Surround and Drown

35 Years ago this week the FDNY suffered a great loss and learned a hard lesson in fire fighting tactics when it comes to truss construction. As part of a group the FDNY calls to determine the structural stability of buildings after the damage is done, I see first hand the horrific and extreme conditions fire fighters face each time they get a call. There is poetry in their coordinated efforts. Their team work and unity of purpose is awe inspiring to behold. Preserve life, stay unharmed,fight the good fight, fear nothing. God bless and protect those who rush in.

Song of the Rolling Earth

"Human bodies are words," Whitman says. "Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame."

I am tired today. I should not complain. Tired is good. Did a good nights work, and now my thoughts are scattered, my attention demanded by a cat calling to be smothered with affection.

"...words are in the ground and sea, they are in the air, they are in you."

I am the word in the river, the word in the sky's high horizon serrated by tall buildings. I look across Whitman's Brooklyn Ferry Crossing this 21st Century day and find the bodies in his words, the words in his bodies. The Lust in his bodies without shame or need of shame, but gloriously, deliriously happy to be alive. The word in the pleasure craft and the commercial craft gliding through perpetual time. Defining moments, and words, and me.

3 PART BREATH

INHALE

Breathe you in,
your scent, your body,
your eyes, your smile,

PAUSE

Hold you gently
in my arms, soft caress
for the last
time

EXHALE

I breathe you out,
I release myself
I exorcise your spirit

The laws of our attraction
no longer apply
I defy, break
veto

your
power
over me

Be gone

Go In Peace

INHALE

Emotion to thought...thought to word...Word to beauty

The cold white noise of
Never means Never
Drills deep through flesh
With invisible bits

I lie still
No need to
Lie
Eye to sky
Moon set
Star rise

To struggle
with what is
and what cannot
Makes pain be

SUDDENLY I SEE...

Given the gravity of the situation you might think this a whimsical photo. The Trayvon Martin verdict is disturbing in so many ways. It is truly tragic, and I don't want to sound naïve, but the questions I ask over and over are who approached whom? How can an armed aggressor claim self defense? And isn't the action of a Neighborhood Watch to do exactly as the term implies, and watch out for stuff? Logic dictates that if you see something you say something and the guy Zimmerman did, he called 911 and they told him to back off. Did he? No. How can he claim self defense? People in this country think that by turning a blind eye to race we can just make it go away, when in fact just the opposite is happening. We empower the racists, gay bashers, and anarchists by our collective denial. No one has the right to this power, yet we surrender it freely by simply ignoring the facts. No one wants to believe they are the racist. Everyone wants to believe they are in the right all the time. All this is but a long preamble to a poem I want to publish.


DENIAL

It is one of
those first steps...

THE first of those
first steps---

People get stuck
in first

All The Time

.

Sunday. Blog Day.

Random Ransom Photos from the gallery on this last Sunday of June. When the month started I was 54...now...that's history.

So much sad news, so much glad news, can one be happy and still have the blues?
So much pleasure...so much pain...is it a matter of just what we choose?

I've fallen down on the job of keeping up with my blog,
don't know which way is up around here anymore

For now my woman is home, but soon we will roam
back to lake south land central Florida shore

Mid summer is here, a time for festival and cheer
and remembrance of all we hold dear

Happy Summer.

A GOOD DAY AT WORK

To quote Mayor Bloomberg

"...it's awards season..."

Normally we are responding to emergencies where we meet our fellow New Yorkers on what's probably the worst day of their lives. Their homes have been destroyed by some catastrophe...or worse, and we are there in the immediate aftermath, summoned by the Police or Fire Departments or the Office of Emergency Management to do what we do: Provide initial Structural Stability Assessments, determine safe and lawful occupancy, or begin to investigate construction accidents. On June 5th at historic Cooper Union, we paused as a department and gave thanks to those who perform their jobs with excellence. It was a happy day for guys and gals who tend to go unnoticed because the bulk of our work is done only when everyone else has gone home. Even if the event itself makes the news, what we do behind the scenes seldom comes to the fore. Yet the Commissioner, and the Selection Committee saw fit to award the EMERGENCY RESPONSE TEAM of NYC Buildings with the Team Award for Excellence. Congratulations all. Well deserved. Now get back to work.