The sky is a beautiful grey
And it's raining steadily in a very
Autumnal fashion, much as you'd
Expect without any of the Summer messiness.

But there is still a warmth in the air
That I associate with a lingering
Summer that cannot so easily let
Go and give up for the rest of the year.

And I drove through it without giving
Even the slightest thought to any
Precipitation or shade on that wondrous
Display in the sky of every grey in the book.

Which book? Probably the color book. One exists, right?
There must be a centrally located color organization that
Puts out a book every year with the recognized colors listed
And any shade that popped up in the last period.

There must be.
How else would we know exactly what Red looks like
Or just how blue
Is the perfectly correct shade of Turquoise or Lapis Lazuli.

I don't know.

I'm not really concerned with the state of color
And its regularization under a recognizable authority.
Regularization? Is that what I am trying to say?
It matters not; it is all bureaucracy.

It seems as if the rivers are too low
For me to set out on the barge
And the trains are running slow
And the roads are closed for some reason.

It is one of those nights that you wish
Someone were around with whom
To converse and spill and sputter
Some things that are clogging up my mind.

High and low.
Phone doesn't get through.
The Internet reveals nothing.
Smoke signals lost in the night.

You just keep questioning yourself
And putting yourself on the stand
For a never-ending cross-examination
Consisting mostly of soliloquies.

Thucydides telling lies in obscure
Ancient Greek and translators
And scholars today using those lies
To advance petty concerns.

This is what sits in the puddled path.
This is what I mention?

So where am I going with this?
Nowhere, apparently, and just then
Only as far as I went today, which was
To the woods out back for a piss.

If you squint your eyes and strain them
While driving fast and mindlessly down the expressway,
You can usually force yourself to think
That you are on your way somewhere exciting.

This morning, that did not work and I
Was forced to admit that I
Was on my way to work, again, along with
All the other Unfortunates.

I suppose that it is good to have a mind
Clear of distraction and delusion on these
Sparkling, vintage September mornings when
All is gilded and polished and the rising Sun is soft on your eyes.

You can review the bewilderment of being told
How much you are cherished and adored right before
You are quietly dismissed and summarily forgotten
And abandoned for some imagined higher ground.

You can also battle with the tangled and gnarled roots
Of your mistrust of bureaucracy and officialdom as
You wrestle with the idea of returning to finish a higher education
That you never really started in the first place.

You can fall into and out of love with your best friend's wife.
And you can do that a couple times a week - because she is
Understanding and listens to you and because she exudes motherhood
And empathy and eases your thoughts with tender eyes.

But that's ok because it is impossible not to fall in love and everyone
Expects it and it only lasts long enough to get you to empty out your
Thoughts on whichever it is that is troubling you - because confession seems
To demand love. Then all returns to normal and friendships reign supreme, again.

Then you get to work.

That 'poem' was terrible.

Apologies.

He gets used to certain states;
Riding alone in the morning
With the radio inaudible under
The whoosh of air coming in through
The barely opened window -
Then there is going alone to parties
And then leaving alone at the end of the night.
Sober, too.
Always sober. Alcohol lost its allure.
Baudelaire was a pussy.
Anyway, he got used to being alone.
Not Baudelaire.
He wakes up alone and stares at the clock.
He goes to the store alone and looks for
The food he wants.
He has never had to consider someone else
Or counted on anyone else
When it came to food choices
Or sleeping positions.
Not overnight, at least. Not when it came to
Actually sleeping and waking up
On a regular basis.
Ruts and portage trails running between Wilderness
Lakes in a far more fresh environment.
Either way, those ruts run single-file.
A lone horseman passes.
Get it?

Some weeks ago I prattled on about someone. I asked if I should continue on like some callous-handed Appolinaire. Perhaps I should have.

Don't be fooled by enchantment. Enchantment disables reason.

Trust nothing but fact and empirical knowledge. There is nothing to be gained by following after anything that is chimera. That is, full of nothing but words.

I am not making sense. There is a reason. I will not elaborate.

You aren't reading this, anyway.

It's a good life if you don't weaken.

Really. Scrape yourself together in the wee hours of the morning, take a deep breath, haul yourself along the highway, and make your way into the hole. Sell your soul, offer yourself to the meat-grinder. Drag yourself slowly away and retreat for the night. Repeat.

