July 27, 2009 - Coffee Break - Kansas City Missouri

At dusk the cicadas start in – chirra chirra chirra - and when the chorus  stops in one spot,  from another tree it picks up the line again – chirra chirra chirra – and then another – chirra chirra chirra. It’s the first time this summer. Remember the year of the cicada –chirra chirra chirra even during the heat of the day – and which cicada cycle was that?                    CHIRRA CHIRRA CHIRRA

And I shall sit here listening until the wine runs out or I start to fall asleep – and already it is too dark to write. And now the wine is gone – that only leaves Morphius

CEOs can matter, but we all might be better off it they didn’t – Harris Collingwood

One thing suggests another
And then it’s a matter of
            Knowing
When and how to stop
            And I can’t

Good leaders can make a small positive difference; bad leaders can make a huge negative difference – Jeffrey Pfeffer

Hep cat
Cool cat
Big cat
Top dog

The cicadas creak and so does the new wattle fencing that shelters the terrace, a nameless insect is crushing grits between its shards, the reddish bird in the pine tree calls every ten seconds, and the west wind, circling watchfully around my walls, leaves unruffled the flat, dense, hard sea, whose harsh will softens towards nightfall – Colette

SUMERTIME


And by late afternoon
Two lovers lay on the grass
While the clouds still moved
East to west
In the mostly blue skies
As they are serenaded

By cicadas


Summertime


He is leaning on the palm
Of his right hand
As he playfully slaps her ass
As they lay entwined
In the green grass


Intermittingly watching
The intermittent white clouds
Blue skies
Green grass


Summertime


As the sun goes down
The poodle parade resumes
The young lovers are long gone
The cicadas more vociferous


Summertime


It is starting to cool
Down

Too far, too late or never at all! Of me you know nothing, I nothing of you – you whom I might have loved and knew it too! – Baudelaire

A dog and his bone
Buried it deep
A cat and its kittens
Without any mittens
A bird and its feathers
Can never be naked


You’re a dead duck
Living a dog’s life
Serving as a mule

Having promised Jose the chef a handsome indulgence, absolved him from bigamy, and raised his wages, Cardinal Pirelli, in gastronomy nothing if not fastidious, had succeeded in inducing him to brave the ghostly basement of the monastery on the mount – Ronald Firbank

7:17 and all is well

The first wave of workers

Are at their desks, in their cubicles

They are the ones that get things ready
For the masses who shall fallow
They are the pathfinders
The day breakers
Night wreckers

Only false memories can be totally recalled – Svetlana Boym

The years of the seagull coincides

With that of the cicada,

This is no coincidence

Pick them off on the wing

Enough to fill their bellies full and more
Until they can poop them on out
They have to sit in the grass of the park


Bears catching salmon have a similar condition
Swatting them as they leap onto dry land
And eating only their livers


Bad florescent light ballasts
Millions and billions or
As Carl Sagen would say
Billions and billions


They shot buffalo from train windows
And for years afterwards rag pickers
With rickety wagons and two nags
Could make a decent living
Gathering bones up from the prairie


The seventeen-year locust
Have invaded the tri-state area
They promise it will only be for three weeks
Isn’t their allotted time about up
Women get hysterical
When they land in their hair


Their strategy is called
Predator satiation
But it didn’t factor in man

There was even a specialist cicada in South America (Entomology, vol CXXI/27) that feed and bred in diesel engines. It lived on emulsified fuel – Jim Crace

She’s ugly
She drunk
She’s hollering
And trying to sing
She persists
In not shutting up


From the notebooks (#48 - 6/8/07 – Nielsen’s Bakery – Ridge St & Homewood – Homewood ILL)

A big big storm front moves in – hot air is meeting cold and spawning tornados. But it is a no go for here. No big storm materializes here.
-

Lakes are our modern form of a commons. The commons have not disappeared; it is just that they are underwater and invisible.

The three-week rule of the seventeen-year cicada is nearing its end. Too many of the old folks sitting and gabbing here in the café drinking coffee – telling stories, making lame jokes and discussing their medical conditions to suite my taste. And it is proclaimed, now you are one of us, like it or not. It’s not a choice, is it? I say.
-

When the mortgage on the average home equals the average income there is no equilibrium. It is the crest of a tidal wave.