not just fishing stories

When defining Canada
you might list some statistics
you might mention our tallest building
or biggest lake
you might shake a tree in the fall
and call a red leaf Canada
you might rattle off some celebrities
might mention Buffy Sainte-Marie
might even mention the fact that we've got a few
Barenaked Ladies
or that we made these crazy things
like zippers
electric cars
and washing machines
when defining Canada
it seems the world's anthem has been
"been there done that"
and maybe that's where we used to be at
it's true
we've done and we've been
we've seen
all the great themes get swallowed up by the machine
and turned into theme parks
but when defining Canada
don't forget to mention that we have set sparks 

'We Are More' Olympic Commemoration by Shane Koyczan

then, stop arguing

Mind, impressive ecstasy, loyalty to noble, hung in the basement of the paleomagnetic crater we call home, standing great, an iron stiff skeleton sinewed to virtue, our first and forever moment, free envisioning robed in the seduction of better, penetrating boundary, bending blood, task of will, only our good, our beauty, and only beauty, our melody exposed to the exquisite, well beyond the dilemma of our hopefulness.

Every human is labor.
And today, we are our future.
We have that in common with all things.

Time, a sharp hope and memory drifts across the ribbon of life’s highway, the vast prairie of the mind, a new horizon every moment, a new footprint every thought. Seasons quilt the hills, stitchery of fresh and brown; stone erodes to sand; the cup of earth sways beneath the ocean’s heavy brew; magnetic hands of moon and star hold us all within.

We are vast creatures, we humans.
Touched by crisp of endless space.

We are vast creatures, we humans.
Never dirt nor sky but all alike.

We are vast creatures, we humans.
None too small and none so large.

We meet first within the caverns of the mountains and second along the slopes toward the sea. We meet again with the yearning grass and glimpse each other through the blizzard and the rain. We wander flat rivers or explore the spongy fingers of the delta near the coast, and we meet in clear water turned quick within the brine. Breeze can be the only wind, another seared by desert, and another cut by hurricane, another crystal’d winter; at last, we each our time, none so greater than the next, none so infinite as we are made.

in the common spirit

Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

A science teacher says, "I think anyone who has even an iota of a chance to get involved in weaponry capable of destroying lives needs to know Keats, to know Blake. I'm not playing here. Who made the technologists, the politicians, the money class the gods?"

both my hands to turn the wheel

I saw that time is love, and time requires
  of everything its full expenditure
  that love might be conserved; and the I saw
  that love is not what we mean by the word.

  For some idea of it, choose a point
  in the middle of a waterfall, and stare
  for as long as you can stand. Now look around
  see how every rock and tree flows upwards?

  So the whole world blooms continually
  within its true and hidden element,
  a sea, a beautiful and lucid sea
  through which it pilots, rising without end.

Bathysphere by Don Paterson
link to Barely Imagined Beings

systems theory

Yo, I get pretty tired too, endless slog of it all, things that were easy seem gluey, but I remember the Cree story of a buck so sick and tired of his woman moaning about food for the kids he stomped out of the tent and found himself walking all alone in the endless grass until he started moaning too. He really wasn't sure which direction to go. It was bloody cold. He's been walking for days. His soul is pretty darn ragged. He's sure the spirits have left him. He's an idiot to go out there. The list of moaning and groaning goes on and on hour after hour day after day until one of the buffalo says to the other "I think I will shut that guy up" and walks across his path.

HA!

along an old trap line

     jonny I miss you
I walked four miles in sun and snow. Sun and snow is worth that.
     jonny you gone 6 months
I walked into an eight foot cabin old enough to fall.
     jonny you son of a bitch
I read her note.

to zero our dial

As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

about a California poet, Robinson Jeffers

---

via wikiquote on Jeffers:

Something utterly wild had crept into his mind. The seabeaten coast, the fierce freedom of its hunting hawks, possessed and spoke through him. It was one of the most uncanny and compete relationships between a man and his natural background that I know in literature.

empleament

I can't explain how one man carries air and is paid for water. There is great random. We see one winner and don't see a dozen. I can say that it takes tremendous will and effort. We ride the river or cross the current. There's the lesson.

why get off a chair?

motive before purpose

the victory of simple

Community is the resource development operation in the group development process of survival. Community is the frontier of sense, the territory of common, the geography of hello. Community sidesteps jargon, confounding the literate, frustrating the aggressive, annoying the credentialist, proving the politician, offering undreamt rewards to the victor while subjugating the right to deny the loser.

Community is instruction kinked in the catalyst of freedom. Community is the micro of the macro, the HQ of the milieu, debugging order and chaos in the miracle that can do that.

Community is the inescapable onus on the individual to participate in the benefit of the whole and the requirement upon the whole to manage itself for the individual.

Community is divergent seeds in the water of dreams, the agriculture of hope.

Community is the ideal shrunk real.

all too few

What was Rodrigo Corral thinking?

...it's all relative to your sense of scarcity.

Target of Soul

I've held my imagination to a very narrow plane, not dreaming more than giving you a strong tomorrow, and not wanting more than that. I've lived simply and propelled my honor. My memory of me is a relentless trail to places I can only describe to myself. I knew at the beginning I would leave ordinary things to travel to my hope. I did not know now is where I'll be.

Collection of

counting from infinity to zero, backwards,

you don’t know where to begin.

link

Clear as fog

I don’t know what’s meant by 'Know Thyself', which seems to ask a window to look at a window. - James Richardson

Navigating Veil

Fix threat.

It's not easy. It's not a matter of courageous power or ingenious wit. It's a matter of grace.

There is much war in this world, but it comes first from much worry. If a citizen fights there's a parade, but citizens must also put their life on the line long before battle.

Calibrate Tomorrow

Pioneering was a bitch when only a homestead mattered.

Now we're walking far.

We are good work, not following, not Crusade nor War, these are only mileposts we see with our poor mind. History is made of spirit, trundle and baggage yes, but glint and spark as well.

Our foot is heavy, but it does lift. We stay along the good trail, our gift many travel, seared in blizzard maybe, but convinced of virtue's key.

We too are ancestors.

The curve of my palm

Look, here it is,
Nestled in the curve of my palm.

Hope sheltered in the heart,
Trusting, as it rests there,
That for a while,
Or perhaps forever,
No harm will come.

