8/31/09

giving

occurred to me tonight,
as I reviewed all that is right
with the two of us
(no worries, all we have discussed),
that you are the first woman
to make me feel like a man
without a simultaneous
outstretched hand;

and that, baby,
is worth a whole lot,
maybe the whole shebang:

thank you, baby,
for giving far more
than you take.



August 31, 2009, for the Wifey, who has no comparison, save a rainbow, lit bright.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

secrets

the sound of You,
sleeping,
is one that is worth
keeping;
my heart,
left leaping,
creeping,
as You drift off,
silently keeping
secrets,
secrets,
secrets
for tomorrow,
for which I wait,
kneeling.



August 17, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/30/09

critics agree

I see them all,
standing over there,
all giggles and glances,
glasses akimbo,
averted eyes,
and askance stances;

but that gaggle
of English teachers,
they do not scare,
as they scrutinize my work,
with their rarified aire:

I imagine them all,
on the toilet, you see,
underwear fallen below the knee,

and their criticism
don't scare me none,
he he he.



August 30, 2009.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

a million lifetimes

sitting at Ned's Point
this morning,
and the grey sky is suddenly
banished
as I remember You,
perched atop the picnic table,
smiling at me,
looking at the ocean,
laughing;

some images last
a million lifetimes.



August 30, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

earthbound

fog, and a cool breeze
surround the oceanside park
in a grey embrace,
as the gulls
cackle the news to each other,
and the trees all
drip, drip, drip
the past night's rain,
ticking off the minutes
since I held You in my arms
and felt Your fullness
pressed against me so tight,
that it felt like You were trying
to get to the other side of me
by passing through me;

I know Your loveliness now,
not just from the warm sound
of Your voice in my ear,
nor the image of You on the screen,
but from the touch of my own hands;

and though the dreariness
of this morning tries to pull me down,
I am buoyed, here next to the harbor,
by the memory of those hours
of delight, and I concentrate,
to stay earthbound,
and not simply take flight.



August 30, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

You and I, at Last

You were worried that You would somehow disappoint,
although I knew exactly how the present was wrapped;

I was worried that I would somehow disappoint,
although you knew exactly how the present was wrapped;

Two woebegone fools in love, chittering, skittering, slipping,
into the moment of many, many lifetimes,
some past, and some yet to come;
once scattered, even shattered, shuttered, stuttered,
but now thrown

Open:
oh my, the grand reveal --
or the huge dismay:
how to react, what to do, what to say,
"if only (s)he did not look that way";
"(s)he is not what I expected,
how was this left undetected,
old miseries now reflected,
and yet I am here,
"We thought, for an instant, perhaps;

but no, that same spark in the eye
that We had both seen
in the bright illumination
of true love's gleam,
was right were we wanted it to be,
right there in that space without any space,
that space between You and Me;

like those well-worn sneakers,
and the favorite pair of seen-better-days jeans,
all that was not right, disappeared from our sight,
and love-at-first-sight became at once
all that it means, something tight,
so very right, so seamless and sleek,
and outrageously perfect and clean,
that you might look it over to see it again,
and you might say to yourself,
this must be "if" and not "when"
which of course are never the same;

and I looked at You,
and You looked at Me,
and a million memories
of a billion centuries
of a trillion lives lived came at once
upon Us, and We knew;

back then,
somewhere,
or out there,
where we have not yet lingered,
two lives intersect,
two lives connect,
two heartstrings
are deftly fingered,
leaving them intertwined,
interposed, entangled then, now
and forever more;
the two of Us,
the Model of Love
and the Keep of Trust,
passion most assured,
under such covers,
lust lurking in dark corners,
and in others;
but virtue and vows
not merely ceremonial bows,
but sacred pledges,
never breached;
but no matter --
star-crossed loves' irony
reached, as two become one,
yet apart;
still two beat as one,
in the heart;
fever, cast aside
in favor of pride worn, adorned, as We stand
side by side,
to be judged,
not on Our lesser selves,
but upon Our Love;

it is there, in the lying still
together that We proclaim:
Our love is no different,
than any that is named:
it is only Ours,
it is sacred to Us,
and We will not see it defamed;

but what, the reader exclaims,
is to be made of this meeting;
is it the end of the beginning,
or the beginning of neverending?

easy to answer, for Us,
I suppose,
as Our blushes rise quicker
than the scent of the rose,
so swiftly Our passions do rise
to the fore, that an answer
to such a question
deserves nothing more,
than a bid that the questioner
look on Our faces, and see all around,
the trails of love's laces:

I love You.

August 29, 2009, for the Wifey, the keeper of my heart and soul.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/26/09

new game

let's play
a new fun game:

you hide,
and when I am
ready,
I'll come looking
for you.



August 25, 2009.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

two fingers

I burned two fingers today,
badly,
and it reminded me,
a moment after the pain,
of You;

I just did not think,
as I instinctively,
reached for the coffee pot,
which had been
sitting on the grill,
to keep it hot;

and I must tell you,
that I love you so much,
that I would gladly
burn my fingers again,
for You,
but I think I would rather
use them to do
what I know how
to do,
and I rather suspect
that You would too.



August 23, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/25/09

one theory

they poke
and they prod,
and they
goad;

and then
later,
scratch their heads,
and ask:
"now why did she
explode?"



August 25, 2009.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

approaching ecstasy

the appointed day
and hour,
no longer far away,
drawing closer
with each sweep
of the second hand;
the clock,
often ignored,
mesmerizes me,
much the same
as You are adored;

my heart flutters,
my speech stammers,
butterflies
are everywhere,
this time of year;

the pounding
is not someone
at the door,
it is my own heart,
the one that You adore;

You fill my every
moment now,
asleep and awake,
as I realize
the sweetest love
to make is the love
that gives
without regard
for what it will take;

the searing heat
that radiates
makes me swoon,
and Your arrival
cannot come too soon;

ah, come to me,
my sweet, and leave
your cares out there
somewhere,
bless me with You,
and I will make them
disappear;

measured merely now
in hours,
before union is at last
ours,
it simply takes my breath away;

the thought of your fullness,
nestled in my hands,
your breath warming my neck,
it is more than I can stand;

this treasure, this
pleasure, this dream come true,
this is only possible
because of You;

wait, we must,
but we take it well
on trust,
we see it all unfold
in days,
approaching ecstasy.



August 25, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/23/09

afar

the calling
of our lust,
loudly,
bore no dust;
it was,
as it was,
as it must
be:
primal,
feral,
free;
and the
heat
between
you
and
me
could fire up
a sun,
a star,
from afar.



August 22, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

Warning

When I am an old man I shall wear green
With a yellow hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on whisky and argyle socks
And cotton shirts, and say we've no money for sugar.
I shall sit down wherever I am when I'm tired
And take free drinks when offered and push every button I come across
And take a whack at anything I choose that crosses my path
And continue with wild recklessness my checkered past.
I shall go out in my underwear to fetch the newspaper
And eat the fruit off other people's trees
And learn to knit, not!

You can be civil to all and mind your waistline
And turn down second helpings
Or gorge yourself on all that there is to eat
And give away everything that you own
And also everything that you don't own.

Now we have exhibited the proper behavior of gentlemen
And met our duties and obligations
Doing our best to please everyone
And lending a hand at every turn, chipping in.

