Where were we?

4/17/2025 A Season of Distraction -- POEMS 4/9 thru HOME

the little case for i
Con/Jur/d, 4/8/2025

Without an ego
the case for being
a slime mold, and
eating smaller
weaker organisms
would go unremarked

-we could be selfish
without judgment-

(Unless it’s about lichens
don't get us started on
lichens, and their extreme
“just living on water and light
attitude”)

A Frost Covered Body
Con/Jur/d, 4/9/2025

We're in Cleveland. We both 
have stories that take 
place in Cleveland. we aren't here
for its narrative weight, although
the trains last night sang a uniquely
American song, a rattling, thumping
booming mechanical digestion
of culture, community, a replacement
of watershed iconography, like
Bear, Beaver, Moose with
the universal mechanism

THE MACHINE FOR THE MANY!

blood, spit, wood (polished), sequestered
(private) art for the few; we talked about
going to the Rock and Roll Museum last
night. being of an experiential bend, could
not fathom why a representation of a living
 experience could hold our interest, stayed
in and watched music videos and classic
noir in bed instead; (sic) we're here because
 it's a few hours from home 
and although we have
been acting the part of hating our little
rust belt, broken circuit, twilight town, so
long, it has lost the feel of acting, we
are looking forward to the comforts 
of the familiar, much like the dream this
morning from which 
we did not want to awake

there was the usual sense of an extended
community and the doing of doings about
which we cared deeply, and an expectation
of Jack the Dog, the last canine who we 
acted as a substitute pack leader for, 
a step-alpha of sorts, brushing past our legs.

we remember he is old and has been sick 
he had lived a long and healthy life, and
because of his first pack, doesn't really trust
our multi storied urban loft, later 
we find his frost covered body
in his favorite sleeping spot, by the roses
in the stone roof garden, high above
the news

Nearby, there is a clutch of baby white rabbits
and when we are done crying, wonder about
reincarnation, the persistence of life
even in dreams. When we've transferred back to
Cleveland, we read a paper on 
animal awareness of their
own mortality, how they change at the end of life
as if they know they are shifting, transferring 
from sleep to awake. 

There is a necessary remembering to this
a settling down as we sit in the hotel lobby
next to a giant guitar, as people begin their
ordinary day, in this extraordinary dream

A woman across the way
is talking about organic Japanese
microorganisms, a man is replying
something about firefighters, and the
smallness of this world, we're thinking
of home, and the quiet certainty

of a frost covered body.

Heading Home
“We’re all just walking each other home.” - Ram Das
Con/Jur/d, 4/10/2025

Like being and becoming, one can never
be home, he said, we can never achieve
pure being, always becoming, always

HEADING

We replied, we both like potatoes, so do
we need more shared than this? without 
being nationalists, eugenicists, border-line

DISORDERS

Got back to Binghamton, NY yesterday
felt like we achieved something, going
and coming back, back and we think out

AGAIN

Like diagnosis, community, country are 
not fixed things, we convince ourselves
this life, these people, our biomass are

PERMANENT

GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM 
is a prayer to return, a confession of  your
alienated state, a denial of your existential

CITIZENSHIP

You say, I don’t recognize us, yet in 1983
David Byrne said: “our president's is crazy/
did you hear what he said/ lie right to your

FACE”

Could it be you weren’t paying attention?
in my opinion, he sang we are flippy floppy
we fall down the stair, and people are

STRANGE

We replied, I’ve been saying he’s Ronald
Reagan in drag. Ronny in drag? that makes
sense, he said, becoming, more of what we’ve

BEEN.

MY FIRST WALK WHEN HOME WAS IN THE CEMETERY

Our favorite piece from this morning’s playlist:

Much love,

Con/Jur/d, 4/17/2025