Friday, November 30, 2012

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Let's do it right

Some say that you should stand here beside me
 You know you won't, but you want to let the
 Breeze flow across your skin. A simple request
 Just stay here beside me. Just be here with
 Me
 It is a request. Not a demand.
 Only desire Just an animal inquiry.
 So so so so so You know.
 There was an apple on the cupboard,
You left it Like you left me.
 Easy.
An easy consumption
And easy avoidance.
So so so so so so
I left the window open,
 I'm sorry.
 The wind It blows across your skin and you are cold
 It is my fault.
 I

Friday, October 19, 2012

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Wow

This ting and I do mean ting might be the worst thing I have ever encountered on the Internets as far as useful advice for anyone:


Wow and tripple wow:

Skip the Store Altogether

If you don't have a ton of time or hate grocery shopping, try doing it online (Peapod is surprisingly affordable). This is a great way to avoid the tempting aromas and strategically placed impulse items and just shop for what you need. Best of all, you can save your grocery lists on the site, so if you buy the same stuff every week, your shopping can be done in literally minutes.
With just a little bit of planning, you can easily get into a groove of grocery shopping for just you—and save some money and waste less food, too.
If you really hate grocery shopping, check out Lifehacker's tips here.

Jaysus living Christmas.

Really?  

Saturday, September 29, 2012

What a summary

Diet


If you decide to take on the care of another life, 

you need to respect its needs. 


  • If I get a cow, I provide it hay and grass. 
  • If I get a snake, I provide it mice. 
  • If I get a cat, I provide it a ground yellow corn, corn gluten meal, chicken by-product meal, soybean meal, beef tallow (preserved with mixed tocopherols), animal digest, calcium carbonate, turkey by-product meal, salmon meal, ocean fish meal, phosphoric acid, choline chloride, salt, potassium chloride, titanium dioxide (color), vitamins (vitamin E supplement, niacin supplement, vitamin A supplement, d-calcium pantothenate, thiamine mononitrate [source of vitamin B1], riboflavin supplement [source of vitamin B2], pyridoxine hydrochloride [source of vitamin B6], menadione sodium bisulfite complex [source of vitamin K activity], vitamin D3 supplement, folic acid, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement), minerals (ferrous sulfate [source of iron], zinc oxide, manganous oxide, copper sulfate, calcium iodate, sodium selenite), taurine, yellow 6, yellow 5, red 40, blue 2, rosemary extract.

diet.

Friday, September 07, 2012

For toilets that run or won't refill


I am inspired by toilet fixtures
FAST FILL VALVE
FITS ALL BRANDS

I won't mention that it
REPLACES UNIVERSAL FILL VALVES
Sorry,
I GUESS I DID.

The installation was as simple
As the box suggested
One
Two
Three

But I have a bucket of water
From the drained tank that I
Have not emptied.

You know it is impolite to talk
About our bodily functions

But changing the float valve
In this shitter really makes me
Want to take a royal shit

So I do.

Goodness.  You shouldn't talk
Like that

The INSTALLATION went well
I even consulted the Spanish
Instruciones.

At least it flushes now.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

An Ode to Lynn

Lynn,
You were dour
And you know it
The postcards from
That far away city
Speak of love
However

You must read that
Book aloud to us all
Now

We are stuck on the
Tube

But then again
We drank at the
Bar X

There was loss
There was gain
There was

Your excellence cannot
Match a regular schedule
Of meetings and schedules

I suggest you write
That's what you do
Dear doctor
Write

An Ode to Lisa

Lisa,
The glaring sun could not outshine
Your honeysuckle brilliance.
You sang, my God you sang.
You sang of a memory lost
And then recovered
You sang of lust undiscovered
Discovered.

I talked to you after, quite foolishly,
And said "honeysuckle" when it was
Honey locust.

All honey tastes as sweet,
As the poet says.

An ode should be longer,
Methinks.

But I am overwhelmed, like
Keats with his bubbles winking
Your wine has over-taken me.

What's the strophe?  What's the
Antistrophe? But here's the epode:

Pindar celebrated athletic performance,
Did he not?  You out shot the sun
In your simple song sung.
Twelve hundred million meters
I say.  No discus could ever
Sail so far or so high.

Tis not unusual, as Tom, might
Say _________________________

So much depends


while ($Redwheelbarrow=="glazed with rainwater") {
$whitechickens="beside";
}

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Three encounters with loneliness

First, "I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,"
The lights were on in his
Office.

Second, a casual conversation
In the hall, "I'm just feeling
Lonely."

