Rob Krabbe's Blog: From a Krabbe Desk, page 6

She Was Smoking Hot and Tasty – Chapter 942

Since I have been reprocessing the personal legend of my quitting smoking, and all the emails I found in my in-box from people that have and still are sharing that experience with me, I decided to look through my old journals of other seasons  of  this seeming life-long distress.  Let me preface this by saying, we have a saying in the Presbyterian Church about being a "reformed tradition" church, it is this, ""reformed and  always reforming."  I think it fits the battle with smoking, "Once quitting, and always quitting."

I found this "prose poem,"  in my journal archives. Decided to (re) post it.  It is from my life's journal, a journal I have kept since I was a child.  From reams of paper to the advent of computer, and giggabytes  of pages. I think I have written so much journal that if printed up and stacked up  to wards the sky – it would be knocked down by God and our languages mixed up again.  By the way, "prose poem," is not my own definition, but a bit of a "catch all."  It could also be defined as undisciplined poetry.  For me it is just my nature to live somewhere between one place and another.  It is neither poetry, or simple prose.  It is more brain dump, but that seems less poetic still. 

No one who has not been there will easily grasp the addictive nature of smoking, but maybe family of smokers would understand more of why it is so hard.  This prose poem does what a lot of my writing does, it juxtaposes two subjects to help in some odd way, to ease a point into my own understanding from an area of my emotional being that is mostly in chaos a lot of my life.

From a journal page of yesteryear:

I reach deep and taste pleasure. Cool shadow y wisp against my flesh, exciting me. An old icy friend with privileges but no conscience, she feels more and more like the steel morgue tray stiffly caressing my great-grandfather after we, weeping, signed the forms and walked away and they, turned off the oxygen smothering him with his own irony. Memories come like a bad habit with the mandatory tears just as unwelcome. Sentimental crap.  Unbidden, and I known I am a foolish child that knows better. Even then, she sings her song to me. Even then—I listen.It is sweet, after-all, and I curse my sensibilities while listening to the siren's voice as she strokes me with the perfect notes into an old familiar orgasm. In the midst of it, I glimpse her steamy crumbling black teeth. Her dead eye sockets suck me in as if into a black hole; she pulls me to her, like I was laying her down on a used wedding bed,where excited eager lovers, afterward, had found the hotel room door left open and wet rice everywhere.
My trembling pleasure fades into a hushed frozen silence as my reason tries hard to get my attention and show me a saner reality. You see, thousands of times I've lost my mind, trembling like a dog behind the liquor store hoping for a scrap of bread; she does have the most exquisite scratching nails, and I kick at the ground with the marrow of my bones.  I know I should stop myself, and leave, but I want her. I get up to leave, but instead I turn and "what the hell," I enjoy her anyway, as long as I was still breathing, and she was already lit up.In the end, her stabbing leaves me bloodless. She, swimming inside me behind the defenses, splays me open wide, leaving me there to die a rather irritating death. After my pleasure shakes me, and the shallow moan of ambiguity spans the length of my passing worship,I realise, the joy I intimately and endlessly know, like "a hostage that ends up loving the son-of-a-bitch;" behind the curtain, I see the betrayer.She tries in vain to keep me by curling around me, her vapors trailing into my mouth, licking me dry, poised like a cat in some performance art piece. But this time I crush her between my fingers, and a dirty ash tray, burning myself, which will remind me of this tomorrow, when she calls to me, with her beautiful voice, as if nothing had changed.

6:25 This Morning and "Quitting Again or Continuing to Quit?"

6.25 a.m.

Sipping the first morning cup of delightful bold coffee, trying to clear my head. I try to ignore it, creeping up on me, the freaking bastard demon. It stands behind me, as if I didn't know he was there. What does he think I'm stupid? As I take a deep sip from my cup, make the "ahhh" sound as I swallow, I say "I know you're there you bastard from hell, just stop thinking you're fooling me. If you have something to say get on with it." So now, less subtly, as I sip my coffee again and for the nine hundred and forty seventh time this month I lament smoking, and my right index finger taps my right middle finger absentmindedly reminding each other of the cigarette that used to be there, and how they miss that warm feeling of the paper burning barrel that would cushion them against each other, as the wonderful aroma (it really does smell good to a smoker) that would leak through the thin paper and onto their skin. My fingers sigh.

