My Bark is Bigger than My Bite

A piece written by my nephew Aaron, a gifted, up-and-coming poet…

Chicken of the sea, shiny silver scales hailing: “We need to evolve tonight”

Left fin extended, saluting civil upheaval via southern bend

That’s the reflection from the blurry shimmering in the murky waters

My soul swims in pollution with no HAZMAT mask on

Huckleberry Finn thumbing is dumbfounding,

Posing by the obvious usage of goblin hobnobbing

I’m all stumbling summersaults and awkward umbrage mistaken for

High stakes hatred

Who’s raking the leaves on my lawn?

Leave me alone, I’m some kind of dumb and fumbling all thumbs via

Scummy mentality

Trying to scrape together leverage so I can muster a “hello” to the

Barista as she creates my coffee

Who can afford more lumbar support or stomach average lunches so

They can squish between cleavage and beaver within skinny slivers of

Fantastic orgasms?

Spin a better lattice so my yellowish teeth grit fits knitted with indented intonation

Perfectly interwoven with worn out welcomes of worrisome shivers shouting-out so

Starstruck, thumb-sucking dumb fucks

Against my luck I snuck under the radar to find celibacy sanctuary

Statutory of limitations has expired

I’m hidden in a crooked rubber nook caroming

So slow-mo fancy HD

Am I gonna come out clean and finally stand on my own two feet?

I guess I’ll wait to see

The excitement is so palpable in a kaleidoscopic plethora of avenues

Philanthropic hope if only I’d win the lotto, so in the cards and you know it

I’ll be like the handout homie Great Gatsby

Life of the party intermixing gist with drinking but missing not for the lazy but

Because of social anxiety

Showcase my poetry in the Smithsonian only in a social state of dystopia

Let’s bask backwards for the marijuana brownie bake caked on my consciousness,

Complex logistics getting fragile helicopter moms pissed

Just get stuck in the most muggy of things stinging rigid that have no relevance

Cuz I’m busy crying about Forsberg retiring

Happy VD everybody!

　

~Aaron Daniel Purcell

2/14/2011

Look at Me

She stood near the music

both to hear and to see—

after all, Orpheus speaks

to ear and eye.

Harlem River rushed

along the ground beneath

her tapping feet.

Suddenly she turned

and heard, saw

a gravity of souls,

the familiar magnetic pull

of blue-green iris

to blue-green iris—

melding like Monet’s blossoms.

The reunion was pleasantly

shocking, surreal.

She ran her fingers

across the beauty that

was this coming together—

this parting—

then sent it soaring

with a black kiss.

It sailed above the crowd

and exploded into

blues and confetti.

Perhaps in the end

all that remains is the
music.

~Susan Adams Kauffman

"Dark Night Chills" by Glenn Beckmann

The following story was penned by my good friend Glenn, a writer, artist and all-around outdoorsman who lives in Alaska.

I hear a call sometimes at night after you're asleep. I need to feel this night's air. Tonight it's cold and dark, as my boots crush the frozen snow beneath. Each step fills the peace. I try to find the spot that feels right; it's quiet, and then I'm still.

I hold my breath to let this night's calling filter in. First a cold chill touches me, as I'm focusing the shadows. The wind is soft and steady. It's my first call this night as I hear branches whisper, as they comb the breeze They almost hide the voices of this night.

Tonight this breeze cuts. I shiver, but continue to listen. A distant wash of an ocean's heartbeat pounds the beach. It's clear to me now, it's constant. But that's not all that's calling me; I'm still being pulled.

I look up to this nights sky, and this opens me to a deeper chill. My body shakes with a heavy shiver. I need to cross my arms to keep it still. It subsides.

This night's blackened sky is filled with life, and it's calling me. Like the stretched trees around me, we both are pulled upwards. Stories are being told in patterns of pinhole lights, each twinkle a song that fills me with wonder. I'm lost in its peace, and for a moment time stands still--until a blade of shocking cold cuts me. I awaken to this earth that keeps me. I want to listen to the this nights sky, but my body is chilled; it tells me no.

