Nomadic Home

Most Days

2020-01-31T17:30:00.002-05:00

"Most Days"

Most days I am able to harness some hope and strength

Others, it is elusive and hard to find

My weariness is enveloping

If the Coronavirus came round here

would I last days, or hours?

It's what's hard to hang onto ... humanity ... my own humanity

It takes so much of my life force to stand up and walk even a few steps

I love greeting people, smiling at them, talking with them, feeling their inspiration and strength that they take from me that helps ease the steps of their own path

Much of the time I feel like I'll just fall over

and just not get up

like a dying horse

Then I talk with someone, and gain strength from the exchange of kindnesses between us

Sometimes water just leaks from my eyes, like rain trying to soften the hardened cracked earth of the desert

The night is long and dark

Today I ate a sausage mcmuffin with egg

and 2 boston creme donuts, a small milk and small coffee

The fatigue in the eyes of the young, old before her time, McDonald's girl,

washed over me ...

I smiled. She smiled

"Livin the dream" I whispered.

"Livin the dream," she softly volleyed

She had hours to go, sitting in that window.

I returned to my parking lot, my soul full

zjm

1/29/20

Happy 40th Birthday Weekend!

2020-01-10T12:48:00.000-05:00

Your blood

Flows through my veins

Your heartbeat

Inside of mine ...

~ dad

Options

2019-11-08T14:22:00.000-05:00

Last night I began my second 6 months living in my car. It snowed in the parking lot where I spend most nights. Got down to 21° with a windchill of 11°.

Cold.

Received the above junk email before dawn...

"Now let's see,

To which dreamy place shall I go?"

Dream time over ...

A woman just knocked on my window.

Homeless, in a shelter with her sister.

Hungry.

Gave them some money for food.

~ zjm

8 November 19

Quandary

2019-10-02T12:42:00.000-04:00

The predicament of the old adage

'write what you know'

is that I have now survived long enough

on this blue sphere in the lightless heavens

that I no longer know a goddamn thing

Understand even less

And that leaves me in raw companionship

with roaring silences

~ zjm

5 AM

2019-09-01T05:14:00.000-04:00

Resting

Under a light down blanket

In the front seat of my car

The unearthly stillness

Of late night, early morn

Just before dawn

First of September

Autumn chill

Winter on her way

~ zjm

1 September 2019

The Tutor

2019-08-17T00:39:00.000-04:00

Be silent and listen:

have you recognized your madness

and do you admit it?

Have you noticed that all your foundations

are completely mired in madness?

Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner?

You wanted to accept everything.

So accept madness too.

Let the light of your madness shine,

and it will suddenly dawn on you.

Madness is not to be despised and

not to be feared,

but instead you should give it life...

If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness,

since it makes up such a great part of your nature...

Be glad that you can recognize it,

for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit

and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life,

since life itself is full of craziness

and at bottom utterly illogical.

Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself.

Life itself has no rules.

That is its mystery and its unknown law.

What you call knowledge

is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life."

C.G. Jung

Moment

2019-08-16T12:14:00.001-04:00

An older woman walked up to me
after my morning swim
as I was walking stick my way out to my car
slow as a fucking slug
and says

"I watch you come in here every day
and exercise in the pool
... I respect you so much"

"Thank you," I replied.
"You are most kind
You just made my day"

Didn't help me move faster
or without my good friend, pain ...
but that touch of simple human kindness inflated my lungs with emotion
with gratitude

As my long time compadre and friend
Cameron
is prone to say when moments like these
arrive out of the ether

"Better than winning the lottery"

~ zjm

16/8/19

For Matt Meg and Cam

2019-08-15T20:23:00.000-04:00

UNDERTOW

I set out one night

When the tide was low

There were signs in the sky

But I did not know I’d be caught in the grip

Of the undertow

And ditched on a beach

Where the sea hates to go

With a child in my arms

And a chill in my soul

And my heart the shape

Of a begging bowl

Leonard Cohen

From 'The Flame

Mt. Baldy

2019-08-15T13:22:00.005-04:00

Only

By crossing

The Bridge to Nowhere

In both directions

After immersion

In desolation

Does one find

Their fucking way

Out!

