Dark and Stormy Night

The old reservoirs were deep
so there is no sleep
and no time to conspire in the temple

So much depends
upon
a shovel in the hand
of a child
glazed with rain
water
culture
and
dragon boats with no life jackets aboard
just buoyant ideas

Keep the line taut and the fuel tank topped off
You shouldn’t wear glasses because they make you
unworthy to your sister’s
eye
and foreign words are discouraged
because the rice doesn’t know them
and won’t grow
at their whispering

It’s our water culture
and his great leap forward
from a ramp built on the skulls of your brothers
lower your eyes so that he sees you don’t weep
For that old reservoir is deep
And no time to sleep
And no time to make plans in the temple

I’m driving down a steep road in San Francisco. The road ahead of me appears to descend precipitously to the edge of the bay. Parking is packed and the road is narrow. I slow to a stop at a stop sign right in front of a dive shop. I’ve got nowhere to go so I look inside. In static stances are mannequins in wet suits and buoyancy control vests. The mannequins are all wearing huge afros atop their fake heads.

Driving forward will only serve to put me in the bay now. I’m at the end of the road. What I need to do is a three point turn, but there are cars on each side of the road and space is very tight. There are so many cars but not a soul to be seen walking around. I look out upon the bay to see several dive flags and bubbles floating to the surface of the darkened water. Throwing it in reverse does not seem an option to me.

Interpretation:

Common anxiety dream brought on by the climax of the electoral primary season.

Action agenda:

Relax. Take up surfing.

Recorded 7:55 am, April 18, 2008

The psychopaths watch as Ferris Bueller hands his son a map of the New York subway system

Ferris says it’s all there kid

There’s a day game Ferris adds

The son looks up at the balding father and asks

What am I supposed to do Dad

You do freedom son, freedom says Ferris

Why couldn’t we do this on a school day the kid says

And then the subway doors slide closed between them
and one of the commuting psychopaths straightens up in his seat
remembering that his workout videos say to always keep his
core tight

It was with great sadness I learned of the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin’s death in a freakish encounter with a sting ray on the Great Barrier Reef. Although I had seen the man less and less over the years, I still recall with fondness scrambling by his side over sand dunes in search of scorpions, poking sticks under rocks to agitate rattlesnakes, and scuba diving in the South China Sea (in his khaki-every-zoologist/safari guide uniform he always wore) to swim with sea turtles. Being the consummate showman he was, he played footsie with the rider of the pale water buffalo-camel-ostrich-whatever, always understanding the value of an ounce of peril mixed with a pint of knowledge.

I fear for men like the Crocodile Hunter and Timothy Treadwell, the Grizzly Man. They make a career telling a cold, unresponsive camera lens to be careful of fangs, and teeth, and claws and spitting venom. Take one . . . let’s do it again . . . take two . . . no, that doesn’t sound right . . . take three . . . okay, with a little editing we’ll clean it up Steve . . . Tim . . . Bucky . . .

That’s right . . . Bucky. Bucky Mularcky, the Shark Wrestler. He’s actually the guy who started it all, the original. He was the man upon whom Peter Benchley based the character of Quint in his famous novel and film about lurking death in the depths, Jaws. He may be more myth than man now. I only heard one story of the Shark Wrestler, told to be by the man who everybody thinks Quint is actually based on.

“Quint’s not me,” he said. “It’s him. Buck Mularcky, a retired jockey with one arthritic knee who made a second career out of taking rich, fat Boston blue bloods out on a good ol’ shark hunt. Instead Buck dived in and wrestled with them. Made those wall street types piss right there on deck with his antics.”

Buck Mularcky bit off more than he could chew on that last charter when two great whites bit him in half like he was a bloody chum ball. He had grown too comfortable with danger, fallen in love with the hero, The Shark Wrestler, he had become in the eyes of those city cats. He was Narcissus, only he had the whole Atlantic gray to look down into and see his beauty smiling back at him with several rows of sharpened teeth.

Okay, Bucky didn’t have a camera. Both the Croc Hunter and the Grizzly Man did. I wonder if they saw their own reflections in the camera lens?

Who’s next for the death of scale-shell-fur-claw? I met a man who raises redworms, Eisenia fetida. He dived into a vat three feet high of worms when I stopped by his warehouse on business I will not discuss here. He had an audience of one. Think if he had a whole nation? I was more than a bit shocked at his behavior, but later I learned that worm husbandry was a second career for him. He had been a competitive skier and had lived in the French Alps the last twenty-five years. It all came together. Hunt McLish is an adrenaline junky that, if I am to call myself human, I must save from his own foolishness.

You see there’s a reason to fear. There’s a purpose to not forgetting the fear. We are here today because our ancestors feared that which could kill them. They didn’t go walking up to bears, wrestling sharks or jumping on top of mature crocodiles. Respect and fear of that which has the potential to kill is a survival trait passed down through thousands of generations. To try to turn off that fear, disregard it, embrace that which can kill and thus turn off the wisdom of the species, the generations, is mortal folly, though yes indeed, damn good entertainment!

My cyber-amigos at Cyber Connections have been kind enough to publish my musings on a game I enjoy and use to both settle international conflict and foster greater global understanding.

Read it . . . Play it . . . Love your fellow man.

Look at this.

