Temporal Lobe Fragment

And say of yourself:
I am a thing and no thing
A confluence of things and more than the sum of things
I have never not been and never will be
I have always just begun, I look back on the end
I am time out of no time, I am the end of time,
And pretender of time,
I am all of nothing,
Some of never,
Approximately always
Forever

And say of that other self:
A thing and no thing,
A confluence of things and less and less of things,
Having never not been, never need be,
Having always begun, always just ending.
Time out of no time, who ends time portends time,
All of nothing,
Some of never,
Approximately always
Forever

Copyright 2009 Briar Rose


Photos: Neuron in brain; computer simulation of universe. Mark Miller, Brandeis University; Virgo Consortium for Cosmological Supercomputer Simulations, www.visualcomplexity.com, The New York Times.

Vegan Corned Beef and Cabbage. . .

. . .for your iconoclastic dining pleasure.

2 medium onions, cut into wedges
1/2 head cabbage, finely chopped or shredded (I used red cabbage this time)
4 carrots, cut into 2-inch lengths and quartered
2 ribs celery, thickly sliced
4 cups vegetable broth
1 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon rubbed sage
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon mild horseradish
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
6-8 ounces vegetarian "beef" or seitan or reconstituted TVP chunks (like Lightlife Strips)
2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon red wine or cooking sherry (really adds great flavor)

Sauté the onion in a large, non-stick pot until it starts to brown. Add the remaining vegetables, the broth, and the seasonings. Cover and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes. Add the "beef," cover, and cook for 15 more minutes, until vegetables are soft.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the vegetables and "beef" to a serving plate and keep warm. Return the broth to the heat. In a small cup, combine the flour, water, and wine. Gradually stir the flour mixture into the simmering broth. Cook and stir, scraping the bottom of the pan, until the broth has thickened, about 10 minutes. Pour the gravy over the "beef" and vegetables to serve.

Makes 4 servings. Each serving, using the Lightlife strips, contains 117 Calories (kcal); trace Total Fat; (3% calories from fat); 10g Protein; 20g Carbohydrate; 0mg Cholesterol; 336mg Sodium; 7g Fiber.

Recipe is from this site:

blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/03...ted.html

(And I must say, that is the stupidest looking harp, not to mention harping technique, I have ever seen--but what do cows know?)

Debunketty bunketty bunk. . .

. . .another myth is sunk:

txtwriter.com/onscience/A...tsnakes.html

And I Will Not Forget

~On Williamson’s 65th~

It was a dream I had,
A moment captured in a blink,
Spring green or autumn russet-clad
Balanced on the brink

All in a synapse span,
The while mute constellations turned
Beyond, and where the plovers ran,
Scryless ocean churned.

I named it after me,
Drew out the light and it was good,
And to the dark a boundary,
Fixed and understood,

To mean what I decide;
Now clotted knotwork runs of rhyme
Make and unmake, leave and abide.
Syllables mark time.

A decade for a day,
And on the seventh day to rest,
No God but I, who scribe in clay,
At the words’ behest.


Copyright 2008 Briar Rose

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses...c-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

~Title gratefully borrowed from a recurring line in "Five Denials on Merlin's Grave," by Robin Williamson

Photo: Celtic Pen

November Takes the Field

The thistle is all done.
The dogrose bows beneath the sun,
The greenest tree the gravest
Skeleton.

The bravest has been slain.
A crown has lost its Aquitaine,
An amber jewel its setting
Yields to rain.

Besetting cold is near,
Thrusts blue to bone like any spear,
Parts flesh and bone and gristle.
Winter’s here.

Copyright 2008 Briar Rose

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses...c-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.



(The illustration is called "Dead Roses" and is by a London artist called Mayko--
thelittlechimpsociety.com/kuron...ayko/)

"Fire it up! Fire it up! Fire it up!"

STILL my favorite movie in all the world.

Happy Hallowe'en, everybody!

Next Door Neighbors

Dawn the dew slips cold to footfalls,
Called to work or called to school.
Take a pen or take a shovel,
Every calling has its tool.

At mid-morning hear the teacher
Drill the chronicles of strife.
Through the window hear the preacher
Drone for everlasting life.

And the carver’s echoed chip,
And the arid scrape of chalk,
Tell a birth and date of death,
Tell the ticking of the clock.

Noon is not resigned to autumn,
Fan blades whirl, sun pushes down.
Summer shuns to reach the bottom.
Fall’s a verb and fall’s a noun.

