What we see, we have already "read" as our visual cortex filters our perceptions down through the doors of our experiences. What we read is immediately transposed perceptually to some kind of image that is compatible with our imagination. Here you will find much to read, and lots to see.
When it became clear aliens were working here with their dead-giveaway, perfectly cut Armani suits, excessive politeness, and those ray guns disguised as cell phones tucked into their belts, I decided we had two choices: cocktail party to befriend them, or massive air strikes (I joked at the board meeting) on what might be a hospital for children with rare diseases, but could as easily be where these aliens spawned and lived. Cocktail party it was, and they came with their gorgeous women dressed like replicas of gorgeous women, and though they sipped their martinis as if they'd graduated from some finishing school between their world and ours, I must admit they were good company, talking ball scores and GNP, even movies, and how bright and inviting the stars seemed from my deck. I found myself almost having sympathy for what certain people will do to fit in, until I remembered they might want to take over, maybe even blow things up. And when the dog barked from the other room, the way she does when some creature is nearby, about to cross an invisible line, I was sure I couldn't afford to trust appearances ever again. But when it was time to leave, they left, saying at the door what a good evening they'd had. Each of them used the same words, like people who've been trained in sales, and as they moved to their Miatas and Audis I noted the bare shoulders of their women were the barest shoulders I'd ever seen, as if they needed only the night as a shawl.
Today, ten thousand people will die and their small replacements will bring joy and this will make sense to someone removed from any sense of loss. I, too, will die a little and carry on, doing some paperwork, driving myself home. The sky is simply overcast, nothing is any less than it was yesterday or the day before. In short, there's no reason or every reason why I'm choosing to think of this now. The short-lived holiness true lovers know, making them unaccountable except to spirit and themselves--suddenly I want to be that insufferable and selfish, that sharpened and tuned. I'm going to think of what it means to be an animal crossing a highway, to be a human without a useful prayer setting off on one of those journeys we humans take. I don't expect anything to change. I just want to be filled up a little more with what exists, tipped toward the laughter which understands I'm nothing and all there is. By evening, the promised storm will arrive. A few in small boats will be taken by surprise. There will be survivors, and even they will die.
"Love is the condition in which happiness of another person is essential to your own."--Robert Heinlein.
Thoughts On Happiness
My grandfather used to say,
“Happiness is just those brief moments
in life when you’re not in pain.”
I loved my Pop, but
I must report he was a
hypocrite about happiness.
There was never a man
who loved life more,
or who could embrace calamity
with more grace.
When he was a toddler, playing
by the creek near their cabin,
watching his mother use a washboard,
he smelled death behind him;
turning he faced the hungry yellow eyes
of a cougar, growling with glee,
but before he could be devoured
his mother leaped over him,
pummeling the puma with her bucket--
he always hated cats after that.
He was an artist,
a Western landscape painter;
a master of clouds, mysterious valleys,
jagged peaks, and solitary protagonists.
As he aged, he struggled
with arthritis in order to hold his brushes.
I once told him, “You are an artist for the ages.
Never give up on your art, just paint your pain,
create color with your last breath”—
and he did, but pain emerged on the canvas
as beauty, as genius, as metaphor.
He stroked his joy into his oils, daubing it
onto dew bubbles, the gnarled dwarf trunks
of sagebrush, sunlight on a fencepost, moss
on a rock, the detail of bark on every tree,
the glint off Winchesters, smudges on leather
chaps, the rusty twists of barb wire, the big
veins on the hands of riders, farmers, and
mountain men.
Earl Melbourne Carpenter left us in 1986,
leaving his paintings hanging silently
in quiet rooms across five states;
but I still hear his Zorba laugh,
at midnight twice a week,
when he visits me. I can always
smell the rose oil in his hair
as I follow him back
into my dreams.
Glenn Buttkus
March 2010
Posted as part of the 1 year anniversary of dVerse Poets
would you like to hear the author read this poem to you?
