11:45
some of day’s poetry/spoke word…
am I
talking about wine so much, and the apparent philosophy and mythology
to grapes fermented? This is weird. Think of
how even after a person passes there’s the
longing, the
influence,
the impression of their time here with us, so their
story still sequences and we see and sing ‘there is no end,
there is no destination’. so my thesis,
inextricable, impenetrable, that’s how convinced I’m convinced of
something, this something, wine helping me make the thing
happen, you know that thing that makes me a good daddy.
what. immeasurable, untetherable, talk to self
in oeno-syllable.
Maneuver out of anything, bring
a notebook to jury duty— all conversations blurry newly—
centering gem, jewel, amethyst or ruby, of an eye’s eye for me
only slightly see, completely…
Mom and Child
Sit next to me, the smaller square table, she already having her coffee— so glad I didn’t order anything with caffeine.. very much ready for some wine, or just more music, like now I listen to a song I’ve never heard before from Thievery.. on my way home in a bit, where I’ll further settle into my day off, take notes in the Carpe Journal.. or write poems, or something.. something.. have to stay writing.. that is my “brand”— but I hate that word, and idea, that I’m reduced to a “brand”.. I’m a writer, not some box on a fucking shelf.
Mom and child, little boy younger than Jack, leave. My space, again, all mine. Feel myself getting worn out and down from writing so much. But I’ve been focused.. I deserve a glass of wine, and some new music, maybe the song I just listened to, maybe another..
Now a father and his two young girls sits next to me— “FUCK!” I think. But I’m leaving soon. No white wine at home.. I could get one from the store up the street, on Coffee, the gas station. You’d be surprised, the selection isn’t bad. And how impressive can white wine be anyway? I know, I know.. all the Chardonnays that Paul Hobbs makes, and all the cult Chards from Sonoma Coast and Napa, and wherever, and that SB from Matanzas Creek— whatever, it’s all white wine.
Music everywhere, and these people around me, all with laptops, even the father shows his daughters (one of them anyway, the other on her phone) something on the screen— Yes, I’m running out of steam with this day of godly writing. Too much typing, I think. When home, just take notes.. little anecdotes like Kerouac’s father’s magazine.. oh, love this song… poetry, sing, recite, have people enjoy what you share.. shorter the better.
(3/21/16)
Stairs and Stars
He waited for his son to wake, with coffee. He couldn’t sip yet. Still with such smolder.. light blows on surface. But he enjoyed the quiet. Then he was up. There was no more quiet, now only love for the chaos and catapulted conversation that was set to surround– the sharp paradiddle of sprints on the floor above. He went upstairs to see him, what project he’d assigned himself now. “Look, Dada! Look at me!” he said, standing on the table, with quarters and pennies, and other coins he’d taken from Daddy’s work bag, in each hand, a couple coins falling, Dillon watching them fall with hands still extended out and up, fists closed packed with currency.
“Get down, buddy, be careful…”
“Daddy.. um.. Daddy, you help me?”
Daddy lifted him from the table, onto the floor.
“Daddy, let’s read books..” They both sat and he went through all his books, all his books, each one, taling them all from the shelf then rearranging them in little vertical piles in the thin, long white shelves that were set on the floor, still there from when they first moved in. Daddy watched him look through the books, narrate where he wanted to for only a couple seconds then move to the next book. Daddy noted each movement, studied and envied. Why couldn’t he see everything as he did? Why did he lose it and at what age?
“Hey Daddy, this book a special book! A real special book for me!”
Daddy watched some more, helped him arrange the little manuscripts in their set piles– “No Daddy, you have to do like this,” he said, showing Daddy how to do it professionally and to Dillon’s right-then-and-there instituted standards.
Then they went downstairs, to Daddy’s coffee cushion. Now cold but he didn’t care.. the chaos was too colorful and too educational. Checking the time he saw he soon had to get ready for work– “Hey buddy, daddy’s gotta get ready for work.”
“No no no work daddy, not today, okay?”
Good idea, Daddy thought. No work today.. just more time in the new upstairs library, with his new teacher. More to lean, more to be taught.
More to love.
