BIRTDAY MONTH 2o16 WK o3

Sunday, May 15, 2o16
Sundays. A lazy day traditionally for the Woods clan. A very sad day as I remember it, it's like your whole life ends with the end of the weekend. I don't know if that's grammatically correct or poetic that last phrase,   . . . your whole life ends as the weekend ends.  Any better? Maybe not. I'll keep it anyway. Yes, Sundays seemed like graveyard time to me as a kid. Still does. You know that feeling you get sometimes when you feel as if all eternity, all existence is slowing down, that if it stops (and sometimes it feels like it will) all life will also stop. Sundays. A mourners' parade to the gloomy days of Mundane Monday . . . Tortuous Tuesday . . . Wistful Wednesday . . . Theoretical Thursday . . . but resurrection on Freedom Friday . . . I wrote a poem about my family that tries to capture that dreary existence we all call Sunday:

My Mother’s Day

Sundays were always lazy days

around our house. Dad would lie
on the couch drinking beer, watching
the Figure Eight races on TV, nodding
off every now and then. A single snort
from his open mouth would wake
him with a start. He’d take another
sip of beer, wipe his eyes and fall
right back into whatever dream he was dreaming
without even noticing that car 56 had just been
rammed into oblivion by a Plymouth Fury.

Mom busied herself in the kitchen. Doing what?

I don't know, motherly things, I suppose.
She'd scurry about all daylong from the kitchen sink
to the  refrigerator. Always looking for something
but never finding whatever it was she kept looking for.

Me and Brother Dennis would sit on

the back-porch listening to Mother
banging around in the kitchen
and mumbling to herself.

We never talked my brother and me.

We just sat on the back porch steps
digging at the dirt with the heels
of our tennis shoes quietly dreading
school on Monday. We hated school
almost as much as we hated each other.

And my sister? She moved out ‘long ago

to our Aunt Ella and Uncle Ace's ranch  
in the high desert. I never knew exactly
what she was doing up there so far away
from her family, her real family. I never
understood my sister or her moods.

Come to think of it, I never understood

any of the women in my life. That’s
probably the reason why I live alone.

Anyways,

it’s Sunday, Mother’s Day. As I write
this poem, I wonder what my mother’s doing . . .
probably walking to the refrigerator, to the kitchen sink,
stopping to fold and refold the dish towels, the cloth napkins
her mother had willed to her two years before I was born.
She still searches for that something she could never find.
Woodie o5-13-12 (rewrites o5-11-14)

Thursday, May 19, 2016

So, I've had this idea of creating a comic strip based on my friend Michael. Michael is a recent graduate of OU! Yes, he is now one of Dylan's "Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift" generation. An interesting kid living in one of the most interesting towns I've ever known. I know, I can hear the eyebrows raising and the skeptical voices shouting out, "What about Paris, New York, London?!" Well, I am sure that they are very lovely, creative and absolutely cool places to live . . . but when you look at them in the cold, hard light . . . Brother, they ain't nothing but glitter dust compared to good ol' Norman-town.

Went to dinner with David and his family. Got invited to go with Brendan to go see a movie this weekend! Highly honored. Brendan's a interesting guy. Don't know his whole story but a very creative guy, smart. He has a movie review blog, The Norman Nerd. He writes really "beautiful," very creative reviews. He's a hell of a lot better writer than I am. I'm jealous.

A few entries back, I talked about love, about how I missed being in love. I may have misspoke a bit. To be as honest, as it is possible to be honest when writing a public blog . . . I'm not sure I've ever been in love. Does that sound odd, maybe callus? Probably. Look, I've been told my whole life that "love is the answer." Never mind what the question is because nothing matters other than, "love is the answer." , I mean to say, people have demanded that I love other people, and I'm not all sure I ever have. Damn it. Am I just too self-centered? Too much a loner? Maybe I'm sociopathic. Nah! I'm not all Silence of the lLmbs. I'm crazy but not QUAZY!  YET! I need to think more about this . . . I'm guessing. But let me leave on this bit of thought. Maybe love is an illusion, a shadow within a ghost or a shadow within a shadow of a ghost.

2:17 p.m.

I am having an alien moment . . . day. It's true. I've never quite felt at home here on this planet, this plane of existence. I could never get my physical balance quite right. Oh, I tried but put me in a crowd of you  . . . you Earth Thingies and all the instructions given to me by . . . those in charge . . . just escape my body and computer chip brain leaving me a stumbling, mumbling mess of  . . . flesh . . . well, simulated flesh. I rather admire you . . . you Earth Thingies. How you are capable of keeping your balance on only two legs! And seeing with only two eyes? How do you manage to see anything at all. No wonder the other . . . beings . . . from other . . . worlds consider your species to be nearsighted . . . if not totally blind.  No wonder we can run around among you with you barely realizing that we . . . are . . .  here!

