My OCD month

It's been a long month in my posting world. I have 21 posts for September. My previous record was 17 in February for a 329 page views. I figured I needed to have 353 page views this month to break my record...calculating average page views per day and considering this month has 2 more days...which I'm sure I will do. Don't know why I feel compelled to put out so much. Must by my OCD. I know...not only am I a word nerd, I'm also a number nerd and dance nerd. Got back from contra-dancing and my back is still intact. Feel like I'm about 75% better. Hopefully will be okay for the Eclectic Cloggers performance in Issaquah this Sunday. This week has been crazy busy, but I feel better...calmer amongst the back to school Fall Rush storm. With my back better, I still feel the need to pace myself...push myself but know when it's too much. It's an exciting time of year...new faces...old faces...figuring ways to genuinely connect with each person...while finding space for myself. It's very easy to go into overdrive...so I have to remember that slowing down to really listen shows respect of others and yourself...naturally giving better service. Next month I won't be so obsessive about posting quantity...but who knows. OCD may kick in again. I only hope my writing improves with each post.

Sly humor

I'm still reading William Mayne's "Sand"(1964)...such wonderful writing you have to read it slowly. His humor and characterizations are so sly you have to pay careful attention. The writing made me laugh out loud, which doesn't happen much...

Some background: The boys in this story found a small railway hidden under the sand for hauling gravel at some now defunct gravel company. They want to unearth the tracks, but it passes through a neighbor's property. The neighbor does not want their property dug up. The boys figure a way around this...

"'Dear sir,'" read Bobby. "'I regret I cannot allow you
to expose the rails under the road to my house. Yours faith-
fully, N.Merriot.'"
"I wonder what he means, exactly," said Harold, look-
ing slyly at Ainsley, to see whether he appreciated the joke.
"We could say we thought it meant something else,"
said Ainsley. "But it would be a waste of a good lie."
"We should have let Guy read it," said Bobby. "He
could make it mean anything."
They went out to see what Guy could make it into. Guy
read it, and without any prompting he decided that to
regret you cannot allow something means that you are sorry
that the thing is not being done, and therefore if anyone
wanted to do it, they would be welcome.
"You must be right," said Harold. "We ought to have
made you do it in the beginning."
"We caught ourselves," said Bobby. "Who would dare
to explain that we mean what Guy means." (page 127, "Sand")

A deceptively funny story...and yet another reason I continue to read William Mayne.

Better

Ibuprofen, ice, elevate
I'm told to alleviate my lower back pain
Bring the swelling down.
I started after clogging class
I want to dance at full capacity
By Sunday night
For my Electic Cloggers performance
And contradance Thursday night
With minimal pain
I like having that as my goal
I love to dance
I love to write
The rest will follow
And sleep...
I want to sleep without pain
Breathe, relax
Ibuprofen, ice, elevate
Rest
Sleep...six hours...much less pain
Better...about 35% better
I can feel my body reallign
Freezer pack the pain points
Today will be the busiest day of the year
I feel
Better.

Denis Streeter 9/27-28/11

Some nerve

I must have known
Sleep wake through the night
Rolling for comfortable position
It would be a night of pain
Sides and tail bone seizing up
Some nerve
Rolled out of bed early
5:30
This will be the busiest week of the year
I have to be ready
Body tilted to the right
Left side more pain
Some nerve
Tilting me
Walking to work will help straighten that out
Nerve pain
Must effect appetite
Like some food suppresant
Pain...
I'm still trying to describe it
More like my mid section has been squeezed in
Won't quite let go
And my exercises
Can not flatten my back
Limited extension
Slower it was
Slow
Some nerve.

Denis Streeter 9/27/11

Slower

I could feel it this morning
Mattress carrying lower back pain
Concave holding tension in
Roll out of bed
Walk to sink to shave
Bend at waist and feel my back give slightly
So I bend my knees to keep back straight
I feel its weakness
Finish shaving, saline nose, put dishes away
Lie down in bed
Trying to figure the pain
It's the same but I don't quite have words for it
That feeds my tension
I hate not having words for what I feel
Turn on computer
Write out these words
Look out my window...
Rain...
Slide open window to hear its roof patter
Slide window back
My back...a weather barometer of change
Wondering...
How much will I be able to do
How much should I try to do
Feeling physical toll of last week
Every movement has its measure
Every thought takes its toll
Every typed word takes time away
What will the day bacome?
I don't know
Take it slow.

