{misc}
(for things that don't go elsewhere)
poems
day of no sun (lungs)
written and posted Wed 2020-09-09
not orange not red /
just no sun at all /
(i think i see brighter sky to the east? /
but my eyes have deceived me before) /
a parting gift on my last day at home /
our black barbecue speckled grey with ash /
falling like snow, but too small, too sparse /
a spider web on a basketball hoop catches white flecks /
burnt redwood bark from not so far away /
though the domesticated redwoods here, around me in every direction, /
they look oddly, poignantly beautiful in this diffuse ecliptical light //
the street lights went on at 11am /
yellow sky jaundicing everything /
some headlights on, i imagine their drivers a little confused /
a little depressed /
but not surprised //
it's quiet /
still and eery /
the birds are there, a few at least /
but hushed /
maybe for them the dawn never ended //
i search for the sun /
i can't find it /
though i know where it should be /
a plane flies north descending /
it flits in and out of existence /
moving between rolling patches of yellow-grey fog and brown-orange smoke /
it fades ghostly transparent, then disappears from view /
its sound remains for half a minute then also fades /
a strange echo //
found the sun eventually /
it's pale orange, though the sky around it distinctly pink /
it seems weak /
in a moment it's gone again /
“until next we meet” //
i drive south tomorrow /
to breathe the smoke of different fires /
hopefully tempered at least a little by pacific air /
not as bad as these fires /
but how could they be /
those are desert fires /
dessicated jeffrey pines /
sagebrush and joshua trees /
not expecting to be burnt like this /
expectations lie /
still better than millennia old redwoods /
my what a guilty thought to think //
i refresh my various air quality websites /
bookmarked in a folder named “air“ /
i criticize my parents for their obsession /
i criticize myself /
the indices often don't agree /
i fall back to my monitor /
more cheap chinese electronics i didn't need /
i reload the maps /
decode the color bars /
i see the smoke moving south tomorrow /
i wonder if it's following me /
maybe if it is at least my parents will get a break /
but it doesn't look like they will /
the red particulate drifts with the wind, an uncontrolled hemorrhage /
what blade could make that wound /
(i know the answer) /
i hope the projections are conservative /
the sensors overcalibrated /
i know it makes no difference //
my lungs ache lower left /
or maybe that’s my heart /
i imagine burning blood /
contorted capillaries /
deflated alveoli /
filled with gunk /
my metaphors are a bit much /
calamity makes us all dramatic types /
at least those of us privileged to suffer mainly as spectators //
but it’s too much to imagine fleeing forest denizens /
hands gripping shirts to mouths /
poor makeshift substitutes for the masks they forgot /
or couldn’t find /
or thought they didn't need /
or were told were only for “those people” //
it was already too much to imagine /
coughing seniors and knee-necked young people /
115° air stinging throats /
there are many ways to deprive a pair of lungs /
as we all have learned /
and keep re-learning //
2020: the year of the lung /
the year of hungry diaphragms, /
arteries aching for oxygen, /
unsated air hunger, /
breaths not taken //
something’s slipping away as months pass /
fast looking forward /
slow looking back //
i should learn to cope /
but maybe not /
i go back and forth /
as with everything /
to adapt, or not to forget /
move on, or stop and stare /
somehow i think it’s less of a choice than i imagine /
usually it is //
i was so full of wisdom in the spring /
knowledge comes from hardship /
right? /
if you’re paying attention /
but at summer's end it's more muddled /
for now, just breathe the air you have /
you never know what fresh hell is on the horizon /
lungs crushed under fallen timber dislodged by an earthquake /
lungs iced out by unseasonable cold /
lungs infected by disease borne on a rushed vaccination /
lungs exhausted by pointless screaming at empowered cheats /
lungs with breath depleted by unceasing arguments or crying /
as it is, it’s hard to hold in mind the ones i know are happening /
maybe best not to even try /
they look different when held together /
and not in a truer way /
and it’s tiring //
breathe deep the sorrow-filled air /
while you can /
and hope that’s all it’s filled with ///
last day of august
written and posted Mon 2020-08-31
i have no strong reaction really /
even if august is my least favorite month /
though september is my third least favorite /
(after july) /
(i’m not fond of summer) /
walking nonetheless /
peaceful morning /
birds are chattering but not in the foreground /
pleasant background but maybe a bit too quiet /
like they’re a bit shy perhaps //
the smoke is there, unmistakable by nose and eye to the sky /
bathed in too-orange morning light /
but at least as yet i don’t detect that familiar ache in my occipital lobe /
and for that give thanks /
and i guess i’m reassured /
the year’s rhythms carry on /
summer is cresting /
it may yet be hot again, it’s not too late for that /
but this weather today is what people imagine when they dream of moving to the golden promised land /
smoke notwithstanding /
nothing good comes free though /
the weather you dream of comes hand in hand with clockwork dry spells /
after all a sunny day is one generally without rain /
especially out west /
freak summer thunderstorms notwithstanding //