Friday, May 2o, 2o16, {2:06 a.m.}

I can't force it. There are no magic words, there's not a lullaby with a soothing enough melody that can lull me to sleep. My fantasies, my stories that I always visualize when I close my eyes for the night . . . I mean, the morning . . . work like counting sheep  . . . but not tonight . . . I mean, this early morning. I'm hoping that by three my body and mind will have had enough consciousness. My poetic-self is waiting to stroll the shadows, speak to the many fantastical creatures that live there. Perhaps I'll dream but it's not necessary. This "waking life" is dream enough for me. I prefer the darkness, the empty void of a dreamless sleep. It always makes opening my eyes into another day a BIG surprise! like rising from the grave, waking every morning is small miracle of resurrection. Jesus must of smiled when he rose and strolled out of his tomb. I bet he appreciated life even more than before.

4:42 a.m.
My eyes have betrayed me once again selling me to the deaf darkness morning brings. Night has become my master and no amount of pleading seems to move her highness to show me any pity. I am doomed to an eternity of sleep depravation. Unconsciousness is nothing more than fairytale, an empty equation that proves only that science is a myth and all the heroes that Ancient Greece produced were nothing more than smoke caught in the wheels of the ceiling fan above my head. Might as well make the coffee, slap in a CD (Blind Faith is playing on the laptop) and await the inevitable dawn to tap at the window blinds.

Saturday, May 21, 2o16

I'm surprised that I made it through all of Friday with only 2 hours of sleep in my gas tank. But I did. No nap, no closing the eyes for a minute. Went to OKC with David. He had an eye exam thing at one of those BIG ass buildings downtown. I was a little freaked out with the number of old people patients there in the eye doctor's waiting room sitting in uncomfortable chairs, sitting there watching the huge flat screen TV (some kind of gardening show playing) just waiting for one of the security locked doors to open and for one of the extremely young receptionists to callout a name. "Jenny!" I watched Jenny slowly rise from her chair. She used a cane as she waddled over to secured door #1, her right hand gently covering her right eye as if she was afraid it would fall out and roll around on the floor. Door #2 opened. "David?" I watched my friend disappear into the other unseen room. I heard the security on the door click into place. All of a sudden, I got a chill. This place was so creepy with its security doors and overly pleasant employees. It must be a trap. A trap for old people. They weren't doing eye exams. They were engaged in the harvesting old people organs for . . . for . . . okay, it was a silly idea. What would they want with old people organs? But I couldn't shake the eerie feeling that there was something wrong with this place. It finally dawned on me. This wasn't an optometrist's office! I was a top secret government lab where they test teleportation devises. Yeah, that made sense. They would use old people for that sort of thing. Old people are expendable.  Damn it! How am suppose to get home? David does all the driving! This is bullshit, man!

BIRTHDAY MONTH 2o16 WK o2

I'm wondering where's the rain that the weather girl promised me this morning. She did much more than just forecast the weather. She did her best to scare the shit out of her viewers wanting them, no doubt, to take the damn weather seriously. But not a drop of wet. A brisk wind shook violently the leaves on the elm tress that line Trout Avenue, but even that wasn't much. In her defense she isn't forecasting the weather just for Norman-town, she's covering the whole state and I suppose it must be raining somewhere in Oklahoma just not here.

Started writing poetry about 2oo4- o5. Yeah I had written some before that but I didn't get "serious" until the 21st century while living in Las Vegas, NM. A lot of the stuff I wrote there was in the moment type stuff. You know, whatever was going on at the time I was actually writing. I think they call the style "stream of consciousness." Basically, you just start writing whatever is going on in your mind at the time and you write and write and write in one session until you just can't help but put the pen down. Then you let it rest for a week or two, go back and clean it up a bit because stream of consciousness writing can be pretty messy. Sometimes, when I go back in to clean it up, it's in such bad shape that I can't even tell what the hell I was trying to write about. Anyway, I'm in my BIRTHDAY MONTH and I'm realizing that ALL the poetry I've written has pretty much NOT been stream of consciousness, in the moment, but stories about my past! Ain't that funny? Yeah, there were moments the writing was  "in the moment" but the soul of my poetry is triggered by my past. "Everything old is new again."