That's a thought.
That's a poet.
Pondering.

First and until

That man, that stupid, daft man and all his adventures.

Majority & Madness

Emily Dickinson's poem:

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur, you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

Reposting: "Listening to the bird"

Many of us fail to notice we can be devastated merely neglecting to change lanes on the way downtown. We fail to notice we can be hammered each day merely by glances and comments. We manage tiny details and we fret over a bit of confidence. We are not so strong.

Hemingway said,
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that it will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

So it is a cruel place here. To stand with children. To reconcile death and dilute death in the cup of your heart. We are not built for this. It is an imperfect world we make better in our good ways. You have been this courage.

Graham Greene said,
'Oh,' the priest said, 'that's another thing altogether—God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us—God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.'

We are tender things, inside a nuclear star, shielded by so little. You are this courage.

It is a simple world too. Great complex things may not happen here. It might be that only ordinary things can exist under this cosmic storm pressed to dirt by gravity!

A glimpse says we are honored. Another says we have touched a heart. A friend is tender or we are tender with a friend. A spring warmth begins us again. We were brave and did not notice winter.

There is another thing. Love. Oh why is this omitted from every Constitution? There's nothing in us but love. It is our cellular engine, some say, and burst the Universe days ago, some believe, and is our quest under the onion's peel. We haven't said much of it. Oh why is our love not the entire curricula? It is what we know too little of and what we most require. We are all siblings here, with you; not one of us is finished in this schooling.

What can be said? "Grant me the abandon to be a fool in this loving moment! I demand to revel in this loving moment! Do not dare to take this loving moment!" Our next day a necklace of these stubborn jewels, some pearls on the floor, and some links broken, and some love to never be... to have loved and lost and a' that.... We're fools for it, nuts for it, lost in it, breathing bliss and blues....

Hillel says,
If I am for myself only, what am I?
If I am for others only, who am I?
If not now, when?

I'm saying we will always be nervous, incapable, foolish.... And so what? They say the difference between a good dancer and a bad dancer is the good dancer isn't paying attention to themselves but to dancing.

Was it Kahlil Gibran or Rudyard Kipling?

Earth. You invite me to joy and then deny it.
That is like saying, "Turn the goblet and spill it not."

Taller we

Won't we all want to grow?

Growing is a good thing and it's important to be tops. But as important, yes, more important, is joining and sharing. We do this first. We do this in order to grow. We are first friends and then we gather and then we share and then we celebrate and then we love and we are intimate and then we grow.

We are bricks in the /et al/
It's not commerce. It's precious.
And the height we want is care.

Recession's Lament

By Alexander Brome [ link ] who died in 1666.

Let 'um plague us until they be weary.


We must flatter and fear
Those that over us are,
And make 'um believe that we love 'um,
When their tyranny's past,
We will serve them at last,
As they serv'd those that have been above 'um.

And economists too

Bald heads, forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think.

William Butler Yeats, The Scholars

Era of our plow

Poet Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature; the election of Barack Obama; exclusively for The Times:

Forty Acres

Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving —

a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls,

an emblem of impossible prophecy, a crowd

dividing like the furrow which a mule has plowed,

parting for their president: a field of snow-flecked

cotton

forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens

that the young plowman ignores for his unforgotten

cotton-haired ancestors, while lined on one branch, is

a tense

court of bespectacled owls and, on the field's

receding rim —

a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him.

The small plow continues on this lined page

beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado's

black vengeance,

and the young plowman feels the change in his veins,

heart, muscles, tendons,

till the land lies open like a flag as dawn's sure

light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower.

Pretending tomorrow

Written in May 'o8, a nicely sour article, maybe to read later with a very good mood on hand. Or a jigger of scotch:

For a while in the 1990s, the idea was a "service economy," kind of like the old fable of the town whose inhabitants made a living by taking in each other's laundry -- only in our case it was selling hamburgers to tourists on vacation from their jobs making hamburgers elsewhere, or something like that.

Then came the idea of the "information economy" in which making things of value would no longer matter, only the processing and deployment of information (sometimes misidentified as "knowledge"). This model seemed to suggest a yin-yang of software engineers who made up games like "Grand Theft Auto" serving the opposite cohort of people who bought and played the game. If nothing else, it certainly explained how lifetimes could be frittered away on stupid activities.

That illusion yielded to the housing bubble economy, which actually did produce a lot of things, but not necessarily of value -- for instance, houses made of particle board and vinyl 38 miles outside of Sacramento. It was a tragic and manifold waste of resources, as well as an insult to the landscape. But the darker side of the housing bubble lay in the world of finance, where a vast empire of swindles was constructed to support the Potemkin facade of production homebuilding.

Now we are in a strange period when those swindles are unwinding.

And more vinegar from Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler, author of 'The Long Emergency', nine novels and editor at Rolling Stone Magazine "I know it is difficult for Americans at every level to imagine a different way-of-life, but we'd better start tuning up our imaginations....":

The standard of living in the US can't be supported on debt anymore. The people of the US don't produce enough real value to service their debts. Institutions can no longer be supported on debt gone bad. Something's got to give -- meaning something has to bring the US standard of living down to a level consistent with our declining actual wealth.

Nuthin' to it then.

Maybe it will not be complicated, what's ahead, and we will produce real value in a world more brittle than we've realized, and perhaps more tender.



Reminds me of a poem, The Transition Position...

Large aged institutions seeking restitutions match gumptions, aim assumptions, challenge improvements, educate movements, calling sufficient not less than omniscient -- a task recommended even if dead ended. Regardless conditions in mind or munitions, that's preservation not creation; a consensus objective to soothe the subjective; assets sophisticated in actions distillated. Real value let me tell you, in all categories, is not in these stories.

What is the deductive that spurs the productive?...

Isn't it proven that what keeps us movin' is not intellectual, not dreams ineffectual, however analytical or grandly political? No! Freedom's invincible if based on the principal that each can find motion from ocean to ocean, reaching and catching, dreaming and matching, in faith and with fearing, with sweat and engineering, with diligent facts in solvent pacts. If anyone will share it, let's base it on merit. This is the trend to level the bend, to smooth the tension in cash flow and pension. To recover know how, compete and show how. ...

