The best buzz word that names the word that names the words used that names the words expected that makes the words used most
The more its said out loud, the more the words heard are the words that rationalize the words that are mostly used wrong
Always announcing some part that secretly knows that the meaning gleaned is never wrong but words of those whose use the words wrong for their own right reasons
Which makes it reasonably right for the best use of words, rightly (for me, maybe others)
is to remember how right things were before the entrance of all the bad punctuation, and misused words with thee worst meanings wielded
The plural form of “me”… (to not) make sense of most words anymore
just the words that meet and greet at call and response
It’s been a long time, and a lot of change(s) has kept me in an interesting limbo-adjacent space where my creativity and all the actions associated with it ended up taking an extended pause for grieving, mourning, healing, celebrations, passings, people leaving/returning/leaving again antics, and a bunch of other colorful expletives to describe how my being 40-something was going…
Today, I’m at my happiest space knowing that at this moment (though I may no longer be 40-something), I am a 50-something Soul whose still writing, still living, still breathing, and this post is my reminder and my alarm that my creative outputs will be, finally, shared outside of my comfort zone… I’m an artist, and I can/do change(s)…
It’s no secret: change(s) is/are REAL! I’m thankful for some of them; others, I mourn/grieve my own way regarding them; others, still, as confused as I am over the how/what/why of them, I also don’t suffer fools, so it’s all good…
Happy 2025… if you’re still here, new here, or returning, I’m back like I never left…
I’m a man of a certain age and I can wish you well from the heights of wellness to the lowest depth of the water well’s bottom that old buckets descend to retrieve, by the gallons, what was needed aboveground to replenish a home’s supply for a few or many and
the wish could change just as the bucket gave way to the mechanics of the manual hand pump that revolutionized, at the time, the way my 3rd and 4th generation grandparents accessed the needed resource… but my wishes are always that others be at their best with or without me because
I’m a man of a certain age who at a certain time
(or three)
way back when wished for salvation over a porcelain bowl for hours the day after several ladles of punch poured into
(then)
clear plastic cups from bathroom tubs in houses/apartments I didn’t know who who lived there; where my friends and I showed up with bottles of grain alcohol to add to the skyline of bottles of proofs higher than unseasonably warm
(close to 93 degree)
weather days on the cusp of spring and
mornings
(over the course of several years later)
I can still wish you well up-close, though mostly from afar
(to protect everyone involved directly or loosely, believe me)
and I have been okay with both the kind and unkind narratives I never chose to be placed among beings who didn’t consider that I’m a man of a certain age who takes books page-by-page to savor meanings and leanings of subject-verb agreements
(and understandable disagreements)
in stanzas spoken out loud by those who hid their voices and hands after throwing rocks
at this age, I have mastered catching many of these stones thrown midair; crushed them into powder for years while cheering on each of us who wakes up to live another day
despite the timeless breaking points anointed as normal by familial/nameless ones whose claim to notoriety is believing that becoming a man of a certain age isn’t worth celebrating I send well wishes across distances when and where I can in wordy sentiments or silent intentionality even when
their berating antics continue as if they have ever had the luxury of thinking time is on either of our sides
truth is I cared until I didn’t have to…
if witnessing days’ dawning all these years has taught me anything, it’s that men of a certain age know when to let memories of things and them(s) rest inside graves they’ve dug, finally, become overgrown into unmarked, indeterminable ones because
the Earth has a way of making sure that man’s missteps of breaking and fixings leave no traces as if they were never there to begin with
One day, there will be a commuter rail line on the other side of the factory across the alley… there will be a station for arrivals/departures for travelers located either two blocks south or three blocks north of this spot where the streetlight in the alley lights up the backyards of each home on the east side of the street…
One day, nighttime sky memories will remind the city’s dwellers across its grid to look up and remember being able to see across vast distances as morning’s light enters…
One day, the call of “timing” will make peace with all it begins/ends…
Try as I might, it’s hard to be in a forgiving mood with music when the lyrics tell everything you never wanted known… like
Bill Withers’ “I Don’t Know”…
which I can never forgive because I’ve felt as old as time within minutes heart filled love and heartbreak blues… I know; just didn’t know he did, too…
the opening chords make the swelling begin as the tearful revelation this time is worse than the last time and the time before that… and
I still listen like it’s brand new…
and Donny Hathaway’s “Magdalena” shouldn’t make me bawl but I do when he says
your love is like a razor / my heart is just a-scar
and it breaks down into wailing reserved for moments in front of covered mirrors; reserved for leave-takings into rooms closed up and away from everyone because the guttural emotion is more than a notion to share even with a best friend… and
there’s never anything wrong in the first place… I
just like the music and how rhythms and sounds and sentiments move me… I
listen with complete attention as if the first time… and
maybe this is the last moment these lines and any others stir anything… maybe
it was never the music intending to bring anything beyond rhythms and sounds… maybe
all the feelings come from nowhere, but even chances go around when the lyrics start… though
all you want is for those feelings to end… forgiven or not
sometimes, it’s all the things I’ve come to know that make me hesitant to claim any more than I can hold within my arms…
other times, it’s all the inner workings of what I have yet to know that keep me owning only what memory and intention allow me to dream…
but there are times, being here, that I want to forget it all and forge ahead, onward to somewhere else…
where these new ghosts are afraid of heights, and I will climb even higher to outrun them and their haunting…
I’m not from here, I’m from somewhere else on the other side of the Great Lake where the shore spans the entire eastern border of the city I call home…
sometimes, I like to believe I’m from nowhere, so old passages can’t claim me
…because I never was…
sometimes, I believe that hopelessness is a myth, that truth is a moving car parking around a corner I don’t reach because I walked in another direction…
and sometimes I believe the best thing about life are the endings that begin something else altogether if I look closely enough and just listen…
and it wasn’t enough time in the day to keep those feelings in check
it can’t take the telling signs
it becomes non-rhyme reasons to expect a steady hand holding a jagged line
it’s a nonsense thing
an essentially harrowing tale told to no one in whispers
it’s the mere mention of being present
it is resentment
it is reaching
it is a reaching upwards when the ceiling lowers all it’s own
it’s a seething hysteric in an otherwise blank matter
it was blown clear across a night sky through thoughts and wishes from beyond
and right there, right then, slow steps and voices muted just enough to avoid detection select the spacing of left-brained thinking that all is something else
but mostly
(don’t profess to know all the right things at the right times)
it’s the feeling of being halfway wanted to go fully away
BEING 40 SOMETHING 