Don't weaken.

Sacrifice. Work hard and always without cease. Collect your money at the end of the week and deny yourself the things that you thought about during the week in order to sustain yourself in the darkest moments that tried your resolve. Deny. Hand over large portions of that money to support people who will slowly suck the life from your bones. Support people who cannot support themselves, who were left to your watch by a man who weakened.

Again, don't weaken.

Don't flinch.

Don't think about alternatives. Don't. Just don't.

Get used to this grind. Get used to never resting long enough to fully recuperate. Your shoulders will ache. Then your feet, your knees, your back, and finally your heart. Your mind will forever be in pain. Thought will be laborious.

It is a good life, I suppose.

You could be in the Sudan. Or The Congo. Or Afghanistan.

It's a good life, if you don't weaken.

I am currently reading Petér Nadás' 'Fire and Knowledge.' It is a mixture of short stories, essays, reportage, and miscellany. Nadás is a Hungarian writer. I don't remember where I heard of him, but I can assume that I read in the NYRB a review of one or the other of his works. I am sure of it. It might be the London Review, but I see those two as a trick-sided coin. Either way, I enjoy the fiction more than the non-fiction, which is rare for me. The stories are all told from the point of view of a younger person in 1960s or 1970s communist Hungary. There are subtle little bits here and there where something catches your attention as being radically alien to you; you follow the little flash of light down the path and a giant wrecking ball smashes into you. For a laugh. You get caught trying to sympathize or, worse, understand and identify with the people in the stories. You get smashed because you can't understand any of it as a lazy, unthinking, spoiled-brat American. And I think highly of Nadás for employing that technique.

I just finished a collection of stories by Roberto Bolaño. He was Chilean, but he lived all over the Spanish-speaking world until he died several years ago. A lot of the stories took place in and around Barcelona in the mid- to late-1970s. Which made me stop and think; they speak Catalan in Barcelona and isn't it weird that so many Latin American writers fled dictatorships in their homelands to go to a place where the memories of a Dictator were as fresh as raw milk and cowshit on your boots? Either way. Brilliant. It has sparked and fueled a rising interest within me to read more and more Spanish-speaking writers.

Some time ago, I encountered some poems by Borges. They were in the original Spanish, but, with the remnants of my extremely rudimentary Spanish from school, I was able to slightly discern what the poem was saying. This excited me and I have since been reading more and more stories and poems by Spanish writers. I have ordered bilingual editions of Rubén Darío and Cesar Valléjo. I have ordered two more books by Bolaño. I have some Neruda and my Borges. I am going to try and make some sense. I like the idea of it. This is the first time that I have actually appreciated that I learned Spanish in school (and college) instead of French. I still would have loved to have learned French, of course, but now I appreciate the richness of Spanish. Like Lorca and Neruda. We shall see.

Another topic itching at my brain has been the Iroquois Indians. The Haudenosaunee. People of the Long-house. They of the Five Nations. They were the original inhabitants of my home region and more and more, day after day, my fascination with their culture and history grows. I have been searching for an Iroquois-English Dictionary, but, remarkably, there do not seem to be any that are easily found or accessed. Not too shocking. Academia in this country only seems interested in the Native Peoples after they've been dead for a couple hundred years; then it is only their bones and pottery with which they want to deal. I did manage to find an Ethnobotanical study of the Iroquois, so that is a start. From the ground up, it seems, will have to be the direction I travel in this respect.

The Nation that lived here where I currently live was the Seneca Nation. They were the largest, I believe, of the Five Nations. They built villages and maintained large tracts of cultivated fields. Their hunting grounds stretched from Vermont to the Ohio River Valley and down into Maryland. They had songs and poetry. They now maintain a couple casinos and fight to protect their tax-free cigarette sales from the greedy bureaucratic claws of New York State. But the history and culture of the Seneca is as great as any peoples on Earth. Perhaps even in this Cosmos? I don't know. I cannot speak to that. I really shouldn't speak anymore about it until I am properly informed so as to not appear to be so ignorant.

Does anyone even read this? Hahaha.

I am basically writing this to stave off the real feelings that are welling up in my bowels. Probably because of the anonymity that this provides. And because nobody is reading this anyway. It makes it easy. Sublimate. Absorb. Release waste bi-product as gas. Move on to next adventure. Move on, again and again.