Fiercely Indie - but despising Cons & Neocons

You'll find this an interesting eye-opener .........

Democrats:
Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts.
Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam. Paraplegic from war injuries. Served in Congress.
Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.
Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars,and Soldier's Medal.
Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
Chuck Robb: Vietnam
Howell Heflin: Silver Star
George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311.
Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and AirMedal with 18 Clusters.
Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul
Wallenberg.

Republicans -- and these are the guys sending people to war:
Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
Tom Delay: did not serve.
Roy Blunt: did not serve.
Bill Frist: did not serve.
Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
Rick Santorum: did not serve.
Trent Lott: did not serve.
John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
Jeb Bush: did not serve.
Karl Rove: did not serve.
Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
Vin Weber: did not serve.
Richard Perle: did not serve.
Douglas Feith: did not serve.
Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
Richard Shelby: did not serve.
Jon! Kyl: did not serve.
Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
Christopher Cox: did not serve.
Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.
George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty.
Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non- combat role making movies.
B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.
Phil Gramm: did not serve.
John McCain: Vietnam POW, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
John M. McHugh: did not serve.
JC Watts: did not serve.
Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem, " although continued in NFL for 8 years as quarterback.
Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.
Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
George Pataki: did not serve.
Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
John Engler: did not serve.
Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base.

Pundits & Preachers
Sean Hannity: did not serve.
Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')
Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
Michael Savage: did not serve.
George Will: did not serve.
Paul Gigot: did not serve.
Bill Bennett: did not serve.
Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
John Wayne: did not serve.
Bill Kristol: did not serve.
Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
Clarence Thomas: did not serve.
Ralph Reed: did not serve.
Michael Medved: did not serve.

I would believe only in a god who could dance.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy is nothing but common sense in a dress suit.

~Author Unknown

Anton LeVay, Seen at the Coffee Bean, in His Dotage

The Satanist wore a flowered shirt
like a cowboy's; and had a Sioux Indian
quirt, with which he drove seven midnight
stallions through the hidden dimensions
stacked like glass panes, in the shop.

Windows, without shades, without frames, incapable
of opening to night breezes, and clearing out
the heated greenhouse gases built up
from every day's blistering sun. And I,
for one, had come to prefer the middle
of the evening, hot as it also was.

When I wasn't watching, that dark priest
slipped away - glided, into one of those other
planes, I suppose; his bald head and goatee
and florid shirt hidden from me as he
flattened out into two dimensions.

One fewer than we know, or feel;
where the tension slips away, only because
the world becomes a little less real. Where
there are no knots - Gordian, or not.
For, to make superstrings into tangled things
requires one thread, at least, to pass
over another. And loop back.

Perhaps he'll be back - just when I lack
the werewithal to explain all
the complexities that bedevil me.
Those even higher dimensions we can't see;
but still will be - here - long after
we're gone.

I'll buy him some coffee. Maybe some tea.
I'll buy him ... something. But I won't buy
his two-bit disappearing act: the pseudo-
miracle, performed by reducing his world
to the transparent, and fragile. Unless,
of course, perhaps I even sooner shatter
the glass of his mysteries.
By accident. Without meaning.

Mercy

I killed Her; yet never
told anyone about it
until yesterday.

(Well, not entirely true.
My best friend knew.
Though sometimes I wonder
if He’s forgotten by now.)

I killed Her. The thought
of the fact, that I held
Her life in my hands,
and it was She who wanted
Me to end it.

Not that there was no fear
in Her eyes; Her years of
faith only ever more
true because the face of
its currency could be flipped
to the tail end of permanently
attached doubt.

She didn’t really want
to die. Yet She did want
Me to kill Her.

Cornered in the prison
of a Body that knew nothing
but tremors, or rigidity.
Yet knowing, that My fears
that there might be nothing more
to Her, that Her departure
might really be final,
was no idle speculation.

Ivory towers can be real.
Especially as they crash down.

And the debris winds round
to the same place:

No one will ever ask
more of you; or give more.

Sometimes I imagine
someone will ask Me what
it’s like, to hold Life
in your hands. And dead
Words, from rotting
Shakespeare, and his fictitious Hamlet,
come roaring forward:

“I prithee, take thy fingers
from my throat:
For I have something in me dangerous
Which let thy wiseness fear …”

HOLD … OFF … THY … HAND …

But I’m just insane, inane;
talking to Myself.

