W I D E O P E N S P A C E S pull wandering eyes to possibilities more expansive, more accepting of greater distances, as if taking your car to the next town over were no different than running downtown for your errands.
Islands—physical, urban, mental— inhibit, implode possibilities, put 'too far' signs on near horizons, as if traveling to city's center might entice disastrous demons to steal rational thought from your well-balanced senses.
"Why would you want to see Pittsburgh?" asked my friend, lifelong Philadelphian— "Because I've never seen it," my response—"I've never seen it either!"—he claimed fifty years.
Her father-in-law's village nestled near Windermere in England's Lake District. He complained he hadn't seen his best friend in years. "But why?" she asked, "he only lives one village over."—"It's too far."— "It's only five miles away!"
High school athletes from Havre, Montana; Colville, Washington; Priest River, Idaho; any small, one-school- fits-all center for everything educational, all claim one commonality: their parents think of distance in units of time not distance, add one dose of necessity to the mix, stir, and pour their lives into driving, driving, driving— etching mental maps on synapses stretched to "yes"
It’s time to find a poem again! Yay! Today’s paradigm will be…what I found over the past 50 hours.
Rest assured, poor little doggie! When she dresses you in pajamas, she prepares you for all of Life’s ludicrous realities!
pills once taken for entertainment now do anything but, maintaining dubious adherence to general opinion. schedules provide meaningless information to entice us with false surety. familiarity with annoying situations eases moving through them, no one's idea of good design. security doors which open for everyone. here mister tee-ess-eh? will you pass this through your magic gate? how does he know it won't explode? not planning for Game Day in your bar most assuredly epitomizes poor planning, understaffing, my lovely barmaid. silent Uber drivers receiving their instructions in Chinese, afraid to make eye contact. beautiful golf courses, those green monuments to money, grass, dominating nature. never in one dozen years has any hotel thermostat delivered any temperature near its displayed number.
until you knot your necktie around your head like poetry's morning Rambo to avenge this collection of glib promises, lame excuses, forms without function, lies of omission.
Flew cross-country yesterday, arriving in Seattle at dinner time. After several wonderful West Coast beers and a burger, my East coast biorhythms took hold: “It’s almost 11 p.m., nimrod! Go to sleep!” I did just that, totally forgetting the poem at all. At least there are “four.”
Nearing St. Louis, MO. September 2026
AIRPORT HAIKU
Non Sequitur
"If you listen to music, you must use headphones or mute your speakers."
Airport Cool
Act like you've been here before, but hang onto your sense of innocence.
You Could Have Walked
She pumps her arm up, down; he mimics her with his left arm: Oh! Fitbits!
Meaningless Schedules
Late again leaving gate. When all flights arrive late Aren't they all on time?
Would it help to know I’m a double-Gemini (both sun sign and ascendent)?
Street art. Seattle. August 1994.
Dichotomy, meet Contrary.
Loved sport—disliked jocks, hated pep rallies. Baptized at thirteen, Atheist at eighteen, Agnostic at twenty-five, Catholic at thirty-nine. Supported group marriage of the "line" variety, found monogamy difficult enough. Voted for Carter, editorialized supporting Reagan. Call Washington "home," Can't live there—love rainy, warm South-East. Love spicy food, can't eat it. Believe sobriety equals our natural state; drink like a fish. Studied communications, journalism, wound up playing scientific expert. Planned working to seventy, retired at sixty-five. Believe in "live every day as if it's your last," stand fixated in space-time's ambergris, pinned by my dwindling time.
Don't believe astrology (much) though I studied it enough to know ascendents from sun-signs yet how can this Gemini resist, confronting all these two-faced contradictions?
moss mottles granite domes, witnesses who saw, briefly, transition from those living sympathetically with them, to those who did not. this briefness, infinitesimally short for those aged rocks, bluffs, mountains, witnessed a people living both in, out of sync. Wabanaki warred alongside them, these demonymic defenders soon to be abandoned. where to go? now flung far, to bayou, to lakes, to pockets 'back home,' adapting, not assimilating. granite domes remember such as these, pay them brief homage.
75/100 100 poems in 100 days Seventy-five percent!!!
