2004 Archives

I may resolve to change my ways this year,
exchange old habits for ones I've not tried.
But there's no point in much of that, I fear,
for one's true nature cannot be denied.

Perhaps I'll vow to focus more on things
that increment the positive aspects,
but who knows what the future's bound to bring?
The lessons never come like you expect.

The truth is, all the seeds for next year's fruit
would not be useful now unless the ground
for planting them had been already tilled.

My only hope is that the land will suit,
and that the right conditions will abound.
Should that occur, my barn's already filled.

31 JAN 2004

By the time I got to it,
the clarinet was odd;
a quaint small instrument for guys
who never got the girls
(even the ones who played
and sat in the same orchestra rows
day and day, year after year),
who shuffled in the back
behind the trumpets
and saxophones.

It wasn't really a manly thing
at nine or ten years old
to play.
But that was after Artie
set it down, and Benny
stopped "Flying Home".

Used to be the clarinet was king ---
and guys who played it
led the bands that fellas killed
to get into. Not the "sweet" bands
(although even Miller's band cashed in
on clarinet by chance, with
Moonlight Serenade, and Welk's band
was the only place you'd see a closeup
on those nickel keys)
or the "money" bands, per se,
but the bands where you had to be
great to even get a note in.

To me, that was the reason why
I played that black and silver stick:
because of Artie Shaw
who even out swung Gene Krupa.

30 DEC 2004

When Obiwan Kenobi felt the end of Alderaan
it was as if a hole appeared and swallowed, to a man,
the lifeforce of each precious soul existing 'til that time
and twisted, perhaps frayed, the cord of which we form a line

I wonder, when tsunamis hit, when earthquakes take their toll,
how many sense the devastation wrought, and still console
themselves that these are unknown folk of far and distance lands
and do not feel the spike that drives itself in others' hands

In retrospect, we call it karma, God's will, or bad luck;
but are we all so ignorant, fresh off the turnip truck,
that we must have some writing on the wall to comprehend
or find a mystic omen first, and then assist a friend?

The world is what the world is, whether nature's realm, or God's;
but sadly, we each feel so distant from it, and at odds
with every notion that connects us to each living thing,
and every song that all life forms but us have learned to sing.

The lost, the dead, the wounded? These poor souls have passed the test.
There but for the grace of some God, we think, we live and have been blessed;
but blessed not with just life, but opportunity to grow
and prove our faith in something is of substance, not just show.

How can we ease the suffering? How can we stop the pain?
How can we more control the world so it won't hurt again?
A better question, one that might serve better those who grieve:
How long 'til each of us becomes what we say we believe?

30 DEC 2004

To accept one's karma and the responsibility for one's actions is strength. To blame another is weakness and foolishness. Let's begin by not advertising our ignorance. If you must blame what happens to you on your friend, your neighbor, your country, your community or the world, don't advertise it by speaking about it. Keep that ignorance to yourself. Limit it to the realm of thought. Harness your speech and at the same time work to remold your thinking and retrain your subconscious to actually accept this basic premise.

-- from Living with Siva by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

There is something liberating about
waking up early. Not too
early, mind you. But earlier
than you need to be
awake; and if you're lucky,
early enough to see the
last of the night disappear
in the whitewash of the
morning sun, and to hear
the birds when they first
rise and start practicing their
songs, like violinists warming up
outside the concert hall for
a performance later that afternoon.

It's a sense of freedom,
definitely --- and an opportunity to
feel the earth's slow glow
as it stretches its muscles
and wipes the traces of
sleep from its opening eyes.

29 DEC 2004

for John Lennon

Too much of what the world has been,
and is, and still might be,
has as its limits what we call
impossibility.

We reign imagination in
and relegate its course
to doomsday visions, worst-case scenes,
and dissipate its force.

But the first step in making change
is picturing it grow;
if we cannot imagine it,
we cannot make it so.

When Lennon said, "Imagine",
it was not just empty talk,
but an instruction to our souls to crawl,
then try to walk.

Imagine that your point of view
is not all that there is
(to living, love or existence)
and you will learn just this:

That brotherhood and peace and love
were with you all along;
and required only listening
to one another's song.

28 DEC 2004

I will not write for other poets.

They exist to ridicule each other,
and failing that, to share inside jokes
on what words are or aren't clich
on poems written in metered speech
on lines that rhyme, even if well done,
on absurd show instead of tell
(as if a poem could only exist for its own sake,
without serving a greater purpose
than entertaining a few self-important snobs;
perhaps, I offer to such critics,
if you don't feel a connection with the work
you're either in the wrong profession,
the piece was beyond your frame of reference,
or just maybe the poem wasn't all about you).

And those who claim to teach, who write
in back rooms, sneaking off to slams on weekends,
lording it over a gathering of teen angst
and tossing their black pearls of wisdom:

How dare you offer as advice
"For God's sake, nothing before 1900"
as if what's new and now and wow
will be remembered even half that long?
Poetry is how culture is transmitted.

It's not just a mindless TV program designed
to inundate the captive audience
with strings of images.

It's a story, too. And sometimes a lesson.

And it's the way poets talk.

About what's important to them.

And if that happens to also be meaningful to just one other person,
let's hope that person hears or reads it ---
because the other poets also in the room
don't mean anything without that, either.

28 DEC 2004

Between the acts on the great stage
the green room swells with life;
like ocean waves the movement never stops.

Each spent performer, bathed in sweat,
absorbed into their entourage,
glows with the energy of the crowd.

Around the curtain's edge, those next
to play are bathed in the footlights;
their skins mirrored white phosphorus.

All are intoxicated with a sense of time
on the heady brew of ideas and wild talk;
each creates their own constellation.

It seems to me an India:
a festival begun ten thousand years
ago, with millions in the band.*

I came here as a stranger, long ago;
although I know the hour I arrived,
I could not say which door I used.

With jugglers, clowns, actors and saints
I've sung and played and swooned;
the stage is shared with all who care to dance.

Outside the street is dark; no lights
run down the path that leads away.
The door is open; no one stands in wait.

I do not know the ticket price,
nor if I walked or came by car.
It does not matter, either way.

The lights are dimmed, another song
from silence rises into form;
I know the words as if they were mine.

When will it end? I cannot say;
each claims their after-party rights,
as if this show will ever end.

I'll sing as long as I'm allowed,
and stay until its done;
there are fruits and wine enough.

And once I'm filled and all sung out
whoever brought me to this place
will have to take me home.

17 DEC 2004

* Bhagavan Das, in his biography, describes India upon his arrival in the early 60's as "a big outdoor festival that had been going on for 10,000 years, with 10 million people in the band."

The world goes on because civilized men exist. Without them it would collapse into mere dust. Though their minds are as sharp as a rasp, Men without human decency are as wooden as a tree. -Tirukkural 100:997-8

Excerpted from the Tirukkural, translated by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. Copyright Himalayan Academy Publications, www.himalayanacademy.com.

(edited slightly for content and privacy)
Hey:

x

(and here's my response, again slightly edited)

Dear x:

While I am flattered that you think my participation in any organization devoted to the purpose of world peace might be useful, I am sorry I must decline. At this point in my life, I feel that organizations really make little difference if the individuals who comprise them have not "made their peace" with themselves and their immediate surroundings first. After all, of what good is a hypocrite who attends peace rallies and then goes home and grumbles about how loud his neighbor's stereo is, or yells at his dog? I think you get the point. All the organizations in the world will not do what is required, which is to change each single mind, one at a time? What that requires is that each individual who is interested in peace act peacefully --- and from that small ripple in the pond, echoes emanate endlessly to all shores. That is the exponential growth that is needed, I think. To start with an organization, no matter how noble its intentions, that does not have as its core that basic belief --- that individuals, not organizations, make the difference, is to pursue the wrong means, at least for me. And the means must justify the ends -- after all, they define it if, as in my life, the journey, not the destination, is the whole point of existence.

As for the Prince of Peace ... I have often wondered why such a prince would require such an extensive army. That seems to defeat the purpose. After all, peace-keeping is NOT peace-making. It is only punishing hatred with the threat of reciprocal, impassionate violence. And THAT surely is not Peace.

Thank you again for your kind words. I wish you well in your endeavors.

Happy Holidays.

The times when goodwill, peace and love
are praised are rare indeed;
and rarer still those instances
when thought translates to deed.

So in such seasons where these things
are found, take heart, rejoice,
and with compassion, grace and honor
add your hands and voice.

It matters not whose holiday
was borrowed, changed or nicked;
but just that at this time of year,
the bubble has been pricked

that splits us up in separate lives
and robs us of the sense
that we are all part of the whole
lifeforce experience.

So wassail, carol, hymn and jig;
let yuletide spirit reign ---
for sadly, it may be a year
before it comes again.

25 DEC 2004

It started out as hail this morning, but has turned to snow
Which happened last here in New Orleans fifteen years go
Those who came south for sunny climes are in for quite a shock
To see the trees decked with the real stuff instead of fake flock

Perhaps Heatmiser struck a side deal with his brother, Snow,
And somewhere further to the North are suntanned Eskimos
The children are all fascinated by the flakes of white
And burn up cell phone minutes squealing in peals of delight

While parents look outside in wonder at their cars and lawns
and at their poor thermometers, whose red has all but gone
Of course, it being Christmas day, the city's all shut down;
but had it been a weekday, you can bet that in this town

there'd be a halt to everything except the drinking halls
'cause no one here knows how to deal with sleet, and the snowballs
they're used to seeing are shaved ice with flavored syrup in,
and driving is peril enough --- wait 'til the ice begins

to set and fill the potholes. Then we'll see a wondrous sight:
folks who can't drive well normally out skidding Christmas night.
And it's a Christmas snow --- it happened only just today;
But it's New Orleans. Blink, and it will quickly go away.

25 DEC 2004

You'd better not pout, you'd better not cry You'd better be good --- I'm telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town. He sees you when you're sleeping He knows when you're awake He knows if you've been bad or good --- so be good, for goodness' sake.

I just today realized the problem with the commercialization of Christmas. The point of the above song is that IF you're good, you will be rewarded. Conversely, if you're BAD, your actions will be noted, and your stocking will be shorted accordingly.

Yet, at the same time, we are admonished to "be good, for goodness' sake".

If we apply logic to this, that's the same as saying "art for art's sake" --- or that art is worth making simply because art is worthwhile.

That means that the song is saying that being good is its own reward. That it is the right thing to do. That's why one does it.

NOT FOR THE REWARD, or because someone is watching who'll provide some payoff.

On one of the communities I manage, someone made a comment that it seems like all the peace-oriented communities are pretty comatose --- not a lot of posting activity. This made me wonder about peace-makers, in general.

To me, a peacemaker is not someone who is all that interested in lamenting how non-peaceful other people are. In addition, they don't necessarily work in groups. Peace, after all, begins with the individual --- and anyone who is seriously interested in finding, and making, peace is always going to look at themselves first and root out in their own character, actions and psyche those violent or harmful impulses and manifestations which are antithetical to peace. That means, of course, a constant level of activity for the peacemaker that starts perhaps unperceivably (to the outside world) and radiates outward first to their immediate surroundings --- co-workers, family, neighbors and so on. There isn't a lot of point in organizing a sit-in half-way around the world if you haven't got your personal act together first.

Marx said it best --- the first step in any public revolution is the private revolution. Ramakrishna, talking extemporaneously about 50 years earlier, said it in a different way --- unless you have personally experienced God, you've got no business preaching or teaching God to anyone else. First, you've got to shut up and listen. In other words, change yourself and you have already changed the world.

So I'm not really all that surprised that the "real" peacemakers aren't clamoring up and down the "peace-oriented" message boards. After all, they're busy doing what they need to do, despite a world that doesn't value their efforts (and often doesn't even realize their effects, because they are assimilated by osmosis, not radical paradigm shifts). For me, it's enough that people interested in making peace have a refueling station such as peacetrain to pull into and share their experiences, encourage others and when they can, say just a word or two.

To sum up, to me you "make" war. You "spread" peace. The difference is that you can separate war, either philosophically or physically, from yourself.
With peace, that's not an option. The Creator and Created are One.

Any thoughts?

With each breath, opposites are reconciled:
like the unconscious seeping under the door
that the river makes as it rises during the night,
then at first light ebbs slowly away
as the sun's heat pulls it into its glowing bosom.

To dub the inhalation Da, to sense its quiet strength,
then name it Ma as it comes forth from the lungs,
its motion merged with infinite atmosphere,
warm tendrils seeking out atom by atom
the molecules that shape the space,
flesh out the illusions of matter
and the world's wide mask of being and nothing,
is to lower a string into a lake
and think you've split the water.

There is a moment, between sighs,
where there is only one expanse of air,
samadhi in a pregnant pause;
and in that instant what divides
a flame from its penchance to burn
becomes the only line between
the different forms of god.

22 DEC 2004

What is the sound that echoes in the ears
when all is silent and the earth, asleep,
leaves off its boisterous clamor and harangue,
its endless waves of wild, chaotic speech,
and in a mute and restful slumber dreams?

The world in such a chasm's wake was born,
its roots entwined around a primal hush
that swallowed nothingness without a word
and cast itself out like a spider's web
from shadow's body into space and time.

The frequency at which that first hum sounds
destroys the fibers of its universe;
each phase an ending that begins again,
a great abyss which endlessly refills,
reverberating in ears not yet made.

Infinity is but a moment's span
as worlds wink in and out like distant stars;
and time becomes an artificial guide,
a meaningless contrivance marking out
where one illusion borders on the next.

20 DEC 2004

There are no words to capture this
exquisite moment of pure bliss
between the grasp and letting go
between the thought and need to know

There are no words that can express
the soft caressing tenderness
of just a second's quiet peace
between holding and just released

Drowned out by a heartbeat,
its low murmur barely heard
below the gentle cry of stones
that wish to become birds

There are no words that can relate
the edge of time, the end of fate,
between the lines the phrases flow
and not yet sentenced, fade and go.

There are no words to ponder on
from hallowed texts, their marrow gone;
between each page, a film of dust
speaks what it can, to whom it must.

20 DEC 2004

In a week I will be forty. If my mother's right
it's time to get my act together and find more delight
in doing what needs to be done to build something to show
for two score spent in dissipation watching the grass grow.

For forty years I've wandered, aimless (if you read my press)
and how I managed to survive is anybody's guess;
but here I am an older man with little put aside
for rainy days and the malaise built up like muck inside.

And even though my mother (bless her and her dreams for me)
is likely to deny it or at best, just disagree,
the course for me is still unset, with mountains still to climb,
and wild paths yet to ramble left untraveled all this time.

I could have gone a different route, sought greater wealth and fame,
but had I come another path I would not be the same.
The stars are not much different in the sky as they were then;
they can be used to form new paths, not just trace might have beens.

And I have what I want, right now, though some would call it less
that what it should be. I seek out a greater happiness.
If I should last for forty more, undoubtedly, I'll find
that my boat will at last reach shore --- just where, I do not mind.

For ports and inns and treasure troves on wild, uncharted lands,
I'm sure will fade from memory like dry dust in my hands.
It's only knowing who you are that makes a difference;
and taking forty years to learn that through experience

instead of scanning manuals, taking courses, reading signs,
has built a life worth living. And the best part? It is mine.
So forty comes and forty goes --- it seems a lot of days.
All that was bad was my own fault, for good, I must give praise

to forces I've just glimpsed upon this often lonely trail,
that oft appear as wisps of smoke not some great holy grail.
I hope just this: the time to come, what's left to me this round,
won't seem like unimportant drivel, or just mumbled sound.

But forty's just a number; it does not mean all that much:
some measure of maturity to lean on, like a crutch,
or use to force my issues down some young and eager throats
who've just started their seeking and still think they must take notes.

So I will taste of forty (a respectable old port)
and try to make the next four decades of a different sort.
I couldn't do the same again, so what's the point to try?
I'll take each new day as it comes, and get there, by and by.

26 DEC 2004

Having been notified by Google Alerts that a new service is available that takes your original website and scours the web to check and see if your content is found elsewhere (that is, borrowed liberally without permission), I give another thought to what has to be my favorite take on plagiarism:

Lermontov: "...and remember, my dear Mr. Krassner, it is far more disenheartening to have to steal, than to be stolen from."

--- from The Red Shoes, of course

In another sense, poetry (at least good poetry, in which the author has said something from their unique perspective) is as difficult to pass off as one's own work, if it is not, as it is difficult to use someone else's driver's license and claim it is you. The fact of the matter is that driver's license pictures are purposely so horrible (I have yet to see one, from any state, that manages to even vaguely flatter its owner) and these photos are so unlike the license holder, for the simple reason that only the REAL and authentic owner of such a license would claim that the picture contained thereon is themselves. There is something to be said, in many respects, for the ultimate audacity of truth.

And with poetry, it is I have discovered the same. After all, it is only the most audacious explanation of a poem's meaning (and that is typically the one that is at the polar opposite extreme from any literary critic or literature professor's interpretation, although it need not be, which oft surprises both the poet and the professor LOL) that is typically the one belonging to the author. Perhaps it is too simple, perhaps too obtuse. But an imposter trying to pass off the piece as their own work would NEVER use that particular exegesis. And other poets (if not the caffeine-laden, vapid dilettantes who frequent readings and slams and/or think themselves by virtue of their own pomposity and inflated sense of gothic me-o-centrism to be the next Plath, Rimbaud, Morrison, Shelley, Bukowski or whatever) can tell the difference. In a heartbeat.

Sometimes, a word can have a myriad of meanings. Take "vidya" for example, which in Sanskrit means knowledge, when spelled with a small 'v', or denotes knowledge leading to liberation, i.e. to the realization of Ultimate Reality, when spelled with a capital 'V'. When I wrote this song, it was for a girl with that name --- I did not know of its other connotations. But reading it now, almost fifteen years later, some of that deeper meaning seems to seep through in what I said then.

Sometimes, we surprise ourselves with epiphanies that cannot be rationally explained. It is these flashes that illuminate a darkness, and can pierce shadows we didn't even know existed. For poets, I suppose, these are "Rumi" or "Kabir" moments, that result in creations that are intended as simple love songs directed to a single person, but in reality illustrate a devotion to something much greater than the individual subject.

Watch for me when you sleep ---
dreams can be masterful fortune-tellers.
There is no distance too great, too far,
that wishes cannot traverse as mountain travellers.

Think of me when you wake ---
there will be other fond remembrances.
Dreams cannot deceive; there is no substance
to your fears. I will come for you.

I will be in the farthest stormcloud.
Listen to the thunder --- there will be my words.
Look upon the mountains, unyielding to the seasons ---
there will be the rocks that turn to birds.

Talk to me in your wishes ---
hearts can hear where ears cannot.
Time is but an obstacle which can be overtaken.
Wishes will bring nourishment as if holy waters.

Watch for me when you are worried ---
dreams can be revealing sources.
There is no distance that is so far
that wishes cannot cross like hallways.

I will be as the waves on the ocean.
Listen to the thunder, there will be my words.
Look upon the mountains, unyielding to the elements ---
there will be the rocks that we will turn to birds.

27 JUL 1991

Tolkein's world of fabled creatures
did not speak to me
of my own sense of purpose,
or responsibility

and so its strange translation
onto film I did not mind;
except the Ents and Bombadil,
who Jackson left behind.

But Earthsea, in which my own life
found endless parallel,
and traced a journey like my own
through a personal hell,

when wrought onscreen seemed stale and trite,
its lessons left unspoke,
and mists around its message
lost, somewhere on a fake Roke.

13 DEC 2004

When grandma fried the eggs, she used the salt
so liberally its savor burnt the tongue;
and so my father grew to hate the taste,
eschewing through his life their bitter edge.

It seems to me this metaphor applies
to nuggets gleaned by some religious sects;
when taken from their source, the sea, in part,
they overwhelm the soul with acrid fire
and cease to flavor, but only repel.

Once taught to spurn the salt through overdose,
some go through life unseasoned, knowing not
of how themselves of this saline are made,
and learn to satisfy their hunger on
what tasteless crusts they come upon by chance.

13 DEC 2004

Joy in the world! The time is come!
Let earth reject all kings.
Let ev'ry heart give itself room,
and with all nature sing, and with all nature sing,
And with, and with all nature sing.

Joy in the world! No tyrant reigns!
Let men new songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy!

No more let pride's illusions grow
in wars that spoil the ground;
It's time to let earth's blessings flow
Far as all life is found, far as all life is found
Far as, far as all life is found.

To fill the world with truth and grace
We must make nations prove
The folly of self-righteousness,
And share justice and love, And share justice and love,
And share, and share justice and love.

A flurry of words assaults the ear
as she storms back in the room,
alto voice filling the space
left by the withering blast
of the horn; the false lull breaks

as the drum, relentless, kicks
forward the time, and her growl
bites off the bar viciously,
saying, listen close and learn -
you don't know my opinion.

No, no, that's my quick response,
block chords of the piano
trying to fix the segue,
substituting chord after chord,
as the bass beneath pushes

us ahead, red hot and mad,
working the room with anger;
the murderous notes fly wild,
burning away useless charts
as Miles and I turn our backs,

and say, "Never mind."

The head that began it all
now lost, deliberately,
only tensions and guide tones
suggesting of melody,
her alto pauses and breathes

as the snare drum snaps, alert,
finding the primal level
in our talk, the undertow
where the nothing we share breeds
and lets loose its dark malice.

A conversation, I think,
is not about streams of words
in space from a single voice,
but interplay of accent;
subtle questions in each pause

a spur driving another line,
or emphasis, amplifying
the other's words, pushing back
perhaps only with a breath
to change rhythm and the tune,

like saying, "So What?"

For the song is not possessed
by one alone; it weaves and moves
from alto to first, trumpet,
then to bass and to the drum,
brass bell, then ivory key,

as moistened reed gives way, back
to the brass, struck on its edge
by wire brush; each one pushing,
working off of each other,
waiting to get the last word.

Now she's back in the kitchen,
but her solo I block out;
focusing my quiet vamp
'til she sits out a chorus
and I can speak my own phrase

as she turns her back to me,
thinking, like Miles, of control,
giving me a bit of space,
with an irritating cool
that shows she is the leader.

The band says, "We hate that."

31 JUL 1994, revised 31 OCT 2001

There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him. -- Antonin Artaud (1895-1948)

The play's the only thing, upon this stage ---
the one true line from which all tangents spring;
and if the actors move from joy to rage
in but a moment's span, or seem to bring

a touch of madness to their roles, perhaps
reel in some strange delirium's delight,
remember once the curtain's drawn, these chaps
must face their critic's mirror every night.

The lines that flow so freely from their lips
leave only bitter ashes on the tongue,
and in love's arsenal, faded applause
serves as a scourge, and accolades as whips.
No wonder they seem mad and quite unstrung,
and break along their human seams and flaws.

09 DEC 2004

for Rudyard Kipling

There was an idea
that grew in a brain ---
not a clean break, but rather
a troubling sprain.

It swelled up and shut off
the centers of speech,
thus remaining hidden;
and just beyond reach

it festered, fermented
and spread like a rash
along the poor cortex
which gave up, and crashed.

But that was so long ago ---
now the brain's learned
to shun stray ideas
lest its pathways burn

with even the memory
of strange and queer thought;
to be safe, it forgets
most that it's been taught

and so pretty thoughtless
it plods through the day ---
imagining it has
always been this way.

Now dearly beloved,
believe this is true;
lest you want ideas
to happen to you.

08 DEC 2004

The minutes drag and slow to just a crawl,
their tired legs turned rubber, and their hands,
so used to crisp precision, mime a drawl
that stretches seconds out like rubber bands.

Each sound becomes a dopplered wave, each sigh
a whirlwind swirling echoes in its wake;
and even the sweet words of lullabies
rasp in the ears like dried leaves 'neath a rake.

Beneath the skin, each vessel like a drum
begins in low vibration keeping time
and with a dull, lethargic creep drones on.

