Virginia Woolf

Haunted by blank reflections, she stepped into the netherworld of empty bliss, sinking slowly from the weight of the rocks she fetched from the river’s edge, having filled her pockets with their heft. She entered the wash of her salvation, her single purpose murky with the green filter of life conducting its ebb and flow. Her eyes wide and wondrous called to a welcoming place, her final place.

 

Changing Dimensions

Time to run away?

Where to go and what to say

Ticking gets louder.

A ravaging discontent descended or perhaps ascended or better just landed. It felt heavy, weighty across the shoulders, although not to be measured in pounds. Still, it had heft and I staggered under its embrace. A clashing of me’s ensued. The logical, rational, reasonable me versus the dreamer, the schemer, the romantic. I now realize the battle has been waged for years, not a war, more regular skirmishes with no accord in sight. Enough! Battleground chatter matters not. What does matter is the “same” morphs into new iterations of the “same” and that’s insane. Perhaps change for the sake of change is a good thing, the only thing. Who said that was a bad thing in the first place? Some intransigent malcontent trying to pretend to be content? My mother loves to tell the same jokes all the time, given her limited repertoire, perhaps she hopes that I can’t remember the punch line. A favorite is, “What’s the difference between a rut and a grave?” She takes great delight in delivering the answer, “the dimensions”. It’s true, the dimensions make an impact but change, perhaps changing dimensions makes a bigger impact. I feel crowded, the rooms are closing in on me, the dimensions are painting me into a corner. I need a big sky, an open field, a giant breath of fresh air. Big dimensions, big change.

                                                                                                                                                            

Brave New World - A Rap by DJ TazzieDog

My acrid invective, selective

Directed to a world gone mad

Sadly teetering on the brink

Of what? Destruction? The stink of corruption?

It might come down

To those capitalized clowns

 Making the rounds with the

Takers, the breakers, the policy makers

Doing the bidding, taking the hitting

Fitting the world in

Maniacal games of

Fame, fortune, greedy contortion

Cesspooling their retooling

Fooling with our resources

Our recourse is

An evolution of

Trickle down solutions

Call it revolution

When the shit hits the fan

And the cowards all stand

On their island alone

With their glam and their gab

On their now sinking slab

We will sup with the fish

We will breathe in the pitch

Of the pine and

Rewind the plunder

That brought us asunder

We will look to the stars

That shine down on our hood

We will learn to be good.

DETACHED

     

A treasure trove of idiosyncratic humanity. A struggle of oddities, carefully curated, fumbling to fit into a landscape…Alone together, a cold comfort of disconnected souls, detached wires, wireless but longing for a signal, just a crackle of recognition.  “Your usual”? asked the barista, who once tried to escape in pursuit of a grander scheme, but then returned to the familiar. Competence centered on steam and froth and recognition of the passing throng: their preferences, their dislikes, their way of controlling their tiny worlds. She stood in line, losing the line. That’s what her coffee shop actor/director acquaintance called it, “losing the line.” Something about getting lost in a different reality, or maybe just about getting lost in general. The way she felt most of the time. The way her life took on a blur. A shadow within a shadow. True self became a series of meaningless poses, demanded by the hour, the minute, the transitive verb, the object of her affection. Still, the auburn hair, still auburn. At least there was that. Other things too, grounded her.  A phrase, the swill of coffee, a glance of, what, sympathy? Wait! Was it sympathetic? A slit of blue from a quick side-long, five bodies ahead, next in the order queue. As if he knew all the crazy shit rolling around her carousel noggin. Well, she’d never know and that was just great because the last thing she needed at this moment was a real human interaction that required real thinking or, at the very least, empty-headed diatribe, which, although skilled in thoughtless conversation, meaning less-thought, still, she wasn’t in the mood and preferred, at this moment, the stream of consciousness meanderings that took her away from the line and rows of unnecessary coffee-related products.

         “Here, I thought you might like this,” he said while handing her a white cup with mocha-hued froth peering out the top. Stymied, she accepted the, was it gift or gesture? Before she could gather up a “thank you”, he was gone. Blue eyes, blue jeans, dark hair, gone. She left the line and went to the window to look for him in the parking lot. Gone. The cup getting warmer in her hands.

HAPPINESS

As an aside, if you look at the word "happiness" long enough it starts looking suspiciously wrong-headed and you may wonder if it is misspelled, just as I wonder if "misspelled" is misspelled. It looks a little weird, as well. Who in the world thought it might be a good idea to take the word "happy", an adjective and turn it into a noun by eliminating the "y" which, by the way, gives the word itself a rather jaunty appearance, and replacing it with an "i" followed by "ness". Curiouser and curiouser. Yet another word that is looking rather, shall I say, curious.

HAPPINESS

I am not happy

Only part of the time

The other part

Is less than happy, yet

More than not

Happy, that is

Not, not happy

Yet, not, happy.

 Flip book smiles

Smirks, herky jerks

Strobe

Off and on

Off and on

And I, with my

Half-empty glass

Reflect on something

Or nothing,

Which must be

 Something,

It’s all perception

A squint, a sizing up

A startled look into

Half-happy eyes