The Fabulous Durkee Girls--Part 1

       


        In future blogs you will see many heavy to happy topics in poem, but you will also see heroes and  villains--my ex.  People  I celebrate in poems as having been inspirational to my life and the outlooks they shared by their life 's testament.


        Little sister, Dorothy, and big sister, Virginia, were like Adam's peanut butter.  You know the one where the oil separates out and you have to stir it up.  That is how I saw them:  Peanut Butter and Oil.  Totally opposite but stir them up and they belonged to each other.  Totally inspirational and yummy to know.  Religious/Episcopalian D and Agnostic/perhaps atheist V.  Oh, but they loved each other.  They both lived to garden.   Dorothy had a dogwood (a natural hybrid of Cornus nuttali and C.florida) she found in her garden named after her.  Virginia had a rhododendron named after her:  'R.Virginia Richards' though she argued it should have been named after her husband, Leverett, who had interviewed  a rhododendron breeder instead of being named after her.  Also, she complained her Rhodi was famous for being the first that scientists isolated the killer fungus###.    Giniadr embraced her e-mail handle and the latest technology as much as little sis hung on to"snail mail" and making wine and quilts for her grandchildren.

                                                      PART I THE  DOROTHY STORY

           I liked to call her Harris because that was the name she took when she married her husband who was one of the people that caught polio after WWII.  Mr. Harris was handicapped from his illness and permanently on crutches like another client of mine Harry Russell.  It is interesting to me that though they both had this disability; they never acted like they needed special treatment from society.  Instead they did not act like society owed them anything and they did not let their impairment stop them from doing anything. Always they would be out working whether it was dead-heading rhodis on a walker or planting their garden on their knees.  Harry R. even played golf on crutches and had his own consulting business for years.  Mr. Harris, was one of the head engineers that built the gorge roads.  His office close to Maryhill was in a converted service station among the Gunkel peach orchards (google: peach beach campground).

            He was a bit of a character and there was a perpetual fog of Camel smoke in their home until the day he died.  He once told me, a garden guru when I was in my twenties, how to start grapes and he gave me some of their cuttings.  He said "Mark them well so that you know the top from the bottom.  Then stick the top into the soil."  I diligently followed his instructions and every one of the cuttings grew.  It was not until 30 years later that the realization that he was making fun of the punk who knew it all. You could even lay them sideways and they would grow.  He had a laugh from the grave and I am much more humble and and now admit I know nothing.  He loved to play with dynamite--it was easier than digging holes for their apples and pear trees.

            You ask, " I thought this was Dorothy's story."   He was sewn into the fabric of Dorothy's life from the day they met.  She was up in a fruit tree when Virginia's then future husband was with his best friend Jay Harris.  I would have loved to hear their exchanges.  "Is it a nut in the tree?"   They read to each other every night with a glass of homemade wine they had made together--heady things like Lewis and Clark's journal.    I called her the "little ole winemaker". She was an inspiration to our now carboy madness.  Her basement was full of carboys with air locks and aged bottles of blackberry (a desert wine that rivaled the best black muskat) or Oregon grape that was dry and so good.  Can you imagine picking 20 pounds of pioneer grapes for a 5 gallon carboy.  She gave us many of her recipes.  Many Friday nights after work were done next door at Harris's. We would sip these and her favorite scotch.

How do you have a crush on someone your grandmothers age?  Easy.  I would watch her from next door going back and forth with her little honda tiller preparing her garden.  Watch her garden rich with compost she made burgeon.  Whose rich?  The spoiled control freak I worked for or the one who loved the earth and shared all she had?  Anyway, I ached to have a help-mate like her. Good things do come true.   Voila, I found my darling, Marieke, a very important footnote in this story.

It was she and her sister, Virginia, who turned us on to Peach Beach.  This was the same place that her husband, Jay, had an office in the old service station down a winding road from Oregon's Stonehedge, which was the headquarters for the building of  highway 14 with all of it's tunnels. ( I assume this was where Jay became fond of dynamite)  The Gunkel orchard in Maryhill,  with peaches and apricots (they had to be Tiltons) and Sam Hill's wonderful Museum of Rodins and history was discovered.  Every year we would make the hegira with Dorothy and Virginia to pay homage to sun-ripened apricots and peaches.