The leg we stand on

Where do you even start?

"Any fool with a roof over his head, a car to drive, a job that pays the bills, food in his cupboard and refrigerator, a sense of responsibility, a feeling of belonging, of having a family or a community or a tribe that depends on him and perhaps even loves him; who has a leg to stand on, shoes on his feet, a warm bed, clean underwear, hot water, a toilet that flushes, books to read, music to listen to, a chair to sit on, hands and feet and arms and legs and eyes and ears that still work, a cracked and compassionate heart, a brain that is still capable of manufacturing sense (even if only occasionally) and cooperates, however gracelessly, with his tongue and dispatches words to his fingers; any fool whose fingers can still grip a pen, who still has access to blank sheets or scraps of paper and who continues to feel compelled to say something; anybody, in other words, who has lived a good, long while on the planet and feels things ever stirring in his head and heart, any such person should spend at least half of whatever time he has left in the world saying nothing but thank you."

Another marvelous original snippet of writing by Minnesota's Brad Zellar.

Yes We Can Fly Now

Within a day's glow a thousand moments tempt the mind...

     I never knew what time could do
     Until I let my dreams come through
     Reminding me that day or night
     The stars are never out of sight.
We are the eagle.
     Light above and dark below,
     To see the heart of the sun,
     To see what duty has won.

That Tomorrow Ahead

Dear World,

You may be selling the bottles but the poets own the water.

You can manufacture all we say and package and wrap

All you want, more and more,

But unless it springs from the earth

It is not yours.

Grace Cavalieri

Sometimes, when a wind sighs

"All things change when we do" is the subtitle at Changing Places where I found this poem:

From Sunset to Star Rise, by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)


Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer’s unreturning track.



Painting, 'Nambe Snow' available from Artist Polly.

To spend our fire

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us--to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves--
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress'd.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well--but 'tis not true!
And then we will no more be rack'd
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power;
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Matthew Arnold, The Buried Life

---

Every reporter that has interviewed me has asked, “Why do you think your story has riveted so many, and such a diverse cross-section of people?”

I think it is because I do what I want and I do what I believe in.

This is not always the easiest route, not always the path of least resistance, but it is the only path I allow myself to take. I have refused to sacrifice my integrity as a person or the integrity of my art to appease anyone, and incidentally, have had story-book success because of it.

I find it a travesty that I am compelling because of this - that it is rare and therefore inspiring to come across stories of success (and I don’t just mean money) from following one’s own road. Such choices should be cultivated, honored, and rewarded wherever and whenever they are made!

Yet instead, our society seems to prefer the oppression of individual spirit; prefers fear-mongering by those in power, whether that power comes in the form of a boss or a military unit or a parent; prefers insecurity masquerading as 'informed intelligence' over talent or originality.

It is our right and our duty as individuals to stand up to all that - to stand up as the most honorable and most powerful version of ourselves and LIVE.

Live right, live true, live now, and help anyone and everyone to do this as well, alongside us.

Happy New Year.

The Test of Life

At age 4, success is...not peeing in your pants.
  At age 12, success is...having friends.
    At age 16, success is...having a driver's license.
      At age 20, success is...having sex.
       At age 35, success is...having money.
       At age 50, success is...having money.
      At age 60, success is...having sex.
    At age 70, success is...having a driver's license.
  At age 75, success is...having friends.
At age 90, success is...not peeing in your pants.

by Ben Liberman

Our Costly Mind

It's nuts wanting better than simple.

I've met only fools that think we are not foolish.
And greater fools putting themselves wise.
Ignorance is the hiding place of bullies,
illness clustered in rank.

It's tender folks I respect.
And aspiring folks more.

It is a kind of love

The Patience of Ordinary Things

It is a kind of love, is it not?

How the cup holds the tea,

How the chair stands sturdy
and foursquare, 

How the floor receives
the bottoms of shoes

Or toes. How soles of feet know

Where they're supposed to be.

I've been thinking
about the patience 

Of ordinary things, how clothes

Wait respectfully in closets

And soap dries
quietly in the dish,

And towels drink the wet

From the skin of the back.

And
the lovely repetition of stairs.

And what is more generous
than a window?

We Of Void

It's love I want not pride or money. No shine takes this nor silver will. Quit gold now, then diamond, and every wealth. Speed, strength and winning stop. Water and warm and kissing tempt. But eye and eye is my infinity, and us my only earth.

Rough Honesty

The Safe Invisibility of Saints
Martin Vest

It’s hard to say now
when I turned and took this road;
a wild of cigarette-thickets in my lungs,
holding my breath
against the spark of whiskey
that will one day catch them fire.
Or when I first wore the feet
of Ichabod Crane
into the headless dark of a tavern
with the punched blood of my nose
three fingers of tin
hardening into silverware
at the back of my throat
for a breakfast of failing liver:

The lean white worms
of my face’s nerves twitch
in the wreckage beneath their scars—
the nerves of my mind,
squealing untied balloons
half-pinched, releasing their little wind
into a whirligig
of prescription slips and dander.

It’s hard to say when I started killing myself.
It was something about the American dream.
Something about fifty years of my father’s life
working him into bone—
Something about poverty of spirit
and the safe invisibility of saints.
I wanted to eat rocks. I wanted to say
that man does not live by bread at all.
I wanted to taste His blood in mine—
to buy a home in Oblivion with a money
that instinct invents along the way—
I wanted the world to forget my name.
It was something about saving my own life . . .

Joy which is a heart

The Sun:
A necessary set of pictures

Along the way from plankton to pulsar.

To live with life an ally
and all the earth its winking crew
and all the heavens supervise.
Now that's living!

To live an ethical life in an ethical land,
put upon by innocence not put upon by guile
nor sticks of rage,
nor ruled by the weakest of the weak
hidden in the grandstands of corruption.
Now that's living!

Joy which is a heart for a heart
and lends this heart to friends.

The Real Wealth

"TEN minutes now I have been looking at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver
on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be
hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to you,
After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory
hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,
When they stack a few silhouettes
Against the sky
Here in the park,
And show the real huskies that are doing the work of
the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them,
Then maybe I will stand here
And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag
in the air,
And riding like hell on horseback
Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men
all over the sweet new grass of the prairie."

