Sifting through the shifting sands

Rich Ferguson
December 2020

December 20

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve made mistakes in my life. Just the other day, in fact, I mistook the skeletons in my closet for new suits of clothes. Before that, I put my foot in my mouth with my other foot was already there. As a kid, I once uttered “serial killer” when I’d meant to say, “this is really killer breakfast cereal.” More than once, I’ve rung Pavlov’s bell at the howling hour, leaving a thousand drooling wolves at my door. I’ve lost count of all the ways I’ve decorated my walls with misspellings of decorum. Time and again, I’ve imagined far more beautiful versions of myself, yet I’m still waiting for them to reply to my fan mail. Should you see me on the street, I’m the one with a “for rent” sign tattooed on my forehead. Sometimes my brain needs to be occupied by better decisions.

December 19

These are days where we gotta prove we can pay it forward while running backward. That we can breathe while underwater, or balance our checkbook while balancing the weight of the world on the head of a pin. Times like these demand we gotta have a stiff upper lip and a lower lip ready for kissing. We gotta prove we can get ahead even with one wish tied behind our back. That we can stand on our head in a world turned on its head. That even though our third-eye is in the shop for repairs, we can still recognize the difference between the get on up and the lowdown. Gotta prove we can take beatings from fists coming at us from every direction. That we are fully formed and realized, not just some dream dreamt by a dream not fully dreamed.

December 17

The night may grow wild. Sleep may bear teeth. Storms can press their lips to our footsteps, blow until they get a tone whose dark song steers us off course. The calendar may stand with its back to us. Moments, months, and minutes speed up and suddenly slow down like time taking its first driver’s test. Still, our hearts maintain their constellations of joy, our bodies held together with brightness. Courage remains strong—many breaths long and a lifetime wide. As for the wolves at our door, I’ve replaced them with flowers.

December 16

Discarded beds upon soon-to-be winter sidewalks. Where brittle leaves fall, so do weary bodies. But don’t let the quiet fool you. Don’t overlook the unwritten history of anonymous warrior hearts. While last night’s dreams have been bruised and beaten by a brass-knuckled moon, they still rise to face a new day.

December 15

I have this notion that the sky sees us as its own sky. Sometimes it views us as storm-sullen with our riots and hate-mongering. Other times, we appear sunshiny with our lovehoney buzz and thousand-watt optimism. Sometimes the sky sees us as different cloud patterns: artists, stratocumulus; nihilists, nimbostratus; children, cumulus; the elderly, cirrostratus. The sky views our city traffic as shifting cloud patterns containing different images—castle, dragon, dandelion; it all depends upon the hour of day and which way the wind blows. I hear that on certain occasions, you can marvel at the bright blue above and witness it admiring you. Imagine that, seeing each other as one another’s beautiful dreaming sky.

December  14

We are a melting pot filled with the newly born and newly dying, gallows humor and divine strangers. Brawls and buses, alleyway saints and leaders without pity. We are a melting pot teeming with miserly millionaires and cynical street sweepers. Books and beauties, doves and deities. Howling dogs sensing disease in the air, black cats with tattoos of the desperate on their psyche. We are a melting pot bubbling with those who create art and those whose only art is hate. Murder and magic, the whiskey-maddened and joy-gladdened. Ingrown toenails and homegrown optimism. Locked doors, open minds, diamonds whispering our names in their sleep. Children that say the wisest and wildest things they sometimes make the blue sky blush.

December 13

Kevlar your heart against the evil and unjust. Refuse to drink their poison of prejudice. Stand firm against nazi tsunamis. Reject the offer to spark fires with hateful bones when that heat only serves revenge artists and assassins. Grace is the communion wafer sweet on the tongue. It honors our devotion to harboring good in an ugly world while granting us a taste of absolute light. And while little pieces of us may be scattered along the road from oblivion to redemption, it’s always best to arrive at your destination with your dignity mainly intact.

