Carving Out A Life From The Marble Block Of Happenstance

It's been a while since I was able to really SIT down and gather my thoughts into something I could put down into writing. Great changes are underway, as always, never dull moments, constant flux...

...Happenstance.

I suppose this word is a loaded one.

Depending on how you see your life, your social standing, and all that you think you own, and that which you begrudgingly possess as your "lot", this word will evoke feelings in you that are relative to these factors...

I watched the storm roll in last evening, it was a Wednesday. The gum trees curled up their tear-dropped awnings of green, upper middle class patrons shuffled single file off of restaurant patios and back into dimly lit flat screen television caves of happy hour work day retreat--"hump" day. David and I just so happened to be sitting under an umbrella at that moment and so we continued to watch the sparrows peck up last minute crumbs, sifting through cigarette butts, and pebbles, pop tabs, cigar wrappers. How casually the winged and beaked dormice go about all of this, under the adoring watch of two humans of a sapien species that largely ignores such simple tininess unless it is hungry or seeking entertainment. And then of course, the impending storm, and when the sky broke a fountain let loose of surprisingly freezing rain drops, such a shock on a quite warm late afternoon. The birds took cover rather quickly, the loot of city-pickin's had been dropped promptly, left to the ruins of sog. And, I----I crossed my arms over my breasts, hands tucked in my armpits, to warm my so-perky-from-the sudden-cold-that-they-hurt nipples (I refuse to torture myself with wearing a brassiere these days).

...We happen to be in a life position to really come close to the heart of abundance in what this society labels "scarcity". The mere sight of us elicits reactions and opinions from strangers and acquaintances alike, but that is of little significance, and it should never be significant or worth a single worry or second guess. I do not experience the dark implications of taking the joy ride of happenstance throughout life for the time it is necessary to do so. Happenstance is the magic of the present moment. So in moments when I happen to be mentally aligned with my faculties of self expression, I am able to belt out some poetry. How ever random and dismembered the connections seem, I am open to all of it, and available to my self.

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From The Future

(written during and inspired by last night's poetry reading at Betram Woods Library in Shaker)

My grandmother was Russian

or is she

Ukraine?

Grandfather was Palestinian

or is he Israelian?

Who we are?

We've become like the air between the forgotten walls of

so-so realestate

or perhaps

irritating particulates of fiberglass insulation

that when the mallet and saw breaks us loose

we flood the atmosphere with the smoke-like generations of congestion, the

refused inheritance of time-release carcinogenic principles

its all dislodged from the plaster and wood, maybe some asbestos was left by accident

and

was it my fault, we went for decades unnoticed,

infecting the new home owners with lung cancer?

In any case, this is only a risk if you're unpacking boxes in the attic.

I wouldn't worry about the asbestos,

especially if where you're standing was built after world war two.