Listen you judgemental anti-smokers, I can hear you already, and you, you religious segment that consider smoking a sin, lay off for a moment here ok? It's Satan. The devil made me do it!

Bear with me, I'm leading somewhere, and by the way, don't be a grace killer. Man if I wasn't a Christian, I'm not sure I would pick Christians to be friends with. (Ok, I'm sorry I didn't mean that, I think we mean well . . . mostly) Besides, I didn't say I ran to light up, ok, kool?

You know, kidding aside (only til the end of this sentence), in this current culture, you could easier admit to having been a murderer or a wife beater trying to quit, and be less judged, maybe even supported in your struggle to "cut down" than to admit still craving cigarettes. We have done a great job of demonizing the use-to-be favorite pass time of yesteryear.

The reality is, I started smoking when I was 12, and smoking was not only socially acceptable, but it was the coolest thing a person of my age could do. It not only made me instantly cool on it's own merit, but was a wonderful prop for "the posing" that all young men in the seventies had to do to survive junior high school.

You could point off in the distance at something, calmly, with the smoking wand perfectly positioned between two fingers, and you could be so damned aloof and take a deep wonderful draw from the smoke while someone said something you were feigning as important, and while everyone marveled at how you took so much smoke without coughing, and look cool doing it, you would be nodding all-the-while you make the smoking-sucky-smoke face, and then make love to the cloud in your open mouth, as you nod again; allow a trickle of the smoke to escape your mouth, only to suck it into a nostril as if it were an attempted escape of a sexy naked woman. By the way, when I found out that was called "french inhaling," man did my cool level go up, I had thought that maneuver up myself, and then came to find I was as cool as the french.

Then one of the best possible ways you could smoke was: to savor the smoke deep in your lungs, blow it out forcefully, or, and this was my grandfathers favorite, thus mine, and the thing I loved to do in honor of him (he died from emphysema) you could talk and let the smoke just come out indifferently with the words, and from between your teeth. Man that was cool! A seeming indifference was of course the coolest thing a pre-man could do to be considered a man, and indeed the hardest to pull off. Boys in the pre teens and early teens were a fragile kind of cool, remember. Even a stif breeze could cause a boy to have to carry his note book artfully positioned in front of his fly. So to be aloof and "cool," well, took almost more than a hormone raging boy-man could muster.

At that time there was no cheaper or easier way to turn up the "cool" knob on your life in your friends eyes, than the simple and cheap art of smoking. Especially if you could do it as if it were the most normal thing in the world, something you barely even knew you were doing. Better when someone would make mention of it, and you could then roll your eyes, as if they were un-cool for even taking notice – that was just a free bonus. Side point: when someone else is observed being less than cool it automatically credits the cooler person as a level-1 cooler to roll one's eyes disgusted at the lack of coolness being displayed by said less-than-cool person.

Ok, ok, here it is, for you who are thinking I am gloriying the evil habit. Of course the hammer drops. The piper comes for his check. The bill must be paid . . . and if I were a fundamentalist or an ancient Hebrew living under the law, here is where the sin comes in, I guess; I try to act as if this were news to me that came only later in life. The sin then being (and I sort of agree here) the great lie.

Smoking as it turned out, when I approached fifty, not only is the most sure way of dying young. I had smoked and struggled to quit for decades on and off, well . . . I tried to believe myself that nobody told me in a way that mattered or made sense; I didn't know then!  When I was twelve, I had not developed the part of the brain that considers and weighs risk and consequences; how could I have understood that it was more addictive than heroin (by the way that comparison still makes me chuckle – but it apparently kills like a million times more people than heroin).

The raw truth, I don't think any of us honestly allowed themselves to think in our heart of hearts, that it was good for us. To suck smoke from burning weeds into your lungs, and call it healthful as the ads said in the nineteen forties and fifties, well, deep inside we knew it was a load of crap. Everyone knew it. We may not have known to the extremes, how bad it was but we knew. So all you non-smokers, when you ask the question, "don' they know how bad it is?" The answer is . . . of course we did. We just chose not to acknowledge it. Its kind of the same thing for me as a person struggling with weight issues–I can eat an entire cheeseburger with a completely empty and innocent mind, in the middle of a diet, and then not remember "cheating."  Why do you think we (smokers) always got so angry and defensive about it? Duh.