I make my way back to bed. I shiver one last time as I slip my bare feet into the bed beside you.

Dragonflies in Defiance

I strolled down to the creek today to watch the dragonflies. Because it is so late in the season, they are huge, big as fingers (such as this one who sat still and let me photograph her). Because we are entering fall, they are also mating. It is wondrous the way they make love in mid-air. What would that be like: to feel no physical boundaries nor forms against which to thrust, to unite bodies? Mere air would require more tandem effort in order to produce the glorious friction of intimate contact. Yet floating weightless, ungrounded, with a lover would also feel musical. Song, after all, rises above the tug of gravity and fills the air waves with pure sensation. Today the dragonflies swirled and swooped, their bodies joined in a duet of delight. Soon these lovers will die. The females will lay their eggs and lie down. Perhaps we humans could learn a thing or two from these magnificent creatures. We live, we love, we expire; why not float with abandon now and then and defy that which leads to a variety of deaths: gravity, disconnection, silence? Winter quickly follows autumn.

Outside the Stupa

Save the ashes
For reminders
Stony things remain

Tooth and bone
unimpressive
I have left these things

Because fire is bright
Fire is clean
efficient and divine

Tooth and bone
Charms and dolls
I am free tonight

~From "I Burn" by Toadies

I'm sitting on the ground--something I haven't done in far too long--watching ants wind their way through a maze of cow, or perhaps horse--?, bones. I just picked up a femur and marveled at the swirled curve of a socket. It is perfectly articulated. I once would have traded everything in order to know its designer. But now I don't want to know him/her/it. I doubt that I would understand this entity, anyway. Besides, there would be a sort of diminishment of the designer if we did connect. My eros is too hungry, too groping. I'd want to somehow internalize the creator, perhaps even worship it. Instead, I'll simply gaze from a distance and "be" in this creation, this moment, with these insects and leg bones, these skulls.

I'm at the Shambhala Center outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, a Buddhist retreat nestled in the mountains. My friends and I drove here this afternoon. It's lovely. I hear the wind rustling the aspen leaves. I see silver flecks as they flutter. We entered the stupa a few minutes ago, and while I found the gilded Buddha statue impressive, and the colorful designs and mosaics enchanting, I couldn't sit there on a meditation cushion for long. Doing so felt claustrophobic here in this idyllic wooded setting. I also couldn't remain in the stupa because it was uninspiring. I've outgrown religion in all of its forms. It's not that I feel superior to believers; rather, religion has become too confining for me. In my eyes, it can't possibly contain the Source; in fact, the earth itself can't contain it. And I don't think a man-made temple can begin to adequately address or express this Ground of Being.

Nonetheless, I made the decision while sitting on the floor of the stupa to ignore the religious aspects of what surrounded me and instead bask in the sensual experience. Perhaps if I had to name my religion, it would be sensuality. Or art, the expression of sensuality. I'm much too erotic of heart for any religion constructed by humans. So I'll sit here on the dry, grassy ground among these bones and simply "enjoy" without seeking understanding or a connection to the transcendent. This transcends.

NOTE: I did return to the stupa later in the day, where I found the following words in a poem someone left as an offering:

In the garden of gentle sanity
May you be bombarded
with coconuts
and wakefulness.

How?

How does one grieve

when there has been

no absolute severance,

no death? I wilt, I break,

but I cannot die

to this. Thus, the dying

proceeds for another day.

And another. Another.

The knife blade is serrated,

the cut jagged and

disconsolate.

I weep over the loss

but cannot figure out how

to lose, nor to stanch

the steady drip of

blood, of heart.

--Susan Adams Kauffman

WAITING

Winter,

for those of us,

brings its cold,

its muted air,

and its slumbering

loam

that awaits.

I am a handful

of seed—

lavender, perhaps—

oblivious yet

abiding,

listening in my sleep

for the faint,

thawed breath

of longing.

-Susan Adams Kauffman