Stress Management in Black and White

Stress Management in Black and White 4-16-93


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGPb8YYnxPc

Rocket ship sanity.
Lucidity on a string.
Cinnamon cappuccino sippings
entrap a waltzing instinct,
whereof my Barcoliner recliner.
Gazing from the corner of my eye,
it's Flash Gordon through the snow.
He's got his hands in his pockets
on his way to save the universe,
real casual like.
A skyward cloud jockey carousing
Oysters Rockefeller.
What's your silver lining and why?
Black coat, top hat and tie
or flannel boxers and pajama tops?
You believe mine is greener
than your side of the fence,
you forget,
there are no fences in the sky.
Stand and deliver,
you cannot fool your soul.
Hors D'oeuvres are served
from pole to pole.
Relax and save your universe.


Authors Note:
So what does cappuccino, pajamas, Oysters Rockefeller and Flash Gordon have to do with stress management? Sometimes it has everything to do with. There will always be things present in life that don’t make sense at that particular moment. Even though it may be true, it may not make sense. Under certain circumstances or from a different perspective it completely makes sense, but not from the present context.

The snow outside is coming down hard. I’m a bit stressed and I want to relax. I’m sitting in my recliner sipping some cappuccino and watching an old Flash Gordon movie. I get a kick out of the scenes with the toy rocket smoke bomb on a string. Unbelievable and ludicrous, but yet lucidity wins. I cheer him on even though I know he’s going to come out on top. Flash foils Ming’s threat to humanity with a casual urgency. He saved the Universe. So I get up and walk to the window with my hands in my pocket. Those few steps lasted longer than they actually took. Did I have too much cappuccino or was this moment surreal? The thing that was stressing me didn’t make enough sense to stress about anymore. My brain is my universe and I must defend it with the same casual urgency.

I was hungry and wanted something to snack on. The TV said something about Oysters Rockefeller. I have this ardent distaste for seafood so I made a box of Pizza Rolls. Oysters Rockefeller is not the Hors D'oeuvre in this piece. Oysters Rockefeller represents my Ming the Merciless. With a clear head and a proper perspective, it doesn’t matter what the Hors D’oeuvre is. Everything I need for the situation to harmony is right there in my universe. I just need to relax and fly that rocket ship.

Frosting

Frosting 1-30-94


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtmMredXKuo

As when three leaves left the tree
I stood up naked in the window
watching the heated summer day
fall to the ground.
I stood there a moment
left cold in shortened breath
contemplating the arrival
of a winters chill, forestalled
simply by getting dressed.

I imagined you here
and baked a cake
at the thought of you.

Still in the midst of winter,
a naked man stands in the window
reflecting the new fallen snow
just like icing,
white as a wedding cake
cooling on the counter.
A warm sweet fresh baked aroma
permeates my apartment
as I get dressed again.

Authors Note:
Frosting is about Autumn changing to Winter, keeping warm, and my recurring thoughts of a spouse while baking cakes.

About the naked part... I wake up, bake a cake, make frosting, take a shower when the cake is cooling, I walk past my chest high window on the way out of the shower and check the weather outside. In the winter, when I bake the most cakes, this is cold, and a new snow on the trees is beautiful.

I left the first word "As" out of the video. The introduction of the ingredients didn't transition well to the reading of the poem. "As" was kind of abrupt. "When" is smoother, like the frosting.

This depression era frosting goes best with angel food cake, in my opinion. Graham crackers is a close second. Sometimes after frosting a cake, the leftovers wind up on grahm crackers.

7 Minute Frosting
1/4 cup Butter (Not Margarine or Vegetable Spread! Use Real Butter!)
1 Egg
1/2 tsp. Vanilla
1/4 tsp. Salt
1/4 Cup Cold Water (Ice water without the Ice works best.)
1/4 Cup Flour 1 lb. Powdered Sugar

Cream first 5 ingredients.
Add the flour and powdered sugar.
Beat for 7 minutes on high.

Baker's Tips:
The part about the ice water without the ice, I fill a large cup with ice and the measuring cup with ice. I wait until the ice melts enough to make 1/4 cup. Empty the ice from the measuring cup and measure the water from the large cup. Ice water works best because it keeps the butter from melting. You don't want the butter to melt.

You don't want to use room temperature butter. I use butter when it has been out of the fridge for about 10 to 20 minutes. Not room temperature, not straight out of the fridge, somewhere in-between, but more on the cold side. Well chilled butter helps keep the frosting creamy.

Try adding the first cup of the powder ingredients about 1/4 cups at a time to get things going. Then add the rest about a cup at a time until the powder is blended in just to keep the powder spray down. Once everything is in the bowl, blend it for about 7 minutes.

