Bunny Sunday
Easter is a lonely business…
(Hillsdale Shopping Center, San Mateo, California 2018. See my other work here and here.)
How a cat gets it done
My fuzzy espionage friend Mikazuki and I are pleased to present you with this brief visual guide illustrating The Four Stages of Kitty-Induced Aggravation, as established by famous Swiss animal behaviorists in the 1960s. However, be advised this is for educational purposes only. My cat is a professional. Please don’t try this at home…
Stage 1, Denial: “Mika, you son of a bitch, DO NOT even think about it!”
Stage 2, Anger: “Goddamn it, Mika, get the FUCK down from there!!”
Stage 3, Bargaining: “Mika-chan, please don’t do that. Mika, please come down. Mika-chan?”
Stage 4, Acceptance: “Jesus Christ, he did it. I’m impressed. Now I need the step ladder.”
(Brisbane, California, March 2018. See more of Mika-chan and his brother Kuro-chan here. And see my other work here and here.)
How to knit a cell phone
There are no roses for us
but the ones we make
from Japanese paper
made in China, by the way,
that we buy in vast retail spaces
stocked with glue and glitter and ribbon
and blank books of impermanent quality
with which we build volumes
of memory and dreams.
The dreams are for ourselves, supposedly.
The memory is for anthropologists, hopefully.
They’ll see how we were
then marvel at how dull it all was,
and wonder why we wasted our time
compiling scrapbooks,
seeing our children,
or writing poems.
And they will envy us that we tried,
goddamn we really tried,
and that we left behind for them
enough of a world to pity.
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft stores….
(Michaels, Colma, California, March 2018. See my other work here and here.)
Ink jets and heart attacks
She ran the dead’s carpeting
throughout the office supply stacks.
She wanted a toy, not pencils nor tacks.
She was bright, shiny cuteness
in an Office Depot®,
or was it an OfficeMax®?
You know,
wherever the corporate types go
for overpriced ink and free heart attacks…
(At Staples in South San Francisco, California, February 2016. See my other work here and here.)
Wheel chair blue
He had stationed himself in front of a Grocery Outlet discount supermarket on Bayshore Boulevard in San Francisco. I had just stopped by for some Dr Pepper. I’m addicted to Dr Pepper. As I walked toward him he asked me if I could help him out a little. A little was about all I had jangling loose in my pocket so I gave him all three bucks of it. He thanked me for the money and said he appreciated the help because he’d had two heart attacks and lost his job while recovering from the second one.
“That’s why I’m in this wheel chair pretty often,” he said.
“I can relate,” I said, “I had a heart attack myself fourteen years ago, three weeks shy of my 40th birthday.”
That look people get when they think they’ve found a kindred spirit flashed across his face, and he started telling me details about his first heart attack. Frankly I had no desire to swap myocardial infarction stories. I still periodically suffer from PTSD because of mine and talking about it has never helped. That shit just gives me nightmares I don’t need. So I told him very apologetically that I really needed to get my shopping done and then went inside the store.
I was in and out of the supermarket with my Dr Pepper in less than five minutes, but when I emerged the man in the wheel chair was gone. And I felt bad about that, because I was going to give him three dollars change from the $10 bill I had just used to pay the clerk for my liquid fix. But I did feel good that our lives had intersected, even if minutes later they probably had diverged forever. I hope he felt the same way. It’s better to know people in a few fleeting minutes and let them enrich your life than to never know them at all.
And I wonder if he wheeled himself out of the grocery store parking lot or walked pushing the chair in front of him. I hope he walked.
(San Francisco, California, February 2018. See my other work here and here.)
A priestess of the check-out line
Life is balance, popcorn a paltry modern offering to Demeter and the famished New Microwave Gods…
(San Francisco, California, February 2018. See my other work here and here.)
Nakano laundromat
At a small laundromat in Tokyo
I loitered outside to see how people go.
They were slow.
It was November and they were slow.
But in Tokyo slow is much faster
than what seems fast anywhere else you go…
(Nakano 5-chome, Tokyo, November 2015. See my other work here and here.)
Cupid’s Valentine moon
Tonight the moon was less than full but more than willing,
the kind of moon that inspires killing
lovers, hearts, and alcohol,
this versatile moon can do it all.
And if the moon isn’t worthy, it’s still better than you.
It never killed for a temple or pew.
So sleep your dreams, and dream of sleep.
The moon is never ours to keep…
(Brisbane, California, February 2018. See my other work here and here.)
Textbook dog
Here, take a minute to look at these photographs of a textbook case of dog. Her name is Allie Anne and she belongs to a friend of mine here in Brisbane, California.
There, isn’t that better? This is cheering you up a bit, isn’t it?
I thought so.
Seriously, looking at these photos has got to be better than whatever dismal and infuriating news reports you were reading about the fucking moron in the White House who is systematically tearing our country down and apart with his stupidity, ignorance, and racism.
Yeah, I know. It’s continually depressing and hard to summon either courage or hope.
Hey, I know, I’ll look at the dog with you. Let’s be calm for a few minutes and just sit here together and look at the happy dog.
(Brisbane, California, January 2018. See my other work here and here.)
Glow shop
Before my face scraped the road,
I saw a shop that glowed.
I couldn’t get inside,
So the tender ghost without me died.
This freed me to further travel,
And continue to unravel
Secrets that I sought.
Truths that can’t be bought
In illuminated shops,
Found at bus stops,
Or drunk in bars of great divinity.
My secrets aren’t within onyx superstructures of great art,
Or in the meat sack we call the human heart.
So resting overnight I watched the shop glow.
By morning the sun rose so fast
It seemed retrograde slow.
There were places I had to go,
People I had to be.
More ghosts I had to fetch,
And a love I longed to catch.
For decades this place was a bodega (the Coca Cola sign), then a retail shop (the India Rose sign), now apparently it’s a private residence.
(Brisbane, California, January 2018. See my other work here and here.)