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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
 Posted - 05/28/2006 : 20:36:54
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| Two sides to every border story. I hold on to you. Still listening with my heart. |
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3701 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2006 : 05:08:50
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Cold, clear night, shooting stars provide their last wish.
Twenty five miles from Del Rio, the day has settled down for the starlit night.
The campfire is kept company by casadores, hard drink, and guitars.
Eagles and Yellow Ledbetter in the air.
Just past the edge of the light, visitors pass through, unnoticed.
Some on four legs, others on two.
Looking for something to eat and drink as they make their way
to destinations unknown.
craig |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 05/30/2006 : 19:19:17
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| Happy to see your writings again, Craig. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 05/31/2006 : 19:49:13
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| She's juicing lemons for lemon pies for tomorrow's celebration. He's crimping crust with his narrow knuckle. Blue on the other side of their window. Wind chasing the racing clouds across the sky. Here, near her ear, he begins his recitation. The words roll like honey off his sweet tongue. A disparate tale with no linear neatness. A sweet circle. "His heart...es mi hogar," she says. Her smile is level and shy. In the narrow courtyard, roosters agreeing. Bowls of roasted corn. Chile and lime. Happy first anniversary, Antonio and Piera. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 06/04/2006 : 20:56:33
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| "...and the skies are not cloudy all day." |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 06/05/2006 : 22:09:27
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| Here he comes. Riding Rocinante. From a hole in the clouds he commands, "Fly now!" The sun blinks. The fog fractures. The beach goes back to the birds. Gulls and terns and pipers. The turquoise sky suddenly fills with wings. |
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3701 Posts |
Posted - 06/07/2006 : 18:40:03
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quote:
Originally posted by Ailinn
Here he comes. Riding Rocinante. From a hole in the clouds he commands, "Fly now!" The sun blinks. The fog fractures. The beach goes back to the birds. Gulls and terns and pipers. The turquoise sky suddenly fills with wings.
Sorry to interrupt but that was just unbelievable...really.
Craig |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 06/08/2006 : 19:34:55
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| Thank you, Craig. I love your pictures/stories/shadows. The haunted ones especially. And your Tennyson post. "...someday when we all sit down at the big table, hahaha," he says. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 06/08/2006 : 19:37:31
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| PS We had to cross the 74 to get home tonight. A road with a long story. Bumper stickers ~I SURVIVED THE ORTEGA~ |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 06/10/2006 : 07:39:34
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I said to her, There's a new preacher in town
And he's out of his mind...
Carmelita was away, so I introduced myself
To the, um, darker side of town...
She bought the whiskey and I drank it...
Later, as I watched the sun come up
From her room,
She called out to me...
I forgot to tell you, my ex
Is a sherrif, and he's still in love...
Pity, the nite had been going so well...
Rev Buckman
http://www.mytown.ca/outsiders/beukema/
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 06/10/2006 : 07:40:37
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Off in the distance I could see a cloud of dust...
I woke the poor redhead up and told her
Get dressed as fast as you can and climb
Out the back window...
If Carmelita finds you here our other problems
Will be over because she will kill us both...
I, however, will die more slowly and painfully
Than you...
Rev Buckman
http://www.mytown.ca/outsiders/beukema/
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3701 Posts |
Posted - 06/10/2006 : 21:02:40
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Suffering hot today, no air moving, like dog's breath in this small Texas town.
Went back to the old church, it's been a lifetime.
Wedding today, in the church I grew up in...
Saw the staircase there, where I saw the face peeking around the corner at the top. It looked like a clown when I was but a child.
The staircase didn't appear as high today as it did then.
I still don't like clowns...
Remembered the building for Sunday school classes behind the church and the portico were we got caught...
We had camped out in a tent in Tim Simon's backyard. We decided to go to the filling station to get candy on our bicycles...
At 1:15 in the morning.
I was eight years old.
Constable Graham caught us and put the fear of God in us. We never made it to the service station. Being the youngest had it's advantages, I never got the blame...
The old church.
Where I almost lost an eye from pulling a stuck pencil out of a pencil holder when I was four years old.
The old church, where old skeletons abound, some to remain locked away...forever.
craig
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2006 : 13:22:28
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When Carmelita came that morning
She had brought me the cooked dough with
Sugar sprinkled on it that
I loved so much...
She kissed me and said,
It is good that you are alone for
Now I know that I can trust you
With my heart forever...
Now that she is gone for the last time
And finally...
Those words hurt me more than a beating....
Rev Buckman
http://www.mytown.ca/outsiders/beukema/
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2006 : 16:53:10
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I went from walking around with my chin up and pounds of encyclopedias on top of my head to kneeling up straight on rice. The first to improve my posture. The second to discourage my venial ways. "Chest out, shoulders back, and wipe that defiant look off your face!" the Sisters ordered. I was the 9 year old bane of their lunchroom/dinner hall existence. The thorn in their rosaried sides. Too loud with the trays. Too much hot water for dishes. Too "daydreamy" saying my prayers. The fact that I ran away once a month and the train conductors brought cartons of milk (Sealtest, Ron) and cheese sandwiches didn't help. "You can't expect to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!" Mother Superior said angrily to Father Keane. More fuel for the fire. My not-yet-dead soul duly smoldering. I vowed to become a good orphan. Until I could step out of that strict frame. I brightened my rebelious, dark stare. Changed the angle and slant of my handwriting. Left my Catechism margins pristine. I told truer stories. When that didn't work, I quit peanut butter crackers and the Coca-Cola machine. I made up sins for Confession. "Three Hail Mary's, Roisin," Father said. "Now be a good girl and tell Sister there's still too much starch in the Altar cloths."
