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Once I Was

May 30, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

I remembered this morning that there had been a life between us, holding us tightly as if a private gravity, personal and rollin’ steady, like ” a circle ’round the sun.”

Today breaks over the ridge, shadowing the valley road. Each morning is a gift these dwindling days, a 4/4 rhythm in the dancehall of runaway time. “Dance me outside.” a favorite local writer once said. Waltz me one more time under night bright western skies is what I say.

Listen close, hear the far off sounds of saxophones playin’ soft, of dinner dishes settlin’ in the sink, of sweet music in the kitchen. There are shadows dancin’, lighting up the wall.

Tarmac Meditations-It Ain’t Heaven…It’s Illinois.

May 29, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

I was riding in an ATV on my way to Memorial Stadium in Champaign-Urbana to get to the finish line of a 10K race event. In order to get there before the first finishers we scooted down a back road. I shot this from the back of the ATV, high shutter speed and ISO and a great deal of good luck. The sky wasn’t that precise blue and the shadows weren’t quite that long, but it felt like the end of day. The sunlight on the silo spoke of night coming and something special in the air. So that is how I processed it.

Writer’s Whine

May 28, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

I don’t want to write about brave Ulysses or Persephone unveiled or running through the town or any other such heroic fuckin’ thing.

I am sittin’ in my room, waitin’ for my ship to come in; I’m thinkin’ that I just want to get where I am going.

It’s not a lot to ask. Or is it?

Estimated Time of Departure

May 27, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

Shady dealin’, midnight trippin’ is my way of life. The dishwater dawn is my time of day. The next toke is my only friend. Total obedience is the price of admission. A faith born in terror, it ends in the relentless cold.

Tomorrow never comes. Innocence dies by inches as if to the raggedy beat of a breaking heart. Dreams die hard here. The dead are the lucky ones. Life is long but death is for fuckin’ ever.

So bring on the seizures and the shakes, the chest pounding jammers and the flat-out sick fear of shadows, windows, sunlight and the dark. It ain’t a choice to hit the pipe when I can’t stand up, when my heart is outside my body, when I’m pukin’ blood, even then, because I know the each and every toke takes me right…there.

Sometimes, like tonight, my best friend’s best friend walks through the door and tells me that I am hittin’ it too hard.

“No cuff, no front tonight, only cash. Keeps you honest.” he says. “Savin’ your life,” he says. Grinnin’.

I wonder if he realizes or cares that he is part the chain; that his profit pays for the giveaways in the schoolyards.

It is time to leave Hell well enough alone.

My time of leavin’ is at hand.

They Weren’t There Again Today

May 25, 2012 By Michael Lebowitz Leave a Comment

“Well, I keep seeing this stuff and it just comes a-rolling in/And you know it blows right through me like a ball and chain…” Bob Dylan said that. Apparently it is a Bob Dylan kinda day. Mostly I take pictures of people running; mostly I do it on the trails and in the high country. Sometimes I go to the high sage desert or some flat land mirage. But sometimes all I can see are the people who are not there. The empty seats and the overgrown grass, the listing fences and rolling clouds speak to me of spring time goin’ summer somewhere else, the next generation of the ‘boys of summer’ finding another “field of dreams” on which to slide toward old age. A dyin’ stadium is filled with ghosts and some mornings they are my only companions on the early morning run into the sunrise. I stop sometimes and listen close. I pretend to hear the hot dog vendors and smell the popcorn but mostly I just keep runnin’ because the ghosts aren’t out there, are they, and they aren’t waitin’ around. It ain’t sad and Lord knows it ain’t lonely come sunrise out here, it’s just another day on the road to wherever it is I am goin’.