Tag: Family

Beer Cans on the Counter and Random Thoughts at 0436 08.03.17


Just woke and fixed a salad made up of cucumber, sweet onion, tomato, and Caesar dressing. Love it. Thinking of writing a play. Wish I had the talent. Don’t think that I do. In the meantime I look at my family history and think of all the rich material there and believe it is sad to let the story not be told. I look at life and see mistakes, countless mistakes, and a tragedy that should never have occurred and wonder just how to handle it. I wonder if it should be told and does it really matter. I don’t know. Really. I don’t know. I just see this pile of shit (can I say that?) and wonder about it all. I wonder who would it matter to except for myself?

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Once
a poem by Gordon Kuhn Copyright 08.03.17

I was young once and lived all alone.
Each night I sat drunk in the dark
And listened to the neighbors fighting down the street
He said, she said, oh who gives a royal fuck.

My nightly dinner a plate of fresh boiled spaghetti,
The sauce a greasy mix of fried bacon with sweet onion
My drink a tepid six pack of cheap bought beer
The couch before the tv was my throne
And drunk I had not a drop of respectability
As I staggered about in my individuality
Inside the one bedroom apartment
Lost in a world without companionship
Lost without counsel, without guidance
And faced life confused and all alone.

Beer cans setting on the counter
One rolled up under the recliner rocker
Neighbors fighting down the street
He said, she said, oh who gives a fuck
Simply leave me alone, all alone
Its how I want to live, all alone
Being young once and eating a dinner of spaghetti
Its sauce fried bacon and onion on top a greasy mix
Washed down by a six pack of Old Milwaukee
I could not afford a better fare.

Beer cans setting on the counter
My body asleep on the floor
Alcoholism was the bed time Teddy Bear
Beside the bed near the door
Where I could see the beer can under the rocker
The neighbors screaming, fighting down the street
He said, she said, oh who gives a fuck.

Beer cans setting on the counter
The neighbors fighting down the street
He said, she said, oh who really gives a fuck.

Poem: Heartbeat at Night /// 8.1.17 A


Heartbeat at Night

by Gordon Kuhn
Copyright 8.1.2017 all rights reserved.

I stand alone in the steamy dark
Listening to the sound my heart beat makes all alone
and the other voices there never reply
no matter how I call out their names and I fight and try
to hear a voice, a single voice,  come to me from out of the sky
For I am all alone in the steamy night
I speak to the dusk surrounding and there is no response
My words echo back so lonely in the night
I speak to the darkness surrounding and there is no response
for living ghosts never show themselves in séance
at least none that I have ever found
and their voices never reply, and they, should they try?
to be so earthly bred and bound a monument to the living
no matter how much I speak and try and I cannot make it by
listening for a single voice to be found, just one to speak to me
as I stand all alone in the night, the steamy night and am so alone
to hear a voice come out from the sky, to simply reach me before I die
from those there standing so clearly in my sight

New Car and Other Random Thoughts


Have a new used car. Jumped into a 2016 Honda Odyssey EX-L. White with light interior. Sliding doors on the side and a power rear door. It has all the bells and whistles.  It has a camera on the right side for making turns and the first time it came on I thought I had lost part of the car as I didn’t know it was there. Fast. Smooth. Not like the 2007 Chevy. PU truck that was my love and I planned on being buried in it. Alas, not to be. Too hard a ride to go to GA and other places and besides Tread, the German Shepard service dog was miserable and getting rebellious about getting in and out of the truck. Suzie, the Great Pyrenees had no problem. She was a love and I miss her and her brother, Sergio, and Tifton the little brown dog we found one Labor Day weekend driving through Tifton County in GA.

rabbit tears – run rabbit run


Chapter one: How do I love thee, let me count thy bruises.

He stood in front of her rubbing the knuckles on his right hand staring down at her where she sat on a wooden chair in front of him. He growled as she reached up to where blood trickled from the bruised flesh below her right eye. Touched it, saw the blood, then lowering her arms clasped her hands in front of her on her lap. Slowly she looked up at him with tears racing down to her chin. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he voice trembled. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The year was 1926. She was just 19 and he was 27.

He slapped her hard jerking her head to the left. She slowly recovered. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“So, my mother and sister are liars?” Blood stood against the vows of marriage. Sometimes blood is stronger, and in this case it was. “They saw you at the theater”

“No,” her voice wavered, “no they, if anyone it was Virginia and all I did was acknowledge an old school friend.”

“Who you then went into the movies with.”

“He had his girlfriend with him”

“You sat with him.”

“I sat with them, not with him,” she said her face hurting her badly. Her tongue slipped sideways and found a tooth had been dislodged.

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Bacon and eggs and coffee, please.


So, there you have it. Breakfast in a world where many have nothing to eat and there are those who blame us for that tragedy and yet the “old world” was established for a very long time and mostly lives in pre-Christian  terms. America became independent, went to work, used capitalism, not socialism or communism and definitely not under a dictatorship government to get to be where we are today. Yet, there are those who want to toss all that away out of fear that someone might come along and kill them. Well, get real people, there are people out there that will kill you just because that is the goal and sucking up to them isn’t going to save your ass but challenging them and fighting for what we have here will at least give us a chance. If you believe that socialism or communism is great then for goodness sakes don’t let the door smack you in the ass going to where those economies are. You want to live in a dust bowl with killers running around then go, but please don’t expect everyone else to follow your hysteria while you drop your drawers so you can be violated by thugs.