And so I should give it a bit of a test run, perhaps?
So that all those around me are not taken aback too harshly
When all of a sudden I am an old man, wearing green.




August 23, 2009.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/22/09

Intersection

She said:

that is why I said earlier,
no need to be nervous:
we've known each other,
all our lives;
we took different paths:
yours, rough;
mine, seemingly smooth,
but with heartache;
and separated by our new existence,
we managed to find ourselves back,
back again,
to the soulmates we were in the other life.

And He said:

wow, that is so beautifully expressed.

And She said:

and yet, while I will not
give up this new life of mine
for my soulmate,
in this life drawn from our other life,
this weekend I give freely
of my own
volition.

And He said:

you do not need her help;
this is gorgeous expression right here;

And She said:

Yes, this weekend I have planned,
this journey we have taken:
the soul knows,
and our souls knew,
and we take what we can,
and so our weekend will soon be here;
this dream for you, I can make happen
and well wish it that it could be more,
but if wishes and dreams and all that other stuff
that romantics say could be so,
well then there would be no need
for an afterglow.

And He said:

you are an amazing woman,
and I am a fortunate man,
to be honored by such love as yours;
I am, and always will be, so glad
that we were destined
for each other, baby.

And She said:

I think you and I were destined for each other,
because once upon a time,
or once upon a future,
we are meant to truly be together;
I have believed this since I first realized
that I love you;
that there will one day be
no obstacles,
no boundaries,
just you and I,
and our love,
and all we have created.



August 21, 2009, with the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/21/09

total soul

She was shy,
you might say,
resistant;

He was sly,
you might say,
insistent;

but oh, baby,
when they finally
got together
to rock 'n' roll:

it was
fire
on fire


it was
total
soul to soul.



August 20, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/20/09

within me

I closed my eyes just now,
and I realized,
how so very close you are
to me;
you are only a breath away,
a small, swinging sway,
your tantalizing beauty,
just within my grasp,
the hold that will last
a lifetime,
and all that is passed;
I treasure every moment,
that relieves the torment
of not having you,
here, with me,
eternally;
I know you,
and your love for me,
completely;
and I wish for only
one more day,
to have you
within me.



August 20, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/19/09

already gone

for all the magic, the whole of it was
just tragic, me and you, and me and you,
and me and you, and etcetera, and
etcetera, all of that that was never really
true, and all of our faces turned so blue,
while we were stuck to "me and you,"
and while we rationally knew what was
really true, well we really knew, deep
down inside, there was no truth to abide,
it was all just illusion, just a momentary
confusion, just a mistaken allusion,
just two people being confusin',
just wantin' to hold on while we knew
that we were losin', just a way to keep
from choosin', another glass slipper that
slipped away, another something for
another day, another way that we could
say, hey it happened for us, something
that we could trust; but at the end of the
song, we could not bring it along, it was
already gone, baby, it was already gone.



August 19, 2009, for a bunch of them, but not Her.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

un sueƱo de mi amor

when presented
with a love as undying
as yours for me,
a sensible man
simply drops to his knees,
as I have,
and acknowledges
how fortunate he is,
as I am,
to have such honor
bestowed on me;
I truly do not think myself
worthy,
but when you tell me
that your journey here,
in seven days,
is "to fulfill
un sueƱo de mi amor,"
I swoon.
know only that I feel
so blessed
to have your love,
the promise of so much
quiet, noisy, exuberant
joy:
te quiero, mi amor,
es verdad, siempre.

Wow.



August 19, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

A Few Minutes with Betty, Chapter 15: "Upsetting the Applecart" (or, "Wait, You're Not Hugh Jackman!"

"I'm back. I got your Mother's Day message. Thank you."

"You're welcome, Betty. I am chatting with Candida right now."

"Cool."

"She's doing a little better."

"I'm glad."

"But this is a slow process."

"I said hi to her this morning."

"She told me that."

"And I let her know I was here for her. We aren't tight yet, but I just wanted to put it out there."

"She really appreciates the support, and thought, it was very sweet of you. You may hear from her; she really likes you."

"Who wouldn't?"

"Well, yes, that's true."

"I hate when people are hurting. It sucks."

"For an uber good time, call Betty, 703 . . . ."

"HEY, HEY!"

"Sorry."

"Although . . . I went to the movies alone on Sunday and got hit on five times."

"For an UBER good time, call Betty, 703 . . . ."

"Knock it off, buster."

"Okay. Sorry."

"My working name is Darla."

"So you only got hit on five times? Only five? What, were you wearing shades?"

"Nope. But many of the men at the movies were geeks. I think I frightened them."

"Well I'm no geek, and you upset my applecart regularly."

"Snort. Trust me, Shakespeare, if Bill Gates dies before you, you will be the biggest geek on the planet."

"I don't usually call it an applecart, but somehow that just came out, so to speak."

"Apples aren't really a good analogy here, especially since I like to sink my teeth into apples, or fry them, or use my apple slicer."

"*Crosses legs*"

"Exactly."

"It figures that you would have an apple slicer."

"My kids like apples, and I'm not allowed to play with knives. It makes my husband nervous."

"As well it should. Are you two doing okay?"

"Sure, why wouldn't we be?"

"Well, a while back, you were a little pissed."

"I got over it."

"Good."

"Just because I get angry doesn't mean I don't love him. Sometimes I want to love him to death."

"I know, that would keep anyone awake."

"He he he."

"I can see him now, ol' one-eye-open George."

"Nah, his allergies have been making life difficult for him lately. So I just use him and then put him to bed."
"Yep, just another appliance . . . another personal pleasuring device."

"I had to go to the movies alone, I needed to feel loved on Mother's Day. Is that so wrong?"

"So you went and saw Wolverine? And no, it is never wrong."

"No, I saw that last weekend. Alone."

"Especially if it is dark or you are standing up."

"Wolverine sucked! Aside from Hugh Jackman. Ha ha. I went to see Star Trek."

"Ah, any good?"

"In a theater full of geeky men and nerds. I loved it."

"Oh that's good to hear. I loved the TV show when I was a kid."

"And let me qualify that by saying that you couldn't make me watch anything Star Trek as a child without tying me down and prying my eyes open a la Clockwork Orange."

"I have only seen a couple of the movies."

"My brother is a Trekkie."

"And none of the other TV shows, the newer ones."

"I mocked him constantly for it. Shall I mock you now?"

"Let's see . . . yep, Monday ends in Y, alright; sure, go ahead, Betty."

"Nah, I'll behave, Shakespeare. There were parts of the movie that I couldn't stand, but overall, it was great."

"I have to leave shortly to scout out a location and take some photos."

"Oh, you journalists are so cool -- scout out a location -- I love it."

"And then I am covering a public hearing at 6:30."

"You are a busy bee, Shakespeare. And yet, you always seem to find the time to steal my words for your humor pieces."

"I would not call it stealing, Betty. We are a humor team."

"I have to take my oldest to get her ballet tights. She was invited to join the junior dance troop."

"I remember those days. Two of my girls loved it, but the third hated it."

"Since she's good at following directions at the age of 5, they invited her. She loves it. My younger daughter is going to try it out next year. I hated it when I was a child, but then I have the grace of a dead squirrel."