For your reading pleasure: here are a list of real slogans – only a smattering – of what we told ourselves through advertizing.

• Its a woman's thing

• You've come a long way baby

• For digestion's sake, smoke Camels

• Taste me, taste me, come on . . .

• You're never alone when you're smoking a Strand

• More doctors smoke Camels than any other ciggarette

• L&M its just what the doctor ordered

• Lady be Kool!

• Menthol-fresh, cool, clean, consulate

I had to stop myself, there are thousands of slogans that actually helped us to understand how good smoking was for us.

Most of the time, I am glad I quit, even all the time when I am honest with myself, but like the old country song says I still crave a good smoke "once a day." that is "once a day, every day, all day long."

Suddenly it occurs to me, (and the demon vaporizes frustrated with me) as I consider going to a lighter "creamer" in my morning coffee, as the thought rumbles around that it won't be quite as "creamy," well call me a simpleton but the stem of that word rared up for the first time. "So without "cream," it won't be quite as "creamy."" Oh, yes, it's the simple things.

The demon pops in for another moment:

"I think obesity and fat is much more dangerous than smoking. Wouldn't you be healthier losing all that extra weight and letting the cigarettes help distract you from the food? Doctors will tell you that people who smoke lose weight."

Shut up foul demon!

Then it strikes me again. The answer so close (as usual) and yet, I had almost missed it. My coffee was empty.

So here I go, off to the kitchen to grind beans and start up a fresh pot of wonderful rich and robust sumatran dark roast. Doctors do tell us, in more reports than not, drinking coffee is good for us. AhA moment. Now I am ready for my day. The demon vaporizes finally truly powerless, and I lift my praise hands to the sky! My additive personality has been distracted by the majestic drink of the gods (there is only one for me, but that was for my polytheistic friends). God is still in charge of the universe, and has blessed coffee once again for my use. He has shown His mercy and . . . I suddenly tire of verbal-bating and head for a warming refreshing of my cup and a good day's work.

Now I can start my day!

Best to you all!

P.S. I wrote this to answer the person a few weeks ago who asked, why I like coffee so much.

 

6.25 a.m.Sipping the first morning cup of delightful bol...

6.25 a.m.

Sipping the first morning cup of delightful bold coffee, trying to clear my head. I try to ignore it, creeping up on me, the freaking bastard demon. It stands behind me, as if I didn't know he was there. What does he think I'm stupid? As I take a deep sip from my cup, make the "ahhh" sound as I swallow, I say "I know you're there you bastard from hell, just stop thinking you're fooling me. If you have something say get on with it." So now, less subtly, as I sip my coffee again and for the nine hundred and forty seventh time this month I lament smoking, and my right index finger taps my right middle finger absentmindedly reminding each other of the cigarette that used to be there, and how they miss that warm feeling of the paper burning barrel that would cushion them against each other, as the wonderful aroma (it really does smell good to a smoker) that would leak through the thin paper and onto their skin. My fingers sigh.

Listen you judgemental anti-smokers, I can hear you already, and you, you religious segment that consider smoking a sin, lay off for a moment here ok? It's Satan. The devil made me do it!

Bear with me, I'm leading somewhere, and by the way, don't be a grace killer. Man if I wasn't a Christian, I'm not sure I would pick Christians to be friends with. (Ok, I'm sorry I didn't mean that, I think we mean well . . . mostly) Besides, I didn't say I ran to light up, ok, kool?

You know, kidding aside (only til the end of this sentence), in this current culture, you could easier admit to having been a murderer or a wife beater trying to quit, and be less judged, maybe even supported in your struggle to "cut down" than to admit still craving cigarettes. We have done a great job of demonizing the use-to-be favorite pass time of yesteryear.

The reality is, I started smoking when I was 12, and smoking was not only socially acceptable, but it was the coolest thing a person of my age could do. It not only made me instantly cool on it's own merit, but was a wonderful prop for "the posing" that all young men in the seventies had to do to survive junior high school.