Perhaps

~ zjm

15/8/19

Visitor

2019-08-15T12:31:00.000-04:00

visiting light

slips through my fingers

like morning mist

~ zjm

15/8/19

Leaving

2019-08-13T11:59:00.000-04:00

I don't need a reason
For what I became
I've got these excuses
They're tired and they're lame
I don't need a pardon, no no, no no, no
There's no one left to blame
I'm leaving the table
I'm out of the game
I'm leaving the table
I'm out of the game

~ Leonard Cohen

My song for today

2019-08-11T20:57:00.000-04:00

"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls."

~ Anais Nin

Exhale

2019-08-10T07:14:00.000-04:00

Beautiful sunrise with cool low humidity air greeting my morning.

Left my parking lot and stopped at McDonalds to get coffee and a sausage sandwich. Talked with a young man about to end his 10 hour shift, go grocery shopping, then home to his 2 and a half, and 1 and a half year old kids, spend some time with them, and his wife, before trying to sleep this afternoon to ready himself for work tonight.

He was full of optimism laced with fatigue ...

I am in front of the Y, getting mentally and physically ready to make my way to the pool to swim and work out this body that battles me constantly ...

Thinking of my daughter Megan ... my grandkids Emilio ... Camilo ... and Neali, asleep far away on another coast ...

All of us
Tired
Resting
Getting ready
Hunting for cagey optimism
To live another day

Exhale ...

~ zjm

10/8/19

From the parking lot I call home

2019-08-09T10:57:00.000-04:00

Before

I sleep ...

Cat naps in my

Projectile home

That guide me to a new dawn

Crammed in like

Charlie the Tuna in a can

Yet

There is beauty to drink

That tames the soul

And brings rest

~ zjm

9/8/2019

Relinquishment

2019-08-07T21:09:00.000-04:00

August 7

First day of autumn

On ancient calendars

First brushes of colour

Hint of changes

On their way

Welcome or not

Dark

Cold

Snow

Shadows

Starkness

Death

That offers the costly

Olive branch

Of rebirth

zjm ~

Proof Positive

2019-07-14T11:22:00.001-04:00

(For Edward Abbey)

In the desert

The searing desert

The desert with its waves

A sea of hidden color melding into an ocean with no relief of water

Turbulence that swallows the whole

I hold a picture taken in morning shadows of hanging grapes against morning fog on the sea

I look at it, and see me and you

"Goddamn, we were here

There we are"

Cave paintings

raw and muted colors

markings from scrapings of rock against rock

Everybody trying to leave a scraping somewhere that is recognized

embraced as real

as beauty

Stood at Donner Pass yesterday on July 13 ... my dyslexic 65th birthday

Rather, I sat in my car looking out the window over Donner Pass

Hurts less to not move and look

Think Moses felt that way?

The wagons of the Dead are long gone

as are the cannibals with the will to survive

All that remains

is the color of the lake

the formations of rock

the sky

the trees

all inviting one

to rest

to recline into free fall

Fading shadows of the encroaching Nevada desert circle me

scattering my memories and sense of self

But morning returns and desert air enters and departs at will

Here I am

Cave painting on the desert floor

Donner Pass behind me

along with the muddled fog on the sea

~ zjm

Reno

14 July 2019

The Estate of Zaudliza

2019-06-12T10:48:00.000-04:00

(My New home)

Day 21

"Life is pain, highness.

Anyone who says differently is selling something."

