Only in my town
Originally uploaded by olivander.

I’m sure there are many divorcees who would be happy to offer their ex’s kidneys to this person.

Yard King: kicking wintery ass since 2001.
Originally uploaded by olivander.

The 8″ of snow they forecast turned out to be only 6″, and that collapsed to 4″ by the time I got home to blow it.

Please read in all the sexual innuendo of that statment as you please.

I’m not an activist, I’m a freedom fighter.
Originally uploaded by olivander.

I got that white peace ribbon during the Berkeley People’s Park protests years and years ago. Over the years, it has traveled with me, tied to a backpack or tote bag handle, on my jacket pocket, or flying from my car antenna. It’s become dingy and tattered with age, but its meaning is as important these days as ever.

…that I am too stupid to install Moveable Type.

Oct.9.1940 — Dec.8.1980
Originally uploaded by Rick II.

Desolation
Originally uploaded by olivander.

I’ve felt very disconnected lately. Over the next couple of months, two of my friends are moving out of the country, two more are moving to the east coast, and another is moving to Atlanta. Sometimes I really hate living in the midwest. While it’s equidistant from everyplace, it’s also equally far away from everyplace. It’s a half-full/half-empty sort of deal. But with half of my friends gone, it’s just half-empty.

It is done.

Goodnight.

Sleepless
Originally uploaded by olivander. Silhouettes like shivering ancient feelings
They cover my foreign floors and walls
Submarines are lurking in my foggy ceiling
They keep me sleepless at night…
Can you pull me out
Of this sleepless night
Can you pull me out?–King Crimson

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, originally uploaded by olivander.

I am not a city boy.
I do not need proximity to the chattering swarms,
the sea of foul-tempered elbows
late to their pigeon holes.
I do not need concrete building blocks to prop myself against,
that serve no purpose
other than
to remind me of my place.
I do not long for the lurching buses
and black-stacked lorries
coughing pale death
down the shattered roads.
I do not desire 57 channels and nothing on.
I need the tree-spired horizon
buttoning wild skies of beetling snake-tongued clouds
to undulating golden oceans.
I desire ear-splitting silence
and a kitchen-cut sandwich
with thumbprints mashed into
its spongy surface
on a forgotten wayside
on a forgotten lane to nowhere
in the shadow of a prairie shipwreck’s
hay-dripping spanners.
From here
the land receives
Day’s slow blink
without trepidation.