Through air grown thick and stagnant standing dumb,
their wings beslimed, ideas fight to climb;
and then the moment ends, and they are gone.

08 DEC 2004

For some reason, sitting out under the carport this morning in the rain made me think of a period during 1991 when I wrote about 30 songs in the course of 36 hours. It was a very strange Peter Gabriel meets Van Morrison kind of weekend ... just me, the computer terminal and the digital piano.

Blues for Elijiah

Ravenous, we turned our backs on civilized pursuits
in suits of woven rags and skins, exposed to elemental change;
No human chatter breaking forth, no spewing after-thoughts
of imperfect internal combustion.

Blinded by the word of the immortal beast of broadcast,
scarlet-eyed, star-struck, in cathode-ray imposed myopia,
we foolishly believed that we had found the new Messiah
and we called to him by name, Blessed Technology.

Cloven-hooved, through clover fields, we chased the dream inconceivable
Thinking we could make believe and make it more believable

Turn away from your television
Turn away from your radio
There are more things in Earth and Heaven
Than you'll ever know

Words are only words if they hold no other meaning
Symbolized interpretation of an unseen imagery:
The silence shouts out deafening; cover up your ears
or you might hear something important.

Hungry now, and rooting through the leftovers of history,
power ties no longer bind, yet cut off circulation.
Do you still believe that you have found the reasons for your presence?
Do you still hold fast to dreams that have no meaning?

Turn away from your newspaper
Turn away from your bulletin board
There are so many things escaping your attention
There are more rivers left to ford

With all your money, can you still pay attention?
Will all your bridges tumble into the sea?
With how much credit can you purchase my affection?
Will you be frightened if I love you for free?

Turn away from your television
Turn away from your radio
Listen to the music playing out in the courtyard
They're playing verses you should know

Turn away from your radio
Turn away from your magazine
There are things happening that are much more important
There are still wonders you've not seen

26 JUL 91

Fallen Angels

A monster's out walking the streets tonight
Devouring the city, cobblestone by cobblestone
A soul without mercy; and you know
pity is a lonely word, small and forgettable

Silent in mute screaming agony
Following the gutters down and out to the sea;
otherwise, without purpose, directionless,
void of apparent course.

Searching for fallen angels
Fitting them with dragons' wings
'Cause if this play falls on its face
We'll have to think of something

The monster in his guise, so human,
licks his lips, mastiff-inspired,
the scent of life, animal
caged words, primitive and sophisticated.

Alone in schizophrenic company
Following the sound of life around the corner;
no intentions, only expectations
of disappointment in the shadows

Searching for fallen angels
Fitting them with dragons' scales
'Cause we'll need more cannon fodder
When self-preserving instinct fails

A monster is stalking the city tonight
Devouring the pavement like lines
on a printed page, without mercy or pity,
which are lonely words, small and
easily forgotten

Searching for fallen angels
Fitting them with dragons' hearts
'Cause we'll need all our energy
Once the floor show starts.

26 JUL 91

At dawn, when I awoke, the rain
was but a mist that damped the lawn;
and then its whitewash strength increased
to rinse the night, 'til it was gone.

Its purpose served, it too then waned,
as greys began to blue
and dried the puddles left behind
to just a drop or two.

Yet on the breeze I taste it still ---
its cool and fragrant kiss,
that lingers in the morning air;
good days begin like this.

The wrens, at first asleep, or shy,
now venture from their shade
and low, take up their favorite tune
and start to promenade.

07 DEC 2004

This morning I shall try to set
my sights against the hypocrite
that dwells inside me, giving pause
to any who would praise my cause.

I seek him out, this two-faced toad
whose inner turmoil oft explodes
in fits of misdirected rage
against his keepers, or his cage,

and bid him walk with me a while,
to value substance, over style,
and for a moment to forget
those years developing regret

for dreams undreamt, and songs unsung,
denying that we are among
the smallest spots in life's design
yet claim so wildly, "mine, mine, mine."

This morning, for it's early stil,
there's time to catch him, and I will,
to, at least for an hour or two,
pretend that he's illusion, too.

07 DEC 2004

Quote from a currently running commercial for Cox Digital Telephone:
"If a million people are doing it, it must be a good thing, right?"

So, if a million people are jumping off of cliffs, to use a metaphor from my mother's playbook when I was a kid, you should be doing it too?

Or to paint with a much broader brush ... if a million people are racist, sexist, bigoted, uptight, boorish cads, then that's the direction you want to head in? If a million people support a fascist dictator with an agenda that includes decimation of people not like him (or them), that makes it a worthy cause?

Wow. Marketing never ceases to amaze me.

To paraphrase Ibsen, since when has the majority ever managed to do anything but ostracize (and that's the mild end of the reactive spectrum --- the other end would include thumbscrews and quartering or crucifying) its innovators?

Sometimes, in fits of restless pique
I lose the will to even speak
and listening to voices lie
reduces me to tears; I cry

not for their souls in peril, no,
but for a world that makes it so
worthwhile to bend and shape the truth
this way and that, a mood to suit;

And weeping, once the phone is dead,
I sit and wonder, seeing red,
why those who have integrity
must bear the brunt of infamy

while tarred and feathered by those fools
who will not play by agreed rules
but choose instead to twist and wreck
the facts. But then, in retrospect,

I pity anyone who must
rely on guile instead of trust
to count some coup against their foe
scoring them, one, everyone, zero.

06 DEC 2004

Parenting teaches, like nothing else did
that you pay for the bullshit you pull as a kid
the invoices rendered by children who ask
for clemency, extended curfews, and cash

Blow thou, winter wind, on my shutters and doors,
knock down happy scenes outside department stores,
and lay your hand over the acres of trees
picked before their prime and chopped off at the knees.

Set loose your ice knife blade and cut through the night,
send glad-handing carolers running in fright,
wreak havoc on fake snow and decorative sleighs
and overwrought, wasteful electric displays.

Blow on, winter wind, separate wheat from chaff,
and I will smile merrily, and even laugh
when your icy breath on the window panes rasps
and rattles lawn ornaments and dry bird baths.

Send all the leaves, dried out, their chlorophyll gone,
to rest on the self-righteous manicured lawns
of those who would well-wish just once every year;
Blow on, and once all of the garbage is cleared

keeping blowing until you have gusted your fill.
Blow ye most triumphantly, blow as ye will;
and then, when your efforts have cleaned off the swill,
meet me at the top of some sad, lonely hill

to lend me your strength -- let it fill up my lungs.
Together, we'll seek out new songs to be sung,
and gather fresh myths to raise our kids among
that see the world once more as vibrant and young.

04 DEC 2004

Two murders I witnessed in opposite trees
across the canal, voicing cacophony;
a trial of wills between territories
resulting in blackened skies, as the light breeze
of morning and rain brought a chill to my knees.

Not often such numbers are gathered this way,
suggesting an omen to christen the day
accompanying storm clouds hung heavy and gray,
their pregnant, expectant rough edges in fray
awaiting the hour when havoc would play

on all thoughts of picnics, or sunlit parades.
I watched as the black wings formed out of the shade
there in the tall cypress where their nests were laid;
and just for a moment, felt cold and afraid ---
then sipped from my hot cup of coffee, just made,

and drew on my pipe, let the thick smoke surround
my head, and then slowly, not making a sound,
rose from my chair, let my feet feel the ground
cool underneath me, and looked once around,
and thought of myself, quite small and unprofound.

Two murders I witnessed in opposite trees
this morning while killing time quite patiently;
and though it was quite unrelated to me
I pondered some moments on the irony
that such things should happen, and that I should see.

04 DEC 2004

Two saints of diametric views
one rainy Sunday morn, did choose
to spend some time in long debate
on gods and men and life and fate;

each sought to prove his deity
more just and great (such vanity)
imagining the sad world pined
for their opinions, wrought sublime.

While neither knew the other's gods
(or quite why they were at odds),
their hearing dulled and eyesight poor
each stood on their respective shore

with little buckets rimmed in salt
distilled from the sea, to assault
with proofs that just their deity
encompassed true salinity.

They splashed each other well enough
and neither one could be rebuffed
until both soaked through to the skin
they paused; and as the tide came in

a voice was heard above the swell
that neither knew (at least, not well)
and it said, "just act like the world
is not for man, but for the squirrels."

Then buckets half-lost in the sand
the two saints laid down, hand in hand,
and in the fading daylight's spark
saw the horizon's distant arc

and gained perspective, sitting there,
the ocean in their underwear ---
and laughed, because their points of view
were equal parts hogwash and truth.

Two saints went to the shore one day;
and from that beach, none went away.

When in the winter, I shall stand
a bare tree tall on frozen land
there may be some who choose to rake
among the leaves left in my wake
and into separate piles by hue
divide these skeletons. But who
can tell by looking at them from
the long rake's length, when the snows come
which were the first to dry and fall
without accounting for them all?

Which once green fans in spring were dropped,
and now are mixed with autumn's crop?
Which dried on branches now grown old
and clung until their sap ran cold?

Like placing blank sheets front and back
of chapters splitting the known facts
that populate a life's long span
in some great sequence, as if planned,
without acknowledging the whole
as mystery, beyond control.

And once so bagged and sifted through,
who knows if they are sorted true?
If such a task be done at all ---
one sack too full, or one too small,
tends to distort one's sense of scale
and in the end, can only fail
the way a footprint in the dust
leaves little sign, except it must
describe a path begun or ended;
not much else, or what intended
course was left behind or started fresh.

Each turning point leads but to guess.

For who's to say which precise point
becomes the branch's end, or joint.
Until the growth is stopped by time
there is no finite to a line.

But some will section off in parts
where one phase ends, and one phase starts,
and in some erudite display
explain a life in finite ways,
and capture facts with endless notes,
transcribe the tunes from songbird's throats,
fit each stray thought into some mold
where it can be cast, hard and cold.

I choose, instead, to linger on
those leaves now lost, blown from the lawn
by wind and rain, that will not be
included in the raked tally.

For these, the lost uncounted score,
describe the flesh that is no more,
but lines a garden bed somewhere
or turned to dust along a shore.

And the great naught that is their wake
needs neither sack, nor pile, nor rake.

01 DEC 2004

Thanks for the invitation. I must say, having looked into facilitating my own Great Books curriculum at several times in the past, that the concept is neither unfamiliar to me, nor uninviting. However, my reason for declining at present has little to do with the scope of the program, but more with the medium. I have participated in a number of online study groups, interest groups, etc., over the past ten years, and have found that while they do promote a degree of intellectual stimulation, and do foster a sense of camaraderie among participants, they by their very nature limit the exchange of ideas because they have as their foundation a sense of anonymity. It is very easy to expound one's ideas, and wax philosophic, in the vacuum of not having to look another person in the eye. It is gratifying, particularly to one's ego, to have the group linger on a thread of your own creation for endless iterations. However, too often it seems that is where it ends. Having a cluster of pen-pals, so to speak, does not improve my opportunity to have intellectual (or otherwise stimulating) conversations in real life, with people that I encounter in the flesh on a daily basis. Without that level of personal contact, having an exchange of ideas to me is stale and flat.

I don't say that this particular curriculum or this forum will lead to that end. For me, however, particularly since my own meaning of an educated liberal extends FAR beyond the narrow, and one might even say, self-destructive, confines of Western culture, that at this point in my life, your group is not for me. It smacks too much of knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone, as some kind of barometer by which one can compare one's education to others and somehow feel more justified in holding opinions, and grasping the illusory reins of control over a life that to be understood must be tasted in the flesh, rather than by sucking the aged marrow from its volumes of bones.

That's a long way of saying, thanks, but no thanks.

However, I wish you success in this venture, and again, appreciate the invitation.

Scattered like jewels tossed out
across a black crushed velvet plush
electric fueled stars winking
against an endless backdrop of night
their pulsing engines cycling
with an urgent rasp
their transmissions settled
into high ratio sedation
controls set to automatic pilot
as the guidelines flash by
like homing beacons
on an endless runway
glow from gauges green and orange
illuminating chins set firm
eyes forced to the open
against the lull of airsteamed whine
fighting the urge to sleep, to drift,
and follow the flow of the road
as it rolls itself under the lights.

There are so many little things
that make up life's stretched years;
and pausing now, to list them,
I find my payments in arrears

for moments that have come and gone,
each adding to my store
of seeming insignificance
that whole, is so much more

than pieces, parts and bits of dust
drawn from the world's extent
and left upon my doorstep, freely,
no charge evident.

The big gifts, they may thrill and make
their first few days so bright;
but soon, their glamour fades and dulls
like day will turn to night.

But little things, they will remain
beyond their seeming use,
bind fast together one's whole life
and never let it loose.

So I am thankful for the small
and plain and unobscure;
For in the presence of such things
my faith in life is sure:

That every action, though unseen,
unnoticed by the throng
still makes a ripple in the pond
and sings, with its small song

That music humming underneath
the bustle of the world -
the little seed from which, in spring,
a flower may uncurl.

For these small things, and others too,
I thankful raise a toast;
And so remember, for a moment
just what matters most.

The hand that grips so tightly at the reins,
its fingers numb with effort after time,
will endure bruises, callouses and sprains
so long as it still feels the tugging line

that links it to life's pulsing, straining steeds
as they careen along the path ahead.
In time, firm hands grown weak may start to bleed
and give the team, once strong and fresh, their head;

but then, their sullen backs and swollen legs
will want only their oats and warm, dry stalls.
Despite how earnestly the driver begs,
against such joys the thrill of travel palls.

And so it is with youth that is so bound
it does not love the road, only the goal;
and in its waning moments, can be found
just remnants of a whole and vibrant soul.

21 NOV 2004

There is only one thought
that is scarier to the industrialist
than "Workers of the World Unite".

It is "Want What You Have".

Neoconservatism is not a threat to the free-living, free-wheeling, bleeding heart liberal philosophy of us drug-crazed, sex-minded hippie freaks.

No, despite its definition as "an approach to politics or theology that represents a return to a traditional point of view (in contrast to more liberal or radical schools of thought of the 1960s)", it is not the left wing, per se, that is the target of neoconservatism. It's target is not to return us to before 1960, but before 1760. After all, the traditional point of view in politics or theology is not democracy. It is monolithic, totalitarian and unquestioned rule. It is fascism, painted with a nostalgic brush called "the good old days" --- those days before liberal science gave us the conveniences that gave us the free time to sit around and reminisce without having to actually experience the minor setbacks of medicine, culture, diversity, equality, and economic well-being that were in those halycon days available only to the extremely wealthy, or extremely lucky (and luck would be defined as in the right place to benefit from the temporary whims of the current dictatorship). It is belittling, beheading, excommunicating, exiling, or executing any who disagree with your point of view. And it is the point of view of rich, white men --- who have convinced, somehow, the remaining 95% of the population of this country (that's right, 95% of the wealth is controlled by 5% of the people, remember, and those aren't people living in Harlem, or Watts, or Chinatown) that this is the agenda upon which America should settle. The course which we must steer by. Our mandate.

Let me get this straight --- our mandate, as a democratic nation, is to abandon democracy, much as the Anasazi abandoned New Mexico.

Under a banner of religious self-righteousness, jingoistic nationalism, military might and xenophobic paranoia --- particularly regarding people of Semitic origin and language.

Careful with that swastika, Eugene.

You will not successfully barter the illusions of freedom and liberty for the illusions of control and safety on my watch. The former may be undisciplined, untamed and only nebulously defined, but even in that raw, feral state they are worth ten times the most alluring manifestations of the latter.

That's what I call a Neo-Liberal agenda. Fixing the broken left wing so the eagle doesn't have to spin in circles and wear itself out trying to leave the ground.

Or to put it more bluntly, you can have the Constitution to wipe your ass with when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

The right to bear arms is NOT the same as the right to own or use a gun.
Schools and hospitals should be a greater priority than prisons and graveyards.

The ends never justify the means.

A Democracy is more fragile, and therefore needs more protection, than a Republic. The former is an idea, while the latter is a thing. That's why the Pledge of Allegiance is somewhat misleading. A symbol, such as a flag, stands for an idea or ideal, not a thing. A thing is a limited interpretation, a casting in the temporary stone of time, so to speak, of an idea. It is not the idea itself, only a small part --- in the same way that a religion is merely a bucketful of seawater mistaken for the entirety of the ocean.

Once you disregard ideas in favor of things, you stop thinking. Once you stop thinking, it doesn't matter what the polls say, because the opinions you are offering are not your own, anyway. Most likely they have been given to by someone who does not know of, care about, value, respect, understand, or have any responsibility for, your life.

The responsibility, at least, they can never shoulder anyway. Responsibility is the price you pay for ideas --- whether your own or someone else's.

I subscribe to several poetry journals.
I do not find kindred spirits there,
only other wandering souls who seek
no connection with the poetry I find
pulsing under the surface of the world
that has a natural rhythm, that breathes
its own cadence, that does not merely wish
to impress with some artistic notion
of importance.

I have been a musician my entire life.
Playing jazz, classical, bluegrass, country, punk,
rockabilly, metal, goth ... and combinations of them all,
I find too often that the emphasis
is on the next gig, the money machine
that seems to feed on other genres too
and leave bitter, isolated writers of songs like me
wondering why anyone would consider
themselves a professional (meaning for the money)
versus an amateur (because they love doing it);
and an attitude that seems antithetical to the expression
that music is the universal language.
There are more partisan barriers in music
than between the left and right wings of government.

I belong to a number of pagan organizations;
and there are too few members of those groups
who understand what it means to harvest anything,
yet subscribe to some version of mumbo jumbo
that insists they have a harvest festival,
that fail to hear the voices of trees and plants
and somehow still feel that human beings,
as opposed to other forms of energy,
have a right, nay responsibility, to focus energy
for their specific purposes.

I have been a liberal since I first took a political stand.

And I have been a vocal American.

And somehow, today, when the voices of victory are raised
by those who appear to believe that America is right
by virtue of them affirming it is so
(and in the absence of any factual evidence to back it up),
I realize as I have said before,
that the lesson Napoleon failed to learn from Elba was this:

All men are islands.
Some are just in better climates.

As a singer-songwriter born in the 60s and raised in the 70s and 80s, I suppose there are two major shadows under which I labor: I refer to the long shadows cast by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. I am influenced by both, in different ways --- but that's the subject of another tale.

Listening recently to a Springsteen collection, I was struck by a notion. That is that both Bruce and Bob deal primarily with sketchings of tragic heroes. Now, we can very simply define a hero (non-tragic) as someone who responds to extraordinary circumstances and in the process, becomes extraordinary, if only for a brief moment in time. The tragic hero, on the other hand, is someone who is not changed from their basic state of ordinary or extraordinary by the nature of these circumstances.

For Dylan, the tragic hero is an extraordinary individual who is forced to reconcile themselves with ordinary times. For Springsteen, on the other hand, the tragic hero is the ordinary individual who is embroiled in an extraordinary life. The tragedy for both writers is that in both cases, their heroes fail. Dylan's extraordinary hero does not improve their ordinary situation. Springsteen's ordinary hero does not rise above their state to absorb the extraordinariness of their time. Both seem trapped, not so much by the mundane nature of either their surroundings, or their personal outlook, but rather by a sense that what really matters is somehow beyond their grasp --- and almost beyond their imagination to reach.

A further significant difference is that often, Bob Dylan is the tragic hero himself, as opposed to Bruce Springsteen, who merely assumes the mantle of the hero for the purposes of illustration --- at least in the later works of both. There is cross-over in their early years, both ways.

Lastly, it is important to note that the immersion in this world of the ordinary, for Dylan its events, and for Springsteen, its people, has marked each writer in different ways.

Dylan, it seems to me, tends to reach out to the extraordinary that he is sure exists in all humankind. Springsteen, on the other hand, tends to try to communicate with people at their most ordinary, believing that once they acknowledge their shared ordinariness, that acknowledgment itself will result in the development of extraordinary people.

A slight difference, perhaps, but I think very important. The difference between extraordinary ordinariness, and ordinary extraordinariness. Or to put it another way, the magical mundane versus the mundane magical.

What truly defines the subjects of both writers' songs as tragic heroes, however, is something even more sublime --- and that is this: without being immortalized in song, their stories would not even command a moment of our collective attention. This world, that focuses so much on attaining some level of control, no matter how much it costs to acquire the temporary rights to that illusion, does not take kindly to reminders of those who have either lost control, or willingly given it up; reminders that you never really have control, and what control you may think you have isn't really of much use in the greater scheme of things. Unless, of course, those reminders have a good beat and you can dance to them.

Here. This is the sound
of the world becoming whole:
one breath at a time.

Here. This is the way
that the world becomes awake:
one eye at a time.

Here. This is the place
where birth and death coexist:
one process, not two.

Here. This is the time
that defines the entire world:
each moment of now.

Here. This is the song
that the whole world is singing:
each thing in harmony.

Here. This is the part
where you add your unique voice:
part of the whole choir.

Here. This is the tune
from a forgotten hymnal:
the music of life.

Here. This is the law
that the whole world must follow:
Embrace life, or die.

Here. This is the fact
that we want to overlook:
We don't own the world.

Here. This is the myth
that fuels our own destruction:
We are the whole world.

Here. This is the point
at which we each make a choice:
Living or dying.

25 AUG 2004

Once upon a time, although since as a dimension, time is a relatively unstable paradigm and cannot often be trusted to remain in the tense that one would expect, in a land far, far away [and distance too would seem but an illusion that our physical bodies must endure, but that our minds can easily dissolve with a modicum of effort], there was a very small planet that circled its medium density star - one tiny speck of dust in a mighty dustbowl of a universe.

It was a planet of contradictions. A planet of unusual propensities. A planet that called itself a world sometimes, but at other times felt like a planet.

The inhabitants of this strange planet who had an interest in such things at one point unanimously named it. Those who did not require a name for it seldom acknowledged such activities, regardless of how much circumstance their participants conferred upon them. They may have been thinking, "What's in a name?", but they also might not have even noticed. In the seventh-most widely spoken language of the inhabitants who populated (either by chance birth or through destiny motivated relocation) the most diverse range of climates, the planet was known as Arthel - well, the name was not actually a word in that language, but in a language that was used by a majority of the dominant inhabitants, a language no longer actively spoken on the planet, but revered as a way to escape the need to define things to the non-dominant inhabitants. You may already have begun to guess at some of the unusual propensities to which this planet was inclined.

The inhabitants of this planet, Arthel, were fortunate enough to have been able to develop, propagate and thereby populate it, thanks to a remarkable compatibility between their requirements for survival and the resources available from the environment in which they did these things. The significance of this fact cannot be overlooked - there were many other planets that would not have nurtured these inhabitants in such a successful manner. Many of these inhabitants marked this significance by embracing a sense of their own uniqueness, their innate skills; many others did not. Some of those who chose not to mark such things?were among those who had no "name" for their home - at least not one that was widely circulated or shared.

As one might typically expect on a planet that embraced contradiction and an air of "mystery", the species of inhabitant that was most abundant on Arthel did not "control" Arthel. It may be that they did not wish to control it, or it may be that they simply had no conceptualization of control with which to apply that construct. In either case, the primary inhabitants of the planet were not the most vociferous planetary residents. There was far too much planet, it can be assumed, to cause much of a reason for worry about which inhabitants got which resources. Think locally, you can almost hear them saying. Work with what you've got at hand. Of course, many of the majority inhabitants did not have "hands" - hands were an evolutionary development that concerned only a small number of Arthelans. Most Arthelans enjoyed other physical traits that more than compensated for opposable thumbs.

But it is the Arthelans with opposable thumbs that concern us in this story. This is their history, more than the history of Arthel, although the two are intertwined so closely that few can see light between the threads.