Carl Sandburg, Ready to Kill

The Other Wealth

GDP "measures everything... except that which matters." - Robert Kennedy

a tear may fall for truth

Hmmm... to children

may you believe deep inside that someone loves you,
may you have shelter and food, safe places inside and outside of yourself,
may you have the opportunity to fall down, to pick yourself up
without having to be told how to do it,
may you have the freedom to express all things without fear,
I blow a wish for love to come from many places so you can see its many forms,
may you learn peace and tolerance as you learn to disagree,
learn to find solutions that don't involve too much comprimise of your will
if it is true,
may you have arms to hold you
kisses for your cheeks and head
someone to tickle-wrestle
someone to love,
may you be spoiled just a little by a special friend,
may your caretakers set limits and teach boundaries,
may they know theirs as well,
understand that grown-ups are learning too,
may your dreams be nurtured
your nightmares quelled
your prayers heard
your hand held
your hair caressed
your stories listened to
your self appreciated
your body safe and
your spirit free

Hayden Carruth, In Memory

The Afterlife: Letter to Stephen Dobyns
Hayden Carruth
American Poetry Review, May/Jun 1999

You live in a sinking nation, Stephen, in a stinking
Time. America is falling apart. We look down in
Astonishment, but mostly in dismay. The other day
When I met Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison
On the plaza they turned their backs on me. I
Understood them. I'm a recent arrival, tainted
With degeneracy, no matter what my personal
State of innocence or guilt. Alas, they say
They can tell it in my speech. They say the spectacle
Of presidents and professors impeached on charges
Of trivial misconduct for patently greedy
And partisan ends is more than they can stand.
Who would have thought America could become
A nation where the putsch, the coup, the revolution
Advertisement
Of the swine could prevail against the common
Will. Stephen, we conclude the common will
Isn't strong enough, not any more, the corruption
Has reached so deep and spread so far. You
Must learn again to live in the common shame,
As in the days of slavery and the massacres of the
Natives. You must learn to live again in
Dreadful isolation, a castaway. Oh Stephen,
For the first time I'm actually glad I've escaped,
Even to the nullity of the afterlife, even in spite
Of all the beauty and comradeship I've lost.

Hayden Carruth, In Memory

Society And We

thoughts along the way from plankton to pulsar...

To live with life an ally
and all the earth its winking crew
and all the heavens supervise.
To live life with joy
which holds a heart toward itself
and joy which lends this heart to friends.
To live an ethical life in an ethical land,
put upon merely by our mercy,
not put upon by guile
nor sticks of rage,
nor ruled by the weakest of the weak: Those hidden in the grandstand of corruption.
Now that’s living!

And now a word from our sponsor

              We walk toward the infinite in such a tiny frame
         as if atop a dune of slipping sand
              seldom noticing the miracle of our balance.

We Argue

Rich vs Poor?
No.
False vs True.

Media

I understand
a silver nickel in a wooden jar,
carved, and
loud.

Belief

Particles, machines, tunnels and all the rest, the danger is not our science. Perhaps believing this requires a better faith and simple politics.

Study is never danger.
Only ignorance has killed us.

Superstition is common.
Higgs won't hurt.
Pigs might.

Memory of Our Future

We are the watch of all is well.

Both flags and rainbow climb the sky, America. You have learned much in the last years and achieved much in two hundred. Now manage it. We will learn to do this within the scale and impact that prospers us or we will encounter the horrible pain of our limitations. Where we extinguish life we risk our own and where we plunder we destroy our sustenance. To society we have given much praise and to nature we have felt much remorse, but conceding to our machine imperative, nature is neutral, never frozen by our belief or melted in our reverence, but easily damaged in our huddle of currency and prize. We are wealth and pride and we are war and shame, capitol tokens that weaken the foundation of earth and the fountain of life or we are awareness and experience and substance and consensus, each and all we face today.

Cognitive humility is the revolution.

Our Sun leans...

The trees are telling secrets...

Today is the day I want to keep, sunlit
the way it is, and breezy. The trees
are telling secrets to one another with their
leaves. Even the crickets exclaim over the
sweet, soft smell of the meadow grasses
and the way the sun leans against
the trunk of the sycamore.

Pauline says with gratitude, "Let me keep today... "

RNC Police, er, Force

iN tHE cASE oF pOLICE

i wish i could be that much a child,
as much a child as he,
wild,
and unjustified....

oh, what i could do for the world if i had the right of force!

imagine, says i,
we could all own a sandbox again
and strut so proud of our adventures:
all would follow in delight,
while only elders carry wisdom.

oh, what i could do for the world if i had the right of force!

imagine, say i,
we could assure justice again
and strut so proud of our lessons:
all our days would answer dignity,
and HOPE would be achieved.

I will be happy soon

[read like old beat coffee house free verse]

I will be happy soon.

Our complex Eisenhower era of Military and Industry build mistake and doom, minor men, that have made abundant things costly and rare, in governments of whine and pride, a lament of the angry, an error of fraud, killing the common to lift the elite, killing and killing, and injures our great community for little men of privilege, a lobby of indemnity, ingenious magicians of public honey, vulgar braggarts in a loud veneer of media too timid to reveal our democracy is not an agriculture of votes but the water of our future.

The strong are acutely quiet.

As seeds spike their dark inch, as leaves pull to light, as life is mighty and honor is our bounty, as even roses know, we too will one day bloom.

[hey cat, dig it]

Another Olympic

It is not easy bringing new to day.

The most long labor.
The remaining take packages home.

Maybe another Augustine will say this is sin.

Of course it is.

There's no church, no government, no creed, unless joy.

unhumanize our views a little

Carmel Point, Robinson Jeffers

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Boiling it up

Where is the rich magnificence
That tender children know and sense;
That drifts our atmospheric thought
Beyond the tightened social knot?

Where is gifted deep intelligence
That leaps our cobbled sense;
Where piercing probes of quickest wit
Can lance the gripping past, be done of it?

Where is the blanket of community
That o'er the womb of opportunity
Our loitered deeds do sprout and climb
To strengthen hearts that brave through time?

Where are these coasts of civil rhyme,
That soothe these dusts that fall in time
That pound remembrance to the heart
To build our peace, our poise in every part?

