Peeve

Today's peeve is brought to you by the letter "Y".

As in, "Y-Y-Y do they do this!"

Executives who skim their emails. When you take the time and care to address all possible questions in your reply, only to get a reflexive email shot back at you asking about something already covered in your message.

Nothing says "I didn't bother to read it" like one of those off-the-cuff, frantic replies to your own, well-composed email.

I gotta get out of the office more...

May This Time

The sun repeats its course. Exactly ten or eleven years to the day, more like than not, this shade of orange gold wrapped around the building fronts and shadowing underpasses. The grass was this high, crazy high, ecstatic wild but not crawling, not yet. It’s still too cool.

The sun repeats its course. Autumn and spring feel like the same thing if you all-of-a-sudden wake up in the middle of one, like regaining consciousness in the in-between light. Dawn? Dusk? Does your body feel when it comes out of the west?

The sun repeats its course. Exactly ten or eleven or so years ago, more than likely, this particular wavelength of sunset radiated off the deep dark windows in the closed-up stores, the shells of factories. And people were driving around, paying much too little for gas.

The sun repeats its course, exactly enough to turn the crescent-handled deadbolted doors on memories stored eleven to twelve distant years ago. The same dim spot in the lee of Bamber’s Superette. But now there are gilded weeds straining in that abandoned parking lot. You know it maybe, the chain-fenced one across from Raco?

The sun repeats its course. Maybe not to the micron, but to the aging eyes. Close enough for me to weave a random weedy vine through my back fence, in the dim of the lee of Alvin’s garage. The bare fields like bald spots edged in wild green hair, the highest plants catching light like eleven and twelve and thirteen years before.

This shade of orange gold… I know it so well. I want to disappear into it, with it. There are so many green strawberries, so many more white blossoms, on my in-laws planted rows. We both want the same thing: summer.

The sun repeats its course. I repeat an oath under my breath as I walk down the office hallway, in the last hour of my day. This was earlier. I find that if I say the first line, I am compelled to say the rest. Something like Franny and her automatic prayer. It’s the oath of someone who is trying to be good. I repeat it. The sun grows lower,

and cottonwood fluff hits the Saint Joseph River, until its like caramel and dust.

Accidental Birth

She said, "All I did
was exhale into a picture frame.
I fogged the glass
and someone slapped a back on it,
wired it for hanging.
And all it really is
was a sigh of surrender
and they caught it like you might catch
a spider's web,
with a can of spray paint
and some construction paper."

The Claws Insist

They try to sell me disappointment
this ragged legion of ochlocrats
but I have hidden my purse from the herds’ hands
and pay out love to the worthy cats

I think they hunted the Florida panthers
and culled their numbers in greed and spite
until the mythical skunk apes packed up
leaving behind them only the night

For certain sometimes I speak to be listening
painting ribbons on the timeworn stage
a sudden truth like a bursting spotlight
illuminating an empty cage

There is a loudmouthed cat here
who grooms himself with a shiv and tongue
where beats the heart like a Spanish guitar
collecting quarters in the sun

There is a rhythmic séance
inducing tremors by loops divine
felicitous and so frightful lovely
it carries weapons of a gentler kind

Pfilip of Everywhere Conquers The Moon - Part I.

Pfilip was not an old wizard by any stretch of the imagination. An old wizard would have, for instance, a flowing white beard and knobby-knuckled hands tipped with fingernails that had reached geologic proportions. However, Pfilip was not young. There were lines around his eyes and a shadow of grimness about his mouth. A better explanation might be to say that Pfilip had the sort of face one could observe and, without too much effort, visualize what it would look like in another twenty years, yelling at children to stay off the lawn. His wispy brown hair was showing a few streaks of gray already, mostly hidden beneath a gaudy, misshapen hat that resembled a chef’s toque, except the hatter had given it a warped brim and topped the whole mess off with a sort of squashed mushroom cap, the edge of which was festooned with many small charms. Overall the shape of it suggested a spool of thread plunked down atop the wizard's head; and the top of the hat had been collecting fallen seedpods and burrs all day long. There is little point in asking what color it was—the hatter, apparently, could not make up his mind.

