What's in Your Hand?

What do you hold in your hand everyday?
Something so close, besides your fork,
Or your spoon, that you behold it every day.
That you care for it,
Marvel it, even, sometimes.
What else do you handle that shapes the hand it's in,
While the hand shapes it as well?
Is the top of your steering wheel shiny?
Is your hammer's handle blackened with five stripes?
Your shot shell loader (yeah right) have that oily groove for your thumb?
Can you still read the digits on your phone?
Your remote?


What do you touch with your tips everyday?
Something you carry close, something you need,
But still feel it odd and new?
Does the finger-smudged touch pad on your garage door opener reveal your four digit code to professional economists and amateur mathematicians?
Is the speed dial button for your wife wiped clean by oft ignored then redialed calls?
Do you like the pop of this keyboard's buttons over that?


My hold is my hammer,
The things we've done,
And the heights we've climbed.
I've lost more than I've worn out.
And I've held a hundred,
But I've always kept a chosen few, at least for a while.

No I'm Not

You know how I know I'm not the crazy one, how I'm not the one with all the creepy voices and touching rebukes and scathing replies? Because everyone says I am, and everyone I know doesn't tell the truth like it's meant to be told..or even imagined and not told. Some people I know are about to put the gun in their mouth, smiling the whole time, saying how great they are and how the things they have are so awesome and the smiles keep coming sickeningly out of their faces like yellow pus from an ingrown hair they let fester for a week before they stooped down and did the deed.

You know how I know I'm not a liar, though I may not tell the truth all the time. I tell a truth, and you know when my head hurts or my back or if you're lounging too close too long or if I want to vomit in your face, but you also know if I love you or if I want to be around you or if I trust you--even if it's only true for a year, a day, an hour. I can shine a light on you, and bathe you in heat and happiness and heart. Or I can flick on the hose and douse with frigid delight, watch the curling from the cold and pruney tips, red rimmed eyes.

I'm wary of the people who talk about themselves all the time, even if I am one. I'm wary of people who never use the word I, me, we. I too am weary of the people in between. Non-binary folk, mentioned above, fit for scorn, loose in their emotions like over-sized suits, never baring their gums and never rubbing your coat or scratching your ears. Calm classic citizenry that do nothing for anyone except provide a tax base, a voting public who care that much and not much more. The wary-some folds are louder, so we get drawn to and fro.

Anyway, that's how I know, that's how I know I'm not always the shit to put up with, the litter box smell, or the squeaky windshield wipers, that sometimes there's others' shit to be tolerated and dissuaded and disregarded, then put away. Empty the inbox of sour notes and off key tunes. Keeping the crap makes you crazy, cold, and cringing when the light hits you, when the heat's turned up; waiting for the bill to come in the mail instead of rolling naked in a thin sheet, ditching the security blanket.

My feet clunk just as loud as yours, yes it's true, but I notice the differences and count your reaction and gauge my gait accordingly. That's how I know I'm not crazy, cause I tip on my toes, and bite on my tongue, or I stomp sharply, shrieking to be heard, present company withstanding. So I swim in my suit, loose as it is, though I can change the colour consistent for content and comrades.

Yeah, I ain't the only one that doesn't consider the sounds and smells and the salts in the wounds, but I'm the first one to notice when I should, to not laugh nor point, but notice and almost care, as much about you as I do about me.

Work

Sometimes I look down at my feet and it's a beautiful thing to see; them perched on the slope of an inch and a half wide rafter, thin ankles, footy socks, tanned, everything connected just so, balanced in the air on hardly anything. I was built perfectly for what I do. No real fear, just in the air, to work.

I talk to men, grown men, who speak of their fear of heights, of their inability to carry on in the air and later, on the same day, talk of how tough and kick ass they are. A study in bravado, of bullshit it was.

I've seen these tough guys get woozy at the sight of their own blood. I've seen them have to sit in the shade on a hot day. I've seen them whine about blisters. I've seen them drag their feet around a job sight until ten to quitting where the pace doubles as tools are gathered before going home.

Of course, those days were over one rainy day when I flagged down a car with a couple of los gentes.

Facing The Prospect of Playing Paintball With Teens

I Like guns. I like blowing stuff up with them. I like knocking stuff over with them. I like holding finely crafted steel that was made years before I was even a glint in my daddy's eyes and making these weapons go bang!

But do I really want to be shot at by a bunch of young-uns with paintball guns? Do I really want to chase them around on two bad knees and shoot at them? Well, maybe.

I have the opportunity to take my teenage son out to the field of battle, but I'm having second thoughts.

For one thing, I like for my son to practice good gun safety, which really never involves the pointing of a gun at me: DAD! Now we're going to have to practice doing just that, and then shoot each other. And I've not shot somebody since high school when me and Marty Pope would take the BB guns into the woods, complete with swimming goggles for eye protection, and shoot each other.

The second thing is, I know for a fact they, paintballs, HURT! I drunkenly let my good friend Brain Casey take careful aim at me in his shop one day, and, even AFTER I had stuck three and half inches foam rubber under my tee-shirt, the impact of the "soft" projectile brought me to my knees and a tear to my eye. I won't mention the purple third nipple I had for a week...at least it was dead center.

