When the Oaf Faced Linoleum

He stepped to me

Big as a house,

But I knew in his heart

He was small as a mouse.

 

His daddy got rich

Selling exotic cars,

So, he puffed out his chest,

Like he was the star.

But daddy’s money

Didn’t make him a man,

And his trophy wife mamma

Was busy working her tan.

 

Then here I come walking,

Pacing myself as I go.

My life was exhausting,

But he didn’t know

What it’s like to commute

Across the class divide,

And work like a dog

While your worlds collide.

No, he didn’t know

And he didn’t care,

But I didn’t mind.

Already knew life ain’t fair.

I was born to a standing

Destined for grease,

But blessed with a mind

To unbend my knees.

I was playing the cards

That were lain on my table.

We are none of us born equal.

We just do what we’re able.

Life had engendered me fortune

And I was trying my best.

All that other noise,

Was better left for the rest.

Say what you will.

Hurl your slurs at me,

Hemmed in by status

While I’m walking free.

I don’t need privilege

To know what I’m worth.

My momma done told me

At home, from her hearth.

 

Well, nothing intimidates

Like a confident dude.

It so irritates trolls

That they become rude.

So, he said what he said

Trying to get under my skin,

But I just shrugged it off

And he couldn’t win.

Next, he picked up a backpack

To throw at my head.

Well, that crossed a line

And snipped at my thread.

 

I caught that thing

Straight out of the air.

I questioned his intent

And leveled a stare.

Gone drunk on bravado

He cursed me some more.

Then I tossed back the pack

And put him down on the floor.

 

I don’t condone violence

As a first option to seed,

But its still a tool in my kit

For whenever I need.

As I charged in that moment

The fear hit his eye,

And I knew in short order

He’d become a pliable guy.

I became an instrument

Of my aggressor’s regret.

You reap what you sow,

And you get what you get.

 

I sat on his ass

Pinned his face to the tile

Twisted his arm back

And spoke with a smile.

The linoleum was polished

And shiny with wax.

My tone was determined

As I laid out the facts.

Said I, “Don’t be mistaken

If I may seem aloof

I just want peace.

That’s the truth.

You did not think

And now you’re in a bind.

Take this opportunity

For reason to find.

Apologize and promise

To leave me alone

Or test my resolve

To injure your bone.”

 

I waited a beat

While he stewed in his dread.

Then an old rival strolled by

Sharing “He means what he said.”

Well, that was enough

Because they weren’t friends either.

Good sense hummed back on

Like a logic rebreather.

 

Mousey’s shoulder was hurting

As he groaned with pain,

But that prep school oaf

Was certainly not insane.

He nodded his assent,

And so, to his promise I said then,

“Okay, but go back on your word,

And we’ll do this again.”

When I think back on it now

My old rival stands out.

His words of foreboding

Removed any doubt.

If I could turn him

To freely back my play,

Then I must be for real.

Best to heed what I say.

 

I don’t want to fight,

But I’m good at it though,

And this weight on my conscience

Goes wherever I go.

My father once told me

“We make our own beds,

And you cannot foresee

What goes on in men’s heads.

Choose your battles

With sufficient discretion.

Cavalier agitators may find,

That they end in aggression.”

 

After I let that dope up

And he staggered away,

I took a few deep breaths

To let the tension allay.

I looked out the window

As leaves rustled in trees,

While watching my rage

Drift away with the breeze.

That day had been pleasant

With a blue skied scene,

And after that little hiccup,

It returned to serene.

Into the Darkness

A lunar eclipse

Creeping shadow of Earth

A blackout is coming

Some terrible curse

The neighbors inside

While I stand alone

Braced for the spectacle

And chilled to the bone

The moon just a sliver

Starts turning my gears

Then with one final flare

The light disappears 

Into the darkness

I walk without fear

Armed with my mind

I won’t shed a tear

 

Into the darkness

And out of the light

Where frightful sounds

Go bump in the night

 

I know it’s not real

It’s all in my head

And yet so overwhelming

This feeling of dread

 

Take a deep breath

Hold those demons at bay

Center my mind

Until the fear goes away

 

Into the darkness

I plunge once again

That devil disturbed

I slay in his den

 

I’m not afraid

I’m in control

You do not scare me

Crawl back in your hole

 

Into the darkness

The glow of my soul

Protects me from evil

And burns hot as coal

 

Into the darkness

I walk without fear

Armed with my mind

Sharp as a spear

 

Into the darkness

But I am alright

Because even in darkness

I am my light

And then here it comes

The moonlight return

To shine like my star

This you may learn

Don't fear the darkness

Or what it may do

Just arm your mind

It's all up to you

The Barefoot Scrivener

These are days without socks

Just like time without clocks

It passes, but I don’t know how it goes.

