The Daily {W}rite July 2018 wk o4

I swam out of the great depths of a dark sleep. Opening my eyes, I found myself on the sandy shores of consciousness. My face enjoyed it. A smile rose up, blossomed into a glowing flesh flower. My taste buds loved the sweet and sour taste a grin bestows upon them. And coffee  in the morning? Nothing new there. Always a the warm taste of coffee on my lips . . . even when I'm dreaming.

Doctor's appointment made for Thursday at 10:10am. Yeah, David is gonna love getting up at 9:00am to drive me cross town to the doctor's. Why an appointment so early? Well, I have to see THE doctor this time, not a PA, because . . . well lets just say it's a bit embarrassing to talk about. Not serious (I hope) but definitely embarrassing.

My only Sia album playing on the DVD player. My depression is flowing gently around and around inside my head . . . my thoughts . . . a soft tenderness to them today. My body relaxed . . . a sparrow calm after the storm has tired itself out . . . becoming a gentle rain. Yep. Rare to feel this way anymore . . . so forgive me for wallowing in it for the rest of this post.

I wrote a whole poem from scratch last night . . . okay, very early this morning BEFORE today's sunlight stretched its light across my windowsill:

Mime Train . . . All Aboard!

Late night . . . actually, early morning/. . . but it only counts as morning/when you wake up, and you can't/wake up until you go to sleep. However,/some people sleep with eyes wide open/while their minds drift through life/as if they were sleeping, dreaming./Their words if ever they speak at all/sounds more like a Gregorian chant,/a dog growling at its own dreams/of finally catching that damn cat/that always encroaches on his/backyard territory,/or that sound my drunken  father/ would make when passed out/on the front room couch/while watching the Sunday/stock car races. He snored/like thunder, like a train/moaning through the midnight./You remember when trains/sang through Norman town?/I miss that sound, which always/made more since than people/constantly screaming nonsense/in my already too burdened ears./My quality of life would improve/if people would stop talking just/long enough to hear a leaf fall. -Woodie

Tuesday, July 24, 2o18 

I woke-up. A little disappointed. Grogginess, head full of empty space, flattened out a bit during the moments of deliberate unconsciousness . . . sleep. but the day picked up as it droned on. That gentle anxiety that stumbled through my veins yesterday transformed itself into a pleasurable feeling inside my head. The day kept tripping over itself, its big feet, and my voice just giggled a bit at it. Depression turned into a sideshow filled with my monsters dancing and singing, entertaining me for a change.

Warm. The window facing west is warm. Like . . . like a piece of buttered toast. I should've gone to the laundromat today. I haven't washed clothes in . . . what? A year? Maybe a bit less . . . but a year sounds right, well rounded, believable. Anyway, tomorrow I promise my . . . self, tomorrow laundry. Clothes are all ready crammed into the new backpack . . . ready to go to dirty laundry confession . . . cleanse the souls of cotton blends. Yes, tomorrow I redeem myself.

THURsday, July 26, 2o18

So, into the Classen Family Clinic. The outside, red bricks the color of dried blood. Inside that stale smell, that old people smell . . . you know, like a graveyard, something rotting. Your nose wants to run off your face . .. find a disinfected corner (white, white, white walls) to crawl up into and hide. Nothing like walking into a doctor's office to make you feel like you're a five year old kid terrified by the thought of a needle puncturing your skin. What if Nurse Ratchet breaks that long, skinny piece of metal off  in my arm?

Last month I went to the same clinic. And they told me I owed them x amount of dollars for my last visit, which I had paid already. The woman up front didn't care . . . it didn't show up on her screen, and no payment in full, no doctor's appointment. So, after a heated discussion I paid the bill, and two days later I received the check I HAD sent to the billing company with the letters "VOID" across it's green face. And guess what happened when I went to the doctor's the same doctor's office that hassled me over a bill not being paid? Yeah, you know.

SATurday, o7-28-18

Sometimes It Just Rains

I wake up each morning with a very thick, heavy head attached to my neck. Not sure where the weight, the dead weight inside my skull, came from. Perhaps too many fat-ass dreams squatted on my cerebellum just to catch their breathe. Too large sighs from my dry mouth and the weight is gone . . . the most terrible things are always the most fragile. So, coffee, always coffee, first.  My coffeemaker  had died yesterday, just up and died. Maybe by its own handle, or suicide by coffee filter. We will never know for sure. There was no note, no hint of dark-roasted depression. He always seemed happy enough . . . as happy as a coffee pot could be. Everyone liked him especially me. So, improvisation. Simmered some water in my popcorn pan, transferred the hot (but not too hot) liquid into a cup and filtered it through the coffee I had put in the coffee filter I placed in the dead carcass of my Mr. Coffee coffeemaker and  . . . hot coffee. Well, warm coffee at least. If I wanted it HOT, I'd have to reheat it in the popcorn pan. Lukewarm coffee suits me just fine, compliments my life, my life as it has always been. 