2003

When I reach the age of Elvis crucified
Two years and small change from now
I shall have been 33 years a missionary:
singing love songs to the deaf;
painting pictures for the blind;
copying manuscript parts to hand out
to a toneless, voiceless choir;
dancing for a stoic crowd
of cynical philosophers.

At that time, like Rimbaud,
I shall have been a serious poet
for seventeen years.

And like young Arthur, who cast aside
his disillusion and grandiose angst,
I shall endeavour to never preach
another sermon;

the prayer book from which I read,
the liturgy crafted lovingly from my own sweat,
the matins I have sung at dawn,
the vespers whispered to the fickle fingers
of twilight,

I shall renounce.

My voice, that grows tired of its own echo
in the empty hall,
My fingers, that have worn down the ivory keys
of life's tempered clavichord,
My mind, that seeks to claim some vain energy
by which to transform, incandescent,
the darkness;
these tools I will abandon.

In these score and thirteen years
with the coin of Caesar I have been paid:
the pennies of disillusion,
the nickels of apathy,
the dimes of indifference;
and within the span of the next 700 days, or so,
I shall have accumulated
the postage
to return to sender
what talents the gods have sent me,
unsolicited.

Unless, of course, I win the lottery.

Because, as Hemingway observed,
the rich are different from the rest of us:
they have money.

19 AUG 2004

and the children who think that summer ends
and somehow school and learning resume again
who do not yet realize the lessons
and the parents who think their fall begun
and somehow school and learning do not apply to those
who do not yet realize the lessons
and the rest of the living, breathing world
and every species that is born and dies
and knows no respite, no vacation
and wants none, having no understanding of those
who do not realize the lessons
only end temporarily, at best.

When does a dialogue with self cease being a monologue?

At what precise moment does the epiphany conceived of self-deliberation end its foolish premeditation on some inner change of being and address itself to the self in others, recognizing in external, living beings that same life force that propels it along the path of least resistance to its indeterminate conclusion?

When does that personal philosophy (or love of knowledge) come into being that requires the death of philology (knowledge of love, one could propose) and must of its own accord stand naked, alone and shivering on the mountain of endless esoteric academic masturbation and let loose its seed to propagate the action of love?

On what basis is the foundation for living laid?

On the cold and calculating pillars of what we think wisdom, but is in reality mere logic and more of the same false illusion separating the observer from the observed?

Or on the fetid swamp, crawling with unseen slime-in-the-making that marks its time of evolution simply absorbing the dry coastline and turning it to scores of miniature Atlantis fragments?

When does the monologue, the endless harangue against unseen foes and perceived slings and arrows that pierce the wondering mind with necessary doubt and wavering conviction, cease to be a speech released to the waiting air alone, and listen, beyond the echo of its own Doppler castings, to the response in the ears (any ears --- one's own, or someone else's) that comes back, like a Messiah encased in the triangulating pulse of myth's strange sonar, like a quiet ripple lost in the cascade of the sea at high tide?

At what precise moment does the angle of the jaw when open start to close the portal of the ears?

When does a dialogue with self cease being a monologue?

18 AUG 2004

Posted this evening to the Ishmael Community, a web community devoted to the principles set forth by Daniel Quinn in his books Ishmael, The Story of B, and Beyond Civilization, among others:

My question is the result of a conversation I had this evening with a couple of Latter Day Saint recruiters on my front lawn. I was able to describe for them very well (using the ammunition provided by your books) an alternative to their explanation of "how" things got this way, including acknowledgment from them of the accurate interpretation of the Tree of Knowledge and Cain and Abel. However, I found myself in a quandary when attempting to describe "why" our culture, as opposed to the lions and bears, the Maoris and Navajo, would choose to take divine right into their own hands and take their lives out of the hands of the gods. In other words, what was the impetus that caused the Takers to become Takers? The explanation in your books very clearly identifies the myths (now borrowed by the Takers) trying to explain "how" things got to where they are now, but what seems to be missing is "why" anyone would make what seems like a giant leap and decide they were above the law that brought them through the evolutionary chain. So I pose the question to you --- WHY did the Takers stop becoming Leavers? Where did this seed of self-delusion germinate? And more importantly, why would a group of Leavers (for that is what we all were, at some point) believe such a lunatic? Why would anyone assume that their way was right for everyone in the first place? There had to have been some event, some epiphany that led first to this ill-founded conclusion, and then to its growth into a shared delusion.

I'm just not sure what it is, and that information seems critical to expounding "why not".

Ah, I must admit that I admire their dedication. I wonder, however, that their missionary zeal carries them out into wild, uncharted areas at the edge of their map before they have taken their message to their direct neighbors. I speak, of course, of the dedicated young men in the bicycle messenger trade of the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

You may find it amusing that these gentlemen in cheap suits and humidity-limp shirts would wander to my doorstep in their proselytizing. They are different from the old African-American women peddling Jehovah as his Witnesses. To these, who hand out Watchtowers on such subjects as fraud, I can offer short comments like, "Hmmm ... don't you think it is ironic that you speak to me of fraud, who are taken in by the biggest fraud of them all ... that somehow, a lily-white Jesus and his Aryan-seeming friends and apostles/associates would convince you, a child of former slaves who has grown up in the shadow of racism, sexism and poverty, that it is not necessary to seek any kind of heaven here on earth (for that would require wresting it from the hands of rich, white men, I'm afraid), but that your reward shall come in a future paradise, while others reap theirs now ... that seems like a pretty clear case of fraud to me, my dear grandmother." And they pause, and shake their heads, and offer to pray for me, of course, but after I part company with them I am sure they are difficult for their pastors to handle.

Nay, the Mormon lads are of sterner stuff. And still, as I explain to them that mankind is gone astray from (G)od because they refuse to spit out the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, to place their lives, like the sparrow, lion, lamb and lilies of the field in the hands of God, and insist that they have the knowledge of who must die (all who would oppose them) and who must live (man, glorious man, who must have a purpose greater than the jellyfish or hyena). To explain that we are the culture of Cain, the mighty agriculturalist, whose story the Hebrews adopted but did not themselves write, whose meaning they have never quite understood --- the Caucasian farmers, who would kill off the hunter gathers and pastoralists, and for each white man slain would return death to the darker races sevenfold. I wonder, as they thank me for my well-thought out and logical explanation, on the spirit that fills their hearts --- that glory of righteousness that insists that mankind has a greater purpose than any other species,
and would prove it by claiming some character flaw. 'Tis not a character flaw, I tell them, but amnesia. That's why we need prophets and seers. To remind us that we don't know what we're doing. And still they seek after the "one true path" that is suitable for all persons, in all times, in all geographic locations. A hyena does not seek to live like a lion; nor does a lion seek to live like a hyena. I tell them this. And I quote them the gospels. And I mention that I admire their bucket of sea water; but it is not the whole ocean, nor does its galvanized rim surround the whole of any truth --- only a fragment.

Sadly, they may not visit me again. But they will send others. Those who refuse to live in the hands of the gods, but insist their own hands are divine, always do.

I pray for them. And for the proving ground that is this earth, the mere waystation on the way to greatness that will be consumed by their blundering and self-righteous dominion. I wonder how we managed to last this long, in free fall, thinking in defiance of the laws of gravity and aerodynamics that we have been flying under our own power.

I've only written one song that reminds me of how much I owe to John Prine, as a songwriter. And it's not really just his style alone --- there's a little Tom T. Hall thrown in for good measure, as well. This is another song from the Undertown Cycle (Frequent Reader, you will recall that's my attempt at Springsteen's Nebraska. Written, perhaps poignantly, shortly after my own divorce became final, this is one half of the picture.

Just leave me here, would you?
We all die alone
There's no one to call
And no movies been shown

Its all sentimental
That crap, anyway
So just leave me here
And move away.

Just leave me here, would you?
And go live your life
There's not much adventure
In being my wife

Its all a tradition
That stuff, anyway
So just go on
And be on your way.

Don't bother with crying
or clutching your hands
Just trust in your God
while he laughs at your plans

And teaches you lessons
you dont understand
That make you a woman or man,
And survive it the best that you can.

Just leave me here, would you?
No sense we both crack
Pack up all your memories
And please, don't look back

Its all sentimental,
That crap, anyway
So just drive off
And Ill be OK.

Just leave me here, would you?
Don't bother to call
And I wont leave the light on
For you in the hall

Its all a tradition,
That stuff, anyway
So just leave me
And move away.

Don't bother with weeping
or wringing your hands
Just trust in your God
that its part of His plan

And remember youll never
full well understand
Just what makes you a woman or man.
And start over, as long as you can.

1998

I wonder at the most auspicious times
that by some random system are proclaimed
and why those correspondences we find
ourselves at odds with should take all the blame

The moon, for instance, in its wane and wax;
The seasons, as they go and come again;
The numerals assigned like colored tacks
to calendars devised by human brains,

As if in the whole world mankind's belief
about the way the universe is made
means anything at all to a small leaf
or changes how it perceives light and shade.

I wonder how the world devoid of man
survived through countless eons and evolved
without the logic only we command,
and managed, with its riddles yet unsolved.

I ask the mockingbird to state its case
for choosing the best moment to proceed,
and swear I see a smile upon its face
that seems to say, "Why don't you learn to read

a book that needs no glossy title page,
that promises no esoteric lore,
that will not guarantee you center stage,
but may instruct you nonetheless, in more

than what you think important, or germaine?
What book, you ask, contains such heady stuff?
The book of life, that you seem to distain;
but against which, your knowledge is mere fluff."

I wonder at the most auspicious times
that by some special school are found and named.
It is no wonder that we act so blind.
That we think we have knowledge is to blame.

17 AUG 2004

It takes perhaps at most an entire day
depending on the company and scene,
but at some point there's nothing left to say
and words become superfluous, obscene.

It's not because the topics have run dry,
or even that some common ground is lost.
More to the point, it becomes hard to try
to fill the void when all don't share the cost.

And then, the simple comfort of two souls
that understand without the need to chat,
outside the ego's posturing controls,
becomes a treasured place of beauty that

rejects the more gregarious and finds
in silence, peace, for body, soul and mind.

17 AUG 2004

Last night a storm rolled slowly in
the thunder muffled by the air
so heavy, like a mortar's crack
or heavy rifle silenced with
a potato at its barrel end,
wrapped in layers of gauze;
it could only slowly make
its way along the pea-soup night
and felt that it was far away
instead of at our doorstep.
The rain was more like sour sky-sweat
that leaked from cloud-pores; it did not fall
but oozed out in the still air like
the world had run a marathon,
the moisture dripped along its brow
and heaving chest, coating hot and salty
the gasping, overheated ground.

10 AUG 2004

pietrosperoni, or the artist formerly known as fool_in_spirit has asked me to provide, in the Wiki version of the 9/11 report, my thoughts on the document. I plan on doing so, but the interim steps in which I get my thoughts together I will process here.

Let's start with the logical premise of the 9/11 report: That terrorism must be prevented from affecting the United States. The proposed method for doing that is to increase intelligence about terrorist organizations and their actions, and to increase security to deter those actions. I think that is the wrong method.

First, the most logical method for deterring terrorism is to reduce terrorism. The fact of the matter is that terrorist groups exist because at some level, there are world governments or other bodies politic that believe that these terrorists are justified in their purpose and actions. If this were not the case, they would be eliminated. Consentually, and globally. To accomplish this end, we must as a nation, and a consortium of nations, separate those who don't like us for the wong reasons, and those who don't like us for the right reasons.

The first group can only be eliminated by education. And that education must begin at home. If we are the leaders of the free world, we must lead by example. There is a reason why third-world countries focus their available budgets on military strength and neglect health care and education. The reason: becaus? we do it. Until our spending on education and healthcare is greater than our military expenditures, we cannot expect anyone else in the world to value education and healthcare more than military might. As a corollary, our education (both at home and abroad) must not present bias, or be combined with or contingent upon, other factors. For example, the delivery of 100,000 textbooks must not be coupled with the delivery of 100,000 cases of Coca-Cola. The delivery of 100,000 vaccine units must not be coupled with 100,000 Bibles. And so on. We're leading, as you might have guessed, to a discussion about doing right for its own sake --- or Dharma with no Karma. But that will be discussed in greater detail in a later post.

The second can only be eliminated by addressing these right reasons, admitting where there is fault on our part. In essence, this also relates to practicing what we preach. First, the United States must be accountable to international law. Second, any United States-based corporation or entity operating outside the United States MUST in its dealings outside the United States be required to adhere to either local law, or United States law, whichever is MORE restrictive. For example, child labor and minimum wage law in the United States must be applied to workers for American corporations outside the United States. That's only a beginning. Anti-trust legislation should also be in effect. If a company wishes to do business in or with the United States, it must follow its laws EVERYWHERE. And it must apply those laws evenly. For freedom of speech to be truly appreciated, it must include the right to say "Fuck the United States", at the most general, and "Fuck McDonalds" more specifically. In addition, IF we provide aid to one side of an argument (say, the Israelis), we must provide aid in equal proportion to the other side (say, the Palestinians). To do otherwise is not only to produce the impression of impropriety, it is to explicitly be unfair. Weapons or money for one side MUST equal money and weapons for the other side. Or more to the point, NOTHING for either side should they fail to conform to international law and/or their agreed upon conditions.
Of course, the delineation of groups that hate us into those that are misinformed versus those that are justified is dependent upon a single thing --- that we listen to what they are saying, and assume from the get-go that they have valid viewpoints. These viewpoints may be disproved. But to go into a discussion with the opinion that you are always right, and they are just ignorant and belligerent troublemakers, is NOT the answer. They may be right about us. And what does that say, if we are not willing to admit our faults, correct our leaders, corporations, policies, and actions where they are short-sighted, self-centered, bigoted, biased or otherwise detrimental?
If the United States is to actually be, rather than appear to be, the leader of the free world, it must remember one very important thing. The most powerful nation is not automatically the greatest nation. The greatest nation is the one that leads the world as a whole to a better future, not just itself. The greatest nation is the one that is the most admired, not the most feared, or hated. The greatest nation is the one that leads by example, not by coersion. The greatest nation is the one that wages war on the conditions under which terrorism appears to some to be the only viable option. The greatest nation does not declare a "war on terror". The greatest nation gives terrorists no basis. By ensuring that the entire world is a place in which terrorism is not justified. Not for the glory of the greatest nation. But for the progress, evolution, safety, happiness, and well-being of the entire planet.

More to come. I'm starting to feel like a speech writer.

We do not want to go and sit
for three long hours of this shit.
We do not think it well-spent time
to learn to walk the judging line
or show your beauty, just skin deep
to leeches, dilettantes and creeps.
Revealing if our wallets reach
quite deep enough, that's what they teach.

But we will drive, in monkey suits
and gag ourselves on their false fruits,
suppress our thoughts, lest they betray
the fact that we despise the way
these things are run, and come about,
attempting to smooth out the doubt
that if you have good looks and poise
(at least as deemed by vapid boys)
you don't need brains, or self, or sense
just ego and experience.

Alas, the time is drawing near -
hair washed, clothes pressed, complexion clear.

So off to some great hotel, we
advance to meet sad destiny.

In my back pocket rests a check
which writ, will debit self-respect
and add more funding to the cause
of empty, self-indulged applause.

There is no up-side to this thing.
There are no praises I would sing
to lift up pageants as some good.
I'd pull the plug, if I but could.

08 AUG 2004

Well, I have done it. Purchased the "official" 9/11 report. And read it through, at least at this time on a cursory level. I will re-read it in detail, of course.

There are a few things that trouble me. They are as follows:

1. A war on terrorism will not succeed. That is because terrorism is the symptom, not the cause. The cause is a state of global affairs that gives rise to the belief that terrorism is, for many, a justifiable and perhaps the only viable alternative to advance their agenda to the point where it will be considered.

2. If we are to engage the problem of alternatives to terrorism for those who now employ it as their sole means of communication, we have to start looking hard at the fact that we are a single human family. National "rights", and boundaries, really must have no meaning if we are to address, fairly and honestly, the grievances of one group of people versus another. The fact is, that as a human species, we are in effect a single family --- albeit in some cases only distant cousins.

This makes EVERY war in effect a civil war. Brother against brother --- for the majority of religions on this planet accept as one of their tenets some degree of universal brotherhood.

3. With respect to that universal brotherhood. The United States must make a statement to the world, and must lead the other "so-called" civilized nations in one very important point. We must accept Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Druidism, Wiccanism, Sufism, Voodoo, Santeria, Ba'hai, Sikhism, Confucianism, Atheism, and all the rest, as absolutely equally viable paths to that exclusively human (at least, human-claimed, for none of the other species that have evolved and existed for millions of years on this planet have found it necessary to indulge in the nuances of comparative theology) province, enlightenment. If we are capable of being enlightened (as we claim), then we need to accomplish it. That means returning spiritual truth where it belongs --- to each and every individual.

4. We need to focus our resources not on exerting our influence through military might, or covert operation, or corporate interest, but through demonstration of our principles by enforcing them upon ourselves. Eliminate special interests. Eliminate preconceived biases. Restore (or, rather, considering our own systematic programs of terrorism that checker our own historical national agenda --- vis a vis the Comanches, for exampl?) "justice for all." Not justice that meets our needs or serves the expediency of the moment, but justice that punishes our friends when guilty, and praises our enemies when they are courageous and in the right.

5. Finally, we need to think long and hard about something that G.I. Gurdjieff once said, that was almost echoed in Obama's recent speech at the Democratic convention: "As long as a single person is in prison, no one is free." No matter what the reason --- because prison population, like terrorism, is a symptom. And to address the cause, we cannot continue to just build more prisons and graveyards. Or schools that teach rigid ways of looking at the world. Or churches that preach hatred and xenophobia in the guise of building their own brand of "chosen people" to pit against the rest of the world.

Ah, I could go on.

Paraphrased (and adapted somewhat) from a wonderful book, The Telling, by Ursula K. Le Guin:

There were no "original" human words for God, gods, or the divine. The bureaucrats who formalized spirituality into "religions" made up words for "God" and installed state or cultural theism when they learned that a concept of deity was more important in the cultures or states they took as models. They saw that religion was a useful tool for those in power. But there was no native theism or deism. The word god, to authentic, original human beings, human beings living in accord with the laws that govern all life and to which human beings are not an exception, was a word without referrent. No capital letters. No creator, only creation. No eternal father to reward and punish, justify injustice, ordain cruelty, offer salvation. Eternity was not an endpoint but a continuity. Primal division of being into material and spirutal existed only as two-as-one, or one in two aspects. There was no hierarchy of Nature and Supernatural. No binary Dark/Light, Evil/Good, or Body/Soul. No afterlife, no rebirth, no immortal disembodied or reincarnated soul. No heavens, no hells. The original human system, the one that resulted in the evolution of the human species from neanderthal to cromagnon to homo erectus to homo sapiens to homo sapiens sapiens [a process which bureaucratic religions all insist was the point at which evolution ended, being no longer necessary, contrary to the principle that in order to progress, to survive, a species must evolve or die] was a spiritual discipline with spiritual goals, but they were exactly the same goals it sought for bodily and ethical well-being. Right action was its own reward. Dharma without karma.

The tap left running,
wasting water and money;
all claim it evil.

they watch it dripping,
blame who turned it, and cry
"How wrong! How shameful!"

No one moves to change
the sad scene; their sole action
is indignation.

Yet when someone tries
to turn the spigot's flow off,
they are reviled, too.

Is it the action,
or our own nothing done
that is upsetting?

So you can describe
how the world has become mad,
and with pride, complain.

Just being righteous
without fixing what is wrong
compounds the problem.

What glory is there
in being right about things
that make life ugly?

There is no changing
without risking ridicule.
You must at least try.

05 AUG 2004

Dear Postmaster General:

I live in what likes to call itself, at least in information generated by its tourist bureau, a major metropolitan area of the United States. New Orleans, Lousiana, to be precise. The local branch of my post office is located roughly seven blocks from my house. The delivery route for my neighborhood is approximately 8 city blocks square. Not much area, all things considered. And yet, the schedule for mail delivery to my residence on a daily basis varies from about 10:00 a.m. at best, to roughly 6:00 p.m. (today's delivery) to sometimes, not at all. That's right --- sometimes there is NO daily delivery. While there is a regular delivery person (who is very nice and personable), often our mail carrier is a substitute. Often, these substitutes do not even wear any piece of clothing identifying them as a USPS employee.

By contrast, when I lived in rural Ohio, on the Hardin and Wyandot County borders, I was approximately 10 miles from the nearest post office, and roughly 15 miles from any town with a population greater than 7000 people. My carrier's route was probably about 15 square miles. And yet, regardless of the weather (you know, neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor hail, etc.), you could set your watch by the arrival of the mail. It never varied more than 10 minutes either direction EVERY morning EVERY day.

This disparity in service seems strange to me.

Just thought you'd like to know. Not expecting anything whatsoever.

The world is suffering and pain
or so the Buddhists say
but with control of mind and flesh
for some, it goes away

Not for the tree, or rock or mouse
does this travail desist;
nay, 'tis for man, and man alone,
the top dog on the list

For man deserves a better fate
than to compete, and die;
and thus, all man's misguided myths
are built upon a lie.

The lie is whispered in our cribs:
that this world is our toy,
and that each field of grass is less
than one grand girl or boy

And so we use, abuse and waste
our time upon this earth.
Instead of finding balance,
giving back, we make it worse.

How did we get here? And what for?
These questions, our tales say,
end in the right of human might
that does not see the play

of life and death in which we're cast
where we believe our press
and act in spite of natural law
that teaches, more or less

That every thing that lives requires
the death of other things,
and in the end will make an end
of pawns, as well as kings

This suffering we dwell upon
disturbs us each, because
we think ourselves, mankind, exempt
from nature's violent flaws.

And so, we ponder future states
where all is just and fair
instead of realizing that
we are already there.

This world was not conceived for man
to do with as he please;
his grand appearance made less ripple
than a passing breeze.

To think your kind has rights to more
than any other type
is just misguided myth, not fact.
Please, don't believe the hype.

04 AUG 2004

From a recent thread over at buddhists:

What is our obsession with death?

For example, the other day, I was walking outside my house to find an immense amount of ants on the sidewalk, I was with my brother. His immediate reaction was to gather up mulch, pour lighter fluid on it, and burn the ants, as opposed to me blowing them back into the grass.

Why do you think we as human beings do this?

My reply as follows:

Quite simply, it is because our shared mythology as human beings, regardless of which "civilized" culture we call ourselves a member of, has instructed us that we have the power of gods --- to determine who has a right to live, and who has a right to die. We base our decisions, consciously or unconsciously, upon this premise - that what we think should live, lives, and what we think should die, dies. As best suits our needs at the moment, without any concept of balance or give and take. Because, of course, evolution ended with the appearance of homo sapiens sapiens. And this plane, or earthly existence, is not something of which we are an integral part --- it is only a proving ground in preparation for some "better" existence, in Heaven, Nirvana, outer space, whatever your religion calls it.

And from a little further in the conversation:

The point is, I think, that we attempt to enact the story we are told, in order to make it true. The basic story of "civilized" cultures, that is, cultures who are products of the agricultural revolution, is that the world is made for humans, and their role is to rule it (humans being the purpose for which the world was made, after all; they are the culmination of creation, according to our cultural mythos). The enactment of that story results in the attitude that we have the right to do with it whatever we like. And so we have done. And so the world is the way it is. We suffer because, according to our cultural mythology, we don't have enough power to control EVERYTHING. If we had no myth telling us to rule, or control, and lived according to the principles by which we became who we are (homo sapiens sapiens) there would be no suffering. There would be life and death, and acceptance of the fact that we are built of food, and in turn become food. Or something like that. Our behaving as gods is illustrated in the cultural maxim that humans, moreso than any other creature, deserve to live and not die. The end of thinking suffering is a burden does not require that suffering itself stops, but rather that we accept our place in the process of life and as a result do not cause others to suffer unnecessarily (in providing us food) and suffer only briefly when we are converted to food. Suffering in fact is a minor waystation. It is the avoidance of suffering when it is required that results in imbalance.