You could point off in the distance at something, calmly, with the smoking wand perfectly position between two fingers, you could be aloof and take a deep wonderful draw from the smoke while someone said something you were feigning as important, and while everyone marveled at how you took so much smoke without coughing, nodding all-the-while you make the smoking-sucky-smoke face, and then make love to the cloud in your open mouth, as you nod again; allow a trickle of the smoke to escape your mouth, only to suck it into a nostril as if it were an attempted escape of a sexy naked woman. By the way, when I found out that was called "french inhaling," man did my cool level go up, I had thought that maneuver up myself, and then came to find I was as cool as the french.

Then one of the best possible ways you could smoke was: to savor the smoke deep in your lungs, blow it out forcefully, or, and this was my grandfathers favorite, thus mine, and the thing I loved to do in honor of him (he died from emphysema) you could talk and let the smoke just come out indifferently with the words, and from between your teeth. Man that was cool! A seeming indifference was of course the coolest thing a pre-man could do to be considered a man, and indeed the hardest to pull off. Boys in the pre teens and early teens were a fragile kind of cool, remember. Even a stif breeze could cause a boy to have to carry his note book artfully positioned in front of his fly. So to be aloof and "cool," well, took almost more than a hormone raging boy-man could muster.

At that time there was no cheaper or easier way to turn up the "cool" knob on your life in your friends eyes, than the simple and cheap art of smoking. Especially if you could do it as if it were the most normal thing in the world, something you barely even knew you were doing. Better when someone would make mention of it, and you could then roll your eyes, as if they were un-cool for even taking notice – that was just a free bonus. Side point: when someone else is observed being less than cool it automatically credits the cooler person as a level-1 cooler to roll one's eyes disgusted at the lack of coolness being displayed by said less-than-cool person.

Ok, ok, here it is, for you who are thinking I am gloriying the evil habit. Of course the hammer drops. The piper comes for his check. The bill must be paid . . . and if I were a fundamentalist or an ancient Hebrew living under the law, here is where the sin comes in, I guess; I try to act as if this were news to me that came only later in life. The sin then being (and I sort of agree here) the great lie.

Smoking as it turned out, when I approached fifty, not only is the most sure way of dying young. I had smoked and struggled to quit for decades on and off, well . . . I tried to believe myself that nobody told me in a way that mattered or made sense; I didn't know then!  When I was twelve, I had not developed the part of the brain that considers and weighs risk and consequences; how could I have understood that it was more addictive than heroin (by the way that comparison still makes me chuckle – but it apparently kills like a million times more people than heroin).

The raw truth, I don't think any of us honestly allowed themselves to think in our heart of hearts, that it was good for us. To suck smoke from burning weeds into your lungs, and call it healthful as the ads said in the nineteen forties and fifties, well, deep inside we knew it was a load of crap. Everyone knew it. We may not have known to the extremes, how bad it was but we knew. So all you non-smokers, when you ask the question, "don' they know how bad it is?" The answer is . . . of course we did. We just chose not to acknowledge it. Its kind of the same thing for me as a person struggling with weight issues–I can eat an entire cheeseburger with a completely empty and innocent mind, in the middle of a diet, and then not remember "cheating."  Why do you think we (smokers) always got so angry and defensive about it? Duh.

For your reading pleasure: here are a list of real slogans – only a smattering – of what we told ourselves through advertizing.

• Its a woman's thing

• You've come a long way baby

• For digestion's sake, smoke Camels

• Taste me, taste me, come on . . .

• You're never alone when you're smoking a Strand

• More doctors smoke Camels than any other ciggarette

• L&M its just what the doctor ordered

• Lady be Kool!

• Menthol-fresh, cool, clean, consulate

I had to stop myself, there are thousands of slogans that actually helped us to understand how good smoking was for us.

Most of the time, I am glad I quit, even all the time when I am honest with myself, but like the old country song says I still crave a good smoke "once a day." that is "once a day, every day, all day long."

Suddenly it occurs to me, (and the demon vaporizes frustrated with me) as I consider going to a lighter "creamer" in my morning coffee, as the thought rumbles around that it won't be quite as "creamy," well call me a simpleton but the stem of that word rared up for the first time. "So without "cream," it won't be quite as "creamy."" Oh, yes, it's the simple things.