      TUEsday, o7-31-18

The Universe Inside

12:30am
Well, here it is, July saying a warm goodbye as we enter the last day of sun for this particular month.

4:30pm
Yeah, I'm having a difficult time writing this last day, putting the days before in some . . . some . . . way that sounds . . . poetic?

Large clouds hanged in the sky by the hangman crows that just flew by. Sad clouds, lifeless clouds just laying there turning white to gray as the day licks them dry. I wonder why nature is so cruel.

Went to see the new Mission Impossible movie last night. Note to producers: If your movie franchise is failing to draw an audience, immediately hire the actor Simon Pegg. Revenues will at the least triple.

Big deal on Facebook, they plan to "protect us" from Russian trollers. I'm much obliged . . . but do I really need protection from trolls? Don't I recognize them when I see them? Yeah, now that I know they exist I just don't answer back at their dribble. Okay, sometimes I do, but I only answer back with my homemade Meme.
See you, dear reader, next month. {smiles}

The Daily {W}rite July 2018 wk o3

It's more difficult to forget than to remember

Alone, singular in the apartment as well as in life. A stranger to everyone, to myself a mystery, a puzzle that I can never figure out. The saddest thing about my existence in this moment  . . . I am satisfied. The saddest and happiest I remember ever being. A cup of coffee asleep on my left. City of Bones acts as a pad for my mouse . . . we all know what I'm talking about, right? Pad and mouse to my right . . . the laptop, the center of my universe. So hypnotized by my keyboard and my fingers making love together, creating a technological child together . . . I shall call their prodigy  . . . Blog. Its proper name, its name in public, The Daily {W}rite. But here, I'm  its . . . grandfather? Oh, don't particularly like that label . . . Blog's older brother . . . Woodie.

4:41pm
Last night for the last two months I have had three different dreams where I'm attacked by an intruder. And each attack has brought my out of my dream kicking and punching at . . . well, the open air. I'm not much on dream analysis but I was curious. Why am I having dreams in which I'm being attack?

Dreams about being beaten or being attacked often relate to issues of control in your life, and your own vulnerability.  Even if you feel you are in complete control of your life, you may still have an attacking dream, because deep down, you could be waging a war to stay in control, and fear what would happen if you lost control.  Being attacked in a dream is not usually about wanting to hurt yourself or others but can be about your own unresolved internal conflict.  They can disturb with their violence, but attacking dreams often show a way to peaceful resolution. -WellBeing.com

As I said above, I don't believe in dream analysis per se but considering my personal feelings about myself . . . it makes sense. 

MONday, July 16, 2o18 4:30am

Yes, still up. Wide-eyed awake. Well, not exactly wide awake . . . Sleepiness is creeping up behind me. I can feel it's warm breath on the back of my neck. Maybe I'll get something worth reading written down before my eyes give up their desire to keep consciousness alive.

But don't count on it. This late at night, or should I have said, this early in the morning my body feels weightless almost, like I'm floating. Tumbling through the darkness, a shadow in the void searching for just a bit of pale  light to guide it's way onto the couch and then, hopefully, to just fall all the way into the warm arms of a nice dream. Yeah, I want to be lost for a few hours in a fantasy that won't wake me up before the sun arrives.

5:24pm 

   Those who are possessed by nothing possess everything

Memory. I go over and over this . . . from the afternoon when I wake up until late, late into the next morning when I finally go to sleep . . . again. It's my prison . . . my memory. Planning a breakout. It'll be a long process . . . like boring through  Mount Fairweather with a thunder storm . . . but with the force of one raindrop at a time. Change is impossible. You can rearrange the furniture in your apartment, buy new clothes and throw out the old . . . far easier to change your look than you mind, your thoughts.

TUEsday, July 17, 2o18
The sun through my front room's window . . . even with the blinds half closed it warms to an uncomfortable degree the right side of my body. And gnats playing kamikaze games, my face their Pearl Harbor. I want to write a new poem. I'm hesitant. What if it's a bad poem, what if someone reads it, what if it really sucks? Okay, I'll go with an older one.

Doors
There are too many doors inside my head.

Big doors, thick in varnished mahogany,

shiny doors with gold inlay knobs,
and knockers the size of a gardener’s fist.

