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buckman
Firefly
USA
2685 Posts |
 Posted - 10/03/2008 : 19:32:25
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He remembers the day of August 27th 1992
with pinpoint accuracy.
Oh, not what happened that day.
Nothing much happened.
Another Thursday at work;
then home to a woman and a bottle.
What he remembers is he felt whole...
still.
It was his son's last day on the planet,
and
He felt whole,
still.
He remembers the day of August 27th 1992
with pinpoint accuracy.
Hank |
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3707 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2008 : 20:03:09
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Point of reference...reference points.
Where you were "when". What you were doing. What you felt...or didn't feel.
Kennedy.
World Trade Center.
Hearing of someone's death...or birth.
Hearing your own anquished screams, or involuntary laughter.
Watching my father's knees buckle at the news of my mother's passing. The birth of my grandchild...
We drown our sorrow or we celebrate...with a bottle.
At the very bottom or the very top of our conscienceness...
"If I get drunk or if I pray, either way I'm on my knees."
Craig
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1797 Posts |
Posted - 10/03/2008 : 22:15:20
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Hank,
I'm so sorry. May 5th, 1973. The last day my dad
was on the planet. Born in 1917.
BGee |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2685 Posts |
Posted - 10/04/2008 : 09:42:14
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Indian Summer Saturday October Hudson Valley.
Hot again today...
Leaves are not turning fiery yet
Like they did when Van wrote Moondance
in the real Woodstock just north of here...
City people driving up the river for the
tree shows will be disappointed and have to
drown their sorrows with mimosas and bloody Mary's
at my friend's Irish bar in Nyack where I met Plumbley
and Gilesy fresh in from the Isle of Wight
in 2001 before the world
turned upside down [again]...
Steely Dan Alive in America came on my jukebox while I was
excercising and
reminded me of Hazy Davy and how much hurt we all felt
for him in jail in Amsterdam those three months, grabbed
on the way from Modena to New York so we could see Willie Nile
open for The Dan;
I felt like I was in there too, tho I know that's ridiculous
because while he was starving and fighting
for his very life, I was drinking whiskey
and taking percocets and chasing wimmins....
Ah, life....
Indian Summer Saturday October Hudson Valley,
Hank
["Sometimes it's just a matter
Of looking down the ladder
To see how far you really have to fall
Sometimes it's just a breeze
That brings you to your knees
But a strong wind can fly you above it all
Sometimes it's just a breeze
That brings you to your knees
But a strong wind can fly you above it all"
Hank Beukema - revbuckman music - 2007]
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2685 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2008 : 07:38:40
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Cold, rainy Sunday morning
reading Carver about staying in bed
and reading on a rainy day,
look up and laugh at the juncture...
Shuffling the music, an orchestra plays
Floyd's Wish You Were Here.
Damn, Another juncture,
remembring sixteen years past
how I let the young friends of
my boy set up a boom box at the wake
against everybody's wishes
and they played this same song...
Hauntings are everywhere in October....
Not always a bad thing. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/07/2008 : 19:56:20
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| The clotted clouds. The cave, low and smoky. The Grail already buried beneath the dirt floor. Another nights absolution in his year of 365 dreams. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/07/2008 : 19:58:18
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"...close your eyes...let the sky fall...nothing can harm you...dream now..."
MSN
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aussiedave
Rocker
Australia
472 Posts |
Posted - 10/07/2008 : 20:30:50
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clouds scatter
I lay back
arms outstretched
a kind of Christ
and muse
I headslam the past
recall your gift
of giving
an empty sacrifice
I examine
transparent holes
in my hands
palms up
fingers curl
a lifeline
of promises gone
I lost you
I wore a crown of thorns
your soporific image before me
memories embellish heavily
upon the brow
pain and...
God how I loved you!
..crucified me
those nails passed through
my living flesh
love spurted out
turning jets
into gilded streams
great droplets fell
empty
the blood flow
turned the water
into a tangerine wine
you drank me dry
breaking bones
and hearts
hurried my death
you left me there to hang
after decades of silence
I shall not rise
AD
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/11/2008 : 17:43:37
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| Hello Dave. Great to see you here! How are things in your part of the world? |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/11/2008 : 17:47:46
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...after Craig's Crystal Beach photos. A spatter of rain. Then another...
"I'm holding your heart out of harm's way. Dream now."
MSN
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/11/2008 : 17:50:23
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| In the orchard of temptation Adam stands and winces. Reaches for the tender place, the space where his rib used to be. The woman in the red dress glistens. A carpet of small petals multiplying under her feet. Around them The Garden shivers. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/11/2008 : 17:52:32
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| Soon he's pulling the Ark through shallow water. His lit cigarette. His granite hair. The vine-entwined fences of Eden receding. The sky, brazen blue, the way he likes it. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/11/2008 : 17:56:17
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| Later, when he's on his knees with cold nights at his shoulders, a sea window comforts him. A candle burning on the fog-damp sill. The salt-encrusted finials of their high iron bed. His uniform jacket and cap on the peg. His storm-smudged eyes...her high-buttoned shoes, waterlogged. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2685 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2008 : 16:47:18
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Melinda took me to Dreamland one afternoon.
The finest barbecued ribs in America are hidden in
a little shack on a dirt road outside of
Tuscaloosa.
The menu was simple;
Half a rack or a whole.
Some iced tea and white bread.
A yellowed autographed 8X10 of Robert Plant
tacked to the burlap wall above the table next to one
of Joe Namath...
The huge man in the white apron that took the order
would have been scary in a prison shower
but was sweet as pecan pie to us...
Just Melinda and me.