There are ledgers and spreadsheets

And other intellectual feats

My productivity seldom wains.

No matter, whatever I may do

The week doggedly charges through

Ending where it began, but further.

Yesterday I was but a lad

Trailing coattails of my dad

And today there is salt in my pepper top.

I understand how time must go

For it rarely flits away too slow

Since every day is filled with living.

Alas, there is no time to pause

In the wake of nature’s laws

I’m barefoot at my desk, but busy.

A Few Spare Words

Clever is as clever does,

And I got clever young.

I've got a mind full of shovels

But a sandpaper tongue.

I sound smooth if its written

And maybe smoother if its sung,

But watch out if I speak plainly

Because that's how it gets brung.

I don't rely on obscenities

Just to fill the stagnant air,

Yet if I hurl one in your direction

It should curl your hair.

Like the rev of an engine

Growling sharp to life

The venom of my acid tongue

Will cut you like a knife.

I don't say this to intimidate

Or to cause you any harm.

It's just a statement of fair warning

In case I lose my charm.

If you hear my canine bark

My bite is close at heel,

So temper your incitement

Before this shit gets real.

Posture

Posture is important. I once knew a man who stood with a pronounced slouch. There was something crooked in his posture and in his demeanor. He looked like a question mark when he wrote on the blackboard. The crooked man had the power to allow or restrict my access to an opportunity. I had been the top student in the German’s math class, but the crooked man held the cards of all our fates for the following year. I had earned that opportunity, but somebody with money and power had paid him off to give away my opportunity to someone else. It was the girl who chased my coattails, who ended up being promoted with the advanced class.

The crooked man admitted his betrayal to me privately. In his weakness he thought that his reasoned excuse would appease me. He assumed that everyone was as cowed by privilege as he. Instead, his betrayal only focused my detestation for him. But now, I was stuck with the crooked man for nine more miserable months. He talked to us like children, but we were young adults. His classroom had floor to ceiling windows that opened on the ground floor. I always sat in the back. In the warm months we would open the windows, and during class I would gradually ease my chair backwards until I was sitting entirely outside. I was bored by his class, but I was always prepared to answer when called upon. Otherwise, I was inching my way outside, free but tethered, under the fluttering maple leaves and a blue sky – until he yanked me back with his insipid droll and his crooked stance.

By the time we were done together, I hated not only him but the very thing I had excelled at prior to meeting him. It did not matter that the girl who had been given my spot washed out after a year and transferred somewhere else to disguise her embarrassment. Nothing could correct the wrong that had been done to me.

However, hate is a self-destructive emotion, and pity is useless. If there is no recourse to right a wrong, the individual still must figure out how to overcome its shadow. Yet that man was just a piece of a much larger puzzle. I carried a lot of rage, for a lot of reasons, for too much of my youth. It does not matter whether rage is haphazard or directed at injustice. Rage cannot be contained. It corrodes the vessel in which it is carried, struggling to get out. It took me a long time to learn how to set those negative feelings free from the sanctuary of my mind.

Scars scab over, but some of the residue of trauma never leaves you. Twenty-something years later I came across that same man again, at the wake for one of his colleagues. The man who had passed had been a mentor and a hero of mine. But I knew by then that some people attend events surrounding a death, to pay their respects to the deceased and their loved ones, while others attend to be seen attending. The crooked man stood like an old tree that had been permanently bent by a perpetual wind, even more crooked than I remembered him. He was still weak, and still mealy mouthed.

It made my skin crawl to be near that cockroach. But cockroaches live in the shadows, so most people never see all the things that they do in the darkness. As far as I knew, the crooked man only ever abused the trust of those powerless to defend their honor against him. The time for discussing his betrayal was long passed by now. He would get nothing from me, but that which I chose to give him. I understood that my etiquette was about me and not him, so I straightened my shoulders, made my spine extra erect, and tilted my head only enough down to look him in the eye. Then I said "Hello."

We exchanged pleasantries in the company of some others. In my mind, some part of me was still seething, yet I remained polite, betraying no emotion. After a few moments, I excused myself. As I walked away, I looked back over my shoulder. The crooked man was speaking with a lovely woman who had been his colleague all those years. She must have known who he was, but perhaps she did not know that there was anything to be done about it. Dealing with a sick mind can confound even the most well-meaning people, especially when no obvious solution reveals itself. Perhaps she was just being polite in the same manner as I had been. Sometimes there is no choice but to trust others to their own judgments.