Crouched beside Pfilip was a boy of perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age, with (as they say) a clear brow and eyes aflame. He had blue eyes, blue as a robin’s egg, and silvery hair that fell to his cheekbones. A fierceness played about his features, and his smile showed a lot of teeth, but then he reached up to pull his hair away from his eyes, and in this movement there was undeniable gentleness. He pulled a small, steel knife from its scabbard and flipped it around his fingers, fidgeting.

“Who were my real parents?” the boy asked idly. He and his mentor were hidden in the undergrowth, watching smoke rise from the chimney of a secluded cabin.

“I told you,” Pfilip whispered, never taking his eyes from the smoke, “you were an Elven prince who was stolen from his kingdom by a beautiful wizardress and given to me for safekeeping.”

A moment of silence followed, in which the intermittent sounds of the forest testified to the sublime serenity all around them.

“Why won’t you ever give me a real answer?” Baffin sighed, though he made sure to keep his voice low. It should be noted that the cabin in the clearing was, proportionately, like unto a castle. Whoever dwelt there was large enough to turn a doorknob five feet in diameter, and thirty-six feet off the ground. The serene smoke rising from the chimney was a bonfire’s plume.

Pfilip turned toward the younger man, though his eyes still watched the smoke. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, then shook his head. “Alright. You don’t have parents. A stork dropped you in a cabbage patch. Can we focus on the task at hand, please? You might have to actively avoid dying at any given time.”

“Lessons for life,” Baffin muttered, and re-sheathed the knife. He shifted on his haunches, stretched a bit, prepared for a run.

“Now, you do remember what to look for, yes?”

“It will be tiny, smaller than my hand,” Baffin replied, speaking from rote memory. “Probably hidden among the gemstones of the hearth, pressed into the wood there. A small… orange… glass… moon.”

“With a drowsy smile and heavy-lidded eyes,” corrected Pfilip. He flexed his fingers as though preparing to snatch the object out of the thin air in front of him.

Baffin looked at his mentor with incredulity. “Really, how many different glass moons do you think she’s going to have in there?”

“If it were me trying to hide the thing? Hundreds. Literally, hundreds.”

“Great. I can see you’re going to be trucks of fun once this is done. It’s really that valuable?”

Pfilip reached out and tousled the boy’s hair, simply because he realized he was older, and believed he could do that sort of thing now. It was probably the first time in his entire life that he had ever tousled anybody’s hair. It was a fraternal sort of action. And he was somewhat amused when the boy knocked his hand away and slugged him not-too-gently in the arm.

“Baffin, if we get the moon back, you won’t believe the places we’ll go."

* * *

They watched the cabin in silence awhile longer, until suddenly a puff of sparks blew from the chimney, and the smoke died down.

“That’s it,” Pfilip whispered, “she’s finished cooking her spell. Now she’ll leave the cabin and head toward the standing stones. If she isn’t around the corner and out of earshot by the time the door latches, we wait until tomorrow and either try again or seek another plan.”

“I wish we didn’t have to speak the chant aloud,” mused Baffin. His mentor smiled.

“Well, you have to—that’s why it’s called a chant. From the Latin canere, ‘to sing’.”

“You and your Latin…”

Pfilip’s smile broadened, not at the boy, but at the prospect of finally laying claim (again) to the elusive artifact hidden within the witch’s abode. “Someday we’ll visit that facet of the Gem, and I’ll get you a book on it. Watch, now. The door opens…”

[To be continued...]

The William Tell Overture vs. The 1812 Overture

Not. The same. Thing.

I must apologize for accidentally spreading misinformation about this fact. Rachel, for the record, the 1812 Overture is what they play during the fireworks.

The William Tell Overture is what the Lone Ranger rides around listening to.

Yeesh... but then, nobody else caught it either. You can thank my wife for this sudden tidbit of enlightenment & clarification.

Happy Saturday, all.

Crosshair

Chamber a word—
thumb “confluence” into line
and before it, “our mortal”
the hammer shot forward
with the force of “My lips require. . .”

Then stand there
blindfold slipping from one eye,
and be my William Tell overture.

As spent syllables
fall and roll
a golden bullet caught in your teeth.

That is how you do it.
That is how to take me down.