Because, through Her fears,
Her words were:
“What thou wilt do,
do quickly.”

I killed her, what seems like
so long ago, but told someone about it
yesterday; the Hamlet in me,
manufactured spirit or no,
challenging that Laertes to something
like mortal combat.

Coldly communicating the question:
If I can kill for love, how hard
would it be for Me to act
on hate?

Not hard at all.

If not
worth it.

After the Exodus

In Exodus there is this “Pillar of Fire,”
but it’s in the Valley of Fire I find I can come
to rest; and the best thing to think
about there is how I can see, someday,
all the flames, all the names
in the burning panoply come
here to smolder, eventually;

to the same place. Pouring, like the waters,
in fast floods, slow trickles; sneaking
in underground streams, but to the same point
in Space. Yet in and among the faces, the Truth
I face is that I still wait
most for You.

"The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation, for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of forms that we have loved ... "

-Joseph Campbell

A Memoir of Youth, 1984

A hush silenced the crowd that moved like a single-minded entity in the dim, smoke-filled auditorium. People began to rise in their seats as two immense figures strode down the wide-aisle, their broad bodies nearly blotting out the bright spotlight that was trained on them. Slowly, a chant started to swell..."Road Warriors...Road Warriors..."

The shorter, more thickly built of the men looked around him with an intense fire that seemed to make his eyes glow. His Mohawk haircut seemed to bristle, his savage war-paint glowing on his face. His partner was not so taciturn … he growled and flexed like the beast he was, ready to attack. Hawk was always like that. Animal's fire was more submerged.

The chant continued to surround them. They were villains, yes, but what villains these men were, to command such respect from those that hated them.

One instant, the ring hovered before their advancing forms, surprisingly small. Two men waited inside, noticing that the adulation of their fans was becoming a fearful silence. Animal smiled cruelly; these opponents hoped their skill would be enough to withstand the raw power of the Road Warriors. They were wrong.

In an eye-blink, the two barbarian wrestlers rushed to the ring, diving through the ropes and charging their opponents. Their hammering forearms and knees pounded them unmercifully, driving them to the mat.

Only after both men lay stunned did the Road Warriors back off at the referees insistence. Animal moved to his corner while Hawk taunted one of the fallen men to get up.

Austin Idol, the blond one, was the first to his feet. Dazed, he fired two blows to Hawk's midsection. Then his eyes widened in amazement and he looked up with apprehension. Hawk growled, his own eyes widening in a killer fury, for Idol's punches had had no effect!

With one corded arm, Hawk reached out and grabbed Idol by the hair, his other arm whipping around to strike Idol with a meaty thud that reverberated through the auditorium. The blow carried Idol off his feet and back to his own corner, where he had barely enough consciousness left to tag off to his partner.

Hesitantly, Jerry Lawler stepped in to face the insane, slavering Hawk. Hawk gave him no respite, charging forward and striking up with his knee repeatedly, making Lawler double over in pain. Hardly able to move, Lawler responded with a desperate punch that connected to Hawk's stomach, felling the Warrior momentarily.

His vision blurred, Lawler seized what he knew was his only opportunity against such a large, evilly powerful enemy. Grabbing Hawk's head, he positioned it between his knees and tried to lift Hawk up for the pile-driver, a hold capable of downing the mightiest of wrestlers. Heaving, the veins stood out in Lawler's temples.

But Hawk did not budge.

Rearing up like some primordial dragon from the sea, grinning madly, Hawk flipped Lawler over his back and down hard. Consciousness left Lawler as Hawk heaved him to his feet and struck him with a forearm, downing him again and then dropping his leg like a heavy log over Lawler's chest.

Not finished, Hawk yanked Lawler up by his hair and reached to tag off to Animal, who paced and waited for his turn. As soon as their hands met, Animal exploded into the ring, slamming Lawler with forearms that moved too fast to see. .

Perhaps it was some manner of mercy that made Lawler pass out even as Animal heaved him into the ropes. For, as Lawler catapulted back, Animal reared all the way back and brought his twenty-three inch arm forward like a whip, powered fully by his thickly-muscled body.