Dusk, the rusty maples yielding,
Dusk, the ember, ash and frost,
Dusty script the sun forsaking,
Dusty couplets of the lost.

Leaves that plaster to the glass
With the autumn wind and rain
Leave disaster when they pass,
Leave with summer in their train.

And summer kicks us to the curb,
And summer plays us for a fool;
And "leaves" is both a noun and verb—
At least that’s what I learned at school.

There’s a schoolyard and a graveyard,
Slate leads in and slate leads out.
Chalked or chiseled, all the same,
Slate is what it’s all about.



Copyright Briar Rose 2008

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses...c-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

CATS

On August 20th, my sweet old white polydactyl said, "Well, it's been a lot of fun, but I think it's time to cross the 9th Life boundary." She was almost 18 1/2, and had done very well for years on medication for hyperthyroid, greatly exceeding the average survival expectancy for that feline ailment. In July her blood cells started showing changes consistent with certain more serious diseases, including cancer, although we didn't pursue the Big Serious Testing that might have yielded a more definite diagnosis because. . .well, jeez, she was over 18, you know? Our vet said whatever the tests were gonna show, the news would have been bad. We showered her with love for three more weeks or so and then when she stopped eating her kitty food, we gave her Nutrical and indulged her with deli roast turkey slices and--her favorite!--fresh corn cut off the cob. (Yeah, all cats love SOMETHING you wouldn't think a cat would eat. . .) When she stopped eating altogether, we let our vet gently put her to sleep.

Nature and cats don't like empty spaces, however, and just as we were beginning to think a house with only four cats was a pretty sensible arrangement, along comes a friend of mine who says a friend of his has had two cats palmed off on her by a friend of HERS, and. . .well, she has the cats two weeks and ends up in a rehab hospital and comes home in a big old heavy leg brace.

I hasten to add that her hospitalization was not prompted by the cats!

Nevertheless, now she reckons she has about enough energy and wherewithal to take care of ONE cat, so she's keeping the nine year old cat without eyes (that's another story) and needs to find a home for the 2 1/2 year old cat who steals the eyeless cat's food.

Guess who's ended up with the 2 1/2 year old cat?

Well, she's kind of a long haired kitty--that kind of coat's totally new to me! She comes with no mats at all, so I'm hoping she won't be high maintenance--I may luck out; I suspect her somewhat casual care two owners ago didn't include constant brushing. She'd never been seen by a vet and has never been spayed; never even been in heat, is what I get second hand. Well--that seems a little unlikely!

Hell, for all I know she may be in a coy, demure version of "heat" now--she doesn't yowl and roll, but she does head-butt and hiss at the same time. Stands on her back paws to thrust her little head into a waiting hand, purrs and mews--and when she's had enough, hauls off and whacks your hand. A magnificent little bitch goddess!

We went to visit the nice Kitty Doctor yesterday and Samantha tested blissfully free of nasty contagious cat diseases and got some shots, and we have a spay appointment in a little over a week. I walked out of the vet's office with the cat carrier in one hand and the box containing Akasha's ashes in the other. Jeez--full circle!

We always end up doing Baptism of Fire cat introductions in this household. Samantha's mainstreaming with the other cats now--and tomorrow a doggie comes to visit.

If cats had thumbs, they'd thumb their noses at planning.

Well, actually, Akasha *had* thumbs, so I guess I know who to blame.

Here Till Here Is There

BACKGROUND AND CAVEAT:

In 1987 a singer by the name of “Licorice” McKechnie disappeared and remains missing today, presumed dead. My title is borrowed, with gratitude, from a song by the group The Incredible String Band, which she had left in 1973. Obscure as the lady herself, certain references in this poem are likely to be opaque to all but Stringheads.


The retrospectives sometimes miss her name,
Whether she was Chris-tee-na or Chris-tye-na—
That German sites have christened Caroline.—
But fey, she frolicked on the album jackets,

And cradled a fat toad or baby bird
In pale and slender hands. We saw her soar
Breezy and carnationed in a swing;
In wood and meadow, saw her in velour,

In liner notes, the candy soubriquet.
Pitched up in schoolgirl euphonies we heard
Her sing what merry Robin penned, “Papa
Would take me to the park to see the swans. . .”

Rose-browed, but whispered bare neath her chiffons,
Whirled through by dusts and potions, so they say,
A butterfly beneath the waking sunlight,
Moth at the dreaming sweet, black sticky flame.

