Magic Silver Pop-Flash Lightning Storm Show

The post below is a recap of an actual evening's close, not just fantasy fiction - it's about real times spent in my driveway watching the weather.

The ranchito outside of Krum, Tx that is the scene of this evening is up for sale.
I fear I shall see few evenings like this from my driveway in town anytime soon.

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In my driveway, I stand under the traces of rain passed on. I feel wind rush from a high pressure front just rolled by, fading out. Thunderstorms recede miles, miles and more miles away on the prairie horizon.

They race to their next appointment for a hail drop. Quite an ambitious schedule they keep.

Spirits of Chaos revel up in the heavens and silent xeon lamps pop their flash. Might be cannon thunder of the gods but it's to far away to hear, barely felt. Too far away to hear? Yeah but easy to see by an unaided eye.

At night when driving home I've got to turn off the AC. Roll down the windows, and smell that fresh scrubbed air.

Lucky for me, I checked out a Maria Callas CD from the library. Popped that sucker in the CD slot as the silver sliver light show fires up the sky. Laughing, growling and barking I was like a coyote dog, as I drove north along I35.

I get paused at the railroad tracks, by this night train pulling freight, in the crossing way. I breath slow and easy, turn off all but the running lights. And wait for the train to finish rooooolllllling by. Gonna wait a while for a night train blocking the entrance to downtwon cosmopolitan Krum, Tx.

So then I watch the sky show but through trees by the roadside, trees yet to sprout leaves. Rosebuds and azaleas - they are in bloom but strange, these trees appear to have no leaves yet.

Rock-bam-boom, clacka-clacka-doom, train keeps going on, on, on.

As Maria Callas sings sumthin in eye-taliyun about some dying lover's broken heart. I see the show through fingers of tree trunks, smell the blooms, hear... nothing but CD and train. And the sky just rocks with silent ka-BAM on each explosion of finger light.

But they are .... Sssshhhhh - silent explosions. Voiceless ropes of cold silver dropped from sky to ground, jumped from ground to sky.

All I hear is the train at the crossing, and Maria Callas. Doing that classical wail, which is akin to a soul sister wail, just different. An earlier form of soul music, is whut them opery arias is. Nice stuff, opry - whut some folks call an acquired taste.

When not so very far away, sometimes the thunder you know is there by its lightning is just the softest of murmurs. Murmurs like a contented lover lying beside you. Sleeping away the night in a lazy semisnore, semislumber, semiwakeful way.

I hope that lover, she's dreaming down a concoction of storm drama. But safely in her sleepy head, and out the way of our waking lives. Get it all over there and then, darlin' -- all that stuff what German poets called "Sturm Und Drang". Keep that in your dreams and out of our walking, wakened lives.

Maybe that's what's going on up there. In the world of silent faraway storms. Somebody's lover (or everybody's) draining off all the day's disappointments. Sweetening their wakeup on next day of life, by dreaming the sour drama out, at night. Up there. Out of the way.

Silently, or just softly as a murmur. So as to wake up with more of those blues gone, gone gone. Gone into the inky black blue of the night, where them blues belong. Sometime around the 1:30's or the 2:30am's of the night. All done by the Oh Dark Thirty point of time before sunrise.

You'll wake up safer, saner, more ready to just do the day w/o sour drama hurled all over other folk if you dream it out up there. Sonambulent, that's the word for which I've been fumbling around for. Means a sleepwalker, or the likes thereof. Them's that don't dream it off, they's the sleep walking sonambulent types. The ones you avoid at the office water cooler next work day. 'Cause all they want to do is bitch and moan about stuff still stuck in their guts.

Maybe they don't have no one to lie down next to at night. Nobody to pat them on the rear real soft in the night, stroke their hair. Murmur in their ear, say that it's gonna be allright. Whisper to them to sleep it off, do all that drama in their dream times.

You can take it to the limit out there, up into the night storm sky. Let the ink-night write lines of blues way past your ledger pages' edges. Balance your books with chits from the land of who-cares-where, but do the math away from the two of us joined together, please.

Ain't got no witness to their lives, the water cooler people all soured up like that, the unwitnessed. They wake up sour and loaded for bear. Sleep walk through the day, as a thunderstorm that wants to be heard, up close and nasty real.

Rock-bam-boom, clacka-clacka-doom, the water cooler train wreck yet unhappened people keeps going on, on, on with their... "unresolved issues".