We would all split up and u-pick.  Dorothy, in her nineties would be to the top of an orchard ladder immediately.  Marieke always the worrier would stick close to D. but would finally come over to me and say you catch her if she falls.  After the truck was full and the poundage paid for, we would head to the top of the hill to the Maryhill Winery.  There we would brouse the wines and invariabley pick their fine Sangiovese (Chianti).  Pop the cork and lay out our picnic feast.  D would always bring fried chicken and her homemade dills.  After our repast we would head back the Washington gorge side.  In no time, Dorothy, who had talked all the way up, would be fast asleep.  Then it would be Gin's turn to talk and the miles would roll by the mighty Columbia.

The sadness of how today's culture & wisdom is lost from the elders was not true with Dorothy.  How many people learned from Dorothy.  Wow, my mom took sewing classes from Dorothy at Clark College. Dorothy was one of the few women of her time that went 4 years to college.  She advanced studied in Paris and made all of her and her daughters' own clothes.  I would have loved to have one of the vests she made lined with lamb wool.  All of her grandchildren had a beautiful handmade quilt.  It is interesting that the inspiration she gave to all rubbed off on everyone.  She would have loved to live long enough to see her grandson and wife have this business:  Perfectly natural soap.com.  Hand made soap made for all, but heavenly for us gardeners.

I worked next door to her garden for 30 + years.  She never ceased to amaze me.  I was honored to be by her bedside when she slipped off of her mortal coil.  She always shared her garden and she is alive in our garden  today.  When we walk down our paths, we say," Hello Harris, you're looking fine today.  Perhaps that is one more lesson she gave:  Share your wealth.  And finally, she was the muse for these poems.


              This poem was written in the Baja soaking in the sunset, sipping on a bottle of Harris’s black berry elixir, and cooking on her # 9 iron skillet--all things she gave us for our trip.



                         Harris


Thank you Harris little old wine maker
We sip to you
Two chairs on the Baja beach
A bottle of  your Marion berry champagne
The waves lapping on the sea of Cortez shore
Quiet--evidence of footsteps left in sand
Now only pelicans and porpoise play not too loud
In the last tie-dyed colors of light
This is vacation and you are with us


And she always will be with us.  DeeDee is the name her sis, Virginia called her.  She was just like the chickadee.  Flitting and singing.



                           Chick-a Dee-Dee

I hear you in the trees
You cannot let me forget your song
I remember when you were
Battleground Plum Princess in the days
When people celebrated
The flowering of the Italian plum orchards
They crowned you in this spring rite
Begging to the brown earth to come alive
Praying to all of the gods
That the dryers would be full come fall

There you were
Witness to the death
Twelve foot wide giants riding to the mills
Only stump platforms for your playhouse
You respected those who lived  on this ground
Long years ago--legends were learned
All for the good of Clark county
Your father’s mountain home will be a park
Where my grandchildren will discover
Wild flowers still grow

Remember a skipping girl
Passing the fruit trees down the lane
Grazing on whatever loaded branches were in season
If you couldn’t reach on tip-toes
You would have to climb
Tom girl still in the tree
When the love of your life
Asked you to come down
“Is this a nut tree?”

All the stories told
Repeated like some Indian legends
We could never be bored
Finishing your stories for you
Friday nights live
A glass of wine from the cellar
The same grape pioneers fermented
Now the bottle is empty
We grieve  for a glass and your smile
You are still alive
As the passing of your lemon cake recipe
And the grafts of your Dorothy dogwood

 
         

seamus eulogy

   
                                   
                       
          What drew me away from a making-salsa day?--a gift from a friends bounty!  The death of a man I did not know.  A man who I will certainly now explore.  His poems were read on OPB enough to make me want to see more of a gift my ignorant soul must find and read.  Poetry helps us find meaning and breathe in our so ordinary life.
                                     