So often, the concept of education is limited to a model where information flows one way, from an educator to pupils, with the assumption that what is being taught is a set of static instructions that must be imparted in a specific way, with specific focus, disseminated from trained minds to shape and mold untrained ones. But in reality, learning does not REALLY occur that way. Wisdom, as opposed to book knowledge, is acquired by absorption, by immersion --- one could almost say, by contamination. And often, those who fulfill the "teacher" role end up learning more about their subject in the process than those who are labeled "students".

And it is only in the antiseptic, sterile halls of academia where one branch of knowledge is not intimately interconnected with other branches. Only in such a classroom is art separate from history, mathematics separate from philosophy, physics separate from spirituality.

Education is about learning as a multi-disciplinary pursuit. It must include self-teaching. It is about soaking up information from a variety of sources and acquiring the facility to interpret reality as an individual. For oneself. It is a step beyond the preconceived notions of how we learn, what we should be learning, and the ways in which those bits of scholarship fit together to construct the unique, complex and individual puzzle that is human existence.

It is also about "coming of age." Not as a poet, writer, philosopher, scientist, priest, historian, musician or any separately defined area of "expertise." But coming of age as a complete human being. With the goal of the lesson to learn the meaning of humanity. Not just its purpose, or its origins, or its current state of affairs. But to glean from the school of experience, the process of osmosis by which each separate occurrence or instance of data becomes part of a larger whole.

after reading, again, Daniel Quinn's Ishmael

What is the point to the great war
that we have waged three thousand years?
Have we discovered any more
than better ways to produce gears?

The revolution that gave birth
to so-called luxury and ease ---
has our great process on been worth
renouncing evolution? Please

Tell me the path we've named as right
that names us, humans, beyond laws
with which we learned to walk upright
and claimed as gods our noble cause:

To take for just ourselves, by right,
the entire world without remorse;
to judge what lives and what should die
and from the gods except our course.

To prove our story is not false,
the one that tells us we are kings,
we'll turn the world to a death waltz
and put an end to living things

But those that live include us, too;
At this war's end, we, the great hero,
must kill ourselves to see it through.
The end score - us, one, all things, zero.

03 AUG 2004

In my mailbox today:

Hello my name is X and I have a little problem with my beliefs. I have been a pagan since I was 14, and I was raised in a metaphysical household.{ I am not a flake I promise. } I have had many occult experiences in my life. I am 22 now and I have been doubting that Any of what I have experienced is real. This is probably due in part to the overly rational environment that my college trains a person to be. (for the record I am a sociology major with trust issues.) Well throughout my college carrer I have been getting less and less proficent at my abilities to where now they are almost nill. I can't feel anything anymore when it comes to psychic energies. I am having trouble believing anything anymore and It is killing my spirit. NOTHING seems to be working and it continues to make me frustrated dispirited and sad. When I try some energy work or something it doesn't seem to be very effective. I just can't rid myself of that part of me that says; :This is stupid, I cant believe I am still doing this. What if there is no form of divinity and no such thing as magic." I am not trying to have yo
u solve all of my problems or anything I would just appriciate some kind words if you wish to give them. Thank you for your time and concern.

Here's my response:

I don't know if I'm really the right person to ask. It sounds like the first place you should go for advice might be your metaphysical household. Barring that, it sounds to me like you are experiencing life as a typical 22-year old, at least based on my own experience. When I was 22, what I discovered is that my capacity for doubt really expanded. That, in and of itself, is not a bad thing --- but it certainly can be overwhelming when the questions outnumber the answers at a greater ratio than they did in the past. I wish I could tell you that the answers come quicker as you get older, but that would be a lie. The fact is that what becomes more important is that you really understand the questions. As for problems with workings, the only things that I can immediately suggest are to change, as much as possible, your environment. Start hanging out with people who intrigue you, who challenge your curiosity and are likewise searching for answers to the big questions. Take time out to simply "be" with nature. Don't stress over controlling the energies of the universe, or focusing them to do your will. Seek to understand the balance, and to see the energy that by necessity inhabits everything. To paraphrase a Buddhist teaching --- seek the sacred in the little things, the rituals you do every day without calling them rituals and isolating them from the "mundane". There is no mundane. Every act is a deliberate thing, with consequences and learning wrapped up in it. The little rituals we do without thinking --- like changing the mood of a room simply by smiling when you enter it, by saying hello, by being interested in other people --- have much more effect that we typically acknowledge. Find music that speaks to your soul --- not specifically "pagan" music.

Sociology is, in my opinion, a field that looks to find ways to help other people. But it often crosses the line of personal responsibility and does things for people that they really need to be doing themselves. And it often finds problems simply to give sociologists something to talk about and draw salaries for analyzing. Try to step back from the study in a dry, academic sense and think about what you can really do to help others. The first step in changing the world is to change your perception of it. That is magick in its most basic, fundamental form. Changing the world by changing yourself. That is the true meaning, for me, of "as above, so below."

Finally, remember that in truth, nothing can kill your spirit. Because it is eternal. The problem that so many face is that they think so small. It is not just YOUR spirit. It is the spirit that indwells in every thing. The things you think are important, and the things you assume are not. The things you see and think you understand, and the things you don't see and can't even imagine. The world is bigger than you. And it doesn't necessarily have a plan that is perceivable to you. All you can do is start where you are, today, looking at where your foot is on the ground. That is your path. And nobody else's. That's what makes it absolutely essential. Only you define it. And in the process of definition there are of course missteps, wanderings, periods of drought and flood. That's balance. To understand that balance, and to strive to achieve it, is for me the essense of what being a pagan is. Not thinking metaphysically, or magickally, or religiously, or philosophically. Just thinking, and acting.

The real problem for you right now is not that things are not real. It is that they are absolutely real. And the illusions of ambitions of what could or should be accomplishable with energy workings, spellcraft, psychic energies are fading into a much larger, much more vibrant reality. The reality of being. Just being yourself. And figuring out who that is in the process.

Hope this helps.

Bright Blessings to you.

for Memphis

in the undertown around the middle
earthen jars the senseless struggle:
i shall be released from this
before the current pulls me

undertown, around the rooting rockets way
before the dawn of timing, when
our cultured throats scream out so that
the horse-drawn whispers drawl
their quiet haunting innuendos.

in the undertown beside the river
runs the hiding seeking slumber:
i shall be awakened from this
just before the nightmare finds me

undertown, beneath the covered bridges burnt
before the gods of ego's altar, when
our cultured pearls slide out so that
the tenderloin potential plays
its game of spattered caulking.

in the undertown below the wasteland
roving scarlet head supporters speak:
i shall not believe in this
until the dream has drowned its dead in

undertown, before subtle shaded sadness swells
its mottled cracking smile, and then
our cultured throats slide slow so that
the sword-clamped teeth can grasp
their severed thoughts' aboutness.

1994

OK, so projects such as Poets Against the War and Voices in Wartime are pretty good ideas. They tout such noble themes, ponder such meaningful quiestions like "The terrible beauty of the poetry is our guide, leading us to the deeper questions of the origins of war is it innate in human beings? Do the warlike societies succeed? What is the human experience of war? Can art illuminate politics? And, in turn, can the grim realities of war teach us about the delicate and important role of poetry?"

But there is a different point to be made here. How many poets REALLY give a damn about anything but their poetry? How much attention to events that do not directly affect their me-o-centric, angst-driven, destined to die young-and-leave-a-good-looking-corpse fueled by the twin beacons of Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas lives do they really pay? Sure, there are specific poets that when called upon to address a certain political issue gladly push pen to paper and come up with something that can be used to further a campaign speech or lengthen lines at a booksigning.

But where, pray tell, were all these poets BEFORE 9/11? What were they using their sprawling notebooks of pseudo-verse to accomplish, other than blocking the landlord's passkey by laying them against the door, or bartering a few odd lines in exchange for a double espresso? The question I'd like to ask, rather than the mawing query quoted above is this: do we have no sense of history because we have no poetry, or do we have no poetry because we have no sense of history? Or even, do we have no history because we have no sense of poetry, or do we have no sense of poetry because we have no history?

How many poets fill copious overpriced Moleskin notebooks with their innermost, dankest most feral intuition on the dangers of their own all-to-human failings, but reject as inapplicable the advice given to young guitarists --- if you want to play like Eric Clapton, don't listen to Eric Clapton, listen to who Eric learned from -- BB, Otis Rush, Freddie King, Robert Johnson --- and rather than seek for their pop icon poet's sources, seek to emulate only the most recent iteration of over-hyped style and end up as poor, weak, undisciplined and sloppy hacks who don't even have the imagination to imagine their own potential?

How many poets, I wonder, who channeled the inner turmoil of their apathy and the nation's sleepwalking into projects like those mentioned above, have ever written, not about the War on Terror, but the War on The Things That Make Terrorism Seem Like The Only Option?

Where in this feeble, grasping, quip-throwing, cliche-burning circle of "Show, Don't Tell" has anyone bothered to change their own reality?
There is a commercial on television lately that really makes me mad. If only because it is so truthful in the message in conveys about the current situation --- ostensibly about politics, but ABSOLUTELY pertinent to the arts. To any artist --- or to anyone who even thinks about themselves as an artist (or writer, or painter, or what have you, bearing in mind that the most true definition of a REAL POET is a writer with a day job). The commercial goes like this:

A bunch of people are in a communal lockerroom. A faucet is running. People look at it running, comment on how horrible it is, look askance at the flowing tap, shrug their shoulders. They do nothing. Then, in the midst of the milling crowd surrounding the offending faucet, a person enters, calmly, and in a quick motion turns off the tap, then goes about their business. The complaining, wondering, apathetic, bitching, kvetching, confused, and otherwise useless masses are amazed.

Of course, the commercial is about voting.

But it is really about ART. Like the grunge movement, which was obviously very able to acutely document the evil, dark, and wrongness that everyone with half a brain could begin to grok, but obviously unable to come to any kind of consensus (collectively or individually) on how to proceed to solve that wrongness, the arts are a self-aggrandizing, self-promoting, self-serving, self-absorbed pursuit of self-pleasure.

No wonder we have no FUCKING culture. We've been satisfied with canned tuna --- Andy Warhol, Britney Spears, Thomas Kincaide, Jessica Simpson, Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Wham, Madonna, wow the list goes on --- for so long that not only can we not fish, but we don't know anyone still alive whose willing to teach us how.

Bah. Enough ranting. Go to sleep now, John.

for Jim Morrison, who I very liberally paraphrase and augment: Why are songs and poems important? Because songs and poems are the basis by which culture is passed from generation to generation. No one sits at their child's bedside and reads them War and Peace; they teach in rhyme, in meter, in short works. In the building blocks of culture.

There is no spokesperson for your generation;
it is a hoax that you want to believe ---
that someone else will speak for you,
explain those crazy thoughts of yours
that keep you awake late in the night
questioning first, your sanity,
then next, the sanity of those who judge sanity.

There is no great role model for your age;
just another media frenzy led by old, tired sharks
who want to find a way to package
some elixir of youth, then age you before your time
and hook you on the stuff, too.

There is no voice crying out from the wild,
no magic bullet or single dosage
no seer sage poet priest politician messiah.

There is just you.

And the dreams you don't express.
And the others you let speak for you.

Throw away your radio,
your Billboard and Rolling Stone,
your solid gold subscription
to someone else's Top Ten List.

Speak your own words.
Speak your own mind.
Teach yourself how.

20 JUL 2004

In the most recent issue of American Poet, the journal of the American Academy of Poets, there is an advertisement for a book, Coming of Age as a Poet: Milton, Keats, Eliot, Plath, written by Helen Vendler, who seems to have written a great number of books on poetry.
The blurb in the ad, which probably comes straight from the jacket sleeve (although having not read the book, I can neither confirm or deny this), starts with the following sentence, which I found most intriguing:

To find a personal style is, for a writer, to become adult; and to write one's first "perfect" poem --- a poem that wholly and successfully embodies that style --- is to come of age as a poet.

To come of age, to reach maturity as a poet. Hmmmm ... I wonder if that achievement is self-measured, or if its length is drawn against the yardstick of others. Which brings me to my current train of thought: as a Druid, I am more than a poet. I am a poet, musician, historian, philosopher, teacher, and priest. How does one come of age in a single discipline if one's life path is multi-disciplinary? Does not maturity (or immaturity) in one area affect one's level of achievement in all others? And what is the purpose of that maturity? For me, the ultimate goal of poetry is not simply to influence other poets; neither is the goal of any preacher or priest to influence only other preachers. At least, not that alone.

My audience is humanity. My goal, I suppose then would be to assist humanity in the recognition of that humanity. Or something like that.

Perhaps my self-questing is the result of having recently started rereading Plato's Republic. Resulting in the question, what is the ultimate purpose of performing any action?

What is the reason a musician plays? A poet writes? A preacher preaches? A philosopher ponders? A teacher educates? Who is really their audience?
It boils down to a quip that I made several years ago when I contemplated writing music reviews. In order to change the way people think about music, first they must be thinking about music in the first place. So how to ensure that prerequisite dependency of thinking on a subject before launching into said dissertation? Who really cares if people who are on your wavelength are already listening? Aren't words on their subject extraneous, like coals to Newcastle? Dr. Gene Scott, a Los Angeles based preacher, once said that there are two kinds of people in any congregation ... there are saints in the making, and there are preachers. If you're not a saint in the making, and you don't like what the preacher in front is saying, you are obligated to form your own church. How that relates, I leave you to decide, dear readers.

So many poets trace, or seek to trace the root
of their art back in time, but just so far;
and would attempt to judge all verse to suit
their own agendas. Doing this, they scar

just the veneer, the surface of our craft,
by quoting others' rules, like "show, don't tell";
throughout the ages, true poets have laughed
at limitations that disdain the well

of inspiration that knows not of schools,
of petty squabbles that divide with scorn
the select few from all the rest. What fools
think they decide what makes good form?

The work of poets starts first with the tale,
spoken aloud, and then put down in books;
to show, not tell, like television, pales
its gift for message, and relies on looks

to transmit to a world that cannot see
beyond its own small, self-enamored frame;
into this setting, the false sense of free
expression is not proud and strong, but lame.

For poetry is far more ancient than
the movement touting art for just art's sake;
it must encompass all that is human
experience, or it is a mistake.

And it must tell a story, even though
there is no audience that seeks to learn,
and stand its ground, despite foul winds that blow,
to keep alight what flame in us still burns.

As for the countless journals, zines and such
that would critique using a focused knife:
To poetry, they do not matter much;
They represent its corpse, and not its life.

16 JUL 2004

To be a cynical writer is to never have been in love...well, to never have been in love and have it endly up other than badly, I suppose.

To be a romantic writer is to forever be in love - not so much with a person, or even an ideal, but more or less with the "idea" of love.

To be a "political" writer, one need only suppose that the ideal of love, while perfectly described in the theoretical world of legislation, has never been capable of reaching its ivory tower notions.

To write action and adventure, the required modus operandi for the scribe is to capture the impossibility of eternity, save through a well-placed legend or two.

To contemplate science fiction is to see love for what it is, a means to a more harmonious future, or the chaos that engulfs the order of probability.

To be an historical writer, one need only remember, with love, the periods of time with which you have no natural connection, or have imagined a connection of such magnitude that it engulfs any such intellectual advancement that may have occurred between the idealized era and the current one.

To be a motivational writer is to disregard the spirit of the times, to insist that love is to be found and described as you find and describe it, that it is to entertain your minds and not your hearts, to make by the "power of positive thinking" the lessons to be learned by losing seem the source of all true evil.

To be a nihilist writer is to never see love at all. It is to experience rejection, but not hope. Fear, but no courage. Reason, but no faith. Grounding, but no earth.

1991

Thinking of Richie Havens (thanks to poetbear for dutifully transcribing "Younger Men Grow Older"), I reached into the deep chasm of the archives and pulled out the only Richie Havens-inspired song I ever wrote. It dates from about 12 years ago ... imagine all kinds of "Freedom" like strumming ... not my usual subject matter, but I was extremely irritated with some right-wing Christofascist ideology at the time, and it sort of just came out ... it was probably a combination of Freedom Fighting in Nicaragua, Freedom Fighting in the Falkland Islands, and Freedom Fighting in Belfast.

God, it seems your houses are the very first to fall
Explosive words in your foundations leave most wicked scrawls
And your small children, those you haven't time enough to save
Are gone, and your own armies lay your sod upon their graves

Please tell your children this is not how it should be
We cannnot kill each other off, and still claim to be free
Each day another heathen soul climbs nearer unto thee
But for myself, here in our hearts is near enough for me

Women and our children are the victims of this war
But that is nothing new, for it has happened here before
Perhaps the grail was something Arthur never should have saved
Before the world believed in You, and by Your will enslaved

Please tell your children this is not how it should be
We cannot hate with hatred and believe in love and peace
Each day another murdered soul cries nearer unto thee
But for myself, inside my heart is near enough for me

We sit upon the left of you, or perhaps on the right
Far from the door so we can ignore wailing in the night
From those gnashing with their gums because their teeth have fallen out
Your word has so deafened us that we can't hear the shouts
Of your unbroken followers who toil within our jails
And keep our cross-constructors stocked with wood and sharpened nails

Please tell your children this is not what you had planned
We cannot draw the line between two kinds of fellow man
Each day another holy fool runs nearer unto thee
But for myself, here in my heart is near enough for me

1982

The difference, in a nutshell, between what Michael Moore is saying and what I'm saying:

MM: The emperor is naked!
ME: That naked man is NOT the emperor!

LOL

Democracy is dependent upon a single, basic premise: that those with power as a result of wealth and social standing are willing to reject the advantage conferred by the possesion of this power and reject the use of any such advantage in the defense of their position against others with differing viewpoints and agendas who do not possess similar advantage. In short, democracy demands equality before the law. Despite the obvious fact that individuals are NOT equal with respect to environment, education, race, religion, intellect, physical prowess, social standing and/or graces, financial wherewithal, and so forth, the intention of a TRUE democracy is to ignore those factors and regard each person as legally interchangeable.

There are, of course, safeguards built into our legal system to ensure this. But unfortunately, they do not address the fact that there is in practice, if not in the theory upon which that practice is based, a great disparity between the resources available to some versus others. In our democracy, for example, a defendant is provided with legal counsel in matters of criminal court. In a true democracy, it would be either ensured that this legal counsel vouchsafed an indigent defendant is comparable (in education, experience, and expertise) to the counsel for the prosecution, or that the party prosecuting the case would be no better than the individual produced by the defense. Likewise, for a wealthy defendant, it should be ensured that the quality of their attorney should be correlative with the quality of the prosecuting attorney.

With respect to democracy by representation, true democracy requires that the agent, or representative, be truly of the people they represent. For example, a congressman should be of similar educational background, financial status, cultural milieu and so forth of their average constitutuent. That means no congressperson should being wearing suits that the majority of their district cannot afford. Likewise, the salaries of government officials should never exceed the average per capita income of their "flock". In regard to campaign contributions, no political candidate should receive from ANY contributor (personal, or corporation --- which legally is the corpus or body at the head of which is the representative of any number of stockholders who have chosen to invest their individual monies and/or opinions in the legal person thus incorporated) more than the equivalent of one week's salary of their average voting bloc. That would eliminate the campaign finance issue altogether, perhaps --- and salary increase issue as well --- because the only way for a candidate or congressperson or president to get more money (either in salary or contributions) would be to actively improve the living wage of their constituency. Now of course, you might say that will increase the jostling over "prime districts". Well, I think it only need be sorted out at the smaller district level. Larger districts, such as states or countries (i.e., senators and presidents) typically include a wide range of income, including much that is NOT wealthy. In California, for example, it is probably likely that the district that includes Beverly Hills would have a high median income, versus the district that includes Compton and Gardena. For a Senator, that would probably wash out at some level. For a Representative, however, Beverly Hills represents a cushier spot. However, the basic premise of democracy as defined above can be applied here. The point is that financial, social, etc., inequality MUST not influence legal equality. Therefore, the average amount of campaign contributions from the wealthiest quarters CANNOT exceed the average contribution amounts from the poorest quarters. That means that if Pickens County, Arkansas as a whole contributes only $500, then Los Angeles County, California can only contribute the equivalent per capita amount (for example if there are 500 contributors in Pickens County, Arkansas that roughly equates to $5 per contributor; to apply that to Los Angeles County assuming a population of 5,000,000 means that the most that could be used by that constituency is $5 each, or $25M. But that is a VERY wild theory that probably in five minutes will make no sense.

The point is this, I guess. To me, it's like televangelism. There are no circumstances when a preacher should be wearing a Rolex unless the majority of the constituency to which they preach ALSO not only can afford Rolexes, but chooses to spend their monies on such things. By the same token, under no circumstances should an elected official be wearing a suit, driving a car, living in a home, that the majority of their constituents could not afford. Not on the distribution of wealth, but the distribution of numbers. Because, you'll remember, democracy is about legal equality. Which is a numeric base. 1 = 1.

Of course, military service should be determined on the same basis. Particularly in a draft. There is no legal way, in a true democracy, for a wealthy child to get a deferment when a poor child does not. As far as the law of democracy goes, they are absolutely equal. Anyone who bends that system does not believe in democracy. And should NEVER be elected mayor, governor, senator, congressperson, president or even head of a homeowner's association in so-called democratic nation. Or something like that.

If you read this, you take something
made of flesh and bone,
a piece of time and space and breath
not quite a gift, or loan

or even money down upon
some future equal trade,
but more, one part of dialogue
unanswered, thus half-made

To read it and absorb its lines,
then move to other things
without an answer, move or gesture
clips its hopeful wings

Like showing at a picnic
without bringing your own dish,
yet piling high your plate with food
as often as you wish

Without an equal partnership
of muse and write and read
there is no purpose in creation,
just a void that feeds

on what is drawn from single souls
and cast, like nets, to sea
but comes up empty with the trawl.
This then, is my plea:

Who knows how many countless times
this bottle's come ashore,
been uncorked, contents scanned
unheeded, corked and tossed once more

without a single line appended
to its simple verse?
Without some answer, though
it cross the whole wide universe?

If you read this, add something;
a kind of coin, or praise,
it need be no more than a word ---
then send it on its way.

Restuff the contents through the neck
and push the cork in tight;
then watch it float off with the tide
until it fades from sight.

A message in a bottle, sent,
and now, its purpose known:
to speak with those on distant shores
so none may feel alone.

10 JUL 2004

for James Joyce

Daedalus, my father, tried to fashion me for wings
but I, who treasured heresy, had no use for the things
or for the cliff that he had labored at for many years
to leave for me a fortune or a basis or career.

He shoved me off the edge the day I turned a young eighteen,
not knowing really who I was, or what the drop might mean;
to some gods quite unknown to me, he might have said a prayer
then watched with blended pride and sorrow as I beat the air.

Of course, because the wings were made to fit his arms, not mine,
after a brief respite of floating, I made a decline,
and found in sharp perspective with the looming of the ground
no use for most of the great knowledge he tried to pass down.

The sun above shone as it does, both bright and hot that day,
and my sire's mix of wax and feathers sought to melt away;
while from the cliff-side, he looked on, still hoping for the best,
like any fledgling's parent does when they first leave the nest.

But though I am my father's son, his dream was not my own,
that all the miles he ran and walked instead he might have flown,
counter to training, expectation and man's hallowed laws,
I sought to regain life on earth, despite its glaring flaws.

And so we parted company, old Daedalus and I,
my view along the cliff's rough base, and his toward the sky;
and the hard lessons for us both that we tried to avoid
came, in their time, despite the ruses that we each employed.

Now many years have passed, and I've recovered from that fall,
though in some places I'm still bruised and sometimes have to crawl;
my father, disappointed, has retired to his death bed,
and I, instead of flying, have learned how to walk, instead.