At the office, I'm gonna do me a double radar take on my next approach to the water cooler. Though I do feel sorry for such who sleep walk so sour during the daylight. Them what ain't got no night-witness to watch over them as they send it up to be swept away with the next passing storm.

Heck, I'm among 'em, the unwitnessed, I sleep alone now. Did so even beside that gal I married, towards the end of it at least before that train done wrecked all messy and expensivo-mente boy howdy. But now I take care of mine angst or sturm und drang or whatever in my driveway, and during that drive home to my little ranchito. I laugh, I bark like a coyote, I shout out the window at the silent murmuring thunder show. Thank gawd for rough prairie weather.

With the windows rolled down, I take in the ozone long before I wake up and smell the coffee the next day. I get it out of my gut, mind, feelings, right then and there. I wake up no more that half a bubble off level. Which is.... socially functional and thus acceptable and economically reinforced. It's a social duty for us to do this before we go out to meet the world. To get levelled up and all. At least enough to pass morning inspection at the water cooler.

I can hardly wait for the next storm front to blow through. I'll check the library for some of them other opera CDs, maybe something German. I will expand this new acquired taste of mine for arias. Get me some spicey batch of that German "Sturm Und Drang" stuff I heard of. I want to hear that kind of color, as my soundtrack to the next silent thunder-show. If it ain't too burdensome like that German opry with the fat lady holding a spear and wearing a pointy, two-horned helmet.

But if I must wait for that next thunder show to come, then wait I will.
But I won't wait to live while waiting.
That just won't do, nor will I.

How To Remain A Goddess In Good Standing

Can Hera remain a goddess in the eyes of her husband Zeus after he catches her clipping her toe nails?

Go Down Knowing On A Chi Town Night

Asked I am why I ask so many questions about why.
I ask because a gap is how it is between you and I.
Between you and yourself, him and her, us and them.
And no one is asking the whys about wheres we've been.

It's what we know, and all we pretend not to know.
Because life is, thank God, still like it is in Chicago.
A town where everbody knows everything; and nobody knows nothing.
That's what cops hear in Chi-town, when they go sniffing around.

In Chicago everybody knows everything, and nobody knows nothing.
We know it all. We know it not, that's our story should we get caught.
And we' sticking by that to the bitter end. That's all folks, enemies and friends.

Who knows the deal on how it went, between you and me. Do I know?
Who knows how it went down between you and the mirror. Don't you know?
Who knows how it went between him and her, us and them. Do we?
All we know is the gaps separating the sides. Don't we, though.

Like it is in Chicago, on the north side and the south, suburb and city,
Indifference and pity, dark and the light, black and white, the living
and the closed mouth. Poor pretending rich, the high class go slumming,
Everybody knows ever thaing; and nobody knows nothin.

Know a popular tune? Whistle it when you walk past Graceland Cemetery
On Chicago's northside, not so far from the night life in Uptown.
Sing it to those lying in wait, their ears are cupped to the ground
Listening for songs the tongue-less want to but can't sing merry.

Gracelanders at rest lying where now they know so much,
No longer at last so troubled by all that they cannot touch.
While everybody around knows it all, knows ever damn thing;
Ain't nobody knows nothing about the coming night's sting.

Go down knowing on a Chi-Town night - step aside shadows,
Jump from pool to pool of flickered street lamp light.
What you do not know, what you do and deny as foresight
Waits for you, waits - makes you want to take flight.

Almost A Ghost But Not If I Can Help It

For a while I thought I was a ghost after I heard Lyle Lovett and His Large Band. But then after I gave it some thought, I know that I really ain't no ghost. Or ain't like any of the usual ghosts you ever knowed.

All this thinking happened while I was listening to one of Lyle Lovett's CDs - of him and his Large Band. In that CD's songs I heard crisp, bluesy riffs reach out of my truck speakers and slap me right upside the head. Early before dawn this morning, en route from the house to work, I had Lyle on the CD and on the brain. And the heart.

It came from his guitars, guitars tightly strung and precisely struck. Oh there were some horns and such, but mainly it was Lyle and his guitar. Singing and ringing together they were a twisted thread on a needle, a metallic strand-sound that sewed my mouth shut as it opened other things. It was a sound that only God-favored flesh tipped fingers can play. I've tried to learn how to play guitar like that, like Lyle and his bandmates. I can't. Maybe I ought say not yet instead of can't. It's been four decades of trying, so I can't easily just say someday soon. Oh I can pick one up, strum it a bit, rattle the strings - but not open anybody up with what comes out.