The third, and maybe most important thing is, if I get shot in the neck (or some other soft part), and start crying, I'll immediately go berserk and wade through the sea of teen faces shooting them in a wild release of rage. Which is not a big deal I guess, except that all the dads'll be there to witness the foul humour. Indeed, some are actual customers of ours, and some may be at some point.

It is odd to want to shoot your fellow man, and I have actually shied away from this game, but I'm a firm believer in trying something once--even golf. And I have shot Marty Pope up a bunch of times so I think I can still get past that cultural check and balance.

I just hope that the teens can take a hit, and that they lay off my pretty face.

Texas Radio and the Big Beat

I want to tell you 'bout shot gun sports,
I want to tell you 'bout how what you see
Is what you shoot.

I want you to know,
When you sweat on the wood
With your cheek;
You watch the clay.
You watch it break.

I want you to know,
If you shut the fuck up,
You'll know what to do.
It's all in yourself,
It's all what you see.

I want you to know,
From shotgun to pistol,
It's all just the same;
You raise it eye high,
And you'll shoot what you see.

I want you to know,
The crisp acrid pop,
And the thrust to your hand,
Hot brass over shoulder;
What you see has gone down.

I want you to know,
We practice on clay,
On steel,
On paper,
And on deer,
And pray for no day.


I want you to know,
Some days are never
Meant to become,
And shots are never,
Meant to be done.
But there are things,
I hold close to my heart.


I want to tell you 'bout
How I have made ready,
For days not to come,
And clays not yet thrown.
For I will not blink,
For we shoot
What we see.

Two Points of View

I've seen some things, I have.

I've seen things that shock and surprise and befuddle and make me shake my head even though I should know better and shouldn't be phased by the happiness (as a jealous prick) or maliciousness (as an innocent bystander) of others.

I try to just bumble along my way.

I was eating lunch with a friend the other day, in a chicken place, and watched as two, very youngish patrons rose from their seats, gathered with their clique, and sauntered outside to the parking lot where they all walked away slowly while the two young men held hands.

As a child of the eighties I couldn't help but stare. Watching two young men enjoying the freedom of expression that in my day would have got them beat and ridiculed really just made me think how far we had come as a society...did I mention we were in Yanceyville, NC? Yanceyville!

Yes I stared...and smiled. I remembered a picture someone had posted on facebook of a bright red tee-shirt proclaiming, "Some people are gay, Get over it!" on a grinning Sir Ian McKellan. Yes I stared: here was freedom in a tiny hick town...

I was inordinately happy about the whole scene, like I am when I can order in a taqueria without any help, surrounded by black hair and brown skin...

Then I bumble on my way.

Now there are two horses I've seen that need someone's help. And of course, I've convinced myself that I can; that I can figure out a double-win for all involved.

When I see them on a half acre lot, with no shelter, just a parked stock trailer, I know that something isn't right. Driving by, I can see there's no grass left higher than a registered stubble because they've grazed it all off. I see they have hay, but it's the kind that's rolled up, for cattle, and it's dumped in the mud and left laying out for weeks.

I just don't get it. The horses are gaunt, ribs showing, hip bones jaunty, and I can't wrap my fucking brain around how this guy, whom I've met before, can just drive by them everyday, see them sucking wind like that, and not do more. So I will.

In a perfect world I could just walk up to the guy and ask if he needs some help. I bet I could get truckloads of people willing to lend a hand--whatever it would take to make the horses healthy, but crap like this never plays out like that. Instead, I'll be the asshole, the motherfucker who can't mind his own business.

We'll see.

So I bumble along trying get some happy and I see something that makes me smile and say the cliche, "We've come a long way, baby." then go to bed, wake up the next day and see how far we've yet to go.

Of course we can bumble along all day checking out the good and the bad (and the ugly I suppose)--Greensboro, NC getting MILLIONS of dollars for a Greenway (whatever the fuck that is) while food shelters beg on the same newscast for food donations because, if you'll remember, we're in the worst state of depression and unemployment since before, what, WWII, and their shelves are bare.

But I'm gonna stick to my TMZ, my thirty mile zone. I going to enjoy my view of freedom and young hand-holding "love." And I'm gonna save my starfish that're washed up and exposed at low tide and flick as many as I can back into the water before the sun kills 'em.

Vacation

What would make me lock up my best friend by the hands of strangers, and leave her behind for several days?

What would make me pack up a bunch of groceries before heading to the vast wilderness of Sugar Mountain, where the closest grocery store is, uh, 1.5 miles from the condo?

What would make me leave all my toys locked up in a safe, and all my TV's unplugged (awaiting an errant thunderstorm), and all our computers turned off and unlinked to the world wide web?

What would make me leave my bed, and comfy rumpled pillows and my shower that could blast and strip the paint off an old wooden fence?

What would make me hit the road in the heat of the day and streak past points of (my)interest to get to our destination?

Why would I leave my home? My place, where *I* hole up to forget the heat, and work, and taxes, and sore necks?

Oh yeah, to relax.