---

"There lies before us if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity and forget the rest." Bertrand Russel

Olympic

My heart fell to rise a thousand.
Not today, never without it,
Wonder is enough.

Roots of Taboo

Gods inside, gods outside,
Gods above, gods below,
Gods oceanward, gods landward,
Gods incarnate, gods not incarnate,
Gods punishing sins, gods pardoning sins,
Gods devouring men, gods slaying warriors,
Gods saving men,
Gods of darkness and light, gods of the ten skies,

Can the gods all be counted?
The gods cannot all be counted!




The British Museum offers an online exhibit of the Pacific Islanders from the 1760 to 1800s period of first contact.

For the inhabitants of the Polynesian islands in the eastern Pacific, the gods were always present in the world. But, while their powers could be life-enhancing, they were also potentially dangerous and had to be contained. Godly power was controlled by means of the concept of tapu, from which the word taboo is derived.

graves lucky to own stone

so easy to say pioneers are history

old wagons along Kodak sand
old arms torn by scythe
old Dickens bones

Today's Battle

Where's the trouble?

The trouble is they attack.
The trouble is we attack each other.

Factors

trust random
trim to poise

UnanimWe

Strive. Only survive. Damn war. I'm proud of enlisted troops, sad, and listen carefully to officers and do what authority commands but I do not think these things save us nor will nor can no matter what we pay or when we salute or who's blood lost. I'm glad of Founders and Paine and Rebels and less death and least threat along the land. But I do not think Jesse Helms should be buried without scorn and I will never like authority in its pilfering, nor tricks, nor lies, nor bullies, nor praise anyone to be near their prize. I take great dreams and most poets and wilt to prophets but do not live outside my heart and never due yours. Not one claim the infinite. Are you binding me?

post.txt

I wouldn't know if either God or you will approve then it shouldn't matter if I tell you my proud moment today is a dozen thumbs of hot dog I put along the dash and I whooped in some odd glory when my good dog waited 'til the last before he tongued each gift knowing this man is no cheat.

Right back at ya!

the thunder of beauty
not memories
not dreams

---

[Credit, Sierra Nevada Photos, fine rendition]

Never go

Earnest more rare than able.

Oh, shun quickly sour.
Betrayal shut forever.
Pain quit instantly.

But sweet is unafraid as sweet is genius. Put there, take it.
Doubt's no refuge, savior, ability, sanity. Sweet love decides.

True moment. Given. Got. Yours. Kept.

Power's dumber

Power's dumber,

because insight
ain't quite right
when fact is money
and lies are honey.

Do-it-ism

Strongerly. Betterly. Heartfulst. Phffft.

Screw targets

Though tests are incomplete, aiming may be bothersome. A better tease is never let a synapse see it coming.

Polling May

There are not many of you.
You're precious. Thank you.

My effort every day is to care deeply.
You might say this has been done before.
I say mankind walks.
Oh, how can I say it?
We walk because we each bring courage.
Isn't this deep in our nation, neighborhood, and life?
Go ahead, Let yourself,
Bring yourself journey and, thud, thud, thud, simple destiny.
Our fathers felt no strength but brought today.
It's a horrid thing when only battle these days. Loss confuses us.
But also, our nation yearns a little, hopes a bit, and truly wants.
Oh, maybe we are good hope that will replace cheap old men.
Trust yourself. Tomorrow might be what you want.
Courage changes this world, like feet step. Our journey is the world.

I'll tire easily and be forgotten, but I want every breath written in love and freedom.

We only step

There's a calm thing content in wonder.

The mall without

PIERRE TEILHARD de CHARDIN

The egocentric ideal of a future reserved
for those who have managed to attain egotistically
the extremity of 'everyone for himself'
is false and against nature...

The outcome of the world, the gates of the future,
the entry into the super-human --
these are not thrown open to a few of the priveged
or to one chosen people to the exclusion of all others.

They will only open to an advance of all together,
in a direction in which all together can join and find completion
in a spiritual renovation of the earth....

No evolutionary future awaits man except in association with all other men.

Needs a better title?

HUMANS SENSE MIND'S INCENSE

NAME ONE SCHOOL GREATER THAN SOCIETY
OR TEST GREATER THAN ANXIETY.
SUGGEST THE CRITERION
TO GENTLE A CENTURION
OR JOSTLE THE ETHERIOUS
TO CHALLENGE THE SERIOUS,
REDUCING THE EERINESS
HIDING IN OUR WEARINESS.
SUGGEST HOW TO CLEAR STEAMINESS
FROM SILK CLOUDS OF DREAMINESS
OR HOW TO FIND THE ESTEEMABLE
IN THE SCRAP AND REDEEMABLE
THAT HIDES OUR OMNIETY
IN DRAPES OF PLEBIETY.
NAME A JOURNEY GREATER THAN ART
OR A DIPLOMACY GREATER THAN HEART.
SUGGEST REMINDING THE PEERLESS
TO REMEMBER THE CHEERLESS,
AND TO BALANCE THE PEACEABLE
WITH THE ACERBIC UNCEASABLE
THAT MAKE SO MANY ANESTHESIAN
IN OUR LAND SO ARTESIAN.
NAME MOTIVES MORE WORTHY
OR STRUGGLES MORE EARTHY.

© Brian Hayes

Transition Position

Even the Etherious can be Properly Serious

Large aged institutions seeking restitutions match gumptions, aim assumptions, challenge improvements, educate movements, calling sufficient not less than omniscient -- a task recommended even if dead ended. Regardless conditions in mind or munitions, that's preservation not creation; a consensus objective to soothe the subjective; assets sophisticated in actions distillated. Real value let me tell you, in all categories, is not in these stories.

What is the deductive that spurs the productive? Not savings and debt. Not cyclic bet. Not deficits added nor momentum padded. Not organs or cults. These stifle results. Not stiffer a fine to help undermine reticent tissue. This clouds the issue. No, I report, the facts support that angry miser is no fertilizer when what we require is incentive's fire.

Lend some support for here I purport our greatest resource, no matter our course -- impregnable forts, lucrative exports, justice and reason without moral treason, or freedom's impunity in gentle community -- our purpose can't shift to get over this rift. If we're interdependent, remaining resplendent, we must tune our novice and junior to rise up the mast, to see both future and past in all aggregation that fuels innovation.