(10/10/15)
Vintaged Mood Mud
Clocking in late, 9:51.. rough morning with little Kerouac and his unwillingness to go to school, get ready, just being defiant to I believe see how I’d react.. but I’m here now with my head in a million places with Ross’ funeral tomorrow, the move, packing, getting all the documents for the loan, me calling in classes today. Wouldn’t say there’s 
tremendous guilt, but a little, and a little, as they say, goes quite a long way. So I dive, headfirst, olympianly, into the coffee. Was going to write at SBUX but decided no, the people just annoy me, and then the library but then I saw myself only being frustrated while there– BUT WAIT!! There were some books I wanted to rent.. maybe.. no. I need to stay put, here on couch and type. Jazz to be activated in a minute, and in such artful spirit I also need to visit some wine spot today, for my ‘Mock Somm’ series.. listening now to KCSM jazz online, wouldn’t have anything else frankly– this tune, not sure name, doesn’t display on website, but it motivates me and understands my mood, with the blues suggestion and slow New Orleans-esque pacing. Lovely. Again, just what the writer needs in and on a rough morning like this. Papers from yesterday, right.. and I think about the adjunct life and world and role, and how it, IT itself, may drive me away, and if not away then toward another FT attempt in wine, that bridge to my own label and wine-oriented outfit. Wine, always sharing a story, something expressive; some voice, there’s no criticism like with that greasy pig full-timer that slighted my writing and teaching and me, and at Mendocino College no less– no, wine is that sensory embrace that reassures you, brings you to a certain Reflective Equilibrium, leave you pleasurably pensive; spellbinds, find, sings in its own individualized chimes. The adjunct world, and Education collectively, notably at the JC level, and Univ’, seems to contradict, convolute and corrupt all it professes to endorse and support.
Jazz, wine, more closely linked that the classroom, teaching and real writing, real expression. Wine encourages; wine IS jazz.. more than poetry but a colorful Humanness that I can’t stay away from, it’s own auditory opiate– I want everything from this day forward to be jazz, in my Life.. everything is jazz and poetry and wine. LIFE. No struggle and if there is there’s victory and sight in the struggle.. so I write like I’m making sense and not at the same time– jazz, as I said. MY morning suddenly begins an incandescent insinuation about everything around me, and what I’m about. So my story has a new chapter and song.
Driving Jack to meet his grandmother, Cathy, somewhere between here and Monterey. More than likely in the city. Should I take a detour, do something new, find some Newness, that Beat time that she wrote about.. write by the wharf? I’m thinking too much, and all the clutter around me doesn’t help, the move, crunching my consciousness like frail dirt clusters under a determined tractor tire. Keep moving, you’re on stage, wine wine wine– The thought and alchemy to the reality ahead of me, what I want.. Eddie’s story. I’m soon to be there, I know, on the Road writing and talking about writing and wine and California, not so much how to write but certain ideas I have for starting a project (where my adjunct years will serve me). Not that I don’t want to teach, I just don’t want to be in this context, but that too I’ve written already. I’m tired of the consistency and the perpetual presence of certain certainties and realities.. I want the Newness.. the randomness, the not-ever-expected. And quite and noise, just like the breaks of this current track..
Blogging, not exactly how I want to do it, but I have to now, and it’s instant, as Amber said.. what she does now in India, what she writes or blogs or sees I can only imaging, but that’s that Newness! Experienced by one of my students; she’s passed me, ardently, admirably. I want too to walk those streets and smell what she does there and talk to those characters, drink that beer she mentioned, and just write in some kind of NEW. When, though? I have to ask. Humans always want the stew of stimuli to stream, especially us, the real writers. Not the people that post to a blog everysooften and say in passing, to people at a party or meeting new people in a tasting room, “I’m a writer,” or “I write.” Really? I always want to say, “How much?” “Oh, every few days or so,” they’d say, and I’ve heard this reaction, I have! Not saying I’m a better writer or person, but much a more frequent and serious penner than this character. I’m losing you and myself, but that’s what jazz does sometimes. Where’s my word journal, the little Paris book that Mom got in my city, for me? Shit.. kitchen? Upstairs? This house is a mess, and I doubt anyone’s reading still, I’m exhausted by this prose as well, but it’s truth and my Now and the room I’m in, the mood that has me, or rather had me.