PS Susie... Maybe explains my penchant for soapsuds up to my elbows. Love and sunshine to you in the great northwest!
PPS Have you ever grown tomatoes? |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 06/13/2006 : 20:31:25
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| No flat days. Every wave a spiritual invitation. Every five second ride a reminder to be humble. Zero's. Heaven. Zuma. County Line. Trestles. Beacom's Footsteps. Swami's. Eden. All alive. "...but words can't do music's work, baby," he says. The ruby earrings burn in her ears. The close Santa Rosa's are at flashpoint. The lists he's assembled. Notes and doodles in the margins. Different color ink. "...for different days..." he says laughing. Laughing. Turquoise faces. The telephone number of everyone in the world. Fog climbs in hundred foot cliffs. Salty. Shivering. Holes in the horizon. No compass to find true North. At dinnertime a thousand car dealers from El Cajon assail them. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2006 : 23:19:10
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The woman who stood at the window
could only imagine shade,
and the sound of leaves moving overhead,
like so many whispered conversations.
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The God of curved space, the dry
God, is not going to help us, but the son
whose blood spattered
the hem of his mother's robe.
~Jane Kenyon~ |
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3701 Posts |
Posted - 06/17/2006 : 22:15:48
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East Bay – revisited
One is no longer with us, two remain, three generations still exist…
Just an ordinary red lantern, of the Coleman variety. Is there any other? I remember we used "white gas", from the Amoco service station. We always filled the metal gallon gas can prior to going on the expeditions.
Many a night did it give us comfort in the smothering darkness. If only it could tell the tales that were told under its light. A novel could be written of fishing, shrimping, oystering...watermen and their boats.
It was his custom, the one with the gnarled hands, disfigured from years of arthritis, to light the lantern. A few quick pumps to pressurize the fuel, he fumbles to strike the kitchen match and the entire room is illuminated. Moths and mesquitos dance. The same routine for the Coleman stove…white gas gave us both light for the cabin and provided heat for cooking…hand cut french fries, fried shrimp battered in corn meal and ranch-style beans, the staples of the small cabin on East Bay.
Cold night. Two of the mariners fast asleep in their bunks…long day. The one with the gnarled hands shuffles into the cabin…
“Boy! Take a look at what I got!” he exclaims in his Mississippi accent. Barely able to hold them up in each of his hands were two bull redfish, well over thirty-five inches long. The pride of his catch woke the other two from their slumber and the last thing they wanted to do was to rise from the comfort of their warm bunks. He returned to the small pier and caught a number more of the redfish while they were still running. It was a good night for the oldest of the three and exclaimed the next day that the smell of watermelon of the school of fish was so strong that night, meaning many fish. Schools of fish smell that way when they are running or feeding on bait fish, he says.
The lantern remained lit in the other room as long as one of the watermen were awake…the last one awake was obliged to turn it out.
One night, after “lights out”, snoring started almost immediately. It became louder and louder until one of the three could no longer take it….
“Curt?”
“Yeah, boy!”
“I guess that ain’t you then, is it?”
“No boy!”
“Wanna go see what it is?”
“No boy!”
Gator…just on the outside of the cabin…it must have crossed the bay from Anahuac. Flashlights always accompanied us on any foray outside the cabin at night afterward.
We never fished for pleasure, it was always for food. We shrimped and oystered for money, to make ends meet. It was always work regardless if it was for food or money. Late nights after getting home, heading shrimp for 10¢ more a pound or in the winter time, trying to go to sleep hearing another oyster shell thrown in the pile, oysters being opened for six dollars a gallon.
The old lantern hasn’t been lit in over 16 years. I am now the owner of it and the Coleman stove. The oldest of the two that remain parted with them just yesterday. “They still work” he said “but I have no more use for them”, always being the practical man. I am sure they still do work. They must be passed to the next generation…
I study my own hands a lot lately. I see hands that are now older and have been weathered with age. They are much like the gnarled hands I remember and also of the oldest one of the two that still remain.
I am quite honored and proud to see the hands of my father and my grandfather…in my own.
Craig
"Only write what you know, boy. They'll know it when you lie"
I have only written what I know...
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Edited by - Craig on 06/18/2006 04:56:54 |
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Joey L.
Swinger
USA
1328 Posts |
Posted - 06/17/2006 : 22:28:10
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Beautifully written, Craig,
Beautiful, indeed.
J
The Future's Not ... |
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Karen Runk
Firefly
USA
4902 Posts |
Posted - 06/18/2006 : 08:38:55
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Thank you Craig. You are taking us to another place, another time, and other reflections. A sign of a good writer. Very good stuff.
Cya soon.....
Karen Runk |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 06/18/2006 : 16:57:54
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Craig, this is wonderful. I loved it the first time. Whole paragraphs stuck in my head. Thank you for posting it again. Especially today. Happy Father's Day!
Roisin |
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The Nightly Vigil