Being – WALKING ON THIN ICE

shadow of the not-Yeti

April 11, 2023 No Comments

Stopped by MetroHealth Pharmacy for vitamins and found the underground parking lot and most doors blocked off, with a metal detector at the open main entrance.

Perhaps gun violence is reaching corporate concern level and the money being lost will finally push gun control in Congress, for as we all know most politicians care about money more than anything.

Strange thinking about population numbers versus social development. There are arch building ants, I believe in Africa, who keep trying to build arches, but they keep collapsing until the ant population becomes large enough that (seemingly) mass-mind kicks in and they suddenly know how to insert a keystone. This boggles my mind.

On the obverse side of the situation, there are some Texas rabbits who bang and breed until there are too many per square mile to support them all so they develop a nervous condition and start dying off until there’s enough room to bang & breed again.

Perhaps the ever escalating gun violence in the U.S. is our people-version of this rabbit-neurosis. Wife pointed out in a rabbit warren, rabbits at the top of the power structure eat better and live longer and happier than any of the rabbits below them, and the lower you go, the shorter you live (due to stress).

And of course monkeys and birds have been documented lying and thieving by uttering fake danger calls to try to scare companion away from found food so they can eat it instead.

So lies, and theft, and death by social order are part parcel of nature’s blueprint.

Hmmmmm.

This is but a few of many mysteries . . . for example, are sexually loose female trolls called trollops?

Or, if you ain’t a Yeti, does that make you a not-Yeti?

Shadow of the Yeti

Lady’s cat house

January 12, 2021 No Comments

Christmas day was a bitter cold snow storm, and Doug, the free-range neighborhood cat, let us know he might be willing to move inside with us, which no can be done due to our own cat and dog and the fact that a feral cat would spray our place with cat piss to mark his territory.

So Lady spent a couple hours creating a Doug house for him. Took duct tape, a large cardboard box, put insulating cardboard forms under it to get it off the cold wood, added bubble wrap, wrapped it all in plastic sheeting, and added a wool blanket.

Took it out, showed Doug, he put his head in the front slot to inspect her work, then climbed in and spent the next two days of freezing temperatures in it. I’d put bowls of catfood in the box for him.

Don’t know if he’s still using it or not, but it was a right fine Christmas gift that may have saved him… and definitely eased my guilt of leaving a life form out in the freeze.

So Lady’s cat house was gift to cat, her, and me.

(quickly stopped leaving catfood out for him because it was attracking the mange-crazed coyote)

Alfie betta, the large orange snail, and Sucker

August 18, 2020 No Comments

Fish Story

Went down to the pet store for waterplants, a snail companion, and replacement neon tetras for our tank.

On the way to checkout, we passed a wall of small, clear containers, each containing one betta – which pretty much filled the entire area, leaving them no room to swim. Several floated belly up. I don’t think they were fed, so they stayed, trapped, unmoving, staring out at their human captors until they died from hunger.

It broke my heart, reminded me of my prison days, so I asked Lady to pick one (would have tried to save more, but they’re fighting fish and don’t play well with others).

She chose a gorgeous, primitive, red creature, all silky and strange.

Back home, we released it in our tank, and it stayed still, in one spot, traumatized, for the rest of the day.

Next day it swam into the plants and hid.

After awhile, it peeked out, a wee more each day, until finally each time it saw me walk by, it dashed to the glass and did a little waggle dance of maybe happiness, maybe expectation, maybe both.

I knew it danced mostly for food because usually it rose to the top to feed after greeting me, but sometimes it stayed below, level with my face, and wiggled its front fins as it flowed back and forth in seeming joy, very much like a happy puppy.

Lady suggested we name it Alpha (for Alpha Betta), and I counteroffered Alfie, after the Michael Caine film, which is ironic because Caine’s Alfie was total lack of love and joy, while our’s oozed both.

The snail we got the same day as Alfie slimed a different path. We’d chosen a medium-sized black snail to make sure it was too big for our snail-crunching loach named Sucker to eat. It was supposed to keep our large orange snail company, which we’d named Speedy because he literally zoomed around the tank.

Lady mentioned they might mate, and we’d have all these baby snails for Sucker to eat. As I turned off the aquarium light that night, I noticed the snails were kissing, and thought “How sweet, babies on the way.”

Next morning the black shell was empty, and Speedy so gorged with snail flesh he couldn’t quite fit in his shell. So much for sweetness.

Which leaves us with Sucker, a leopard loach we’d initially bought to control our small snail infestation.