                                               Eulogy For A Man I Did Not  Know


                                               What Seamus did you see in us

                                               Spinning words into Irish shamrock lace

                                               Pictures grounding us in dirty earthly palette

                                               I cannot begin to speak your greenius Gaelic

                                               Looking to the garden maze of 100 square

                                               Jungle madness not close to straight rows

                                               Grains of Aztec gods in love bleeding red

                                               Their purple and pygmy torch lighting the way

                                               Through this right to live staking your gold claim

                                               Let light shine among us here

                                               Share sun with your crowding neighbor

                                               Pinch a leaf to give us space

                                               Offer water to a thirsty mate

                                               At the rising August sliver

                                               All the paths gone to tripping flowers

                                               Who would know now

                                               The hours and hours

                                               You tried to give food and soul

                                               To your lined May plan

                                               Oh if we could be so like your Nobel way

                                               But you are gone on this very day

                                               So to the frost will come

                                               To bring order to this chaos

                                               Where there was none

                                               The words you sung remain

                                     
                           

Farewell to SPRING

                                                            Farewell to Spring


                                        Going Forward Slowly


                                     Solstice weakening Winter

                                     Let there be fires

                                     Naked dancing

                                     We can rejoice

                                     The heart of winter has been ripped out

                                     We will slowly bleed into life Spring                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    


          When the vernal equinox was pregnant, I had this idea to interview Spring.  Now it's 57 degrees out and nothing even close to summer is on.  Rain and temperature has forced me by the fire--killer bread rising-- using whole soft white wheat and rye kernels--thinking of whole villages in medieval times going rave with visions from the ergot fungus in their rye.  I wonder what they thought of spring.  Easter and he has risen, eggs, rabbits, pagan fertility rites by witches around heaped-up  bonfires.


Paul said, " Frog madness noise searching for mates out there in the dark and that means time to stop bleeding the sugar maples."  Another said, "The pantheon of bulbs:  Crocus, daffodils, Spanish squill, chionodoxa."   I could never get enough or have  enough of them.  Maybe this explains my madness for bulbs.  "Optimism, after a dark winter."  "Hope!"  "The first ooh chartreuse leaves of Oemleria .  What is yours?  Tell me.  Comment!

My favorite ( which is not Spring)  was from my friend, Lloyd.  Not often do you find someone in this world that has the same distorted view of Spring, " is a season closer to the longest day of the year.  The corollary of this means the days are getting shorter and bare winter is a shadow on the sun.  Now, what do you think of Spring?  The bulbs are withered limp brown.  The leaves of the Indian plum are a non-stunning plain ole green.  Still got that optimism?  What dreams are molding from 90 days ago?

I remember 90 years ago it seems, when I was 19.  The world would be changed by me and you.  The tsunami force we thought we were has more than crested.  The cycle continues to spin.  The years that were beginnings continue going round and round like some old "Circle Game."  Stop and take inventory of dreams dreamt and realized and then count your blessings.  There is still time.  What I have learned from tending our garden is that Christ should not have said " the lilies of the field."  He should have said, " behold the poppies of the garden."  How the best, most vigorous effort was not necessary.  Never planted yet still the strongest kaleidoscope of blues, reds, and lavenders.

I have not been able to write because of Spring--you drive me into work frenzy.  Blame it on Spring.  The kids are gone.  I must blame my absence on someone besides laziness.  Planting and fearing psychotic rains, little creeks that should not be there at this time, rotting all of my seeds.  Fear not!  The corn will be knee high.  Tomatoes will be plump.  Have all of the expectations become empty?  No, we are waiting for the unripened fruits of Spring.  Are we always waiting for the next.  Perhaps winter is not villain.  Maybe it is time to redraw our plans for more Springs.

Can depression have any face in this?  What is it like to not hear the symphony of spring hope-thousands of frog bassoons  and it is only tinnitus in your soul?  Do you feel worse because you know you should rise to the ever present bully sound.  Pull myself out.

Yes, I am happy I survived Spring.  My fingers are to the bone.  Still, I am sitting back writing to you a day left in Spring.  I feel I need to continue Spring even tomorrow but especially now.

After 28 years and almost as many parties, we are taking a break (say new road$) but I can never forget our wedding that started our parties.  Beni Maiko is in her second flush.  I dedicate this poem to my beautiful wife, Marieke.