10 JUL 2004

Now, watch the eagle perched upon the limb;
his eyes, that seem to peer into the soul,
take in the troubled world that waits below him
and see beyond illusions of control.

How like that noble bird we seek for answers,
and take upon ourselves his inborn traits;
there still upon the branch we preen like dancers,
not understanding our purpose or fates.

Great nations take him for their sacred symbol,
and bid him clutch dual tokens, peace and war;
while discontent to let their future gambol,
they cast aside the instinct borne to soar.

This imitation eagle, one wing pinioned,
is let loose now in low, small circle flights ---
a source of great amused, confused opinion,
with freedom's duties, but none of its rights.

His talons have been dulled on greed's coarse whetstone,
his molted feathers used to plume parades;
and old now are the songs of where he has flown,
for memory of that flight is now charade.

The tree on which he rests? False public service
in obeisance to some unseen lords;
Look, anything that comes near makes him nervous
and strain against his rough, restraining cords!

No eagle can be destined for the showplace;
on such a stage his spirit wilts and dies.
The bird of prey exists for the hunt, the chase;
to posit otherwise is to speak lies.

Who are the fools who seek to tame his spirit,
to bid him dance and entertain their whim?
Look there, not on the tree, but somewhere near it ---
the selfish few who claim to own the limb.

09 JUL 2004

Thinking of Dante, thanks to fool_in_spirit, I dug through the archives and pulled out one of my favorite older poems on the subject of Love.

There is a Persian story that posits that Lucifer loved Jehovah above all things. Lucifer lived to be in the presence of his love, and would accept no substitutes. Then, Jehovah created humankind, and asked all the angels and such beings to pledge allegiance to this new form. Lucifer, distraught, swore that he would not; his allegiance, he proclaimed, was due only and exclusively to his one true love, Jehovah. As punishment for his imprudent action, Lucifer was given the most cruel punishment that Jehovah could think of --- to banish Lucifer forever from the presence of Himself, to never again hear his voice, to live only thanks to the memory of the love that was (and is) his sole sustenance.

I am so in love although I have never seen;
my eyes are full of things my heart denies me:
colored visions wrought in the language of amour,
the word made flesh in the weak metaphor
of wretched, babbling men
whose hollow shoulders form the bowl of tears
in which my true love's face is drenched
(the ablution of loneliness).

The street, narrow and ill-lit, covered windows
blinderized as animals of burden,
where we first met; the oceanside cafe

(do you remember our first vows of constancy?)

where bread and wine were defined and then shared;
the desperate bed that lead our wrung hands
to cartography;

the tiny chapel in the woods we gaily toured
and in our fancy, pretended,
like small children will,
to celebrate our nuptials -

oh, how memory serves its aweful dregs
like bitter, rousing tea.

Remembrance is the greatest tool in love's mad arsenal!

Yet even more wrenching
is the memory of the future,
the once upon a time that hasn't happened yet;

like all loves will, I see my love
in everything around me.

Unlike the simpering, weak, whines
from other lovesick swains and paramours,
who find their 'true love's countenance'
in such a narrow spectrum
of their world

(bah...I laugh at their enfeebled similitudes)

there is no limit to the specters that remind me
of my other half.

'Tis but a rose, you hopeless suitor,
it may never be the cheeks of the sweet face;
only an odor carried on the wind,
a breath of carrion or the opinion of swine,
it will pass for a scent of the alcohol and water bath
which lingers on love's neck,
a neck supporting the fairest visage
since the "real" contests were spawned:

Olympus has been redeveloped,
Atlantis has been drained and reclaimed,
the heartless shores of Troy
have become a resort community
for lost and half-found converts
to the order of a new world.

Oh, pale would-be conquistadores,
your weak and gutless vision of your beloved is nothing.

Would you, as Lucifer once dared,
refuse to bow to any but your true love,
and suffer
the banishment,
the desolation,
the yearning to live
only to remember your lover's sweet "Go to Hell"?

1993

there is a poem
that i will never write down;
words cannot hold it.

there is a poem
that cannot be recited;
it escapes like breath.

there is a poem
in every simple movement;
it is verse, set free.

there is a poem
between the lines written down;
no pen transcribes it.

there is a poem
that transcends literature;
how could books hold it?

there is a poem
behind this very poem;
someone will find it.

in the dialogue
between is and possibly
there is a poem.

07 JUL 2004

I heard the sounds last night of war
outside my window and front door,
wild shells and streaks of fire and light;
and I was troubled at the sight.

No thought of where the sparks might land
entered the minds that worked the hands
that with their matches struck these bombs;
a country of brave automatons.

The flash of light, the burst of sound
and emptied beer cans all around
while through the smoke which slowly cleared
the throng of wise non-voters cheered.

They cheered the colors and the show
and cursed the duds that would not blow
their senses wowed by shock and awe,
and the ends of their fingers raw.

The cost of fireworks? Twenty bucks,
from out the back of nameless trucks;
The cost of freedom? Tears and bone
worth more than any flag now flown.

For what good pomp and grand parades
to celebrate a poor charade?
It lessens knowledge of the cost
if lives in some great lie are lost.

This freedom that we celebrate,
is it a license by which hate
and fear become the only sense
by which we gain experience?

Our independence, so hard gained,
is its dirge to be our refrain?
I seek, although perhaps in vain,
to define freedom, once again:

Freedom from the right of kings,
in matters large, and petty things,
and from the presumed word of God
that with chains bids man's feet be shod,

and from the whim of landed wealth
who seek first their own fare and health
and from the bane of presumed right
that sees darkness, save its own light

and from the harsh slavemaster's whip,
and fear of persecution's grip,
and from the unseen, hurtful ties
that persecute the meek and wise

and from the threat of hangman's laws
that seek to punish without cause
and from the hand that seeks to still
the tongue, the mind, the heart and will

and from the bloodied, soulless crowd
that sees itself as just and proud
and from the ignorance that seeks
to serve itself, and harm the weak

and from the politician's greed
that dines in pomp, while poor men bleed
and from the engines geared for war
that gnash their teeth, and cry for more

and from the state, that seeks to bind
the tongues of reason, and be blind
and from the cloaked and hidden cause
that bids us follow, just because

and from the forked and evil ways
that seek by bloodshed gold and praise
and from all those who would be kings
and paint themselves with angels' wings

and from our baser natures, too
that seek reward where none is due
and from the impulse not to act
when those who guide us go off track

and from the right to hold one's peace
when liberty and freedom cease
and lastly, freedom to believe
and when that freedom's risked, to grieve.

06 JUL 2004

On Turner Classic Movies this evening, one of my favorite films of all time ---- one that I've seen so many times (probably over 100, actually) that I've got most of the dialogue memorized:

If you are a dancer, or have known or dated or been involved in any way with a dancer, you will of course know this film. If not, and you are interested in the struggle between life and art, between dedication to one's craft and living a life separate from it, this 1948 classic is definitely a must see.

Why must you write, in vain attempts
to capture in mere words the sound,
the feeling, the taste of experience,
when words in the noise of the world are drowned

or lost, their sense fleeting and soon
forgotten, erased by the passage of time,
replaced on the mind's jukebox by newer tunes,
ending up badly quoted, their context maligned?

Why bother with the work of casting
something that will past your life endure
when public fancy, not long lasting
to begin with, seeks to make your work impure

by using it to sell subscriptions, cheap knockoffs,
sugared snacks or politicians?
Why write, create? Why build? Why try?
Because to choose to stop, means die.

03 JUL 2004

One of the ways you could describe James Dean is as a figure standing with both arms outstretched, one side Marlon Brando saying, "Up yours," and the other side, Montgomery Clift saying, "Help me." -- paraphrased from The Mutant King: A Biography of James Dean, by David Dalton

Kowalski was always right, and never afraid. He never wondered, he never doubted. His ego was very secure. And he had the kind of brutal aggressiveness that I hate. I'm afraid of it. I detest the character. -- Marlon Brando on Stanley Kowalski

The last of the icons remaining to us
whose methods have become the norm,
whose portrait of rebellion created the fuss
that pushed us from the eye to the storm

and in just a few lines, or gestures, inspired
a lost generation to gather, and name
its enemies. He watched, and grew tired
of pale imitations, but never blamed

the audience, who were not born to follow,
but rather the great machine churning out trash;
recognized his own failing, too -- that hollow
morality that could not refuse the cash.

The greatness of men is found in their flaws;
there is no perfection that can so inspire,
if only because how we deal with the raw
and festering wounds in our lives, and aim higher

than mere entertainment, or paychecks, or fame
and are willing to risk all of that, for some cause
(which although perhaps shallow or just some wild game,
is the crucible in which our apathetic ice thaws).

So ramble on, mumble on, show warts and all;
The goal is not merely to light up the screen,
but more than that, to illustrate that a fall
is a clear testament of an effort, unseen

to claim an authentic soul, one not for sale
at any price, and through the feral and wild lands
of our dreams, to be willing although sometimes frail
to grasp at a greatness with your own hands.

02 JUL 2004

Guaranteed to offend everyone ... but only intended half seriously.

Kennedy proved that the rich are assholes.
Johnson proved that politicians are assholes.
Nixon proved that Presidents are assholes.
Ford proved that Senators are assholes.
Carter proved that the media are assholes.
Reagan proved that Republicans are assholes.
G.H.W. Bush proved that Vice Presidents are assholes.
Clinton proved that Democrats are assholes.
G.W. Bush is trying to prove that Americans are assholes.

At the request of nemo49, here is a villanelle that theoretically also provides some impressions of New Orleans. Although I have to admit, feeling rather Tom Waitsy at the moment, the picture I've chosen to put in the Viewmaster for this one is a bit on the sadistic side. But then again, Nawlins does have that contingent. Ya know, vampires and all. With bondo fangs and everything. Giving tours. Pointing out witches ... and strippers.

The air is thick with history, with years of sweat and toil.
Old ghosts play hide and seek in sheets that show more recent use;
The wiser tourists avoid alleys and shun Bourbon's roil.

Old men of different colors sit on their front steps and broil,
and stare across at one another, hearts filled with abuse;
the air is thick with history, with years of sweat and toil.

Some drunken fools careen along the street, in beads and foil
and pay five dollars to discover "where they got their shoes".
The wiser tourists avoid alleys and shun Bourbon's roil.

For two weeks in the spring, pre-Lent, the tense peace turns turmoil,
and you don't want to see OPP for the weekend, that's old news;
the air is thick with history, with years of sweat and toil.

If you look closely, underneath the surface, a slow boil
festers even in the minds of drunken revelers at Krewes.
The wiser tourists avoid alleys and shun Bourbon's roil.

So come to spend your money here; we'll throw our beads at you
and like as not you'll end up poorer but show no scar or bruise.
The air is thick with history, with years of sweat and toil.
The wiser tourists avoid alleys and shun Bourbon's roil.

29 JUN 2004

Take a slow breath.
Don't hold it long; let it go.
See, there is more air.

Take a good, long look;
Don't scan the scene too quickly.
See, there is so much.

Take a deep swallow.
Don't rush it; chew the liquid.
See how full you get.

Take a pause; listen.
Don't mind all the surface noise.
See, you can do it.

Now give it all back.
Of course you have to keep some;
so you've changed the world.

Take a short lesson:
Each moment is a treasure;
gold can't buy one back.

Breathe, look, drink, listen.
Become part of the whole world.
See --- you can't help it.

29 JUN 2004

Freedom of speech doesn't do any good
If no one has time to stop and listen;
Not that anyone actually could
Listen, with their mouths also open.

So I will stop talking, at least for a while,
and let everyone else have their say;
I will listen to the same things repeated
by countless others, who each think
they are repeating something for the first time
or that no one else has ever heard it.

And the quotations from third sources
(like reading the Bible and believing its happening to you)
will continue; with interpretations regurgitated
verbatim again and again.

But there is no point in me talking.
All I can describe is my own path;
I cannot begin to talk about yours.

And that's what you want, isn't it?
An atlas that shows where you could be going,
but doesn't make you describe where you are.
Where YOU are.
Not where your philosophy is at present,
or your political agenda,
or the lack or abundance of your education,
or the number of newsfeeds you can consume each day.

You can keep that frame of reference
for someone who wants to be hung on a wall.

It ain't me babe.

28 JUN 2004

We sit in circles, crop circles, like silver-clad heroes at Arthur's table, dark knights of the soul of verse, our words colliding in the jousts of wit and criticism. Is it the flame that draws us moths to it, and so we dance in the flickering candlelight, hoping to stay entranced and yet remain un-scorched? Like ashes on the forehead can remind us of our lone and bitter days, days when we thought "if I could only be accepted, if they would only listen" and so drank ourselves silly in the inconsequentiality of the moment, we titter, stumble, laugh and tumble against the cold, hard steel of our truths, our realities.

And in the end, we want of wealth, of fame, of power, of "don't I know you from somewhere" and "weren't you with...last seasons" and "oh, I thought your last...was simply marvelous" and so on and so forth and furthermore and insofar and even if it mattered, even just one smattering of an insignificant jot of ink that spilled on blotting paper or stained the index finger rather than died its immortal death on the crucifix of watermarks and typesetters' thorns - yes, even if that could save our tortured souls from waking in a world we could not evade with our descriptions, make light of in our comedic stances, would we want to pass it by, relinquish our hold on that which makes us realize how much we need to simply create, to form, to place under our power that experience of living, of dying, of falling down drunk in an alley watching our world crumble in half empty tea cups?

Written, it seems so concrete, so decisive and bold - yet it is the journal of a hallucination, created in our minds and carried out on the gurney of the flesh into the streets we barely recognize, and the stones in the pavement do not glint or glitter as we remember them, nor so brightly as they can.

An in our drunken haze we drop our curtsies and highballs half-full of the contraband elixir we consider our inspiration - and we ask for it by name in the password prose of prayer: give me three or four rounds of Dark (and often cloudy and thick swirling dark it is), and then a couple of clear and crystal Brights for the road, the road I must trod down in inebriated, lucid celebration of my inhibited yearnings. I want, I announce to the "wicked and expedient stones," the world of my choice, of my creation: a world where one can morally possess a mind and venture to speak it, a world where social conventions are gatherings of gregarious and yet not sheep-like folk who know not only which fork to use with the salad, but which one to take at the bend in the road that leads to funny or witty, separating dull chortles from mirthful laughter.

Laughter, yes, and tears that come from excess - these are the signs by which we will be known; and they shall sing our praises while they curse us, hound us for mementos while they scour the tabloids for our inadequacies, and read until the wee hours of morning each drop of saccharine and strychnine we draw from our veins with the prick of a vengeful pen.

1995

What is the point at which the conscience burns
and thus consumes the mind with thoughts to act,
that in its darkest recess for truth yearns
to separate illusions from the facts?

And the externals that provide the fuel,
that pile the planks under the stakes we seek
upon which to transfix ourselves as fools ---
how much do we require before we speak?

These embers that now scorch the gathered crowd,
how long before their heat is burnt to ash
and we, again, will curse the cold in loud
vehement wailing in the last light's flash?

How many will bewail both fire and dark
that dare disturb their dulled complacency
while others see engulfed in the first spark
the basic tenets of democracy?

And this conflagration we now build
to smoke some evil hornets from their nests ---
at what point will its appetite be filled?
Once it's begun, the bonfire knows no rest

'til it devours all things within its touch,
its raging tempest void of care or sense;
and then, too soon is gone without so much
as a faint flicker of experience.

Unless the fire outside is taken in
and used to fuel a greater flame inside,
the burning of externals is just din
that drowns out reasoning in fratricide.

So watch that flame with care that you ignite ---
with caution, choose your victims for the pyre;
and know that he who claims his match most right
is likely both mistaken, and a liar.

25 JUN 2005

Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything. Or he believes in one thing at a time. He believes a second thing only if it somehow follows from the first thing. He is nearsighted and methodical, avoiding wide horizons. If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity.

Incredulity doesn't kill curiosity; it encourages it. Though distrustful of logical chains of ideas, I loved the polyphony of ideas. As long as you don't believe in them, the collision of two ideas --- both false --- can create a pleasing interval, a kind of diabolus in Musica. I had no respect for some ideas people were willing to stake their lives on, but two or three ideas that I did not respect might still make a nice melody. Or have a goot beat, and if it was jazz, all the better.

-- Umberto Eco, from Foucault's Pendulum

If I could in one word describe my road,
without digression through its tangent routes
or cataloging each and every node
that might be seen were I to map it out,

a single thing that clearly would detail
both how the trail and I got to this place,
despite the odds predicting I would fail
or in the search for truth, fall on my face,

then naming it would be of little use.
For if in a small segment of a line
the infinite whole world can be contained,

we may as well collect words as refuse
and think our days in study, wasted time,
a sentence where just empty space remains.

24 JUN 2004

Speaking hypothetically [which might mean communicating virtually by forcing directed bursts of recently inhaled oxygen-nitrogen-miscellaneous ethereal non-visible compounds to rise from within the air sac viscera through the windpipe and past a discerning set of vocal chords (say, a G-major-minor-7 flat 5) under the epiglottis and over the taste buds the river and somewhere behind grandmother's house oh what big teeth you have and then out into the void where someone is waiting patiently -- and here's the first occurrence of doctor-patient confidentiality, isn't it? Doesn't it seem like being someone's patient shouldn't mean waiting for 45 minutes for an 80 second consultation? -- and fortunately, you've got an attention span of more than 4/1000ths of a second or you never would remember what you wanted to say before you launched into it per the preceding description], which might be to orally transmit similitudes or other such drivel (and as Isaiah once said, "I have used the little suckers!"), please turn and spit. Thank you.

The Twenty Percentists represented (do they sign their correspondence "Periodontically Yours"?), the proverbial four out of five -- and using the word proverbial here does not refer to the fact that Solomon, although long in the tooth towards the end of his reign, was probably not working with a full set of choppers -- would like you to rinse, please? Incidentally, if you'll pardon the tongue-in-cheek (a little drill-side humor) do four out of five of the leading figures on the Caspian Sea and the Crimea -- where Tartar control was at one time a little on the drastic side -- feel that the ever-loving Constantinatives went a little overboard (and of course, that's where they got the fish that had the taste that prompted the sauce that the Tartars built!). And on that same wavelength (a little fisherman's' humor, and as Charlie Mingus said, the shoes of the fisherman's wife are some jive ass slippers) why eat fish that doesn't taste fishy? Isn't that like saying you want a tomato that tastes like an apple, or "Let's have a misteak and Vidalia not-onion?" That's all fine and dandy if you're one of those that thinks that whiting tastes like haddock tastes like code tastes like scrod tastes like talapia and it's all so much better drowned in a cream sauce, but why eat fish at all? Why not put a little salt and a few bones in some tofu? Anyway...

My relatives, with little regard for the medicinal benefits of scotch, get gin-give-itis around the holidays. Here all this time I thought they were talking about Tartan Control - and that suits me fine, because there are just too many Scotsmen and not enough single malt for my liking. Throw the Highlanders (including Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert) overboard and pour me a shot of Laphroaig or Glenfiddich. Four out of five Gaelic practitioners of the orthodontic arts recommend Tartan Control Plaid Remover. And while we're talking about dentists, please remember that the Listerine will never get into your mouth if you're sitting in front of your mirror like the Quiet Man and that little bottle is swinging across the treetops yodeling like Johnny Weismuller. Oh, those crazy Scotsmen. Our Father, who art intoxicated, hollow J & B thy brand. Perhaps the fifth (not of scotch, this time, but of those irrepressible dentists) doesn't work with patients who chew gum -- then again, if all the world were bread and cheese and all the sea were ink and they told their friends and so on and so on how would we ever find time for sweet chewy nasty unwholesome foods that without which there might be little need for the man in white smock who sounds like a golfer ("You've got a hole in one on the back nine there, my friend," or "Nurse, I'd like the putter, please," or whatever it is they say). Is there a little stamp that goes on the Doctor of Dental Science certificate that indicates membership in the Four Out of Five Club? Do associate members get discount rates on green fees, or just on those neat sharp pointy instruments the use of which inevitably brings the remark, "That didn't hurt a bit, did it?"

Speaking hypothetically (which in addition to being next to impossible with all this stuff in my mouth), turn and spit (I almost forgot, that's better). It's the next best thing to being there and take it or leave it, it's all we've got, because my dentist (who happens to be one of the four looking for a fifth on the isle of Islay where they make Laphroaig in copper kettle and age it for ten years and that's why it tastes like heather and peat moss and shag tobacco and has a little quaint mist about it but still doesn't explain why it has to cost at least thirty-five dollars a bottle) is out of town fishing. I hope he's got a bottle of Tartar sauce with him, because I tripped on the Col Gate and have Crest fallen and I can't get upper bicuspid. Somebody left their Trident on the lawn and I've got a lump on my jawbone that feels like a sermon from the Molar Majority. Feels like I've just Neptuned in and caught the end of Poseidon's Misadventures (edited for television).

Gives a whole new meaning to brushing up your MacBeth.

1995

Inside the small box
That is our experience
There is nothing new:

The folded edges
Let in small amounts of light
To read old news by.

But the lid is loose ---
A gentle push opens it;
Look, there is a sky!

If you throw your weight
against the side, you can tilt
the whole world open.

Just another box
That may look like open space
But has edges, too.

ome spend their lifetimes
Thinking the box protects them;
they worship cardboard.

What lingers outside
is violent, wild and risky:
It is fully alive.

Without much warning
it may devour your small box;
why die that slowly?

Life is not easy;
Anyone who denies this
is selling something.

Look! Your box and mine
Share a common boundary.
Let's leave together.

Introduction to a Poem Requested by a Dear Friend. Please note: dear friend is somewhat of an ambiguous phrase, which should not be misconstrued to mean that I have anything against any deer, elk, moose, springbok, or other non-horse, leaping, running, jumping herbivore - which is like a vegetarian except more boring in conversation - because I like woodland and veldt-dwelling creatures of that sort because they never try to talk to you when you're on the phone with someone else).

Anyway, here goes: It's a never-ending story, a pit without a toppus or a bottomus, a continuous saga, or at least a tale that seems to be sagging ever closer and closer to the ground: it's the ending of the end-all, the creme de la creme of something that was once was soft and pliable and oh so very pleasant to the touch, smell and sight but now has hardened into a plastispasmodic dessert tray offering that shows signs of oxidation, sugar viscosity breakdown and overall loss of morphologicality and appeal. What is it? Or rather, what was it, what could it have possible been, from whence did it come and will it return at end of day to close our eyes and minds to deprive us of the burden of imaginative recompense? I don't know.

I'm milking this one for all it's worth: I feel it's my udder responsibility. What I have attempted to attempt here is an introduction, a prologue, a pre-initialization segue, an opening monologue, to set the stage, give you the background, or sort of give you the "in last week's episode" synopsis of what you might have missed if you had been out having some sort of a mid-life crisis experiment consciousness awakening mind-bending good old fashioned get up and go something going on last week and between the sound bite politics and other mindless trivia that have been sandwiched in between your neurons and synapses in the intervening time period instead of paying strict attention to the events, actions, and their separating moments of extreme boredom (don't you just love those peaks and valleys?).

She said that she was longing for the life that she once had
The changes they were coming fast, and some of them were bad
Said she could not believe it
Maybe she was going mad

And I saw just what was happening
And I wasn't much surprised
That the laughter was now missing from her eyes
No, it was not much surprise I felt at all
More like autumn blues when leaves begin to fall

She said she wanted happiness and things as they had been
For life had started laughing and the joke was quite obscene
I shook my head and tried to say
I know just what you mean

For I saw the road she'd taken
And I wasn't much surprised
That the laughter was now missing from her eyes
No, it was not much surprise I felt just then
More like longing for the wisps of might have been

She spoke of that long trip she made somewhere into the East
And the times she spent in turmoil wrestling her inner beasts
And of all the men that failed her: businessmen, and clowns and priests
And I wasn't much surprised, not in the least

She said she wanted more to life than memories that fade
For going through the motions seemed like such a sad charade
Said she felt like an old record
That was scratched and overplayed

And I noticed what was happening
And wasn't much surprised
That the happiness was missing from her eyes
No, it was not much surprise I felt at all
These things happen when your past decides to call.