It struck Lawler with a clothesline across the neck that completely lifted him up and hurled him down, coming dangerously close to breaking his neck.

Animal growled as he pinned the supine Lawler, pointing in the direction where he knew a camera lay. As the referee counted to three, Animal screamed, “Bundy … Buuunnndyyyy!!!” The crowd watched, knowing that the deep bellow was a direct challenge to one of their favorites--and even more than a challenge, a death-threat. But no one rebuked the Animal. No one dared shudder without permission.

ALL Faith is false, all Faith is true:
Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes
his little bit the whole to own.

What is the Truth? was askt of yore.
Reply all object Truth is one
As twain of halves aye makes a whole;
the moral Truth for all is none.

Ye scantly-learned Zâhids learn
from Aflatûn and Aristû,[1]
While Truth is real like your good:
th' Untrue, like ill, is real too ...

[1. Plato and Aristotle.]

-Sir Richard F. Burton
"The Kasidah"

Basic Input Output System

(RITTERS NEWS SERVICE) MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
... and the word “karma” was scrawled over a wall of his apartment, in what forensic tests reveal to be the blood of a rutabaga.

While all accounts are S------ never believed in “karma” in the strict sense, his disappearance is even more unusual considering the recent publication of his short story, “The Shrew That Ate Rush Limbaugh.” The story appears in the latest issue of the magazine Tales of the Unanticipated, which the FBI categorizes as the subversive publication of The New Union of Soviet Socialist Postal Workers.

“The Shrew That Ate Rush Limbaugh” was written in 1983 when S------ was a senior at Irondale High School but more than fifteen years of attempting to sell it were futile and it was not accepted until S------ himself became a teacher.

Authorities refuse to comment on the suspicious nature of this coincidence. However one unidentified student did speak at Odyssey School, where S------ taught until recently. When asked what she thought of S------ as a teacher, she remarked: “He was good ... (urp) a little tough though. Definitely half-baked.”
_________________________________________________

RWSj, Case File # 3128221

(report of Dr. R. A. Gross, MD, PhD, BA, AB, Do-be-do-be-do)

Fri. 12/13: Patient's Messianic delusions continue. Has created short story with "Goddess" character called "Jenni." Can't determine whether he created her or she created him.

Sat. 12/14: Patient convinced someone named "----" has published his story, which was rejected by every other SF magazine multiple times over more than ten years. Patient says ---- has resurrected him so it ---- must be God.

Wed. 12/25: Patient insists I refer to today as 'Wotan's Day' and that he's gouged out one of his eyes to achieve inner vision. I tell him I see no damage. Patient tells me I need to gouge out one of my eyes. I ask him which one. He says, "If you don't know, I can't help you."

Tue. 12/29: Patient has come up with Trinitarian metaphysics re: himself, Jenni and ----. Prances tirelessly, singing, "There's Daddy, then Junior, and I'm the Spook!"

Off-key rendition spooks other inmates indeed.

Fri. 13/1: I ask patient if he knows what sacrilege is. He accuses me of wanting him to say it's a gum resin. I tell him that would be mucilage. "Right," he adds, "but you'll find sacrilege holds everything together better."
________________________________________________

Given RWSj's undergraduate education in neurophysiology, his graduate education in philosophy, his endless obsession with the mind-body problem, and his seven year stint doing research, you might be tempted to believe parts of the short story published in this issue are based on real events.

Nothing could be further from the truth. S------, for example, never has had sex with any real corpses. Only Lutherans.
________________________________________________

In a sophomore English class, RWSj was given an assignment to make up a story about a picture from samples posted on a wall. The picture showed a human girl and a chimpanzee sitting on a curb, looking at each other. The result, with only minor modifications, is the tale included in this issue, with its unique take on the Mind-Body Problem.

To this day, S------ wonders what would have happened if he had chosen the picture of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. At the very least, however, it wouldn't have ended up a story about anything with a soul.
________________________________________________

During the particularly harsh Russian winter of 1977-78, a small bundle was delivered to a babushka's door near Novgorod. It was apparently a mere frozen mass of fur, congealed blood and organ meats, but the babushka was near-starving and thawed the bundle anyway, hoping to find enough to make a broth.

