Shit

Small town parade. Old women on lawn chairs hold tiny American flags and cups of icy tea.  A horse and rider stall in view.  Kicking and lunging forward, a young curly-haired cowgirl snaps the reigns.  The animal begs for a moment.  The horse drops its duty—a pyramid of green goodness in the middle of the parade root.  A high pile many see drop and stack.  Next, a horse drawn carriage successfully avoids the pile to the crowd’s amusement.  Followed by a motorcade of vintage cars, candy thrown out windows to kids—all missing the poo.  Marching girl scouts all swerve to avoid the dung pile and the crowd again cheers their sharp decision making.  The poop, this part of the parade’s focus.  A collective effort to preserve a perfect dirty mess.  A fire truck offers assistance when it barrels through the left half of the manure.  The crowd “ooohs,” when liquid squirts from road apples.  Baton throwers spin and toss, and one of them with her back turned, plants a heel in the high stuff.  The crowd “ahhs,” and she looks back and down and continues dancing.  A slight smirk of disgust grows on her face.

What a slow and painfully public destruction of that shit.

Dismiss Connection

Dismiss Connection

“Sure you should be smoking that down there?”
I was in the pit.
The old loading dock concrete cage.
He took a double take as he peered off the catwalk above.
Two questions.
What I was or
if I was smoking.
And where.
What to answer…
“Smoking what?”
“Smells funny.”
Shrug.
“Okay,” reluctantly.

"Watch, these be broke, too.”
A man pulls construction parts from his truck bed.

Seafoam Like Snow

Seafoam like snow
Stacked drifting strands—
cool beach morning.
Walk and search for
The missing shine,
The hidden secret beneath
Foam colored good time
Memories from the life
Half engaged and without
Indolent others warped time
And belief of milked foam,
Hands held, names yelled,
Gone.

Can Scar

Best way to throw a floating beer can away in a swimming hole,

finger in the trap, and a simple fling to safety—out of reach,

Blade in my name and on the mouth caught me and later my left first finger,

flayed open with ease at the flick and thick juice dripped from bent-back flesh,

“You need to get that out of the water,” Jack said, from the shore, having watched me,

That, the permanent scar remains stories of arrows sorrow and war array,

my day of swimming done, I let the Vietnam Vet dress my wound and talk.

Supposed to end with the interesting. I did and I am.

Distraction Addiction

What does not help, will kill and eventually destroy. What I refer to is distraction. And who I refer to is us, humanity, and specifically for this example, Americans. Distractions of magnificent proportion. Can you guess where I am going yet? First, what is it we’re being distracted from? What is important? Importance is relative to the individual, but what can we all agree is important? Love, it is said, is most vital of all to human existence. Some say there are several types of love: Self-love, Parental-love, Romantic-love etc. But here I’m not making that distinction. I’m talking love in its purest and simplest base form. And love comes from each other and from God through all forms of life. But there’s so much risk involved in love. So, its priority falls a bit. Love is inconvenient and shamelessly oppressed for it. Love as a verb, is meeting needs and giving yourself away. Ask Jesus. Love as a noun, is a place where often, two and more camp comfortably.



Are we addicted to substance or behavior, or both? Both. And that is why when a mobile phone or ipod is misplaced there is a sense of panic that ensues. Retracing of steps and places and calling of the phone and friends to find the missing device. Already planning a replacement, because to go without this technology is unheard-of and unacceptable. To be out of the technological loop is to be an outcast. But to be addicted to the digital realm is the goal. And our jobs will give us just enough money to keep up with all the latest gadgets we must own and use and depend on.



Professional sports are not important. Almost everything on TV is not important. These are examples of distraction. Cell phones and gaming, texting and interactive media for entertainment purposes, lack all importance, unless used for transmitting love. Technology entirely, and its uses for entertainment, distracts. Hobbies of all sorts, for the most part, in today’s world, hinder the spread and proliferation of love. Comfort and convenience, two pleasures we as Americans are deeply entrenched in, coddle our sense of distraction slyly—while we go on living the dream. And if dreamed up from the minds of profiteers, we’re right where they want us. Subjugated willingly in the prison of the mind, hardly better off than our North Korean friends.



When we distract ourselves from Love, we stare headlong, like Narcissus into the pool of our demise. And we’re so sexy. So beautiful. So speedy. So alluring. Don’t look away. Don’t you dare look away. Not even to make love to your partner, who you supposedly love. Not even to smile and say ‘I love you’ with your eyes to poor beaten strangers. Not even to consider another human being compassionately. Not for the sake of love. Not for good.



This may appear an extreme assessment of modernity, I realize. Often, the truth feels that way. Like a knife too sharp, cutting too deeply. What’s offered here is a simple broad truth, doubtful any could argue with its core. Our ‘needs’ are being met, or so we think, by distractions from love and physical interaction.



Addiction is divided in two, addiction to substance and addiction to behavior. Often the two intertwine into destructive and sinking behavior. The result is an unhealthy human.



So what we have here on a macro scale, is a nation addicted to meaningless inconsequential and now proven harmful behaviors and substances. Hundreds of millions addicted and able to tell hundreds of their so-called ‘friends’ they hardly know, what they had for breakfast or what’s going on at work or who gives a fucking shit! Tell me in-person over dinner, or don’t tell me at all.





A. D. Blade

Death of a Situation

Hard to let
a situation die.
Especially a difficult
One.
One that two fought
harder for each,
than the other willed
to give—of
timing’s sake.
One where hurt
lies
and
Love
Tangled
and knotted
the
left undone.

Hard to let the
Dead stay dead.

quote

"That's what animals do, they move on."  -- Cesar Milan