Cup

A cup of Ire. A cup of Mirth. Half a cup of each for most. Cupping the crown of a baby’s head or the round of a lover’s breast. Cupping all you still possess in your arms after a fire. Cupping the last of your warmth in your hands and blowing on them in hope of more.

You can borrow a cup or a cup of sugar. There is precedent. There is a rumor the Holy Grail is a wooden cup. Valhalla welcomes all with an endless cup. No need to borrow again, as all heroes share with abandon and glee. When someone is drunk, we still say they are lost in their cups. Sometimes I feel lost in my cups without drinking a drop though. Thoughts are nectar that can be both toxic and intoxicating. If time really is a river, then I suspect we should measure it in cups.

Some pups fit in a cup. Teakettle ChuaChuas, Toy Poodles. All kittens fit in a cup. Rats fit five to a cup, but rarely come bearing a cup. Biergarten servers come bearing many cups, with the goal of making everyone lost in their cups enough to sing. Even if you don’t speak the language. Stille Nacht. Alles Schlaft. Except on the Night of Broken Glass. So fragile the peace that humanity tried to pour into that cup of time. Kristallnacht. Brittle even. A shattered cup that cannot be repaired. But glass can be recycled. It has to be crushed, purified and cleaned of contaminates first. It becomes cullet that must be remelted and cast. Completely new shapes of cups can result. The cup acquires a new nature and life by being ground into dust and reformed, but using this dust requires less energy/ heat than forging a glass cup from scratch would. This makes recycling glass cups economical. What about human cups? Does it take less energy to grind out souls to the essence and recast? Sometimes it takes less energy to grind my beliefs to dust and recast. How many cups of time do I have left after all? The limit is unspecified. Glass cups can be recycled endlessly, and they are brittle. Are we any less resilient than glass?

What is at the bottom of our cup of time and soul? Are there tea leaves we can read to forecast the future of time without us now?

If you take away the C you’re left with up, but you can only fill a cup up not pour it up. Not even in space without gravity will a cup pour up, but it can still be filled up. In space, your cup will not runneth over. Molecules stick together in a bubble that just expands beyond your cup...all you can do is shatter the bubble into smaller bubbles and push them out of the cup. These bubbles endlessly exist until someone vacuums them up, or consumes them...cups them again. I start most days with a cup of coffee or tea. Sometimes I have a “good cuppa” with a friend. Is love consuming a cup together? Or pouring a cup for? Or refilling an empty cup? Or smashing a cup together to celebrate your vows? Is love one or all of the cups we can measure in the river of time?

I have a cupful of questions.

Solemn Man

Dear Solomon,

For just one man, you were so clever that we forget the moral of the story was not about how to be so clever. You gave us a parable of satisfactory conflict resolution by unsavory methods. By proposing to cleaver the child, you exposed the truth. The most righteous will compromise. Good will yield and kneel before bad, allowing their own family to suffer grievous injustice in order to avoid greater harm. You made it evident that the will to win at all cost is a disease and pride is a necrotic rot to be exposed to the public for cleaning. But what if the public had refused to look? What if the public proposed alternative facts? What if the public had supported handing the baby over to the wrong mother, and the real mother had been forced to watch it happen...to watch someone else raise her baby so that her baby might live? What if your solo-man ruling had been denied final authority? What if crowd apathy allowed the most righteous mother to be wronged? Solomon, I know you were a solemn man, but how did you know the crowd would honor your sincerity?

Respectfully, 

A Modern Moralist

My sketch of a baby that I love this year

7 songs for 7 days

 Stress is high, and while part of the pressure is political, this playlist is a bipartisan coping mechanism. These 7 songs don't have much in common besides a measure of dark humor, existential-style fingernails clasping the cliff edge type hope, and enough measures to give you a dance (or at least sway) break when you need it.

1. Wednesday: Dear Doctor (Rolling Stones). In music, there are 2 main political parties (i.e. Stones vs. Beatles). I guess it is obvious which primary I vote in for chief of albums, but let's argue about it anyway because that's more fun than politics and, "I'm damaged."
   
   
2. Thursday: Sweet Dreams + 7 Nation Army Mashup (Pomplamoose ft. Sarah Dugas). Some say that the sweetest dreams require a big dirty backbeat and "who am I to disagree?" 
   
   
3. Friday: The Outdoor Type (Evan Dando/ Lemonheads). Get ready for a weekend roughing it with a little white lie to yourself. We're ready for the worst, even if the "closest I came to that was one time my car broke down for an hour in the suburbs at night." 
   
   
4. Saturday: Heads Will Roll (Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Happy Horrors! We can always, "dance until you're dead" with the cute wolf pup.
   
   
   
   
5. Sunday: When God Closes a Door (Larkin Poe). It's Sunday so, "let's see how the gospel goes"..."in a getaway car."
   
   
6. Monday: In spite of Ourselves (John Prine & Iris Dement). No one likes Monday. Monday is tricky, but "In spite of ourselves, We'll end up a'sittin' on a rainbow, Against all odds..."
    
   
   
7. Tuesday: Let's Dance to Joy Division (The Wombats). The old rhyme says that Tuesday's child is full of grace, so whatever the day brings we can, "celebrate the irony."  

Tough Enough?

did I toughen up?
scars so thick
a second skin
burned and burned
to begin again
I remember when
existing hurt
every day I lost my shirt
I had no history
so everything was
a dangerous mystery
but now...
did I toughen up?
metaled in
head armored
to bleeding heart
so foolishness
can't even start
I remember when
counting doubt
was so devout
I had no pride
so nothing was
on my side
but now...
did I toughen up?
or just, age out?
Stand here,
Hold this,
Let's fire another round...

Oberon singed curled his whiskers a lot as a kitten too.

Truth Taxed

Truth always demands a tax.

The sooner I admit it the smaller the fee.

The later I agree to see it, the greater the toll.

The tax of truth is at compounding interest,

Factorial for each day of denial,

Such that 5 days denial factors to 120 lives,

But just two more days, at 7, factors to 5040.

I mastered the math long ago,

But not the meter of its implication yet.

Why do I keep borrowing from this monster?

At some point, the borrower must become

Exponentially gross

For giving the lender credit again?

Despite knowing,

I must find the wisdom

To ask

How am I a fool today?
But I am too taxed.

If wishes were fish, and truth was neon bright...