1988

Concerning K. I cannot say it came as much surprise
There always was a kind of fuzz that lingered in her eyes
And anyway, the games you play get serious enough
Without the threat of psychopathy breaking all your stuff

Concerning E. it seems to me our ages were all wrong
We didn't grow up with the same books or sing the same songs
And furthermore, her mom got sore that I was more secure
Than her strange fundamentalist preacher man could endure

Concerning M., I won't condemn the daydreams of the past
But it was never meant to be, and never meant to last
And in end, I won't pretend that dream died slow and hard
But there was no room for me then or now on her dance card

Concerning V. I won't deceive you, that was a mistake
She wanted oatmeal safety and I gave her nut and flake
And when it stopped and she just dropped me, it was for the best
There wasn't any way I could have sat through the whole test

Concerning J. I went away before something could gel
But we were shooting in the dark, as far as I could tell
And so to speak, as different freaks our paths would never meet
Except at the rain-soaked crosswalk of some Seattle street

Concerning G., and M., and R., and maybe J., and C.
There were some magic moments, but they're all now history
In retrospect, if I neglect to mention you by name
It's not that you are unimportant; just say I'm to blame

Concerning S., now, more or less, there is so much to say
I wouldn't trade what I have lost for what I have today
And truth be told, now getting old seems less a cross to bear
Because a life worth living is a life you want to share

21 JUN 2004

Ultimatums are absurd,
like "I will not write one more word
until those reading clap and say,
'Bravo!' and 'Watch the genius play!'"

The Sufis had it right, I think:
"Don't name wells from which you won't drink";
and yet, to stand aloof and proud
from rabble, sometimes, is allowed

When lines of poesy and wit
Are cast aside, in praise of shit
the gauntlet's thrown, the challenge made.
Now, let mere pundits be afraid!

The bards of old were greatly feared,
but their kind have all disappeared
and in their place are only found
experiments in time and sound

The erudite, vanity press?
Who reads that stuff, and more or less
who gives a damn for words these days
that speak the truth, when lies are praised?

The torture of the gentle soul
who speaks against such mind control
and casts their nets for bigger fish
and writes exactly as they wish

Is to live in a dull gray place
Where art is schlock and soon defaced
Where schools are meant to churn out rows
of mindless robots too well-clothed

And Music? Who can bear the tune
That blares out Sunday afternoon
Lambasting resting ears with tripe,
vulgarity and guttersnipe

Too loud, the world seeks truth in vain
for it hides behind windowpanes
a throbbing headache from the noise.
It waits for men, and finds, just boys

Who dabble with a word or two
But think of drink and fight and screw
Without the faintest sense of shame
That they know not their father's names

And yet, this sad, misgotten lot
Who claim a God that knows them not
Will look at me with great distain
As I stand out and smell the rain

Oh, wash this street, and filthy town
destroy its streets, and bear them down
along the river to the sea;
It cannot come too soon for me!

And ultimatums? I refuse
to leave this place, to cede, or lose
until my words, like slow, cruel time
sink in and waken just one mind.

21 JUN 2004

The stripling lad born weak at Beltane's fire
now stands, and draws his measure proud and tall;
he takes the throne with passion and desire,
and bids the fading shadows to withdraw.

Upon this longest day, he reigns supreme,
the heat of manhood coursing through his veins,
and watches o'er the fields now lush and green,
the forests in full leaf, and grassy plains.

May love be warm, and all your dreams be bright
that find you on this new Midsummer's night

And yet, in this, his hour, when darkness wanes,
as earth draws close in embrace with the sun,
the balance shifts in cycle yet again
and starts once more toward aphelion.

How fleeting, this brave moment of control,
when day's bright visions chase the dreams of dark;
it fuels the flames that feed the growing whole
and then is gone, just ash where once was spark.

May all the wrongs of winter be put right
good tidings to you this Midsummer's night

Stay now, and watch through the few darkened hours;
for in these sunlight times, the veils are weak,
and grant to bards deserving of such powers
a touch of sacred madness, so to speak.

And keep your eyes alert for those who waltz
between the shadows from the faery lands;
they seek to lure the fool, and play him false
who thinks the world can be held in his hands.

Remember that the king, too, now in court,
has but a moment's glory, then must die.
So join with him in summer's happy sport ---
a dream of joyous play for you and I.

May we remain forever in the light
that grows its strongest at Midsummer's night

18 JUN 2004

Thanks to a thread over at Have Your Say Today.

The question: should guns be banned?

My answer is, and I dedicate it to Charlton Heston, Tom Selleck and Arnold Swartzenegger - each who may use it as they see fit:

No. Banning guns violates the Bill of Rights guarantee of the right to bear arms.

We should instead ban the manufacturer, sale, distribution and use of ammunition. There is no constitutional right to LOAD those arms.

That way, both sides can be happy. You get to tote a gun around, decorate a rack (either in your house or your truck), wave it at parades, but you can only hurt anything with it by swinging it at arms' (it and yours) length --- a distance that puts the target both in perspective, and within range of a suitable defense or counterattack - which would serve you right for waving that thing in their face to begin with.

Don't outlaw guns. Outlaw the bullets.

Peace out.

Here's a thought I had in response to a recent post on the KerryNewOrleans group at Yahoo:

> anyone have a monthly meeting or something?
>
> I moved here last year, I now it is Hot here until election day, but we
> are gonna do a rally or something, right?
>
> Who wants to go to the Quarter w/ me and explain Bush to tourists?
>

While I admire your enthusiasm, this plan of action sounds to me a bit like Jehovah's Witnesses canvassing neighborhoods they don't live in. Why start with tourists? Starting with your own neighbors, and even your own family might be time better spent, or getting residents of Orleans Parish nominally interested in the issues (although a historically Democratic zone, voter turnout is abyssmally low - people don't make the effort to get to the polls if there is any kind of deterrent, even a slight drizzle). That kind of confrontation requires a lot more fortitude than attempting to convert people you don't know, though.

What exactly are you hoping to explain, by the way? The problem, or the solution?

As for rallies, they are great for building team morale and making a show of support, but the problem is not with the people who attend rallies (on either side), because at least those people are INVOLVED. The problem is with people who really don't give a damn one way or the other, or like the candidate they ultimately choose for reasons they assume are right because no one has ever asked them, in person, to think about them.

Remember, if you fight by bashing your enemy, you're not making a difference. You're endorsing their tactics; and the medium IS the message.

What a field day for the heat / A thousand people in the streets / Singing songs, and a-carryin' signs / Most just say, "Hooray for our side"

-- Steven Stills, from For What It's Worth

Cheers,

John

It's not about learning to draw a clearer picture of the ruins
It's not about taking a sledge hammer to the ivied hallowed halls
It's not about the trash you can talk about those who disagree
It's not about undercovering where lies are passed as truth
It's not about reporting the faux paus and misdirections
It's not about informing others where they've gone astray
It's not about conversion by a sword called something else
It's not about the polls that show your side is in the lead
It's not about great solidarity and getting numbers
It's not about the old news that the corporations run it
It's not about watching the old order wither and die
It's not about spelling out in clever words the problem
It's not about discovering some esoteric They
It's not about dropping the bombshell in the new Enquirer
It's not about retaking Washington without a battle
It's not about some new magic pill, prescription or placebo
It's not about returning to some halycon of light
It's not about appealing to the undecided middle
It's not about pretending to undo decades of hatred
It's not about protecting and preserving ways of life
It's not about convincing yourself that your cause is justified
It's not about selecting from the lesser of two evils

It's not about the problem.
It's about the solution.

Everyone can talk for days about how fucked the world is.
Who is willing to admit that changing that world
Means changing yourself,

Not your employer,
Not your neighbor,
Not your family,
Not your Congressman,
Not your President,
Not your religion.

Not just that. But at least that.

I will blaspheme to instruct
if those still listening can hear:
the pretense of this world is fucked
beyond repair; that much is clear.

I will replay classic moments
in a whirl of light and sound;
relive near death's self-wrought torment
in my history's chains, bound.

I will speak in words, in whispers
of potential still untapped
while you burn away to blisters
where our skins' touch overlaps.

I will surrender to my vision
and in sonic sculpture rend
epiphanies to indecision
blank postcards I've yet to send

I will build a church to reason
in the metaphor of lies
so that thinking is not treason
and its lack, no alibi

I will lose myself in speaking
out against the endless wind
while the freaks go right on freaking
mindless of the world they're in

I will curse the world's foundation
built upon the backs of slaves
and in worship of sensation
find my own soul, free and brave.

17 JUN 2004

WHAT: Patti Smith and Her Band
WHEN: Tuesday, June 15, 2004
WHERE: House of Blues, New Orleans

OK, so the impetus to see Patti Smith came about with relatively no warning, little advance notice. I was minding my own business, returning home from dropping my daughter off at summer Driving School, and listening to WWOZ which is one of the benefits of living in New Orleans (although you can now access this listener-supported station anywhere in the world, thanks to the Internet) - a jazz and heritage Music station that plays the Music of its own geographic location (as opposed, I guess, to college radio stations that depending on where you live, may or may not have much local original Music to support).

It was the tail-end of the first afternoon show, and I caught part of an interview in progress. The voice of the person being interviewed and what she was saying I immediately recognized as Patti Smith. Well, it wouldn't have been hard to guess. There are, unfortunately, too few women in Music who are willing to pontificate on the philosophical and political implications of corporate America and its ultimate affect on the viability and substance of rock and roll. There aren't very many men who talk that way, either. Maybe Lou Reed. To make a long story somewhat shorter, one of the things that Patti was passionately describing was that rock and roll belongs to the people, not to the corporations, and it's about time we took it back. She wondered about the marketing of pop stars as punk icons, and also compared the corporate control of the major airwaves to a government administration that had not been elected. OK, so she and I agree politically on a great number of things.

It was not hard to convince stardances and her best friend of 25 years (whose birthday we needed something for, anyway), who came of age during the late 70s and like me knew who Patti Smith WAS, that it was essential that we attend the show.

Cut to the bar, prior to the show. The bartender (a young woman probably in her mid-20s) asked us (because, I guess, we looked like we would know), "There's Patti Smith and Patty Smythe. Are they the same?" This is, mind you, a bartender at the House of Blues.

Short Explanation: Patty Smythe, 80s. Patti Smith, 70s. Patti Smith not married to John McEnroe. Patty Smythe probably doesn't know Lou Reed. Patti Smith came first. Patti Smith would probably never duet with Don Henley. And so on. Of course, we knew enough to set her and the barbacks straight on the issues. LOL.

The stage room at the House of Blues is a great size to see a three to five piece band. You can get close enough (in fact, without too much trouble you can kiss the stage) to see everything clearly, to make eye contact. But there is enough back area by the bar to get some air, and the balcony affords a view of the throng from the safety of some distance. The House of Blues itself is at times, however, a bit creepy. There's a preoccupation with death; a lot of RIPs, tombstone-like relief lighting, combination kitsch-revival sloganeering, and the underlying presence of religion gone awry. The combination of voodoo and hoodoo, but both given a Hollywood veneer, ya know. But the way they have it set up, you enter down an "alley" and step down into the club.

I can liken the show itself to a religious service, particularly given the intro provided by walking through the HOB to the stage room. Prior to the first number (there was no opening act), there was a pretty constant mid-level hum of chatter, laughter, meet-and-greet conversation. In the pre-curtain minutes, you could see that there were distinct crowd clusters in the audience:

First, the folks that had been Patti Smith fans since Patti Smith became Patti Smith. The older set, the ones who were former punks, now grown up along with Patti. These were of both sexes, and could be distinguished by the fact that they, unlike most of the rest of the audience, actually were dancing. These you could associate with the people at church who are there to hear the sermon and apply it directly, at that moment, to their lives.

Second, the folks that had been converted to their current politico-social framework as a result of Patti Smith. This is not the same as the first group, in that the first group ALREADY were converted when they encountered Patti Smith. They worshipped, so to speak, Patti's gods; whereas the Patti converts worship Patti. Of course, these can be easily identified by the intense expressions on their faces as they strain to hear every single word that drips, drawls, screams, croons, or whispers from Patti's mouth. These people DO NOT dance. They are seemingly non-affected by the medium in which the message is delivered, and show concern only the for the message (which is, of course, only half the message, and some would argue the less important half). These you could associate with the front row pew sitters who follow along in their highlighter-stained Bibles, know exactly when to shout "Amen" and somehow every week fail to appreciate that the sermon provides direct insight into the condition of their souls, and not just the poor folk back in the rear of the church.

Third, the folks that understand that to be considered alternative, one must be seen at a Patti Smith concert. I will not comment on this lot. These are the people who go to church to get a date.

Fourth, the significant others of the second and third groups. These are the people that end up as the dates or life partners of "religious" church attendees, who find the attitude of constant self-righteousness a little over the top, but basically are too busy or cowardly to make much of a stink about it. Besides, they enjoy the barbeque pork picnics and other social aspects, so long as they don't turn into crusades to convert the surrounding picnic areas.

Fifth, those folks obviously not interested in whether Patti Smith or Patty Smythe were playing, as long as they were allowed to enter the club and party at the House of Blues, drinking copious amounts of alchocol, seeing and being seen. These are the people who attend church simply for the free food and drink. Doesn't matter what's on the table, or what kind of sermon they have to sit through to get it.

Sufficed to say, the best time was really to be had by group one; of which, our party of three was a member. It was obvious that these crowd cells would gravitate towards each other.

I'm tired of writing this already, and the show hasn't even started yet. LOL. More later.

Religions are formed every day
Each meant to last, each fades away
To be of use, each offers some
Instruction on the life to come

The best address in simple ways
a set of questions we all raise:

Why we reach, where to look
What to grasp, how to hold,
and when to let go.

It is the answers to these questions
that provide the clues to
who we are.

I was raised on tales of princes, kings and dragon's hordes;
the books they filled engulfed my world with sights
that to this day affect me deeply. I can hear the swords
(both those of plastic from my youth, and others forged of steel)
that came to clash against their foes each night,
caring more for the price worth paying than what they could afford.
King Arthur, the Green Knight, Quixote, seemed alive and real.

I think that each young man envisions serving some great king
whose cause is noble, pure and just, and worth our life itself.
We seek out those champions, imagining them different from ourselves,
yet sensing that the circumstance of birth, and station can
reveal the king to be a pauper, or make knight of common man.

We claim our independence, fiercely, so quick to deny
such foolish fancies, the great need that does not die inside
but with the years grows stronger, and makes us resort to lies
like "'that dream world exists no more" or "we've advanced beyond
the childlike wish for guidance from some other's regal hand."

But it still remains, that longing; and the lucky ones may find
that all that separates us from that goal is our own grown-up minds.

I wonder, thinking on the legends woven in my past
exactly when, say, Arthur, knew how his die had been cast
and sloughed away his peasant's garb, and found a sword at hand;
how long did he lay wondering, at night, dream-tossed and damned
to live a life that was not his, a pretense biding time
before the dreams that filled his head solidified in flesh?

I've often looked in mirrors, noting something in my eyes;
a smoke from a far distant fire that waits, unseen, disguised,
at other times, when I bewail the state of my affairs.
I wonder, who is it, exactly, who looks back from there.

The truth behind these tales is plain:
for those who think of themselves as kings
from birth, are not the regents who
live on in legends, past their deaths.

'Tis only those who say, "not me"
and would deny their fates,
who step beyond their possibilities,
that are remembered, great.

For chivalry gives no great honor
measured out in gold;
It teaches when to let go,
what to grasp, and how to hold.

15 JUN 2004

Despite what you may read in books, no revolution brews
in noisy bars or quiet cafes among agreeing friends
who decide the status quo is flawed, and pay their dues
producing pamphlets that describe the means to reach some end.

It is not action by committee, out to change the face
of the illusions that surround the minds of men and states;
these mere revolts exist in unreal time and space
and merely shift the larger portion to a different plate.

To truly change the world requires that in a single mind
the thought of reaching past the known burns with undying fire,
and in that place where none imagine who or what they'll find
to dare to step, with one's one feet, into a quagmire

that wretches the security from culture's safety net,
believing that the best has never happened yet.

It is not revolution to in any way believe
that those who are your enemies exist to bar your path;
and only would-be rebels are by this pretense deceived,
led to some senseless slaughter, while seeming opponents laugh.

15 JUN 2004

When one looks out past
the breaking waves at ocean's end
those across the sea

seem much less remote
connected by this expanse
of constant movement.

Away from the sea
In a great endless valley,
peering at the edge

of the horizon
where the sky and land connect
the mountains rise

dark blue and somber;
they separate more clearly
expanse on both sides.

Yet the more finite
space of the wide sprawling plain
is not the desert

hugeness of the sea,
it does not shift and not shift
change without changing

it just dries to dust
and then turns again to green
is lost in deep snow

and each spring flowers;
the ocean's chameleon
greens, grays, blacks and blues

breed deeper hungers,
suckle darker fears and dreams
and know their own gods.

religions are born
of the deserts and the seas ---
seeking to fathom

the underlying
pulse that moves without travel
swallows with no trace.

14 JUN 2004

Presented for your consideration, two parts of an otherwise normal weekend, filled with taxiing teenage daughters, reading online journals, laundry, pondering work (yes, I am a closet workaholic), sleep (a necessity after the grueling workweek of endless conference calls and quality assurance "light" reading of things like Software Management Plans and 500-line Gantt charts), cooking, light cleaning and grocery shopping.

The first part was a trip to The Spider's Web bar a few short blocks from my house. The occasion was the birthday of an online friend of mine, bigrob, who I had previously never met. It was a great time, although truth be told I should not be drinking in public (LOL). It was loud, the jukebox featured a great variety of Music, and the bartender, Amber was terrific. The conversation ranged from Music (Rob's roommate is a songwriter as am I, and Rob and he are both Musicians) to literature and politics. I even played some pool after an abstinence from that sport for almost a decade. I woke the next morning feeling old, hung over and somewhat anachronistic, however. So much of my life has been spent in bars discussing, playing and evaluating Music. I was not accompanied by stardances, my wonderful mate, on this occasion. To be honest, I have to say that probably the volume alone made this place, although kitschy cool in its way, not really that much my scene. That, and the preponderance of single people on average 10 to 15 years younger. An interesting adventure, nonetheless, and probably one that I would repeat. But I felt like I had to work really hard to do something --- although I couldn't exactly tell you what that was.

The second part, however, on its surface seems much more mundane. Our new neighbor (of about four months) invited Star and I over for wine and barbeque in his newly organized and re-gardened backyard. He is 59, and has traveled a great deal and recently moved back down to New Orleans from Vermont to teach. There was no Music. The conversation was quiet, although animated and lively, and incorporated travel, family, ancestry, hippy remembrances and other topics of intellectual bent. The wine was excellent. The food was exquisite. One realizes, after hosting many a party, that the key element to being at home in another person's house is whether or not they are an able chef. That, and being comfortable finding and using the bathroom. I think both Star, I and our neighbor agreed that the evening was the most enjoyable we each had spent in a great while. It's nice to simply converse with others, as equals, without the pressures of proving oneself. It is refreshing and relaxing. I woke the next morning feeling peaceful, intelligent and part of a community. I appreciated Star for the same reasons that I have always appreciated her --- her life experience, humor, intelligence, insight, passion and creativity. And I felt appreciated in the same way.

Perhaps I'm just getting old. Star and I are going to see Patti Smith tomorrow night at the House of Blues here in New Orleans. That we both know who Patti Smith is (and have known, for a long, long time) is important. Because we are not just hippies. We are both old punks. Hell, I'm even an old Goth (I remember where I was when Bauhaus broke up). I think now, however, we realize that at least Musically, and probably in many other ways, that volume is not a substitute for or expression of power.

Or something like that.

Truth be told, my high school years were difficult ones. Having been transplanted from a remote rural environment in northwestern Ohio to the sunny clime of southern California just in time to start high school, I found it difficult to adapt, in many ways, to the Members Only jacket, Izod shirt, Sperry Top-sider wearing preppy environment that was Republican Torrance, California in the early 1980s. Add to this mix the fact that I was really coming into my own as a Musician and poet, that my engineer father very vocally expressed his disappointment in my non-fascination with mathematics courses, and along that road the somehow simultaneous introduction of both Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols to my worldview's soundtrack (OK, a little behind the hip schedule of the world, but bear in mind that there were limited resources on radio and record on the farm), and you may begin to see the potential for strife.

Quite frankly, I didn't particularly care for most of my reality --- but a catalog of the ways in which I experimented to alter that reality is not the point here.

My father, perhaps sensing a wandering on my part, and desiring that I prepare to assume a role of some kind in society, laid upon me the burden of absorbing a great number of books from his personal library. I suppose I should be thankful for this, at least on the surface, benificent gesture. As a result, I was brought into the great continuum of self-righteous empowerment that ranges from Dale Carnegie to Norman Vincent Peale and now extends out to Tony Robbins. One of the things my father did during my early teens was to become a distributor for one of these Amways of Advancement, the Success Motivation Institute of Waco, Texas. They boasted such titles (provided, on series of cassettes and volumes of binders beautifully packaged in leather cases) as "Blueprint for Success" and "The Dynamics of Personal Leadership." Additional volumes of varying levels of import included "How to Win Friends and Influence People", "The Power of Positive Thinking", "Think and Grow Rich", "The Sale Begins When the Customer Says No" and so on.

I participated in this process willingly enough. I prepared "Plans of Action" (POAs) and memorized all kinds of affirmations. "If you are not making the kind of progress you are capable of making, or feel you should be making, it is simply because your goals are not clearly defined (Paul J. Meyer, SMI)". "Crystallize your Thinking". I say memorize, but it would be false of me to assert that at least in some minor way, these platitudes were not internalized to some degree. I am who I am today, optimistic about the possibility of being, in no small part thanks to this indoctrination.

But somewhere along that same continuum, these teachings failed me. Because their primary focus was ultimately on defining success as a function of money. That's the lesson, I think, that my father was trying to impart --- that if you make enough money, you can basically do whatever you want. My father was raised on Horatio Alger and other rags-to-riches stories, and high schooled in Liberty Township, Ohio, the same place where Norman Vincent Peale cut his journalistic teeth at the Republican Courier. A careful reading of Alger, however, will demonstrate something quite different from the "pick yourself up by your bootstraps, earn your way, opportunities are created" kind of jingo for capitalism that they are imagined to be. The fact is that almost every one of Alger's rags-to-riches heroes ends up rich through inheritance, sheer luck or magnanimous gesture. There's little or no proof that hard work will EVER get you these things, at least provided by Horatio.

The point of this exploration is that it always seemed to me that the motivations of these self-help gurus were questionable. Dale Carnegie, for example, suggests that when entering the office of an important man, to scan the locale and create a mental catalog of that man's interests --- fishing, his family, the Cape house, and so on --- not as a means for developing a connection with that executive as a human being, but merely as a tool by which to exploit that man's inclination to slim his wallet and fatten your own. Very Sun Tzu, it must be admitted.

And the bottom line is that actually achieving a higher standard of living, as defined by annual income, stock portfolio performance and neighborhood property values, never seemed to actually make anyone that I knew personally any happier, nicer or cooler to hang out with. They had more money, 'tis true, but the reality of it was they weren't going to spend it on me. And to keep it, nurture it, turn it into more of the same, it was unlikely they were going to spend it on themselves, either. Now, you may disagree with me here, but to value the accumulated item higher than the act of accumulation seemed to be the point of these self-empowerment programs; and the reality was that most people never actually achieved more than the accumulating act. It was "the pursuit of happiness," and not its capture. Of course, that is a defining American principle. And that brings me to the real point of this diatribe.

