the heart of falsity —
As true as Randy.
Stop talking please.
Okay, gush a little more if you must — then hush. Going on too long makes the speech so very wrong.
Don’t you know that there is a time, between one set of words and another, when what happens only happens during silence?
Haven’t you, in the whomp and whoosh of wave-washed life, put on diving gear and dropped down into a sea of enforced quiet, sunk down within the deep walls of one of your own psyche’s submarine canyons and seen beautiful, quiet, coraline thoughts growing there?
And then, haven’t you, in wise and decompressive mode, surfaced — nicely aphonic. Remember that, the deep water, deep sea, depthy quiet, the next time you decide to send out a boat load of your verbal ware. Pause, then, and sail, softly on the quiet side of care.
We’ve too much practiced talk and squawk. Prattle, prattle, rock and rattle; tattle, tattle — it’s a custody battle. Hoarse, hoarse, remorse, remorse; of course, of course it’s a screamin’ divorce!
Prolix, bollixed.
Wind bags and wanton tongues yell and deafen the whole world.
Wise rags muff and fluff and heal with salves of quietness.
.
Hello!
Open up, eyes!
Out of bed sacked head!
Blink goodbye to downed night, and Hi-five upped sun.
Look, it’s a new day peeking through your upcurved-curtain lashes.
Turn out of your soft, shining bed to safe sun and bright star-kissed world.
Another night’s scary sorting has been warded off; day’s sane-slit and lash-louvered glow is back.
Up and out in it, how astonishing is the surrounding glory of the day’s sun-circle tour.
The bright squares of it, rectangles, circles, ellipsoids and serpentines of it.
Every wheel, waterway, window, wild and winding walk afire,
Glistening on the edge of our downy cheeks,
Angled through our slotted windows —
Life-making light!
Welcome!
The very brave fear greatly, then they charge!
They run at the very thing that scares them near death.
Unemployed? They screw their courage to a job board. Winless? They ride in the Tour de France clean. Broke? They tighten their money belt and pay their bills.
While cowards cheat; the brave go out and compete — alone if they must, in an open sea, in a storm, lost! When the waves breach the deck and no one comes to help. they lash down the watery hatches, set the slashing sails to full and take the spinning wheel.
They fail, miserably and try again.
And in their inner sanctuaries, those sad and fearful cloistered rooms inside, the brave brook no tart heart. They do not blame someone else, nor go begging for sympathy, nor rot with resentment, regret and rancorous refrain when all seems lost.
We all suffer; the courageous simply weep in a corner more quietly. Cowards and valiants both die many times before their deaths; the valiants simply break out of their graves and flush their sorry corpses out into the open again faster.
And in the end, bravery dies well, giving the final gift with gritted teeth and class. Lamed, the courageous run hard down the stretch toward the final pole vault.
I’m smack down, knock-you-out, beyond-the-heliosphere smitten.
I’m attracted beyond the extreme edge of blacked-out captivation.
I’m flat-out, heels-over-head, shot-into-space-to-the-edge-of-the-sun besotted.
I’ve never seen, anywhere, anytime, in any way such flat-out, alluring, full-on, crazy-pleasing, floor-you-and-snatch-you-back-up again loveliness.
There simply is no other beauty like this. There is no other ultra-extreme elegance beyond the silken edge of the finest elegance to match this.
I just can’t stop gawking!
And when I was kicked in, smashed up, beaten down and washed out — done, gone and finished — this raging beauty grabbed my hand, smiled me up and invited me out.
I can’t get over it; I won’t get over it; and nothing in the future will get me over it.
I’m in love!
With God!
To help or not to help, this is the difficult question.
I don’t know!
I’m sick past sick of the not-knowing!
The internet site said to put the injured turtle in a box, and place it in a dark and quiet place. Keep it warm and safe. That will give it the best chance to calm down from the trauma.
I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do!
The returning warrior goes upstairs to his bedroom. He closes the door. He turns off the light. His wife watches the TV downstairs and tells the children to be quiet. They haven’t yet seen the MRI.
When they do, what safe box will be provided, to recover in?
They are everywhere now, the exploded, concussed, rattled and ruined , sitting quietly in bedrooms, parks, bars, hotels, cafes and parked cars, surprised that it is taking this long.
I didn’t know there were so many!
An unemployed twenty-something sits in her small room, her computer on her lap, open to a resume. She thinks about going out in the afternoon. No, maybe not. She pulls her blanket over her feet. A old floor fan is running in the background.
They are everywhere now, the young, under-employed, single and poor. I talked to her. She came down from Botswana for college. There is nothing for her here in South Africa. She is going home to nothing.
Our world is filled up like a used fifty-gallon water barrel and overflowing onto the dirt with the blasted, blistered, brutalized and abandoned of our society.
Whatever explosion, expulsion, exasperation, exclusion, excoriation or excruciation they have experienced, I think that they at least deserve a warm blanket and a quiet box.
