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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Oct 16, 2018 - 09:08pm PT
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Partners
dedicated to the Reverend Mathis
One of us at either end,
a swami tied with a ring bend,
a cincture with a bowline,
I was sure that we could send,
for he'd been my bosom friend
since I was eight and he was nine.
We crossed the ice in quick time
to the base of our intended climb
and switched leads all the way.
On the summit we felt prime
So I made up this little rhyme
To commemorate that special day.
--mfm
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Oct 17, 2018 - 03:52am PT
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On a theme of aging, a few more tankas -
***
old brass primus purrs
blue flame under blackened pot
not used for decades
treasured but as obsolete
as the climber who carried it
***
hands so powerful
solid on rope and rock
forty years ago
wrinkled now and trembling
still holding untold stories
***
time comes when you know
there is not much of it left
then you recognize
inevitability
so little time, so much love
***
WM
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Oct 17, 2018 - 03:56am PT
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bravo!
pronouncement
night owl crossing moon
whiching hour is coming soon
who knows who's the loon
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Oct 20, 2018 - 07:19pm PT
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Lost in a Bad Dream
All trials and tribulations
now seem minor by compare
with losing a dear loved one this year
but for a lock of his dark hair
This week was crammed with two weeks toil
seemed easy by and by
remembering someone missing today
brought tears into an old man’s eyes
I thought that things were going well
considering the adversity
juggling irons and taking names
‘till I began remembering
Exhausted and overworked
the evening found me unprepared
the solitude it turns out
caught me up short unaware
The memories flooded back to me
of a boy who’d lost his way
his life reduced to ashes now
a curt reminder of this day
I don’t know when the healing starts
or when I’ll find relief
every time I catch my breath
I’m still consumed by grief
The world seems trivial since he’s gone
where does my purpose lie
beyond propping up my family
I still take quiet times to cry
This is the state we’re all in
a shadow still hangs o’er
our lives suspended by his death
I’m trying to believe there’s more
What god there might have ever been
could hardly matter less
in this place where hope lies motionless
there’s unrelenting emptiness
I know that I can soldier on
so lonely I have rarely been
but emptiness times loneliness
this wasteland I cannot defend
I’m sure tomorrow morning
I will wake and start my day
but no matter how tough I think I am
some pain will never go away
I’ll listen to the radio
and finish up some work
and try to forgive myself the times
I’ve acted like a jerk
I’ll kiss my wife good morning
and give to her some space
and try to give myself the time
to find a little grace
-bushman
10/20/2018
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Oct 21, 2018 - 04:14am PT
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The Replacement
He moves through life
not here nor there
Who he’s become
now is not clear
As though he isn’t
in the air
Some say he isn’t anywhere
the replacement
The sound of smoke
is everywhere
The replacement neither
has a care
As laughter wafts
all though in the air
It matters not a wit
to the replacement
The replacement does not care
the replacement is nowhere
The replacement’s pain
lies deep inside
It’s more than real
and there it will remain
No matter how thick is his hide
the replacement
He sees unholy
decimation
The replacement
with his wide eyed stare
They tell him time heals
life’s unfair
It matters not to all
to the replacement
His voice a scraping
rasping sound
He feels devoid
but duty bound
Now easy laughter
is rarely found
His pent up rage deflated
the replacement
The replacement does not care
the replacement is nowhere
The replacement’s pain
lies deep inside
It’s more than real
and there it will remain
No matter how thick is his hide
the replacement
-bushman
10/21/2018
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Oct 21, 2018 - 11:39am PT
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Would like to know the back story on this one.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Oct 21, 2018 - 11:51am PT
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The sad song of addiction
For Wayne
and Tim, my o my A son - I can but try
( I can try to understand)
What becomes one when the life is all unfurled
It justice seen
but dashed
by the fowl beautiful Heroin
As with all
Re: The replacement
The hart can no longer take
All the stones and arrows thrown
So
The replacement steps up as guide as Ice breaker
As line backer to the smaller now bruised running back
A man who, while fully concussed, must still plod ahead
Must for those left hanging, must stride
Must still persevere
The front of the well pounded battering ram
The world on its own
on this turn is
Hurt full
twisted
beyond all hope of redemption now
We killed off the sacred cow
Ate of the belly meat
so gorged
we fled to see the northern lights
A oh-so-brief display - The tonight show
Ignoring for a moment
Only a moment
And all seems lost
Ason A grown one who?