I was sitting zoned in my chair, stoned, lost in a book, when I heard a thud. I looked over and saw a large green feather from a cat toy flopping on the floor, going thump-thump-leap, thump-thump-leap, and my brain froze, simply could not process what I was seeing because we don’t have any battery operated cat toys, and for sure no flopping green feathers.

Lady finally broke through my confusion by saying, “It’s Sucker.”

Somehow Sucker had gotten out of the water, climbed 3 inches to the plastic top, squeezed through an opening, wriggled to the front, and fell four feet to the floor, landing atop a green feather as long as he was, which stuck perfectly to his wet body, so I saw a 6″ green flopping feather which impossibly looked alive.

I got up, scooped him from the floor, pulled the feather off, and as I turned to put him back in the tank, he twisted around and sank his fangs deep into my palm. Amazing amount of pain, immediate blood flow. I pulled his snail-crunching teeth out of me and dropped him in the water, wondering how the heck he’d gotten out since there was no wet trail on top of the tank – perhaps he’d teleported through the glass like those rogue electrons in quantum tunneling.

Since then, Sucker and I watch each other, he having a taste for my blood and wanting more, and me – a Pisces – wondering if I’ve been infected with mutant fish slime since I started taking 90 minute baths daily.

Speedy died six months later.

Sucker, always dreaming more me, followed.

But Alfie’s still here, waiting, watching, puppy dancing whenever I walk by.

So lovely to be liked… by a fish.

Yes, erumpent fireflies warmed hands

January 13, 2019 No Comments

Yes, erumpent fireflies warmed hands
on xanthous flames fireplaced in a
viperiform damascene hagioscope
gripping the reredos

Girandoled discoball constellations
yogiboogeyboarded swimming pool lights,
dog and ponied interstices of the ceiling joists
zoopraxiscoped herds of variegated animals,
the alopecoid and hares, all manners
of dazzling English animals

The nickle nutlets of teeth in
jellygraph gloss of a dead lamb’s grin,
closed eyelids, japan painted blunt nose
nuque broke, visceral ladled nup of bent innocent colliform
draped on a chair, the Inuit their kamiks

Corpulant agriculture was fecund
on plates we left for morning after Christmas,
wastive abundance, frapped humanity
in ruddy hardihood consecrated by
the rabbi we called in;
the comrade donned a biretta
the webster sat under the vesper
it was a mixed bag, fingers bewildered in
nodated whatevers, que sera sera-ing,
the cows munched their kerf
it was ok it was the weather

The validity of vermiculture,
of worksome insects typing logopedics,
rosining translucent violins withily weaving
wirewove niello of the organized whole

~ Lady

Friday Night

July 6, 2018 No Comments

A delirium of talk
from my head to my heart
tight burn hollows of shoulders
dog breath, a panicked cat
bird in the throat
bird in the ear
bird in the eyes
bird brain
Friday night

~ Lady

Cat & Dog

April 7, 2018 2 Comments

Cat & Dog

Cat was on the feather
Showing me where the feather was, dear

“Did you catch a cat?”

Barely, like one of those quantum particles,
snapping my fingers,
hard to hold

…

Our cat knows
which one is the prey
in our current game

I saw a woman
play Three Card Monte with her dog
she’d put a dog treat under one of the cups
go swish, swish, swish, mix them up,
and the dog would point his nose at
the correct cup every time
and eat the treat

While this is impressive
it’s not quite as impressive as it looks
because she cheated;
she kept her right hand
on the cup with the treat,
never took it off,
went swish swish swish swish swish and
always kept her hand on the treat cup

The dog just watched it go
back and forth
and never left the right hand

When she stopped
he would touch his nose to it;
he would get the treat

…

Instead of a fireplace
we low-class have a water tank
there’s usually 10 seconds
between the bubble burps in the aquarium filter
but sometimes it’s 11 or 12

I am a wee odd.

For example, I count how long it takes you
from locking the door
to becoming visible in the parking lot

It used to be 31 seconds

“You mean you count?”

Yes, 1001, 1002, 1003

It used to take you 31 seconds to get out
and then 41 seconds because you were cold and you were carrying more stuff
and recently it was 51 seconds
and I started thinking, ‘this is getting
too long but you’ll probably stop at
the mail box,’ and I saw you and you had
a package in your hand.

If it had been more than 60 seconds,
I would have come down and checked

“Wow, that’s very nice”

I work what grid I can, he said
black cat, red feather, white line.

