Ignorant Pardons

As a veteran, a few days short of 4 years in ASA (Army Security Agency), I don't intend to push this too much, but the Secretary of the Navy, Richard V. Spencer was totally correct in standing up to Trump . . . these pardons are beyond the pale and are an attack on all our quality military service women and men.

Measuring sins

I'm not sure what's worse:
trying to shut up
or trying to write verse;
I totally give up.

My sins are small.
Your sins? Your call.

Aware but Basically an Innocent . . .

Put aside Game of Thrones temporarily, just keep in mind the randiness throughout and self-interest exploited to extremes, the ancient Greek tragedies are at least as in tune with today's U..S. governance . . . without going into particular examples, let some of the scripts trickle through the creeks of your conscience for a moment: the Iliad, Antigone, Prometheus Bound, the Orestia, etc., and etc. The last few days is similar to my junior high and high schools education . . . (ignore the tedious repeats in college) . . . there were really lessons for us to learn and we yawned and looked as bored as we sometimes were . . . I wish I had remained aware through more moments of reading the tragedies and listening to them in class . . . I could better explicate this week's reporting on the orange bump . . .

Jose Cruz

was a Housto Astro!

I remember taking my young son Toby and his cousin Joshua Boydstun to an Astros game . . . a guy came up to us as we approached the entrance and told me he had some tickets . . . I balked - this is not my type of adventure . . . but he nodded toward the boys and said Jose Cruz wants you to have his box seats for today's game . . . it was a tremendous experience and when Jose came to bat early in the game he turned and raised his cap toward us (sitting just yards behind home plate) we acknowledged his greeting and his beautiful smile . . . he was a Houston Astro . . .

ain't nice nor good for you

cancer ain't nice nor good for shit,
but sometimes it can drumbeat new thinking
of stuff that keeps us smiling despite the shit.

Sometimes Doodle Out

Everything is earned.
Almost nothing comes without a down payment.
That's okay! It fits who I am.

Except as I type what I earlier scribbled, I disagree with my earlier self.
Earlier self was wrong.

Everything is not earned - what could I have done to be born a white human male with a relatively stable DNA?

Measuring the Lengths of Silence

Conversations continue
within and throughout our interludes of talking.
This is not an answer to a question.

I merely suppose, as delicately as possible,
that love continues through our lengths of silence.
I have no questions to answer.

okay it's cancer

I intend to create a chronology of sorts of dealing with bladder cancer and with stage 4 advanced prostate cancer . . . I'm running and doing well and will begin to post it. Not for my nonreaders but as chronology for myself . . . Hardhead would understand.

Cathy

She's in the hospital
who yesterday taught us the language
of Camus, Dostoevski and Plath.

She has no voice today.

Paralysis is complete on one side
and who can remember
the thoughts she thought
as she left the road . . .

I'm heading back today (not to the hospital)
but to the bar where we were, laughing but serious,
when she said that Plath would be alive today
if women had learned their strength sooner . . .

I'll drink a favorite draft of ours
and maybe find someone to talk with
about something,
but not about hospitals . . .

maybe about Cathy . . .

roosters before dawn

I have heard the talk
at kitchen tables
between turns of solitaire
among brown-circled cups
of instant coffee
about the terrible sadness of silent
couples in restaurants
and their trips to the bathrooms