Shy doors too, cracked and muddied,
bloody handprints dripping from the frames,
their hinges browned in rust, decay.

For far too long have those doors been closed,

and yet, I always try the handle, listen to the rattle
of their locks . . . they never let me in.

And the creature dressed in black,

a heavy collar (boney white) around
its turkey neck, he tells me tales
of a magical place where the door is always ajar,
always inviting, holy and just as white and stiff
as that cardboard noose that chokes his throat.
Woodie 11-24-14 (rewrites 11-19-17)

July 21, 2o18

Long night last night ending at eight this morning after a hungry run to the local IHOP for burgers and fries . . . a run to Walmart for nicotine gum. Been a couple years or so since I quit cigarettes. Now I gotta figure out how to leave the nicotine behind too.

Early morning yesterday on our way back from Walmart . . . I had a thought. Yes, not many of those around, are there? I shard this one with David. I'd like to go somewhere, somewhere that I haven't been before. Japan maybe. Or Scotland, Ireland . . . somewhere that I've put off for this reason or that. One place before the final curtain call. Didn't write everything I wanted to but . . . {smiles}

The Daily {W}rite July, 2018 wk o2

SUNday

   The beginning of a blog's week is always the easiest due primarily from the guilt the writer feels for not writing an entry for each day in the week before on a blog that is titled: The Daily {W}rite. That may well be the "writer's" most powerful muse, guilt.

I dream you up inside a paper cup/drowning in the kitchen sink./Days are swollen but she walks about,/a crippled pilgrim heading south.A sparrow from her pocket,/lets him stroll around the grassy knoll./It never flies away, scared of heights/and though she sanctifies the morning skies/never budges more than a foot or so from home./And we all wonder as we wander pass/this Lady Spirit of the past who refuses/the comforting hand a stranger may offer./And we’re left alone, standing there alone/ upon that grassy knoll with nothing,/with nothing but the thought of coffins.

   Above, is a poem I'm just beginning to work on. Well, that's not exactly precise. The above "rough idea" was typed out, and then abandoned when I had know idea what to do with it. It just sat on my hard drive until last night when I accidently found it while searching for the missing New Poems 2018 file. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you didn't read the last entry in last weeks blog post. Shame on you. {smiles} Anyway, I can't remember what frame of mind I was in when I jotted down this peculiar (what seems to me as peculiar now because I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote it) thought. {shit eating grin}

MONday, o7-o9-18
Yes, I did nothing today. But maybe . . . tomorrow? The big plan is to get up at 9:30, out the door by no later that 11:30 AND bike myself over to the Regal to see Ant-Man and The Wasp. Will I? I don't know. It's gonna be 89 degrees tomorrow. That's not hot, really. But not sure I can bike that far (4 miles up, 4 miles back) although I did it all the time when I was younger. But I gotta at least try to get out on my own.
Here's what happened to get me to this decision: I was suppose to go see A&W with my friends David and Vickie. Got the times sent to everyone . . . and then David said he wasn't feeling well so he bailed. No, worries because Vickie would be interested in going . . . I thought. But she IM'd me saying she wanted ALL of us to see it at the same time. We should wait until David is well enough. Okay,  but then David IM's us back and says me and Vickie should go anyway . . . "Look," I typed, "let's just wait until you're well, David." So, okay no movie. No big thing. Well, after I thought about it for a while . . . it was a very big thing to me. I wanted to go see the fucking movie (sorry Timothy)! But I couldn't go because I don't own a car and I don't have a driver's license. It got me to thinking: I don't do shit (sorry Timothy) without my friends. I need to be a bit more independent. So, tomorrow I go to the movies by myself. Power to the Woodie!

THURsday, June 12, 2o18

So, I know what you've been waiting to find out . . . did I go to see Ant-Man and the Wasp? The answer is . . . YES! . . . NO! "What the HELL kind of answer is that!" I'll explain if you watch your profanity for the sake of reader Timothy Croom who hates "bad" language.

Actually, I got up Tuesday morning with the confidence of my convictions that I WOULD ride the bike over to the Regal  . . . but . . . two cups of coffee later, I really decided . . . it was too damn hot out there for me to take the chance that I could ride the bike to and back from the Regal without suffering heat stroke. So, I did not keep my solemn promise to the reader and myself that I would see A&W. And I was ashamed. And in the middle of my chastisement of myself, the phone rang:
David: (on phone) You up?
Me: (on phone)Yep.
David: Want to go see the bug movie?
Me: Oh, heck yep!
So, I did go with David and, yes, I witnessed "the bug movie" and it was wonderful!

