Doomriders In Town Tonight!

Time to crawl out of the cave and get myself a good mid-winter dose of rock. Go ahead and wreck your neck or break some furniture.

Winter Message

This morning I saw Saint Francis of Belchertown in prayer. He was outdoors on a hilltop suffering hard at five degrees buried past his waist in frozen snow with ice clinging to his shoulders. His countenance did not betray his pain, and not because he wore the hard mask of stoicism or the blissed-out expression of transcendence. His expression is what drew my attention - engaged, patient, optimistic. His head was bowed, humble but not shameful, not beaten. I thought, if no one hears your prayer friend, it's no fault of yours, and then realized someone did.

Knowing Isn't Enough

are you worthy of your destiny?

knowing who you are is not enough
the real work is
becoming who you are
fully realized

doing the true business of your heart
even when you can feel it slipping
through your fingers and you
taste failure before making
your first move

in terror
you watch a movie in which
you play a guy missing the bus
of his own
life

Fragment Of A Weather Report

So a glaze of ice has coated the cars
and the roads and the rooves, already overloaded with snow,
and the people of this medium-sized city
are suited up for battle.

They shovel out their buried cars,
their blocked driveways and parking spaces,
and the plows come by and bury them again.

Many have panic in their eyes,
their faces show
disorientation.

Where some of them come from,
this kind of thing doesn't happen,
and maybe now they're thinking
their old home looks quite good.

Easy is relative.

I chiseled the ice off my windshield,
and now there is a great big smile in the glass,
which will mock me until I can afford to have it replaced.

The radio said that the shouting and spontaneous joy in
Tahrir Square has turned bloody
as the government unleashes it's dogs
in street clothes on the people.

Here we pile snow in mountains and try
to keep the roads clear and the schools open
while Queensland braces for a cyclone,
billed already as likely their worst in history.

A scientist said that the gradual warming of the oceans -
which of course humans aren't responsible for,
we're just out there trying to make a buck -
adds more moisture to storms and thus more power,
but that's just earthy-crunchy, socialist, tree-hugging propaganda.

Right, Pakistan - nearly drowned?
Right, Brazil - buried in sliding mud?
Right, Australia - flooded out, now blown away?
Right, America -2,500 miles of winter fury falling down?

I saw two women trying to get their stuck car out of the snow.
They had brown skin, wore headscarves,
lived in one of this city's tougher housing projects.

A young man with white skin, wearing a suit, not from that housing
project was pushing.

I stopped, did a little shoveling,
and then we three pushed that car free,
but it was raining ice pellets down on all of us,
so no one spoke, but we all smiled
and looked into the eyes of each of the others
for less than a second, and then we went our seemingly
separate ways.

From the French film, The Hairdresser's Husband directed by Patrice Leconte.

A Writer Talks About Writing

Communion

In the car, the phone keeps ringing and it's your staff all saying they don't know if they can make it in, and you can't see shit really because those wiper blades you should have changed six months ago are nothing but ice clubs dragging infuriatingly across the smear of your windshield. They predicted another four to eight inches today with the real accumulation not coming until tomorrow, but that's propaganda because you know you shoveled more than that before the morning commute even started. The kids have a half day of school for some reason, probably dictated by union politics rather than public safety, and your ten year old knows that this is insane as he dutifully places his life in my angry driver's hands with three inches of snow melting off my frustrated middle manager's head. I'm getting old, I think, and worn out by the tiresomeness of so many things. The snow is falling, and we are never prepared, always caught up short in the midst of these legions who completely lose their senses and turn out on the roads to do ridiculous and dangerous things at five miles per hour while I'm trying to get somewhere. It's not about you, mocks the red cardinal flying overhead - so vivid - the red bird, the ultra-brite snow, this crushing pain radiating across my chest and down my arm.