Third, I don't recall it so
Clearly, but it was a lost
Girl who walked by me and
Said hello.  She glanced quickly
Side to side

Hush now, don't explain
Loneliness

Monday, August 06, 2012

Honor

We all have the honor of over-
Hearing others talk about our-
Selves at some discrete point in
Our lives

Sometimes it is while we lay
In bed--our father dying in the
Other room.

Sometimes it is sitting behind
A wall--where, on the other
Side they discuss your future.

Balancing it out, you know
Is the other

Play them off Space core cat 10 hours

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Thursday, July 05, 2012

Chipmunk enjoying a sunflower seed

Another in a series of animals enjoying food.

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Bustle in your Hedgerow

I think I may have found the quintessential blog entry. No wonder blogging has been going down hill since 2011.

Sunday, June 03, 2012

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Daisy

You want your children
To run to

To hold you

Blinking cursor

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Conspiracy of Geeks

They rule the world.
Why else do machines
Not fix themselves?

(Computers etc)

Secret lairs:

  • Mom's basement
  • Grandma's basement
  • Aunt's basement
  • Garden level at Cascading Palms w/ 3 others
  • Bedroom
  • Neo-Georgian
  • Colonial
  • Post-Colonial
  • Duplex
  • Hotel room
  • Beach
  • Castle
They rule the world
And make it impossible
And make it possible
And imparsible

It may be pursuable

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Observations at a fair

I prefer to believe that the black
Eye of the only boy in the Irish
Dance troupe was received while
Kicking ass for Irish folk dance

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Suburban back yard

I don't know you anymore
He shouted
His glasses likely flew off his
Face

It was one of those plaintive cries
That only men, only, choke out
With the dissolution of their
Desolation

There was a reply
It was low bass

The wind struck then
Rattling the apricot
Leaves

Nothing more could be
Heard

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Payson Canyon Spring


Payson Canyon Spring
Originally uploaded by Clint Gardner

No HftNM yet one this venture, but this might just be one of best pictures I've ever captured. It is, none-the-less, probably my favorite photo so far.

Haibun to follow--perhaps shortly, or perhaps longly.

I am on vacation, after all.

Stop peer pressuring me!

Monday, May 14, 2012

Kid's show star

The former kid's show star sits at his computer
There, that blog post again, it itches his skin
The one that some no one someone posted
But like untreated syphilis it haunts his cowboy
Soul

There, there is his past; the stupid he can't live
Down or up, the empty heart that was tied to
Place and time and time and place and dark
Matter

The kids loved to hate him, and he tell himself
That before he leaves seventeen comments
Because eighteen would be too many to
Condone

And then he searches again and again and again
Looking for those mentions of himself and him
Self. Because that is what cowboys do who have
Lives after being a kid's show star and no some
One

Sunday, May 13, 2012

HfaNM 3: Washington Park




Today I wandered around Washington Park, four miles up Parley's Canyon beyond the golf course club house. 




 It was another extremely temperate temperature, with partly cloudy skies.  The park itself is an oddity, really.  The trees seem to be a mix of native, box elder, scrub oak, and pine; as well as non-native shrubs such as lilac and currant.  


Paper mulberry, however, is native.  I know this without recourse to the Internet, since on the farm where I grew up we had a paper mulberry bush near our duck pond.  It was shaded by a standard mulberry and some wild rose bushes.  Now, you must realize that our farm was in the heart of the Salt Lake Valley and the paper mulberry is not native there.  That particular paper mulberry was transplanted by my grandfather from an uncertain canyon surrounding the Salt Lake Valley.  My father was very specific in his recollection of how the bush came to be when it would bloom each spring.  Seeing the familiar flower in the Wasatch caused me to think of my family's connection to place. We've been here for over 160 years now.  That would be eight generations?  We're just at 7, as far as I can tell.


I wandered about the place for a while.  It is an odd place, really.  The native trees hovered over non-native grass and swing sets, hibachi's and picnic tables.  Still, the butterflies didn't seem to mind.  They flitted about and left me unable to take a proper picture until one decided to land on a winter-felled box elder branch.  I could see the golf course through the trees.  I don't think the butterfly, or moth (as it may be) could, however.  I think their optical ability is somewhat limited for that, but I'm sure the ultraviolet view they enjoy is non-the-less spectacular.  


I wandered east in the park to where it met up with the Mountain Dell Golf course that borders it to the north and headed back to the wild-looking area that surrounds the conveniently located rest rooms at the gate of the park.  Westward from there I came across a sudden creek.  Buttercups hugged the margin.  The I-80 noise was louder here than any other part of the park.  Cars and motorcycles screamed up the Parley's canyon grade, and the occasion basso profundo Wotan yell of a diesel's engine brake cut the stream gurgle.  The highway noise fit Washington Park well, I think.  As I said, it is an odd park.  The Natural is side by side with the unnatural--the Man imposed.  