This man is dancing with four tanks. I know it’s hard to see in the picture, but if you watch the steps from beginning to end, it is really a dance in which these five are engaged. Amazingly, the dance is reported to have lasted about an hour.

At first this man seems like a mad man. I’m not convinced that he isn’t. He might be thinking he is actually waving down a taxi. I wonder what’s in the plastic bag. Mu Shu Pork? We are told to believe that this man is a hero and he should not be forgotten, though if you asked any kid walking in Shanghai about him they wouldn’t have a clue who he was.

You really need context here. This dance happened the day after students and workers demonstrating in Tiananmen Square were brutally mowed down by country bumpkins armed with AK-47s. The steps appear closest in spirt to a slow waltz.

These tanks are Chinese Type-59s, which are copies of Soviet T-55 tanks. Each one weighs in at around 37 tons. They are equipped with a 100 mm main gun and a 7.62 co-axial machine gun. I generally wouldn’t know this. Google was a real lifesaver in the researching of this.

The sinister irony is that this image would probably be impossible to find in China if you tried to “google” it. Google has essentially allowed its technology to be used against the spirit of the people of China like a Type-59 tank. I suppose this is good commerce.

Oh wow, look at this.

These two handsome men are dancing in the holy city of Mashhad. Masshad is in Iran. I’m not so sure what is holy about the city. They are dancing with vials of enriched uranium in their hands as if they were pieces of Manna in the desert. My guess is that they are doing the tango.

I wonder if the dove is meant to be a symbol for a delivery vehicle for the enriched uranium. The dove will drop vials of enriched uranium upon the heads of evil-doers, infidels and global imperialists. Yeah, I know the dove is the symbol of peace. These dancers are really belaboring the point that this is “good” enriched uranium that will be used to power dish washers, televisions and marital aids.

These colors are brilliant though. These guys make me think of those youth propaganda dance parties during the Chinese cultural revolution when there would be one dancer “the peasant” with a sickle, and one dancer “the worker” with a hammer and they would bring the two together at the climax of the night. Tears would pour down the face of Chairman Mao as he would whisper to his defense minister to order increased production of Type-59 tanks.

Oh God, look at this.

Here are two guys dancing with a snake. It may not look like dancing, as it appears they are just holding the serpent aloft, but they are dancing. I think the sweaty guy on the right is also speaking in tongues. This is definitely an example of the cha-cha-cha.

These are Pentecostals, probably from somewhere in Appalachia. They get off on handling snakes, feeling the spirit, drinking Strychnine and other ways to directly experience the presence of Jesus in their lives. They believe if you get bit, it’s because of some failing on your part.

Only a small minority of Pentecostals actually handle snakes during worship, so I don’t want to paint too wide a swath with my wacky brush. Most do have a very literal interpretation of the Bible, though their interpretation is up to interpretation. Like many Christians, they believe that Jesus is returning to Earth for an encore, a series of cataclysmic events as described in the apocalyptic writings of Revelations.

Ronald Reagan is reported to have believed this. Many believe George W. Bush does also, and he’s decided he’s all about making the wackiness very, very real. I don’t purport to know.

Okay, so if we’re keeping score:

Chinese tanks - bad
Chinese food delivery workers - good
Google - bad
doves - good
doves used as delivery devices for weaponized uranium - bad
tears - good
propoganda - bad
Jesus - good
Jesus summoned by nuclear conflagration - bad
Mu Shu Pork - delicious

The holocaust happened,
but not like how you think it happened.

Yesterday, children becoming memories happened,
but not quite like how you were told it happened.

A plane touching a building in Manhattan happened,
but not quite for the reason you think it happened.

An astronaut stepping on the moon happened,
but not quite in the way everyone remembers it happened.

An invasion of a country happened,
but not quite like the soldiers describe it happened.

Someone breaking bread and drinking wine happened,
but not quite how you were taught it happened.

A writer writing a lie happened,
but not for the purpose you think it happened.

Alas, there you are, my white boy from the black alcazar. You’ve grown more than a few hands taller since I saw you last! Why, you ask, do I measure your height as if you were a horse? To my equal in foolishness, it’s our common language and measure, and once you tried to put a saddle on me!

So now I see you with a furrowed brow and Vulcan’s furnace in your eyes. Your ruddy cheeks betray a trip to the countryside to take in the night aire.

Me? I haven’t told a joke in a long time, though I think you’re about to tell a story. And why do you hold me this peculiar way? There’s a word for this method. Tender I suppose. Our reunion is sweet, but something tastes like loam.

One favor lad - send that lout of a digger away. His tongue knows no certain key.

Inspired by Hamlet, Act V, Scene I by William Shake-A-Spear.

An old man!
Brush jumps in-
Ink blackens tip.

Inspired by Basho and written from the perspective of a frog who just jumped into a pond.

Old pond
a frog jumps in
the sound of water.

Just look through the upside-down owl I asked him.

Bored mother rambled that he was twelve. She touched upon the death of his father on Hill 875 - you know what the guys in the thick of it call ‘Nam.

Look into the light son.

Rods and Cones, Rods and Cones, Rods and Cones . . .

There’s a crowd dancing on that retina but not a cloud in this boy’s sky - I mean eye.

Look at the chart . . . yes, through the owl.

A . . . E . . . O . . .

How about the numbers on the third line down?

1944 . . . 1968 . . . 1976 . . .

So it goes.

Inspired by the character Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.