Forth comes the nite. A hallow wind breathes Autumn’s health. Everything has changed, as I implored it do. Branches break without second thought.
The night mare rides, lifting souls lost wandering. I have been wandering. The same shiny sidewalks for at least a several whiles.
The underdog and unlikely are my tribe. The possible and presumptuous are my tribe. The chosen and courageous are my tribe.
You remember the last time I floated over the foot of your bed. Like it was a feverish malaria induced dream. Sweat it out. Sweat it out. Summer memory sweated out. Autumn, rock me to sleep, lay me down. Queen Mab, take a vial of any tears. And use them as special effects when crying is called for again.
Dear cousin, I’ve been distant, but I care. I think of you every day. I’ll be jetting in and out of town this month and hoped you’d host my days or show me around at night. We always have such a darling time.
It’s been bothering me all year, I swear I must have left something at your condo. Did you find – did you keep – my candy skull zippo? That would be magnificent. The endless flame. It is yours to borrow until soon …
It seems that I’m changing again and I’d hoped we could talk and drink tea. I’m always changing when I come to see you, huh? Last time it was liberating from containment. And this time it’s … liberating from containment. I’m such a broken record. Always changing.
And you listen so well, the perfect audience to a living production. To me, I’m completely normal. I feel normal to me. Aren’t I normal? Were you normal today? Liberate from containment. You know, just a chat over a cup of agave-sweetened roiboos steaming from ceramic cups the size of my face.
Do you remember that coffee shop? Oh, let’s do find it. You can show me.
So my watch broke (or I threw it) and I broke my telephone ear piece plus I just don’t use the telephone so much. I much rather be there with you in person, anyway, rather than talk about being there. But my exact arrival, as always, will have to remain unexpected cause I’m living with such currency that many adjustments to my schedule are assumed. Do polish out the stemmed glasses and think about me telling action stories of this crazy summer spring and winter since we saw each other last.
So much has changed. I’ll be there soon … autumn
Ode to Californians who know what edible means.
Ode the natural eaters whose bodies smell like citrus blossom. Oh, Neroli, she moves behind me in the mirror. Like a veil of orange fabric, just wind blowing curtains, this nymph, this seductress, this angel.
Ode to the earth quaking constantly. Seismic tremors amplified by my bed springs, sitting in my inner ear satellite. With one elephant foot on the ground, with one lifted, head tilted, she’s always moving when you are always feeling. The earth is alive and she holds us up with solidarity.
Oh, she’s the one you can depend on.
Quaking earth, Neroli nymph, edible medicines, autumn shadows and the first day of October like citrus blossoms again this year – but this time we blossom in autumn.
A strangle hold on infant necks; summer finally lets go. The cruel death grip of forced cheeriness; we’re all quite tired of you now.
Relent, angry dragon with rotten stomach, hacking cigarette sparks of contagious flame. Setting my hills to burn on fire – your hugs crack ribs and suffocate.
I stand now on something tall. My palms are to the sky. I banish this season of regeneration. Produce no more from this vine.
I surrender now to something subtle. My soles are to the ground. The cool embrace of gentle arms. Even dragons find silence in the cave.
I think I forgot how to write.
I can’t think of a word like this feeling.
I feel unable, with joy, unable.
Just sit down and sip of the perfect temperature kukicha twig tea. Let me tell you a story, rather than compose the poetry.
There was a day once in LA with a sun gentle and soothing. The air carried moisture and the cloud cover did not lift. Not entirely. Not at all on this day. This slippery, Southern California day. It just keeps slipping through my fingers.
There was not much to do on that day, or rather, I was doing things that did not lend themselves to tangible achievements: I folded the clean laundry, I bought resale bed sheets from a lady I met on the street, I hitched a ride to an audition and chatted with a friend about dreams and passion and pride in the community we are a part of. Just livin and really being cool with it.