                                              28 Years


              From Amsterdam streets to bride


              From always lover to wife

              To know beyond doubt

              There is always that person

             Who has my back

             No matter how close the roiling seas
                                 
             Try to capsize our row boat

             All of the poems I have penned

             Add up to the most important words

              I love you David

Habemus papam

          In a conversation over the phone with my brother, Tom, this facetious question comes up:  "What do you think of your new pope?"  This is a topic that screamed for a rant though I never thought it would be a topic of a blog,  I will try not to drone on (maybe that will be a topic someday).  I still want to do a Spring thing, but for now habemus papam.

What I think is preliminary, verdict still out.

Let me begin by saying I was totally amazed that the media made this a # 1 lead story for days.  The adage if it bleeds it leads was not followed unless you consider the juicy scandals and intrigue behind the Vatican doors of homosexual priests, abuse of their bank (What is a church doing with a bank?  Let's hope the funds will be used for more things than keeping the princes of the church in their rich life styles and if cardinals are the princes does that make the pope the king?), pedophilia...are we talking about a church?  I think with 2.1 billion followers, members it might explain media coverage: I wonder if they count me and a lot of other folk because as they say: once an alcoholic always an alcoholic.  If your off the juice you are still an alcoholic though now you are recovering.  You must find the humor:  Argentina, Francis's home country is 90% Catholic though only 10% go to mass or as you would say are"practicing" kinda like doctors and lawyers.

As you know I am a recovering Catholic.  I have tried to overcome the brain-washing and imprinting from the womb.  I have tried to retain some of the bottom line Christianity which Catholicism has like Jesus's main tenet:   love your neighbor as yourself.  Is it weird that they say I am a Catholic first before they say I am a Christian.  That I follow the pope not Jesus.  I found it so interesting that all of the cardinals and church hierarchy wanted a pope that would keep and enforce the rulings and dogma of the church and keep the strict rules in place and the money.  All that I wanted was a pope like pope John Paul the XXIII.  A pope that would call the Third Vatican Council, that would embrace all men and women, a person who would not be a pharisee, or a money changer, or a theologian arguing how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.

Maybe Francis fooled the cardinal choosers.  I feel there is hope that things will change in the church. I love to use words like mendacity, hypocrisy, two faced, exploitation.  I hope he abandons these practices of the Church.   Makes these words of the past.  I hope the new words are:  liberation theology, humility, practiced poverty, the truth of Catholics and contraception, condoms to prevent the spread of aids,ooh masturbation, pedophilia, married priests, women priests, other faiths, Jews,   homosexuality, distributions of wealth, the truth, what would Jesus do.

Many orders like the Jesuits take the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and Jesuits take a fourth vow:  obedience to the pope (I wonder how that will work since Francis is a Jesuit).  When I was a novice at a Jesuit novitiate, I was astounded that the only vow that was followed was "obedience, brother," as father Master would say.  It meant blind obedience or as one of the spiritual exercises meditations (brain washing?) a Jesuit was to follow if you were told to water a dead stick (plant) you were to do it.  Orders  can get around the poverty by saying poverty in spirit as the feasts were overflowing with with wine--almost bacchanalian feasts of excess.  No worry about anything material brother, you don't have to worry the car is always full of gas and you will be invited to the richest peoples house--does this sound like poverty.  Need I say more.  I can't even talk about chastity as that has become a joke.  I remember the friend I had at the Novitiate.  There we were;  outside on the light-less Sheridan hillside, a Jesuit Novitiate (now a Scientologist bastion), watching the Perseid meteor showers when a hand moves to my side and I have to push it away and say I don't want to be that kind of friend.  He later left the Jesuits and became a priest and stepped in front of a bus in San Francisco because he was facing allegations of pedophilia.  Many of his "friends" are Jesuits today.  That is not to say all priests are molesters, or do not keep their vows.  I see the new pope is used to taking the bus and picked up his own luggage and paid his own hotel bill, and said the palatial apartments that are his now do not need redecorating--maybe there will be an intensive house cleaning not just of his kingly trappings but of the entire Church.

