Baby You’re No Good… January 27, 2012
Posted by tempguy in Uncategorized.add a comment
Live college radio, my first shift.
I spun the vinyl back a too-generous quarter turn
As Denny Tellinghuisen or Dave Winter or someone else
Stammered the weather forecast
To our non-existent 10 watt listenership.
I nervously flipped a switch
And the Eisenhower era felt turntable rumbled to life.
Linda Ronstadt’s vocals emerged from the bass riff and the crackle,
Slowly building and staking independence.
You’re no good, she wailed, at 45 rpm.
Deep inside me a vague demon awakened,
Whispering that I was a pretender, she was right and
…you’re no good baby, you’re no good…
Noah’s Flood January 12, 2012
Posted by tempguy in Uncategorized.add a comment
On an idle Wednesday just prior to Noah’s flood,
Soul Wolves howled in the distance, ignored by the masses.
Their chorus warned of pending apocolypse,
and wailed of broken redemption.
Startled ants looked to one another,
grazing zebras raised their heads;
even the spawn of Eden’s snake took note.
Lower Creation paired up on an instinctive journey ark-ward;
humanity too engrossed in the Jersey Shore marathon to notice.
The Back Side of Middle Age January 9, 2012
Posted by tempguy in Uncategorized.add a comment
On my 50th birthday—and this is true—I got two letters. One invited me to join the AARP. The other encouraged me to check out their pre-paid burial insurance plan.
I realized maybe I wasn’t middle aged anymore.
My parents are approaching 80, and my Grandma Raney lived to be 90. If I stay active and eat my broccoli occasionally, I should last at least that long—barring the Apocalypse, of course. I’m 54 now, so I figure I’ve got about one-third of my life ahead of me. I’m calling this “The Back Side of Middle Age.”
It’s an interesting time. You share funny colonoscopy stories. Your chest hair turns gray, at least for guys…and your thinning hair on top mysteriously reappears overnight, sprouting from your nose and ears. Acne is replaced by age spots, skin tags, and worry lines.
When it comes to fashion, you’re dumbfounded to learn some idiots spend more on a single pair of jeans than you spent on your last suit. You realize the latest designer color is the same polyester shade you wore to prom.
You see how stupid it is to keep up with the Jones’, when they can’t keep up with themselves. You care less about big-boy toys and more about clearing them out.
If you have kids, you tear up looking at their baby pictures. But you begin to have genuine adult conversations with them. They tell you they love you, which is something you never heard when they were teenagers. And you realize that despite your many shortcomings, your kids turned out OK after all.
You see you’re part of a global community. You care much less about what others think of you, and much more about how you care for others. You realize that a timely nod or a sincere hello can make someone’s day, because a smile has done that for you before.
You write down your Bucket List, because you know life is unfair and fragile, and loss can be sudden and without farewell. You treasure time with parents, value laughter with friends, and cherish insights from preschoolers that have yet to be institutionalized by our educational system.
You recall the dumb things you did growing up and wrong decisions you made as an adult and realize you’ve gained Wisdom. Keeping that in mind, you’re more tolerant and less judgmental and realize you’ve developed Grace. And you learn that if God has the mercy to forgive your shortcomings, the least you can do is forgive others of theirs.
You’re still fooled occasionally, but are more nimble in bypassing smoke and mirrors to see Truth. That’s why you turn off the Sony to marvel at the palate of wispy gray clouds, highlighted pink in a coral sky by a setting orange ball. You unplug your iPod to be awestruck by a brown thrasher’s love song. You pause to study the impossibility spun into a spider web. You’re stunned by The Great Out There.
I remember freaking out as I turned 30. That was nearly half my life ago.
However, these are Truths that couldn’t have been written in my heart until The Back Side of Middle Age.
