We are in denial
about
Life and Time
and thoughts
and memories
that die
when we die,
about reality and
feelings &
rockets and
space and
energy and
pompous
assholes
and Love.
Look again, both ways. One more time.
Denial is fantasy.
Gaps undeniably exist. Mind them.
sucks to be me, nothing close to carefree.
what works barely gives me life.***
On break, having coffee,
at a walk-to place from work.
Age came up.
Larry could always make me laugh,
a raised brow or expression,
his subtlety with humor,
the ability to play it straight
with a sincerity of stupidity.
We volunteered numbers,
all 40-somethings.
Larry looked serious.
“I just have one question.”
He’d set the bait. I knew better,
but one must play along.
I took the hook,
lest all fun be spoiled.
He looked straight at me,
and patiently awaited my response.
He was from the Buckeye State.
We met as underage roommates.
Both junior Air Force enlisted. Later
each married Texas gals
both opted for university:
Larry to UT, I to A&M.
As roommates, Larry thought me loud,
badly behaved, and unworthy of him.
He was classical. I was rock ‘n roll.
Incompatible, but no harm done.
Twenty years later
while wrapping up military careers
as Air Force officers,
he was a chopper pilot who served in Nam,
I was a B-52 crew dog.
When our paths again crossed,
we were distant friends, no more.
I asked, what’s your question, Colonel?
He asked, “If you are younger than I am, why
do you look so much older?”
I’m older than Larry now.
Rest in peace, my funny friend.
©Bill Reynolds
Look both ways. Mind the gaps.
All the best stories are past, or soon will be.
Remember.
“I am strong, but I am tired, Stephen, tired of always having to be the strong one, of always having to do the right thing.” Brenda Joyce, An Impossible Attraction
I’m not always much of anything.
I’ve been an old white man for a long time,
a branded stereotype with good teeth
and a bad attitude,
apparently not supposed to ask for
some things, cuz I am old and white.
It’s okay. Perhaps they’re fucking right.
Equality is in, unless you happen to be
old…
white…
and have what’s left of an old hard on.
Others were (and still are) treated like shit
by white guys. Nazis were, are, white,
male; no fucking idea how old fits.
Some old men are idiots, non-millennial
impotent bastards who hate everyone,
and everything, especially women.
Stereotyped, hairless shit heads
with nothing to do
but make mankind worse.
It’s a tough world, but we can try
to make it better each day.
To make it last.
©Bill Reynolds, 6/13/2019
Look and listen both ways for real equality. At least, don’t be unkind.
Mind the gaps like lifelines with stories to tell.
I almost never wanted this – to be a writer,
but I write, I drink too,
seldom too much
anymore.
That’s not discipline or pride,
it’s from bein’ too fuckin’ old.
Thinking of words, I write them and then
I point, and I say, “Hey look, I’m a writer.”
Quite certain that of the many who
thought they had taught me English
as an academic subject, who gave me
perhaps deserved grades without motive
with one exception, may groan in their graves.
A good man, Thornton looked at me, “Why
are you even here?” I think he knew.
School was mostly bull shit. I learned little,
but it was still involuntary servitude crap
I never wanted to do again. Not like that.
Even college.
Today, I might not kill them,
but they might think I would. Back then,
I thought I needed them. Now I know.
One or two might scare a bit. Maybe.
A few. Very few. Assholes are not
educated out of it. But I write.
Look at me.
I think I always liked it (writing that is),
but nobody ever (till years later)
said that I was good at it. Maybe Thornton
hinted. Even Miff W. said, “You know,
college is not for everybody.”
Maybe not Miffy baby, but it was for me.
Surprised? Don’t be. You motivated me.
Look both ways, maybe with some bitterness and sarcasm.
Find motivation in the gaps.
I live my life on a road
somewhere among stop
and smell the roses,
live this day like it’s your last,
or be active and get shit done.
Torn a little between bitchin’
‘bout being old and its baggage
and happy as hell to be so well.
Lucky is what they say, privileged
to be no worse, like dead ya’ know.
I used to say — live fast, love hard,
and die young. Like the Meat Loaf song,
two out of three ain’t bad, and besides,
I’m still having fun wonderin’
and wanderin’ up-n-down this ol’ road.