Today was Mother's day. My mom passed last year. I did celebrate the holiday for my sister. She and I are all that's left of the original Woods family. Anyway, I took her out last week to see the movie Mother's Day. We had a nice time. I wrote maybe a couple of poems about my mother and father. I did write one each for both on their respective days, Father 's Day and Mother's Day are the poems names. I'll share with you the one I wrote for mom. You know, on second thought maybe not. Something else maybe but not that one. Lets see . . . Maybe tomorrow I'll think of something that you haven't yet seen. Until then.

Monday, May o9, 2o16
A gentle sunshower. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't seen the clouds gathering in the East. Beautiful blend of gray and white. I decided to go out  (barefoot) and catch a few shots of it. Surprised, my head bobbed and weaved frantically trying to escape . . . raindrops?! My body was confused at first wanting to run back to the safety of the front porch . . . but my mind calmed  it down. "Silly body! It's just a few drops." Finally, my entire being (mind and body) came to the conclusion that this little bit of rain wasn't a threat and that it actually felt good on my skin.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

This evening I glanced out the window and noticed this big whole in the sky! My primitive subconscious turn away in fright. Well, surely a hole in sky is something to be horrified by. But my poetic minded beast that shares my subconscious with my primitive side immediately turn my eyes back towards the phenomena. It was only a matter of a moment before my civilized self, my

pragmatic snob of a rational being scoffed at both the poet and the primitive because there wasn't a hole in the sky at all! Just a little patch of sunlight that had found its way in the narrowest crack in the clouds formation. They were coming together. That was all there was to it. Winds from the south (and perhaps the north) were pushing the two cloud banks together. Nothing frightening or poetic about it. Just the "laws of nature." You know I will not chide my primitive or poetic thoughts for making something out of nothing. And neither will I rebuke my pragmatic mind for its lack of imagination. No, it definitely has served me well . . . at times. To be honest, my primitive and my poetic sides too often have gotten me in troubles both physical and spiritual. The two of them are sometimes more childish and headstrong, reacting to situations before they've thought things out. But I must admit that the Primitive and the Poet of my existence have always been far more adventurous than my Pragmatic mother who has, so far, kept me alive.

Thursday, May 12, 2016
Walked around The Corner a bit yesterday. It's starting to warm up outside a bit more than my pale, cancer prone skin cares for but that's why I buy the sunscreen. We sat outside the Starbucks and drank cold coffee. I got to thinking about the kite store that used to be in the space the Starbucks now occupies. The kite store was there back in the 80s. Lots of wonderful superhero kites, box kites, big kites little kites of all the colors you could dream of at that kite store. They even had this long (expensive) dragon kite that if you could get it into the air wiggled about on the wind like a giant worm! A beautiful thing but way too expensive for me. I think it was about $100.00!

I'm not sure how much I like being on The Corner anymore especially in the spring. Too many beautiful, young women. Not kidding. Norman-town may have the most beautiful women in the world! So, why is that a thing to be sad about? Dude, I'm sixty-eight years old (almost), and there's no way ANY woman would be interested in me. That's the only thing I really miss about being younger. I say younger because I was always the "older guy" when I lived in Norman-town. Yeah, I was only twenty-five years old when I started at OU Drama Department but everybody else was eighteen to twenty, with a smidgeon of twenty-one year olds. So, anytime they needed to cast somebody as a grandfather in a play I was they guy they came too. I wore so much white shoe polish in my hair . . . Hey! Maybe that's the reason I'm bald now, damn it!
I don't want to go on and on about it but I miss female companionship. being in love . . . if I ever was in love. Maybe once to an English girl. Yeah, I was for a minute or two, I guess. I wrote a silly poem (or two) about my "life in love." Here's one of them:

Rambo In Love

I've heard so many say,

"I'll never fall in love again."
I myself have said the same
at least twenty-seven times a day.

Yes, I confess I'm perpetually falling,

yes, tumbling head over heels in love
like... Sylvester Stallone as Rambo
in First Blood.

Remember?

When he takes that leap of faith
off a fifty foot cliff and lands in a tree,
crashing through branch after branch
until BAM! He slams to the ground with
that deep, beastie sound, "UGH!"

Yep, that's me.

Constantly re-stitching my
heart while running away from love's
baying bloodhounds.

I really can't help myself. Every time

I look into a young girl's blue eyes
or hear the ring of her sensual voice
or feel that gentle touch of soft hands brushing
'gainst mine, I'm gone! So hopelessly, so endlessly,
so recklessly... in love!

