Answer To Your Question

“What do we say to the God of Death?”

“Not today.”

Game of Thrones

A Place Called Home

“Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption 

and the relentless amassing of useless crap. 

Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. 

Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. 

Happiness is home. 

And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. 

It is a state of mind. 

A place of communion and unconditional love. 

It is where, 

when you cross its threshold, 

you finally feel at peace.”

 

~Dennis Lehane

Easter Morning

From their choir loft

In the mud and water outside my open window

Spring Peepers

Without fanfare

Herald the risen life of spring

And I am glad

~ zjm

https://youtu.be/UwVEI5M-948

About Time

I gave the Amazon Series ‘White Dragon’ a look today...

In an early scene, one millennial adult child
speaks to another 
about the crushing disappointment of being someone’s child ...

“Parents are just like us, but older, you know.

Just as screwed up with 20 more years of secrets.

Don’t be so hard on your mom.

You know, she could be a good person and fucked up too.

The most interesting people I know are.”

I am 64, and my parents are rolling

down the hill to 90...
fully encumbered
with imperfect histories 
and increasingly fixed frailties

Just like me

My choice ...

Simply love and embrace them
as the humans I know as mom and dad
~ those who gave me the gift of life

and fuel me still ...

~ zjm

Something

“I believe in my mask-- The man I made up is me

I believe in my dance-- And my destiny” 

~ Sam Shepard

Good Friday

Despite the harbinger of winter death

spring returns

and life goes on

~ zjm

(photo by zjm)

Clarity

“The reason I talk to myself 

is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.” 

~ George Carlin

Rest

I will let go

and rest 

when I am dead

At least I hope so

~ zjm

First Light Thought

If wild goats

stroll over loose rock

with ease and delight

without sliding from the mountain precipice

thinnest veil between life and death

so can I

~ zjm

Remains

Layers of gravity

press me down

near to the ground

leave me with the scent 

and taste of fresh dirt

seal my common fate

with those who have walked before me

drops of sorrow and loss

ascent of wonder and dreams

swirl as unseen mist above me

~ zjm

Thanksgiving Blessing

Snow on the ground

cold

money for food and gas this week

not oil

Space  heaters 

piles of blankets 

layers of clothes suffice

Unknown days from eviction 

from my home of 14 years

playing cat and mouse games with nameless owner 

and their legal protectors

Thinking much these days about my current lot

how I got here … 

my choices

those of others

factors beyond most anyone’s doing

Lot of tail chasing

endless circle

Body wracked with increasing pain and immobility

transient waves of

sadness

anger

hopelessness

fight and resolve 

dissipating into a fog of suffocating weariness 

Solitary like a pine tree left standing after the inferno in Paradise … 

I am still motherfucking here

~ zjm

Stuck

It’s the times in my life

when I stop wandering

that I am most lost

cast as a rigid piece in someone else’s puzzle

blind to all but the minuscule circle around me

fostering notions of security and home

fear of what lies beyond the dome

stuck

fucked

~ zjm

But a Whisper

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow, 

creeps on this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time, 

and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle! 

Life's but a walking shadow, 

a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage 

and is heard no more. 

It is a tale told by an idiot, 

full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

~ Shakespeare, Macbeth

This Little Light is Mine...

“All of our days are numbered; we cannot afford to be idle. 

To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. 

Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, 

a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand 

and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. 

If you can hold on to that flame great things can be constructed around it 

that are massive and powerful and world changing – all held up by the tinniest of ideas.”

~ Nick Cave

Identity

Wild Dog Biting

He was an odd sort of fellow

not all there

if you know what I mean

but neither am I

Wearing an old sailor hat

dirty windbreaker 

aging shoes 

he wandered around 

up and down

muttering to himself

glaring eyes

darting to and fro

He stopped and looked me in the eye...

“I just might be Jesus Christ...

now what the hell would you do if I was?”

I asked him if he was

“I don’t know

but it makes you stop and think

what if I was!”

Indeed

I

so choked with self

stopped up with judgement 

fused with fear

wouldn’t know the Christ

if he were a wild dog biting

me in the ass

~ zjm

In The End...

“Comedians and jazz musicians 

have been more comforting and enlightening to me 

than preachers or politicians or philosophers 

or poets or painters or novelists of my time. 

Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little 

other than our clowning and our jazz.”

~ Kurt Vonnegut 

Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

Fathers Lament

Far beyond my wounds both imagined and real

I remember my dad’s love

Strength

Wisdom

Laughter

Hard edges that summoned anger and fear ...

Expansive arms and sturdy hands

That saw me through the day

Bearded roughness that bid me home

Perhaps, if I am lucky, 

long after they tasted flaws I intended as gift

My children

Too

Will, once again, desire the embrace they knew as dad

~ zjm

Spring 2019

Truth

There are two kinds of truth:

The kind that gets bent and manipulated for someone’s self-interest...

...and the kind you carry inside and know is real.

Chasing the Demon Dog

Hound of the Baskervilles

Sidney Paget

My first sighting and visitation of the demon dog was at age three
at night
in my knotty pine bedroom 
on the second floor of the parsonage 
provided to my preacher man father

And thus began my lifetime dance 
with pursuing apparitions of death

Hounds of heaven and hell
and everywhere between

Once feared, now embraced

Closest companions 

ushering me into new realms of living

~ zjm

‘Wait and Hope’

April Fools Day