When she did so, in the center of the bundle was revealed a small canister of microfilm, detailing the true nature of the so-called "Cold War," the secret role of America's CIA, and the lost Zoroastrian prophecies with which RWSj (the "new Tetragrammaton") would find his place in ushering in the new Golden Age.

Unfortunately, the old woman, by the name of Yaga, ate the canister too. S------ has been collecting and analyzing dried samples of her feces ever since.
_________________________________________________

The oldest recorded survivor of a prostratotomy in relief of hypognostimanic impotitus, RWSj now lives happily in a place not too far from Wisconsin, the home of beer, cheese, and serial killers.

There, Bob spends his time in the cattle-barn, catching mice, rats and other small rodents and batting them around before eating them, at least when he’s not writing advertising copy for God.

Neither Bob nor God is allowed on the furniture though. That’s for company.
_________________________________________________

As the only man in the history of the Church to have hemmorhoids declared legitimate stigmata, RWSj continues in his saintly tradition of humility and grace, steadfastly insisting that he is not worthy.
_________________________________________________

RWSj is a local writer and teacher, and the smartest human being who has ever lived.

That is, next to the person who ends up proving why.

Enoch

(published as part of the novel EYES, 1993/4 by xaos Books/Chaos warrior Productions)

"by Cadmann Warner"

Heat waves shimmer and distort visions in front of him. They turn the desert to dun-colored illusions.

There are no oases ...



His boots scuff across the grainy sand. Water has come, has fled, has left the earth to dry. The ground is cracked into patterns that do not match. It is nature's form of tile floor. Perfect, fashionable tile for a perfect, fashionable four-bedroom rambler in a perfect, fashionable suburban cul-de-sac.

He has three layers of cotton socks. All are damp and make his feet itch. He needs the socks. He needs to prevent blisters from his heavy boots. He needs.

The boots. There are snakes in some places. He has heard this.

The buttes are towers of sienna and burnt umber rising from the floor of the desert. They were towers. They seem towers.

He thinks of dragons and kings. Stories. Parables. They are only images, caused by desert heat.

Patches of dry grass grow more frequent. The boy looks to the horizon. Just over it the terrain varies even more. He knows this. He knows much.

He stops. He removes his olive-drab canvas backpack. He uses the pack as a backrest when he sits. The slightly rolling, dry fields are where he will set up his pup tent.

He reaches behind, unstraps one of three round canteens from the backpack. He drinks. The water is lukewarm. It is sweet. It hurts when he gulps too hard. The flesh inside his throat is dry and raw. But he thirsts.

He wets his palm, with it his cracked lips and the skin near his eyes. He sighs, and he coughs.
The boy's thin legs are sun-bronzed. The cutoff wool military pants offer no protection from the sun. The face is young and not yet angular. The hair is bleached now, by sun. The gaze is dull and too-aware. He has had German classes but does not know about angst. His feeling is unnamed.

He looks up. He sees a figure move slowly across the desert toward him from too far for the figure to have whispered and the boy to have heard. He hears the whisper retroactively. The stranger's gait is casual. He has his hands in his pockets. His outline is distorted by the heat waves. His shoulders are broad, powerful, but the man seems incapable of harming anything. Or simply unwilling.

Aura, the boy thinks tangentially. But perhaps, he thinks, it is only the impression from the heat waves.

The man strides forward without blinking or averting his gaze. He comes close enough for his face to be visible. His hair is medium length. His beard is trimmed close to his face. The face is neutral. It does not yet smile, but seems to. It says hello.

The boy responds. He does not wish to avoid response, but could not hold it back even if he so wished. The distance between them is too close in the vastness of the desert. The stranger asks if he is going up to the buttes.

Yeah, the boy says. He guesses so.

The stranger's face does not change. An impression of a smile intensifies. The boy feels relieved. He has been told "yeah" is a bad word. One must only say "yes, sir." Especially when one does not mean it.

The stranger asks why. Why does the boy go to the buttes? The boy shrugs. It was nice, being out there alone sometimes.

Alone, the man ponders out loud. Out here, there is not much else.

"It depends on what you know to look for."