Totally devoted? Most true…

of course, for a moment or two
‘til something horrible happens. Perhaps
it's just a single word spoken out of tune,
a blemish appearing quite suddenly on her face
from some simple change in light... or fate.
Gad, what a fright! There's nothing more
loathsome than an imperfect lover!

So again, as before, I'm off, off to discover

another love that, hopefully, won't let me down.
Metaphorically speaking... I've had more wives
than Mickey Rooney.

Woodie 5-24-08

Saturday, My 14, 2o16
What are you saying?! Already? really, the last day in the 2nd week of my BIRTHDAY MONTH?! Alright, I believe you. I'm sure . . . well, pretty sure . . . you wouldn't LIE to me . . . or would you?! {suspicious frown}

What a glorious night last night! Art Walk at full tilt springtime. People everywhere and, of course, David knowing EVERYBODY had to stop and talk to each and every one of them. We spent three hours at Art Walk and two hours and forty-five minutes of it was spent waiting on David to finish his anthropological questioning of every old friend he ran into. "So, what's been happening with you since 1968?" And of course people being people. they told him everything that could possibly happen to a human being in forty-eight years, and not five years at a time, or even by individual years . . . more like day to day for almost fifty years! Okay, it really wasn't that bad. Or was it?! {smile}

Saw some wonderful digital art by a very young artist, maybe in high school but not even sure she's that old. But dude her "comic book" style surrealism is just gorgeous! And I didn't get even ONE pic of her work. Stupidest question I asked last night was to this kid. "Do you have a studio?" She stared at me for a moment and, "No, I just do all this in my bedroom and wherever I'm at, at the time. Don't need anything

but my computer." And she wasn't being flip to the old guy. She was sitting there all the time creating a new piece. There are brilliant children running around on the streets of Norman-town.

Here's the thing. As much as I love being an audience member watching other artists create their art, I am also feeling a real jealously towards them. Take this guy named Caleb (pic on your right). This dude rocks the blues better than most. I mean, this cat burns the lyrics in midair with his raspy dragon voice. And the audience eats it up. This guy is  . . . fucking good! And I dig the hell out of watching him perform. BUT I also envy him and all the other artists out there because in another life THAT was me. ME living the artist's life. ME, making music, yeah, I sang for awhile but I was never as good as any of these musicians today in Norman-town. Me creating theatre, creating art, living and breathing art. And now? Well, just a guy with a lot of time in who realizes  as far as being an artist goes . . . not sure I was ever, ever that good at it.

So, this sudden realization that my whole creative life has been a lie or at the least a waste of time, I've decided to either stop bitching about or get my grumpy butt in gear and get out there and BE the artist again.

BIRTHDAY MONTH 2o16 WK o1

Thursday, May o5, 2o16
Yes, the month of May is my BIRTHDAY MONTH. Yes, I know that some would say that I'm being rather greedy claiming the whole month for myself. However, I am going to be 68 years old on the

23rd and that should be enough of a reason to say to myself and the world, "I deserve a whole MONTH dedicated to the celebration of my BIRTH, damn it!" And yes, I know, that some of you out there thinks that longevity in and of itself does not justify my commandeering an entire month! And to be totally honest, I'm sure that in today's market you could sell to the public that reaching the age of 68 is actually any kind of accomplishment.  There are many more people in this 21st century of ours that are far older than me. But in my defense, if you knew about my past, the life I've led, the dangerous adventures I have been on during my existence on this physical plane, you would concur with my conclusion . . . it's been a crazy-ass journey . . . but no crazier than any other human's journey. But totally honest, my life hasn't been all that important to anyone except me. And sometimes, in the anemic hours between black and white, I'm not even sure my life is even that important a thing to me.  But enough of this gloomy, myopic gobbledygook! It's my BIRTHDAY MONTH!