But that's against what I can imagine in my head, the exactly-so if what I want heard coming off my fingertips. Sometimes I can feel it, too - how I'd feel if I, I had God-favored flesh on my fingertips. Have you ever felt like that before? Have you felt like that many times? Like you knew what you want to hear out of your mouth when singing. Like when you need, not just want to, you need to wail like Aretha Franklin; but that's not what comes out.

Like knowing what you'd like to see come out from under the sweep of your hand. If old China is your locale, it would be an inked brush in your hand, flying across rice paper. If colonial America is where you stood, it would be a pinched quill pen scritch scratching across parchment underneath your hand. Either a brush or a pen, but under your eyes, under your hand, a beautiful thing would come to be. A poem or a love letter or a Bill or Rights or a portrait of someone, but something you loved would take shape.

And the fruit of those talent blessed fingertips, it would be alive with feeling. It would pour out like sticky honey. Sweetness licked by another's hungry tongue. Breath blown over hair above another's soft warm ears. It would flow, it would softly blow, like a whisper it would go.Surely the message would go down in after over someone's fleshy ear lobe. Go down into the bones of their affections, and grasp their senses by the roots.

And then you'd know it - know not just that they but you too, were alive. That you had lived and you had loved and that's how you'd know it. You'd know it by the warmth of the other person's reaction, know it by their in-kind responsive heat. Know it by their nighness, of their drawing nearer to you. By your audience you would know - lover or even enemy, by their reaction you'd know you weren't no ghost.

Know this you would by the slight curl of a lip. Or a smile so rightly accented by some crinkle-wrinkles around the eyes. That's the trick to reading truth in faces, did you know that? Which is reading those little squints around the eyes.When the smile is sincere, they will be there. When it ain't, you still may have 'em in your grip but in a different way - better that you know that.

But what to do if you can't pull those metal stranded strings like Lyle Lovett? What to do if you can't push the trumpet notes around like Miles Davis, as smooth as a speed skater on ice? It's all about what to do to get a closed door open, and not just rattle the door knob like ghosts do - make a reach but without effect.

Shake people up with appearances, like some ghost who can reach out but can't touch? I don't want that, I want what results in a felt touch, a smile, a real resonant reaction. A chill down the spine is good, if it's the right time; but not the spooky kind. How to guarantee a warm blooded response I don't exactly know. Not yet do I know.

All I know to do is try what I'm doing now, which is to point you at something that moved me. I will tell you about it, I hope that it rattles your senses to the point of your feeling it, or at least an itch that makes you go scratch it. A hand on the shoulder is good, but even a prick on the skin will do. All this I do in hope it opens a door that's between us, one that is closed.

So I point out how Lyle Lovett sounds coming out of the truck speakers. Or I mention the song "Moondance" by Van Morrison, how that can spin you around (sometimes at night). Or I say you gotta listen to Miles Davis and his "Sketches of Spain". Ear stuff works real good for that kind of shake up wake up call. I might exhort you to listen to "Spem in Allium" by Thomas Tallis; 40 people it takes to sing it, but when they get it right there's no words to describe the places you go on that carpet ride of choral swell. Or hey, playing some psycho rockabilly by Reverend Horton Heat could do it, to get you out of your chair and your toes a scootin' across the apartment carpet, maybe.

Sometimes I describe how trees look in a forest mural painted by Thomas Hart Benton - how they writhe like live snakes that got by magic spell and patient strokes turned into wood. Remind you I might about how sitting on the hood of a rumbling muscle car can feel. You'll feel the heat move through you starting where you sit with feet on a hot chrome bumper, while you ponder the horsepower; you'd want to smoke your tires, turn heads, burn rubber and screech, to get the whole block's attention.

There's no good sense in hearing, seeing, feeling all this good stuff and keeping it to one's self. Got to use it like tinder to ignite heat in somebody else, in their - oh, where to put it? In their self, their heart, their mind, on their tongue, in their guts? Words for these parts of us are just handles not screwed into anything, sign not mounted on posts - no the real thing itself, not the 'where' where the feelings go inside us to be combusted and burn into vapor. Smoke - real smoke that you can smell is air more dense than puffed words; though sometimes the right words can cause us to smolder and smoke inside.