~ William Goldman

My physical pain today, riveting through my body

Each breath a hammer blow

Can't breathe

Can't think

Can't write

Not even a breath of respite

As if I am deconstructing in front of myself

me, the only witness

I scream

I weep

I cry out

And then

I give thanks

~ zjm

Another Morning

2019-06-04T12:34:00.001-04:00

Just an ordinary day

Beginnng quietly with phantom reflection

Of what it still means to be here

On earth

Taking air

Accelerating into conversation among friends and strangers at a coffee bar

Deadly spiders in Australia

Alice Cooper’s Spider Show and love ballads

~ His influence on Michael Jackson’s Thriller

And last night’s Wailers show in Quebec City

Moved on to the new Spectrum offices

Lots of white blue and black office decor

Accented by lurid unnatural light

Staffed by a hum drum millennial

With barely one foot in this world

We stood near to one another

Two patrons dreading the ‘service’ to follow

She, 70-80ish

Me, 60-70ish

In the hushed silence of another business day

I returned the internet router and modem

From my just foreclosed upon home

While she shuffled through papers

“I suppose you will need to see the death certificate”

“Yes, in order to change the name on the accounts”

A new kind of hush was born while

Hum drum millennial left for the back room

Without a word or gesture

To scan the proof of no life

Needed to update records of the living

I reached and touched her arm

“I am so sorry”

“Thank you,” her voice trembling

As she placed her face between my beard and shoulder

Both hands around the back of my neck

Hum drum millennial returned from the back room

Scanned death work in hand

Office muzak undisturbed

Computer keys altering the reality

Of everything but the human

My kiosk companion grabbed my free arm as I moved to the door

My baston easing the way

“Take good care of yourself, man”

“You too, ma’am”

Our tears embracing

~ zjm

The Difference

2019-06-01T19:20:00.000-04:00

Kids give up on their parents

In a way

Parents can never give up on their kids

~ zjm

W. B. Yeats

2019-06-01T18:34:00.000-04:00

As I thought of these things,

I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness,

and it seemed to my troubled fancy

that all those little points of light filling the sky

were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists,

who labour continually,

turning lead into gold,

weariness into ecstasy,

bodies into souls,

the darkness into God;

and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy,

and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried,

for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift soul

weighted with so many dreams.

Uncle Walt

2019-06-01T11:05:00.001-04:00

Uncle Walt was correct, but only in part...

The truth is ... we WILL contribute a verse

For better and worse

At best, the path behind us will be strewn with light and darkness

Good intention and broken effort

Touches of love and kindness

Inflicted sorrow and pain

With the memory of others

Our only legacy

And a bended knee
Beneath the garish sun

~ zjm

Ferlinghetti (I am paying attention to my elder)

2019-05-31T07:04:00.001-04:00

I asked a hundred painters and a hundred poets

how to paint sunlight

on the face of life

Their answers were ambiguous and ingenuous

as if they were all guarding trade secrets

Whereas it seems to me

all you have to do

is conceive of the whole world

and all humanity

as a kind of art work

a site-specific art work

an art project of the god of light

the whole earth and all that’s in it

to be painted with light

And the first thing you have to do

is paint out postmodern painting

And the next thing is to paint yourself

in your true colors

in primary colors

as you see them

(without whitewash)

paint yourself as you see yourself

without make-up

without masks

Then paint your favorite people and animals

with your brush loaded with light

And be sure you get the perspective right

and don’t fake it

because one false line leads to another

And then paint the high hills

when the sun first strikes them

on an autumn morning

with your palette knife

lay it on

the cadmium yellow leaves

the ochre leaves

the vermillion leaves

of the New England autumn

and paint the ghost light of summer nights

and the light of the midnight sun

which is moon light

And don’t paint out the shadows made by light

for without chiaroscuro you’ll have shallow pictures

So paint all the dark corners too

everywhere in the world

all the hidden places and minds and hearts

which light never reaches

all the caves of ignorance and fear

the pits of despair

the sloughs of despond

and write plain upon them

“Abandon all despair, ye who enter here”

And don’t forget to paint

all those who lived their lives

as bearers of light

Paint their eyes

and the eyes of every animal

and the eyes of beautiful women

known best for the perfection of their breasts

and the eyes of men and women

known only for the light of their minds

Paint the light of their eyes

the light of sunlit laughter

the song of eyes

the song of birds in flight.

