| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| buckman |
Posted - 09/24/2004 : 18:16:26
I sit in the dark in the back of the saloon...
What is between my table and the dusty
street is twenty feet that is
on the very edge of Hell...
The townspeople say they are sinners: the townspeople say they are evil...
The reality is that they are just Cowboys and
they are very much alive and much of the
rest of this town has already died... I talk to
the Lord and I Know what is Evil
and what is not,
which is why I hold services here and
not in a church....
These men make a decision
every time they put the whiskey to their
lips, every time they put the
tobacco to their mouths....
They make a decision between a
longer, duller life or the life
that they are choosing to live....
Yet I can see the desperation in
their eyes; I can see
that for every year that they age,
they remove themselves another year from their
childhood and their youthful dreams...
I can see that the only time
They will smell the
fragrance of a lady is
when they choose to pay for her...
I can see that they care not a
bit about Eternity, but only for today...
But, that is Just Alright
with me and the Lord
If everybody went to heaven they'd run out of room.... Rev Buckman
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| 20 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| buckman |
Posted - 08/10/2020 : 07:19:39
I sit in the dark in the back of the saloon...
What is between my table and the dusty
street is twenty feet that is
on the very edge of Hell.
The townspeople say they are sinners;
the townspeople say they are evil.
The reality is that they are just Cowboys and
they are very much alive and much of the
rest of this town has already died.
I talk to the Lord and I Know what is Evil
and what is not,
which is why I hold services here and
not in a church.
These men make a decision
every time they put the whiskey to their
lips, every time they put the
tobacco to their mouths.
They make a decision between a
longer, duller life or the life
that they are choosing to live.
Yet I can see the desperation in
their eyes; I can see
that for every year that they age,
they remove themselves another year from their
childhood and their youthful dreams.
I can see that the only time
They will smell the
fragrance of a lady is
when they choose to pay for her.
I can see that they care not a
bit about Eternity, but only for today...
But, that is Just Alright
with me and the Lord;
If everybody went to heaven
they'd run out of room.
|
| Ailinn |
Posted - 08/09/2020 : 17:15:56
...the waiters musical laughter after sunset. Their nightmare tales close to my face. Their falling dark hair and fierce pointing fingers, "...and the hungry bone-eater under your bed!" When I cry or shiver they wrap their warm waistcoats around me.
A child in a world without children. A short stint behind cloistered walls. A long hall of tall unwashed windows. Winter evening under a bridge. Streetlamp floating in fog. I run but I don't cry out. I hold my hand over my mouth. Afraid he might hear me breathing. So many silent alleyways in that part of town. I don't tell Sister Catherine because I'll loose my outdoor privilege. Later I run in a bigger city through turnstiles underground.
"...bent line or a straight one...?" he says. Clock on the wall in its fourth dimension. His covenant with time. He's barefoot at the easel with the blanket over his shoulders. She's perched on the high wooden stool. "Some stories should be longer," he says, sweeping Cerulean across the sky. Baffling brush strokes. His fingerprints touching the sun. Dew on the grass. A dazzle. Breeze from the open window. Eucalyptus with its sharp coughdrop smell. |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 07/31/2020 : 17:02:32
Uneventful gradual climb. Cedar Mesa near Mexican Hat. Shortly before rounding a curve, PAVED ROAD ENDS sign. No warning. No chance to turn around. Suddenly airborne on a shimmering ledge. Valley of the Gods and upside-down semi beneath them. The Moki Dugway. A sand and gravel road. Switchbacks and 11% grade carved into the face of the cliff. No guardrails. Folks with cold drinks and binoculars watching the show from the valley floor. "No guardrails," he laughs. |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 07/31/2020 : 16:42:01
Pines to Palms. SR 74. Choose your world junction at Anza. Idyllwild to the left. Pinecones big as cantaloupe. Palm Desert to the right. Equally beautiful flips of the coin. Dangerous Lampblack nights. Ghostly apparitions. Hooves flight into the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa. Lightning doesn't strike twice here, but three times. Black and blue shine in the morning. |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 07/29/2020 : 18:09:04
The car finds the tiny beacon of light in the high desert dark. He takes her into the LADIES and washes her face with cold water and scratchy brown paper towels. Blood on his shirt where she holds him. Bewilderment fading. Cracked windshield. BIG HORN SHEEP CROSSING NEXT 23 MILES. Salton Sea in the distance. Its eerie prediction. Beef pockets and gravy. Praline pie. Sugarloaf Café. Redemptive CA 74. |
| buckman |
Posted - 07/26/2020 : 13:21:32
The Painted Moon
Sitting in New York eating fried rice, alone,
and remembering San Francisco
Almost fifty years ago.