Who we can if in deep surmise got his dad's
Sensitivities
but in this modern world, found no way to out them
Too turn them outward
Found not one way to expound of the misery
that locked in
deep down
so
wither'd his very soul.
So looking out as if within when in all the stories the son eclipse the far the father to far to go
&So
Fell to the throws of boils in the bulb,
or that most cruel mistress of miss trust
or both?
or take all comers? I espouse that while not looking so
That that last girl is the worst of all
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Oct 21, 2018 - 12:13pm PT
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Potato Mountain
I will arrive
an habitual escapee
from the rabbit warrens
of central planners
By ferreting north
in search of
breaks in the maze
rifts in the grid
I will follow
a stream beside
the climbing track
and yet higher
To a saddle below
the great ridge
southward along
eastern slopes
To a fine summit
of long vistas
and white gravel-skirts
exposed to sun
Exposed to eyes
sweeping round
the slow wide circle
of arcs in passage
Years to degree
degree to century
century to millennia
beyond human sight
And my own frail
footsteps in iron soil
blown to red oblivion
by winds now shadowing
My identical track
passed beehives
thickets and copse
up the potato
To a summit
of concrete pylon
red dirt
and folk art
Where unknown infidels
posed the creative
issue of their
anonymous fancy
In the form
of starch-fat tubers
affixed with parasols
to shade them
And toothpicks to
give them arms
and bay leaves
to make them hair
Hats to render
them style
atop bald and oblong
pates of brown
Wings of sumac leaf
sleek and waxy
to impart mottled skins
flights of fancy
But they cannot fly
like chaparral birds
fitted to wind
and wildness
Unmoving the potatoes
await their fate
on a flat stage
above the world
Three days pass
their number reduced
in gathering erosions
and mathematical decline
Four days
the mule deer
has found them
yet still proud potatoes
Pass from deer
to lion to
slow beetles
upon the soil
And there the
once magnificent
and well-arrayed
vegetable host
Submits bravely to
mechanical escorts
in the brief free fall
to worlds below
https://www.booksie.com/483586-hassy-prolog
https://www.booksie.com/483604-crilly-crick-spring-prolog
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Oct 21, 2018 - 04:05pm PT
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I’m sorry Wayne, we lost our adult son to addiction and liver disease on September 10th. He had been clean now for over a year since he destroyed his liver with hard dinking the summer before last. He suffered multiple health issues and struggled with opiate addiction, alcoholism, liver disease, diabetes, and he was bipolar.
I have been posting some dark poems this past month and I did not intend to bring any one down. Trouble is I’m the guy supposed to keep his sh#t together and prop up the family. But after the numbness and shock of holding everyone in my arms when we saw our son code in the ICU (all the girls in the family, my wife, daughter, and granddaughter were huddled in my arms when our son died), now that the initial strength I needed to support everyone is waning, and I’m really feeling exhausted and emotionally drained.
Last few days I’ve burned the candle at both ends repairing our brush chipper after it caught fire at a job site Tuesday. End of the last two days I’ve found myself at the garage sink scrubbing all the grease off and sobbing uncontrollably into the sink. Happy my wife doesn’t see me like this, she’s been through enough and I don’t want to trigger more additional grief for her at the moment.
Friends and family give condolences and tell me time heals. I just want to say f*#k all that but I keep my mouth shut because I know they mean well. So writing and posting some of the feelings with poetry is my therapy, also bike riding.. Later I’ll get back flying my model planes but that diversion really doesn’t matter to me right now.
Wayne, I just wanted to note that ‘The Replacement’ poem is about me feeling like a hollow shell and a zombie lately. Gnome, I appreciate your trying to Gnome-splain it for me. Tad, thank you for your ear, buddy. Ward, I love the potato mountain poem. Mouse, if you read this just know I think you’re a trooper. I’ll get through this. It just hurts a lot right now is no other way to put it.
Cheers (I’m trying),
-bushman
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Oct 23, 2018 - 02:35am PT
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At last, some serious verses about the saddest thing in the world...the rising cost of getting hammered.
Thank you, Q.
There must be more...?
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Oct 23, 2018 - 03:54am PT
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Good on the one, who moved, was moved to move one!