Find what is requiring all the untiring to push to the end for which we depend. You must seek the vantage. Peer over the rampage, where wisdom's enough, no matter how rough; where no explaining or drama or feigning can cloud the growth that freedom's oath can bring to this nation. Now that's socialization!

Isn't it proven that what keeps us movin' is not intellectual, not dreams ineffectual, however analytical or grandly political? No! Freedom's invincible if based on the principal that each can find motion from ocean to ocean, reaching and catching, dreaming and matching, in faith and with fearing, with sweat and engineering, with diligent facts in solvent pacts. If anyone will share it, let's base it on merit. This is the trend to level the bend, to smooth the tension in cash flow and pension. To recover know how, compete and show how.

Committees promoting, elevating or demoting the actuarial fences of programmed consensus; chits and credit, no matter who's led it, no matter the bank, no matter the rank, no firm will ever earn, nor thinker ever learn the power systemic in the creative polemic, always available, never assailable, always effective in freedom's directive.

Lets not be demented with what's implemented. Do well for doing good. We know that we should. What's holding us back? Worry about trouble and lack? Imbalanced obligations? Value added among nations? Inadequate attention? Paralyzing contention? Risk and recapture? Greed for the rapture? Ideas rejected by the self-elected? We can't force a fool. Use democracy's tool! Why be delirious? Why jostle the serious? Is it their choice, not ours? Why waste your hours?

The only safe moat is get out & vote. Leave the rhetorical fudge. Let results be the judge. Look square in the face at the problems we chase. Go back to the right in yourself day and night. You know if you're giving good effort for living. You know life is fine when we're each genuine.

Use responsible onus 'cause history's shown us society's crescendo is not innuendo. It's living without fear and doubt. It' not military nor voodoo nor fairy, nor a ritualized nod to a relegate God. It's not guaranteed work or a pork barrel jerk. It' not feeble acting or caustic reacting; not hidden maneuver or charade improver. It' not narcissism or tricks and farcism. Let's be fair. Those who care fulfill genuine need whether they follow or lead.

© '87 Brian Hayes

Timing

They first said jiffy in 1785 and said a jiffy is a thief.

But I was born and raised smallishly. Cities were my want and in awhile I went. I first learned that showing up is critical and that timing is everything.

Later IBM said there are as many picoseconds in a second as there are seconds in 37 million years, so in a jiffy I took off my shoes to feel my cells twitch.

I also learned the King's hands were a pound, and one handful an ounce, and if a King twitched the remainder in his hand is a scruple.

Scruples without shoes are the time I carry now.

Done with time, all is just.

The moment is eternity.

Our first step

Triumph is our journey.

Triumph we begin
and cannot stop.

Roots of insight

Via TroutsFarm, two snippets from the land we call our Heritage Oak.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
- Joyce Kilmer

---

The most beautiful thing about a tree is what you do with it after you cut it down. - Rush Limbaugh

sYstem poem

BEST VOICED:

Where do we live, boys and girls?
We live in a

S
S
SS
SS
SSS
SSS
SSSS
SSSS
SSSSSY
SSSSSY
SSSSSYS
SSSSSYS
SSSSSYSS
SSSSSYSSS
SSSSSYSSST
SSSSSYSSST
SSSSSYSSSTE
SSSSSYSSSTE
SSSSSYSSSTEM
SSSSSYSSSTEM
SYSTEM
SYSTEM

SYSTEM!

SYSTEM
SYSTEM
SSSSSYSSSTEM
SSSSSYSSSTEM
SSSSSYSSSTE
SSSSSYSSSTE
SSSSSYSSST
SSSSSYSSST
SSSSSYSSS
SSSSSYSS
SSSSSYS
SSSSSY
SSSSS
SSSS
SSS
SS

SSSSSSSSSSYYSSSSSSSSTEMMMM

C'mon. It will only take a minute. Go back and try it out loud!

p.s. This poem won the Governor General's Award in Canada maybe mid-60s.
I've searched hours for the original author but Google is not helpful searching for audio!

The oxide of greed

It's a culture thing, based on the wonder of game theory. I think of money-grubbers not as up/down ranking, but a form of complex systems where congregations arrange themselves like biofilm near feed, lazy bunch of buggers too, in the main.

What was I thinkin' a few years ago while trying to compare aspiration vs. guile?

Prime anthropological stuff:

"Social Imitation Theory"

"Mutual Contingency"

"Attribution Control Modeling"

"Transference"

"Exchange Theory"

"Bargaining"

The overt/covert power of "The Cue".

Stimuli in finite nodes of decision trees...

Chains of expectations:

1) authenticity determined by context,

legitimacy determined by context,
validity determined by context.

2) the literal and the spatial,
left and right brain,
lists and algorithms,
forms and flows,
indexes and events.

Synchronized spectral stimuli:

a probabilistic logic
for the synthesis of reliable organisms
from unreliable components, (link)

the dismaying sprawl,
a pluralist locus of vigor and victory.

cybernaut, capitalist, christian and cowboy
along the way from plankton to pulsar.

Heavy Snow

Clipping found in Parker Huang's wallet.

A bank of whiteness

Is all I see. Have I

tossed away the world

or the world me? Or

is it just a single

moment that I stand on

a sheer precipice

with clouds passing

through me?

Some mists sweep the

sky. Some stars elicit

serenity. I feel that

I am gathering the

reflections of a flower

in the water and that of

the moon in the mirror—

no scent, no motion,

yet I sense eternity.

I stop breathing lest

I wake myself. From

where, of what world,

have I come here? I

turn my head and see

there are only footprints

that follow me.

Today is best

Doomsayers are not my thing. Fear is faith opposed. Both are feelings and orientation rather than ideas and activity. Neither are firm.

What can I say?

There is a footprint sculpt in sand I am.
I could not ask for sturdier things.

Listening to the bird

Many of us fail to notice we can be devastated merely failing to change lanes on the way downtown. We fail to notice we can be hammered each day merely by glances and comments. We manage tiny details and fret about ourselves to build a bit of confidence. We are not so strong.

Hemingway said,
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that it will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

So it is a cruel place here. To stand with children reconciling death and diluting death in the cup of your heart? We are not built for this. It is an imperfect world we make better in our good ways. You have been this courage.