Can’t I make a little box out of an old pallet or something? Save my Starbucks money in a jar, or something? There is reason to act past reason’s persistent request, isn’t there?
The precious ones with mental illness suffer perhaps the most. They stand hunched at the edge of my consciousness, the seat of reason undone, reality gone, common sense fled. They lurch crazy-eyed through the homeless camps, skulking along river’s edge, sleeping downtown between the buildings, sprawled on the lawn of the church, laying on the sidewalk at the entrance to the mall.
Mothers hustle their children away, but these were once themselves children, and in so many ways they are children again, in need of being told to not take off their clothes in public, to take their medicine, to sit down and eat and to go to bed at night.
They all need the traumatized turtle’s care — a little box, a quiet corner, a place to be soothed.
Do not freakin’ tell me that nothing can be done! I am not comfortable with telling myself that. We may not be able to heal brain damage, but we still know how to be kind, don’t we?
Which one of all the drug-addicted, alcohol-obsessed, brain-damaged, war-wounded, emotionally undone, unemployed, under-valued precious ones of the earth don’t still need to be gently touched on the arm, kindly spoken to and perhaps tucked into bed at night.
Will no one ever pat them calm again?
Mother Teresa, where are you?
Someone please help us reinvent kindness.
Aren’t these still our flesh and blood?
“No” has a happy home in every wise brain.
What gifts, what endowments, what freakishly fine talents would have been kept from the world without a no to the cheapskate, the naysayer and the lazy bim, bam and bum within.
What successful child ever grew up without no, and the child who was never told no, never grew up.
What dieters ever thinned down or up without no to the sweet whining, seductive call of cake or cookie or calorie?
Which of the bent, twisted, cracked, crumbled, conflicted minds that ever breathed oxygen avoided the penalty box, the ticket, the firing, the expulsion, the drugs, the alcohol, the jail or the prison except by a few stern self-inflicted no’s.
No is needed, a lot, but not just no.
There is more to life than just no. Look around the edge or over the top of every high, thorned, hedged and conventional no, and you’ll see a lovely, nubile, winged, bright, book-toting yes looking right at you.
Run towards that yes yelling and waving. Yell, “Yes, I can! Yes, I will! Yes, I do!” For it is that very yes that has the power to replace old addictions, discover new habits, heal relational wounds and inspire fresh contributions to all the fine arts and the fine sciences.
For within each and every spoken yes there is restored memory, perspicacious reason and a super-gorgeous winged thing of imagination.
Don’t you know that every pen, poem, piece, pan, paper, piper, pean, pastry, panacea or panel ever pieced together has a joyful-howling pack of yes’s pursuing it?
No may be that mangy dog that must have its dutiful, flea-dipped day, but yes, drop-dead gorgeous yes, will drive the sports car with the top down, write the poem, paint the picture, eat the chocolate cake, kiss the fluffy cat, refinish the wood floor and host the latest, flipped over, hip-pity hop, hop, hop bop.
So feed that! Smack that! Yes, jump on that –everyday! Close your eyes and fold your hands and put your heels together and yes your own fresh yes five times a day. Eat it up and go back for seconds and then have a dollop of yes on top of your best yes, for dessert.
The yes within the yes of your own, sweet, self-affirming yes is your best inner guest.
No is fine in its time, but wise souls always fly the furious flag of yes just before charging right over the top of a no longer helpful no.
What hellish hurt hatches here.
Is that friend’s grin a fanged smile?
Is that saint, the poison landlord of the messy web?
Is that coworker a co-conspirator?
It is the most common thing on earth to pretend to be good when we aren’t.
There is a kind of crack that can open up between friends that leaks a treacherous toxicity into the sanctuaries of their souls.
And oozing through the self it trickles into the brain, drips through the jaw, sets the teeth on edge and poisons the tongue.
The henchmen are recruited, the meeting set up, and then follows the under-the-coat thrust, the old behind-the-back stab, the paper grave.
And so the world is again reminded, that deep within the soft coils of friendship may yet slither a fanged treachery, hissing in the soul, undulating through the mind and boring an oily and venomous tunnel into the heart.
To turn on the ones we once loved,
It’s a choice we each make, or not.
Frighteningly high mountain cliffs, from a distance,
And in evening light, may appear as a smooth, soft and safe wonder to us.
And a life with missteps, and drops and falls into this or that plunging cravass,
May later, near the end, appear a softer and more beautiful thing.
How we chose to remember what was sharp or hard or full of harm will make it what it was to us.
With but a little more distance we might yet remember,
That at our psyche’s shocking birth we were astonished,
In puberty thrilled.
In our middle years we were astounded.
In old aged sat amazed.
And in the end, dreamily drifting down death’s deep drop, if we so choose,
We may find that we are knocked over and ploughed under with wonder.
Modern Soliloquies & Pastiches 