The (mis)adventures of a macintosh administrator.

I read about schools not allowing black students to be class president. The sort of thing that makes you shake your head and give up on people. Then I read a beautiful poem written by Paul Laurence Dunbar. I sought out his bio to learn more about him. He was black. His parents gave him a love of history, books. He loved school, and he excelled at it. He was class president in his high school.

When I go up through the mowing field, The headless aftermath, Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew, Half closes the garden path. And when I come to the garden ground, The whir of sober birds Up from the tangle of withered weeds Is sadder than any words A tree beside the wall stands bare, But a leaf that lingered brown, Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought, Comes softly rattling down. I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you. 

Here, I place
a blue glazed cup
where the wood
is slightly whitened.
Here, I lay down
two bright spoons,
our breakfast saucers, napkins
white and smooth as milk.

I am stirring at the sink,
I am stirring
the amount of dew
you can gather in two hands,
folding it into the fragile
quiet of the house.
v Before the eggs,
before the coffee
heaving like a warm cat,
I step out to the feeder-
one foot, then the other,
alive on wet blades.
Air lifts my gown - I might fly - 

This thistle seed I pour 
is for the tiny birds.
This ritual,
for all things frail
and imperiled.
Wings surround me, frothing
the air. I am struck
by what becomes holy.

A woman
who lost her teenage child
to an illness without mercy,
said that at the end, her daughter
sat up in her hospital bed
and asked:
What should I do?
What should I do?

Into a white enamel bath
I lower four brown eggs.
You fill the door frame,
warm and rumpled, kiss
the crown of my head.
I know how the topmost leaves
of dusty trees
feel at the advent 
of the monsoon rains.

I carry the woman with the lost child
in my pocket, where she murmurs
her love song without end:
           Just this, each day:
           Bear yourself up on small wings
           to receive what is given.
           Feed one another
           with such tenderness,
           it could almost be an answer.

My father always said, "early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, 

At one of Quentin Crisp's question and answer sessions in his one-man show, 

a girl in the audience asked 'What is the quickest remedy for a broken heart?' 

to which he replied:

'The quickest remedy is that you must learn not to 

value love because it is requited. 

It makes no difference whether your love is returned. 

Your love is of value to you because you give it. 

It's as though you gave me a present merely because 

you thought I'd give you one in return. 

This won't do. 

If you have love to give, you give it and you give it where it is needed, 

but never, never ask for anything in return. 

Once you've got that into your head, 

the idea of your heart being broken will disappear.'

- Posted from my iPhone

I'll tell you, if you really want to know: 

It was 2006, I was in Boston, taking the green line downtown and had just entered the underground station.

You are there. 

You have learned to enjoy the attribute of patience in itself, for it slows time, honors tranquility, and lets you savor a world in which you are clearly aware that your passage is but a brief candle. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

When you were boys we ended every dinner cooked outside on the grill by toasting marshmallows. One day last year I found the perfect sticks at the supermarket. How could I not think of you? Long dowels with pointed ends wrapped in a plastic bag, despite their intended purpose they were made just for getting the marshmallows past the lip of the kettle deep towards the orange and grey coals. I bought them, brought them home. Even though I live alone. 

No one's fated or doomed to love anyone./ The accidents happen, we're not heroines,/ they happen in our lives like car crashes,/ books taht change us, neighborhoods/ we move into and come to love./ Tristan und Isolde is scarcely the story,/ women at least should know the difference/ between love and death. No poison cup,/ no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder/ should have caught some ghost of us: that tape-recorder/ not merely played but should have listened to us,/ and could instruct those after us:/ this we were, this is how we tried to love,/ and there are the forces they had ranged against us,/ and these are the forces we hand ranged within us,/ within us and against us, against us and within us.

High school band. Memorial Day.
Country cemetery. Marched all the way.
We stood in formation, took off our caps.
Stood with the nation, we played taps

Year before Kennedy, year before King.
Last year I cared about anything.
But for that moment, we were one.
Honoring soldiers

At Arlington.

Notes drifted across the plains.
Swallows signaled oncoming rain.
Station wagons, pickup trucks
Rescued us then turned to rust

We put on new uniforms
Crisp, creased. Tattered, well-worn
Some forget where we come from
Some come to rest

In Arlington

When he was twelve, took my only son
Lost ourselves in the Smithsonian
Then Abraham, above the Mall.
Then raised our hands, touched the wall.

Headstone horizon, eternal flame
Unknown lie with familiar names
Sacrificed daughters and sons
So I could cry

At Arlington.

The man I love enters the kitchen
with a groan, he just
woke up, his hair a Rorschach test.
A minty kiss, a hand
on my neck, coffee, two percent milk,
microwave. He collapses
on a chair, stunned with sleep,
yawns, groans again, complains
about his dry sinuses and crusted nose.
I want to tell him how
much he slept, how well,
the cacophony of his snoring
pumping in long wheezes
and throttles--the debacle
of rhythm--hours erratic
with staccato of pants and puffs,
crescendi of gulps, chokes,
pectoral sputters and spits.
But the microwave goes ding!
A short little ding! - sharp
as a guillotine--loud enough to stop
my words from killing the moment.
And during the few seconds
it takes the man I love
to open the microwave, stir,
sip and sit there staring
at his mug, I remember the vows
I made to my pillows, to fate
and God: I'll stop eating licorice,
become a blonde, a lumberjack,
a Catholic, anything,
but bring a man to me:
so I go to him: Sorry, honey,
sorry you had such a rough night,
hold his gray head against my heart
and kiss him, kiss him.