If the weather is hot it is best to refrigerate the frosted cake. The egg and butter are dairy products and they do get melty after a while. A thin crunchy skin develops on the frosting after about a day in the fridge. Tasty.

Prelude to Resolution

12-24-94 4:00am


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RByL9ShozSY

Considering the A.M.
Four.
Silent peace.
Heavenly new day sleeping.
Nothing moves.

Not guilt, not shame, not remorse, not self pity, not resentment, not anger, not depression, not frustration, not confusion, not loneliness, not anxiety, not betrayal, not hopelessness, not failure, not fear, not denial.

I put them down on paper
to hold them still.
To fold them and put them away.
I save myself from these
and a new child is born.


Author's Note:
On Christmas Eve at 4:00am I found myself contemplating a few contenders for the New Years Resolution. Eat less chocolate, drink less caffeine, stop the foul language toward annoying drivers, and go to bed earlier. (To name a few). Excess Chocolate or a late night bed time is not really the issue needing resolve. When I get to the root of these things on said list it comes down to a number of unresolved issues. So I wrote out a list of some of these root issues for future reference. What is listed above is what that list may contain.

I have yet to make a New Year's Resolution.

Good Grief

Good Grief 6-3-91 / 11:30pm

It's amazing that in such
a rushing violent death
I can see an inner peace.
That horrible beauty,
rushing violent death,
and to accept it.
His rushing violent death.
My beautiful brother.

Grief brought my pen to paper. It was my first tool in dealing with the loss of my brother. Yes, this blog started out heavy on the death side. That is how I got started. This is not the end either. Grief doesn't go away, it just gets different with time. A couple of hours after deciding to accept his death, I understood what it meant to acknowledge the beauty of his life, despite the brutal truth.

The Last Paradox

The Last Paradox 6-3-91 / 7:00pm

Onwards inside death
lay a euphoric tranquility.
Past the last synapse
of pain and fear,
parallel to reality.
To live that moment.
To die that moment.
Whilst overlapping states
of body and spirit
dissolve to their own:
So this is what it's like to die.
How pleasant.
And the art of dying is accepted
as the act of living is
before the birth of death.

Note: After years of struggling with the violent death of my brother and acceptance of that death in the same sentence I started to look for something positive, something peaceful. He deserves better than that, I deserve better than that.

Toast

the sky was jelly
the earth was chunky peanut butter
thinking of her was like a knife
and i was a piece of toast
the evening without her was
everywhere
and it was spread all over

Note: No matter what you do that person is there, you can't stop thinking about them and you miss them. Somehow something as simple as a snack before going to sleep is not free from that longing and it is next to painful.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec3XILmLTPE

Memorial Day

Memorial Day 5-30-94

The crickets chirp.
The crow caws.
The pinwheel squeaks
in the wind.
The dog barks.
The bug crawls on my knee.
The old man plants flowers
in the distance.
Roughly eight o'clock p.m.
and eighty degrees.
Summertime.
The squirrels are busy
and the grass has grown for the day.
The trees whisper at dusk.
The sun has gone
and the night rolls in.
The cemetery is closing,
come again.

Stone Rubbing

Stone Rubbing 4-22-94

It's been there for days
sitting in the sun
in the snow
for years now
outside plain as day.
It's been a long time
to visit so often
to lay paper flat
and to color sideways
with a crayon.
It's been a long time
for days now,
a long way to saving
the markings on this stone.

Consecration of an Angel

Consecration of an Angel 3-18-94

Anointed on gold immaculate.
Robed in velvet red.
This crimson scarlet guardian.
Of wings majestic, chatoyant adornments.
Wafting on the premonition of death.
His sentient gesture of solace in the breeze
waits with empathetic sadness.
He must know what is to come.
You can see it in his eyes.
There is no other tranquility
for his mere hands,
his trusting arms folded open
propending to comfort the gentle soul of this
child
about to come unto him.
Suffer not my beloved.
Blessed you are safe.
I will show you the way.
The consecration of an angel.

New Years Day

New Years Day 1-1-94 / 2:00am

In the still chill of the cemetery
as a full moon wanes in the fourth day
my composure fades.
Sometimes I wonder which way he's looking.
His broken young bones laying there
Earth to Earth, our little angel.
Sometimes I wish I was God
Suffer the little children
to come unto me
and forbid them not.
At times I wish he had some
grandiose delusion -
said that he was Jesus or something
that some day he'd come back
to life,
and the joke would be over.
Sometimes I just pray
and kiss his grave crying.