"Ah, but you are UBER limber; that has to count for something besides great nasties."

"I can also do push ups; so I'm limber and strong."

"Let's leave your bra out of this, okay?"

"That's just wrong. Leave my padding alone."

"Madam, I did not touch your enhancers. You would have known."

"I should have. Sometimes I'm not all that bright."

"Okay, I have got go get ready to get out of here and on the road."

"Okay, Shakespeare, have a good time."

"And you know that I love and respect you, even if you are sometimes dim."

"I might be dim, but I can still gut you if need be."

"Well in that case, you are still a bright light in my book."

"No, I'm not smart, I just fake it well."

"Very well. See you later, Betty."




August 19, 2009.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/18/09

circling

voices, not loud,
but present,
breaking the blessed silence,
the quiet
bestowed
by the sun on the waves;
the void broken only
by calls of gulls,
circling,
always circling,
seeking,
searching,
sometimes even
finding;
I look here
for answers;
for You,
as I circle,
circle,
seeking,
searching.



August 16, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/17/09

Killing Grandma while eating fetuses with Hitler


Is there any group out there that the Republican’s aren’t trying to offend?

The wild accusations are crazy, letting an individual have the power over end of life care decisions is turned into Government wants to kill Grandma. That really shows you care about Grandma don’t let her be in control of important decisions about her life.

Holocaust Deniers are comparing Obama to Hitler. A great way to honor the vets who fought against tyranny, claim they fought and died so that people could be denied healthcare.

Anti-Vaxers are upping their claim from the totally debunked link between Vaccines and Autism to Vaccines will contain Nano-probes so the government can track all citizens movements. Great way to gain sympathy, try to block access so babies will die horrible deaths from easily treatable diseases.

The birthers, people who claim that Obama isn’t a citizen, are against the treatment for mental illness. Fill in your own joke.

Its easy to understand their fear, the main thing Obama is shooting for is more individual options in healthcare choices for them having to make their own decisions means putting those decisions in the hands of the most stupid and incompetent person they know, themselves.

8/15/09

Aphrodite come down

Aphrodite come down,
as I cleave
the forest in two,
to make a path
from me to you;

Ī†Ļ†ĻĪæĪ“ĪÆĻ„Ī· come down,
as the Sun
melts slowly,
dripping down
in your wake;

Acidalia come down,
as desire
thickens the air,
and I drink it in
deeply;

Cytherea come down,
as all Creation
takes on a patina,
glistening,
dreaming;

Pandemos come down,
as every head
turns, averting,
senses acute,
longing;

Cerigo come down,
as every heart
throbs, pounds,
muscles tensed,
pulsating;

Aphrodite come down,
as the Wind
loses its force,
release,
impending.


August 15, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/13/09

the curb

worse places,
I suppose;
some chosen,
some led there
by the nose:
a cesspool,
quicksand,
the mind of a fool,
no water in
arid land,
the sweat
rolling off
your mother's
brow,
wiped away
by the back of
your father's
hand;

but still:

here,
amid the shattered
shards of taillight
plastic,
amid the forsaken
dreams of the
light fantastic,
among the hardy
weeds, heavy
with seeds
for more,
lying desolate
with the rusty nails
and lonely travails
of the dead animals
entrails,
scorched by
the sun,
sucked on by the
crows, and as
everyone knows
picked apart by
the legions of ants,
here,
with the solitary shoe,
the lost license plate,
the souvenir t-shirt,
the broken watch
just a minute too late,
the dust and the
detritus too much
to enumerate,

here:

this is where you
choose to leave me?

no, I will not go
to the place forsaken;
I will not be the road
not taken;
all that has passed,
means that we will last,
or the love we made
should never have
been taken:
I still stand in awe
of what has happened
between us,
how much
we have grown
into each other,
into each other's head,
if it were not for one
or the other of us,
one or the other us
could well be dead;

so I rise,
I look deep into your eyes,
and I say "No,
I will not go,
and neither shall you,
if it is the last thing,
really,
the last thing,
that I ever do."

I am staying right where
you left me,
yesterday,
until you come back,
and fetch me.

I shall wait forever,
as I always try to be
a very patient man.



August 13, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

Evil Minions Are After Me





Since I discovered the secret plot for cats to take over the world and Identified their leader. A calico who goes by the evil name of Tigger.

Tigger’s evil minions have been dispatched to surround my house, or at least the backyard.

Here is a picture of them spying on me.
Cat Spies:


Identifying photos of the cat mob.

Evil Henchcat 1:


Evil Henchcat 2:


Evil Henchcat 3:


I tried to ward them off by putting out Tuna and Milk, but even that would not get rid of them. And my plan to dissuade them by rubbing their ears and petting them was just met with an evil laugh that sounded like, “Purrrr”.

All because I know of their evil plan to rule the world and delegate everything that doesn’t involve eating, napping, being petted, and playing to have humans carry out.

What the evil cat leader Tigger doesn’t know is Project Savior is not the only sight that has found out about this evil plan.

I can has cheeseburger has been spying on the cat army for years now. Here are some shocking pictures that they have taken documenting the cat’s goals.

Cats ultimate goal:
funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

And their training:
Ninja Training
funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

And how they stalk anyone who might find out about their plans:
Stalking
funny pictures of cats with captions
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

We must act now before cats take over the world.

Some things you can do to protect yourself.

Cats get disorientated when you rub their ears. By rubbing their ears you can incapacitate them hours (Of course that means you can’t do anything for hours either).

Soft fluffy pillows, especially under a sunny window will render them unable to move for hours.

Feeding them Tuna and Milk seems to preoccupy them for several minutes.

I know these are extreme measures but they must be done to protect your family.

8/12/09

A Contender

The Virginia sun still bore down hot on me that quiet Friday in late October although the wind whispered the advent of fall, as I made the short drive from my house to hers, only about four big blocks. It was curious, but not notable, that she had called and asked me to come over and talk for a little while since we did have three daughters together, and making decisions and being their parents jointly was one of the few things that we had managed in recent years without raised voices and lowered expectations. It was my guess that there was no crisis to deal with, as Jane had always been quick with the phone call when some sort of misfortune had erupted regarding the girls or anyone else that she was close to. So I expected that somebody’s grades had slipped, or had a new boyfriend from the dark side of the moon, or that one of them had suddenly realized her subconscious dream of running off to join the circus. Something that needed daddy’s attention, not “what should I do with my life,” but more along the lines of “can you get that spider out of the bathtub, please; it is so totally freaking me out.” Like anyone has clearly marked halfway markers on the road to their own personal insanity. But a daddy’s got to do what he’s got to do, and mostly my role had become one of a deaf and mute chauffeur, who did side work exterminating bugs. On most occasions, I had found myself feeling like an old Chinese woman, walking ten steps behind and to the left, and keeping whatever I might have to say firmly locked up inside of my mouth.