Dinner With Diane Brinker


Jan and I were very fortunate to have as a dinner guest yesterday evening Diane Brinker who was one of  the eight sisters of Kathleen Briles. There were 9 girls and 2 boys. Diane shared a lot of details with us and it was a pure blessing to simply be able to sit and talk with her. In some ways, having conversations with her and others, the people in these stories become family to me as I ride along listening to the fun days and the sad days. It is so sad to me to meet them with all this pain brought about by one person, and the tragedy is that Kathleen would not have died if the FBI had not failed to keep their computer data base up to date. Diane shared photos of her sister and her family with us. It was a wonderful evening but so tragically  brought about. It leaves me with a major responsibility to write Nightmare in Terra Ceia with as much sensitivity as I can muster.

Poem from Standoff: Bare


STANDOFF  is a book of poems that I will be publishing soon. This poem is one of them: BARE. I simply decided that I would post this one for the time being. I hold the copyright on this. 

BARE

Flesh laid back,

Bare!

Raw, no cover to protect

From salt thrown upon there where the whip struck

Beneath the layer thin and thick

Atop with matted hair that hides

Emotions deep run and amid course shall stall

As the owner fails to know the path laid out

Laid out, but not in common diagram of visual plane

Leaving the direction needles spinning mindless there

Nor can one tell or master the storms drifting path

Should path be there hiding beneath a lacquer veneer while

The stronger weather yet to come as emotions gather

As they gather well before the bow that dips deep

So very deep, and then sliding down the hill so steep

Deep down, deep down, falling into the trough beneath emotions towers

Towers without sight of top, nor bottom have

Crashing then they upon decks wet awash with memories tossed

As the pilot fights to stay the line invisible before them

And fails to see the coming of the loss of light

As clouds of thought weigh down the saddened soul

While deck and hold covers fail to stop the rushing waters in

The ship stalls, shudders, shatters from within, rolls, and sinks beneath a wall of tears.

10/3/2016 Copyright GORDON KUHN ass rights reserved.

Yesterday Was My Birthday


Yesterday was my birthday. It was not a significant day for me. Nothing stood out. There was no “wow” factor. For me it was just another day. But for my wife, and my friends, it held a different meaning. Oddly no one actually asked me how old I am. Perhaps that was out of politeness. Perhaps, like me, they recognize that in life everything is moving forward. So on the day before yesterday I was one day shy of being fully the age I reportedly became at the hour and minute of my birth so many years before. Then, I have to say that today I am the age I was yesterday plus one day. I find that atrociously simple and yet complex in a mutually beneficial manner. It occurs to me that we begin the countdown on life when the baby is reported to have exited the mother’s womb. The record will continue until, quite simply, we die. It’s how we count the days and years. I suppose in some small way it all makes sense. I mean, it’s absolutely necessary that it makes sense for some. I don’t know if I fall within those ranks. I might. But I seriously don’t know.

What I do know is that advancing to another age, a plateau in life,  is something we cannot prevent. I find it curious to have friends who lament the passing of the years. I’m not so concerned about the years as I am the activities that occurred within those years. I’m sure that we all have moments where we examine ourselves and in many cases are not happy about what we find there. At least that is how it is with me.
I have determined that over the course of my life I have been very self-destructive at times. Perhaps I was programmed that way by the very people who should have been supporting me and telling me that I could achieve all that I want in this life by working hard. Instead I recall being an 11-year-old child riding in my parents car with my father driving and we passed an area made up of beautiful homes that had smaller, yet still opulent, side homes for guests or for family members. I can recall saying to them that one day I would be successful and I would own one of those homes and the building that was a smaller house would become their home and it would be paid for totally by me. Instead of a simple positive response from both my parents, one so desperately needed, the response was, “Sure. Your brothers said the same thing and neither one of them have accomplished that goal, so neither will you.”
So I truly believe that the programming was attached during that short conversation in which I, as a small child, reached out to the very people who should have been encouraging me, and found instead a belief that I was bound to fail. And, I believe, that I like so many others in the similar situations are doing everything we can to make certain that our parents were wrong and yet the programming, in many cases, was so strong we fail before we begin.
So my hat is off to those who try and fail and yet still fight the false images fed to them as children. Perhaps we are all winners in the end.

Sabrinauestions


Good morning on a kinda chilly Florida morning. I’ve not been outside so don’t know exactly  how chilly, but I think it’s chilly because I’m feeling that way and I’m not fully awake yet either so who knows what I might wander off into this morning.

Okay, that being said, or written, let me get serious for a moment. I have a new follower: Sabrina.

Sabrina asks some serious questions and can be found at:

https://sabrinaanblog.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/am-i-that-woman/

I think that here remarks at that location apply equally to men and to women, so those of us who are male should not be put off because she is making remarks which tend to be more concerned with being female than male. Wow, could I have written a better messed up sentence than that? I told you I wasn’t awake yet.

Anywho, as a friend of mine used to say, I think Sabrina tends to looking at herself and others in an honest way and she is asking of others to comment on some issues in which she claims that she tends to get in her own way……WOW….have I ever been there??? How about once or twice (maybe three or four times) a day!

So, Sabrina, who have asked for comments and I am asking those who follow me to go and look and see if they have similar thoughts like yours (you know we all do…except the sociopaths among us…or is that … amongst us?). Darn, now something else to worry about this morning.

https://sabrinaanblog.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/being-thankful/