Whatever. You name it, I'll try to put it aflame. In any audience - lover, enemy, friend, or noncombatant. Others lit my candle here and there; so why shouldn't I do the same for others? I must do so, I must. And so must you. Because if we can light somebody up, we ain't no ghosts, are not apparitions just rattling door knobs in vain. Or if so, then I will be the best dang ghost there is around, bar none like you never seen. Cause when that door between us done gets opened, who cares how I spooked it into happening, it's opened. And then we can cross the threshold of divided worlds to see, touch, hear one another; share our muse, dance and fuse.

It's all that matters.

Dry Cleaner Pickup, Deferred

Gets tiring, all the gumshoe footwork to uncover Truth everlasting.
There are stories you want to be different, but they won't rearrange -
Cause they're history, old history. The right questions no one is asking.
Too busy paying rent to spare change for friends, much less strangers.

So many things that you still want to leave all the way behind you.
Like clothes you dropped off at dry cleaners, never picked up for weeks.
Didn't pick up for months. Didn't pick up for years. Don't have a mind to.
They wait for you, those old clothes; and so the bill whose loss you seek.

That same old suit, that same old dress, that same old shirt and slacks.
The outfit you paid dearly for with your first paycheck, what you had after tax.
Clothes that dont't fit so good like you hoped they would off the rack,
Make you look like you should to others and yourself. Past time to pack.

But they were all you could afford at the time, was the best you could do.
Can you afford the real story now about how you look, now? Look out now.
You know the skinny about how you wanted to look back then. Look in, then.
What will you do with the fact of difference between the two?

An illegible highway sign says it all

An illegible highway sign
Hangs by one unsheared bolt
Upside down on a galvanized pole
Beside the only road out of town

Not heeded by the reckless
Not needed by the cautious
Hard to read and hardly read when legible
Seen while exiting the town's one lonely cafe

You may not be in the habit of reading signs

Signs of the seasons? Nope.
I got girly shop calendars for that on the wall
Signs of the times? Nope.
I got CNN news on the tube and they're on the ball
Signs of the cross? Nope.
Unless I'm on the ropes, not til Judgment day calls

Route drivers circle back to receive board special sacraments
Chew chicken fried steak silently in cafe booths built for four
Say nothing about alleged dangers down the road, nada
Nada about scenic overlooks or interesting strangers, nothing

At days end when twilight begins, night starts to roll in
A driver is on their own with maps of private publication

Friday Daylight Be Wastin', Wastrel Wench

Introduction:

My grandpa for a while was a tenant sharecropper. Weekends before he got religion, he liked to go out to the dances. Granpa was your normal cowboy - played fiddle, carried a boot knife, got into fights. Lucky one dance night for him he forgot his knife the night he got into a bad fight.

Otherwise during the Depression instead of working as a prison guard ... He would have ended up one of the "guests" of Texas, "camping out". Might even have been a roommate with Clyde Barrow, who he bullwhipped once. Granpa bullwhipped Clyde because Clyde came short a few seconds of shooting Granpa. That was during a break when Bonnie killed another guard on the other side of the field. But that's another story and another poem for another day.

This ... "pome", of sorts, is for my Granpa - in his younger tenant sharecropper fiddling knife carrying dancing drinking fighting pre-prison guard cowboy days.

Friday Daylight Be Wastin', Wastrel Wench

Leave the low paying vineyards, find a better sharecropper camp
Thumb a ride where bands play weekends, no cover charge

Friday sun sets on horizon, good love luck forces be a rising
Moonlight soon to wash ironed blouses stiff from their sizing

Skirts soon to swirl swishing, boys and girls soon to be wishing
That tonight luck favors both the brave and coward alike

You've better things to do with your limited time and
Nights are for - well, somebody got to drink the wine

Why not play your best hand on those few hours off
But work the odds, best no bluff bets 'gainst the house

Oh Buffalo Gals won't you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight
Yes, Buffalo Gals we will come, come tonight and dance by the light of the moon

Years later we won't search for albums you put up on shelf
With pictures of you and me and your old vamp self

We won't resell old gossip and news tips long gone stale
I ain't one to drink bad water from just any old pail, hon

Oh Buffalo Gals won't you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight
Yes, Buffalo Gals we will come, come tonight and dance by the light of the moon