An Attempt to Free This American Soul from Materialism
Suddenly I heard myself saying: it’s someone else’s preconceived notion of who a person is based on what they like. It’s a stereotype. And we don’t base Our Lives on other people’s stereotypes.
The neighborhood cat asks, is it friendly? just above my head the hummingbird chirps.
In honor of my home state of Washington legalizing human composting I dug up (hahaha) an old poem where I consider the alternative to burial or cremation, although I didn’t know it was a thing at the time I certainly was intrigued by the idea and the beauty it holds in it.
or https://crosscut.com/2019/05/dust-dirt-human-composting-coming-wa
If an heirloom tomato were
a body part,
might it be a kidney.
Quartered and sliced
aspirating a fine mist
seeds and juice spill
and soak into the cutting board.
A cherry tomato would be an eyeball,
of course.
The only difference between
the old me, listening to Led Zeppelin III
and me listening now,
is that I now have the wisdom to not
try to hit the high notes.
Restraint.
An over-ripened Roma
might be a thyroid gland,
or boiled and peeled it
becomes a swollen lymph node.
Slices become columns,
now juice and seeds are puddling,
columns into squares.
Of course the Beefsteak would be
the typical enlarged American heart.
Maybe when I die I could be composted
by the state, then They could sell me to
gardeners across the region.
My final act of charity.
You are the twisted pine shaped by salty sea winds and held down by swollen knuckles. sitting on the precipice above the waves which belt out ceaseless foamy crescendos spilling into craggly shores. soaked up by the deserts of eyes and you’re only participation is the attention it takes to let growth unfold, line after line, swells and breaks, you increasingly realize your part in the whole is merely to listen.
cently we had an HVAC technician come out to look at our furnace. It has been down for a few years, for various reasons we’ve never been able to have it fixed, or looked at. He was able to get it up and running, but did confirm our fears that it wouldn’t last long and that he had been out replacing others in our complex, it’s just too old, and we would soon need to replace it. He didn’t charge for the service call which was awesome and over the past few days our house has been a little bit warmer. Which led me to write:
During morning piss
heard the most wonderful sound
working furnace -ah!
Walking the narrow sidewalks cobbled for immigrants of the 1930s
under grayscale constantly moving towards the horizon
past houses framed for the laborers in the ’50s
chain link fences put up to keep out the drugs of the ’70s and ’80s
under trees sprouted a hundred years befor
pushing my way through decades of History
with a wall of ideas around my head to keep out the ideals of the dead.
Dozing with light behind closed eyes, lost in yellowing dry summer grasses.
This frost bitten fog
diffuse traffic light halos
crystallized, traffic sighs
The heart beats and with it the whole of our past; all we’ve stressed and all we eat, collecting all of perceptions impressions, thumping like streetside construction, constantly building a soul
He tugs at my heart / strings like spaghetti noodles / needs more than I have.
While you’re walking down paths of progress, between redbrick post- Victorian apartments and new construction framing, under berry laden but otherwise bare branches, through the din of robins and chickadees, finches and sparrows, the ancient cacophony spills out from every direction, you know it intrinsicly and realize it won’t be long forgotten even in the face of modernization.
