7.3.23. Morning Coffee Notes

On today’s menu:

Horsetail Tea, Time, Mary & Jesus, PFC, Cigars, Zippo, and coffee

 

Today for the first time in forever

Today is the first time forever

Today I get to sit in a big blue arm chair to have tea. Horsetail tea with a gorgeous dollop of honey from local happy bees. Its cold and March and afternoon. I’ve all the windows open and I’m layered up and wrapped up in my grey plush wizards robe, hood up. The lion of March breezing around the place.

The best thing about honey in tea? Well don’t stir it up too violent that way at the end there is this glorious blob of warm honey to watch as it slides out the still warm mug into you r mouth. I learned this as a child, first with sugar and then with honey and it still works today.

Its especially good with an astringent tea like horsetail, nettle, green etc Steeped strong in an insulated clear glass mug. Apologies to the purists but tea bags are good by me.

~

I am not drawn to abstraction

Rather to immersion

~

Mary & Jesus

Antidote to wrath-god   

~

When Pain Ebbs

First time a walk without

And without causing new ones

A giddy joy hardly dare express out loud

But does

~

The sea continues to open up to me

Revelation of secrets

An easy evolution

Todays sample from My Favourite Dreams Are of the Sea:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Sea Made Her Way

snuck up river

dares a short cut overland

crosses the lake

hitches a ride under the high lands

to where an old man sits

back against white stucco

smoking a Cuban cigar

she begins right away

 whispers rolling waves

soaring skimming sounds of silver birds

stars like diamonds among pure black

as if travelling among them there would never be another horizon

behind his eyes the old man smiles

ribbons of smoke barely audible ahh into 0’s

at which she pauses 

sees how he is now

and knows all she can really do?

 return alone from whence she came

never to kiss his pale grey eyes again

~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P.F.C. *

crossing the country by train

deep water port

 shore of dreams

golden gateway rising sun

grey steel ships

grey steel sea

grey soft eyes

fraternity of fear and obligation

naivete and boredom

a steady bravado

a tedium of active duty

battered, dog-eared but never

a note not even a name in,

Shakespeare, bible of complete works hidden away

secret claim to dreams your heart could not reveal

*abbreviation Military. private first class. United States Marine Corps.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~

There Has Never Been an Ocean Too Cold for Her to Swim In *

Flamingo towels Knickerbocker beer USMC Zippo

Old Gold cigarette spiral prayers Gratitude at last, unable to fathom any reason to feel bad about surviving.

Deep breath wonderful (not a god damn palm tree in sight). Watching that beautiful woman of the sea. Only wish there would never have to be a time to leave.

Sometime after midnight, small cedar room,

 Stuart tartan blankets, crisp white sheets, strange night sounds traipsing gingham curtains,

 As if tiny fingers she ohs your name, answer back with words you never knew before.

This spring by the sea your little house will not find you.

Gone now. Perhaps to wander?

That glimmering girl once more beside you…?

“And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun” **

(For: D.R.L. – with regards to W.B. Yeats, his favourite poet)

*  USMC – United States Marine Corps. Zippo – cigarette lighter issued by USMC WW2 Old Gold – cigarette brand

** from The Song of Wandering Aengus BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

5.3.23 morning coffee notes

On today’s menu

Pain, Hawks, Sea shore, joy, equanimity, writing poetry again, title piece from: my favourite dreams are of the sea

At first it was a bit sporadic but eventually

The lapse between pain and non-opposing

Grew shorter

Instead of zing-fuck

It became zing-oh you again

Managing  what is VS seeking comfort

~~~~

This mornings

Red hawk

Unfurls herself

Slowly into flight

Funny how something so big

Remains unnoticed until in motion.