There are allegations of his not actively opposing the dictatorship in his home country.  We have all sinned.  If he was passive, I believe he now admits he should have done more and he has adopted the name of Francis of Assissi.  The first pope in thousands of years that takes a name that no one else has ever chosen that symbolizes peace and love of poverty.  I wonder how this will work out.

For me, I hope all of those words I mentioned come to the fore, and that the main phrase,"What would Jesus do?" is Francis's mantra.  Who knows how this will all play out.  There is hope.

And now a poem about a priest that taught sophomores that were not Alaskan meek lambs.  One of the priests that bankrupted the Jesuit Oregon Province( They kept a lot of properties like multi-millions Jesuit High etc. through lawyers slight of hand) which is an area of the west that goes north
to Alaska and east to the Indian reservations that were a pedophilia place for plunder.  I wonder how many more monsters Jesuit High School harbored that taught us.  Most of the records are sealed but Father Poole made the Oregonian headlines.  As you will see we did not go to the slaughter at least I know of no classmates that did.  I vaguely remember a picture of this smiling monster at a dinner with my lovely little sister, Lisa, on his lap.  How lovely acts of normalcy and natural affection come into doubt.  His mendacious religion rants to us were always, "Take it down to the principle."  This bald-faced chameleon ate at our home and we didn't know that the Jesuits were hiding a monster but they knew.  Shame on the Church and this is a word, pedophilia, that is no longer hidden from us.

                  Father Cess Poole


Some bad priests molest the weakest lambs

I know the devil is flesh

I have seen his bloody tracks

Black magic is flesh incarnate

Wheedles  his way inside

Talks in holy smack

Beelzebub uses a sneak attack

Invites you into an exclusive clubbing

I saw his chameleon face

Preaching to the human race

The façade they call go(l)d

It reeks green dollar bill mold

Talks earnest righteous and boldly lies

Sophomores see through fake and fable

He would invite us to the altar table

Eat the flesh drink of the blood

Repeat answer chant the rant

Take it down to the principle you say

The principle knew who you were too

Cover your eyes be the monkey

Abetting this sick molester junky

We did not want to share your heroin habit

Oh father cess Poole we knew

That you were only fooling not us or God

But some helpless lamb led to your slaughter

That was your only go(a)d

The words won't come. Momma said ther'd be days like this

                                Momma said Momma Said


             Sometimes life is so bogged down in the fire that needs to be built if you want to raise the temp to 60 degrees, the wood that needs to be cut for next winter as you eye the  dwindling stacks in the wood shed for this winter that Norm gave you, the weeds choking the garden till you can't breathe, the tiller that won't start and the words that won't come even if you didn't have to waste time bringing wood in or is that just an excuse--all the lists.  This whining will be brief though wining would be preferred--a vintage over-priced Oregon Pinot--oops there I go again.  The words would come but they would be slurred.  My good old inspirational friend with MS, Doctor Herb(acious) Orange, (what a name for a horticulture teacher) that no matter what difficulties he encounters can always say, "Life is good!"  I'm already feeling better but the words still won't come and the firewood still isn't in.  Ah, the word horticulture I love.  From the latin I wasted 4 years studying instead of small engine repair I could get that tiller running, hortus=garden and cultura=cultivating, agriculture.  When I taught Intro to Horticulture at Clark College, I would always start out with this politically incorrect pun I heard years ago which seemed appropriate for beginning students: "You can lead a hor-to-culture but you can't make them think."  So I am trying to think:  What poems for today?


The thing about leaving home is there is no firewood to carry in only a thermostat to turn up that magically brings heat

 

                                                               At Home


Leaving home why

Every place we go

No matter how nice it is

Stars as bright food as good

We say it is not where our heart beats

Where there are no voices but the echo we own

The deck room framed big in garden

How nakedness is free

No one watching only the trees

Screams of joy not heard

Sense of peace no paranoia

Doors not locked

Windows free to open air

We wonder why we leave

To remind us there are crashing waves

Mountain paths to find

So happy to stay home

Sometimes you wonder if bringing in the wood has a higher meaning than just staying warm.