Cigarettes were a quarter a pack,
Gas was 30 cents a gallon.
We were so poor that we split
The fifty cent rice bowl at the
Moon Cafe on Arguello Blvd.
I remember thinking that if
I chewed it more that it might fill
Me up and maybe last longer.
So we sat there chewing and listening to Mrs Moon
Screaming in the kitchen like she was
Being murdered and looked at the
moon stencilled on the front window...
Nothing else mattered but us.
H Beukema 2020
|
| Ailinn |
Posted - 07/25/2020 : 20:16:33
"Eiffel's father," he calls the Border Patrol agent whose son wants only to travel. Flinty light stroking down on granite boulders in Guadalupe. Ornate grillwork in the courtyard. Sleeping votives along the loggia wall. "Biscuits an' gravy," he says. Cast iron pan on the stove. Kitchen warm and trancy. Pinch of nutmeg when he's not looking. "No plan..." he says grinning, "...that's the plan." So many lit candles in his mind. Water rushing against the foothills. |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 07/09/2020 : 15:54:28
...my bag... Too heavy to carry alone. I leave it at the Station. I don't know if it's against the law so I walk away quickly. On the train I try to remember what was in it. "Milk or juice?" Sister Catherine asks the first morning at breakfast. "Coffee, please," I say. She sets a carton of milk on my tray. Smiles when I say thank you. Later in the hotel I call down to the desk. Coffee arrives in a tall silver pot. Three hot cupsful. Toast too sometimes. Fat pats of butter on a chilled seashell plate. He shakes his head slowly. He doesn't blink. "Keep talkin'..." he says. "What happened to the Pinkerton man...?" she says. (All those sand bags and bottled water in the garage.) "Well, now..." he grins, "I heard he went back to Barstow." |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 07/09/2020 : 15:46:30
-The door bell rang early. Before 8am. "Mornin'," he says, "Let's go get some breakfast."
-Tipped back in his gravity-defying chair, "...you blushed," he says. "An' when we sat in the booth you put your bag between us." |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 07/02/2020 : 17:42:12
Hardware store. Narrow-board hardwood floor and ceiling. Barrels of nails. Bins with bolts and screws and washers. A corral of bygone tools. A curious corner with garden seeds and jigsaw puzzles. They bring home one called Maid of the Mist and another called Magnolia. Pink trees down a vanishing dirt road. A thousand pieces on the table. |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 07/02/2020 : 17:37:32
Outside the store they face their reflection in the wide window. It trembles in its frame when a truck rumbles over the cobbles. Some curbside dust flies up. Refraction at their ankles. They stand still for a lifetime. "...alright," he says. |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 06/28/2020 : 20:25:17
The town coming back after miles of bluebonnets. The lush earth greening up like cresses where a morning mist settles on the village square. Four-corner clock tower. Bandstand gazebo. Knee braces and corbels and spindle rails. Gingham curtains in the gas station window. How could they ever leave. |
| buckman |
Posted - 06/16/2020 : 19:05:24
This is the wallpaper in the tenement in Cleveland in 1954
This is an October Sunday at Yankee Stadium in 1976 with my son and wife
This is everything you wished I was and everything I wished I wasn't
This is too hot to handle and too much to bare
This is all I held back that you needed
This is the love of a lifetime passing in the street
This is the letters I meant to write
This is all the I'm sorrys we never get to say
This is an aching deep inside from need
This is vanilla spice candles and the smell of cinnamon
This is tangible evidence of insanity
This is dancing crazy alone without being drunk
This is the poets trying to keep from drowning
This is the soldier who wonders why
This is seeing God in a woman's eyes and looking for it again forever
This is losing everything and starting over
This is playing music and hearing the crowd applauding
This is what it's come down to
This is perfect sex
This is postcoital postpartum postnasal depression
This is off the beaten path without a paddle
This is the side of the road with no destination
This is vanilla chocolate And strawberry
This is going to the grocery store hungry
This is running with the scissors just because you can
This is tipping your cap to Don Quixote
This is waiting for the Rapture in a black suit
This is a hundred thousand voices singing I can't get no satisfaction
This is blue eyes and brown eyes and redheads and blonds
This is the one who leaves you wanting and
The one you want to leave
This is an adult dose of the grownup's medicine
This is the beginning of the end of the beginning
This is re-creation, revelation, pain and frustration,
This is forgiveness and redemption
This is salvation, edification, sanctification....