A friend and I chatting about fear and dreams.

- Posted from my iPhone

- Posted from my iPhone

1994. Working at Nickelodeon on Blues Clues. Look how happy this kid is. NYC is about to eat him up and spit him out.

Oh well.

- Posted from my iPhone

Oh, stormy stormy world,
The days you were not swirled
Around with mist and cloud,
Or wrapped as in a shroud,
And the sun's brilliant ball
Was not in part or all
Obscured from mortal view--
Were days so very few
I can but wonder whence
I get the lasting sense
Of so much warmth and light.
If my mistrust is right
It may be altogether
From one day's perfect weather,
When starting clear at dawn,
The day swept clearly on
To finish clear at eve.
I verily believe
My fair impression may
Be all from that one day
No shadow crossed but ours
As through its blazing flowers
We went from house to wood
For change of solitude.

- Posted from my iPhone late late at night.

- Posted from my iPhone

STO here we come.

- Posted from my iPhone

Testing, 1 2 3.

dvsjr

--
Posted from my iPhone

Location:Old Plymouth Rd,Sagamore Beach,United States

This day and age we're living in 
Gives cause for apprehension 
With speed and new invention 
And things like fourth dimensions.

Yet we get a trifle weary 
With Mr. Einstein's theory. 
So we must get down to earth at times 
Relax, relieve the tension

And no matter what the progress 
Or what may yet be proved 
The simple facts of life are such 
They cannot be removed.

You must remember this 
A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. 
The fundamental things apply 
As time goes by.

And when two lovers woo 
They still say, "I love you." 
On that you can rely 
No matter what the future brings 
As time goes by.

Moonlight and love songs 
Never out of date. 
Hearts full of passion 
Jealousy and hate. 
Woman needs man 
And man must have his mate 
That no one can deny.

It's still the same old story 
A fight for love and glory 
A case of do or die. 
The world will always welcome lovers 
As time goes by.

Oh yes, the world will always welcome lovers

 
As time goes by.

- Posted from my iPhone

People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels

- Posted from my iPhone

The opposite of depression, I wanted you to know I discovered it. The complete 180 of lying awake at 3am alone and full of sadness for a full year is to be gently awakened by her, warm and naked, spooning you in the darkness.

- Posted from my iPhone

Luxury itself, thick as a Persian carpet,
honey fills the jar
with the concentrated sweetness
of countless thefts,
the blossoms bereft, the hive destitute.

Though my debts are heavy
honey would pay them all.
Honey heals, honey mends.
A spoon takes more than it can hold
without reproach. A knife plunges deep,
but does no injury.

Honey moves with intense deliberation.
Between one drop and the next
forty lean years pass in a distant desert.
What one generation labored for
another receives,
and yet another gives thanks.

- Posted from my iPhone in bed. Listening to the wind.

Because my daughter's eighth-grade teachers
Are having what is called an "in-service day,"
Which means, in fact, an out-of-service day,

She is spending this Friday home with me,
So I get up in time to take us,
On this summery day in March,
For a light lunch at a legendary café
Near the Yacht Marina.

Then we feed some ducks before catching
The cheap early-bird showing of
My Cousin Vinny, at which we share a
Dessert of a box of Milk Duds large
Enough to last us the entire show.

Afterwards we drive to a shoe-store to
Get her the Birkenstocks she's been coveting,

But they're out of her size in green; we leave
An order and stop for dinner at Norm Calvin's
Texas-style hole-in-the-wall barbeque rib factory.

When we get home I am smart enough
To downplay to my wife what a good day
We have had on our own. Later, saying
Goodnight to my little girl,

Already much taller than her mother,
I say, "days like today are the favorite
Days of my life," and she knows

It is true.

- Posted from my iPhone

By Charles Bukowski

each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand -
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha ...
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,
I don't know ...

- Posted from my iPhone

It was darker then, in the nights when the cars
Came sliding around the traffic circle, when the headlights
Speckled with rain traveled the bedroom walls
and vanished; when the typewriter, the squeaking chair,
the slow voice of the radio stirred the night air like a fan.
Of course, the ones we loved were beautiful--
slim, dark-haired, intent on their books.
The rain came swishing against the lamp-lit windows.
The cat purred in his chair. A clock sang,
and we lay nearly asleep, almost dreaming,
almost alone, nearly gone--the days fly so;
and the nights, like sleep, disappear without memory.

- Posted from my iPhone, early in the morning.

They could
pump frenzy into air ducts
and rage into reservoirs,
dynamite dams
and drown cities,
cry fire in theaters
as the victims are burning,
but
I will find my way through blackened streets
and kneel down at your side.

They could
jump the median, head-on,
and obliterate the future,
fit .45's to the hands of kids
and skate them off to school,
flip live butts into tinderbox forests
and hellfire half the heavens,
but
in the rubble of smoking cottages
I will hold you in my arms.

They could
send kidnappers to kindergartens
and pedophiles to playgrounds,
wrap themselves in Old Glory
and gut the Bill of Rights,
pound the door with holy screed
and put an end to reason,
but
I will cut through their curtains of cunning
and find you somewhere in the moonlight.

Whatever they do with their anthrax or chainsaws,
however they strip-search or brainwash or blackmail,
they cannot prevent me from sending you robins,
all of them singing: I'll be there.

- Posted from my iPhone

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly-
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift-not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

- Posted from my iPhone