When I was a boy, we had a diseased peach tree in the side yard. It would drop rotten fruit all over the yard and then we would go about picking it up to throw away. My mother did not know what to do about it. I think that she wanted to save it but did not know how. I always suspected that it might have been beyond saving. Then, in 1985, Hurricane Gloria came along and blew the tree partially over, leaning it propped against the neighbor's fence. It took us a couple more years to figure out what to do, but eventually that tree became so profoundly diseased and crooked, that resolution became imperative. It was abundantly obvious that its life was more painful than any pleasure we might derive from having a peach tree growing in our yard. The neighbor was a landscaper, so he came by and took it down.

Walking away from the wake, now with some distance from the crooked man, I stopped and turned. The wake had been held in a building I knew well. To anyone who noticed me staring, it might have seemed that I was assessing the structure. They would have gotten the action correct, but the object wrong. The crooked man looked like that old peach tree standing bowed by the weight of its own disease. In that moment, I allowed myself to think of the Portrait of Dorian Grey, that novel by Oscar Wilde, about a man who appears youthful to the world, while all the evils of his character are revealed on a magic portrait of himself that he keeps hidden in his attic. That novel was a fiction. In the real world, nature has her way of delivering justice to those who deserve it.

Even as a little kid, my great uncle Lou used to admonish me on my posture. Lou looked like Benny Hill, and he had a similar, though perhaps more wholesome, sense of humor. He was the first person I knew with a VCR, an old beta max that he would play on his projection television. Uncle Lou had a collection of Benny Hill and Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In videos that he would show to anyone who was willing. I loved sitting on the carpet and watching those videos with him. I had a huge crush on Goldie Hawn as a child. She played dumb, but I thought her bits on Laugh-in were clever. I also liked looking at all the pretty women Benny Hill would chase too. Comedy and pretty girls produced the surface level appeal but spending time around Uncle Lou was the real prize. It takes a village to raise a child. Some children have their village delivered to them, while other children need to go out searching for it. Uncle Lou was part of my village, and I learned valuable lessons from his about how a man should act and strive to carry himself. Uncle Lou was the one who told me to “Try something new every day.” To this day, that phrase is a central tenet of my risk assessment matrix.

Lou had been an MP in the military during WWII, but had once divulged that he never loaded his gun. He diffused most situations with a smile and his good humor. I was more terrified of disappointing him, than I was of him per se. When he would tell me to stand up straight, or pick up my feet when I walked, I just thought those were the sorts of things that old people say to kids. Now that I am older, I see how these things matter.

In the past I have posted about how everyone gets a chance to become their own kind of hero. Thinking back on the heroes in stories I read or watched as a child, none of them ever slouched. All those heroes lived by a code of honor, and dignity and integrity. When I played with building blocks as a child, the structure never stood long if the foundation was not solid. Posture is the foundation. Everything, about who you make yourself to be, is built upon how you choose to stand.

The Blossom

Men are like plants,
We grow at different rates
And reach different heights.
Two saplings planted side by side
May seem destined to grow together,
But the rose bush stays low
And guards its beauty with thorns,
While the oak stretches towards the sky
High above that against which the other guards.
You cannot be your brother,
Nor can he be you.
Do not apologize for what you are not,
And do not scold those who cannot follow.
With respect for the nature of oneself
Each individual blossoms in his own way.

Choose

Death is Certainty. Life is Risk. Death is Emptiness. Life is Full. Death is Fearfulness. Life is Courage. Death is Coming. Live Now! There will be no hereafter. The virtue is laughter Emanating from the mouths of the Free. Choose every Moment While the choosing is yours. The world expands before you; Earth and Sky, Wind and Water, Birds above and Worms below, And you here now as witness To Wonders beyond your Imagination. Every Moment is a Choice And every Choice is cumulative. You perpetually program your Mind For every Consequence that follows. Your kindness towards an injured turtle today, Will be the Compassion you demonstrate Towards a fallen man tomorrow. There are no guarantees, Only options and outcomes. You can stand on your feet, Or fall to your knees. You can beg from the world Or mold it like clay. You get to choose, Every Day. Choose every Moment And Live by your Choice. Stand for your Self. Raise up your Voice. You get only one Chance To make your mark on Eternity, So Fight like hell to Live Your Life Free.