Sputterpub's Blog

The color leaves of sycamore become
before they fall – the hue of wild grass
that dries to hay beneath the August sun –
these tones describe my dog. From coal to brass
her aging coat now whitens at her chin,
and fondled ripples like the desert sand
before the evening breeze: as warm within,
as fine as grit, as soft as shadowed tan.

My mind is purple but my wisdom’s green.
I don’t believe I dream in black and white.
I had to study 30 years to learn
the color of my silence. Now between
assertions I allow a little light,
and watch the spectrum of ideas return.

An existential deposition took
eleven heavy hours out of us.
We gave a close and surrealistic look
at three complaints, and saw them for the fuss
they were. A mess of feathers in the air
are all the albatross has left behind
for gulls to scavenge, pecking everywhere
at sustenance that isn’t there to find.

“No Exit” read a sign no one could see,
for though the walls were glass, we didn’t know
of any view around or out, as we
dissected the mistakes of years ago.
Encapsulated in our glassy craft,
we rode discovery until we laughed.

“No Exit” neon-signaled through a wall
of glass a dozen floors above the ground.
And we in that glass conference room were all
like passengers within a lifeboat, bound
upon a sea of stress to any berth,
intense around our table top to know,
a hundred fifty feet above the earth,
just where the day’s discovery would go.

As if we were survivors of a storm,
an intimacy grew among the eight
within that place. Tenacity and warm
amazing patience took us to a late
relief, and finally I understood
their cowardice, and they allowed me good.

For 16 months I sensed the pendant sword
above my head, and felt the weight of stone
around my neck compress my collar bone,
so though I know the lawyers there were bored,
and plaintiff tension couldn’t be ignored,
still I was glad to meet the bad unknown,
and witness how complaints to action grown
were shrunk by truth to pebbles in a gourd.

The stone around my neck became the top
the table showed, its surface flecked with reams
of photocopied evidence in piles.
And long before the pointed sword could drop,
our questions redirected it to dreams,
so light and safe I left that place in smiles.

I joke about how boring water is.
My father says his father bade him think
how many nasty things are done by fish
in it, and try to choose a different drink.
My mother didn’t serve it with our meal –
I thought that ritual for restaurants
and Protestants. It rarely had appeal,
for sedentary me had other wants.

Four days ago, I learned the taste of death
on parchment tongue. Too little water taught
me hiking what a torture is each step
when every cell is screaming thirst, and water
is withheld.
Recovered, I can’t get
enough of water’s clean transparent wet.

My childhood occurred when I was small,
and left a large impression on my soul.
A paltry twenty years it ran, but all
its weeks survive in me. My self-control
my parents held as if they were trustees,
accusing me of none they could perceive,
until in disobedient degrees
I captured power and I took my leave.

Of course I’ll not forget my childhood;
the acid etches deepest on the new,
and none of us matures without its score.
But what was it my parents understood,
those years? Compared to me, they traveled through
accelerating presents they ignored.

I sometimes think, when clients try to cow
me into doing what they have in mind,
or when a costumed person tells me how
I must proceed with forms or humankind,
or when attempts are made to guide my course
at Disneyland, or school, or in a bank,
that even Dad could not impose his force
on me, by carrot, stick, caress, or spank.

Obedience will never be a suit
that I’ll select or wear with any grace.
Compliance doesn’t fit me, and its fruit
will never tempt me. I won’t hide my face
or brain or nerve in any century:
Obedience cannot be found in me.