~ Smith & Lady

Lady Poems on some March days

March 28, 2018 2 Comments

It’s Going to Be a Beautiful Day

Cat’s hours crouching for a mouse
in the kitchen under the dishwasher
maybe most of night I think as
making coffee to Sun Ra

Miles Davis plays in a silent way
Our hanging crystals in the window
hint at the day’s sparkling potentialities

Sunday a.m. moment between here
and there’s doorway where
light glows from ebb of ember

“Every Sunday’s Easter,” I think
and God responds with a magnificent
spread of light on our dirty window
calling and responding

Husband sees it too, says oo
Then sun goes away, “How dare
that sun go away,” he says, and then
“but actually it didn’t go away
the clouds merely blocked it,
right?”

And they lived happily ever after’s
embroidered on our pillow I tell him

“OK, fair enough,” he says.

–

A silence presses my ear, which is startled
at the quick and subtle answer from
an unexpected calculator taking note

The vastness of roar and silence
leaves one to a soup of thought,
worked over flagellation

“How are you?” husband asks, and I’m
keen now to leaving myself a comfortable mote
in the torrent

Our guppy quivers in the tank, the male guppy
her ever-present satellite, the banner
of his hippie tail happy to be near her

–

On our early morning soundtrack choirboys sing
sober remnant whispers of vespers

Traffic splashes in the early morning spring dark
the aftermath of rain’s laid diamonds
on our storm window

–

When the deal goes down
gonna sit here, before dawn
fishtank light on, our ever-present
Christmas lights silently festive
no computer on my lap,
listen to Chet Atkins chirping
to our slowly twirling
window crystals

The muffled tick of husband’s recliner
he shifts position and crunches
his early a.m. cashews

Black cat wanders cheerful
in the dark

Sun Ra

March 24, 2018 1 Comment

Sun Ra

My brother, a man of few words
goes across the street to pick up
a Mexican lunch and after he’s full
he gives me his bag of
leftover fresh tortilla chips
a kind of intimacy

Tetras – their movement’s squared off into binary digits
flicking 90 degrees like an object suddenly stimulated in a child’s mobile
half of them draw straight lines one tetra length long
various vectors and tangled orthogonalities

They cloud in their favorite spot, the hollow on the right side of the tank
between the lake rocks and the bookcase
The ones on the edge more quick, shooting long tangents,
unsure what they define
and when they thin they scatter
the cloud loses its mind

When a tetra’s alone, it’s adrift
without the ballast and balance
of its companions

The reflection
from the fishtank’s bubbler
goes up at the same rate
looping like contained
stars on a strip
of quicksilver

Lyle Lovette says
stars shine on water
sun burns on sand

Jupiter is rising
in the ring of Saturn
to celebrate the equivalence
of the days forthcoming

Polly want a polysaccharide?

Staircase at night
Low piano note
Comfortable noir

I’m going to get a beer
husband goes off to urinate
we’re a pair

The romance of
cyborg man and
atomic eye woman–
the title of our
next book

“When the rising sun
hits the army tents it’s a tent, son,”
he says, then, “s’n will be gone
before eight”

I say, “Astute observations for hire”
He says, “Call me Am….. Astute Man”

then “I was born on the border of
Tolerance and Intolerance,
Texas.”

Were my face an owl
thought not thought but
regard for thock of my
feeling, a mirror bent
down from a tree
undersea
being

I’d be a
calm caravan
plodding crucible of mothered feet,
shadow liquid in its shifting
under witnessing stars

Retiform filter
gold sifting loaded loam
easy, like a cold ripening apple
thinking about the sun
in the night

~ Lady

Tetras

March 10, 2018 No Comments

Tetras –

Their movement’s squared off into binary digits
flicking 90 degrees like an object suddenly stimulated in a child’s mobile
half of them draw straight lines one tetra length long
various vectors and tangled orthogonalities

When a tetra’s alone, it’s adrift
without the ballast and balance
of its companions

~ Lady

The sparrows make love on the sidewalk

December 10, 2017 No Comments

The magic window, our marvelous window, the filigree trees
and the brick apartment building across the street–
when I look when I’m left with a choice about time

I rush it, this big presence like a womb, big cavernous
sky…

The cavernous sky; it was a love affair with the sky

I was languid and intimate with it; It pressed up all around me, The Shape minus me,
if I and I. Or if not, then I in I.

My boundaries like a net, a sieve in a sea with no catch, doors and people,
just this sieve, that’s all, or a catch; a catch full of catch

The sparrows make love on the sidewalk
quick flutters of seed

So many Saturday moments

– Lady