Of course, my years of training and military service had always stood me well in professional situations where keeping your mouth shut frequently means the difference between walking away alive or having that notification made to your next of kin. In my soldier life, knowing when to speak and when to suck it in came naturally, as it usually does for those who manage to make a career out of it. In my personal life, I was usually pretty outspoken, to say the least, and that certainly had caused me more painful situations that anyone deserves in this life, but as a wise old sergeant once told me, when your habit is digging holes and setting traps, you learn pretty damn quick to remember which way you entered. It saves your ass most of the time. And with the sort of covert work that I had done for most of my time in, ass-saving was at the top of the resume, along with the usual in-the-dark-of-night stuff that they write books about and make movies glorifying. And I won’t lie: having never really grown up very much from that pudgy misfit 12-year old, I had always enjoyed the cloak and dagger kind of stuff, which truth be told did not come around twice a week like the movies would have people believe, but every so often I had been tasked with the job of blowing something or somebody up, and just like those hotel implosion videos that everyone watches on TV, I got a really big thrill out of that small part of my job. Everyone loves to see that stuff happen.

If being a good soldier was something that I had taken seriously, and it was, it paled in comparison to how I took trying to be a really good dad. And Jane, to her credit, had really stepped up when our oldest started middle school, and with the blessing of her new husband, she quit working so that she could stay home and be there for the three of them as they entered the always-exciting world of estrogen. Better her than me; I have enough trouble with my own hormonal imbalances most of the time. But in fairness, we had both agreed, in a rare instance, when we separated, that we would always make decisions and conduct ourselves by taking the girls into account first, by putting their lives and their needs ahead of our own, and hopefully as a result to come up with a divorced parents’ model of how to do it right and not irreparably screw up your kids because of the bad choices that you had made before they even came along. It might sound a little silly, but it worked. And since I have always been a typical male in that I think in an extremely lean, linear sort of way, the whole thing was a natural for me. Men, generally, are like dogs, of course: we see the ball go through the air, we want to catch the ball, we run after the ball, tongue flapping and legs pumping, wind blowing and mouth open with teeth bared in a big happy grin – and we forget all about the fact that the ball has gone too far, out into the street, where there is lots of car traffic whizzing by – where we can get killed in an instant – all because we were chasing a stupid ball. Men, in other words, are almost always simply about getting from point A to point B, and it is not restricted to those of us with military lives, I think it has pretty much over time been hardwired into us: hungry, need food, find food, take food, eat -- and worry about the details some other time when we are not hungry.

I pulled up and parked in front of the house that used to be mine, and looked at it with a little twinge of affection. It was a nice place, on a little cul-de-sac with seven others just like it, and lots of big mature maples and oaks, with big yards for kids to play, and all the things that suburbia used to whisper to city dwellers, that siren call that created neighborhoods like this one in the late 1950s and early 1960s, places where men who saved the world could come, have a home, a wife, children, and a little chunk of the America that they had risked their lives for on distant beaches and in dark forests. Of course, in the case of my growing little tribe, we were the third generation to inhabit that house when we moved into it in the spring of 1990, just four weeks before my second daughter was born. And while the neighborhood had changed, as they all do, over the years, it was still families, most of them on their second or third homes, and looking for the same sense of community and security to be comfortable, to raise their kids, and to have a close-by, needed oasis from the craziness of Washington and the darkness that often surrounded what we did for a living in the service of our country.

Part of our separation agreement, the one that every lawyer I knew told me I was a complete moron to suggest, much less sign, was that I was giving Jane the house, with no dollars exchanged, with the requirement that she live there with them until our youngest daughter turned 18 or graduated from high school, whichever came first. I did that, along with a lot of other things, because I felt then that I had let my daughters down by allowing Jane and I to watch as our relationship died one final time, and I wanted to do whatever I could to ensure that the girls’ life stayed as close to what it had been as possible; that their lives were as untouched, day-to-day, as they could be: sort of like a neutron bomb – they get up one morning, and everything’s the same except that daddy’s gone. All their toys and books, all the furniture throughout the house, their bikes strategically dropped right behind the car on the driveway – everything the same while everything had changed. This was my feeble effort to leave as little damage behind as possible, since I knew that there would be plenty in the years ahead that would be completely beyond my control: eventual remarriages, step-siblings, all of what happens when two people decide that they can’t stay together but that that neither one of them sees much point to living alone, that life, while not what it was, will have to become about something, or someone, else.

And as luck would not have it, at that particular moment, on that Friday, my someone else was somewhere else, having left me one Saturday morning in July, by waking me up at 8 in the morning and telling me that I needed to get dressed and come downstairs. When I did, all I saw was boxes being filled and carried out to the U-Haul trucked parked poorly in the driveway. And so, after six years together, four of them married, it was over, just like a neutron bomb, and that irony was not lost on me at all. While I knew that we had grown apart in some ways, and while I knew that our life had not been what it could have been in the past couple of years, I never saw that coming. It was the emotional sucker punch of the century, and to say that it stung is to understate it by at least several degrees. Suddenly, all of the evenings going out to do “some errands” for two or three hours started to paint a different picture than the one that I blithely assumed at the time. And the out-of-town trips to visit her sick mother for the weekend. And the phone conversations that frequently had her getting up and walking to another room while she talked. And so on. Looking back, I was a dope in many ways. But at the same time, thinking about it all made me seethe sometimes. I never have had much time for those who would deceive me, even though deception has been a part of my stock-in-trade over the years, and being deceived myself really gave me cause for pause.

While my history with Mary was significantly shorter than the one that I shared with Jane, it had been intense in a way that usually only the middle-aged among us can fully understand: this was supposed to be a mature love, a grown-up love, a love that involved that last third of life, where we had made all of the stupid mistakes that people make before, and that now we were finally old enough, and wise enough, to enjoy each other and spend time together and watch our kids all become adults and start lives of their own. It was supposed to be a time to reflect, not on our shortcomings, which we both knew well enough, but on our successes and on the things we were proudest of having done, or having not done, as the case might be.

Jane and I had been married for nearly 16 years, had three beautiful daughters together, and had known each other for over 25 as I got out of my car and started heading up the brick walkway to the door. There was a lot of history behind that door, as I approached it, and knocked, even though, because of the girls, I still had a key. I always knocked. Jane opened the door, and then the storm door.

“Hey, come on in. I’m glad you came over,” she said, walking backwards a little as I entered the foyer. “You want a beer? I’m having some wine. You want a glass of wine?”

“A beer’ll do just fine, Jane. Just fine,” I replied slowly. She always had wine, to start out with, and I always had beer. I had no intention of this going any longer than a beer, anyway. I walked into the living room and picked a chair and sat down, immediately lighting the first cigarette. Jane walked in with my beer and her glass of wine, and sat on the sofa across from me.

“So what’s on your mind, this afternoon, Jane?” I saw no reason for beating around the bush, since she had called me the day before to ask me to come over.

“Well, I just wanted to find out how things are going with you, how you’re doing, that’s all. Just check in, ya know?” This was a deepening mystery already, and I had not been there for ten minutes. I took a long drag on my cigarette.

“I’m doing okay, I guess. I’m getting along. God knows I’ve been worse, at one time or another. Why the sudden interest in how I’m doing?” Again, let’s cut to the chase here, baby, let’s cut to the chase.

“Well, I’m just concerned, is all. I mean, we are raising the girls, and whatever is gone between us, you are still their dad, and so I worry about you sometimes,” she said as she lit up her cigarette. She took a good long drink from her wine glass. “You know, how you are doing affects how you are generally, and the girls always know when you are upset or not doing well, and that impacts them because they love you and they want you to be happy.” This was getting curiouser and curiouser, as Dr. Seuss would say, and I resisted a momentary urge to ask Jane why, if the girls were worried about me, they weren’t there.