The stranger's nonexistent smile widens. The boy feels the man's comment was a test and the boy has somehow responded correctly. The boy knows this is only a feeling. He knows he is an unnecessary romantic. Or, more correctly, he has been told he is a derogatory word meaning "unnecessary romantic."

"There's an eagle that nests on one of the buttes. I watch him sometimes.

"Want to walk over there with me? It's still early."

The boy starts setting up his tent a distance from the cliffs. The man watches. The boy says he needs some distance to see the eagle well. He can't see anything looking straight up. The man nods.

"You can see him too. Just wait." The boy brings out something swaddled in heavy padding. He unwraps it. He does so gently. It is Christmas season. He cannot afford the risk of breaking this thing. He is only allowed to ask for something during Christmas.

On Christmas Eve the boy goes to church. He does well in Sunday School. Everyone there says he is such a good and smart and polite young man, but he knows they lie. If they did not they would not just tell these compliments but fight if need be to make them believed in the boy's house. But it was good that the church-people lied. If they did not, what kind of home would he have? It was so good that church-people lied, thought the boy, or he would have to admit that he had no home and be without it and soon starve, in the desert of the world.

He was in the desert now. He had often been here, and knew to find food. But this desert was only a game. He had been told that any desert he walked in was only a game.

He unswaddled his baby: a spotting scope, 5-30X, with zoom magnification. You can use it too, the boy says to the man. "Just be careful. I saved up summer work money a long time for this."

"How long?"

The boy shrugs. "Does it matter?"

"How long?" The man repeats so softly the boy can hardly hear him.

"Three years."The boy whispers back.

The man's sad eyes say that three years is a long time for a boy. The boy shrugs. He is used to it. The hard part was not the saving. The hard part was having such a prize and having to keep it hidden at a friend's house. The friend was good but might still steal the scope,though the boy shared it often.

If "the old man" had known of the scope he would have broken it before the boy's eyes. His "old man" is a priest. He is also an electrician but he preaches of the value of a dollar. He harasses the boy with chores so long as he is at home and is angered at the boy's sometimes-habit of going off without permission; he made the boy toil at the local work farm each summer to pick string beans and told him this was necessary employment for the boy would amount to no better. The boy picked beans in the autumn too, when he was ridiculed for being no good in the sports he was not allowed to play.

He should have been good at these games without playing. He picked beans when he should have been doing his work for school, but made top grades anyway. This was good for had he not it would confirm he "would amount to nothing." At least he was not in the deserts, and starving.

Mother said nothing, or sometimes a little. The boy knew he had to be grateful. If he was not, they said, no one else would have him. No one but the desert.

All knew and hated the boy for getting top marks, for he was as a sissy and a nerd and a freak; all thought this, the old man sneered, did not the boy realize all thought this? No one at school said this but the boy knew him right.Despite their words of praise the church-people thought this.

However, the old man is equitable when he sneers at the boy for being "sensitive." It was not only men who are not supposed to cry. Women also. Women should not cry because they should not think big thoughts, or know anything but elation in his presence, and at the things he can buy them. The old man has no daughters. It is better that way. Perhaps the old man would make a radical exception with daughters, but the boy does not know what good that would do.

The boy is not allowed nice things. He is not allowed nice things, even though the old man is "well off." The boy saved three years and three days for the scope. That he already understood how to work hard and be a man would not have pleased the old man, who is not really the boy's own "old man," and not so old anyway.

"I like your scope."

The boy shrugs. It is a common reaction of his.

He cannot keep the scope in his room. He cannot look on it with pride as he lies in bed and the lights wink out. The scope is not an object but a free and conscious friend. The boy does not consider it his. In this world, he possesses nothing. He has grown to like things this way.

The man walks from the camp. The boy is surprised. He follows to the foot of the pillar of rock. The man unslings his backpack. He removes rock-climbing gear: chockstones, nuts, karibiners, webbing, nylon rope.

The boy asks, You're going to climb the butte? The stranger nods. Alone? the boy asks. The stranger takes the circular piece of webbing and folds it into a diaper harness around his waist and legs. and connects the harness with a locking karibiner.

"Why?" the boy says.

The man shrugs. He starts to climb.