The rooftop called me. From there I could see all of Hollywood, including where those fires burned the hills (second occurrance) last year. I could see the Samsung sign and other peoples’ rooftops. Which no one uses. But me. I can see the real recycling man picking for cans through the blue bin. I can see him organize the recycling he can’t use and place it cleanly back in.
I could hear the stabbing taunt of a murder of crows sitting on the solar panels on my neightbor’s roof. One was louder than the other and cunvulses her body into the most raspy, supported caw of any of the 26 of them. A murder. A murder of crows.
I thought for a second about how at airport security, still to this day, so many years after 9/11, over the loud speaker I will hear a man’s voice warn about “staying close to your belongings and reporting any suspicious behavior” because we are on Orange Alert.
I want to say, “Don’t tell me when to be afraid and how much or how little to be afraid. If there is something wrong in the airport, shut it the fuck down. If there isn’t, then don’t tell me to be a little afraid every day just in case.” Have you ever heard the security voice say we’re on Green Alert?
The economy officially crashed three weeks ago and the news is shouting Orange Alert. But I’m working more than I did three months ago. I am making more money than I have in two years. In fact, my grass root entrepreneurial friends, who have built their businesses on genuinely healthy and agressively green ideals are expanding operations. This is the Green Alert we’ve been waiting for.
One crow lifted up, so easily, and these highly social creatures, in what, just today, I recognized as families of parents and children and childrens’ children, followed the first flier. The murder dotted the sky black, circular black sky, with brash unquietable voices, and flew so low over my head I thought I had been discovered.
I showed myself to the crows. And at this moment in history, I will be more idealistic, more passionate, more gracious than ever before because this is our time.
Autumn started today.
It’s cold now, I guess, but I’m not shutting the windows.
I grew up in a home my father built with his own hands. With plenty of glass door windows on seven out of it’s eight sides, sitting indoors reading a book on the couch was undifferentiated from reading a book outdoors on the porch swing in this house.
As soon as the weather got warm enough to shut off the furnace in spring, the windows would open and they would not close until the furnace fire was lit again. Even then, the windows might have remained open had we not cared about wasting electricity.
Which of course we do.
So … I’m riding through my first full-season autumn in Hollywood and you know, I totally judged SoCal autumn, calling it wanna-be, comparing it to sugar maples turning every shade of sunshine and soil, and then falling to the ground in a final flamboyant display of creativity in say; real autumn-havin’ locations.
Oh, Midwest maples are too brave for their own decoration. Naughty, nekkid maples.
But comparing the two is like a mom actually answering her son when he asks whom she loves more – him or his sister. Because both are pretty, girls, and honeysuckle just erupted in Silverlake – roses are near-wild near the Larchmont mansions. Angel’s Trumpet and lemon trees are looking good in the ‘Wood. And the heftier fruits such as Ju Ju Bees, figs, apples, grapes, persimmons and pomegranates beautify the local farmer’s stands. Yes, this is autumn, too, and there is no other autumn like it.
The sun is still warm during the day, but the wind is cold. And it moves quite a bit faster and with voice, across my meditating form stretched across the floor rug, still refusing to shut those windows even at nite when I have to admit; it’s probably too cold.
For what? For something. I forgot what for, so … then wind moves across my floor-rug-stretched October cadaver meditating on how nicely this relent is sitting in. Intuitively I feel like relaxing. The push is over. And now I reap what I’ve sown, ride the two coasting wheelz, and sentiment over how unpredictably went this year and what a notable push it was. I guess it doesn’t matter what part of the country I am in in autumn. I get to feel this way even in Southern Killa California.
If I only live 120 years, I’ll only ever see 120 autumns. I’m not missing this one. If these windows weren’t wide open, I’d be outdoors anyway.
Autumn practices voodoo with acupuncture needles. All kidney meridian pin sticks and permanent appetite point piercings.
She’s the Wicked Witch of the West Coast.
And when it rained last week for the fourth time this year, it was because of her drum and bass rain dance. Or her potent banashing ritual performed on the Dark Moon.
