--WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO EACH OTHER?

 

…Happy Monday.  It’s gray and gloomy here.  I may turn on my office fireplace for the first time in a long time.

Hopefully you’ll have the best week ever.

…Someone said this: “Life shrinks or expands in relation to one’s courage.”  It makes sense to me.

…I have two new poems up at Verse Wisconsin for their political Issue:

http://versewisconsin.org/Issue110/poems/kuntz.html
 

Last Night with Lincoln

 

Last night I had a microbrew with Lincoln.

He told me a joke about
a slave trader and St. Peter.
I’d never seen Abe that happy,
so when he finished and slapped my back
I expected him to say, No worries,
it’ll all work itself out in the end,
but he didn’t.
Instead he tipped his hat and said,
“Get busy, Len.”

 

 

My Brother’s War

 

He went in thin and clean,

came out bearded and wrecked,
his skin inked with stories of that bloody violence.
Got himself a Harley,
shiny black, pearl-colored.
I took the side car.

We rode through waving wheat and saloon towns,

places where the doors swung at an angle,
roads blocked by cattle or filled with angry dogs.
He stared straight ahead the whole time,
that war he was in a stain,
a skin stitched over his eyes.

 

--DON’T HOLD BACK

 
…I have been playing with the cutest puppy ever and now I want a dog.  Everyone should probably have a dog.  A cute one anyway.

…Have you ever seen the movie “Big Fish?”  It’s adorable.  I love it.

“Rent” is not such a great film, though the some of the songs were still able to give me shivers even after having seen the play three times and the movies just as many

Here are some things for the weekend:

-"I like a man who attempts the impossible." J.P. Morgan

-"The world will always want a drink."

-"There's a difference between loving someone and loving the idea of them."
-"Oh, here is the rest of my life.  It's finally arrived." Gillian Flynn, "Gone Girl"

-"Growing up, if we were having an argument, my mother thought that was great.  At least we were talking."

-"If you're going to get beat, get beat on your best pitch."
-"I have so many ideas I want to talk about, but if you talk about too many, no one's going to hear you."
-"Everything out on the table.  You're not happy today?  I wanna know why.  Let's fix it and move on.  I got that from my mother."

-"Every once in a while, you go a little too far.  And that's okay. -C. Christie

 -"A book should offer hope.  It should lift up the reader." John Dufresne

 
-"I require only three things of a man: he must be handsome, ruthless and stupid." Dorothy Parker

-"If you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed." David Viscott

-"Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself." Harvey Fierstein

-"The ability to concentrate and to use time well is everything." Lee Iococca

-"you will not confront yourself
so you leap to the aid of others"
-d.a. levy

-"It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." Chinese proverb

-"What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has, or how he is regarded by others." Arthur Schopenhauer

-"If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice how he acts when he loses money." New England Proverb

-"Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself." Abraham Heschel

-"It is better to wear out one's shoes than one's sheets." Genoese Proverb

 
-"It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place that I am not." Paul Auster

--YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO

 …I just saw where Newsweek is no longer going to be in print, starting sometime in 2013.  That sort of makes me sad.  I guess I’m an old person.  That seems to be a harbinger for other magazines like Time and Rolling Stone.  Especially Rolling Stone, which has a whopping 82 pages in their last issue.

…I got my copy of “Lost In Thought” magazine.  What a terrific looking journal.  The photography is outstanding.  Even my son said so.  I have a short piece in it called, “New Skin.”

Here it is:

                                                                    New Skin

 

            He did not say I was pretty.  Instead he said, “I can make you forget.”

            No one had ever uttered anything so bold.

            He said, “Let me see.”

            So I showed him everything.  I unbuttoned, unhinged and uncovered all of my layers. 

            I let him touch me—there and there, and even there.  I figured it was part of the healing process, that scars were really just wounds on the way to new skin.

            He never bought me gifts.  He didn’t believe in them.  He said, “This is so much better,” and he touched me again.

            He was hard to satisfy.  He made me feel rabid, incomplete instead of sutured.  He kept me hoping, guessing, on edge.  And in that way he made me forget the other thing.