It’s a wonderful time to be alive.
dark middle night December 27, 2011
Posted by tempguy in Uncategorized.2 comments
Dark middle night, soul stirred awake
Haunted by guilt from choices I make
The sad gray man inside the mirror
With nothing to show again this year
Sifting debris in my tornadic life
Too much confusion, toil and strife
Ideals I cherished are ragged and torn
Foundations once firm are cracked and worn
Got no direction here in my home
Surrounded by family but deeply alone
A psychic bazaar on a dead-end street
My composting brain in slow retreat
Prayers coalesce into slow tracked tears
God seems distant and numb to my fears
Jesus, I wish we could go for a walk
Share some strong coffee, have a long talk
You’d help me sort through this life in ruin
Love me and show me what I should be doin
Revealing my plan with a fiery light
Burning aside my dark middle night
Until then, I shoulder the cross
Eroded dreams and meanings lost
He was Lightning November 7, 2011
Posted by tempguy in Uncategorized.add a comment
Jacked up on caffeine and bourbon,
misinterpreted isolation and barometric pressures,
He was Lightning.
As skies cracked in sudden disjointed randomness,
he tore off everything to dance in frenzied celebration,
baptized in a naked downpour.
Heaven opened wider as he fell to earth laughing,
eyes closed and arms wide.
His heart pounded Bolero
in a seductive frenetic attempt
to be one with Thunder Goddess,
not realizing that she only fills
the emptiness
Lightning
creates.
Black, White, and Gray October 21, 2011
Posted by tempguy in Uncategorized.add a comment
There’s too much black & white thinking these days. Good/bad. Liberal/conservative. For us/against us. My God/your god. The polarity is astonishing, disturbing, and stupid.
If things are only black & white, all the grays in between are irrelevant.
You ignore the gathering leaden cumulus in a coming April thunderstorm. You’re oblivious to the wisdom shared by an ashen topped elder. You miss the subtlety in the last-gasp graphite of a maple leaf, crumbling into fertilizer. You enjoy stepping on silver-dollar sized, gray-grained ant hills. You can’t trace the wispy pencil lines in a toddler’s drawing.
We weren’t designed to think in black & white.
That’s why our brains are called gray matter.
And not only do black & white thinkers ignore an entire tonal gray scale…but an infinite color palate, too!
Weenie Roast October 20, 2011
Posted by tempguy in Uncategorized.add a comment
I wrote this a couple summers ago. But with autumn’s chill finally taking hold after a pretty warm season so far, it’s bonfire weather. And you can’t have an official bonfire without an occasional hot dog, right?
I went camping last night with Abby and Matt. It was rare for July in Iowa. An Alberta high had pushed all things hot and muggy south and eastward, drawing down Canadian freshness and life-affirming, autumn-like breezes. It felt more like football weather than early sweet corn season, just perfect. This is weather you live for, a night too precious to spend sleeping at home.
We had a great time. After Abby retreated to journal, Matt stayed up for awhile and we talked about how he can’t wait to have a son to coach someday. He’s going to raise a left-handed pitcher, and teach him the subtleties of center field that he had finally mastered once he listened to his coach. His son will love the Cardinals and Cyclones, too.
I laughed, telling him the kid will be a Brewers fan (Matt said he’d have a c-section before he’d ever back Milwaukee) and follow the Hawks and not listen to a damn thing he says. He’ll be harmlessly obnoxious, just like Matt, I thought..
He faded and crashed. I cracked a final Boulevard for some writing and campfire pondering.
I don’t usually eat hot dogs. But it was late, and the glowing orange embers looked just right for maybe cooking one. I grabbed a stick Abby had used for s’mores and stuck a dog on it. Great, I realized too late. It’s got leftover marshmallow crap on it, and it’s on my meat…
I scoped out the most promising embers and offered my stick-dog to the campfire gods. The ends started to sag as it sizzled. After what seemed an appropriate time, I spun him around. The once drooping ends now smiled at me.
Campfire light is deceiving. It doesn’t always reveal how well it’s cooking or how dark your meat is getting. Especially if you become enamored by blue flame, or a sudden mischievous breeze up from the river valley fills your eyes with smoke. Anyway…I figured my dog was finally done.
