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BarbraG
Windchimer
   
1825 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
2825 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
2825 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
Windchimer
   
2196 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
Windchimer
   
2196 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
Swinger
  
Australia
509 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
Windchimer
   
2196 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
Windchimer
   
2196 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
Windchimer
   
2196 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
Windchimer
   
2196 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
2825 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
2825 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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buckman
Firefly
    
USA
2825 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
Windchimer
   
2196 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
Windchimer
   
2196 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
2825 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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Doug L
Firefly
    
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 10/19/2008 : 11:35:53
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Ailinn, your Marcella Delight segment is among the best I've read of your writing.
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Doug L
Firefly
    
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 10/19/2008 : 11:39:11
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This place, this road, this patch of ground / One bird alone is singing / You're gone and yet you're still around / And all the good you gave me / Moves inside my body now / A bell that goes on ringing / One bird alone, a loving sound / You're gone, but here, you're still around... |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
   
2196 Posts |
Posted - 10/19/2008 : 17:25:10
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Doug, Thank you for the kind words...and the light you bring to this fire. We've been together a long time sharing the song and the story. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
   
2196 Posts |
Posted - 10/24/2008 : 19:22:32
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"He was a photographer," Marcella said tonight. We were standing on the wide veranda after sunset. The staff has it decorated with autumn leaves and straw people in patch-work clothes. When she said his name I knew it. "The Gallery was young then," she said. "His portfolio was- Lonliness alive. It took my breath away. It disturbed me." She stood at the railing watching the sky grow dark. Then she waved her hand dismissively. "Closure! I hate that word! It's the way of those who want things to go smoothly in spite of in spite of! An idea for fools!" I'd never seen her so angry. Her hands trembled when she drew her shawl around her shoulders.
She invited me to view her "Hobo Album." His work. She has a pass for breakfast tomorrow morning. There's a Broken Yolk on the corner of El Camino Real. |
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