So … happy New Moon, Autumn.
She’ll rip your hat off and sendx it down the street the wind.
She’ll play chicken with you on the sidewalk, then fake shy if she thinks you have expectations of her.
She’ll deposit a Lover at your doorstep without even signing the card, and when you are the only one awake, still basking in passion’s bliss, she will distract you with song at the top of her lungs riding past your apartment on her bicycle broomstick.
I do not have to seek anymore.
Autumn will not be ignored.
She might as well have been riding a broom stick, the way she flew down the street.
With no metal surrounding her – no frame, no seat belt, no air bag – the midnite Air element in full communication across her face. Two wheels and all the freedom in the world.
Speed proportional to her strong limbs’ whims. In the moment soaring on momentum.
She was flying down the street Wicked Witch of the West Coast style on a bike magnificent as the countenance of pleasure on her face. She obviously enjoyed riding. Very much so indeed.
But she was shy. Or pretended to be. Either way, I could not get her to look toward me as she rocketed by. What world is she living in? Oblivious to how oppressive long summer can be. Her world full of mystery and saturated with levity. Her own little game she is winning every day. I wonder if she cries sometimes like me.
Yes, she does. Autumn cries. Autumn soars and Autumn pretends and Autumn, the cousin I never had, finds me every year no matter where I am, though this year I was sure she wouldn’t come. I thought maybe she died. Or forsook the United States altogether for some other romantic land where everything moves in slow motion and no one remembers their given name.
I’m younger now and something tells me that adoration is cultivated separation and so I choose to suddenly and successfully be Disenchanted – no longer will I seek. You don’t look for something you’ve already got. I’m ready to be. I have a place here and it is important, what I am doing.
Autumn … and you still have use for me.
I give up! I give up! I give up! I give up!
This always happens this time of year!
Autumn.
Autumn is happening again and this time it’s in Los Angeles. I can safely say this is my first autumn in Los Angeles. I usually try to be somewhere … witchy as October sets in. Somewhere where the things I feel like doing are right outside your back door. In the woods. Oh, how dark an autumn woods can be.
But this year autumn’s in Los Angeles and something is in bloom again. Oh, devil, it is violently seductive and holds instant access to whatyourelookingfor. I live in a city of 3.8 million people proper, and I smell fantasy in bloom every season. I am hypnotized and I remember turning on my window shield wipers tonite. It has been since February since it rained last. Not that what I swished off my goggles was rain, mind you. More like mist. But enough of it to need one window shield swipe. And then it was over. It rained in LA in autumn tonite.
I detect a pattern emerging. Maybe I’m the only one who doesn’t see it, though I try to keep insightful. Here it is: everytime I go to the drum and bass club I come home and write the shit out of my head because I am so high. High for three days from Technical Itch pulled off the stage, ending with the brownest bump of all midsentence. That’s a pro. And I got high. And now I am flying on my broomstick through what feels like the most gentle, most urban eerie onset of autumn ever.
The brighter the sun, the deeper the shadows.
I give up. Release me, thorn. You’ve stabbed so deeply the skins grown over and I’ve lived with you buried all this time.
A constant slight, my limp is your cadence. Like a canine, I have run stoopid smiling forward, undaunted in my quest for enjoyment and wincing only when no one is near. Like a surgeon, I have taken needle and scalpel and sliced in, bringing blood again, I have dissected everything inside. Like an idiot, I have accepted myself with injury included – even going so far as to give grace for the graze.
And all this meditating and questing and educating has beget me is more of the same but with different responses.
I’m not looking for peace. I’m looking for the philosopher’s stone.
I stop midstride. I clutch something sore. I dream everything shades of grey with no country I haven’t already been and no city I care to explore because it’s all just grey and I can’t possibly top myself anymore anyway.
The scent of a lover long past, crisp forrest floor nostolgia, drifted through the air today.
I mark the end of summer.