Modern Temperatures

It is not the same thing, and I only intend an analogy in that it reminds me of yesteryear that I speak about it . . . I remember a winter hitch-hiking from TX to CA, via the southern route (that is south of the old route 66 . . . which I may later remember another story about hitch-hiking along because it is something that I occasionally did in my later teens) when the temp was way down and I thought that my ping-pongs were freezing, but then just outside Truth or Confidences, going west, an older man in an old pickup stopped and offered me a ride . . . I was so grateful, and still am grateful. He had his granddaughter with him and told me where they were trying to get to before the weather could completely stop them. I don't remember his destination, almost certainly somewhere in central or western New Mexico . . . I was tired and just accepted the justice of the night. He woke me up about an hour into our shared trip . . . his pickup had a slow radiator leak, but instead of weather freezing the leak, the engine kept the water heated enough that it slowly dribbled onto the highway into little ice bubbles (that is only my imagination, I never actually went back to verify). But the bottom decision was irrefutable, we were stopped in the middle of the NM landscape (sparse, beautiful and barely habitable in may spots, from my viewpoint on the highway (including our unchosen spot to stop in emergency mode). It was so cold (neither of us had a thermometer), but it was so cold that the grandfather worried about his granddaughter, and he started digging a hole in the landscape and asked me to help him dig, so that we could bury her under enough dirt to keep her warm to survive the night. It worked, she lived through the night, as we did. But a couple of hours from daylight a light suddenly showed itself in the middle of the night toward the south. I think I saw it first, but I had no real idea what it was . . . a "farmhouse", I think he said . . . (forget the quibbles about who farms in such regions and for such reasons) I never found out what they truly did for a living. We dug up his daughter and trekked toward the light. It was a house with the most responsive people you could imagine, they immediately took in who we obviously were (we may have also told them, but my Spanish is not always so good) . . . we were served platefuls of breakfast beans and corn tortillas (still one of my favorite ways to break the fast). And so we survived. I am not so sure that some folks in our middle north U.S. will be so fortunate. I am worried about them.

I continue . . .

A Day on the Oregon Coast

Snow and rain trickles
from the Coast Range
explore lower elevations
and gently kiss black flat creek stones
before swapping gossipy exaggerated stories
from the elevated heights
with the incoming salty tide . . .

Trash Talk (in passing) . . .

I'm ready to retire.
I'm damn ready to retire
But I guess I should have some means in mind.
At least some $.

Okay, the clock is set early to meet Houston time
of the office opening . . .

It is the same with wine.

An empty winerack
is not necessarily a true catastrophy
in itself, it may be poor planning
and probably
it is notice to restock with a range
of taste well beyond the past.

An emptying clothes closet may reflect
a simple hubris of today's
breathless
acknowledgement of learning how to step out.

So let it be.

But a wine inventory requires more thought . . .

Life in all its glory

I was some 75 years old last June
but don't feel wiser than a year and a minute ago.
Time seems not to slow nor step aside.
I have not felt as threatened
as I might . . . I still have a job
and a monthly SS check
slowly building an annuity of sorts . . .
but even if I find food for all of my tomorrows,
what becomes of all those others?
I see them as I walk about,
some with soddy blankets, and some without,
and what of those aging bikes with contested owners.

Pillows and such . . .

I've moved from pillows sewn into sleep bags
to twin-bed pillows stacked toward the ceiling
before obtaining the actual majesty of space
in queen size pillows,
but now, living into my 70's, I approach royalty
in an alternate, but very possible dimension
with a roomy King-bed, though still with Queen pillows.

Should I strike forth for a pillow that reaches
beyond this common world
into newer horizons of exploding worlds of imagination
that may fit the size of my obvious modesty toward life
and the contentment of time?

I think the answer may well be: Yes, go fot it!

But, thank some powers that may be
I am a man of mostly modest ambitions
that already meet my expectations of tomorrow . . .

Cats and Teachers

Cassius was a cat
Buddha was a teacher
and I learned more from Cassius, without his teaching
than from the Buddha with all of my attention.

Foot Prints . . . Across the Divide

My footprints are faint and maybe fading, but they cover much of the Atlantic world . . . beginning somewhere in Viking England
with a rebirth on the Eastern Shore in Maryland
and ending somewhat south and west until . . .

oddly, from somewhere in Texas and New Mexico
they also cover the Pacific coast (another universe):

From San Francisco to the Apple Orchards of the Okanogan Valley . . .

Obvious places to begin and end . . .
east to west,
across an invented, mostly conquered divide . . .

PSA, Total and Free

Evidently a PSA total of 14.9 ng/Ml is elevated.
I am not totally ignorant of elevated numbers.
But I do understand some numbers (1,2,3) better than other numbers (∞) . . .
14.9 ng/mL takes some education . . .
I know that prostate cancer is cancer that occurs in the prostate . . . (I read it on the Mayo Clinic website).
I do not doubt what it says on the Mayo Clinic website about Prostate cancer.

Early detection is positive - if it is still confined to the prostate gland, there is a better chance of successful treatment.
And that is a big hurrah!