Ringo Starr's perception of the Beatles may be useful here. "For a time, we thought we were the best band in the world; and as a result, we were."

That's really the message of all these self-help programs, isn't it? To enforce the notion of mental focus. As you believe a thing to be, so it becomes. As above, so below. So mote it be. And they say this country is based on Christian principles. Bah. I've never heard anything so pagan in all my life. Life is what you make it. Not as it is handed to you (on whatever manufacture platter you imagine). You become what you pursue. Where your heart is, your treasure likewise can be found. Now I sound like Ronald Reagan, except that I realize that the real Gipper is not external, but is yourself. Win one for yourself. Now I sound like the Dalai Lama. Seek the guru inside yourself.

So why imagine it as a world in which you have to be rich to be free? Why imagine it populated with people who think just like you? Why imagine it absent of strife (a necessary component for growth)? Why imagine that it has to be a supermodel, a Ferrari, a big house on the lake?

Why not set your sights a little higher, Horatio? Why not imagine a world where people are not judged by the content of their wallets, but the content of their hearts? Forget art for art's sake. How about life for life's sake?

More to follow.

In one of his early 70s comedy routines, Flip Wilson imagined a conversation between Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain (and I paraphrase, as the album Cowboys and Colored People is long out of print and my vinyl is lost to the ravages of time):

Queen: Well, what's in America, Chris? What are you going to find there?
Columbus: Ray Charles.
Queen: Ray Charles is in America?
Columbus: Damn right, woman. Where do you think all those records come from?
Queen (excited): Chris gonna find Ray Charles, Chris gonna find Ray Charles!

At this point, Queen Isabella promptly handed Chris a check, which he took down to the local Army-Navy store, obtained three used ships, four cases of rum and a couple of rashers of beef jerky. The rest, as they say, is history.

Humorous as this interpretation may be, it highlights a very important point: Ray Charles was America. And a lot more, as well. Never mind the fact that without Ray Charles, it's probable that Van Morrison would still be an unknown skiffle player; or that Joe Cocker might never have been inspired to damage himself in service to a song. Never mind that legions of artists, stretching back in time from Elvis and Aretha (herself touted as the female Ray Charles early in her career) to Stevie Wonder, would not have had a figurative leg to stand on without him.

The fact is that Ray Charles represents the ideal of America, as expressed in Music. That ideal is that what makes us different, what gives us strength of character, is how we are able to use what is formative in our lives to create a personal interpretation of our reality that illustrates not so much who we are, but what we are capable of.

Ray Charles, although blind, saw something more clearly than others who retained the ability to "see". It is apparent to me in the large body of work he did as a solo artist, but comes absolutely into focus when you examine the duets he performed with other people: Joe Cocker, George Jones, Willie Nelson and so many others were touched by the "Genius" of Ray Charles, and learned, I think, one important lesson: that Music really is the universal language, and it doesn't matter what anyone says about which genre you should limit yourself to or what type of Music is "appropriate" for you to perform. What is essential to living life to its fullest, to experiencing, not only the depths of sadness, but the elevated heights of joy, is not so much picking the song. The song itself is secondary in this process (although the song, to be truly universal, has to have certain basic qualities).

What is essential, sang Ray Charles in a lesson to us all, is to sing with your whole being, to find yourself by embracing not the preconceived notions of what a song has been, but what it could be. Where it could go; and by extension, where we as human beings can go if we dare to venture outside the safe, accepted boxes in which society so desires to put each of us.

Ray Charles singing "America the Beautiful" is a revelation about America. Because it poignantly illustrates not only the absolute love of what America is supposed to stand for, but the heart-wrenching sadness of how far from that goal we are at present. Ray Charles knew that America was not, in practice, about brotherhood. But it SHOULD be. It COULD be.

Ray Charles almost single handedly changed American Music, taking from its isolationist parts and creating a homogenous, harmonious and soulful whole. He created "American" Music from southern gospel, northern Appalachian, western swing, eastern cool and midwest and Delta blues.

American Music. The Music of not white, black, rich, poor, ignorant, educated, simple, or complicated.

The tragedy is that with his loss, we may forget how to sing it.

Ray never ratted out a friend
because they leaned far left;
the communists had great songs too:
from all, Ray learned, and wept.

A silent moment, now, we share
now that his voice is stilled;
and promise, though some would forget
that song, we never will.

11 JUN 2004

bacchanal a riotus or drunken festivity

When the self-righteous trip and fall
upon their own hypocrisy
lovers of truth, in bacchanal,
must not rejoice too mightily

backbite to speak spitefully or nastily about someone who is not present

If you would backbite at your foes
Beware those wearing a friend's clothes
For the toothmarks you make in vain
May cause the biter loss and pain

badinage playful banter

In badinage, two friends may seem
to play at odds, to stranger's eyes;
and often, that foreign esteem,
will read such things as tricks and lies.

bagatelle a trifle

The world is not a bagetelle
A worthless thing we buy and sell;
indeed, its whole is beyond price
and must not yield to avarice.

bathos a ludicrously abrupt shift from an elevated to a commonplace style; insincere or overly sentimental pathos

Hark! The lofty purpose seeks
conveyance in the grandest terms,
yet far too frequently, it speaks
in seeming bathos, just to worms.

bedizen to adorn or dress gaudily

To those who would bedizen truth
and seek to change how it is taken:
know this, once upon the tooth
its flavor cannot be mistaken.

belletrist a writer of literature regarded for its artistic rather than informative value

If you would be a belletrist,
take heed and shape your art
in a great vacuum, sealed and safe
where no ideas start.

benthos the bottom of a sea or lake; the organisms living there

The benthos in the calm, smooth sand
will often fail to understand
the turmoil up amidst the waves
and standing still, think themselves brave.

billingsgate foul, abusive language

The simple man will heap his foes
with endless billingsgate,
not reckonizing that the trowel
he uses seals his own sad fate.

bowdlerize to expurgate (a book) prudishly

Some seek to safely bowdlerize
the Constitution's promise;
they say, 'tis safe to "modernize" ---
to gut, would be more honest.

Unofficially from 1919, and officially since 1931, The Star Spangled Banner has been the national anthem of the United States. Prior to that time, My Country, 'Tis of Thee written by Samuel Francis Smith, sung to the tune of God Save the King was the official national anthem. It presents quite a different perspective on our national scene, particularly if you consider the minor changes I have made to this text, as follows.

My country, 'tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty
that now I sing.

Land where my fathers died
(fathers you now deride,
and from each mountainside
dull freedom's ring)

My native country, thee,
land once noble and free,
Thy dream I share.
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
Those who this spirit kill,
Let them beware.

Let Music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song.
Let concerned tongues awake;
Let all that dream partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.

Our nation's goal, 'tis this,
setting aside hubris,
we strive to sing.
Once more may this land glow
and by proof, make it so ---
against each perceived foe
we pledge this thing.

My country, lost to view
What has become of you,
Can you stand tall?
Drop all your false pretense,
learn from experience
Make your ideals self-evident
to one and all.

10 JUN 2004

Pondering John Kerry's use of Langston Hughes to convey a message of sorts, I thought I would write a poem focusing on what I think Kerry's message should be.

America, your shadow casts a lengthy darkness where
it should serve as a lamp to guide the blind;
and those enemies you imagine beyond your hallowed gates,
fermenting with opportunities to express their angst
and shake you from your complacent sleep,
why do you seek to destroy them, wishing them dead?
Does not a worthless and weak opponent serve
to weaken your own resolve and reduce your own strength
while encouraging the illusion that you are omnipotent?

Wouldn't the best defense against the Red Menace,
rather than castrating the Left Wing,
been to strengthen democracy,
live up to your stated ideals,
proving by example the fallacy of your evil foes claims?
Surely, America, you are more than empty words
backed by full missle tubes, aimed at any dissenting voices.

Do you believe in equality? In the sanctity of free speech?
Wouldn't the best course be to act
as if your sacred principles were the truth?

America, your hypocrisy is that you don't believe in yourself;
and yet, your jingo jangle rings across the globe,
your corporations seek to spread your gospel
laced with the poison of underlying greed.

There is a better way to defeat your enemies.
Make them no longer your enemies.

To fight the war of proof,
using weapons that defeat your message,
underhanded dealings,
covert operations,
torture,
corporate pandering,
strong-arm tactics,
and ulterior motives,
is to lose your self,
and without that, America,
you are just another fascist regime
that supports self-righteousness
because it entertains your illusions of profit,
at least while they are expedient.

America, yours is not a national campaign ---
it is a return to the high ground that is required,
and that elevated place knows no borders
but shares its light
rather than casting a shadow.

09 JUN 2004

I don't want to say anything about Ronald Reagan. I have kept my mouth shut for two days now on the subject. But amidst the feeding frenzy on both the left and right that still is going on (the left to destroy the mythos by rediscovering history, and the right to destroy history by rediscovering the mythos), I feel it necessary to interject a little something.

First: Ronald Reagan was a man I appreciated as an actor only slightly more cardboard than Rock Hudson, whose prediliction for sentimentalism turned my stomach. As an actor, he lacked the physical charm of Burt Lancaster, the inner struggle of Gary Cooper, the sense of irony of Gregory Peck, the intelligence of Cary Grant, and the heroic flaws of John Wayne. And yet, he tried to emulate each one of their personas at one time or another.

Second: The Reagan I knew as a politician was an old man. Older than my father. And as a result, a man of a different time. The great tragedy of the Reagan years, in my opinion, is that we as a nation in the 1980s felt it necessary to rely upon someone who was so obviously out-of-step and out-of-touch with the realities of life in the 1980s. For some sad, crazy reason, our national nostalgia wanted to forget the seventies (and by extension, the sixties) and return to Ozzie and Harriet land. Well, this was the man to get us there, McCarthy witchhunts and all. We (well, actually my parents generation) asked for it, and he delivered. The fact that what we asked for wasn't really what we as a country needed was not necessarily Reagan's fault --- he was simply reading the script that the majority of the audience he could see beyond the footlights wanted him to read. That's unfortunately how democracy works ... as George Carlin once pointed out, the sad fact is that our elected leaders and representatives really are the best that we can do. They embody what is both best and worst in each of us. And in the "greed is good" generation of the 1980s, that worst turned out to be pretty bad, while the good seemed sentimental and trite. That describes the 80s, doesn't it?

Third: Anyone who says that Ronald Reagan, regardless of what he may have done as "leader" of our democracy, deserved a 10 year battle with Alzheimer's, is an asshole. Fuck you for even thinking that. And my deepest condolences go out to Nancy and the kids, both for having to live through the twilight hell and having to live through the circus now, and for the great hole in their lives once filled by a large, charismatic, sometimes humorous and often opinionated individual who is now gone, regardless of how you think he played his roles.

Fourth: On a personal note, the affect Reagan had on my life in the 1980s is observable by two simple facts. That during his Presidency, I was required to register with Selective Service. It was my impression at the time that he was responsible for that; and that I would likely be required to participate militarily at some near term juncture in the jungles of south and/or central America fighting to maintain some fascist-friendly ally of the American industrialists to whom the Republican party owed allegiance. And second, my first opportunity to participate in the government of this county, through the process of voting once I turned 18, was an opportunity to cast a vote against Reagan. I did so.

Fifth: Ronald Reagan was just a man. Nothing more, nothing less. Not a great villain, not a saint. If you're sitting around either reading endless blog stories about him, or writing them, you survived both his time in power (which was, actually, pretty brief and more than a decade ago) and are likely to survive his legacy. Not so for Bonzo the Chimp, who died first.

So once again I've started reading, for pleasure, the dictionary. On an on-going basis, I'll post ten words I discover (or rediscover) from each section that appeal to me, along with my interpretation of their "poetic" significance". Here are the A's:

aeropause the atmospheric elevation above which aircraft cannot fly In a poetic context, this could apply to Icarus or human efforts in general.

aphasia loss of the ability to speak or understand speech Besides its medical connotations, aphasia has poetic implications as well, particularly when looked at from the reverse side: perhaps it is a loss of the ability to speak or understand a language which no longer has purpose, or to communicate in such a way that is beyond language itself.

aphelion the point on a planetary orbit farthest from the sun Ah, the ramifications of this one are many: humankind's distance from its spiritual origin(s), the darkest point in a personal history, that point at which epiphanies are discovered that lead to a return to the light.

apocrypha writings of questionable authenticity Perhaps documents indicating the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of our once-allies and now conveniently enemies?

appurtenance something that belongs with or to another more important thing; an accessory The quality exuberated by George W. Bush in the presence of Dick Cheney?

arabesque an intricate design of innerwoven leaves, flowers, and geometric forms The warp and woof of the carpet of life.

arrogate to claim, take or assume for onself without right Arrogant self delegation; an assumption of powers beyond one's comprehension; judgment of another's way of life.

atheneum a library a beautiful word; the temple of Athena to signify a place to pay homage to knowledge.

augur a soothsayer or seer; to predict, especially from signs Of course, it all depends on who put up the signs, and in what language they are given.

auriferous containing gold, or gold-bearing To assume one's path is auriferous is to seek within the lining within the grayest cloud for a mere glimmer of precious metal.

Having just seen the new Harry Potter film, I was contemplating the underlying message I find in JK Rowling's work. No, it's not some dark Satanic point that seeks to overthrow the basic power structure of the Christo-centric universe. Not exactly, anyway. In my opinion, the most important lesson to be learned from Harry Potter is this: there are people in this world who see magic, and those who don't. Much like there are people that imagine the world is becoming a hell-hole, and those who imagine it can become a paradise. It doesn't matter, really, from whence you feel that the magic, or power, emanates. What does matter is your motivation for harnessing it. Next to that, is your interest in how it affects other people. Or something like that.

Among the views with which to judge this life
are found just variations of a pair:
the one, that looks upon the world as filled with strife
and seeks for naught beyond its veiled despair,

with tired and jaded judgments placing blame
on circumstance and temporary might;
for those who look in this way, life's a game
that designates the one who wins as right.

And sadly, with this vision they proceed
to deem imagination foolishness;
Upon the world they let their bitterness exceed
their hope, and thus, destroy real happiness.

Some unseen, greater prize in vain they seek
to line the coffers of their empty hearts;
and without joy, at length, they deign to speak
of where one's duty ends, and knowledge starts.

The other view sees the same time and place,
but seeks beyond the surface of the world
and to its mad illusions gives no chase
preferring the whole oyster to the pearl.

Where others see mere folly and lost wealth
attending those who linger on the path,
concerned with more than benefit to self,
they look upon the flower's bloom, and laugh.

In each small thing, a sense of grand design
and purpose is observed by eyes like these;
and in the commonplace, they seek and find
beneath the surface, subtle energies

that form the substance of all that exists;
yet this discovery breeds no sense of pride,
nor puts their name on some great hidden list;
'tis rarely fame and wisdom coincide.

Of course, within each group, a varied lot
that spans the gamut from glutton to saint,
exists, and each must find their chosen spot.
For some the vision's strong, for others, faint.

But it is from this pair of points of view
that all the world divides in sects and creeds:
the one, that sees no magic left to do;
the other, knowing better, disagrees.

06 JUN 2004

Certainly my outlook on life, my philosophy of existence, has been influenced and affected by Christianity. Besides the fact that our culture in the United States is immersed not only in Christian metaphor, but has as its core the underlying belief that everyone is Christian and shares as a result some common understanding of a shared reality plays a part in that. It can be an insidious, even covert sense of instrusion by which that undercurrent makes itself known. I'm not referring to the obvious politically motivated occurrences, like "In God We Trust" or "under God" or swearing on a Bible in court as your standard oath. I'm talking about the definition of words. The framework for a worldview that assumes certain things to be "self-evident."

I see these signs in dictionaries and their more readily-accessed counterparts, crossword puzzles. The dictionary I have has a definition for Adam: the first human, and theoretical forefather and progenitor of the human race." It does not preface this phrase with "According to the scriptures of the Christian religion...". Likewise, it is common to see the clue "earthly paradise" in a crossword puzzle. The correct response is, of course, "Eden."

Our system of law likewise reflects this closed-system view. What exactly is "an act of God" - whose God, I would like to know, and on what proof is it established that there is a direct divine origin for said act? Do "acts of God" happen to non-Judeochristians? To atheists (of course, an atheist denies the existence of "God", which doesn't necessarily make it so, Number One, just like believing that George W. Bush is a decent, honest and intelligent human being interested in the well-being of all Americans equally doesn't ip so facto it). This is almost, of course, tanamount to a strange kind of animism, to suggest that anything outside of one's personal control (e.g., earthquakes, floods, political action committees, the mating habits of the lemur, etc.) are under the direct purview and lead by the immense finger of some unseen deity. Are we really saying that every shift in the tectonic plates, every overabundant rainfall (even those precipitated, so to speak, by our own environmental mismanagement and ignorance of the havoc we as industrialized peoples wreak upon the natural balance and cause-and-effect) is a wakeup call from some divine switchboard?

The Bible has been re-translated (or adapted, universalized, updated, modified, or denigrated, depending on your particular point of view), particularly in the New Standard Revised Version (NSRV) to eliminate unnecessary male/female specific pronouns, to reduce gender bias where possible. Political correctness has placed restrictions on such words as "blackboard" (as if being a board whose color, defined by the slate by which it is constructed, being black, is somehow derogatory).

How about a politically correct, or rather, ecumenically correct, dictionary of the English language? One that eliminates Christocentricism so that people (particularly those coming from outside the English-speaking universe) can learn the source of phrase or words without a preconceived bias that is antithetical to their own religious belief? Let the religious nature of a word be defined by its context -- a context not pre-imposed within its very definition, so that it can be better understood that in the human experience, which is in fact in the majority non-Christian world-wide, the prejudices of a minority sect are not the basis by which the English language need be understood. Let the Word represent more universally everyone who is interested in knowledge (be it of words, customs, cultures, self, or even the divine).

Of course, to be thorough, that would entail identifying the sources for artifacts of Christian mythology as well.

For example, the world antediluvian might require modification to its definition, from "the period prior to the Deluge visited upon mankind by God" to "the period prior to the catastrophic flood referred to in Christian literature as the Deluge, and referenced by many other religions and ancient histories as either a divine cleansing, or simply a significant watershed event perhaps linked to the melting of the polar icecaps due to global warming during the post-Ice Age period of the earth's development..." or something like that.

Is this likely to happen? No.

The anthromorpocentric bias of Judeo-Christianity firmly imbedded in our collective Western (and Near East) consciousness, the one that believes there is such a thing as "pre-history" and imagines that with the appearnce of Adam that evolution was completed and the entire universe reached its climax whereupon improvement and/or modification was no longer required, does not entertain exploration beyond its narrow boundaries - thus enforcing its own limitations with a kind of circular definition: it has ceased to evolve, therefore evolution does not exist and has never existed. To paraphrase Descartes, "I do not think, therefore, it isn't."

As I have said before, evolution can be proven. There is no mention of humankind being able to swim in the Bible. Yet, it is obvious that somewhere along the long stretch of time from "Adam" to the present, humankind learned this activity, probably as a means of survival. Ergo, it must be a "learned" skill. A change to the frame of reference by which humanity encountered the surface of the world (and a good part of its surface, by the way). An evolution. Humans have evolved, learned new skills, adapted to different environments, with variations in bone size and density, skin pigmentation, cranial capacity, genetic modifications designed to weed out the less able from the fittest, so to speak. We have, as a species, evolved. Therefore, evolution MUST not only be possible, but essential to our very existence. Everything else is a perhaps once-useful, but ultimately superstitiously misguided despite its apparent good intent, mythos.

However, to paraphase again, this time Arlo Guthrie, "I didn't come here to talk about Alice, I wanted to talk about the Draft."

My outlook on life has certainly been informed by Christianity. But that is not its only source of information. Were that the case, I would be standing at the seashore with a galvanized bucket full of briny water thinking I had a lock on the meaning of the whole ocean. And that is not the case. I have looked in a great number of buckets, tasted many a variety of seafoam. And I have found that by and large, the salt does not lose its savor in the process. If anything, being as a human animal a microcosm for the world as a whole (both approximately 70% saline based) I have discovered under my own blind hands a few of the different parts of the elephant. The trunk, the tail, the tusks, the broadside, the ears. Not that I have a picture in my mind of the whole elephant. That is not likely in a single lifetime, I suppose. But at least I know there's more to the elephant that what it leaves behind in the cage.

Or something like that.

Watch
the sky
slowly unfold
in an array of hues
across the edges of the world
touching every single thing underneath

for only just a moment, and then move
altering its entire pattern
enough to blur and shift
the whole pattern
of the
sky

Each
sunset
a new palette
on which the day is drawn

each instant a virgin canvas
waiting for the touch of an unseen brush
the moving finger that once having writ
becomes part of the scene it paints
creation, creator
insoluble.
The ink,
Life.

When
the sky
has turned to black
the colors are not lost;
if you look close enough, they last
but change, evolve and will not stay the same
no matter how you wish and pray;
they are not permafast
except in dreams
of the
blind.

See
these hues
that seem fragile
and so impermanent
are only simple reflections
of what we choose to imagine
exists only in some clear black and white
but cannot be contained in should and ought.
outside what we can see, the light

contains a wide spectrum
impossible
outside
clouds.

04 JUN 2004

for T.S. Eliot

When Icarus took flight with home-made wings
he sought to rise above, not divine laws,
but listening to how the eagle sings
attempted to reach past the aeropause

that culture places on its young when born
to limit how far flung their dreams may reach,
and teaches children to avoid its scorn
by tempering their thoughts in civil speech.

Poor Daedelus, tradition's solid stock,
can only watch in anguish from the bluff
as his bright future plummets to the rocks,
its bindings frayed, momentum not enough.

Against the ceiling set by common whim
there is no soar or dive; just fall, or skim.

03 JUN 2004

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions themselves. Everybody there adopts great numbers of theories, on philosophy, morals, and politics, without inquiry, upon public trust; and if we look to it very narrowly, it will be perceived that religion herself holds sway there much less as a doctrine of revelation than as a commonly received opinion.

-- Alexis de Toqueville, 1805-1859, Democracy in America

In other words, equality does not equal independence, and liberty does not equate to freedom, particularly of thought.

Alone again or so it seems
and yet, my street of broken dreams
goes on and on

The moon has kissed the sun goodbye
and yet hello, a kiss with which
to build a dream upon

Childhood wanderings in lands
of dragons' wings and foolish fancy
now begin the slow and wondrous
journey to the dawn

and all alone again I wonder
how much longer I can carry on.

Backlit silver silhouette,
a shadow lighting cigarettes
in time with me

Purple grayish ashen rings
float carelessly
as tender summer breeze

Floating through the evening sky
to unknown destinations
ones that we can feel but never see

and once again I am alone,
a child full grown
but lost in make believe.

1984

I seek an answer in the shadow of these years spent wandering and lost; in crumpled notebook pages that mark a trail of desperation and precocious notions, sex-crazed teenage dreams stained with cigarette ash and the half-mad scrawl of an anguished and lonely soul wanting only to belong to something worth belonging to, something real. I see behind these quaint reminders that the poet I have become has been now thirty years in the making --- even at nine years old there were signs of a kind of infectious madness. Believe me, I have dissected my own work over the years with a sharper scalpel that any high-priced psychiatrist could possibly envision.

There is something that draws me to this earlier incarnation. Something that is antithetical to that which can be defined as an American experience. The experience garnered by growing up in America. That experience is the preponderence of ambition and the absolute lack of lofty ambition.