The demon pops in for another moment:

"I think obesity and fat is much more dangerous than smoking. Wouldn't you be healthier losing all that extra weight and letting the cigarettes help distract you from the food? Doctors will tell you that people who smoke lose weight."

Shut up foul demon!

Then it strikes me again. The answer so close (as usual) and yet, I had almost missed it. My coffee was empty.

So here I go, off to the kitchen to grind beans and start up a fresh pot of wonderful rich and robust sumatran dark roast. Doctors do tell us, in more reports than not, drinking coffee is good for us. AhA moment. Now I am ready for my day. The demon vaporizes finally truly powerless, and I lift my praise hands to the sky! My additive personality has been distracted by the majestic drink of the gods (there is only one for me, but that was for my polytheistic friends). God is still in charge of the universe, and has blessed coffee once again for my use. He has shown His mercy and . . . I suddenly tire of verbal-bating and head for a warming refreshing of my cup and a good day's work.

Now I can start my day!

Would You Like Brains With That?

On wonderful days such as these, deep in Upstate of the Carolinas, during the beauty and heat of the majestic summer, the wonderful hot sun's rays burning down on my skin, sitting on my back porch enjoying a sweet thick hot sugary tea poured over ice, like my grandma used to make, my thoughts naturally turn to memories of the taste of brains, and the great zombie hordes of 09.

 

One just doesn't plan for a zombie infestation, and that was our undoing. We stupidly thought the grave strong and fast. We were caught with our brains hanging out, fully unaware, mindlessly stroking our member nations, and posing for the photo opportunities, watching our fox news "break-aways," and listening to our government issue sound bytes, when the cerebrum eating began in the backwaters and small river towns. It was a time for innocence, and a time for fools.

The screaming from the depths; the blackened souls; the earth regurgitated its dead. Hell itself evicted the unthinking, and uncontrollable rotting masses, sans soul . . . and they were hungry.

So there we were, lost and frightened amongst the orgy; the feast; un-quelled. The dead walking, being consumed by the walking dead. Who are we really? This base need to survive laid open bare, who indeed . . . Tossed rag dolls, used up, into early empty graves? Well, apparently the graves were wombs or cocoons of a sort and it was a day to be "born again."

The only strategy was to grab the nearest weaker brother, free up some brains and eat. Zombie just aren't that bright, and when they see you noshing, ravenously, academy award performance or not, they assume you are just more of the walking dead, and move on to the panicked wailing, and running innocent bags of more fresh food. It was survival of the hungriest.  For although zombies technically can eat soiled and dead meat, it does not satiate like a good fresh gray brain porridge and thick blood-red fillet, nor will dead meat keep a zombie motile (most people don't know that).

Stand tall my friends. Keep vigilance, eyes wide open. We are the great trudging rotting reality, composing symphonies of undead remnant groans, the echoes of a once great civilization. I remember! I do! the majestic folklore and stories, America, America, God shed his grace on . . . no time now though, as we wake the beast within, with a mandatory taste for the living. That's when it almost happened, a deeply meaningful momentary consideration, pondered and ready functioning philosophical meandering, close to giving birth to the most wonderful life giving concept ever graced in wisdom by human beings.

Genius really, the epiphany that would have led to world peace and prosperity for the entire world, and to the second, almost realised, but dropped and splashed into the pooling blood, during a "head rubbing moment" of politicians, scratching the itch, the rumbling craving, while each warm blood-soaked life giving morsel cooled the burning need, and calmed the tortured soulless dark empty hearts with wonderful pulsing drippy juicy meat. All thoughts of humanity quickly forgotten in the lust. How quickly we reverted.  No iTunes, iPod Tablet high speed connectivity in the global wonderland that is the small world we live in.  Sometimes, there's just nothing better, than a good hunk of thick steak and a rub on the head.

After it was all finished, in the end, we became painfully aware that there had only been one slightly zombified corpse, and that starter of the rampage, had been accidentally reanimated, artificially dead in the first place, by a well meaning nurses aid and an eleventh hour needle full of Adrenalin. The rest of us, sadly, all pannic-ee and hopped up on 800 milligrams of steamed milk laden Starbucks, were again, in the end, really just trying to not be eaten.