The boy returns to his camp. He positions his spotting scope to watch the man's progress. The man's advance is slow. He places very few anchors at the low points on the rock. The boy does not know if the man is reckless or conserving them for when the need is greater.

The boy repositions the spotting scope. He aims it to where the eagle's nest sits on a small ledge near the summit. He focuses. The bird is present. This is unusual. The eagle likes to soar on the updrafts at this time of day. It hunts. He is unsure what it hunts for. Sometimes it just circles the butte.

The boy zooms in. The movement of the eagle's wings are wrong. The boy refocuses. One of the wings hangs at an odd angle.

The boy licks his lips. The eagle is too high. It cannot return to ground. The precision needed in the descent is too great. It cannot descend. It cannot return. But the break is too large. It will not heal of its own accord.

With no other choice, the Great Bird of Prey might try and fall and crash, pained and delerious.

It is later. The climber moves up the rock. The boy sees him place each anchor. The man is halfway to the summit. It has taken until noon to get that far. His path will take him up through the ledge where the eagle roosts.

The boy wishes he could call up to the man. A wounded eagle might strike out. It might not comprehend that no harm was meant. Such a bird's talons could cause much damage. And this eagle can go nowhere. The man could easily avoid it if he so wishes.

The boy does not so wish. He does not want to warn the man. He hopes the man would come upon the bird. He wishes the man will save the bird. The boy knows it is unrealistic to hope. He knows he only hopes because he is an unnecessary romantic. Or a derogatory word that means "unnecessary romantic."

The eagle is clear in the lens of the scope. The wing is broken midway along its length. When the bird tries to move the limb the outer portion flops.

Dusk comes when the man is twenty yards from the summit. Darkness makes viewing through the spotting scope impossible.

The boy can see the man reach the ledge. The eagle will not take kindly to the intrusion. The boy expects commotion.

He looks. He sees none. He listens. He hears nothing. It means there is nothing. Sound carries far in the desert.

The moon happens to rise behind the butte. The boy sees the man and the eagle silhouetted. It does not lash out at him.

The boy does not sleep. He writes in his journal. He writes poems. He writes them in a notebook always kept hidden lest it be ripped before his eyes: the eyes of a sissy, and a nerd, and a freak.

The boy wakes. He sits up. The sun tops the butte. The brilliance sits upon the ledge. It blinds him. He still cannot see the man or the bird. The man will die. He has not come down. He has no water, the boy remembers. It has been three whole days, or perhaps four.

He must thirst, thinks the boy, for I do. I thirst. The boy cannot wait much longer. He will be missed. He has left without permission. "The old man" will be angered. The old man does not care about the boy's welfare. But he has been gone without permission.

The boy walks north. When he goes a mile he can see the ledge. He sets up the spotting scope. Looking through it he sees neither bird nor man. He does see the man's climbing rope. It is just now cut loose, though the boy can see no one release the top end. It tumbles off the butte to the ground.

The boy scans the butte. Nothing living clings to the rock. He looks up from the scope. The eagle, circling off the butte, is a familiar shape. It flies strangely as if in pain.

It tries to soar. You cannot soar, the boy thinks, it is too late and your wing is broken. You will fall and you will die. The boy does not speak, however; not that the eagle could understand such speech. But the boy does not speak, for he understands that the eagle would die anyway, in the desert, in the nest. It merely would not fall.

The boy sees the eagle's wing buckle at the apex of the ascent. Momentum carries the shape into the glare of the sun.

The boy waits and watches, though the light burns his eyes. He waits for the bird to fall. It has to. He knows it has to. He has been told it has to.

The bird does not fall.

The boy waits for perhaps a half-hour but the heavens are silent. He wonders what to do. But he is still a boy, and this desert only a game.


He takes up his pack. He starts to return.

He has been gone without permission. He will be punished.

Heaven fell on herself tonight
As the devil met me in the wishing well
And in that moment I found myself knowing
That in the end it's just about you and me
Nothing smaller or larger
Though dragons are good for the soul
Nothing can be better than baring yourself for another...
Open for scrutiny, ridicule, and indulgence
Therein lies the balls, and the mind, and the heart...

When nothing is left...
Everything is gained...