And remember that the light is within

if it is anywhere

and you must paint from the inside

Start with purity

with pure white

the pure white of gesso

the pure white of cadmium white

the pure white of flake white

the pure virgin canvas

the pure life we all begin with

Turner painted sunlight

with egg tempera

(which proved unstable)

and Van Gogh did it with madness

and the blood of his ear

(also unstable)

and the Impressionists did it

by never using black

And the Abstract Expressionists did it

with white house paint

But you can do it with the pure pigment

(if you can figure out the formula)

of your own true light

But before you strike the first blow

on the virgin canvas

remember its fragility

life’s extreme fragility

and remember its innocence

its original innocence

before you strike the first blow

Or perhaps never strike it

And let the light come through

the inner light of the canvas

the inner light of the models posed

in the life study

the inner light of everyone

Let is all come through

like a pentimento

the light that’s been painted over

the life that’s been painted over

so many times

Let it surge to the surface

the painted-over image

of primal life on earth

And when you’ve finished your painting

stand back astonished

stand back and observe

the life on earth that you’ve created

the lighted life on earth

that you’ve created

a new brave world

Coffee Monologue

2019-05-29T11:56:00.000-04:00

She sat in a chair next to the high top table at which I stood

Eating my oatmeal and drinking coffee

Librarianish looking

Thin, hair pulled back tight around her head

Olive Oyl with glasses

70 or so

“It’s not that we don’t want them here...

It’s just that they come here with their kids

And diseases that make our kids sick

Then they use our doctors and medical care.”

She took a last sip of her herbal tea

“Our generation, those of us from the Sixties

The last great generation ...”

“They should listen to us before our kids all get paralyzed from these people”

Got to get work,” she announced before walking to her car

Finished my oatmeal and coffee in the same silence I began

~ zjm

Dwelling Place

2019-05-29T10:56:00.000-04:00

Reality

That highly touted land of fiction
Those who claim to live there

Mindless drops of water

Slipping down a bathtub drain

I’ll return to the sea and join
Unrestrained currents wrestling at will
Seeking a place to sit
Or swim
Or drown

~ zjm

In America

2019-05-24T13:23:00.004-04:00

In America ..

Millions of unused empty homes every night

Millions of unused empty second homes every night

600,000 homeless Americans every night

Millions of homes taken by banks and real estate/mortgage companies

with no credible effort to assist homeowners to stay in their homes

Over 5 million USA foreclosures since the 08 recession

By banks whose officers still run the USA economy

Whether they served the Obama or Trump governments

Pillars of society

who populate the boards

of our schools and community organizations

while legally stealing millions of American homes and dreams

My home ...

Purchased for $175,000 in 2004

30 year mortgage

By 2008 recession devalued to $85,000

Wife/childrens mother moved out in 2011 “giving me the house” in the divorce along with sole responsibility for our joint mortgage payments

no longer affordable due to health problems and income changes

Numerous banks refused to modify mortgage

to my Social Security/Dsability income

to make it affordable for me

to keep my home me for me and my two daughters

“Do not qualify”

Denied again and again

May, 2019

Forcibly evicted

by bank

that is now selling my $175,000 house

for $60,000 ...

... same bank that refused to modify my mortgage

to an affordable amount for me to keep my home

so, this week, my children have lost the home they lived in

since they came home from the hospital

Their home of dreams and memories

For now, as I near my 65th birthday, I rest under the roof

of my 2009 Honda Civic

... and envision a new future

Still full of boundless hope and optimism

Some say “I should have planned better.”

Others say “I should have gotten a better job after I was laid off.”

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

Easier said than done ...

~ zjm