“I appreciate your concern, but it’s my marriage, and I’ll handle it. I’ll do my best not to let it affect the girls. They’ve seemed fine to me in last couple of months,” I said as I took a long drink from my beer.

Jane looked me square in the eyes, with those chocolate browns that had disarmed me so many thousands of times before. It was truly her favorite tactic, and I was impressed that she still had it going on. “I guess, I guess I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t make the same mistake this time that you made with me,” she said, draining her wine glass.

Now I have, over the years, been in more professional situations that I care to recount where I have been momentarily stunned, but my training and my instincts had always taken over, saving what could have been disaster. But in my personal life, for reasons that remain unclear to me, I have never been that quick. “The same mistake this time that I made with you? What the hell are you talking about? How much of that wine have you had?”

“Not enough, I’m going to get a refill. Need another cold one?” Actually, I realized that I had finished my beer without realizing it. “Yeah, another one would be good.” She got up and went to the kitchen. The same mistake this time that I made with her? What mistake? What the hell was going on here? Where is she going with this?

She reappeared a few moments later, restocked. “Here you go, Alan,” she said as she handed me another beer. Having not been able to answer the questions in my head in such a short timespan, I decided to continue to dive in, although I was worried about what lay just beneath the surface, as any good diver knows. “I’m not at all sure I understand what you’re talking about, Jane? What mistake this time that I made with you?”

She hit me with the chocolate browns again. Shit. Nothing good comes from this. “The mistake . . . the mistake of just giving up, of just walking away, of just letting it go.” She was having more than a little trouble getting her words out, and I noticed suddenly that I was breathing a little harder than I had moments before.

“You mean about us? You mean about our marriage breaking up?” I asked, incredulous that after nearly 10 years that this subject was coming up. This was the abso-fucking-lutely last thing that I had been expecting. The last thing. And in my head, I heard: What. The. Fuck.

Jane said, “Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Us. There used to be an ‘us,’ remember? It wasn’t all that long ago.” Every muscle that I had, and a couple that I did not use very often, clenched. The lightning quick tightening almost pushed me out of the chair.

While I was trying to think of a response adequate enough to bother trying to push out of my mouth, Jane continued: “When we separated, you just quit on ‘us.’ You just gave up. You didn’t make any effort to see if . . . if maybe things could have worked out differently, if maybe we could have worked things out, if we could have found a way to stay together. You didn’t try to woo me back, you didn’t try to wine me and dine me, you just . . . you just stopped. And then, after a little while, I decided that you weren’t going to try, and so I moved on without you.”

I had been in enough situations where your heart involuntarily starts racing to know that I needed to pace myself with my response to these totally unexpected words coming from Jane. Still, with all of my training, and most of my wits, I had to work really hard at it for a few moments. Jane, after all, my rational, big boy self said inside my head, was quite happily married to husband number three, who, while initially having presented himself as someone that I would truly have loved to stomp to death with my work boots, turned out to be a nice guy, a good stepdad, and maybe even somebody who, under entirely different circumstances, I might have liked to go out with and toss back a few. “Let me see if I have this straight, Jane,” I finally replied. “Are you saying that we might have stayed together if I had come after you? Is that really what you are saying here? Because this is the first that I have ever heard of this. The first. Are you anything even remotely approaching serious, or are you just having some fun?”

Again, with the chocolate browns: “Alan, I’m being serious about it. And I don’t want to see you blow it with Mary the way you blew it with me. I just wanted to try to get that through to you, so that you could do things differently this time, do things differently by doing something with her. You didn’t do anything when we were separated except lick your wounds and act pathetic. I sometimes wish that you had. Sometimes, Alan, I really think that you could have been a contender. But you didn’t do anything, you just gave up on us. And when I realized that, all of a sudden Matt came along, he came into my life, and I moved on. I had to, I needed someone, and I needed to be happy with someone, and he was there, and you were, you were wherever you were, but that wasn’t here.”

Weird is not a strong enough word for what I was feeling. More like surreal. More like I am watching some stupid chick flick, except this time I am in a starring role. This made absurd seem quite reasonable. While I wasn’t completely sure of what I was feeling, I knew that I didn’t need any recitation of how she met Matt, any more than I needed her telling me at this late date that I had ever stood a chance of keeping our marriage together. The only thing that I was starting to feel sure about was that I needed to get out of there, and soon. “Well, I appreciate your concern, Jane, and I want to say thanks for your advice, but as I’ve said before, it’s my marriage, and I’ll handle it, however it needs to be handled. And I really mean that it is sweet of you to think about how I am doing with all of this, it really is, but I will take care of it. Really. I will be okay.” I got up, surprised that I felt a little lightheaded for just a split second, but thought nothing of it considering what she had just said to me, and after a couple of beers to boot.

Jane stood up, a tiny little wobble to her from two glasses of wine, at least. “Alan, please, just think about what I said. Just try to take it to heart, okay? If you need someone to talk to about it all, just know that you can call me, okay?” She had turned up the chocolate browns again, looking for my eyes, which I was averting out of instinct. Once burned, twice shy, as they say.

“Sure, Jane, and thanks, I appreciate it. Really I do. But I’ve got to go. I have some stuff I need to get to . . . .” I heard my voice trailing off, as if it was coming from someone else. I walked to the front door, leaving Jane standing there near the sofa. “I’ll talk to you. Bye,” I said as I fumbled like a kid with the door handle.

“Okay, Alan. Take care of yourself. Bye,” Jane said as she approached the door to close it after me. I stepped outside and the sun had started its daily descent, ever so slowly sinking behind the treetops. I got in the car and just sat for a minute or two, just trying to collect my thoughts.

And then I drove. I drove all around, thinking. Thinking about the bombshell that Jane had dropped on me about us. Thinking about what her motive really was, and then wondering if she had any motive at all, thinking that maybe she just really did still care about me. Trying desperately to put it all together, to come up with some sort of rational explanation that would allow me to absorb all of it as being something even approaching real life. My mind wandered through all of the years that Jane and I had been together, all of the good times and all of the not-so-good times and all of the bad times. The bad times really did suck, regardless which one of us was mostly responsible for them. And I finally decided, right or wrong, that Jane probably didn’t have any ulterior motive, that she was just trying to be helpful, and that she really did care about me, and I let all of that go out of my head.

Then at some point, I started thinking about me and Mary. Remembering how she had just walked out on me, with hardly a word, even as I watched her pack up her things and casually load up her rented truck. I remembered that incredibly sharp sense of loss when I returned to the house later that July day, after she had packed everything up and left. How everything of hers was gone, and everything of mine was left behind, a little like a neutron bomb. She took the cats too, all four of them. The house was not empty, but empty enough to feel like it was some kind of a tomb, and it had no sounds of cat bells, no noise from televisions, no people just in the next room, just me, feeling exhausted, feeling emotionally raped, feeling so totally alone. Every step I took on the hardwood floors had an echo to it, or at least it seemed that way to me. That first night alone in the house was a long one, and I stayed up way later than I should have, sitting in the middle of a silence that was far too silent, far too surreal.