Wide awake in Dreamland... |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2685 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2008 : 17:49:30
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There was a door from the bedroom to a
screened in porch with wrought iron chairs.
It caught the wind and took the smoke and
it looked out over the valley and to another mountain.
He spent alot of time there in the middle of the nite,
thinking and smoking.
It was a good time -
no, it was a grand time, he thought.
He was clean for a time.
He was outdoors with the wind and the nite.
He was a room away from the woman he loved.
In his head he put one more day on the calendar
that was back in NY.
He was thinking he might even make it this time.
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Grania
Rocker
102 Posts |
Posted - 10/15/2008 : 20:22:52
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| ...and he did. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2685 Posts |
Posted - 10/16/2008 : 17:19:44
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I pushed the horse out past the town, out to where I had buried her... I didn't come out here too often, but today I needed to talk to her, to tell her what I had done... Any success you have in this life is only satisfied when you share it with someone you care about.... Today I had made them run; made them afraid to ever come back... They will see the look in my eyes for the rest of their lives and they will remember it... They will see the difference between what they worship and what I worship and see why I will always be stronger... And I had come to say goodbye; good bye to her and to the life we had known together, and to this piece of land where I had put her body...
The snow is falling around me now, and the sound of the woods has changed as I ride... Riding away from her.... Riding away from them.... I am a slave to the tobacco in my pouch and the whiskey in my bags, but I will be a slave to no man or woman ever again.... The choices have been made for me this time, but I have learned how to make them work in my favor... Today I can ride with no guilt, I can ride with no pain; the lands that I see in the skies over the next mountain are the lands where I will spend my next days... My horse breathes the cold air and carries me onward... Ever onward we shall ride...
I look around at the thick trees and the little creek and realize that I have been riding in circles... I take the saddlebag with the whiskey and throw it into the creek... I keep the tobacco... If you are to ride away from something, Preacher, you must ride Away from it, not encircle it with your feeble pace.... Throw off your baggage and ride with the wind; God knows, there is no reason not to... There is so much more behind you than you are apt to meet up ahead that there is nothing or no one to fear anymore... Your strength and resolve, what little you have left, is not of your making, it has come from somewhere else, but it carries with it a price, a responsibility that you have ignored for too long now...
It is snowing again, as I get down off the horse.... I listen to the music coming from the creek and feel the old fever starting to rise... I throw off the hat and heavy coat and begin to sing and dance around the trees... As I spin around and around, I see the faces from my past coming out of the moonlight........ And they are smiling..... All is as it should be....
I have come to the river to pray.... It should have been raining.... I felt the sun on my face as I left the woods, and the horse and I rode over the crest of the hill and saw the river again for the first time.... My River... Our River.... Where it had all started.... Being here now without her would be like all the years I spent before her, seeking my peace and comfort in the river, except that now I would be missing a piece of my soul.... The inland town that we had gone to was behind me now; the gamblers, the ramblers..... the dead.... I would seek to find my faith again, here where I had found it in the first place, here where I was raised half a century ago before the world had turned upside down.... I have come to the river to make my confession, to seek my salvation, to see if there is any future here for one such as I, left without a heart, but still full of seeking, still full of purpose, still full of the belief that I am powerless without the help of a power outside and above myself....
It turns colder as the sun descends behind Hook Mountain and leaves me in the darkness... once again... It seems that the darkness has become my friend just like the rain... For one that has not lived the life that he was expected to, has not fulfilled the promise that was foreseen for him, has not lived in the light as he had vowed..... The faith has never left..... The belief in the power of the Blood has been there from the start and is there now, to this day.... The Father, the Son, the Man I am....
I have come to the river to pray....
Rev Buckman
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Edited by - buckman on 10/18/2008 05:29:43 |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/18/2008 : 16:43:27
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Reverend B~
I see you're holding the hand of the muse. |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1444 Posts |
Posted - 10/18/2008 : 17:04:25
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| Her name is Marcella Delight. She's 79 years old. Named after the daughter of Johnny Gruelle who published the Raggedy Ann stories around 1918. She told me her story, an audience of one, at Sunrise late last night. "I have such a hard time with God," she said. "All I want to do is get as far away from where I am as possible. My faith is shallow, rooted in ritual rather than belief. Unsubstantial as dandelion floss. I met the man who could take me across only to lose him. It's been well-dark for twenty nine years now, and the sorrow of his death never leaves me. 'What you mean to me...' he once said with marvelous intelligence in his clear eyes. A waiting there also. A sign. Kind for kind. Reason enough to continue." I listened. No right words came to mind to console her. She's a "temp" here with no living relatives. There's nothing wrong with her memory. I gave her a blank journal. I don't know if she'll use it. I don't know if she'll be there next Friday. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2685 Posts |
Posted - 10/19/2008 : 09:43:38
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For Egbert.
After the Fiesta, I need to be alone...
I ride NorthEast for many days
Where to be October
Means something...
Where I ran and fished and hunted
As a child and learned the ways
Of the woods and of the Great One...
The trees are aflame in
Their private moondance of fire...
Against the blue of My Hudson
Reflecting the cliff faces of Storm King
It plays the illusion the Old Ones called
Riverdeep mountainhigh...
I smile to think of my Other family
Now gone on high that walked this riverbank
With me so long ago...
They were so like the October trees,
Aflame and dancing with color and
Great beauty just before their private
Winter came and turned them gray...
In the creeping darkness,
I whisper a prayer
That they would
greet me in the spring
As the trees will,
Reborn and ready
For another fling
Around the Dancefloor...
~*~ |
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The Nightly Vigil