Some pictures are poetic, if not poetry in stone:
NO ACCESS GIVEN TO US BY THE AXES CLIMBING AREAS CLUB
YOUR OLD 'BOY'S' "CLUB" IS GREAT
KEEPING SOME PLACES CLOSED TO ALL BUT THOSE FEW?
WHILE BEGGING CASH-MONEY NATION WIDE
WORLD WIDE?
FROM THOSE YOU PROMISE TO GIVE BACK TO
LANDS CLIMBED ON FOR DECADES TILL YOU CAME INTO THE PICTURE
OPENED UP TO CLIMBING FOR EVALUATION, TO BE CLOSED
POSTED, FINES IMPOSED
UM YEAH ??
DON'T YOU MEAN THE NO ACCESS FUND ?
A BUNCH OF STOOGE LAWYERS INVOLVED IN LAND GRABBING!!
OPEN SPACE INSTITUTE IS STILL STEALING OUR RESOURCES.
UP FOR CONSIDERATION-
SAMS POINT / ICE CAVES MNT. IN ELLENVILLE NYIN FACT ALL THE CLOSED TO CLIMBING,CLIFFS
& RIDGE LINES -
LORDED OVER BY THE PALISADE'S INTER-COUNTY PARKS . . .
THERE IS NO "COMMISSION".
iT IS A CABAL*
STILL IN THE GREEDY HANDS OF THE CASTRO FAMILY?
(NOT EVEN GOING TO SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE ORGANIZATIONS NAME-SAKE CLIFFS ALONG THE HUDSON RIVER ACROSS FROM NYC)
REGURGITATE YOUR BS SOME PLACE ELSE!
OH! YEAH, SPEAKING OF A SAD STATE, THAT MAKES CLIMBERS HURL
HOW ABOUT ALL THE OTHER INCREDIBLE ROCK?
OFF LIMITS TO CLIMBERS,
ALL THE CLIMBED ON,
NOW CLOSED?
THE ROCK
IN NEW JERSEY ?? !
I know the folks & volunteers do, do a lot of good,
and do get places open - often.
BUT
EVERY ONE OF THESE GREAT CLIMBING ZONES, IS CURRENTLY NOT . . WHY IS THAT?
*A cabal is a small group of people united in some close design, usually to promote their private views of or interests in an ideology, state, or other community, often by intrigue and usually unbeknownst to those outside their group.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Oct 23, 2018 - 07:45am PT
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Intrigue. Love it!
Probably the only way the Doggers will beat the Sox in the Series...
Of Time and the River
The scene is instant, whole and wonderful. In its beauty and design that vision of the soaring stands, the pattern of forty thousand empetalled faces, the velvet and unalterable geometry of the playing field and the small lean figures of the players, set there, lonely, tense and waiting in their places bright, desperate solitary atoms encircled by that huge wall of nameless faces, is incredible. And more than anything, it is the light, the miracle of light and shade and color-- the crisp, blue light that swiftly slants out from the soaring stands and, deepening to violet, begins to march across the velvet field and towards the pitcher’s box that gives the thing its single and incomparable beauty.
The batter stands swinging his bat and grimly waiting at the plate, crouched, tense, the catcher, crouched, the umpire, bent, hands clasped behind his back, and peering forward. All of them are set now in the cold blue of that slanting shadow, except the pitcher who stands out there all alone, calm, desperate, and forsaken in his isolation, with the gold-red swiftly fading light upon him, his figure legible with all the resolution, despair and lonely dignity which that slanting, somehow fatal light can give him.
--Thomas Wolfe
"bright, desperate solitary atoms encircled by that huge wall of nameless faces"
a metaphor for all life...Mann oh Mann
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Oct 23, 2018 - 09:05am PT
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writing and posting some of the feelings with poetry is my therapy,
Post away , Bushman.
I extend my Deep Condolences.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Oct 23, 2018 - 10:26am PT
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Along the lines of "candlance," rather than condolence (his bright self remains a light unto our benighted feet):
"Le Beatnik"
The beat goes on though Big Daddy is gone, himself.
Directly you pass "GO" you die.
Is that any way to get to immortality?
Apparently so.
Had he not died, he'd have been just another dirtbagger.
Or would he?
Does anyone really care what level baggage he had?
Did it not matter that he had one thing on his mind?
And that was: Get higher faster.
Good plan, Gary, as keeping up with Layton required more than one could imagine.
You died trying.
You failed falling.
(Royal was no doubt proud of you, his fellow Americain.)