And as I continued to drive, I thought about the days and weeks after. How the hurt and pain had nearly overwhelmed me. How I struggled each day to put one foot in front of the other, how I desperately tried to develop some sort of optimism about the future for me and Mary, even after we met for coffee in late August, and it became clear that she was not interested in trying again, in even trying to try. And how I had tried my best to put on a good face for my girls, which I am sure was not very convincing to them. They were all pretty intuitive, and had seen into my eyes, much like I imagine Jane did earlier. That vacant, dull look that even blue eyes as blue as mine could not mask. That hollowed out look that people who have been mortally wounded always have.

As the weeks passed, and the pain fell into that backseat that we all have where we put things that we would rather not deal with, but can’t really get rid of either, I became aware, ever so gradually, of the anger, the bitterness, the resentment, beginning to grow inside of me. Not a rage, not a firestorm, but a deep, simmering, slow burn. An anger unlike any that I had felt before, just below the surface, always present, but never flaring.

And as I drove, the feeling of that anger started coming back fresh, back from where it had slumbered, and started rising to the surface again, as it had the week before when I suddenly found myself thinking about Mary as I was packing boxes and sorting through junk, preparing for us to put the house up for sale. It was almost as if it were a new emotion, one that I had not experienced before, although after not very long, I recognized its face as a familiar occupant of my head.

After a while, I found myself in front of the house that Mary had leased back in July when she left me, parking my car as if I was arriving for a visit. And I sat there for a few minutes as dusk overtook the sky, and I marveled for a moment at how magical the sky looks at dusk. And I thought about what Jane had said, and I thought about what Mary had done, and I thought of all the various chapters of my life, all of my checkered past, professionally and personally. And on balance, I thought, not so bad. Not so great some times, but overall, not so bad. Except for Mary. That had been uncalled for, and I had not deserved that kind of treatment. And as I sat, I felt the anger start its slow burn inside me again, I felt its heat, I felt its swelling presence, I felt it creeping into my head like a nervous cat entering a room, and I realized that I was struggling to breathe.

I got out of the car, and noticed that the lights had come on in Mary’s house, and wasn’t quite sure why I hadn’t noticed that while I had been sitting in the car. I wobbled a little as I walked up the sidewalk a little way, not unbalanced, but not fully in control either. So I stood there for a full minute or more, and pulled myself together. Then, very casually, but with great effort, I hit the tripwire, turned, and got back into my car, and managed to drive away. The two hours on the timer would be more than enough time to get to Fredericksburg, establish my alibi, and wait for the news. And of course, the force of the explosion, contrary to what you may have seen on television, would be more than enough to obliterate the timer and the tripwire, so I would be free and clear, once again. Even though I was blowing it again.

A contender.




November 21, 2007.

Copyright © 2007, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/11/09

Saturday afternoon at Ned's Point

at Ned's Point,
with the verdant grass
swelling at our feet,
I lay the crisp white bedspread
stretching it out, each corner,
to a perfect square,
and watch as you
slowly place yourself there;
you are the loveliest sight
that I have ever seen,
mavourneen;
you are
resplendent,
and your fullness
glistens
with a fine patina
of moisture,
as you crook your finger,
and beckon me,
and your eyes lock
onto mine,
and the air becomes thick enough
to drink,
and I take my place
next to you
forever.



August 11, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

The GOP’s 5 stages of Grief


It’s easy to pick on the teabaggers.

That’s not the start of a joke, just a statement of fact.

Looking at the crowds of people who are protesting their own self-interest, what they are saying makes no sense.

The people who got a real tax break are protesting taxes.

Medicaid beneficiaries are protesting Government Run Healthcare.

A guy who got in a fight while protesting healthcare options, has to beg for money because he has no healthcare.

And of course the Birthers.

An intellectually lazy person that is unwilling or unable to give up their preconceived notions could call these people “Stupid” Like this:

Teabaggers real Fear

The Truthiness is out There

Squirrels have a liberal bias

Clarifying Stupid

Against Stupidity the Gods themselves Struggle in Vain

Watching these Conservatives is like watching Wheelchair Basketball, for the first ten minutes it’s the funniest thing in the world until it dawns on you that these are people who are suffering that are trying to regain a sense of normality. After realizing that you kind of feel like an asshole for picking on them.

It’s the same thing with the Conservatives, sure they are funny to watch then you realize what is driving them and it’s not quite as funny.

Conservatives (by definition) don’t want change. Underneath the offensive language they believe that things are good enough now so change will probably make it worse.

So what happens when change is needed because our present course is leading to total destruction? They see the end of the old world and react like they would to the death of a loved one and go through the 5 stages of grief.

Stage 1: Denial

“Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of situations and individuals that will be left behind after death.”

The Birthers are the best example of this, the total refusal to believe that America elected someone who wanted change. (The racism that comes up is just another aspect of the denial, some members of the birthers would rather be considered racist than face the fact that change is necessary).

Other examples are the Conservatives that believe George W. Bush was too liberal, or that the New Deal extended the Great Depression.

The evidence of Peak Oil and the collapse of our Debt Driven Economic Structure is too much for them to deal with so they simply try to ignore those facts.

Going through this stage doesn’t mean they are mentally deficient in any way, it just means they are human.

Stage 2: Anger

“Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.”

This is the stage that the Teabaggers and the Healthcare Reform Protesters are going through now. Looking on from the outside it’s hard to fathom what was going on in the mind of the guy who was angry because he lost his healthcare benefits so he got in a fight protesting healthcare options. This is like the dying patient that lashes out against their nurse, or the loved one who gets angry at the doctor treating the patient.

The teabaggers aren’t really angry at getting a tax cut, the people who lost their healthcare aren’t mad at the Senators who are trying to get them more options. They are mad at the people who are embracing change and look on this crisis to build something better. They are mad at the people who look to a better tomorrow without fear, as they can’t get rid of that fear themselves.

Stage 3: Bargaining

The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the person is saying, "I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time..."

People are wondering how Sarah Palin could in the course of a few days could go from unfounded anger, talking about “Death Panels” and killing babies, to calling for civility. I am hoping she has entered the Bargaining stage of grief.

She might be the start of Conservatives saying, “Hey, I understand the world has to change, but if we can just go a little slower…”

Stage 4: Depression

During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect themselves from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer an individual up that is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.

Kramer’s ratings are slipping, conservative investors are throwing in the towel. Soon Fox’s ratings will plummet as conservatives give up hope that they can stand in the way of progress.

This will unfortunately be a dangerous time for America, as during this period of depression we will effectively have a one-party system, as the conservatives will completely withdraw from politics.

It will be up to the progressives to police themselves, and political parties have shown they are lousy at that.

Stage 5: Acceptance

This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the death that is approaching. Generally, the person in the fifth stage will want to be left alone. Additionally, feelings and physical pain may be non-existent. This stage has also been described as the end of the dying struggle.

When conservatives reach this stage they will accept the old world is gone and throw out the things that aren’t working.

“Drill, Baby, Drill” will turn into discussions of large “Wind Farms” vs. “Personal Solar Panels”. “No to Socialized Healthcare” will turn to what is a basic healthcare right to be covered by the Government, and what is a luxury covered by insurance. The anti-intellectual movement will move from “A war on Science” to trying to determine the point of diminishing returns of science investment.

