Machines making miracles manifest
as realities resolutely remold;
faded facades of fallacy attest
that stacks of souls have already been sold.
So keep your wits — don’t be twits! Stay tuned,
because a real world still waits in the wings
to play its part for skeptical hearts soon
sick of these clown car clashes of (so-called) kings.
It’s funny, how they spin —
as if the sun wouldn’t shine
through an open door;
as if light won’t penetrate
through their cracked machination.
Walls always crumble —
whether by tide, time, or force —
into shifting sand;
wide open wilderness
unfolding its Truth.
We inherit ourselves.
I guess this will be one of those days where I work on me and let the poetry stand by itself.
Just give in to the light.
Listen:
finding my ears
before looking for words
means a whole lot of not speaking
my mind,
where my thoughts collect without form;
dying unknown, alone
in that umbral
vacuum.
I don’t know how some of you do it. Day after day, some writers come back and find something to say, something to share.
I’m jealous.
I often find myself apparently empty, without too much to say. Or somehow, perhaps I have too little I feel is worth sharing with others.
Am I selling myself short?
However, I’m trying to get back in the habit of paying attention to my creative spirit. Not just writing, but working with materials to bring new things into being. It’s that spirit that I believe drives all of sentient life. The other night I managed to break free of the spell of video games to take the time to rack my March meads to secondary. “Racking”, for the uninitiated, is simply the process of siphoning our fermented product out of the primary vessel into a sanitized secondary vessel. It removes the liquid from the fruit and the yeast and other solids used for the primary fermentation and allows the brewer to finish out the fermentation to their specifications.
Batch 09a, my blueberry / green tea was good. Current ABV at about 16.5%, but still fairly high on gravity. Good medium blueberry flavor, pretty sweet yet. Batch 09b, my mango habanero was also good. Current ABV at about 18.5%, also pretty sweet. Just the right amount of heat buzzing right in the middle-to-back end. Great spicy flavor that doesn’t burn!
After racking and testing the gravity and corking and airlocking . . . they were already visibly fermenting again! Sweet, that’s another first for me.
I didn’t manage to do an April mead, though. My goal was a batch a month for the first year but I’m still ahead of the curve. I’ve made well over a dozen batches by now, counting my juice hooching experiments, and taken copious notes, I have ideas for my next batch. My May mead is going to be a three-gallon batch. I’ve decided five gallons seems like a lot of work when it comes to the bottling stage, and one gallon feels like it’s not yielding enough. I’m looking to fill a dozen bottles in a single batch, that’ll make me feel good.
Hopefully, light is shining on your faces and you’re enjoying mild weather and good times. Happy Mothers’ Day to all the mothers out there, and especially to the ones in my life. We’re all here creating our way through the world, one craft, one pet project . . . one baby at a time.
A solitaire calls:
“that’s a wrap!”
no stage fright afoot.
Nobody‘s fool
fearlessly facing
its laden plate
Nervous sweat falls as
the mourning do,
their grief feeds the root.
Fighting back
the impulse to wilt
at this state
Thriving as the living do
Surviving as we fight too
Searching for a pulse
to elucidate events
unfolding today.
The charm of this noxious weed
is an opportunity.
Stamp it out,
if we were able;
is it hate,
or is it a wish
for greater control?
Fighting nature:
one hand pounding,
one hand reaping,
one hand clapping . . .
silence will fall
and weeds will thrive —
never perfect,
but running wild
with nature’s plan.
Love will survive.
Today we’re firing up our rainbow Saturday Jams EQ for a working-person’s edition of your favorite music video blog periodical!
Icy, irascible impetus
of this continued chronic cold;
wars with what we wish to will
into existence: a
rival — a return
to warmer wits
warranted
fresh, new . . .
spring
I’m not a fan of these day shift working weekends. Aside from working three days in a row, I log in to WordPress to find that I had three views yesterday, which means the seething masses of my adoring fans were looking for a Saturday Jams post that I am unable to post, which is why I’m shooting for one every other week.
Here in North Dakota, the weather seems to have a huge problem with changing its mind; in fact, March came in like a lion, and now it seems to be going out coughing up a hairball that looks suspiciously like a wet lamb. And here I am, talking about the weather again.
So on a day like this I’m lucky to be posted in the one spot where I can find time to write. I’m listening to surf music: The Gasolines, out of Brazil — A little wild with just a hint of world influence. And all in all, it’s not a bad end to a long weekend at work.
Not to mention, I just found their label’s website, which is selling digital albums for $5 USD, including a 63-track Brazilian surf compilation, each song by a different band. Not a bad deal at all at less than eight cents a track!
Today we’re firing up that tasty rainbow Saturday Jams EQ for our After the Flood edition of your favorite music video blog periodical!
What is greatness, but
A tree on earnest soil,
roots of reverence —
long limbs’ labors limitless,
largely spent honing its heart?
Looking to the sky . . .
yearning to find a way up
without letting go,
deeply desiring to dream
and to be dreamt of in art.
reach down through the earth . . .
never stopping, never cease!
Break the foundation,
probing paths for prospective
propagations to start.
Cultivate —
communicate —
Reflection.
Reverence.
Growth.
And here I am again, doing the hard work.
Of course, I never meant for this blog to hibernate, coming back to find so many lost to the donnybrooks of the past several years — the politics and pandemic, so many things that left a bad taste in my mouth and left my mind feeling infertile. I really wish people could just work together to make the world a better place for everyone. Looking back, I believe that in response to these growing situations I stopped trying. I stopped putting down my creative roots to take care of a growing rot in my life, and by the time I had it squared away I had forgotten that I had put my writing in the backseat, and it is so hard getting back to it.
I DESERVE TO BE GREAT.
That is my mantra, which a fellow blogger inspired me to formulate. I had almost forgotten: that is why I moved forward with my plan to change my life in the first place. Not that I feel so great all the time . . . rather, I feel more precarious than ever at times, and I hesitate to move on opportunities because I don’t want to lose out on what I already have, or because I find the process uncomfortable. But I deserve to be great, and I need to aspire to be great in the things I do for this world — locally, and globally. I need to stick my neck out in very real ways if I want to help.
So yes, I DESERVE TO BE GREAT. But “being great” doesn’t happen by itself. I have to make the choices. I have to push for making decent choices, professional decisions . . . to do the right things in life.
Is this what I’m supposed to put on the table when I’m interviewing for a position in the patrol division? It sure sounds good, but I’d really have to sell it. I have to internalize it. Because I do deserve to be great. But I have to make it happen; nobody is going to hand me greatness on a fancy plate because I don’t deserve it for free. We work for everything and we get what we pay for in sweat and blood and honesty.
I keep trying. I keep moving forward, and I’m not perfect. I make a poor judgment call here and there. Even those times are a bridge to being great, and becoming greater still.
We all deserve to be great, don’t we?
My hands hold an earthenware crusethat ’til recently held some good booze;the first taste was like skunk,but the more that I drunk —came to realize I’d just been confused! Whilst looking for rhymes that were tasteful,I passed up many that struck me as wasteful;after hours … Continue reading Make mine Irish — 2022.03.17
Rob's Surf Report 