Denis Streeter 9/26/11

Lift

Watching pieces fall into place
Like some puzzled friend frightened by what might happen
When the wind changes to confuse me
Wind me up, make me winded
And the word play with no emotional depth
Still elluded what I desparately wanted to say
But thought better keeping my mouth shut
Thinking is honesty really the best policy?
Being taught
"Always the truth, but never an unkind truth."
It just doesn't work that way
The way we learn to hide
And then when your truth is revealed
Do you really know whether it is kind?
What bothers me is that
It almost makes a case for concealment
Of course there seems to be
Shades of grey where sharing is okay
But when do you know
Open and shut is how I feel
Some sort of emotional continuum
Feeling out each situation...
What is appropriate?
Why do I resent having to think about
What is appropriate?
I'd rather just bluster out what I think
But there's always the repercussions
And I really want everyone to be happy
But I need to protect myself from being sad
And resentful of taking on burdens beyond my own
But aren't we all called to lift each others spirits?
Yes...but when we are able
When we are able
And to be aware
When others are there
To lift our spirits.

Denis Streeter 9/25/11

Later

Are you writing just to write?
Or is there a reason for this?
I don't know.
Yes you do.
Are you writing to get 10 views a day?
So you can average 300 for this month?
What justice does that do you as a writer?
Do you want to break February's page view record of 329?
Yes you do.
But what's the point?
It's better to put out quality over quantity.
And this is the busiest time of the year at work.
If your creative juices are suffering a bit
Why don't you forgive yourself?
Your mind and body don't have to be on work overdrive.
It's effecting your sleep
It's making you too restless to be truly creative
So you put out creative intellectual nonsense exercises
Some people like them, but I know I can do better
There's not enough emotion in them, not enough real
Maybe there's enough real and emotion at work
That it's cutting back my best writing
I don't know
I'm told to be kind to myself
That's a hard lesson to learn
Even this poem with reality
Has trite written all over it
Write from your living
Connect with me
Tell me what's going on
Just tell me
Give me an example
Just one example
I would but I'm too tired
Has trite written all over it
Just tell me one thing
No pity party
Just one thing
Later.

Denis Streeter 9/24/11

Bells of a ball fed tune

Try reading it aloud.  I think it has a haunting quality.

Sand dust shells started weaving their spells
Before the August moon of one late afternoon
When the quells were quiet and the sands were silent
All in the bells of a ball fed tune
All in the bells of a ball fed tune.

And the shores were shuckled and the birds were buckled
Leaving the land of the listening loon
Where the seagulls tripe riding home on a bike
All in the bells of a ball fed tune
All in the bells of a ball fed tune.

When the quays fell away under foot under clay
And the sand crystallized to the moon
Leaving shells to demand moonlight glow from the sand
All in the bells of a ball fed tune
All in the bells of a ball fed tune.

When the bells in sashay fomed a line on the quay
And the land shuckled tins to the moon
Then the clay sank away when the shores were at play
All in the bells of a ball fed tune
All in the bells of a ball fed tune.

Denis Streeter 9/23/11

The persnicketies

Persnicketies, persnicketies
Will put you ill at ease
Just like some haughty Pyrenees
That you will never please.
It always will correct itself
Though not the way you do
It's critical of everything
It hopes you take its cue.
Persnicketies, persnicketies
The Pleiades of stars
They constellate just perfectly
Correcting who you are.
Persnicketies, persnicketies
Excessively precise
For you will not quite measure up
You will not quite suffice.
Persnicketies, persnicketies
Are sometimes you and me
Precision missing everything
What you and I could be.