In a few years Conservatives will forget they were ever against Alternative Fuels, Healthcare Reform, and Science and embrace these things that they are attacking now and defend them against any change.

Recognizing that the teabaggers and healthcare protesters aren’t idiots, just people going through the stages of grief, it would take a real big asshole to pick on them.

For regular readers of my posts I want to reassure you, if you hadn’t guessed by now, I am a real asshole and I will continue to pick on them.

8/10/09

The Teabaggers real fear


Paula Abdul Appointed to Obama Death Panel. The latest rightwing rumor.

Many are worried that the right-wing appeals to idiots is running out things to make up to try and scare people with. Sarah Palin’s attempt to link counseling on living wills to “Death Panels” would seem to be the bottom of the barrel, but I’m sure the Republicans can dip farther into the crazy bucket.

They have already tapped the Anti-Vaxers telling them the Government plan would mean forced Vaccinations (It doesn’t but it should), and the people who don’t get irony by telling them it would mean a government take-over of Medicaid, Medicare, and the National Institute of Health (You know the guys who do the drug research). Why not take it farther.

Bobby Jindal could tell everyone that under the government plan exorcisms wouldn’t be considered a medical treatment (oops that one is true).

How about appealing to the homeless crazies by saying the government plan will outlaw tinfoil hats, that should get their base riled up.

Maybe Sarah could repeat the line she used about how the Federal Government will spend money on research to find cures instead of treating people. Because everyone (at least her followers) knows that we can’t have science in medicine.

She could tie the two things she is against together, government provided rape kits and allowing the elderly to go to the emergency room and say how the government plan would allow police to gather evidence against rapists, and not allow the elderly to die while waiting for simple procedures (oops that one is true as well).

Maybe they can roll everything together and go for the sum of the fears that frighten their base.

The Ultimate Republican Fear

Government Healthcare will turn people gay, if you ask how you are picking on them for being Christians (even though there are many gay Christians), this will lead to homosexuals breeding out the Nordic bloodlines (‘cause them homosexuals breed like bunnies), since only white people can be Protestants this will incur the Protestant God’s anger.

He will lash out against the US by causing the Large Hadron Supercollider to spew out mini-black holes that will destroy American cities in the south as judgment on their sinful ways.

This will lead to mass immigration of non-English speaking people to our country and history shows that America can’t survive waves of immigration.

This immigration will allow al-Qaida to acquire suitcase nukes that weigh 5lbs and can’t be detected by simple Geiger Counters (these only exist in TV series 24, but al-Qaida is relentless in seeking fictional weapons) that they will deploy against the US for its insult to the Protestant God.

This would cause the France to make a new World Currency making the US dollar worthless.

This makes China repossess all our oil drilling rigs so we can no longer tap the totally infinite amounts of oil under US soil and we have to turn to drilling for geothermal power, which will cause massive earthquakes because God does not like people using alternative energy sources.

The earthquakes lead to massive media piracy making content generators to ask their fans to support them through advertising or direct donations cutting RIAA out of their fair share of $23.85 out of every $24 CD. Without Sony and EMI controlling the music industry American culture can’t dominate the world and Japanese and European companies will control culture.

With people living longer under a government run system, social security will run out of money and gangs of Elderly Citizens (Gray Panthers) will roam the streets attacking the young and fit members of society for money.

In order to appease these Gray Panthers the government will start printing money leading to hyperinflation and it will take a wheel barrel of cash to buy a loaf of bread.

Finally the combination of all these things will make Americans turn away from watching TV and will go out and talk to their friends and neighbors and realize that they don’t have to live locked up inside their homes afraid of the outside world and let corporations to take away their civil liberties one by one.

And having citizens that aren’t afraid is the Republicans ultimate fear.

8/9/09

glimpses of the Divine

glimpse
is an interesting word:
from the Middle English,
glimsen,
meaning: to glance;

earlier today,
en route to the vegetable garden
to secure the day's bounty,
I startled three deer,
two big bucks, and a doe,
who took a couple of ten-foot leaps,
and were gone into the forest;

(they likely had come
to again enjoy the yews)

and the simple sight of them,
brought me this happy news:
it is not so much
how much
you believe
in the Divine,
but rather,
how much
the Divine believes
in you.



August 9, 2009.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

a better look

the woman carrying hulahoops
into the park this morning
smiles broadly
when she sees me;

I know I have blue eyes,
killers,
I think to myself,
and almost say it out loud,

but be careful, mujer,
many a spinnaker
has been torn in two
as other racers were
dashed
against these rocks
over the years;

yet her smile
never fades,
even as she draws closer,
for a better look.



August 9, 2009.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

"Yes."

steady wind,
out of the south,
at ten knots --
sunny --
but not too hot;
a perfect day,
a sailor's dream,
if sailors had dreams,
but they do not;
luckily
for the chosen few,
one of whom
happens to be You,
while sailors sail,
poets dream:
You in that white dress,
here on the verdant grass,
smiling, laughing,
saying
"Yes."



August 9, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

Still Another Saturday Afternoon

The early August afternoon was sunny, but the temperature mild. After several hours of mowing and weeding the vegetable garden, I was ready for a cold drink, and several hours of writing and editing. The work was everywhere: stories for the newspaper to research, emails to be sent, websites to be looked at, a writer's first novel to be edited, my own stories to edit, poems drafted that needed polish and then posting, along with the usual jotting down of various snippets and notes for future use.

Just as I sat down at the computer with my cold drink, she appeared in the doorway, the vision of her capturing my attention immediately, as always: denim Capri's and that pink baby doll, those glorious dark curls everywhere, big silver hoop earrings, cute pink slingbacks, and those smoldering brown eyes -- eyes that could reduce a man to a simmering pile of goo in moments. She smiled, and lit the dim hallway instantly.

"Hey baby. Taking a break from the gardens?"

"Indeed I am, mi amor. I am done out there for today. Now, I must turn my attention to my work."

"I was hoping that you would turn your attention to me, dude," she said, the smile fading ever so slightly.

"Baby, you know how much I love you. But this work is what pays the bills, most of it. And I have so much to do."

"Come dancing with me, baby," she said in an insistent whisper.

"Baby, you know I don't dance."

Her eyes gave me The Look. "Still, for me?"

I averted my eyes, briefly. "Eh, no, mi amor, but I will watch you for a bit," I said, with a small smile coming onto my face.

"Dude, dancing with me is like having sex with your clothes on, and yet, still you resist?"

"That's an interesting image, baby. Do you mind if I use that in a story?"

"Eh, you steal my words for your stories all the time. Why should this be any different? Fine, I am going out with the girls. I will be late," she said, hand on her hip.

"Baby, please do not be angry with me. I never want us to part with anger between us. But I must get some of this work done. Mi amor, please understand, okay? And if you must go, then go and have some fun. I will be here waiting patiently for your return."