So we killed and ate our fill, to hide from the horde and survive! History will say that our neighbors and friends were killed by "friendly teethe."  Yes the great zombie infestation did not truly involve zombies, per se, but a good amount of paranoid hysterical panicking, ending in an afterglow fat-cat-laying-around-the-den kind of full feeling, like the semi-circle of lazy boy chairs of the menfolk at Thanksgiving dinner, while the women did the dishes; a huge number of chagrined and embarrassed yet well fed citizens, and the need, the next day, to clean the landscape of the remnants of the nights riotous festival; the "empties" of all that went to the dirt nap a little light headed.

This day, warm summer day, I wonder, what did we really learn, as we buried our dead, and licked our wounds?

What changed?

I just don't really know, as I watch the television news and suddenly my stomach rumbles, and I realize . . . actually . . . I could eat.

 

© 2011 Rob Krabbe / NoonAtNight Publications

The Endless Day

© 1996 Rob Krabbe

Mercifully, I don't connect with some seasons of my life as if they were reality; more of a ghost memory of another existance.  This poem, I feel more than the words betray, but more as an echo of a time past, that I gladly, with some melencholy, consider well past.  Those who share the road of, for now let's call it "emotional/mental enhancement," will no doubt resonate with the tambor of such verse.  Those who don't, don't, and be glad of it.  Unlike some, I celebrate all those who just don't understand where I come from sometimes.  It means one less person darkens the landscape through times such as the ones I find in my older journals.  Good to pour through sometimes, to consider fresh, my blessings today!

 

I quickly pass

the empty road,

that sees me walk

my eyes bent low.

The clouds lay down

so hard upon its kiss,

The ground lays

its darkness

further still.

Beckon me, I

implore you

foul spirit,

to follow.

I cross and

cheaply look away.

To your truth

and your promise

of peace of heart and soul.

Lies!

That

my broken mind

would fade away!

On my own, I know

I'll listen soon anyway.

To travel down

the path of stone,

through the fog

labored horizon there;

lay me down on hills

made just to die.

On my own?

no . . . this day

will not end

on my life.

Given freely away,

this kindred soul,

my life, as such.

Locked tightly away.

Ours to breath and suffer

each and every endless day.

 

 

The Watchman of the Night

© 1977 Rob Krabbe

High above the surface,

hung in vacant skies.

Lost in deafening silence,

the deepest cries,

"It's so cold here."

Deep in the circle,

white is white and

bright, is night.

Cast away into a world

quiet and serine.

Sweet beauty.

I know, most will never know,

this kind of peace.

Complete and consuming,

death to my soul.

"I just want someone."

Sleep well darlings.

I am the watchman.

Until the morning light.


2069, cold and hungry,

No work left in the city

for a machine.

So I sit here

miles above the city;

eternity fading away.

This is my world;

the deep of the night.

My circuits ready, all quiet.

So I pull the blanket up,

Pretend I can feel anything.

I've seen them do this.

I desperately long, for love,

pretending I have a heart and soul.

I monitor the moments,

and keep the peace.

"If you don't mind,

I'm just so very alone,

I promise not to bother you,

so I'll just watch you while you sleep."

Sleep well my babies.

I am the watchman of the night.

The People of Rumble Creek Mountain

© 2011 Rob Krabbe

 

Chapter one

Deep and hidden in the thick shadowy forest, planted in the belly of the foothills of the great Appalachian Mountains is a paradise. A mossy place completely and perfectly inaccessible to men from the outside "civilized" world, it was hidden and protected by the earth itself.   

In the "keep" of a defensive forest, stands a huddle of ancient sphagnum moss covered cabins at the very foot of the majestic Rumble Creek Mountain, Rumble Creek itself wandering through the center of the village, under front porch bridges, sidewalks and widening into a nice refreshing pond before continuing on down the forest glen and out of site—and for drinking—the best water known to man. Through no one knows it! Except them, and me . . . and of course, now you.

On that page in the annals of historical folklore there is a legend that stands above them all and even to this very day, has been told for well over a hundred years about this magic and spiritual place, set into the forest like a jewel, by God on the eighth day of creation. Very few dared to believe the stories were true.