Graham Greene said,
'Oh,' the priest said, 'that's another thing altogether—God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us—God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.'

We are tender things, flying inside a nuclear star, shielded by little. You are this courage.

It is a simple world too. Great complex things may not happen here. It might be that only ordinary things can exist under this cosmic storm pressed to dirt by gravity!

A glimpse says we are honored. Another says we have touched a heart. A friend is tender or we are tender with a friend. A spring warmth begins us again. We were brave and did not notice winter.

There is another thing. Love. Oh why is this omitted from every Constitution? There's nothing in us but love. It is our cellular engine, some say, and burst the Universe days ago, some believe, and is our quest under the onion's peel. We haven't said much of it. Oh why is our love not the entire curricula? It is what we know too little of and what we most require. We are all siblings here, with you; not one of us is finished in this schooling.

What can be said? "Grant me the abandon to be a fool in this loving moment! I demand to revel in this loving moment! Do not dare to take this loving moment!" Our next day a necklace of these stubborn jewels, some pearls on the floor, and some links broken, and some love to never be... to have loved and lost and a' that.... We're fools for it, nuts for it, lost in it, breathing bliss and blues....

Hillel says,
If I am for myself only, what am I?
If I am for others only, who am I?
If not now, when?

I'm saying we will always be nervous, incapable, foolish.... And so what? They say the difference between a good dancer and a bad dancer is the good dancer isn't paying attention to themselves but to dancing.

Among the knots

They are playing a game. They are playing at not

playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I

shall break the rules and they will punish me.

I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game. - R. D. Laing

A wish for your new year

To lure us lovingly to fuller powers.

One day turns into another;
Orb upon orb spin out the years.
We sometimes reflect such poise.
Sometimes not.

It's just so seldom said,
these stories of the heart.
What better moment than now, another year,
to challenge the coming murmurs of each new day?

Here's to recognizing
amidst the blinding dark infinity
the sweet triumph
of every step we carve
from this froth of earth.

Here's to some discovery amongst our paths.
Here's to worthy dreams to lure us lovingly to fuller powers.

May we be of sharp wit,
with diligence of will,
until every fire succumb as ally
and every flood seek our buoyancy.

May we, as if a star,
use our hope to breathe,
our purpose unmoved,
quick in our calm heart.

May Peace commence our every journey.
May Joy touch deep.

A Blogger's Resolution

I'd like words I do not know
Tell what I've never said
And know is better.

Tip toe

Learning what eyes do

he pressed his nose.

We are where?

There is a task for humanity methinks.

Humanity must have a great want of a superb future.

This is necessary. We fail too easily unless we are deeply invigorated by our path ahead. We must ask this of ourselves.

When I wrote these verses quite awhile ago, I was feeling the gift of hopefulness - an easy step for any child, but an an adult must preserve this 'grand forwardness', if this is a correct way to put it.

Where is the rich magnificence
That tender children sense
To drift our atmospheric thought
Over stony vision lost in social knot?

Where is the gifted deep intelligence
That leaps beyond the timid fence,
That piercing probe of quickest wit
Lance the gripping past, be done of it?

Where is the blanket of community
That o'er the womb of opportunity
Orphan'd deeds do sprout and climb
To strengthen hearts that brave through time?

Where are these coasts of future's rhyme
That soothe the dusts that fall in time,
That pound remembrance to the heart,
To build our peace, our poise, in every part?

Sometimes I say to myself "Give me the wisdom to be a fool!" if foolishness is what's needed for us to believe in ourselves and bring ourselves a world that excites and pleases us.

The toll we must

There must be a voice for less, a sound for nothing, a choir of zero. When children cry, soldiers stop, leaders kneel, poets apologize, mothers rise. Justice is not secret. Tomorrow is not silent.

Prayer for lights in the city

Ode to City Lights

On the curb
not inside the bookstore
doors of frames
beat understanding,
And beyond belief
bent key-less wards.

Now what?

Plagiarize paradigm.

For the "immortality of the prosthetic self...
The old paradigm is the wrong paradigm."

What is needed, he concludes, elaborating on the term made popular by Thomas Kuhn, is a "paradigm shift" toward modernization comparable to those that occurred in the Christian and Jewish traditions."

Within wide swathes, it will in the end begin with something else.



Craprovement:

In all your getting, get understanding.

Peers for Tears

Tears are greater by far than celebrity and are more proud than politicians and blink more color than art and own more wealth.

The notion of politics

Some like the fist and will enjoy the blow from a fist they love. I've never understood it. A fuller thing cannot fit pain and will not give it. A fuller thing cannot fit war.

Is love or loyalty not worth keeping? Count the days these were your prize. Count your treasure.

We provide our love to less than love deserves. And give our loyalty to fools.

We Can Do

Sometimes things don’t go after all,
from bad to worse. Some years muscatel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

Sheenagh Pugh

Swipe

Not like swords. Not like thieves. Fingers.

In one’s own place

Trees
Howard Nemerov
via wood s lot

To be a giant and keep quiet about it,
To stay in one’s own place;
To stand for the constant presence of process
And always to seem the same;
To be steady as a rock and always trembling,
Having the hard appearance of death
With the soft, fluent nature of growth,
One’s Being deceptively armored,
One’s Becoming deceptively vulnerable;
To be so tough, and take the light so well,
Freely providing forbidden knowledge
Of so many things about heaven and earth
For which we should otherwise have no word-
Poems or people are rarely so lovely,
And even when they have great qualities
They tend to tell you rather than exemplify
What they believe themselves to be about,
While from the moving silence of trees,
Whether in storm or calm, in leaf and naked,
Night or day, we draw conclusions of our own,
Sustaining and unnoticed as our breath,
And perilous also-though there has never been
A critical tree-about the nature of things.

---

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.

Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all.

But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.

William Blake, 1799, The Letters

Elect Jefferson!

Note.
Notice.
Noticing.

Steps along the way
belong to where I'm going,
where I've been,
and all before me.
This is Free,
my Family shows,
Generations prove,
Anchors tie,
Law prevails,
and trails teach
your first greeting
and my best gift
is our day.

Who painted the rainbow?

"I was driving north on US-101 on the Waldo Grade in Marin County when I was struck by the sight of the tunnel which appeared like a rainbow except for the lack of color.

