Who Makes Life Worth Living?

/

Playing with my fairy-sister Jesse in St. Augustine.

How's this for simplicity, wisdom and beauty:

"And while I don’t expect you to save the world,
I do think it’s not asking too much
for you to love those with whom you sleep,
share the happiness of those whom you call friend,
engage those among you who are visionary,
and remove from your life
those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.”

--Nikki Giovanni, poet

How to cram for a triathlon

/

Rule no. 1: don't. But since it's in my personality type and Jesse Pace signed me up for June 22nd Oly in Ft. Lauderdale, FLA that's what I've gotta do. However, here's the resposibility card: My fitness level is pretty good for swimming and running, but biking ... groan. The biking sabattical has been loong. So, here's how I get at it: the buddy system. Without the buddy system I"d still be running 10 minutes miles at six miles max and probably still listening to my WALKMAN (which is what I still call my iPod).

So, Saturday was Get After It Day and I emailed Matt to see if he'd take me on a ride, I took him to Colman, we swam 3000 meters and then Matt took us on a 40 miler down along the Cedar River Trail. Rule no. 2: make your training as beautiful as possible. The Cedar River was extremely high, a deep silver green and I spotted herons and a quatrain of baby duckies. Rule no. 3 ALWAYS, AlWAYS, stop to say hello to animals. Make nature your heart rate monitor.

On the last ascent with about 5 miles to go I asked Matt if I should do a little one-mile run afterwards to get the feeling of a brick, like I had to ask. "Do two," he said. So I did.

When I was done I didn't stretch at all except some little lame phone-ins on my calves while boiling water for pasta. I've noticed lately, when tired, I tend to go on a stretching strike, and I have to ask myself: why do I, after putting in all this work, at the last minute stop showing up for myself when I really need to keep myself healthy? I think it's the downfall of being too tired, it's hard to care -- some people over eat when they're tired, yell at strangers and babies, and some of us eek out a training session and then come home and collapse.

Somtimes I see myself as a mother who goes to take a nap while the children run wild in the living room and she doesn't care what she wakes up to see, broken vases, torns blankets... And while a philosophy of logic class from the ages of yore outed the fact that argument by analogy is a false, I need analogies for their visuals and metaphors in order to "see it." Plus I'm a poet so there.

Today I ran and swam and not much stretching again. Ok, none. Maybe this week I"ll be a better mother to myself, or ask: What would my wisest self do? Stretch! I am not full of wisdom today, instead have sights on Las Vegas and an episode of CSI.

A poem for jocks and dirt lovers

/


Cave Creek park, AZ, April '08

Thanks Gary, for sending this poem to the triathlete's email list.

Cartesian Meta-Analysis

I'd like to state that I

have been thinking

of Descartes and his statement:

I think, therefore I am.

These I think are the words

of a man too long at his writing-table,

and too little in his garden.

With insufficient sunburns,

and too few mosquito bites.

I am uncomfortable

with his comfortable idea

that we are real

by virtue of our minds.

That the words in our heads

make us real enough

to voice those same words.

These I think are the thoughts

of a too-sheltered mind.

I am uncomfortable

and therefore I think.

And therefore I am aware

of my body, my mind, myself.

That's my philosophy.

A good strong cramp,

near the hamstring,

would have alerted Descartes

to more than mere thought.

Better to develop a blister

than an ontological theory.

Better a long day of walking

on a rough, dusty path

than the thought

that thought is worth more

than the touch of raw earth

against your feet.

Or another's hand

held loosely in your hand.

--Rich Haydon

Your Organs My Organs

/


Your organs my organs
they know how to love
liver spoons heart spoons
a pair of brains that hide under
the covers so what we aren’t well-
dressed out in the world I don’t like
how the coyotes in your stories go for
girls in headlamps and mallards
a shut kitchen door. I believe
Do Not Enter signs are calming

Only you can come
into the ragged circle of
my deep freeze I'm thawing can you
hear the drip drip sound?

I am the corpse of a dead virgin
lying under the village of a man I don’t know
Together we feel like my ancestors running
for ports and ships to borders they had to
sell anything: songs a soft ass breasts
wedding rings everything to cross the
waters into oblivion they closed their eyes

No one warned them that
new trespasses are like fleshy territories
a new body over an old one or like yours
over mine a passage of North and East
wasp and gypsy we come together
over rocky seas and settle wildly
like orphans and seamen we fall
into a soft down bed calm for a while
oblivious of how far back we go

I am like nobody else

/


Loneliness by Sergei Chepik

I am like nobody else sitting at a big desk fanning
a big paycheck no I am only like the stream of people

falling down rooftops or sitting at the edge of a bed
while a body lay under sheets fanning itself with sleep

I'm sitting at the edge of my head I am like all those people
whose chins pull hard at their necks while the Rolling Stones

or Strauss or 50c play from a speaker over the wall.

It may be a favorite song but we can't even pick up
the vibration our noses only smell graveyard soil
we have a pica it's to chew on ourselves like glass like ice

and rise above everything everyone. But transcendence is a lonely
business. Do you want to lose the touch of your feet trudging with

all the others that storm this young ground of the 21st century?
Stay. And start at the foot of your bed cry for your lover

who has stopped kissing you on your mouth during love making
let your toes rub into the tiny pebbles lost inside

the carpet. There are so many ways for a heart to
break. There are so many ways to repair ourselves.

I May Be a Slut But at Least ...

/

I may be a slut but at least I'm not married you bastard
leave now and when the garbage goes out you'll be in it
the handkerchief I used to you-know-what is in the mail.

I may be a bastard but at least I'm not married you slut
all you have on me is a story a nut getting stuck up
my five-year-old nose at least I got it out before my ride came

Being married to a slut and having bastard kids
is nothing like Adam saying to Eve “You better stand back,
I don’t know how big this thing gets.”

In one of my more erotic daydreams Beethoven comes
to clean my house. He’s in ruffles and a too-small suit
shock therapy hair he bangs on the piano and says Ach! a lot
the duster sits across his lap he plays one-handed using the other
to bat the cat away. He doesn’t clean a thing just grabs
my ass on the way out I can feel his calluses.

You bastard I'm not married least I may be but a slut
so you're home in bed I'm poking a fire with my giant walrus
sitting on the couch you left me with a ticket at the
fair you left me for the zoo didn’t you know
I can keep you behind a cage it's here in my ribs
I will set up a hammock for you throw in some kids

Least married I may be, not a slut you bastard I'm after you
like a hurricane coming in for shore but like some storms
I'm off course and I hit a Canada cold front.

Goddammit I have a slut's sense of direction everyplace is home
you have a married man's gypsy heart you bastard child
we are both like a villanelle, complicated, repetitive, hard to fit

Sometimes I take it all good bad ugly and finally I sleep
Thick green leaves fall on a summer morning huge rain drops
hit a warm shoulder there’s a shiver of a woman with
brown knees carrying a beach towel to the park and walking
towards her is a man she's never met will never say more than
an absent Hi to and forget his face immediately

this man who could love her picks up a leaf
this man goes home and calls his brother who
died a week ago he could use a slut about now the un-
married bastard his kids don’t call anymore
he could use that kind of firm Beethoven hug any kind
of hug -- who wouldn’t want any kind of strong embrace
from anyone anywhere on a day like today?