2:41pm

Spent a lot of the morning watching the hearings concerning Peter Strzok bias towards "That White Guy Who  is NOT a women But Living in the White House". What a fiery day of back and forth insults and insinuations!  I can never go be questioned in front of  a senate committee. Man, I'd be cussin' up a storm and kickin' some ass on those bullshit senators. Hell, I'd be in jail before five minutes of sitting in that chair facing those bastards!

I'm sipping mildly warm coffee as I type this blog entry. Chewing nicotine gum too, which I need to give hard thought time to quitting for good. But that thought lasted as long as I would in a senate hearing.

SATurday, July 14, 2o18
Just siting here listening to Fever Ray and working on finishing up this week's blog entries. Guess what yesterday was . . .?

Yep! Friday the 13th! Or if you like:  Friggatriskaidekaphobia Day.

I know! How the hell do you say that word?! To tell you the truth, I haven't quite got my tongue around it yet. But if you Google, friggatriskaidekaphobia pronounce, you'll get a verbal tutorial on how to say it. Anyway, I was rather shocked to find out there IS an actual phobia connected to Friday the 13th. Yes, some folks are so afraid of bad luck, something bad happening to them that they won't even go out of the house on Friday the 13th. But not me. These days Friday the 13th is more of a mini Halloween, a day to celebrate the supernatural, the bogeyman and all those things that go bump in the night . . . and during the day. All this change from fear of the day to the celebration of the day is due to one thing, the movie Friday the 13th. Yep. Friday the 13th added the monster to a day of just "bad luck."

1:20am SUNday

I just wanted to write one more little bit of an entry before I put this to sleep and post it. I'm failing myself, giving myself an F for living. I was okay for the C- I was receiving since the first term of my life . . . but a fucking F (sorry Timothy) when I've got 70 years of experience under my consciousness belt? This is NOT acceptable. I must try harder to live . . . well . . . and change that grade to an A++++ [smiles} P.S. The picture I took this last Art Walk. I'm not sure what these ladies were doing but they were having fun taking selfies while posing in front of paintings and statues or just walking around Main St. Okay, that's it, that's all I got 'cause I gots no more! 

The Daily {W}rite July 2o18 wk. o1

I'm drinking my semi-warm coffee as I type the first entry for this July blog, and I'm thinking . . . it doesn't feel like the beginning of July. Summer? Of course it feels like summer . . . just not July. I mean, where's all the American anticipation for the Fourth of July, our countries date of birth? There's not been one advertisement for the holiday on TV, radio or Facebook that I've seen. I haven't heard one pop or BOOM from a pre-ejaculated firecracker. "Hey, Woodie! Boy the Fourth of July is almost  here, I can't wait!" Well, it appears that everybody CAN wait because no one is already celebrating. I heard that a few towns in Oklahoma have had their firework shows just this last Saturday. I don't care for that either. IF you are going to celebrate the birth of some THING, do it on the designated day . . . except, of course, for MY birthday. I celebrate the whole month I was born as if the whole month was my birthday . . . but that's only because I'm that important to this world. 

I argue too much with my friends. Someone will say something and I'll disagree, which forces said friend to say something else, which I react to, which  . . . which they in turn react and . . . before you know it, we're in an atomic war of words. I always wind-up losing an argument with a friend. I should shut the fuck up and never respond negatively  to anything a friend says. Nod my head and say "yeah, I hear what you're saying." At least that way I don't have to admit to him/her that I disagree. I don't have to admit to him/her that I'm right, either. There's always something lost during an argument that can never be replaced. Innocent lives are lost, friendships dissolved. No one wins.

10:38pm

Settling in for the night. All my breathing exercises done, into the robe already. Nothing left to do but brush my teeth take my prescriptions (doc told me to take the cholesterol meds. right before bedtime) and brush my teethes (sorry, I turn into Gollum when I get tired). And  yes, I floss! I'm going to try and get to bed earlier than usual. Much earlier if I can. Anyway, I did a bit if writing on the blog and that's something. Maybe tomorrow I'll get a bike ride in. Sleep like angels, you all. Night. {smiles}

TUEsday, July o3, 2o18

The air-conditioner is my best friend today, and the window that my computer is near is receiving nasty thoughts from me as it burns my right arm and make it too hot to sit here without letting down the blinds. I'll do that right now . . . Aaaah. That's better. But I' still taking off the Captain America shirt and jacking up the conditioner to: HIGH and COLD!

