Ghost Buffalo

I shall serve both water and neon. . - -- - Doug Anderson

. If there is a special hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works. . - John Dos Passos nunc est bibendum --

Brief Meditation on the Mark of Age The hunger has gone, but the thirst remains.

Samuel, age 7: Are we rich, mawm ? Oh yes, child. Humble home, warm fire. .

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I Know You, Sister I know you, sister. You're the one who runs and runs. And you as well, mountain woman, you speak the tongue; your daughter is the weightless one. White witch, bright queen, I too have held a box of stones and called it gold. Blue dreamer, wife of mist, I've slept your sleep, I've kissed your kiss. Man of blindness, man in the moon. Alas, alas. I am you too. (first published in The Lyric)

Criss cross, the letters pass, the envelopes each carrying an unrequited kiss. The girl in the convertible unhooks her jeans and idles at a four-way light expecting lusty greens. His soda pop is growing warm. He contemplates the time it takes to eat a peach. The coffee shop is rich croissants and hard-backed chairs and air that somersaults as steam before it dares meet lips. Years pass. She pastures her convertible and paints the study green. He takes his tea at noon. A bonnet blows across the road: cross criss, the near miss – one hundred sonnets for a sideways kiss. (first published in Rattapallax)

Mermaid I am no siren on a city street belting out calamity.

Even with teeth clenched, jaws shut tongue entrapped in bone, I find I can talk.

Cheers to our birth mother, Dumb Luck.

Love said, stop your nervous nattering. Love said, stop your twitching, your restive tapping, your blah blah blah. And drop to your knees.

...who be these empresses, atonists, druids and Scythians who insist the legends are in us.

In praise of all things from good weather to scrambled eggs to the Grand Canyon to the latest book one has read, I note that awesome appears to have been replaced by amazing. I suggest ducky for those looking to break from the pack.

Intersection Where tedium and suddenness intersect, take a left. Should the soft hem of a woman’s dress and the river’s heartless sluicing fuse, undress. Where dreams are few, will the ceiling blue. Deeply blessed or bereft, assume the worst where endless talk and wisdom loom. Say nothing cheap of magnitude or youth, that planet strewn with the guided dumb, and the guided dead. Eschew this. Journey true to your gratitudes and private ends. Don't ask directions of me, my friend. . (appearing in the current issue of Smartish Pace)

The word comes from Greek and literally means “to speak fair,” that’s fair as in “beautiful.” So a euphemism has to sound better than the word it replaces. But sometimes you don’t want to make nice. What about when you want to make things seem worse than they are? Then you can’t use a euphemism, instead you have to use a dysphemism. - courtesy Podictionary, the podcast for word lovers http://podictionary.com/index.php

Many birds in the air on Mayfair and so much high emotion and teen spirit and teen sorrow I have been, we have all been, sweetly rained and emotionally slumped in recent days. O tempora, o mores ... Oil spills, vinter vedder, eddie weather, nudists in Fruita... Wutt next ... And so it was the old man shoulders in to the girl-child's room where she isn't letting anyone in for all in her life that's going on and she is weeping through the walls and I have handled it all right and all wrong and we have all run out of words and he shoulders in and tells her that he's got a shoulder, that he's got a shoulder and it's his to give. And so it was the little brother, always the listener of many things, he comes to me and says to me how does he do that, mawm ...she was just crying her eyes out half an hour ago and now she's giggling... how does he do that ... and what could I say but he's a magician, and so are you, child. in hoc signo vinces ... ---- The Writer