The Poets Against the War Web site now has 16872 poems against the war. One of them is mine. The other 16871 are not. Enjoy.

I started a new blog page for political and anti-war posts. It’s called Burning Daylight, and there’s a link on the right, under the photo. I really want Metaphor to concentrate on my writing and happier topics. Of course, in order for that to happen, I have to quit surfing the net and playing with my spam filtering software, and do some writing.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

A friend of mine has a problem. She and her husband bought some land and are building a house. It’s not on City water, and it turns out the well water isn’t potable. Somehow this didn’t show up in earlier tests. Their only option — besides losing their home – is to spend $38,000 to dig a deeper well. It got me thinking, it just never ends, does it? In the words of Roseann Roseanna Dana, “It’s always somethin.”

It seems like we spend our lives trying to become grownups with all the problems solved — at least the ones caused by dependence on other people who may not be competent. I’ve been working on it for years.

I thought I had it solved by buying a home — no more hassles with landlords, fear of getting kicked out or the rent being raised. I’m on my own, free and over 21. Nobody can give me shit; I own this place. Then the other day, I got a Rules Violation Slip from the principal’s office. I mean the condo homeowner’s association. There’s an oil spot (not quite the Exxon Valdez) in my garage, and they wanted me to appear in a hearing tonight.

Screw that noise. I’m not appearing for anything. I called them up — the management company. Said hey, I’ll clean it up. All you had to do was friggin’ ask nicely. No, they say, we’ve got 280 units here, we don’t have the time or inclination to be nice. This is how we communicate with each other; this is how we do it.

I don’t think I’m inclined to be nice to people who don’t want to be civilized and polite. If we can’t get along together, we can get along separately. Maybe I should sell out, buy a piece of land in the country, build my own damn house where I … won’t have to … um … answer …. ah, nuts.

I wave my hand over a pot of vegetable

soup to displace the steam

and the simmering house falls asleep.

All the gentle ghosts join hands

in the dimlit living room

listening to the furniture pray.

Burning the Midnight Oil, having spent the day Burning Daylight. It’s hard to face the journal, or the blog, to say what I’ve learned. I saw a dead dog – a beagle – on the freeway, but you don’t want to read about that. I called the authorities. All I could do. I console myself with the thought that she carried memories of love across the bridge.

The first endorsement in its 80-year history.

The magazine says the Bush administration’s record “has been one of failure, arrogance, and – strikingly for a team that prided itself on crisp professionalism – incompetence” and that Kerry “has demonstrated steadiness and sturdiness of character” throughout his career.

Are we keeping you awake?

I can’t believe they killed off Leo on West Wing tonight. I’m shocked. I’m troubled in mind. They huddled around their laptops down in Burbank, led him out into the woods – ignominiously – and felled him like a sapling. I wish I could have been there. It must be a rush to be a screenwriter, to kill a beloved character, and leave your audience shocked. … Troubled in mind.

Get Fuzzy is really good today. Mad me laugh.

I just thought of something funny, which I forgot to share when I had pneumonia last month. My doctor said this while he was examining me:

“Holy Shitskies.”

classic

You’ve probably seen this commercial for the VW Toureg: A young couple in a VW take photos of a high and beautiful place, and return the camera to a woman waiting below. It’s a great commercial, right? It made about 26 cells, right in the most middle-aged, acquisitive part of my brain, sit up and say, “What am I doing sitting here? I must have a Toureg. There’s a dealer in Santa Barbara. Where are my keys?”

It wasn’t really the car that caught my attention. It was the music. A soft, graceful acoustic guitar, and a voice that I wish sounded like me.

Oh where you lay

And close on down*

I’ve had it in mind for weeks to find out about that song. I finally got around to it tonight. Turns out it’s Ariel Ramirez by Richard Buckner. I found the name on a forum for Toureg people. I found the lyrics posted on a blog. I fired up Limewire and downloaded the song, then checked out the album on Amazon.com.

My mistake was in going one step further, and trying to learn a little about the song’s meaning. It turns out that Ariel Ramirez is an Argentine composer of very unique and lovely sacred music. I listened to some of his music too. He has a cult following among San Francisco area drug addicts. So I cried. I read that, and in a moment the lyrics came clear to me, and I cried. I tilted on the edge of that lostness, and my heart looked down into nothing but cold stars, pocked moons, and took a hard step back.

I guess I’d been unconsciously teetering on the brink of it for hours, since talking with my Dad about how my grandparents’ house looked when he passed it the other day, now that it’s been sold. It’s gone, sold to people who won’t love it in its desolate imperfection, let alone know the memories of family I’ve stripped from its walls and packed within my chest. They won’t hear the creaking of the floors the way I do.

So much of what is beautiful, soft, and gentle in us lies in the craters of our souls, washed by a sea of rains. We drift in our orbits, taking hits from meteors, space debris. Hoping the scars we bear make us no less beautiful, no more accountable to God. When there is no accounting for our galaxies of grief, we have the cold and stoic face of Ariel, moon of Uranus, empathetic sylph of our long, addicted nights.

Take up your ring

Forget we’re dead*

*Richard Buckner, Ariel Ramirez, from the album Since.