Hopped a freight, saw gang in Thompson Falls, flatcar next track over. They liked my car better, took it by force. No, wait... Hopped freight into someone else's car, who pushed me out again without my knapsack, broke my leg, or... I remember: clinging to moving car, one hand desperately grabbing a handle, slipped, lost my legs while those startled drivers waited, watched, horrified behind barricades. Or did the speed freak sipping Mickey's Big Mouths not drop me off, but instead mug me miles from home?
Eloquently, asked blond Orphan Annie out when snow bounced like Styrofoam. Followed her eastward to Midwest. Sat bouncing one child after another while she conducted services at her church. Or did we split angrily over my lack of faith? I can never remember.
My epileptic buddy seized while training for his bicycle road race, hit his head, died. Knowing he didn't take his meds, dedicated my life to medical counseling, patient support/advocacy. Died early, stress from lack of success, debt.
Indulged whim to own motorcycle. Pretending to slalom along Woods Creek, hit gravel, slid into oncoming lane, already occupied by one-ton pickup. Or did I just slide right over the edge, mangling my body, my hopes for being energetic weekly news reporter?
Did my heart burst when I snorted Black Beauties? Or did I die after doing same with PCP disguised as so-called cannabinol? How 'bout that time "chocolate mesc" turned out to be rat poison, not placebo?
Millions of me's live in my memories, branched from events gone right, events gone wrong, events gone different. When my editor ended my career for once again failing to put "ly" on adverbs. When my employer marketed my database, fame, money, a new career following. When I got hired in Southern California instead of upstate New York. When my wife died from cancer instead of lived.
70/100 100 poems in 100 days
Every one of those branching events could have happened, the only speculative one being the one about getting fired for not using “ly” on adverbs—although an editor/publisher could have ended my teaching career before it started when upon learning I intended to teach journalism he laughed and said, “You?”
I did indeed hop a freight while in college. There was a sinister looking bunch of guys on a flatbed. There could have been a guy in my car. I did hang on gamely when I tried to mount a moving freight car now way too high due to a raised railbed. After getting off of the freight, a tweaked out guy picked me up in a Roadrunner around midnight.
I did have a crush on that young woman in college, but too insecure, I didn’t ask her out. I speculated on her future career.
My epileptic buddy fortunately had his seizure on the dormitory floor, not while he was out training for the race. He’d stopped taking his meds.
I did slide right into the oncoming lane of traffic. It was a lonely road. I righted the bike, got back into my own lane.
Uh….yeah I did do those substances as described. The capsules at the end only had chocolate in them, not mescaline.
The rest is self-explanatory.
It’s interesting to me how I think about all of the ways my life could’ve gone wrong, only rarely think how it could’ve gone differently, and not at all how something could have gone right instead of how it went down. Does that make me a glass-half-full kind of guy? Or do some of us innately focus on good things instead of bad ones?
Almost every day, he said, my glass seemed more than half full, but a fly would dance on top. When we came into home, winging away from sunset, I saw one cloud-like nuclear explosion. My trip's symbolic, beautiful resolution.
This poem would have been way cooler posted on August 18th when it meant more. I drafted it near midnight, and couldn’t bring myself to polish it, find a photo, etc, until today.
Second to last or final voyage out?
Penultimate: bridesmaid celebrated faintly. Always announcing never announced. John the Baptist to Jesus the Messiah. Loved by writers For its erudition. Why this focus on opening act before The Headliner? Who decided this needed a word? Why mark the race's last mile?
Today we trot you out to perform yet again your ultimate function: forty-ninth of fifty, thus almost halfway. Thank you, you're done.
I feel bad because I’m breaking the chain for real today. I had planned to write a poem as we flew eastward, but I chose to finish Hamnet instead… and sleep. Then I thought, “I’ll dash it off at home.” We walked into a house without air-conditioning! 😲😰 It was 60 degF as we walked to the Seattle airport. We dropped into 85 degrees with over 70% humidity here in Raleigh, NC… And the house was the same.
I love the East especially the southeast of North Carolina where we landed, but I was raised in Eastern Washington where hot days didn’t carry that humidity and were balanced by cool nights. This was reinforced by our recent visit there. (Of course all the smoke from fires and the dry, dessicated grasses reminded me why I like the East. )