She turned slightly, in full profile, framed by the light coming in from the hallways many windows. She seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then pivoted and took two steps toward me, her eyes on fire. "Eh, the girls are always running late. I can spare a few minutes to please the eyes of my love," she said, with the soft smile that so often tantalized me. She turned on some music, a samba, and slowly began to dance for me, and my eyes were riveted on her form, her curves, on her slow, deliberate gyration. I was transfixed, and I heard myself say "I adore you" perhaps a hundred times over as I watched her passion displayed in front of me, an audience of one. I found myself rising from my chair, and moving toward her, no longer in control of myself. Taking her in my arms, I felt her fullness meet my hands, and I nearly swooned.

"So you have gotten me to dance with you after all, my love," I whispered into her ear.

"Eh, dude. All roads lead to Rome. And I am Rome."



August 9, 2009.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/8/09

satiation

you and I have
hungered to know,
what those
first few moments
will be like;

not surprising at all,
given the freight
that we each
have carried,
over the last
six months;

know this,
mi amor:
I wait here,
with open heart,
and open arms,
to give you that
abrazo
that you have
dreamed of
for so long;
to kiss you,
like no one has
ever before,
no one,
es verdad,
mi amor
;

all that you
have wished that
you had,
all that,
and more,
siempre.



August 7, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

that you love me

why not just hold the season,
what could be the reason,
for letting it all go to seed,
far more than we need,
not so much an affirming action,
as just a done deed;

hold me close, baby:
I think I might be fading,
not just the bright parts, baby,
but the shading;

I still seek, even though now weak,
the colors of your longing,
the way that they laugh, and speak,
at the sound of your calling;

I am loose now, baby,
ready to set sail,
and maybe,
to set the first nail,
to let the hammers wail,
to let the finished product
tell the tale:

and still, I repose the faith in you,
that what you tell me,
is always true;

and so I wait 21 more days,
to see all of the ways,
that you love me.



August 5, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/7/09

a short one, for a long one

so there is this woman,
my Wifey,
and she is the smokin' hottest
rockin' woman on the planet,
you see,
and she means the whole
fucking world to me;
and she loves me so much,
not just a whisper,
but a big, badass touch,
that she is going to drive
over four hours,
just to see me,
just to be with me,
in less than three weeks;
and that thought alone,
cuts down to the bone --
it makes me weak --
to think that I alone,
make her vow to seek,
to take, to awake,
the love monster that
lies inside me, asleep;
enough to make me weep,
this incredible woman,
whom I shall always keep;
this treasure beyond all
measure, whom I adore:
what else is love for?



August 7, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/5/09

to be true

I look down,
from time to time,
as I type:
I see the vicious monster,
knowable,
perhaps not scientifically,
but still,
by type;
she will rob me,
quiet, in the dark of
night,
when I am not looking,
O, what a terrible fate
she has cooking,
deep inside me;
Kristie asked if I had
given her a name,
and I laughed,
pretty much the same
laugh that I reserve
for old lovers,
the one that knows
no boundaries of the
covers;
and I told her no,
but that I had thought
of naming her Kristie,
so that we could be
closer,
somehow;
but now,
with no cavalry
on the horizon,
I think I may just call
her Bitch,
as if anything at all,
would disinfect
the Witch,
that will toss me
one last ball.

but she will only
defeat this meat bag
that I have been
consigned to;
she will not get at
the man
that you pledged
your love to;
she does not have
that power,
that control,
though she seeks it;
it will not be hers,
she will only be left
with a pile of shit,
and I will be free,
to go from galaxy
to galaxy:
searching for you.

and I will find you,
and you know this
to be true.



August 4, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/4/09

highway

we were all out there today,
dammit
we were all out there,
and we were all damned well
going
somewhere:
some of us
as pissed off as can be imagined,
and some of us,
well just in a big goddamn hurry,
and still others,
just
restless --
tired of being stuck
in the middle of a
downward spiral
at 100 miles per hour,
into the pier of the overpass --
yes, goddammit,
like Buk, only faster
(he had it clocked at 85),
going out in one glorious fucking
bang, bang, bang, clang, clang, clang:
to nothing

the nothing that we deserved
the nothing that we observed,
the hopeless clustering of a big fucking lie
told to us by others
before they died,

and we raced each other out there today,
baby,
like nobody's fucking business,
and like usual,
the biggest dog got
the biggest bone,
and the happiest dog on the porch
was the one who got left alone;

and next to us, at a red,
two Harleys, cruisin' red,
a guy on one,
and a girl on the other:
bandanas, fuck the helmets;
all chrome and testosterone,
and the Cruiser clad in black,
leaves them behind,
no slack,
and you smile,
as I gun it,
four seconds in a quarter mile
PT stands for Punk This;

we were out there, baby,
going faster than any sane persons,
because we were crazy, baby,
we were crazy, enough to be
burstin',
and we bobbed and weaved,
and we did as we damned well
pleased,
and it felt so fucking good,
flying recklessly
from neighborhood
to no fucking good,
we were golden,
it was our hour,
and we understood
absolutely nothin',
and that was as it should
be,
contrarily:
nothin' from nothin',
and it is always free,
free as the songs that
spring out of me,
as we drive,
feel alive,
take control,
go for a speeding stroll,
fly through the gates,
and flip a bird at the toll
takers, the soul achers,
tellin' the whole road,
to kiss our asses,
taking names,
and withholding passes,
suckin' up all those gasses,
and makin' love to people
who wear glasses;
just losin' control,
losin' control, baby,
losin' control.



August 3, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

it is so

pinch me,
please;
can this
possibly
be real,
what I feel;
how you
surround me,
astound me;
you are
all around me:
mine,
all of the time,
and time
passes
so slow
and I never
see you go,
you are here,
forever near:
tell me,
it is so.



August 2, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/3/09

the last test

she tells me
everything,
and I know
nothing;
she shows me
everything,
and I ignore it;
presented
with a
supernatural
love,
I sit
astounded,
to at last
be so completely
blessed;
stunned,
that, without
even knowing,
I have passed
the last test.



August 2, 2009, for the Wifey.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/2/09

one more day #2

people may
wander,
sometimes
aimlessly,
but ants
are always
on a mission,
carrying
much more
than their
body weight,
steadily
advancing,
overcoming
obstacles,
or simply
going around them,
their purpose:
the communal good,
the communal
survival,
one more day.



July 28 and August 2, 2009.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.

8/1/09

Somebody I missed, or no fun at funerals.

I have to thank Teresa over at teresamerica for pointing out a really stupid group I’ve forgotten to make fun of.



No, Not them. Fred Phelp’s group is so idiotic that any attempt to make fun of them would give them more credit than they deserve.

Nope, it’s the conservatives that troll the Internet and say that somehow this group is a bunch of liberals.

Now I do understand how conservatives would want to distance themselves from Phelps even those that believe 9/11 and Katrina were God’s punishment for Gays and Short Skirts, have to look at Phelps and say, “Dude, you’re an idiot.”

But trying to pin that group onto liberals takes a feat of mental contortion that I can’t even begin fathom.

If you want to do some strange mental contortions try equating Kittens to Hitler:



Thanks “Cats That Look Like Hitler” for that image.

Or, try to imply that Hollywood is against guns.





I wonder you would try to imply that?



At least then we can see that the alternate reality you live in intersects the real world at some small point and is merely a tangent existence to our own, that could possibly be calculated using differential geometry in n-dimensional Euclidian space.

But trying to pin Fred Phelps to liberals puts your reality somewhere out there that is beyond the edge of the observable universe.