 ~~~

 Where do they happen

Where do they go

Where do they come from

With Within Without – “Me”

Don’t know Don’t want Don’t need

Thoughts.

~~~~~

Mercy Plea

If I listen

I’d hear my own heart

A weakness which would put me vulnerable

To every heartless thing I’ve done

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don’t know where it comes from

This turbulent impatience

 

Attachment to results

A wish that my writing made a “difference”

That people found it got it responded to it.

 

Or is it something else

An exhaustive ache pain

Redundant days after days

Seeming peaceful but inherently futile.

 

I’m where it comes from

Me

What do I do about that?

Old man blues what can you do?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Equanimity key

Resolution for suffering

 Enabler of movement instead of entrenched rigidity

 Breathe in What Is

Exhale movements with What Is.

Equanimity free from emotional reactions activity is infused with wisdom

~~~~~~~~~~~

Today for the first time in forever I wrote. Working some poems from my manuscript My Favourite Dreams Are of the Sea. I wasn’t getting it ready to send out, I’ve no one to send it to. I just found myself sitting with it. Started with a basic full word do edit and then began to read and work them. Getting to the first three. The changes presented themselves effortlessly. I had no doubt over every deleted word, lines even stanza each brought out the natural shine of the piece. It was a nice steady enjoyment of writing poetry again.  Left me looking forward to tomorrows session and able to allow myself that luxury.

So here’s the title piece ~

 

My Favourite Dreams Are of the Sea

 

Sky so bright it can’t be looked at

water dark and deep

the sky bends down in envy

 I am alone in this wide-open ocean

absent from any shore line

knowing as I lie back she will not let me fall.

 

 Barefoot playing on the beach sand castles built tall as my self

and now with my pail make a way so mermaids who have been watching

 can come up for a visit without leaving their home behind.

 

My mother meets me by the creek once marked the boundary of our beach walks

we are walking back I am telling her everyone is doing pretty well.

she is pointing out to where diamonds of the waves briefly meet the sky.

 

My cousins brother-in-law brings us to the breakwater to fish. I’ve smoked all my cigarettes and he, the brother-in-law, is generous supplying me from his own. They get bored want to go down to the beach side to swim. I don’t want to, So I stay smoking someone else’s cigarettes fishing for nothing keeping an eye on the gear. Nearby there’s woman on a huge flat chunk of granite. She has two children with her. They are playing together with bits of sea weed. She lays there luxuriant in the sun sounds of the waves and the laughter of her children.

 

Walking on the beach with a girl I know from school. tide high and slack.

we are finding things in the sand noting as we go strips of green weeds, bits of sea glass, bleached bones of small creatures skulls of small crabs. Sometimes there are these pink stones. I pick them up put them into the pockets of my cut-off jeans. She picks them up as well and even though she has pockets on her cut-offs she is rather throwing them out into the sea. I give it a go but mine fall short. They’re nowhere near the long effortless arcs of her own. So instead, I give all mine to her and watch. We continue on in that way. Me picking up small pink stones handing them to her so we can enjoy the long grace of her connections with the sea.

25.2.23 coffee morning notes

Some mornings are a long time coming

You begin to count on them and then to remind you not to take then for granted they become elusive. Taunting little false dawns, strange sounds, sensitive bladder, dry cough. Eventually they get here. Well at least that’s what happened today. Guess there are no guarantees though. Except for this,

If there is a morning soon there will be coffee. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

At some point I realised

There is a place

One can go with pain

That is not oppositional

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

So not only can you give life

You can bleed without dying

amazing

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Don’t forget

Spiders want to live too

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

You Might Look To Remember Me

Walking the maple groves

When spring causes swift the sap to rise

The crisp hard frost early in the morning

When the hunting’s best

An old chair strategically placed in the living room.

Remote nearby

Joy and tears of my children and their children

Steadfast loyalty of my loving wife

Wherever & whenever comrades old and new should gather

The dogs barking at some random things.

Yet able to restrain themselves enough to wait patiently for their dinner.

Roll of waves playing guitar with the sunlight.

Old fishing boats at the end of a working day.

Sure, these and so many places you might look

Even occasionally catch a glimpse

Though through the years more and more elusive these might be.

But I can tell you this for sure no matter what.

As long as you have room in your heart.

That’s exactly where you’ll always find me.

Morning Coffee Notes 24.2.23 ~

On todays menu ~ Spring, Horseshoe Crab, Body/brain Memory According to Horses, This Mornings Repetition and of course  COFFEE!

Empty bird feeder

Dappled sunlight

Budding trees

I get to notice

Spring

 Again

 ~

 

 

Horseshoe Crabs

 

I think about horseshoe crabs, when child, discovering them.

My friend telling me they were dangerous because the ridge along their sone and tail would cut your foot. And they were poisonous too!

Notwithstanding I forum them fascinating. Would have called them alien but I didn’t have that word you. Extra-terrestrial creatures you know.