From the last periphery of the inner tree line, the hamlet looked well tended, and yet as one walked closer to the outbuildings, a person could smell the rich history and struggle of a people who had stood the constant test of an unforgiving life, standing through the ages, the reality of such a life wafting from the lines, cracks and crevasses and deeply etched into the logs and mud.  Without any proofs or investigation, one would agree, a story of perseverance and dedication was to be found within the three foot thick mud and log walls of the buildings and compound.  Like rolling bubbling cooking pasta, in deep black sauce, the murky snake seasoned swamplands bid unwelcome enough.

Then scarcely beyond the edge of the swampy soup, the packed huge hardwoods stand at attention.  They were close enough in formation that not many full sized people were thin enough to pass between them single file. Standing hundreds of years old by the trunk size and height, the forest's own line of defense.   So the village was protected from discovery; from infiltration; from the world—the nearest reaches of which lay some 60 miles through the blanket and cover of trees hills, poisons, pitfalls, carnivores, and the boggy swamp surrounding the cabins and forest.  Even that was only a fraction of the inventory, the natural world, and does not take the full of the supernatural into the picture.

This is the place where time exists only marked by itself and where live the legendary people of Rumble Creek Mountain.  They call themselves . . . "The Keepers of the Seventh Seal."

The Clocks

I've eyed all the clocks.

Manifest by my wandering soul,

I've smashed them against rocks.

Burned them in the fire fight.

Banished them with locks.

Cast them into the dead of night

with the ghost of my touch.

The haunting of my memories.

The combinations, and imaginings

and melding of reality . . .

and my mind's leavings.
I've eyed all the clocks.

Wound them up, back, and tight

But time takes its due.

My wandering, comes

back empty handed;

only the smell of my desire.

I rant, and hate the seeming

innocence of all those

damned clocks.

The Sands of Time

© 06•04•1977

I wrote this in 1977, when I was 16.  I don't remember the situation, but I remember I had been an insomniac by then for a few years, and a good amount of my writing then reflected that struggle for sleep.  I was writing a journal of poetry that year, after keeping a prose journal for the three years previous.  I have not stopped journaling both poetry and prose since then.  I think, sometimes, it was a divine gift of writing and music that helped me hang onto the tiny thread of sanity.  I still have reams of old yellowed paper, on which my life's discource was written for so many years before computers.  I upgraded to a typerwriter when "KO•REC•TYPE" was introduced (lol).  I used a lot of it. 

 

If I am gone tomorrow,

or if I live a thousand

years one day . . .

It's Saturday night,

and its droning

on and on like

the line to catch

a bus for hell.

All the angels

have fallen.

All the night

invested in death,

and I hear the bell toll.

The sands of time,

are so fucking slow,

so I break the glass

and it pours out on the

table, leaving pale

yellow smoke.

An aspect of eternity

gets me off, rock hard,

murders me, mind and soul

again and again, so

I grab the thought

tight and right to my

skin.

Visions come

and go, and forever

lays down like a friend.

The wind knows,

where to blow;

knows how I like it.

Simple pity and distress,

I watch my hand, clenched;

it  grows old, as I sit in this

place and wait for you.

I sit here in the hallway[image error]

of my own life and

the gate is still closed.

I'm  destined to stand

outside and knock at

the door to my

own reason.

Splash my face with

rock and sand, and tell

me who I am.

If I am gone tomorrow,

or if I live a thousand

years one day . . .

It's Saturday night,

and its droning

on and on like a

line to catch

a bus for hell.

Insomnia (verse 172)

(verse 172)
© 2011 rob krabbe

 

[Knock, knock, knock]

Fumble for the switch

Powers out, flashlight's . . .

colder, "Crap."

[SLAM] "DAMN!"

The fragile wood trim

explodes like glass

in the thick dark.

Startled, shocked,

chagrined, on my ass.

[BLAM] this time my

toe shatters to the

floor. Swing the door

shut it quick.

The lock chain, taut,

the mystery, the

plodding of old

worn out musty

leather shoes, fills

the news.

Moody Blues, still can't

kill this party.

Kits off, wits dull.

Alien autopsies

and approximations

I lament those that

can sleep.

Free, at last, free at last!

The chained released,

and the great beast,

fed . . . and dead.