December 12

We will eventually rise from this dark season. We will free ourselves from nervous habits and the walls that have closed in around us. Brains that have felt scrambled like TV test patterns will gain clarity. Arms that have felt empty will bear the beautiful weight of embraces. This dark season will eventually become a powerless old blanket we’ll fold up and stuff into a keepsake drawer where we’ll refer to it from time to time when speaking to future generations about these days. Soon, the clocks will turn ahead to saner times. Tombstones and flowers will no longer need to be placed by our shadows. We will rise from these nightmares. The first words on our lips to those who helped us survive this dark season, thank you.

December 7

Something like the way the wind speaks peace when moving through the trees. Something like time fully embracing you in a single second’s passing. Or like how it feels when standing your ground at the crossroads of here and gone. Like playing poker with the devil and you’ve got the ace of joy up your sleeve. Something like how your heart feels when fists release into open hands. Or like your hands pinning a flower in the long flowing hair of night. Or suddenly realizing your life is a door marked enter. Something like finally removing all the boulders from your garden of being. Like glimpsing heaven in the eyes of another human being. Like never being ghosted by your holy ghosts. Something like…something like…yeah, sometimes life can be something like that.

December 6

Days that dig their own grave, graves where society’s braintrust has gone dust. Yet, dig deep enough, and you’ll discover doorways of new enlightenments. The off-color eyes of songs that once seemed strange to our ears offer new meaning. All around us, disease lingers on the breeze, ghosts sport worries like lousy morning hair. Dig deep enough, jewels will be discovered. Questions that once turned in dizzying circles find their way to answers.

December 5

Enraged alarm clocks and five-alarm insomnia. Sweet morning kisses and to-do lists gone stale. Coffee brewing, babies burbling. The final vespers of a pale moon and ghost-souled airwaves of pain playing across ravaged cityscapes. Oraclegush of fortune’s fire hydrant and the Tiffany-slippered footfalls of first light. Cars and bicycles stripped and stolen, birds singing like they got a degree from the University of Bliss. Mildewed wash hanging out to dry on a cat’s ninth life. The exquisite corpse of dreams remembered growing more vibrant by the moment—all the lights and darks on the keys of early morning’s piano.

December 3

A few of my many epic fails when cosplaying as memorable book titles: tried dressing up as The Brothers Karamozov only to look more like Three Sisters. Tried my hand as Beloved, but more resembled The Stranger. The Sun Also Rises became A Scanner Darkly. Leaves of Grass ended up looking like The Wasteland. On the Road wound up Under the Volcano. Song of Solomon became Portnoy’s Complaint. East of Eden turned into Journey to the West. Jesus‘ Son looked more like Satanic Verses. Breakfast of Champions turned into Naked Lunch. One time, however, I tried dressing as Death in Venice, ended up looking more like Life of Pi.

December 2

Perhaps if I had ridden the soul train and you’d boarded the peace train, if you’d taken a walk on the wild side and I’d traveled the dark side of the moon, if you’d saved my double bubble from double trouble and I’d rescued your fallout shelter from helter-skelter, if your obliteration had a bit more alliteration, if my consonance had a little more assonance, if your funny bone found my humerus humorous, if my stairway to heaven didn’t so much resemble a highway to hell, if you were Bloody Mary and I were Bigfoot, if you’d hickeyed my memory, if I’d French-kissed your Belgian waffle—perhaps we’d see more eye to eye.

December 1

What is the sound of one person hugging? What happens to election results deferred? Do they implode or simply slink off to spend the rest of their days on a New Jersey golf course? It’s better to pontificate upon current interest rates than to proliferate with profligates. If, on any given day, the color of the sky doesn’t match the color of your mood, don’t worry. Storms come and go, clear skies come and go. If you ever plan on escaping your current mental state, it might be best to have your papers in order before crossing the border. Either that or travel underground, discover different inner-worlds in the making. With each new breath begins responsibility.