            His hands had fingers, of course they did, but these felt like velvet pulleys.  I enjoyed them and then I didn’t.  Then it was different and he said, “Hey,” and I said, “Not that way.  Love me.  Me,” and he said, “We had a deal, didn’t we?”

 

            I saw him again, for the first time in months.  We were in a crowded coffee shop.  A girl was giggling.  He had foam on his nose and top fang.  I wasn’t sure if he’d done it on purpose.

            I reached inside my sweater and fingered one long mark that dropped to my waist.  The scars of men might linger, I decided then, but I would move on, I would live.

--WHO SAYS YOU HAVE TO?

…It’s the start of a new week and I’m back from Portland, albeit a little beat up.

One of the best things in life is laughing until you cry.  I did that a few times this weekend.

…I’m a list-maker.  To Do lists anyway.  It helps keep me grounded, focused.  There’s a lot of my list right now, so time to get to it, but first here are some things to like:

-"Being a father is the only thing that lives up to the hype. When I'm with my daughter - when we're doing homework together or hanging out watching a movie or kicking  a soccer ball around or doing any of the things we do - that's the only time I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing." Aaron Sorkin

 

-"Writing is making sense of life.  You've worked your whole life and hopefully you've made sense of one small area." Nadine Gordimer

-"Everyone who has ever taken a shower has had an idea.  It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it that makes a difference." Nolan Bushnell

-"I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend against its force....My love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day." Og Mandino

-"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." John F. Kennedy

-"You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant.  You must make it the best of its kind." Gore Vidal

-"Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go say a prayer for him." Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"

-"The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good." Brian Tracy

“...when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.” Henry Miller

 

--HOPE THEY NEVER END THIS SONG

…I'm in Portland/Vancouver having fun crony time with friends that make me happy, that make me laugh.

Presently I'm at a hipster coffee shop where you pay $3 for a drip coffee and they bake their own bread products in front of you.  The place is packed.  Apparently we don't mind throwing our money away.

Why is it that espresso bars only sell fattening scones and over-sized muffins?  Is there nothing healthy to eat?

…I missed the debates last night.  I heard Biden was a bully and expected as much.  I'm a democrat, but he's a little full of himself.

…I think it would be horrible to live you whole live alone.  That's one of my biggest fears.  I guess I have abandonment issues.  I don't know how Thoreau did it.

…Your weekend is going to be fantastic, I just know it. 

Here are some things to think about:

…Through September 23rd, 391 people have been murdered in Chicago, more than in NYC and more than LA (212)

…American income is done almost $5,000 per year from its peak of $54,900 in 1999

…Auto insurers saya 1 billion extra gallons of gas were burned each year from 1960-1999 because Americans are weighing at 20 pounds heavier.  (Yikes.)

…Teens birth rates fell 8%:

2010 -34.2%
2011 -31.3%
 

…Percentage of households with outstnding student debt:

1989: 9% -$9,634
2000: 19% -$26,682

…Highest paid celebrity couples:

#1 --Beyonce and Jay-Z
#2 --Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen
#3 --David and Victoria Beckham

…After 30 years of marriage, Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman are divorcing

…Lil Wayne had his 109th top 100 song on Billboard, besting Elvis's record of 108

…Facebook now has 1 billion monthly users, double the 500 million it hit in July 2010

…The longest running Broadway shows:

#1 -The Phantom of the Opera
#2 -Cats
#3 -Les Miserables (my fave)

…The nation's most promiscuous cities:

#1 -Portland, OR
#2 -Seattle
#3 -Pittsburg
#4 -Miami
#5 -San Francisco
#6 -Dallas (Really? Yep.)

…20% of all Americans have more than 4 credit cards

34% have 2-3
26% have none

…While Facebook is valued at over $110 Billion, My Space was recently bought for a paltry $35 million by Justin Timberlake and group

…There are 46.2 million Americans currently living in poverty

…There are 11 million illegal immigrants already living in America

…Last year 163 police officer were killed in the line of duty

…Last year Americans spent $370 million on Halloween costumes…for their pets.  (Really.)