Drawing it close for inspection, the ends had that black charring you’re not supposed to eat unless you want cancer. There was gray ash on both ends. It had gotten so hot the casing had vertically split, revealing the pink business that you don’t want to know what it is.
No buns, ketchup, or mustard. Not even a plate. Just a nasty looking hotdog on a whittled down sticky marshmallow stick. It couldn’t have been less appealing.
Naturally, it was the best damn weenie I’d had in years.
I cooked another.
Pressing On October 19, 2011
Posted by tempguy in Uncategorized.2 comments
Blades are sharp, daggers drawn –by wicked kings, you’re the pawn.
Darkness hides their bitter aim: to rob your soul, exploit your shame.
They whisper soft in your self-doubt, promising an easy out.
They offer you pain-free relief; never mind those left to grieve.
They know they lie, their hearts are hollow; those in hurt they tap to follow.
Evil -borne, theft-allied; they visit when you’re low on pride.
They burden you with pardoned sin…don’t ever let the bastards win.
While earth spins days both dark and bright…keep praying for eternal light.
And when demons knock, keep pressing on:
The darkest hour gives way to
Dawn.
For Glenn October 18, 2011
Posted by tempguy in Uncategorized.add a comment
For nine months you endured
the darkest deep any man possibly could
after she passed from your arms.
Your soul melted into teardrops,
evaporated into barren faith.
A life-scarred veteran, you carried on
through some good days and the endless god-awful nights.
When someone shared a Marie story
or a grandkid monkey shined
you teared up, your gaze softening into far away.
In a pre-dawn fog…
breath shallow and heart empty…
God finally granted your raspy plea to slip away
the way she did–quickly, at home.
Your head rolled back against the kitchen wall;
your feet twitched a bit and your eyes closed,
reopening to her smiling face
and a long-lost family reunion.
Lightning Bugs June 24, 2011
Posted by tempguy in Uncategorized.add a comment
I took Snoopy for a walk tonight, a June 1st muggy-but-not-overbearing and slightly breezy evening, stars straining to see us through the high random clouds.
We hung a right at the driveway’s end, down our diagonally street until it meets up with the elementary school. Then we headed north on the more sensibly plotted Pleasant Hill Blvd. We strolled past Emily & Jesse’s place, around HyVee, and over the trickling creek that tumbled into a nettled jungle. It was our usual two mile walk.
But this night brought out summer’s confirmation…the always magical lightning bug.
I remember a few years back seeing them first about a month sooner. The conditions must be just right—ground temps warm enough, the humidity prepped, and Jupiter at the proper southeast angle for the glowbugs to appear.
There’s noise associated with warmer weather. I hear nearby tree frogs in a low whirling mode; another frog type croaks obnoxiously from across the street. There’s a daytime chorus of flashy cardinals, muted cooing doves, and the ever-present robin. Cold fronts are sometimes preceded by nasty crack-whip lightning birthing heart-attack thunder—sometimes the kind that, as a kid, made me think God had dumped a few billion potatoes down a giant wooden staircase.
Then there are the noisy bugs. Droning, obnoxious horseflies. In-you-ear whiney mosquitoes (one just pricked my left elbow). And Angie’s despised June bug. They’re large and sudden and they land on you with grippy feet.
But nobody hates the quiet lightning bug. They too are sudden, but in a delightful and smiley way. They flash, then disappear. And flash again over there, where you didn’t think they’d be already.
Children love them because their lightning doesn’t cause crap-scaring thunder. It’s pure joy watching kids capture them, holding them loosely in their little fist while the firefly blinks a Gatorade finger x-ray. Then the youngster opens his hand a bit too wide to look closer, accidentally releasing it, leading to pouting and fussing as the elders chuckle softly. The adults remember it happening to them too.
The lightning bugs are back, graduations are over, and school is out.
It’s summer. It’s good.