Denis Streeter 9/20/11

Lassoed fire

Into the fire where words open flies
Wandering meadows in glossy old ties
Washing the wakefulness double dot quick
Salmons of noodles were making me sick
Sick as a raft when I rubbered the sand
Quick as a dirt monkey quite in demand
Surface to surface the glide monkeys grew
Soon until raisins were dirt into stew
Slide into slide into slid into id
Washing the trash just to do as I bid
Ibid the page but on page forty nine
Mayne ibidology cease to decline
Oodles of more and disturbing they're meant
Wondering wandering where my mind's sent
Bushwhacking stools in search of a chair
Stooling chairs for the words that aren't there
Sugars of cotton in struedels of dumps
Oxygen cans messing garbage can pumps
Up in the fleazit the counterbounce comes
Figuring fees with the foes and the fums
Tempting the sugar when whistles went out
Loading up thistles for tempting some trout
Out in the grounding the hopscotch at bay
Served in a trigger sent out in a tray
Gathering fingers meant guns in decline
Measuring triggers to ounce out a dime
Figuring field mice jumped to the chore
Up to the seasons to figure Al Gore
Open the door let the lettuce inside
No use in hiding in formaldehyde
Senses of uses were wandering floors
Up to the rain when it's figuring pours
Up to the ounces to rain in the pain
Sharpening shadows to shade in the game
Gimbles of louses to threaten the stairs
Given a feast of the devil me cares
Up to the liars where criminals sit
Over the jungles in acres of spit
Into the johns where the civilness waits
Deploring doors into devil mint cakes
Lassoing silence that familiar game
Harder to swallow but easy to tame
Under the junctures and under the threes
Cripples of ice cream made up for the cheese
No more no less when the difference comes
Comes with the fives and the foes with the fums.

Denis Streeter 9/19/11

Word puzzles

A friend gave me a number of words to spin into a poem...

daunted haunted vaunted
impassive agression
incumbent recliner - a lazy boy
aphoristic prophets
ill-used allusions

I had no idea what I would create, but that's the fun.

A lazy boy

daunted aphoristic prophets with
impassive agression met
ill-used allusions
haunted by vaunted incumbent recliners.

Denis Streeter 9/18/11

Window

Days shift
Warm to cold
Heat on
First in month
Remember
Forget
Waves
Shutter lives
There
Gone
Connect
Last
Shift
Core
Love
Heat off
Maintain
Core
Shift
Waves
Remember
Forget
Connect
Off on
Often
Love

Denis Streeter 9/18/11

Moonshine

The trees whistled candles their canine tunes
Into this mess we call foul with dreams
Ever hopeful in the floundering living
Opening boxes the garage left behind
Harpsichords chase the ladders away
And all that's left watch littered lambs
Stringing together the quadratic formula
When the plates come down and template to tea
And the streams pop tunnels hoping lids will fly
Atrractive as not when the wind breaks through
Too comfortable for the precipitation fires
When there's not enough gold for the central bar
Where the pumps want to go but are not seasoned
And the bridges collapse without enough water
Where the mud sands the dunes where the water ran dry
Pumped into plates with the stingers intact
Tectonic plates whistled canine tunes
The water collapsed before the moon lit up.

Denis Streeter 9/16/11

Unexplainable

Over in the yard
Unknown yet set
In the living room tommorrow
The bees bumbled in
All too human
Archie Bunker bluster
All the senses forgotten
Out the window buzzying busyness
Thinking the last line was clever
But it wasn't
Something on the line of
"There's nothing new under the sun"
Most commonly associated with Ecclesiastes
Well then call me ignorant
I like to think there is something new under the sun
Poetry expresses everything
In every unique form and expression
As long as there are poets, artists, musicians
There will be something new under the sun
Of course there's always the possibility
That they're saying the same thing
Just in a different way
If it's a unique genuine expression
It's justified
There is so much out there that is
Just unexplainable
I want to explore the unexplainable
The hope of the spirit, the emptiness of darkness
I want to merge with conflict and feel whole
I want to feel the unknown terrain
Without fear, without anger
I want to learn to love what I don't understand
But I don't know if I can
It's too much
But I can with you
I want to love you
But I can't always do that
It's just not there
It's not platitudes I want
It's your reality
I want to explore your reality
I want to explore the unexplainable
No explanation love.

Denis Streeter 9/13/11

Musings

We live in a finite world
Our existence on this physical earth
Born, pay taxes, and die.
We live in an infinite world
Where what we say and do
Has repercussions
We love
And sometimes in love
We make errors
That seem so large
As to be unforgivable
But that is a lie
Love is also
Learning, sharing, understanding
Listening...
I believe in God
A God I believe I can share
The totality of myself
And that includes my unbelief
I believe in a God that understands my contradictions
Maybe God already knows everything about me
That doesn't matter
It's a checking in
Sharing what's close to me
My love, my distress
Just checking in
See what shakes out
It's a sort of prayer
Call it what you will
Something shakes out
Carries me on my way
Through my day
Through my anger, understanding, love
Through all lifes contradictions
Something carries me
I don't see it
I don't understand it
I feel it
It's there
Wisdom, care
Share and love
Something beyond

Denis Streeter 9/12/11

Interpretation

This occurred today when I was helping an international student...