…In 1991 there were 93,000 knee replacements surgeries.

243,000 operations were performed in 2010

…Walmart, Target and Kmart all opened their very first store in the same year, 1962

…When did you start saving for your children’s college education?

59% -Within their first year
17% -Ages 1-3
17% -Before they were born
7% -After age 4

..Where Social Security payments go:

70% -Retired workers
19% -Disabled workers
11% -Survivors of deceased workers

--FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU

...I listened to Meatloaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell” on the treadmill this morning.  Talk about a rock opera.  Some clever writing there.

…Tomorrow I go to Portland for crony time.  Tonight I’m going to a poetry reading at Park Place Books in Kirkland.  A friend is reading and I might read as well.  If I do, I think I’ll read “Apples” which was published in Xenith Magazine.

It’s pretty much 100% autobiographical.

 

Apples

A murderer’s hands is what I always thought,

the berry-stains having settled into the whorl of my fingerprints and
under the jagged canopies of my nails.
I’d scour my skin with steel wool that looked like a ball of pubic hair
but showed no mercy as its metal bristles
ripped away the evidence.
I had tried to pick with gloves once but it slowed me down
and, despite my young age, I was the fastest of them all,
adults and veteran immigrants.
In the fields was the closest I ever came to being king.

Ragamuffins, we had nothing

yet we were rich in summer.
I was anyway,
my berry-picking money so light yet a weight slithered inside a back pocket.
Juice splotches marked the bills like blood bombs,
still that was George Washington’s face regardless.

I had brothers but not friends.

Even the Mexicans kept their distance,
me skinny and tall enough to be a monster to them,
some white boy Godzilla.

Just before dusk

I had the habit of passing through the weed-wasted cemetery
that butted up to our trailer park.
It smelled of sewage and clay and
the cadaver gray headstones looked like absurd slices of toast
or doors sinking into the sun-baked earth at an angle, aged and crippled,
waiting to be handed a brace.
Some had been sprayed with graffiti,
fake neon names slurred across the chiseled real ones,
though no one seemed to object
or ever even visit.
 
I’d establish relationships with the dead,
befriending them in a way I’d never have the courage to do in real life.
Lawrence Lemley, deceased 1956, became a wise uncle,
Ida Schwimmer, 1932, my sixth grade teacher.
I courted a few of the girls that I expected had been pretty,
one who’d died a year older than me. 
She had eyes the color of a Holiday Inn swimming pool and hair brown and bouncy like root beer.
I told her I was going to be rich someday.
I explained it was berries now, but the real money was in apples.
Once I could find me an orchard that’d take a twelve year old, I’d be set, I said,
and I felt myself blush a fire
when she answered with a whisper that
she believed me.

--I'M NOT USUALLY LIKE THIS

 

…Happy new week to you.

…I don’t know why I like quotes so much, but I do. 

Maybe it’s because I’m always impressed how eloquent people can be, how others can make sense of the world or emotions.
Perhaps I wish I was that smart.

…Here are some I like a lot:

"I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one...not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that; Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."
-MLK Jr.

"No one can write a book.  J.K. Rowling can't.  Tom Clancy can't.  All you, I and those other writers can do at any one time is write part of a book.  If those parts are well-planned, eventually they will fit together to form and entire book." Gene Perret

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come." Milan Kundera, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

"At first dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable." Christopher Reeve

"I have stretched ropes steeple to steeple: garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance." Rimbaud

"What do I know of a man's destiny?  I could tell you more about radishes." Samuel Beckett

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." Albert Camus

"Writing is nothing more than a guided dream." Jorge Louis Borges

"Creativity Takes Courage." Henri Matisse

"I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination." Henry James

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading!” Rilke

"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals." Samuel Ullman

-“As a writer, we have to walk through the door labeled: “ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE’.”

-“I sometimes still here all those negative voices of my youth.”
-“You’ve got to want this more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life.”  --Debbie Macomber