To give oneself without question or pause to a life of the mind, in a nation that worships the life of the body, to produce, to commerce, to practicality. That is the madness that I see forming in myself at an early age. The curse of having read, by the time I was 12, of the history of the entire world without having the limiting prejudice of American interests being of foremost importance. To wonder, at age 10 or so, what the Native Americans really thought of Columbus, echoed perhaps by Flip Wilson's line "and the Indians paid not much attention to Chris and his boatload of Spaniards, being busy celebrating 'Not Having Been Discovered Yet' day..."

I search the landscape of the American mind, and I find no great philosophy to unify the innermost spiritual quest of mankind, but rather Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney --- inventors of practicum to make this world, not the next, the happy hunting ground.

And I wonder about Thomas Jefferson. The line "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." Certainly, it can be intepreted to mean that all humans are created, that is conceived in the same manner --- in fact, in the exact manner of any of the mammalian species --- by the coupling of a male and female of that same species for the purpose of generating offspring. In that sense, yes, they are created equal. Yet, beyond that simple act of conception, there is no real equality. And it is not that act that gives life --- as there are obvious and numerous examples of human coitus that do not result in fertilization. Life is something else altogether; not bestowed by human parents, but rather by a cooperative massing of the energy of the universe into a particular manifestation. Once that manifestation announces itself vocally, it is indeed for the intents and purposes of reincarnation, alive. At any time prior it could, with the cooperation of universal energies beyond the scope of human manipulation, cancel its current mission and await a more fortuitous venture. But that is another point, altogether. As Krishna said to Arjuna at a critical juncture, when Arjuna was bewailing his required task of slaughtering countless relations and other worthy soldiers ... you can no more in reality end their lives than you can create them anew. True life and death are beyond your control; you are merely an agent for forces outside your mortal comprehension. But back to the creation of equals. Certainly, in the studies of genetics that have been pursued since the time of Jefferson, it is clear that the concept of equality at creation is slightly in error. Genetics give one a stooped back, receding hairline, penchance for physicality, prediliction for speech, brain size shape and characteristics. Certainly creation as equals requires equals as parents. But that is another story.

Enough of this for now. I will return to this theme later.

Each day I wake, my head crammed full of dreams
that reach into my conscious life unasked,
defining how I perceive each new task
by tearing at reality's worn seams.

From dawn to dusk they push and pull my mind
in strange directions, seeking some release;
new tangents form in patterns without cease
and with their ebb and flow, seek to design

the life that I too often see as dull,
its colors faded out to browns and grays,
mere repetitions of some useless rite.

Of moments too soon gone, my life is full;
and on these fleeting chimeras, my days
oft lose their edges and fade into light.

02 JUN 2004

Along the coast, the wind was steady, giving the trees that stood two or three hundred yards back from the shore the chance to continue, with their low rustling, the rhythmic chant of the gulf against the sand. Youngsters, in the reckoning of trees, with only a rare few older than that time when Camille wrought such destruction and split Ship Island into east and west; yet a live oak for all its fable longevity grows up fast, and unlike human being who sprint into adulthood and find themselves winded by middle age, these impetuous trees become real elders ahead of forest schedules, laughing with their great arms outstretched over two or three generations of their offspring, who struggle in their mighty shadows.

It is with a great and satisfied sense of perversity that I pay for my gift shop purchases, at a shop just down the street from Beauvoir, the now-museum home of Jefferson Davis, with a wad of five dollar bills, Lincoln-side up.

Yet the ocean itself (which is not the ocean, but the Gulf, says my mate) knows no north and south, no coon-ass or cracker, no redneck or Freedom Rider. It may be the Gulf, and not the Sea or the Ocean, but I sense the presence in the waves that crash lukewarm over me of Lir, of Kanaloa, of Poseidon and Neptune. It is that great mass of liquid that connects us, fluid that knows no real master or nationality. In the gift shop again I look over the rows of seashells available for purchase. Product of the Philippines, one is stamped. I laugh. As if the Philippines were required for this mollusk to come into being.

When I was 17 years old, the age that my daughter approaches now with great anticipation, I spent almost all my waking hours in or at the ocean. That was when I truly became an introspective soul, I think. In the face of the sea's constant Music, spoken words become superfluous and strange.

Away from the shore now, back home in New Orleans, I sat down to read a book; and immediately fell asleep to the gentle sounds of surf remembered; a long sleep, filled with dreams of connections and endless tangents, of currents that hide beneath the surface and feed the cold depths with light by osmosis.

I wonder --- to compare the thoughts of one who has never experienced the ocean (and I'm sure there are a great many such sad and deprived souls) to one who has lived and played in its great shadow. The great religions of mankind, those that must be written in books and given form on a weekly basis, must have been conceived inland.

What is the secret
hidden behind
the veiled innuendo
that hangs
its tapestries
of heavy corded cloth
on these rotting temple walls?

I pierce your flesh with countless
arrows, yet you fail to die;
beheaded, in a pool of cloying blood
your gore-stained neck still
spouts a sermon.

Your skin reeking of the sweet
heavy sweat of gasoline, that hangs
like night jasmine in the humid air
is a reproach; and the raw furrows
there along your back
sing out a louder song than the
hiss and crack of the bullwhip
whose overture is now at end.

Shall I proceed to light the anointing oil
that to your neck you are immersed?
Will turning past their breaking point
the screws against your thumbs
release your hands
from this grasping hold on my neck?

I have burnt away your tongue
with live, red-hot coals;
Will your drawn and quartered limbs,
under the patient care of
some sister-wife,
be sewn to whole in some dark,
fetid swamp?

Look, the lions will not even
deign to touch your ruined
flesh --- it reeks of waste,
of offal, some perfume
that burns the roughest tongue.

What would you live to prove,
that in your dying cause
remains?

Give me no more martyrs;
for the aroma of seared flesh
does not provide a savor
to my senses.

29 MAY 2004

Sometimes keeping a journal can be compared to elective surgery undergone in lieu of some other action, corrective or otherwise, to remedy a more serious life-threatening condition. The act of journaling or blogging, for me, is less about getting my thoughts and creative aspirations down on paper than it is chronicling the space and time continuum in which those things arise. And really, it is less about that than it is about the interactivity of internet journaling.

To do interactive journaling right, from my perspective, is to follow where those who come to my journal come from --- their journals, websites, associations, news sources. Sadly, it ultimately turns out that most blogs are not about the self of these individual bloggers, but more about their sources of information. There is, in a lot of cases, the misguided notion that the blogger is responsible for the only intelligent filtering of information available on the web. So many blogs are filled with clipped stories extracted from newsfeeds --- that frankly, everyone else reads too --- in an attempt to define one's own political, spiritual and/or societal framework and/or agenda through some kind of William S. Burroughsesque cut-up of the reality they inhabit.

The problem, though, is that it is definition through exclusion, through the interplay of other peoples' words. Very rarely --- and this is what separates the mediocre news filter from the blog worth reading --- the aggregator describes what is essential, absolutely necessary, and ultimately the most universal aspect of the selected news clipping --- and that is its effect on them personally. In their own words. Now, these words may be disagreeable to me. They may be misspelled. They may not only disgust or amuse (and these seem to be the polar extremes, with tittilate and epiphanate floating somewhere in between) and they may cause me to shrink back in horror from the person whose self is revealed in their ramblings. But that is the REAL part of the news of that blog. That's what makes it worth bookmarking, revisiting, and clipping from, not figuring out that of the 1,979 times Donald Rumsfield, for example, said something hideous today that was repeated on the web, that my blog has tracked down and collected 1,732 of them, and duly reported my findings like an objective reporter not personally affected by the findings or the outcome of an act, or somehow not part of the very statistics deemed worthy of report.

Because information is not an end unto itself. It cannot be. That's like saying the Bible is God. As I've said before, that's a little too limiting when it's obvious that God is the entire library.

The point I'm trying to make is this: that it is not the information that is important, that is worth sharing --- although the most interesting thing about news aggregation on the web is its explicit illustration that the freedom of the press, at least the mainstream press, is limited to those who own one. What is important is that there are people attached to those blogs. And those people, those individuals, who in these troubled times may be so afraid to not only give their opinion, but form it in the first place (after all, doesn't the Bible say that to think about sinning is ultimately the same as committing the sin itself) have got to have something to say, something worth hearing, at least in their own minds, or they wouldn't be going through the troubling of establishing on-line accounts, designing blog templates, accumulating directory links and cultivating friends-via-electron. But what is it they're saying? Are we as a society claiming, boldfaced, that we are nothing more than how we are portrayed in the news? Is that all there is to it?

Sure, I've got an agenda. So does everyone else whose got a blog. It may be just a playful way to express an alternate side of yourself. It may be that you want some way to focus certain energies that affect your worldview. It may be that you're simply tired of holding pen to paper, or phone to ear as a means for communicating "what's really happening with me" to your friends, be they "real-life" or "on-line".

I wonder, though, how many express that agenda in their own words, or taking the easy way out, like Dr. Frankenstein, create the monster that is their on-line selves using spare parts from other people's bodies.

Bah. Enough ranting for today. I'm off to the Gulf of Mexico to dip my feet at the seashore.

There is something in a family that doesn't like a wall
inside the boundary it constructs, its face against the world,
that thin veneer of solidarity presented to conceal
or pander to the social mores ranking its esteem.

Behind the bastions of normalcy, its main concern
is making sure the single units pretend to conform;
and in that monitoring, it wants no separate, secret lives,
accepting only hesitantly strangers from outside.

Each strained reunion of the brood is subject of concern;
and any bricks laid on in private are quick set upon
with sledgehammers of guilt, and picks of hinting, sly reproach,
each proud attempt to isolate examined and destroyed.

Against this force of silent judgment, one who would be free,
seeking an authenticity outside accepted norms,
must toil in dark and secret, lest their labors be discovered
and hung, a warning pike along the outer fortress wall.

The separate self the enemy the hoarding family fears.
And so with subtle sabotage it works into new bricks themselves
the shale of doubt, and shunning stones to weaken each new plan
until in desperate surrender only the whole survives.

And distance, what is that to it, that reaches beyond time
across the generations, fingers clutching, like ivied vine
that resists even violent axes to grow back anew
and cover each new wound, and scar, with uniformity.

Its cry to arms is "Unity against the gathered hordes
that seek to infiltrate and then betray us from within,"
and with that xenophobic fervor fights to quell, subordinate,
the individual desire to reach outside its grasp.

There is something about family that doesn't like a wall
within its defined boundaries; it challenges the whole.
And each new member must accept their assigned sentry role
or despite years of effort, its well-maintained castle falls.

27 MAY 2004

There is a touch of madness in my blood;
but not a malady of harmful need,
more like grasping out for things that last
despite all proof that just illusion stays.

My German, Swiss and Irish stock is sound -
at least, they learned self-medicating ways
to lose the swirling doubts that trap the mind
and seek to mire the soul in endless strife.

But in the French and English strains there is
no safety net to guard against the world
that grinning wildly reaches out to fool
the willing mark that wanders the arcade.

It feeds upon the silence between words,
a shadow hidden far from prying eyes;
and yet, I feel its presence in those times -
its desperate ambition to survive.

It consumes slowly, sucking at the bones
that frame both solid world and healthy dreams
leaving a fragile and de-marrowed shell
which crumbles without warning into dust.

I fight against this great insanity
that lingered in the minds of my forebears
and turned once thoughtful paragons of wit
to sad, bent husks of life welcoming death.

Perhaps the gene is watered down enough
that it may find no purchase in my fate;
or finding others in my line to chase
that prove less argumentative, elect

to spare my later years this sapping curse.
It also may be that my madness lies
on other tangents, stronger than this thing;
The Celts have demons, too, that must be fed.

27 MAY 2004

The night is late arriving yet again;
and in the day that lingers past its time
it casts tentative shadows, brushed in hues
of lavender and faded rose and blue,

while twilight, holding back its unsure breath
as if it means to swell and burst its seams,
drops only hints its patience has an end
and seems shy and unwilling to intrude

upon the sun's last monologue, intoned
in barely whispered wisps of light.
It lets the final words slip out, then fade,
as finally, the dark blue curtain falls.

Against this backdrop, gentle mauve and pink,
the distant stars appear like bits of thread;
there is a quiet rustle in the trees,
and suddenly, the cool of evening comes.

27 MAY 2004

After having spent a number of days contemplating the connection between the Vedic and Celtic stream beds, via Indo-European language, and receiving a number of illuminating comments to my queries posted at several Celtic culture sites, I now find myself struggling upon the horns of a different, but related, dilemma.

The bottom line is this. I am a writer in English. That is the language in which my fluency and mastery can be expressed. Like Yeats, I question whether it is possible to achieve a true "literary mastery" of more than one language in a single lifetime, exceptions like Vladimir Nabokov notwithstanding. You see, learning another language at a rudimentary level is not enough --- my desire is not to pass myself as a native speaker for the purposes of travel, or even to enjoy works in their native tongues --- these obstacles can be relatively easily overcome with a modicum of study. The issue for me is to become fluent enough to write in another language. And in order for that to occur, I need to consider that in order to read a lot of what I've written in English, the reader must be pretty fluent in English. Otherwise, much of the nuance, the plays with language, the subtlely of innuendo and colloquialism, are likely to be overlooked, or even lost.

On my mother's side, English is for the most part the lingua franca. As second-generation naturalized Irish, I can only assume that any Irish language proficiency was diluted by the time of our arrival on these shores, primarily due to the British efforts before and during the time of naturalization to replace Irish with English, even to the extent of banning the use of Irish. But on my father's side, I need not go back that far to find non-English speakers, at least through my father's matrilineage. My grandmother spoke Plattdeusch (Low German, or Pennsylvania Dutch if you will) during her childhood, and was forced to learn English in American schools as a child. My father learned this language in order to speak with his grandparents, who had naturalized from Bern, Switzerland and spoke no English. As a result, I have less trouble recognizing German words (albeit not High German) than many other languages. I also tend to get at least the Low German accent right. On the German-German (opposed to Swiss-German) side, my grandfather had no German. His family had been in the United States since 1741, fought in the American Revolution and so on, and was for all intents and purposes completely Americanized.

So the result is that English is my Mother Tongue. It is the basis for my understanding of the world. While certainly I have an affinity for a number of foreign expressions and modes of understanding based on my study of those languages (Latin, Spanish, Irish, Sanskrit, German) or my exposure to them (Plattdeusch, Hawaiian, Creole) I will remain only a "literary speaker" of English. Sad that this is true, it seems to me. Perhaps that is too self-limiting.

At seven ten this morning
as the night gave way to dawn
a band of three of black druids*
gathered out on my front lawn

I heard them last night singing
in the dead calm, loud and clear;
but did not recognize their song
until they drew more near.

Drawn to my house, I might suppose
to offer me some clue,
and sip with careful wisdom
from the lawn's supply of dew

Three travelers from the Otherworld
stopped by to check the fire
beneath my recent relit forge
and kindle my desire.

"Recall your smithy lineage,"**
they spoke, and then took wing.
Against this synchronicity
I dared not say a thing.

How odd that they should now appear,
as strangers to these lands,
and offer this encouragement
to my oft idle hands.

And yet, these harbingers whose song
last night I failed to ken
have come to stay among my trees;
I count them as my friends.

05 MAY 2004

* In Welsh, the blackbird is known as "Druid Dhuhb" or the "Black Druid". While we are fortunate enough to have wrens, crows, bluejays, robins, cardinals, sparrows, starlings, pigeons and an occasional parrot among us here in New Orleans, in the five years I have been here this is the first time I have seen an actual black bird. Perhaps there is some significance to this, as the black bird is one of the totem animals for the Druid --- a communicator between this world and the Otherworld, a piercer of the veils.

** There is an area of the old city of Philadelphia that at one time was known as "Cooper's Road" or "Coopersville", in part due to the fact that my ancestor, Simon Litzenberg and his five sons set up shop along that stretch after their arrival from Europe in 1741 as blacksmiths and wheelwrights.

The beastly summer months are creeping in;
I can sense their hot breath and lolling tongues
like a pit bull lurking behind a cypress fence
waiting for the wood to rot away
so it can lunge into my peaceful spring yard.

Canto I

Next stop, the driver said, smiling through cracked wicked lips,
Pleasure City - we huddled, prenatal, wondering -
even in the suburbs the legends grew,
spread by the Party Planners,
the malcontent underbelly of the American Experience,
bastard step-children of the rotted family tree,
planted by righteous Puritan hands,
unsoiled by the burst and bloody entrails they tilled into the New Land.

A mystic angel sang guitar, played his words,
inspired by the big wheels (big wheels),
the bus across the wilderness of naked earth.
No flies on my shit, he sang,
no vultures preparing for the feast,
vomiting cold logic on the corpse of the American Dream.
Pleasure City - last stop on the long, hot road,
sun-drenched with memories long forgotten,
hands that played their songs of construction,
the leather blood-letters,
as buried in the sand as siblings of Antigone.

Ah, but Pleasure City - cool and hot, wet and parched dry!

Old lady in the back, azure-domed, triumphant,
proclaims that she has seen its better days,
the frontier of the experience.
The driver calls her forward,
gives her the crown preserved for Christian martyrs,
kicks her in the teeth and laughs.
He is not amused, for we laugh with him,
unknowingly blind and mute,
another shipment of Other-Worlders seeking to feel again,
to walk the streets of Paradise.

Samerica, we smiled and stepped from the bus platform.

Canto II

It was another long hot world away, our nesting places -
lofty crags for eagles perched on tenement windows -
waiting longing for something anything sweet release from boredom,
enemy of life itself.
The television man appeared one sunny hurt-swept Afternoon -
like maggots on the corpse of dawn we clung to this:
the dream of Pleasure City.
Escape, escape from this into God knows what else there is...
special deals free food and lodging,
the party bus to Paradise.

Am I the ninety-ninth caller?

The embodiment of Pepsodent living greets us.
We smile back,
our jaundiced grins exposing rotted Lifestyles.
This is our Destination.

Under the cold hard moon of desolation we cross the tundra,
mutant wildebeests on wheels of fire,
our gaudy polyester lives unfolded,
wrinkling in gorilla-proof encasements.
Across the lifeless plain our lifeless souls greet new days;
hopeful, hopeless wanderers,
the Happy Hunting Ground defiled by technology.
The radiation clings to our bones,
the remnants of a nuclear yard sale.

The bus driver's azure robes are caked with dust
from roads where tires collapsed.
The Conestoga, pleasure-bound, rolls into Paradise.

Canto III

The doors swung open with a burst of unexpected energy.
A thousand colored suns eliminated our shadows, our doubt -
Ezekiel's wheel had fallen, spinning,
where the fortune tellers shuffled after every deal,
the faces of divination no longer Egyptian.
The sun does not set upon the horizon,
but lingers, mocking while void of sleep,
drenched in the cool, hard sweat of Anticipation,
we rub our heads for luck (heads without a sensible hair).

Outside, in the blaring light of midnight,
a jester expelled from Caligula's court salutes us with a sneer.
He complains of pains, of hunger, of thirst -
wants we have satisfied with endless rolls of change,
while hand and foot courtiers slip us watered Scotch,
stale biscuits and gravy.
The driver laughs, throws our lingering clown a "piece of eight."
Coin of the realm, worth five dollars inside.
It is not edible, for the jester cannot enter the court.
He laughs and throws it away, cursing lady luck.

"Samerica," he cries, his throat hoarse with fervent whispers,
"Your addiction to Horatio Alger is complete,
your opium pipe is a machine,
the Tree of Knowledge where fruits are matched.
Apples or oranges,
the difference being small change to a small fortune."

Canto IV

Bridegrooms no longer hesitant, we re-enter the honeymoon suite.
The floorplan is memorized, our tour guide is unnecessary.
Stepping like ancient warriors on velvet carpets of fortune,
we weave our way through the rabble, the riff-raff.
Heads turn with frank stares, ruby eyes filled with avarice and pain.

The Holy Rollers have entered the chamber.

Foolish and reckless,
then conservative,
we take our turn at the table,
feeding on the adrenaline like baptismal liquids.
The numbers before our eyes:
first, Hymn 40, then Hymn 13.
The priest speaks gravely,
intoning ancient symbols that reveal we will not see the gates at dawn.
The azure-domed Madame from the bus swoons, star-struck.
She has come from the far pavilion.
Men in togas, she proclaims,
announce the King shall dance tonight.
The bus driver laughs.

The King is Dead,
but Long Live the King,
and cash me in.

Like Egyptian cities of the dead, the Path of Ramses,
the Suburbs of Osiris,
we will name our streets after our gods.

Canto V

In the blackened cathedral we sit huddled.
The King will speak, his emissary has taken the stage.
His mistresses,
the golden-tressed and nubile peacocks of the night
have begun the rite of initiation.
The drums have begun to sound,
the trumpets herald the coming of the New Christ.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall be Entertained.
Blessed are the weary and forlorn, for they shall be Amused.
Blessed are the chosen ones, the Holy Rollers,
for they shall receive Complimentary Champagne."

Almost before it has begun, the stage is once again deserted.
A flash of white sequins, the smell of hot light sweat.
The sonic boom from pelvic thrusts, of gymnastic exhibitions,
is overwhelming.
Quickly, the onlookers are ushered out into the cold hard sweet wet night,
into the lighted halls and corridors.
The service is completed here, for the bells are still ringing.
Flashing lights and sirens scream their homage
to the gods we have created.

Canto VI

Two lovers bend their obsessed wills in anguish,
the Paradise of Pleasure City fuels their passions,
their deep despair.
In rooms where once The Voice
held the attention of the molls and saps,
the final moments of ecstasy seep through pale gold curtains
as daylight robs writhing forms of their dignity.

The bottle empty as their thoughts and wallets,
they wince as its shattered fragments
draw their watered blood across the cold tile.
Visions of Hitchcock's motel run with the crimson water
as it slips away.

It was to be a new beginning,
Lady Luck and Prince Valiant embarking,
heading to the New Crusade -
after cleaning out the Golden Nugget.

Canto VII

The neon hourglass fills our eyes;
there is no time remaining for us.
Our sins have not been washed away.

Like Eve and Adam thrust from the gates while forced to watch
the life within the garden, we are returned to the dust from which we came.
The desert moon mocks our retreat.

Pleasure City, the bus driver exclaims.
It is but temporary Paradise,
this golden oasis on the face of destruction.

But Pleasure City - cool and hot, wet and parched dry!

Across the painted desert we wing silent, droning miles;
the tenements and caves from which we crawled
intone their homing beacon cries.
In the back of the bus,
exhausted,
we cross the desert,
spent as useless lovers,
the emptiness of our copulation
reflected in our gaunt souls.

Summer 1990

ceiling now in staring anguish
once the eyes I found and lost
last few moments caught myself
and wound my winding sheet about it.

words are not the thing for speaking -
truth in little hardened bitters
shows itself as one with hopeless
causes, self-aversion dramas,
Lysistratic coffee conscience.

why when said it natural felt
the need to press and fold;
enfolded leipedoptera means
no beauty, pins and needles.

I hate this feeling, wanting
knowing nothing offered is worth taking; yet,
submittal anything for just two fleeting
words, both of contradiction.

given it is gone and yet while nothing
hurts its purpose still expect
you'll never see what pain is

in the place where you are not

1993

We sit & stare across the line, we stare & sit across the line
Our words drawn as sacred weapons, our symbols drawn as ancient hexes,
Ever at the ready should the need
For our defense or quick attack arise.

This worthy line the boundary marks, its cursed edge our limits,
Unblurred & razor sharp, it forms a cruel & hardened knife;
We know its breadth & height & length,
Its size & shape & form are known,
For it is ours and ours alone,
For it has kept us here.

Our palaces & cities we have built, great wondrous sites
We have placed along its separating cleft;
And many, many watchful nights we spend guarding
Lest the line, in moving, be crossed.

It clearly illustrates the limits, the boundary,
Defines & enslaves us with its reach.
There is no question that the line
Cannot resolve by its presence -
Bringing pain & sorrow.

Sometimes, we sit &