Through no fault of your own, just dumb luck that you died.
A credit to our tribe, much more than just a flash in the pan.
Thanks and Amen.
--mfm
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Oct 26, 2018 - 02:37am PT
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Dreaming back the Howling Beast
Raging the drunk
watched to bar the door
where beyond lurked the demons
of unholy laughter
The fire chief appeared
admonished a warning
the drunk raised his head
but did not hear
Threatened by motives
of authorities at play
the beast was awakened
and quickly emerged
Swinging a radio
by the cord like a lasso
the drunk held his would be
captors at bay
Shouting he leapt forward
accosting the chief
railing bright expletives
in a loathsome rant
Barefoot a kick cleared
the door from its hinges
as the chief and entourage
fled into the night
Fast on their heels
the drunk was to follow
demanding to resign
and collect on his pay
Mixing shots of tequila
and bourbon at his locker
the drunk in his blackout
collapsed on the floor
A handful of crew mates
carried him on their shoulders
he awoke spewing spirits
on the nights conflagration
His place reinstalled
as the fool of the party
his shameful behavior
excused as forlorn
The drunk and his Kryptonite
rose with the sunlight
who he ran from
the mirror refused to conceal
The director requested
he make known his presence
for such animal crackers
would have no place here
The beast had been howling
between his two ears
he never knew then
what he understood now
For the saddest thing
was the hardest he found
he was granted reprieve
but his child was not spared
The beast does not howl
between his two ears
the beast has been howling
out there all along
-bushman
10/23/2018
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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aloha
weeping the willow uprooted itself
and wandered through the night
this was how it came to be
born of a tree it took up a stone
tearing upon its barked legs
as it wept to escape the dream
of a world beyond this dormancy
a medicine woman found it
and scraped at its scaly wooded bark
attached to cambium like fascia to bone
thinking it knew the limits of its being
it was fallen as time replaced
all that there was it ‘twas loath to believe
unbeknownst to this sapling become me
-bushman
11/07/2018
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Well, let's try an erotic tanka:
in a moonstruck lake
boots and trail clothes on the beach
a tentative kiss
cold bodies drew together
and your nipples pierced my heart
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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It is only roughly three thousand feet
but a sleepless night can make or break the feat
Errant Night
Why fight it
across the room, a tent floor
An errant thought escaped
The old what ifs come swirling in
the fear of fight then flight
A what then if the pro don't hold
Ah it is the old doubt -
not relevant to this ascent
what then, it fell to a belay
there won't be one this time
now
Those ifs and buts start to grow,
giving texture to the feelings
An essence of the pit that fear can relegate
even a climbing fool to.
It can't be stopped
It can't be suppressed
it musn't be held in contempt
there might be something to it
After all,
a fall
would mean an end to it
Can anything be made out
Is this a warning to bug out
A crawling sense of dread
is growing somewhere
Down deep, It can't be stopped
It can't be suppressed
it musn't be held in contempt
there might be something to it
It can't be stopped
It can't be suppressed
it has been tried to no avail
leading that time to a bail
The doubts are not unfounded
We do not play inside
not on the hardwood floor
This aint basketball
Rocks of size -or not- breed doubts
Doubts about choices
Life's choices
Decisions turn the nut
good or bad
going up
continuing
it is one of those actions
you cannot reverse
Doubts like children
ones own they start to grow up
Fast they take on a life of their own
They start to glow,flashing behind closed eyes
The Light keeps the climber up
Being light keeps a climber up
An errant thought has grown , it is only 2 am
Prone at eleven, was there any sleep
Surely no rem, but some drowsy shut-eye
At two am to start to climb, arriving then,
Disturbing they and them that are mid climb
already ensconced in the rock crannies
those them that too have been fighting doubts
that have been also trying
while ascending to find sleep
in that
Elusive Errant Night
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Nursery Mimes
Mairzy doats and dozy doats
and liddle lamzy divey
And very few things I hate worse
than dreaded poison ivy
This old man, he plays one
He plays knick knack on my thumb
Tooth picks keep my eyes open
while television makes make me dumb
The itsy bitsy spider
Climbed up the waterspout
You’re so captivating that
my heart’s in chains and can’t get out
Little miss Muffet she sat on her tuffet
eating her curds eating and whey
Sometimes I need my coffee like
a sunrise on a brand new day
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all
-bushman, joni, and the merry rhymesters
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