And if some sandalwood and silken summer
Of plucked sitar, the spun to silver web
Of beads and bells sang different beckoning,
The coil of jasmine round about that wound her

Drew her to some other song, say the wren
Before the robin or before the heron?
Would still the girl mulleined and leafed in muslin
And Sunday school soprano, furred and cloched,

Have gowned like Guinevere and flower-crowned
Her glazy visage, sung off-key at Woodstock,
And mourned with “Darling Belle” in widow’s weeds,
Once reeked to soot in grey Midlothian reckoning,
Her woolens sluiced in housepaint and woodstain?



The narrative is hindsight at its best,
An August thing of maybes and what ifs,
How chance the Thetan grasp that more than tithed.
Or after copter flight past blocked off roads,

How mudding tent and torrent that first night
Of hidden stars and candles in the rain
Displaced gold Robin’s band and staged them up
Next day between Canned Heat and CCR

To underwhelm the half a million strong,
With coy sweet songs about “This Moment” whose
Legatos might have joined the shooting stars
But for the blotting clouds and weeping muse--

Not quite the meteoric rise to fame,
But just enough for three more years of tunes,
And then the spotlights yield to western sun,
The service trays and crockery, public bus,

Robin’s painted guitar. Inclined to sing,
Declined to teach “Old Songs and Cottages.”
E-meter’s golden tethered tantalus?—
Too high the plumping fruit, too low the water.

How did the rest evade their dotages?
One to nostalgia circuit bowed, and one
A mayoress, and one a Cardiff bard--
And three dismiss to death even her name,

Though unclaimed royalties may wait to yield
Solace for Perseid nights that passed unstarred:
To hell with Hubbard and with Yasgur’s field--
The children of star seed and beggars’ weeds
Had never loved her like the bud and blotter.



The folklore even disagrees on this:
Whether the last who ever knew her found her
Footprints nudging the Arizona dunes,
Giving the slip to Hubbard’s church. What if

They never find a ragged shawl or diary?
A scorpion in a skull, a tarnished chain?
A final letter, mailed in nineteen ninety,
From Sacramento, to a Scottish sister,

Was three years’ leave to fray the stitch of rumor--
"Shared open mikes in London in the nineties"/
"Impromptu a cappella Wiccan chants"/
"Asleep in batterer’s yard"/ "From hard park bench,

Pulled nameless to the steam of LA streets"/
"Took serious drugs and wore no underpants"/
"Abducted by space aliens in the desert
With Captain Beefheart"/ "Let a cult subsume her--"

I think we cut our cloaks to August promptings.
This month can hunt you down, pull you up short:
I think on August nights of men like Manson,
Who think on August mornings of blood sport.

I think, when summer’s hit the downhill sands,
I know a doomed thing when I see or hear it,
And downward wave’s as deep, so I suppose
That if, some brocade noontide, coppery bands

Of sunlight drew her west to other strands,
An island beach embroidering her clothes
With knots of sea wrack, blue-green stinging seaweed’s
Matty floss as richly might have gowned her,
As gauzy veil of Morpheus around her.

Copyright Briar Rose 2008


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses...c-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Collage: August Night Sky

THE LAMMAS MEN

The Lammas Men come jumping, bumping.
Booming and zooming, the Lammas Men.
Sparks in the sky, peaking, then streaking
To dark again, know the Lammas Men.
The Lammas Men from late July
Grasp summer as tight as ever they can
With opposable thumbs, cruising and boozing,
When sunset comes to the asphalt night.
And the Lammas Men are certain they
Might make the hot sweet summer stay,
If they put up a fight.

The Lammas Men with shiny cards
Are all twenty-one, and proudly exempt
From hastening fall and narrowing day,
And the corn is sweet in the southering sun,
And the stalks are tall, though leaves display
Heavy and dusty, beetled and galled,
Their edges rusty. And summer’s looking
A little unkempt but the Lammas Men
Make a valiant attempt, in mobs, to throbs
Of drum and bass, to stand their ground
Or mark their pace.

The Lammas Men catcall and brawl
Near dark, for a lark, rolling ambered with cheer.
And the Lammas Men lay a rough black arc,
And then another, of rubbery squeals,
To evening’s finale, from dirt road to alley,
The spray can, the ball bat, the downed mailbox tally,
With wagers and dares, and boasts and appeals,
And trying on death just to see how it feels.
And the Lammas Men’s jibes as the katydids call
Are the dialogues of the alpha dogs
Saying, Summer will always, will always be all!


Copyright Briar Rose 2008


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses...c-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.