Later I heard that they were a creature that had silver blood and were used to discover way to treat leprosy. There were definitely a colour of unseen worlds. Upside down there was bits of orange a more familiar thing. sometimes we’d find small little ones not as intimidating as the adults which were about a foot or so wide. Besides all the little one we ever found were dead. Bleach whitish by the sun, shells thinner than a potato chip.

 Any way I don’t know how much of what I believed as a kid is true. Don’t want to know enough of my childhood has been disproven. So I’m keeping this for my childhood and my friends as if that would keep us walking along the big giant oceans sharing stories and the adventure of comradery.

The Body/Brain memory according to horses.

Has its own memory. Things a brain might rather not know. The body remembers and will act automatic to prevent, or at least try to prevent a reoccurrence of such things.

 I remember getting busted up by a horse. First time thrown, first time in hospital, first broken bone, first collapsed lung a long list of things. All firsts that I wished were nevers.

So after I was discharged from hospital I realised I need a cane, There was no medical reason, But I found whenever I was walking around in public and people got to close I’d flinch and it’d hurt. They weren’t really too close but according to the body’s memory they certainly were, So I carried a wooden cane. Not to menace folk but people generally give a wider berth to a person with a cane.

 

The brain too has its own memories. Maybe sometimes it decides the best way to manipulate what’s happened is to go full throttle out there. To prove to itself and the body too that though a thing happened once doesn’t always mean it will happen again’ Kind of rushing away from what the body remembers and mind does not wish to acknowledge. Apart of something that wants to prove something to its/my self?

So anyway that’s the reason I got back on the horse so to speak. Never rode that other one again. A difference between courage and stupid?

And so that was enough for firsts although my second time in hospital was from being kicked by a horse. That was the first time I lost a spleen and at least I know that can never happen again. 

 “Your spleen looks like smithereens’.” said the surgeon. Needed to be quoted somewhere don’t you think? They wanted to cut my chaps off. That of course did not happen. But that’s another story.

 

This Mornings Repetition

 

If I let these days

Gentle lie falling fallen leaves

Like green leaves

Wind whisper rain through poplar

 How can any one of them be bad?

This is my privilege

To be kind is my honour

These are my vows

Today tonight tomorrow

 To you to me to this whole world.

 

(Repeat daily)

morning coffee notes 23.2.23

Today I get to have another one

Coffee

Morning

Dog wiggling with joy

Allowed up on the bed

Grateful

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That morning still dark

Slender glow along the horizon

Promised a sunny day.

 

I already had the horse groomed and tacked.

One of my favourite things to ride out alone early

No plans for when we’d come back.

The joy of it

Me and this wonderful creature

As if we could really never come back.

The sense of truly anything could happen.

 

I knew we’d head down to the river

A small pool there she liked to splash

 I was thinking up the goat trails

Then into the peaks.

She had great balance and true to her breed

Feet like steel.

 

How would the valley look this morning?

Where would we find ourselves by afternoon?

These questions opened our hearts.

Hearts of gratitude. Pulsing life as something to be unknown

Embraced Rejoiced Savoured.

 

Thank You.

 

Cold diamonds

Prisming

Early sun

 

The longer I live the more I know I don’t know.

Like Dylan said – I was so much older then I’m younger than that now,

The certainty of youth seems to give way to the wisdom of not knowing and not for the most part giving af.

All I can do is cultivate kindness to  everyone else that don’t know anything either. Although some folks get really spun out about it. If you spend generations insisting on things being a certain way well good luck to anyone who shows its different. I am grateful for the evidence of revolution. Makes these hardships a bit easier. How can you look a seasons ageing empires come and go and come up with a belief in a never changing anything.

On the other had as a great master once reminded his students upon his departure “Don’t Know. Don’t need. Don’t want.”

 

When we stop splintering in order to “know”

how bright will the universe be

 

 

oh rebel

when you return

a joy to all

after all home is where the heart is

laughing.

 

 

Morning coffee notes 22.2.23

22.2.23

 

She told me she was going out to lunch with her friend. Even asked if I wanted to come along. I was busy at the typewriter, so I said maybe next time.

  Came back, told me she’d seen a lawyer and wanted a divorce. I was so angry I just said Fine. Packed a back, left.