"Mug for scripture?"
"What?"
"Mud for scripture?"
"Can you write it down?"
I direct him to a scratch pad
And he scrawls out...
"Mud for sculpture"
"Oh...you mean clay."
I direct him to our 25 pound blocks of clay
He chooses...
Now I see mud as clay
It makes perfect sense
My eyes are opened
"Mud for scripture"
Hmm...

Denis Streeter 9/9/11

Sand - William Mayne

Some of you may know that I plan to read all 100+ books William Mayne has written. "Sand"(1965) is one reason I read his books. He has a style of writing that you may recognize in my poetry.

The first paragraph from "Sand"...

The shirt was made of cold cloth and frozen buttons. It
lay on Ainsley's bed like a drift of snow. The cold spring
wind blew the curtains and moaned under the door.
Ainsley stroked the shirt. It had been starched with ice.

He has such amazing imagery...and the ability to make the ordinary extraordinary. I close my eyes and I can feel myself there. Someday I hope to be able to transport my readers with such images that it dwells within all their senses. Until that time, I will continue reading William Mayne.

alzheimers

diamonds in the rough
gridding oil wells
cheaper by the ton
find out when they're done
the baskets are ready
ready to be tied
soon with the hummus
better off fried
or is it tofu
i cant remember
which has flavor
which does not
all the confusion
all the time
except some of the time
distant past
some present past
alzheimers
ask for it by name
when the pros go prose
when the prose go pros
dont know
confuses me
dark alley
where you melt down
your facts
to call them
shades of grey
no way
your facts your facts
why throw them away
your a bean ball counter
entrusted this way
today today
they flounder away
must get away
from all this
rhyming nonsense
and write something
tried and true
but the bats in my cobweb
got in my way
today today
rhymes go away
let ladders replace
all these bad rhymes
teeter totter
the lads up a
fine lead roof
where the worms are warm
where the beds are fine
and the squirrels leap
all over time
some nutshell
squirrelled up for winter
some nut job
squirrelled up for time
and the little ones say
laugh laugh the squirrels dead
and i say
where did that come from
but the walls keep coming in
doce does of wind rats and sails
blundering the parking lot
blending the gold
the god you could not commit
the winter of your understanding
half awake half asleep
you know your better off that way
just when time permits
you set the safety off
and all the other runners
run in place
but theres no place
for this
no place
for this
and the standard cams wind up
just before the blossoms explode
when the diamonds were missing
the check stands awake
all for a bunny
a dress stand
and a coffee mug
you were standing
there
i was standing
here
some dual
checkmate
and my soul let out
a sigh
and yours
and yours
and yours
alzheimers
a blended medicine.

denis streeter 9/5/11

No rhyme of a lime

Wrappers at mourning untesticly well
Drifting on lawnward toward some ocean bell
Matters of distancing baffling knees
Upping resistance of shattering trees
Over horizon some deafening splat
Looking glass mirror discovered a bat
Flying above us in litters of sound
Littering silence no uncommon ground
Perturbing coffees when perks drifted in
Some cry awake in the slip of the gin
Comfort surrounding the dangers at bay
Always the anger inviting the way
Wandering conflict you choosing the cues
Some black or white are just meant to confuse
Shades of inversement in rhyming this crime
Sense in reversement no rhyme of a lime.

Denis Streeter 9/4/11

Nearly asleep

Fly swatters bat off farms
Leaving vegetables fending for free
And the toaster ovens clapped their hands
Freeing farms the way bats bite butter
The way licorice count, the ounces were empty
Too tongue tied tired, the rest went thirsty
When then wine racks delivered what the names had forgotten
Two times ten and the rest of the knees
Just before the florist had forgotten the ketchup
And the whirlwinds coming, two by two by the ark
Where the lands shore horns and the lassoes grow
Too late the fate of the straight and narrow
And all the damage between a hotspring tailspin
Luggage out, dimes to do
Feeding the vegetables in a land of worms
Reading backwards luggage wrappers
Tidily dressed out for dinner
Lessons in reading
Time to feed the catelope for a change
Lumber down
Shhh....they're nearly asleep.

Denis Streeter 9/3/11

Safety

This came from seeing all the repaving on 15th near the Ave while walking to work...


Road crew trucks
Faces front
Under grill
Safety cones
Sets of fangs
Hang below
Candy corns
Set safety zones
Traffic unknowns
And in the night
Safety cones
Candy corns
Chase your night
Dreaming zones
In out safety.

Denis Streeter 9/2/11