“I’m hoping to be astonished tomorrow
by I don’t know what.”
– Jim Harrison

 

I, for one, woke up this morning amazed I was not a seagull. Not some Kafkaesque nightmare, because how cool would it be to be a seagull? Tooling around in the sky over the beach, dive bombing fish, surrounding picnickers for a reprise of “The Birds.” Plus that satisfying smack! when a clam hits the rocks from 200 feet. People pay good money for raw cherrystones.

Sure, there was other stuff I was amazed at too. Like how no matter how hard I tried, when I lay face down in the grass inhaling through my nose, I just couldn’t tell the difference between one tuft of sod and another two feet apart. My dog scoffed at my ineptitude, since it is soooo obvious. One sward is clearly correct for business, the other is not.

But back to being a seagull. The flinty Yankee in me (I lived in Boston for 30+ years, so made rank) thinks I should stick the winters out around the Cape and Islands, but so damn cold. Better maybe to head south. A good life picking Mexican out of dumpsters in Cabo.

 

No picnic, this bird
I too, scavenger of scraps –
Cheetos for fool’s gold

 

Day 9, 28 Days of Unreason

 

“So I sit on the edge, wagging my feet above the abyss.”
– Jim Harrison

 

Except the abyss is the Toto song Africa playing in an empty shopping mall at 3AM with not even mall cops on Segways to hear.

Stuck in my head again after all these years when I’d finally stopped hearing “I bless the rains down in Aaaa-frica” over and over until the brink of insanity.

See, now it’s got you too – la la laaaa la la. We’re fucked. Toto on endless 80’s repeat, which was bad enough the first time around.

I blame Columbine on Toto – it wasn’t video games or bowling it was those songs from childhood scraping at the inside of Dylan Klebold’s head until he was going to kill someone.

The Toto subreddit has hundreds of clips of Africa playing over the speakers in empty car parks, stores, janitors pushing the floor buffers of despair.

I watch them all, again and again, and the absurd music video that first ran on MTV and everything on Wikipedia and Google.

There’s no way out but through.

 

Day 8, 28 Days of Unreason

 

“What beauty in this the darkest music
over which you can hear the lightest music of human
behavior, the tender connection between men and galaxies.”
– Jim Harrison

 

Starless, spangle-less,
Ford Galaxy write-off scrap –
Launch pad in the dumps

 

*Yet Another Galaxy

 

Day 7, 28 Days of Unreason

“Her nights are full of the red teeth of death”
– Jim Harrison

 

Jim? Jimmer? We need to talk.
Enough with the death.

“Her nights are full of teeth-staining red wine,
Her smile drunk to the devil’s own lees”

Or such. Nice, right? No death.

This is an intervention Jim.
Going to get you some dream rehab.
Some art therapy.
Make your mom some metaphor ashtrays
and popsicle-stick poems.

They don’t make Narcan for your problem Jim.
Might not be a next time.

 

 

Day 6, 28 Days of Unreason

“I feel my failure intensely
as if it were a vital organ”
– Jim Harrison

 

If you are lucky
maybe that taproot
your heart set so deep
is a carrot, or turnip –
silly but useful,
at least something to eat
after the plough and harrow
have done their dirty work,
and planting comes in season.

But if it is hardwood,
your soul shaded by oak
or walnut,
what you thought would hold
against the deluge
comes up a balled fist
that couldn’t let go,
decades lost
in a single night
and no way to fill the hole

 

Day 3, 28 Days of Unreason

“The cost of flight is landing”
– Jim Harrison

You will want to catch her mid-air. At least break her fall after she sews all the little silk circles together, knots in shroud lines, and tries jumping off the barn roof. She had stolen (just a few) of the tiny parachutes she packed into bombs every day out at Pueblo Field. With her brothers flying by the light of their own flames over Tokyo’s docks, she felt she had a calling.

Or when she was younger, angry that they wouldn’t let a girl go hunting, she saved her penny candy money to buy bullets. You will want to tip their trajectories away mid-flight, when she used the neighbor’s turkeys for target practice.

You will want to spare the lift of her hand to her mouth, because roasting a bullfrog over a campfire is not the best way to find out why the French eat les grenouilles.

Because when you are her very spit and image, what is true for her is true for you.

So much that when you are a teenager, those brothers have to leave the room when you walk in, unable to bear the grief from the sight of their loss.

Because you have eaten bullfrog.

Because you love the smell of cordite.

Because your own grief needs a parachute

for every tall building you enter.

Day 2, 28 Days of Unreason

“Spring day, too loud for talk
when bones tire of their flesh
and want something better.”  – Jim Harrison

 

Lotta slough talk
in the forest don’t you know,
that hard charging game
of strip poker
they play in the spring,
with bear and buck naked
all bets are off

Gotta shed all pretense
with you is what I mean,
skin that throws down
like bark torn off the trees
if that’s what it takes
to grow new with you again

 

 

Time again now to grow some new skin:
Day 1 of Jilly’s 28 Days of Unreason