November 30

I don’t know how to wear my heart these days: on my sleeve or deep within my chest, protected by the fortress of my ribs. It is said that with every breath, one’s ribs expand 3 – 5 cm. Those ribs, which serve as bone Kevlar protecting your lungs, spleen, and liver are actually quite sensitive and can be damaged by a sneeze. An urban myth has it that Jane Fonda and Raquel Welch had their lower ribs removed to make their waists smaller. Humans have three types of ribs: true ribs, false ribs, and floating ribs. Ribs are the reason Neanderthals didn’t need belts. Your ribs move like a bucket handle. Some people kick the bucket because they can’t get a handle on their addictions or emotions. But I digress. I’m just trying to say I don’t know how to wear my heart these days.

November 25

The river is my love colored deep. Like the way fate is connected to breath and our ability to maintain breath sometimes determines the depth of our heart’s future fortune. When the thread is cut between us, there are shadows that escape the depths we once explored together. All that is left, a helter shelter trading its last wild tooth for a roof that doesn’t leak. I understand other waters are more easily traveled and certain shadows remain more steadily by our side. Blue is the color I whisper when I want you to remember the clear waters running between us. When I go under for the first time, my breath reminds me to know when I owe you a fortune of love.

November 24

Because we’ve risen from ashes and fallen from grace. Because we’re warriors, because we’re wounded. Because we can be bastards, because we can possess the beauty of alabaster. Because we’re sapphires and savage, rubies and ravage. Because we demand the right of way even when going the wrong way. Because we’ve thrown stones in glass-hearted houses. Because we can wear rings on all our fingers yet still not be Saturn. Because Saturn returns, because others leave us. Because blood was the ink used to sign our birth certificate, because tears will be the official seal on our death certificate—that’s what makes us human. That’s what makes us devoted and defiant.

November 23

The yin and yang of this life thang—honesty and heroism, cowardice and cruelty. Goodness rising above injustice, truth shrouded by a fog of lies. Consciousness rising, leadership failing. Joy’s gigglesquirm kisses and grief’s coldboned chill. Birdsong and lullabies, gundoom and suicides. Music and lovemaking, disease and deathquakes. Dogs that are more like therapists and a president that’s more like a sociopath. Joblessness and debt, poetry and promises kept. Goose-steppers for hate and others choosing to sing and dance in the rain. Folks like MLK, Coltrane, and those of us sharing a dream supreme.

November 21

Down at the junction of rhythm and ruin, modalities of mortality play out in different ways—the song of Lady Day blows sweetly on a blues breeze as the tropics of hate continue to rage beyond boiling. Good-hearted people still find reasons to sing in the rain as this ongoing reign of annihilation pummels us with injustices forged from stone-blind stone. Every day, “Amazing Grace” plays on a humble record player refusing to skip over the scratches in our collective psyche. And while the rhythms sound extremely warped and one-sided at times, there’s still beauty to be found in the song of who we are.

Read an interview with Rich Ferguson on Arteidolia→

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Pushcart Prize-nominated poet Rich Ferguson has shared the stage with Patti Smith, Wanda Coleman, Moby, and other esteemed poets and musicians. Ferguson has been selected by the National Beat Poetry Foundation, Inc. (NBPF), to serve as the State of California Beat Poet Laureate (Sept. 2020 to Sept. 2022). He is a featured performer in the film, What About Me? featuring Michael Stipe, Michael Franti, k.d. lang, and others. His poetry and award-winning spoken-word music videos have been widely anthologized, and he was a winner in Opium Magazine’s Literary Death Match, L.A. He is the author of the poetry collection, 8^th& Agony (Punk Hostage Press), and the novel, New Jersey Me (Rare Bird Books). Ferguson’s newest poetry collection, Everything is Radiant Between the Hates, will be published in January 2021 by Moon Tide Press.
Rich Ferguson →