       Bearing Gifts To Nothing

Can man ever change his flaw

Single I stand not wanting to be right

Asking only the chance to plead my cause

I cannot say but here is my light

Generic masses hold tragic failings

They die of greed  or mutiny

In Dutch phantoms or Caine sailings

Swearing oaths god damn their inability to sin

Who will kill you ugly hydra

I can only pique make you madder

Only to suffer as poor Phaedra

Does truth care does it matter

Blame the gods for such faulty workmanship

Or the stars not you dear Brutus

Your fathers worshipped the flag why not shit

One mans questions are koto notes in the wind 

Island or continent time grinds to sand

Despite our breathings for all our toilings

So I try to forget I am a weak man

Foolishly bearing gifts for nothing

                   

When our horse loses, when life looks empty and bleak there is always this hope.



                                From Despair


                         No spring will come

                        They have won

                        The rats have eaten  my seed

                        The tulips are frozen mush

                        Hope has died

                        Me too inside


                        Kerry off

                        Carry on

                        The world must grow smaller

                        To touch each man and woman

                        So there can be no lies

                        Where we look into each others eyes

                        Sharing love as lovers do


Sometimes the words come but they were not the ones we wished.


             Suicide By Cop


When a poem must get out

Coyotes  howling

Doors unlocked with found keys

Fleshy cells remembering another night

When I saw your eyes in my head lights

Not a deer on the highway

Looking up at me like that one in Grass Valley

Pleading but knowing death

Was close at hand

Wanting it to be over and gone

I hope you died instantly homogenized

Reformed into something better

But why did you make me a murderer
                                    

It's all about LOVE

                     Be my Valentine!  Sending out hearts to all the people I love.   Love and Valentines Days:  thinking back.  Wow, that girl in fourth grade, Cherie Dedmore.  Surprised I even remembered her name  Wonder if she is still alive.  First girl that I didn't know how to react with--just peach fuzz--you know love is just a four letter word except I didn't have a clue but I knew the word from my dad's service station:  **** which rhymes with lucky.  Didn't know what it meant though.   I knew so little about the four letter word:  LOVE!  And then there was the guilt of the forbidden fruit that Catholic schools and teaching put on our backs. I lived it.  I am a recovering Catholic.  St. Augustine saying," It wasn't an apple on the tree.  It was a pair on the ground."  Sex was made to make you feel dirty and not talked about except in the confessional.  Back in the early sixties sex education was limited to restroom walls and our snickering friends who found their dad's playboy.  I know because at eleven I was the colonel of the urinal at Pop's station.  My duty was to keep the restrooms clean after school.  I read some weird stuff before I scrubbed it off.
                     So, "What's love got to do with it?....(Is love) just a second hand emotion?" sings Tina. There are many kinds of love:  Fraternal, maternal, filial, sororal, unconditional, gay, lesbian, friend, platonic...  I want to talk about romantic love between two "partners for life."  Love and sex.  Sex and love.  One without the other is like a reuben without the pastrami.  A peanut butter sandwich without the peanut butter.  A chocolate cake without the chocolate.  When  two are enjoined, it is possible to experience heaven on earth if only for fleeting moments.  To go somewhere where many people in love have gone before.   In these poems I wish to wax silly like Maccha sang "It's just another silly love song."


              Blue Sky

Kind of blue sounding

People say there have been prettier ones

Than you

But they are now so wrinkled

They have not met

You

I see you I believe

Maybe my eyes were shut

Now I see

You

Where and when I found such luck

Discovering the phantom orchid moth


            Song

When I see you so pink

I think of such incongruity

So bold a clashing color

In this autumn gold Ginkgo time

The sunset deepens on your face

To make the rosy fingered dawn envy

                                                           

Love without reciprocation is sad.

 Checking Out A Library Book

Like so many books on a library shelf

I came and saw you in the stacks

Would I choose knowledge very rare

Borrowing this book

Wanting more than osmotic stew

Standing in front of you  

Looking at so many unknown pages

Grabbing it from the row

Chasing each word as if my last

Tattooing chapters relentlessly on my soul

Feeling needles

Hoping you would read me too

Love the fine print

Then open wide

Hey, we had an earthquake out in Yacolt, Hemingway, just recently.