The stream that I found was near, as fall as I can tell, an old house.  I didn't see any foundations or remnants of that house, other than several lilac bushes:
WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
  
O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,         
And thought of him I love.  (Whitman)
Lilacs were a favorite flower of pioneers and was my mother's favorite flower.  I thought of her on seeing them with their heart-shaped leaves.   The trinity that Whitman mentions is the trinity of Mother/Father/Child.  Love.

There was some other signs of us at the site:  beer cans and butter cups, but one strange placement puts it all together:


That is a decrepit sweat shirt and a hawk feather.  I have no idea the story behind the sweatshirt and several horror story plot lines flitted across my mind when I studied the scene, but I think it is the feather that is more baffling.  Did a hawk land here and in some struggle with its prey lose a feather, or, more likely, was it preening the nearby tree and pluck out this feather like we pluck out irritating nose hair?  

Nature.  Unnatural.  UnNature.

Is that even possible?


A small creek appears
Completely unexpected
Cars scream on the highway


Friday, May 11, 2012

Haibun for a New Millenium: Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve

The Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve is owned by the Nature Conservancy.  I was intrigued to visit, since I've never heard of it before I randomly found it by Googling "cool natural places to visit in Utah."  There is one error in my Boo, below:  Nature Conservancy's main focus is on buying private lands that are under threat of development and preserves them in perpetuity.  They sometimes turn over those lands to local governments.  Given the political climate in Utah to SELL ALL THE LANDS! and DEVELOP ALL THE THINGS!, it seems important for organizations like the Nature Conservancy to be leery of local government hand-overs.

It was quite a beautiful morning.  The redwing blackbirds were out in force; their trumpeting, however, couldn't overwhelm thrush that were singing madly in the bullrushes whilst making their nests with catkin fluff.


























A thrush makes her nest
Singing with beak full of fluff
We sleep well at night

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Haibun for a New Millenium: Yellow Fork Canyon

Note: While I was at the Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve today (May 11, 2012) the idea for posts like this one coalesced, and that is why I have edited it and changed its title. The concept is to create a haibun using the variety of technology I have access to.

Yellow Creek Canyon sits at the bottom of the Salt Lake Valley in the Oquirrah Mountain Range.
 


listen to ‘Yellow Fork ominous’ on Audioboo






Yellow Fork Panorma 2


I want to turn back
But the path draws me upward
Deer crash in the woods

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

She being brand/-new (well new to me)

So the great carless experiment of the naughts has come to a conclusion.  I join you all in the car(rat) race again.  Where did that "To all the Cars I've Owned Before" web page go?


Friday, May 04, 2012

At the defense


My friend of all these years talks through history
Of thought he once found suspect and nonsense
But he has found the root of the conflict and how
The tree was pruned; how the prevailing winds have
Leaned the tree  hard against injustice of life

It is the lonely leaf (not alone) that feels the
Whip of a hot summer breeze or the punch of hail
Those  on the windward side shrivel and tear
Those leeward grow wide with thick veins

The tree knows to sway and twist in balance
Through its studied response to the weather's
Argument

Without the tree, no leaf.  Without the leaf, no tree

Meanwhile, outside, a gentle spring rain falls on
The lush forest of the university, dripping life
On sparkling sidewalks slick with the future

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Some facts are more equal than other facts

We
After all
Are
Very
Good

At wearing shoes

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Screen Play

So all its about is this guy, this guy who just wants to walk
Walk on a beach.  You know:  he's just a regular guy, a guy
Who goes to work, who has his wife, and they have kids
And you know, it isn't such a bad life, but then all of a sudden


Saturday, April 14, 2012

How Men and Women Got Together

And now, for your listening pleasure, a tale of woe, intrigue, and joy:  How Men and Women Got Together.

It is based on fragments of a Blood-Piegan tale.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Poems for a lost love: Magic

Once you told me that you wanted to see
Me grow old:  my temples grey; my ruddy
Visage wrinkled with wise distinction
You used words like that, then.  I remember.

I wonder when I look for you on the wires
If those words ever come back to you
While changing the diaper of your daughter
Who would have been ours, if the words
Had been right.

A young friend now tells me that words
Spoken or written shape his existence
You know that I know that you know that we
Know nothing is less real than the words we
Cast into the boiling pot of our lives
An incantation of being simply cannot exist

Still, I sit and scribble the words, casting back
To a time when you loved me and I loved you
And words really did make our love real and
Solid like the slick concrete I once cracked
My head against, having fallen while catching
You before you fell.

The Scheme

The wheeler-dealer on the bus has a wireless headset
"I am in the back of the bus by the fan, so it is noisy,"
He shouts into it.  The cockney gym rat stares him down.
The wheeler-dealer is not phased and continues to wheel,
"I'll call you back, but I just wanted to touch base and
Make sure we are on for Friday.  I mean it is time to
Move."