11:45pm

I wanted to get one little piece of writing in before I stop for the night. I'm reading this book, you know the one, The Art of Peace, and it's making me think about things, you know, in a different way than I've thought before. But it's difficult to just "change my ways." There's a lot of ideas in this book that I'm learning, but it gets to be so much that I just feel my mind shutting down. One of my biggest mind crap problems is thinking about the past. Yeah, I've mentioned this before. And that is what I'm talking about. I know I shouldn't think about the past so much because it really depresses me, and then I get angry and then . . . well, I take it out on a friend who had nothing to do with whatever it was I went through. So, I've struggled with this "living in the past" nonsense forever and finally today . . . a little breakthrough. I stopped myself from thinking about the past . . . not a lot . . . but a little. A little light, a little weight taken off my shoulders. I felt for the first time in a very long time a sense of well being and peace. {smiles}

THURsday, July o5, 2o18

Went to see the fireworks last night . . . by myself. David was sick. Man, a bit of a jolt because since I got back in 2o12 me and David always went the Duck Pond to see the colorful explosions! It was weird walking around out there all solo and such . . . weird people in the dark. Even little kids tend look like little demons . . . in the dark. There was the shadow of a guy on the little hill right where the stone bridge's sidewalk begins. The shadow turned out to be a dude in his thirties giving his children individual bike rides up and down the hill. Oh, well, no drama there. No revolution there. No mad bomber gonna blow us all up. Which is a good thing . . . I guess. They finally got around to fixing the stone bridge I love so much. Best place to take pictures of the aerial fireworks at Reeves Park. But sadly, the Duck Pond is all but dried up. No more do the ducks swim around their little island causing these wonderful shadows from the light of the fireworks. They just walk around in the mud, the water level barely covering their little web feet! Not the Duck Pond anymore . . . more like the Duck Puddle.

11:28pm

Today was a most wonderfully beautiful day! a sunny day filled with huge clouds that scraped the top of the Energy Building as a tender breeze sailed them across the sky. Okay, I didn't go out side. That last part was made up. I did however watch the clouds from the security of my apartment. Even got a few shots through its dirty window. Why not wash the windows? Because my apartment is on the second floor and I have no access to the A-frame rooftop.

SATurday, July o7, 2o18

Last day in the first week of July. A billion or more years from now . . . Earth will cease to exist in its contemporary shape. It may explode, dissolve into the stardust it once was back way back before it claimed its life, its name . . . "I shall call myself . . . Earth." I'd love to see the transformation. Earth getting a quantum makeover. I wonder who will do her hair?  Yes, I'd like to be there for mother Earth's coming out party as her new self. But more than likely? I'll already in the latter moments of my own . . . evolution.

How about a poem? Would you like that, Reader?

Lighter Than Gravity

I’m sure you understand

how unnerving it is to . . . change,
to feel your body, your thoughts,
your already oddly shaped being
transforming into some . . . thing!
Some unmentionable . . . thing!
Something you never, ever
dreamed of becoming, some . . . thing

you never wished to be.

My friends (those very few that I still have)

keep telling me not to worry,
“CHANGE is inevitable, we CHANGE
everyday, from the day we’re born
we CHANGE, we all CHANGE
we must  CHANGE and . . .”

Okay, if I MUST . . . convert, I hope it’s not to dirt.

I hate dirt. Pushed around the whole day on
by any clumsy breeze that comes along,
or stuck for all eternity to the endless
bottom of a shoe. What kind of existence
is that? And when it rains? You become . . .  MUD!
And I hate mud… even more than dirt!

But if I must, IF you say my resurrection . . . MUST

be akin to earth let me become dust.
No, STARdust . . . YES, glittery bits of cosmic grit
which wander gypsy like between
barrooms, streetlamps and . . . GALAXIES! 
Yes, STARdust! That’s what I’ll be.
That some . . . thing that’s ever so
lighter and kinder than gravity
has ever been to me.
Woodie 4-24-12 (rewrites 
o3-26-13, o7-2o-16, o7, o7-o7-18)

11:03pm

So, I Have just under an hour to finish this week up. Went to put a new poem I found into the  New Poem 2018 file and . . . the file was gone! Just gone! I couldn't believe it. I looked for it in my computer in ALL the flash-drives, and in all the files I have on my 8 flash-drives . . . and I could find it. Gone! All new poems I wrote since January . . . gone. All the old poems I rewrote for "the book" and stashed in New Poems 2018 . . . GONE!

But not to worry. I finely found it. No, it wasn't my evil computer pulling a trick on me . . . though I'm pretty sure it is evil and wishes me emotional turmoil. It was me. I HAD accidently moved New Poetry 2018 into the folder marked My Songs. You see I write my poetry late at night, and I do get extremely tired so . . . well, I messed up. But I'm sure glad I found that folder.