2:30 or 2:45, have to get Kerouac. Then driving south, to wherever.. lunch, what to have? More writing? Sure.. reading, have to dive into my five MSS I promised to read. And that’s another facet to teaching English at the JC, or at all: you can’t read! Papers, yes, but not the books you wish. Robbery, the “profession” pummels us into stoic simplicity, and I’m tired of it. That’s not jazz, not Art, not Lit. And not wine. Wine wouldn’t do that to me, and doesn’t. I know, my relationship with wine is lovehate, I agree, but it doesn’t abuse me like the adjunct world. Why would I keep going? What would I be if I taught HS English? Failed, in certain strain. So, no.. I know me, and I wouldn’t be happy, or alive even.
And a note: job titles; they’re ridiculous. Do centralizing, and not in a beneficial way. And the title THEY determine, they decide what you’re called. And yes my mood’s back.. I need to keep moving, go get some more coffee.. the mocha I bought this morning from that barista, or brewer, or whatever she’d be called is plebeian and limp. My job title: what do I want it to be? I mean I guess I need one, so what, WHAT, what is it? Writer. And if someone asked me a couple years or maybe months (me being optimistic) down the TimeRoad, what do you do? I’ll say, “Write.” “Write what?” “A blog.” “About what?” At this point I’m thinking, “What the fuck? Why all the questions? What are my answers going to do for you?” But, being the mature “professional”, I’d respond “Life.” I write about Life. Yes, the dominant topic is being an adjunct, and wine, and writing, being a dad, and running as well.. so, why couldn’t I say ‘life’? Over thinking, and I blame the jazz, the crazy baritone sax that competes with the frenzied drumming, and the string bass, not sure if it’s a cello or.. but I’m trying to keep up. And the morning’s back on my side, no more mood, no worry, I’m not letting any anchors into my sight or senses this morning. I have toughen, and I will, have with this entry, with these tracks. So… what wine place to visit? No sipping, just smelling, and okay maybe a couple spits, but that’s it.. then coffee after, more coffee for the writer, and no planning! That too adds to this writer’s stress. Just live and write and play like this sax. Song title doesn’t matter, just like a job title. It’s jazz, it’s music, ART, and I love what it does to me. To the kitchen for some coffee, then some thinking, just listen to the sequence, this playlist, and think. No writing. Not now. Just live, note in Comp Book if you need.
Just noticed there’s a lot of blame in my writing. I blame my moods…..
(4/9/15)
dayrime
Any thought secondary has to be buried,
rarely second guess self but I do when it comes to tell–
Observed surroundings, nothing astounding,
Attention span of a gnat, and I’m overly selective at that–
sq6
napkin wipe away everything the
rumors and the saysos, okay? I use it
again and make sure its gone, the
evidence of the mistake, over my lip and cheek right
but I’m wrong and I have to use it, drag or brush or
tap, who knows, charge and electric– seismology of the
normal, make glimmer, a sun or nova, one so super!
I fold it, I’ve done enough damage, it was once so
angular and vocal and present, now it’s worn,
beat, toppled, lowered, and because of me, I’m the
storm, the sickly sorcerer why i dont know, apart fall
clean up soon or else therell be a fall
out, clock knows so, so i go
basket, get away, no other word left and i turn to distract myself
(2/16/15)
Sq 4
Slammed, no care,
leave, draw, more
color, or others, or
once the wine finds
my aorta, then
my song will
be in a speaker, or
million, million-ing, vision and
image, a prism
from pittance
(2/12/15)
pilot ought oh
narrow my realism
for the sake of
what, suspected, I’m an arsonist, or
I will be, I’m about to
burn one of my own books,
so what does that make me,
wait let me– yes, okay, this I think I
said in another note I wrote
to mySelf, one morning before work, when
I was in one of my moods, sipping a cooling mocha and
eating one of those breakfast burritos,
in the market’s parking lot, this is so much
a writer’s foil, tall toil–
eating a candy I found in the
freezer, peanut butter,
my favorite, return to
the child, when things weren’t so necessary, or expected, or planned,
why does sit have to be mapped out, protractor’d,
that robs, I’m robbed, and
thinned, more than the road they set
me on, why can’t it taste this good, where are
the keys, the curls to a better ride? I’ll
go for co-Colossus,
don’t think, just go, I’m riled but
sought slow, and that’s another song I’ll have to
somehow fake, more leaves
get a rake. hope sincere,
that letter was already sent to supposed supporters.
light another match, for the writings in my desk.
hope the smoke heads west, to the pest press.
(6/26/14)
stanza grey
Leaving lot for
secret. Or not
so. It’s a plan.
One I’m breaking–
3/22/14