Healing...
This is most of what you needed and a little of what you wanted
This is all you thought it would be
This is exactly as it should be
This is what you made it...
Yeah,
That's what This is...
|
| Ailinn |
Posted - 06/10/2020 : 16:40:59
Laurel to India. Past the tattoo shops up to the Park. Sunlight flashed off airborne windshields at Union and State. He drove with his shirt sleeves rolled up. (The archive of information there.) "You don't know what's not until it's not," he said in the coffee shop. "Does that sound right to you?" Water leaped in fountains off El Prado. Technicolor frieze on patio screens. She stirred sugar in a demitasse cup. He said he didn't believe in accident or coincidence. "...You like it here, honey?" he said. His face open. His mind insistent and quick. She drew a map of the towns and directions on the napkins. He put them in his pocket. |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 06/06/2020 : 18:56:49
There could be shadow galaxies, shadow stars, and even shadow people.
-Stephen Hawking |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 06/06/2020 : 18:53:28
"One more thing..." he says. "...my father singing to put me to sleep. In Dublin's fair city..." "Talk to me," he says. "Nothing left but the Court and the Catholic Church. Too many rules in the room. I know the ferry. The city trains. I know how to check into a hotel. I prayed to Mary for guidance. A gift Brigid said I was too stubborn to earn. Goodbye, Brigid. Decades ago..." His look turns grave. The pitch in his voice drops, "Listen to me..." he says. 'Be ready for this,' she's thinking. "One life many times. Not dead..." he says, "...but new." |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 06/06/2020 : 18:44:42
"...hot in a kitchen full of steam where the cooks are busy. Lobsters in tanks and on drain boards. Amber liquid cooling in jars. Magic, the cooks say. For chowder or bisque. I sit at a long stainless table. An oversize apron under my chin. Picking seeds out of plump sticky raisins. My fingers are small and quick. My father is smiling. Five shining dimes in his pocket for me. My mother is out on the green lawn by the blue hydrangeas. Her long hair a dark scarf on the wind. |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 06/01/2020 : 21:01:32
"...secret place. I'll take you there," she says. "Low fold in the meadow. Lilly of the valley. White and purple violets big as silver dollars. Clear water running over smooth stones. The bank sloped enough to lie quiet watching the sky slide by." "Did you go there alone?" he asks. |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 06/01/2020 : 20:56:31
"Did you like it there?" he asks. "Close your eyes and tell me what you see." "Episodic," she says. "Little rooms I pass through. My father happy when friends fly in for golf. Raucous laughter. Sweepstakes and Revolution. My mother floating in and out of the frame. Waiting for her face to appear. Scarlet Fever's dark room. Bandage over my eyes. She came and read to me. Thin cotton nightgowns she insisted they change every few hours. Do children still get Scarlet Fever?" |
| Ailinn |
Posted - 05/16/2020 : 18:25:31
Days gone by...
Cold on a long night in late Spring. Small fires against the foothills. Random shots in the dark. NO TRESPASSING signs. He traces his brow with Braille fingertips. Places the lodge there. Swings onto an unmarked dirt road in the middle of Indian country. His sense of direction uncanny. The wedding celebration starts at sunrise and lasts two days. Med is the tribal chairman's granddaughter. Heart of the reservation. Marrying within the tribe. Though Lucas, her betrothed wears a suit and silk tie and works in a high rise in the city. Roasted squash. Fry bread. Beef and deer meat. Buttery chili corn and smoked abalone. Shaken-jar ice cream with honey. Sunsets in layers. All purple and flame.
Later they make a house in Sage near Lake Skinner. We come for reunion. For love. Fish the weekend away in a place that shines. |