It’s time for some wildflowers
and maybe tomorrow I will
stop and look them over, and live that day
like it’s my last, dance like y’all ain’t lookin’
maybe I’ll even find a way
to get some shit done.
©Bill Reynolds 6/4/2019
Live, love, and look both ways. Find and mind all the gaps. Live well.
Jim was watering his experiment
for his ag doctorate, Grasses of the Brazos.
The good ol’ country boy let his smile show
when I observed and laughed at him
for making a big deal out of a bunch of weeds.
They were not flowers or cash crop plants.
Jim said, without looking at me,
“a weed is just a plant out of place.”
Over fifty years now. Where did they go?
I remember Jim
and his greenhouse full of weeds at A&M,
we’d go spray water on them weeds daily.
Later Jim would defend his dissertation about
Brazos Valley dirt and river bank weeds.
Doctor Jim was a dirt man, agronomist.
Just a plant out of place.
Jim got his Ph and D in dirt.
Then, he moved away to California;
who with his high-pitched, out yonder,
Texas drawl, old Jim
was decreed Doc Jim, the good-old-boy
from Meridian, Texas.
In his own way, he became
a plant out of place.
Many times, I have been a weed,
a person out of place,
or so I felt.
I needed to be in a different place,
to feel unweedly,
wanted by anyone,
or not. Was I where I belonged?
Or, was I just another plant
out of place?
Was I
in the place I was supposed to be?
Bloom where you’re planted,
that’s what they say.
Weeds need to grow everywhere,
but it is nice to find your space.
No longer, am I,
a plant out of place.
©Bill Reynolds, 5/23/2019
Look both ways crossing but look all around for misplaced plants and people.
Mind the gaps, weeds grow there.
Freedom is a place
for minds and bodies,
one where I don’t belong.
It’s not where I am. I’ve never been.
It’s just not me. Can’t be.
And you’re not me.
With me?
Is freedom
no masters—no gods?
Am I free when I owe nothing?
Or, perhaps it’s something more;
I’m a life-long indentured servant.
Tell me what is freedom—will you?
Irresponsible of me to ask—but,
if freedom isn’t free, how can it be,
Freedom? Can you see?
Are we ever free?
Completely free, like birds.
A tree is more free
than are you and me.
Is there such a thing as truly free?
Can a society of people be free?
Or can’t you see,
the reality
of being
truly, truly free?
Ya know, it don’t matter to me—
we alone know
what it means to be,
or not to be
free. It just don’t matter to me.
Is there happiness in freedom?
How the fuck should I,
or should you, know?
We are a lot of things.
Free is not one of them!
© Bill Reynolds, 5/20/2019
Look both ways and be not slave to follies and deceit.
Heed the gaps for they may be the crevasses of your mind.
Part of me does not care. About anything. It hurts and yet, it dulls the pain. It is like a graft of nihilism on a life that screams fuck this to me, fuck you to the world, to the random meaningless of the universe. We are insignificant dots of nothing lasting less than a blink in the time bank of eternity. Dust. Then dust again. Can I love nothingness? Does the insignificance of meaning bring the refreshing quaff of the quiet hum of true love’s peace? What does it mean to not care?
Is that it? Dare I stare?
Is it? Are they correct?
AM I?
In the true end, nothing matters.
Is it all just one wee blip
unnoticed by a chaotic universe of
apparent orchestrated randomness
neither sweet nor bitter?
Are left and right the same?
Are choices and decisions fruitless?
Come to me, hold me, love me,
here now, today; this second is all
we have – no more. When this is done
we are finished. The dust of Cosmic rays
and light passing through hollow lives.
Find a good end. There is none.
Most are miserable psychotic,
drugged (if we’re lucky) endings
to whatever sufferable step through
the veil into the nothingness of forever.
Look both ways but live now. It’s all there is.
Mind the gaps, but don’t let them slow you.
Universal Death patiently awaits
each, forever it’s permanently there
welcoming every kind of life over eons
it’s always been the same, birth before Death,
if birthed at all, and some sort of demise
for both the stupid and the wise.
The universe knows each speck of dust,
each one of us for thousands of years
and will do the same for thousands hence.
We may count the minutes, hours, and days,
but in the end Death only counts the ways.
© Bill Reynolds, 5/6/2019
Look both ways in life, but we’ll not see beyond the veil.
Mind the gaps, in the end is the last gap.
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