i like things a little damper and darker /
thus full of life /
but i don’t mind this place either /
its gnarled oaks and bay-scented tangles, /
its hills and marshes and of course, /
the coast with perching cypresses and rock-strewn “beaches” /
and its silent standing mountain watchers living off fog and sea spray /
and most of all, their ancient towering guardians /
now turned sentinels /
burning as they are /
spreading soot across the bay to valley, mountains, and high plains /
and i miss them /
they are the best part of coming home /
(other than the people) //
my day driving up made all the difference for my sanity /
wandering through the canyons carved through mountains rising straight from the world ocean /
my eyes up like a tourist in the city /
my lungs soothed by cool humid air /
my mind by scraggly dropping branches and meadows studded with familiar jewels, /
the golden monkeyflowers and purplish morning glories twining up whatever they find before them, /
giant pendulous pink something-flowers strung between trees a hundred feet up in the air /
like how did they even get there? /
and of course, the main attraction, those vines’ and flowers’ pole-straight monarchs /
the mist-damp redwoods /
though maybe less an attraction than a chance to stand among wizened elders /
or maybe it’s just that my particular celebrity fandom is arboreal in nature /
or i’m obsessed with imaginings of an ancient forested before-time /
that probably never was //
in any case i come not just for them and solitude on winding coastal highways /
i also revere the friends of the redwood /
which never seem to come along when suburban homeowners plant them in their yards /
the tanoak, fern, and trillium /
sycamore and bay /
white-berried lily-of-the-valley /
old walnuts with deeply darkly furrowed bark /
madrones and manzanitas with peeling skin more delicate than any old world birch /
redwood-sorrel like lawns of giant clovers beside canyon-bottom creeks /
and the most beautiful poison-oak /
nets of three-leaved lianas encircling old trunks /
“why not pick me, take me home” they asked /
leaves painted with crimson and gold as much as with oily pain /
“you’ve never felt that stinging rash before, who knows maybe you’re immune” /
caveat temptor /
(yes i know that doesn’t quite work in latin) //
i needed to see them all again /
nine months after that most recent late-morning hike through second-growth giants dwarfing all but the occasional douglas-fir /
though still probably mere neophytes compared to their enormous forebears /
clear-cut to build the cities that would soon crumble and burn in the wake of violently shifting tectonic plates /
but it’s been a long time since all that /
and newly sacred groves reliably returned after that genocide of all but a handful of hidden ancients //
that was a good day, that walk in january /
posing for photos with one parent standing on a curiously curved hillside doug-fir trunk, /
with the other inside the huge dome of roots of a tipped-over bay tree /
i was glad to be back on similar trails along similarly lovely ravines /
where the redwoods are a little smaller, a little scragglier, living as they do a hundred miles south, where there is a little less rain //
all that is bittersweet now /
well it was at the time too, because i knew i’d have for only a day what i want for weeks, for months /
for every day honestly /
but now moreso /
that day, three weeks and two days ago, coming as it did only days before punishing hundred-degree heat (sans air conditioning), /
then deafening thunder setting off car alarms across the city /
which i somehow managed to sleep through, /
attendant burning plasma arcing down from the sky, /
the purple-white roots of a hidden tree in the heavens appearing for only an instant at a time /
and then flames for endless thousands of acres /
chasing people off their homes with minimal warning, /
their principal sin being that they wanted to live close to the trees //
“mother nature is angry” some say /
but i think she does not get angry /
it is we who are angry /
is it reassuring to project one’s feelings onto gods? /
maybe i’ll try it sometime /
i’m not angry /
not about this at least /
i just miss my soggy five-finger ferns and incense-cedars bearing lime-green drooping sprays tipped with tiny cones //
soon enough i’ll be back with my cliff-clinging cacti /
avoiding yoga moms and burned-out surfers on my walks instead of tech assholes and people i didn’t like and/or don’t remember from high school /
farther from my parents and oldest friends /
closer to my stressors, and my independence /
farther from the burning redwoods /
closer to the crumbling cliffs home to beloved pines contorted by the wind and aridity into giant bonsai, /
still locked behind chained fences and unintentionally-angry signs /
posted to assuage fears of unlikely (but not completely unreasonable) imagined tragedies of viral transmission among the careless tourists /
doffing their masks to pose for the same insta shot as a thousand others have posted that day /
scrunching up their faces, jutting hips and flexing muscles just so //
and probably i’ll have left the redwood smoke just in time for the searing breath of santa ana to whip up flames in more southerly mountains, /
and fill the air with poisonous particulates only slightly different from the ones filling my lungs right now /
fewer notes of primeval forest, /
perhaps more of oily chaparral and dusty inland deserts //
i hate the summer as only a californian can ///