"Why not make it a rainbow?

"I was so certain that the bureaucrats at Sacramento would find 1000 reasons why I couldn't paint the rainbows that I never made any effort to get their approval. - Alan S. Hart, CalTrans Engineer during 40 years on the job.

Pure Good Strong Willing

If truly that's youly so duly on toes;
The hat, the ribbon, the upturned nose;
More proud, more able than anyone knows,
Then of course I'll be wherever you goes.

While planning otherwise

While the touch of Nature's art
Harmonizes heart to heart,
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor:

I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields.
Reflection, you may come tomorrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.
You with the unpaid bill, Despair;
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,
I will pay you in the grave.
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!
Today is for itself enough.

To Jane: An invitation

Ye olde enablement

Little Tommy Tucker
Sang for his supper
What shall we give him?
Brown bread and butter

How shall he cut it,
without a knife?
How shall he marry,
without a wife?

Love is easy

Wordsworth said it this way:

... And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Imagine A Woman

Our planet is in desperate need of women who love themselves. Women who use their time, energy, and resources to design life-affirming solutions for the challenges confronting humankind. Women who give birth to images of inclusion, poems of truth, rituals of healing, experiences of transformation, relationships of equality, strategies of peace, institutions of justice, and households of compassion. - Patricia Lynn Reilly

Bold and unshrinking
Annie Lennox in this 3 page news article "addresses global warming, the war in Iraq, the Aids pandemic in Africa, religious conflict, political corruption, business greed, global poverty and rampant inequality.

"This planet is absolutely off its head. It's insane," she says. "It is Hieronymus Bosch out there. Half the people are drinking or drugging themselves to numb it. A lot of people are in pain."

"We contain polarity within ourselves, we are full of possibilities, light and beauty and goodness, but at the same time we are ravaged by doubt or despair or hopelessness. I have been through my own trials and tribulations, so in a way I am trying to make sense of it. But its not about a logical, rational sense. The language of music expresses things that are almost inexpressible."

Annie Lennox, Why

Pure cathartic rant, with toilet

We all rant. It's popular.
Professional pundits and columnists can make a fine living bitching. Listening in on banter in any coffee shop, acrid comments are tipped with the acrid coffee. And blogs have released a 10 to 1 ratio of caustic opinion over tolerant observation.

It's not good to be continually sour and cynical.
We're just humans spinning on a rock. Not one of us is truly certain that we clearly see the motive or purpose in all things.

But a good rant that sums all the poison brimming into our world can't be left without a good ramp of links. Frank Paynter found this acerbic piece. It's pure catharsis.

THE NEW AMERICAN INFANT

Copyright 1996, 1997 John Trubee

Now
such grotesqueries as chocolatey and lemony
infect the lexicon
bespeaking the ubiquitous oral preeminence
of the New American Infant.

Once proud cowboy
now fat-assed cretin.
Once curious scientist
now mall drone gangbanger.
Once ballsy westward-forger
now jacuzzi-lounging sleazeball.
Once prolific inventor
now drunken celebrity wastrel.
Once hardy pioneer prairie mama
now scaggy teenage crack whore.

O America
You blew it.

You became too soft for your own damn good.

Your nuclear submarines beneath the Indian Ocean
protect the trust funds of golfing adulterers in Indian Wells
–from what?

Thomas Jefferson’s vision
somehow hideously devolved
into the embarrassingly trivial tripe
of the Jerry Springer Show.

O America
founded by geniuses with utmost esteem for the mind
you’ve become a gaudy playground
for capricious brats,
imbecilic sociopaths,
emotional snivelers,
and feel-good movie patrons weeping upon their fake popcorn
who constantly kill mind
in mindless reflex.

Petty orally-fixated ninnies
bullying for money,
lying, cheating, stealing,
insider trading,
filing spurious lawsuits for dubious gain,
and squandering job slavedom’s bucks
upon chimerical lottery ticket delusions,
you trashed your vaunted work ethic
in the mad mob dash for sticky candy.

(At what point does optimism become stupidity?)

(How many stomped hopes at last inform the deluded mind?)

You murdered your freedom with cretinous irresponsibility,
you placed social approval above the expressions of the mind,
you slobbered over money as the supreme value,

and now you wonder why you are drowning in shit.

O America
neon playground for vicious money whores
and candyass upwardly mobile dipshits:
who’ll incinerate these vermin?

The New American Infant soils his diapers
and whimpers.

Luckily, he didn't comply

Always do what you want, and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss

The Seuss War

Seuss Bush. These Thobbers are robbers.

Thobs seeth.
"Seething", said a Saying Thing, "keeps Thobs breathing."

A Thob'll lob a boomin' doomer;
the stickory of the hickory, and that's a bat, that.
Thobs flay a day wailingly unfailingly.
These acts are facts in flix and fax.
A shown known.
Thobs throb in seethin'-breathin',
hmmm, a cheese-wheeze:
"Bottle a lottle profit, Prophet.", said CapiTroll.
"Hell Sells. Make a mint. Go to print.", EdiThor yells.

No budget will nudge it.
Thobs blather when they gather,
reapin' the keepin' of rote in the vote.
Some come to the Tell Ya Regalia to sell ya
a Rightly hat, a Rightly hat is adequate to salute repute.

Will we surmise the Next Exercise? Asia Multi-Phasia?

"So," said a Saying Thing, "Can't you see I hear in the ear? A Thob's talkin' so I'm walkin'."

Sluice Bush.

McNabb, my friend

Near the busy and famous intersection of Portage and Main in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, my friend the Scottish terrier McNabb waited at the curb with all of us until the policeman whistled us across.

I was a preschool toddler. Though my memory is clear, the images may not be accurate.

We walked to a counter cafe called Sam's, a blue and white facade, and Sam wore greasy whites and carried a smile that helped me trust the world. I recall learning 'sunny side up' and I recall Sam celebrating with me. Only a warm-hearted man sees eggs can be precious.

McNabb was featured in the Winnipeg newspaper. I didn't know it, but day after day he went to the corner, waited for the whistle, walked to Sam's, celebrated whatever Sam celebrated with him, walked back to the curb, waited for the whistle, and everybody was amazed and everybody loved him.