                    Delirium                                                  


I felt tremors

Aftershocks falling down the Richter scale

Still twenty minutes after

Tremblers

Some adrenaline rush

Like only a stealheader would know

Then times it geometrically

That is true love

It is not all about sex

Your head nuzzled in my arm


And then there is obsession again.

                 Red


She was the devils helper

             Red

I should have known

I could not help myself

I was magnetized to her

Like there was nothing else

That mattered two cloven hooves

I am going to ride it out

The difference between life and living

               Breathing

Breathing in pure oxygen

Then all hell breaks loose

Cant be stopped

             Damned

Happy Valentines Day Star, May, Oliver, Finnian, Caty Lynn, the amazing Maisy, and the beautiful Hannah.

I could go on mushing.

defining Hell

               

            Or as Pop used to say, "What the hell?" or," I'll be go to hell."or just "Go to hell!"



                Here we go.  What is HEdoubleQ to you.  There are many things I am when I live in hell.  Certainly,  I don't want to go or visit.   Sometimes, I find myself in hell despite trying  not to be there. I try to be in it less and less.  So, the Reenster's  spins HAPPY for her 2013 word.  HAPPY seems to me to be the antithesis of HELL.
                Which brings me to one of the few ancient jokes I remember.  Think Dante short.  Guy goes to hell.  (Hell is all about making choices)  The devil says, "Would you like to decide what ring of hell you wish to reside in eternally."  Satan takes him through various very bad places.  Visualize standing in volcano lava reaching for a cup of water that spills before you can bring it to your on-fire lips...etc.  Finally, they come to a ring where people are sitting around tables drinking coffee knee deep in shit.  The guy very enthusiastically just grabs a chair and a cup of coffee and sits down.  He says to the devil, " This is the place for me."  Lucifer laughs and says to every one" Coffee breaks over.  Back on your heads."
                   Hell isn't always fire.  I remember my dad giving me the threat of the strap and me crying, "I'll be good."  Does being good send you to heaven?  Does being bad qualify you for hell?  What is a mortal sin?  Hell, I don't know.  I'm going to confession.
                                         

   Father Forgive Me


For all of my sins

Most were not intentional

You said that mitigates

I only have hope

To be forgiven

For things that I have found wrong

Made grave damage

I did not know the outcome

You say I should have

Havoc not able to be foreseen

Blind to stupidity

Just blind

I quit smoking Camels at 63

Do you understand sin


Some people equate evil and hell.  Lucky are you who have never experienced evil; but if you had maybe then you would believe in hell.  Could hell be the absence of light?  What would an eternal nuclear winter be like--no gardens, no fragrant flowers, not even snow drops in winter to give us hope.  Only Hell-ebors
                                                                                   
                                                                                            

     

                   Fright Night

The muscle moon was pressing down

For some it is enough to push one over

Drive them off the beam

He said no

Admitted there is evil

He could not deny it

Good he could feel

If he touched softly

Tried to bring some Spring into his bones

That heavy Winter full moon

Branches so transparent not able to hold it back

The rain is muddy puddles

There are no reflections

No pictures on refrigerators

Only weighted pounds of bleak nothingness

There must be good somewhere

Hard to see with this dim light

I am afraid of this night

When the muscle moon is on


There are personal hells.  Do we choose them?  Depression?  Lack of hope?  Giving up?

                                              My  Sick


                        When I go off the beam

Like ole George the Indian and his little mutt dog Sportie

  Is a 45-calcopkiller speeding bullet left the gun

Cannot wish the trigger back done

Collateral damage

Who or what took  the shot

Self inflicted pain

Wallowing in a whirlpool of blood

Flowing from my gashed heart

Trying to swim out

My hurt will not stop flowing following

Flailing desperation getting sucked under

Gulping for breath wanting out

Releasing to the down deeper pull

Now fighting back for breath

Now wanting death

Not wanting out

Fondling each squirting artery thrust

Tourniquet tourniquet stop red to black

Reaching up to the outstretched hand

Slapping it away

Silent hope it will reach out again

Who can explain rejecting easing of pain
                                   
    It is a certain kind of hell insane

Some kind of immersion in masochistic glee

Sick when I go off the beam