THE BRAVE NEW LAND

There’s a rule and two others that I found while navigating the Ramon Crater. Back in Boulder there was a devil’s thumb, but this was different. In the crater I rediscovered three of them, rules of thumb, rules to live by, and rules that were meant. The devil is fantasy, I always suspected, but the cultural paradigms sent down in time would never relent! So, in the crater, I stuck my head in the desert, into the sands of time, and I learned as much as I could, till mostly I was spent. And spent I was, coming up from the barren lands down below, on the globe we live upon. I kept learning long after sundown, the rules to live by … and, until now, not making a sound. Rule one I learned from my father, as we hiked in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the highlands of California. We arrived at a campsite daily, with packs upon our backs, to find that others had left things behind. My family was small, only four with my mother and brother, but we learned that leaving a place better than when we c

There’s a knowing left under the world that reminds me of me. I think it sometimes, this knowing, but it leaves soon thereafter, spitting nonsense into my memory of it being. The life it left always tilts my reservoir of love but never touches my lips up, never begs to begin. I sing, I dance, slamming it out unseen, but always tasting the wishing in which it began ~ image:  Etrog in Space, 10-2016  

The alarm split my head open as it went off. My new phone wasn’t normalized yet, and school had just started for the year. It was loud and shocking, but my day needed to begin, nevertheless. Swimming through tasks uncompleted and filling all of my inboxes, I awoke and shuffled towards my morning routine—bathroom, dressing in the dark, tip-toeing downstairs to awaiting animals … feeding, coffee, and contemplation of things to come. Fat ran into the house when I opened the back door, our friendly neighborhood cat, instead of sauntering through my legs for food as I tripped in the dark out onto the back deck. It was strange. I saw Pizza hesitate on the deck-rail, his front paw fluttering as if testing the air for safety. But, with a clink and a spatter, the cat food landed into the metal bowls secured to the kitchen window-sill with wooden cut-out frames and super-sheva. I returned to the kitchen to begin to feed the dogs, Roxie and Dude, scooped Dude’s food kernels with a different pla

Separated by the Rocky Mountain range of craggy peaks, I was forced to reinvent myself by the sheer fact that I was physically cut-off from my past; I had to rely upon the foundation that had been set down by ancestors who once had moved west. I moved east and landed in Colorado, then perched onto the foundation of a suburban home built the year I was born. There, I began to search for work … and three years in I began again to paint. After stints splinted with real estate, museum work, and cabinet making, I carved into my suburban home a woodworking studio for days and a painting studio by night. Hence, after tucking my freshly bathed jammy-clad boys into bed with a story read between lines, pages skipped in anticipation, and then with a parting kiss to the lips of my love, I disappeared down below the earth into a basement brightened with paint to light up dreams of doorways invented to ascend. I built there a tiny staircase with a curving rail up through a hole in the wall leading i

I want to scream every time I think about relieving myself. What is this damn machine I’ve been stuck between?! My cells are conspiring, my path is obscured, and my teeth need to be cleaned?! It’s just not fair that I signed on for a life-changing path, a cairn or cornerstone to admire in pathetic undertones of the unknown. There is a plan, I feel in the soul of what I brought with me, but the feet of this thing I ride in have another design entirely. There are vibrations propelling me into this strange and viscous place, time dilating then expanding and becoming null and void because of its birth, because of mine being me… I spew forth matter that has no relevance, not matter at all. What matters is the meaning behind the expulsion of fluids, the excrement left behind in this world of ‘no matter.’ Whatever… I chose it, supposedly, when I was under the duress of wonder, wandering in a place I can no longer remember. So, the corner of chaos that I once knew no longer exists, and just ro

We have built our mind’s eye to the point of blindness. There are a few coughs and spasms, still, but in essence we have moved onto a realm where each individual is aware, and pissed off at the world’s refractory-insanity. We believe in mankind and at the same time we spit in its general direction, all the while stuck between what we think and what we believe. We laugh at ourselves, but not really, begging a question between what was funny and what we now see. The corporate shadow engulfs us all, money begging our attention, yet we know deep inside that once upon a time a soul moved the entire scene. We are all blinded by our own enterprise, blinded into knowing, and totally unable to see. 

My background is a secular one, but as a child I was surrounded by quite a few churches strewn about. So, when I was very little ... there was a time when we were forced to go to Sunday school; and, we were disturbed by every moment of it. It was a different era, you see, where children were seen but not heard. So, I guess you can only imagine it if you didn’t share this same experience in some form or another. Later, after coming of age and attending art school, my mind told me to push all the limits—nothing was off the table—at least until the year I was propositioned by both of my favorite teachers, one female and one male, to take our relationship to the next level; not in an obtuse way, mind you, but very respectfully and considerate of my feelings and blossoming desires at the time. Thankfully, I had already met my soul-mate and learned enough under-grad-world-religion to know that I was actually a Jew born into the body of a Goy. I loved growing up as a non-Jew, but not as much

Fur growing up upon my floors, I sweep and vacuum it but it keeps building up … little doggies and kitties gather in corners where life in our house won’t disturb, and gathering can continue as days move together to form months, even years. Our white dog, Bongo, once brought into our home, has since vanished to other realms. He left looking into my eyes as I cradled his head in my lap, petting his fur, all the time knowing that it would never mix again with the black fur back home, to end gray and unseen, and then gathering in corners until our time was at an end. The black fur is Dude’s, and always has been, at least during our stay here in what we refer to as the middle of the east on our planet. Dude was our first dog in the Holy Land. Then Fat, born inside a dumpster, showed up looking for food and a night well spent. Pizza followed soon thereafter, as a cat that would be indoors, but in the end … just … wasn’t.  After Bongo replaced us with thought-clouds of wonder, we found Putzk