I rummage through the shoebox where I keep all the pictures of myself in. "Oh, you are so narcissistic." she says. But no I am not. I gotta few, yes, pictures from my younger days, but there really aren't that many. Not enough, at the least, to call me names! That's me on the left . . . no, on the right there. I've been told that this pic was taken when I was 6 months old! Which would make it November 23, 1948, give or take. November 23 fell on a Tuesday in the year 1948. Truman just won (the 2nd of November) reelection. Well, he didn't really win reelection. Vice President Truman had

taken over the POTUS mantel because Roosevelt died in 1945. A big movie at the time was The Boy With Green Hair. Yes, I didn't SEE it when I was 6 months old! Or II did, I don't remember it! However, when I was maybe 6 years old I do remember seeing it on TV. A pretty moving little movie about a kid who is ostracized from the town he lived because his hair turned green! And I think I saw it on TV when I was 6 or 7 or 8 and I remember how much it moved me even as a little kid. I guess it was a sort of scary story because this little kid, older than me but still little, was forced to cut his hair and leave the town he lived in, and he was all alone in the woods and . . . you know I'm getting a creepy feeling just talking about it. Can you imagine? 62 years later and I still get creeped out just thinking about a movie I watched when I was 6? Sure, I mean, I've always been effected by movies. You know that saying about kids brought up by TV? That's me. Parents would go out drinking on a Friday/Saturday night and I would stay home in this big old scary house we lived in and watch TV until I fell asleep on the floor. Mom would give me a pillow and a blanket before she left for the bar. Sometimes she would make me popcorn, popcorn for me, make sure I had the phone number of the bar that she and my dad were going to just in case something happened . . . and then a short, ruby red kiss on the forehead and they were gone for the night.

Friday, May o6, 2o16

Remembering a lot of little things that happened when I was a kid. Just little moments that, for whatever reasons, have stuck to the inside of my brain. Here's a few.
1. Floating a SPAM can in a muddy pot whole. Accidently rubbed the edge with my finger and damn! Blood spilling out of my index like facet. Mud turns reddish gray!
2. Waking up in a doctor's office. Confused, crying. Mom comes in, wraps her arms around me and explains. I was riding my bicycle in the parking of the factory where mom ran a punch press. The factory was right across the street from our house. Anyway, I was riding and tried to do a bike trick I'd seen on TV, got my right foot stuck in the front spokes and BAM! It flipped me over the handle bars and head first onto the asphalt parking lot. Mom said I came to the back door of our house, knocked on the kitchen door and passed out on the steps. I don't  remember any of it except for putting my feet on the handlebars as the biking was moving . . . the rest is a blank spot until I woke up in the doctor's office.

3. A Saturday night, alone in the house watching for the first time, Dracula. I think it was the scene where Dracula first gets to London and grabs a flower girl, pulls her behind a pillar and we hear her scream. To add to it, a wind outside the bay window where I was camped out watching TV started to howl. Scared me so much. Called mom at the bar. I told her how scared I was. I think I was crying. She said not to worry "just go to bed and I'll be home in a while." All I could do was curl up in the big blanket I had on the floor and watch the rest of the movie until I just passed out. Next weekend, back in front of the set hoping to be scared out of my mind . . . again.

4. Seventeen years old waiting out the draft. Working in a woodshop making the bases for trophies. Worked a giant sander, smoothing out the edges and face of the base's surface. Lots of cuts on the hands when they got to close to the sand paper conveyer belt that was traveling at least a hundred miles an hour. Owned a motorcycle then. Use to go up late at night on this hill that over looked La Puente where I had a small apartment . . . not much bigger than the one I live in now. I'd go up there, layback on the motorcycle, drink beer, smoke cigarettes and watch the moon. Weirdest thing? I wrote a poem about it 47 years later not even knowing that I was writing about it! Here's the poem:

Sometimes Things Change

He loved the Moon once, way back in the day.

Lying on the warm hood of his beat up ’51,
he’d watch her all night long, watch her roll
lazily across the sticky summer sky.
The steady thud of cars passing by and over
the 9^th Street Bridge kept him company as
he chain smoked Lucky Strikes,
sipped at a cold quart of  Brew 102.
Just kicking back, staring up at her.

He wasn’t like them punk ass friends of his,

those young rowdy rednecks with spit
in their eyes and Saturday night
anxiously tugging at the crotch of their 401s
anytime a sweet young thing strolled by.

No, he wasn’t like them, nothing like them at all.

He was content to sit on the hood of his car
parked down by the dark shores of the South
Canadian, and watch in silence, just sitting there,
watching her endlessly roll.

Lately though, he noticed the Moon, his Moon,

her looks had started to fade, to go.
Too many large craters along her brow, these days.
Shadows cut deep gullies along the inside
of her tender Maria . . . transforming her,
bending her pale smile into a dark and dusty frown.
Her charm all but dried up, and his desire
to be with her . . . all of a sudden . . . gone.

Somewhat sad it is.  How time can kill a passion.

Once he smoked and drank and gawked at the Moon
with loving eyes, and now?  Now, he barely looks at her.
Woodie 1-14-12 (rewrites 1o-2o-14)