 A while after, once it was settled I was picking up the rest of my stuff.

She asked me Why?

What?

Why didn’t you fight for me, for our marriage.

I don’t remember what I said but I wasn’t angry anymore.

 

~

How should I treat pain?

With kindness.

When I can.

No matter how many years it takes.

~

February sun dances

Crisp morning across my fingers

Each breath catches wonder

Each step keeps me close

 

~

In fact, we don’t really see anything. We perceive reflections of light. And of the light spectrum we only perceive partially. Our eyes are limited. So, what we can’t “see” we decide does not exist. Or we decide it might exist according to our own impositions. Either way, all the while our vision of reality is based on what we don’t really see much like that which our eyes cannot perceive anyway.

Why are we crazy?

 

~

Somethings I’ve known Come back to me

Meandering horses, stray dog, orange cat

A smile you had when you were three

grass is always greener – even if its a driveway

~

 

coffee morning notes 21 2 23

21.2.23

 

Morning Coffee Notes

 

Late morning still in bed

The only green leaves

Vines wove around

Catch the wind

Dark empty trees

Bright silver sky behind them.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

No better luxury sleep

And when waking up

Get to stretch back into sleep

Again

 

Sleep is a nourishment

 

~~~~

 

I didn’t want to

But the day was hungry for me

And admittedly so was I

Besides if I got up now

I could beat the bladder to it

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Thank you for saving my life

 

I’m sorry I never told you. But that night I came home terrified you really saved my life. I lay in bed your cool hands on my for head on my arms. Talking softly all I could say was that someone must have slipped something in my beer. When actually what it was, was I had bought these little white pills after being told they were mild like Valium. Turned out they were white lightening acid. And so, I spent a few hours trying to figure out what was happening alone in the woods coming up with answers like I was dead or I was god or if I didn’t want to be dead I had to become god. Usual seventies acid stuff which at the time even with my experience I couldn’t tell .well any way. I didn’t need to do any of those things, I just had to make it back to you and then it all came clear and you were my mother and I was your kid and I slept for most of a day and it was ok.

 

Sorry too that we never really talked about your sickness. Maybe I didn’t want to know? Or I was too afraid to know that I would be loosing you. Loosing my mommy. I was feeling I couldn’t do anything any way. Well, what could I do? Today’s answers are not the ones I had back then.

 Helpless when all I could do was hold you – and didn’t even do that much,

 Today’s answer – one of them, I hold you now and always in my heart. I see you in my beautiful son and daughter, for that always I am grateful.

Thank you for saving my life and for giving it to us all.

 

 ——————————-

Water Hare New Year

I hang flags in the garden.

Leave them to sky.

Make bread.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 How should I treat pain? With kindness.

The Holidays Have Come and Gone ~

The holidays have come and gone
The new year no longer new
But still the Buddha sits
In each and every heart
The still point
The peace
The home each of us has looked for
In some way or another
So how to find this heart of ours
By giving
Every kindness we give
Allows another to spend a moment
With peace with their still point with their Buddha
Likewise our gift of kindness gives us the same
Moment after moment building a realisation of who we are
A still point of peace at home. With our Buddha
Thank You

the poet PD Lyons Reading from As If The Rain Fell In Ordinary Time ~ part 3, w/text

~todays menu~

Pensioners Remiss

Knowing Now the Healing Ways

Atlantic Luncheonette 

~

themes: growing old, 1970’s, love, city

 

PD Lyons Reading from As If The Rain Fell In Ordinary Time erbacce~prize for poetry 2019 erbacce~press Liverpool UK

Pensioners Remiss – incorporates a variety of scenes from my home town Waterbury Ct. St Johns Church for example is still there on the green.

Knowing Now the healing Ways – again influenced by my hometown and my first apartment back in the 70’s. 

Atlantic Luncheonette – one of those classic coffee shops in America long before Starbucks or cappuccinos. On the corner opposite the exquisite white marble Waterbury Post Office. Many a skipped school day involved the Atlantic – strategically placed half a block from the library. How ironic, skipped school to hang out in the library. They even let you smoke in there back then but that’s another poem or two…

 

Thanks for spending time . 