Two more stops and three more calls and he bounds
Off the bus to his dollar store destination.  Everyone
Knows but he, that he is talking to no one and nothing
Is on.

Monday, March 26, 2012

What dreams may come

You would think you wouldn't nightmare him
Thirty years buried in the sticky clay of your town
But then you wake at 3:23 in the morning and he
Has transmogrified into a drooling demon who
Murders your sister, who threatens to slit your throat

And you spend the whole of the next day secretly
Aghast, since his ghost now haunts you
Not the demon that your unwaking mind made him
To be, but the man who was; the man who built
You a boat to sail in the drain ditch out front

Why now has he transformed for you?
What have you done that has made him change?
What have you given up?  What have you kept?
So you walk out into the storm, clutching your
Collar close, wondering if you will find him
Again.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Care Service

You worried about people thinking that you're ridiculous
But the ridicule that dropped from your lips stained your
Best dress shirt with a jagged pool of yellowing hate

Sneering, you wondered why people would turn on you
It was them, of course, not your stained shirt, not the bitter
Spell bubbling away in the cauldron of your soul

So what is to be done?  Where do you go with all the seething
Mockery that wants to boil over and cover the stove in a sticky
Syrup of jeers that you once thought built the body of your

Existence?

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Inclination

High tension wires strain into the distance
Where mountain range nearly touches mountain range
God to Adam at the bottom of the valley
One arm inclined in lackadaisical acceptance
The other disinclined in active indifference
A sea gull follows the wire through the morning haze
Never reaching the point where man and divine
Join together in a rocky embrace

Monday, February 27, 2012

The carpenter

He carries the plank
Over his house's threshold
Careful not to trip

Friday, February 24, 2012

The Strawberry raises its ugly head again


Look at this

http://www.sni.org/ThanksGiving.aspxhttp://www.sni.org/ThanksGiving.aspx

it is from the Seneca, but I shall extract: 

Small plants: We give greetings and thanks for the plant life, which includes fruits and plants for food and medicine. The plans work many wonders from sustaining life to curing our diseases. The most important of these plants is the strawberry. Now our minds are one.

or this 

Earth: We give greetings and thanks to our Mother that Earth who continues to provide for us. The women and Mother the Earth are one; givers of life. Now our minds are one.

or 

Water: We give greetings and thanks to the waters which provide for our strength and well being. All life, including people, plants and animals need water. We give thanks to the lakes, rivers, and streams. The waters of the world quench our thirst and provide food for the plant and animal life. Now our minds are one.

We'd do well to be so thankful, don't you think?

Now our minds are one.

I'm still not sure of the strawberry.

Monday, February 20, 2012

CORRECTION: President(')s(') Day

Presidential Day ramblings from the past*.

*I was wrong about President(')s(') Day, by the way.  Apparently it is all three and none at the same time. Signifying nothing does not regret this error.

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Mass

Two tweakers pull up outside the Safeway
In a rust-gutted '83 K car last owned by her exes
Exes ex.

Not exactly a new car, but it was new to them.
And he laughs and she laughs and they both laugh.

She is out of the car now, and bolts to
His door,  snagging a crumbling shard
Of fender on her pink running shorts
He bursts out of the car and she hugs his waist
"What do we need?!" she exclaims
Hands sliding into his sweat pants.

"Everything!"  He shouts picking her up and spinning
Her round.  "Everything!"

So they skitter, clenched tight to each other, to the store,
Panicking briefly when they realize they have walked
Into the out door instead of the in

Time is their enemy at this point, since everything
Runs at triple speed for them yet everything they
Do takes three times as long

They spin around each other
Three times dodging an old lady hobbling
To get inside

Of course they are behind her and they
Can barely contain themselves as the geezer
Steps surely over the rubberized automatic
Switch

Still not inside
Still not inside
Inside!

But then it is the decision of carts
Should it be the big cart or the little cart
Or do they just need a basket

Each option is carefully considered between
Fits of laughter
Followed by clenching and spinning
They enter the store with no cart and end up past
The cold medicine when they realize their
Folly

"Fuck!"  And he laughs and then she laughs and then they
Both laugh before grabbing onto each other and spinning.

They wander, four hands on the basket handle
Laughing and grabbing and throwing and spinning
Their basket nearly full but they continue on
When you are tweaking you never know what's
Around the next endcap

It could be a cage display of pickles
It could be tampons
It could be your landlord tapping his foot

But it was just Ritz and Cheez Whiz in a jaunty
Holiday display of Santa offering a darn cheezy good
Communion