cheers.

good luck

bye

!

 

• Pensioners Remiss

When I wanted to see you,

Young and available

Dresses out amidst a blue jean wasteland

Stoned as laughter smoky charms

Dancing any moment unannounced

 

On the steps of Spanish little Harlem

Turquoise as your eyes church doors

Sacramental wine just opened

A spiral of possibilities each as believable as the past.

 

When I wanted to see you,

Roads wide open looking to ride

Strong summer muscles

 Love like horses into sunset.

 

 Diamonds across that midnight sky

 Alive only in your love me eyes.

Breathless barefoot pirouette

 Limitless kitchens, dull Frigidaire light.

 Icy India Pale Ale fast as you can drink.

 Third floor back porch dawn

Aegean blue amongst a city of fearlessness.

 

When I wanted to see you,

Saint John’s Chapel Christmas

 Balsam crushed blood velvet

Crystal choir angel

Mysterious as snow.

The mouth you used an accent of hypnosis

Lead like sorrow obsessed with green

 As if summer returned between live pines

 My hands held by your own to cup each one instead.

 

When I wanted to see you,

So much more so than wherever you were

Sharper than anything ever dreamed

So much sooner than now.

 

• Knowing Now the Healing Ways

I could touch you then. I knew you, just around the corner you. Halfway Up the stairs, you. A single rose growing between back yard rubble, you. Travelled by Grey Hound, cross the country, park bench dreamer, double dancer Zelda, you –

A tide of whirlpools. An antebellum majorette beauty queen. You were the most beautiful woman in the world. You were me as a woman. Wanting to be the first one to make love in a whole summer of dry attics never believing for one minute we could end up on the street by Christmas in Connecticut.

I was gonna. I was destined. I was the one. I was the chosen.  Could have been Jesus, preferred to be Krishna, hoped only to be Watermelon Sugar. A thing delectable to your lips, a thing you might someday remember without lying or regret.

You were anything possible,

Meeting again someday.

Around the corner, halfway up the stairs,

Eyes still same as my own,

Knowing now the healing ways,

Strong enough for love.

 

• Atlantic Luncheonette

     I walked out into a morning

 too bright against my shadows.

Three steps down I’m on the pavement

wondering just how able I am to get along –

Stable as loose change,

  balanced as a junkie on the prowl.

   Still can’t stop thinking about moving

 where it is, I’ll finally get to.

My boots are holes turning into blisters.

Cigarettes keep tempting me with immortality.

Girls across the street dare me to smile.

 

 I make up excuses to call what I’m eating food.

The waitress sings to the radio

 with commercial interruption asks how I am.

  My eggs keep running into hiding,

The coffee strives vainly to hiccup,

 I leave a quarter for the singer,

 a dollar for the poor.

 Ask the women on the corner, how much for conversation?

They say they don’t cater to perversions – try my luck next door.

  I bump into an old friend who asks about my wife,

I say I didn’t know I had one.

Then he’s handing me a ten spot

 says here go catch a cab.

I hand the driver a social security card

he says this ain’t worth noting unless your old.

I tell him my hearts just gone arthritic

He says here pal try a gun.

Two from My Childhood Home in Waterbury Ct. by PD Lyons. read by the poet

When we Lived on Nelson Ave.
PD Lyons

days when my father took milk and sugar
leaving the spoon in his coffee
my mother whistled among lilacs and roses
mahogany furniture kept well polished
 special knives and forks only used on holidays

I knew the name of Lilly of the valley
not to ever put them in your mouth

there were kittens in the sun porch
we watched born from a tabby cat named Felix

there were cherries from our backyard tree
so red I thought they were black,
tasting like no cherries
ever would again

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The Girl Next Door 
By PD Lyons

When I remember
Third floor windows
Tall white lace sails
Summer all running in our veins
Her mother in the kitchen
Making cool aid and plate full of something
Cookie sweet to eat

She wanted me to stay
I was afraid, wanted to go home
But didn’t want her to know
Not wanting to be in this house of too many windows
Overlooking the valley

But she wanted me to stay
Besides the rains begun
Going to be a real storm
Already rumblings a darkening horizon

 her mother agreed
I’ll call your parents. They won’t be worried.
You can stay for supper. You like hot dogs don’t you?

 that was how I learned not to be afraid of storms
Not to hide from thunder or lightning
Frances and her mother, exuberant
Ohs  ahs  joy over every
Menacing vibration sudden crash
Every flash veining skeletal zigzag