Though endings are never ever happy
It's the happy moments along the way
That in the end
Make it...ok...

-Five for Fighting, "Nothing"

The Weeping Dragon

a Childrens’ Book

by Cadmann Warner
illustrated by Marcus Laurinaitis
______________________________________________________

There is a Great Dragon, who lives among a settlement of elfin people, and forever weeps.

***

There once was a dragon. He was not like the legends described dragons. He did not eat elfin people, or burn them with fire, or spit acid on them, or step all over their houses.

And the dragon came upon a surprise. If for a time the elfin peoples were allowed to grow old and not be burned, or stepped all over, or spit upon, some of them became dragons themselves.

They were not all like him; some had no wings, some could not breathe fire but only spit acid, or lightning, or even merely spittle. But all had one thing in common: they also did not thoughtlessly burn or eat elfin babies, or children, or step all over their houses, or spit upon them.

And all other dragons watched over the elfin peoples, though none more than the first dragon.

And, in time, all these other dragons went on, in search of other elfin peoples' to watch over, that they might one day be dragons themselves.

And it came to pass that the first dragon realized that although he watched over them, the elfin people feared him.

And he gathered them together and said, "You have no need to fear me. See, I pull aside the scales of my breast, and whoever would strike a blow may do so. I am your protector, and defender, and shall always bare my whole and vulnerable heart to you." And none of the elfin people struck him with their elfin swords, and the dragon was glad.

But the elfin people had each murmured to himself or herself, and to each other: "If we struck but did not at once destroy this dragon, his rage might be fierce, so we had best not strike at all."

And so one day the dragon said, "I must walk together with these elfin people, for I know that though they accept me and would not harm me, yet do they fear me."

And the dragon called upon the magic of the Creators, Sky and Earth, and all the Others, and they granted him to walk among the elfin people as a human, though They insisted he not be quite so small as they, but tall and proud. And the dragon walked among them.

And as he walked, he did not hear the elfin people say to himself or herself, and to each other, "This dragon is more a threat to us than ever.

“Before, as our protector and defender we could tolerate this threat, of his power. But now he is one of us, and even of no use to us, and weak. But in his weakness still is the potential for strength, for he could yet become again a dragon among us, and be as we know dragons really are, and eat us, and burn us, and step all over our houses.

"Yet if we strike now, unlike before, we may even with our tiny, elfin swords eviscerate him with one blow, and split his heart, and he may die, and we need never again fear dragons."

And the elfin people said to the once-dragon, "Do you remember how you used to pull apart your breast scales and bare yourself to a blow, and say, Whoever would strike a blow may do so, I am your protector and defender and shall always bare my whole and vulnerable heart to you?'

“Would you show us once again, for old times' sake?"

...And the dragon spread his arms and began to speak ...

But before he had finished the first words, the elfin people fell upon him, and tried in vain to eviscerate him with their tiny swords, and in vain to with their elfin swords split his great heart.

And the dragon stood for a moment, surprised, for even as a man their tiny, elfin swords could scarcely make so large a heart as his bleed, and could not kill him.

But the once-dragon realized what they had meant to do to him, and from within his heart broke, and burst. And he fell.

And suddely the sky split with lightning, and dripped with acid, and even merely spittle ...

***

...And hundreds of dark forms descended upon the elfin people, the many forms with wings carrying those without.

And the dragons surrounded the elfin people and said: "You fools! You nest of vipers! We have searched long and hard, yet have still no found any other elfin peoples.
Did you not know that we would have watched over you, that some of you might grow into dragons yourself one day? And none more so than he, who you have killed!"

And the many dragons snatched the spirit of the First Dragon as it fled his body, and they returned to it its dragon power, and each living dragon infused it with a little of their own. And the slain dragon rose, and his body changed into a dragon once again, more powerful and fearsome than any dragon had ever been.

And in their anger the dragons said: "These fools! This nest of vipers! Come, what matter is it that some would be dragons? Let us burn them all, and eat them all, and and step all over all their houses!"

But the once and now-again Great Dragon said, No. For there are those among them who will yet be dragons themselves, one day ...

"Go," he said. "Find your own elfin peoples, while I watch over these. Though never again may I bare my whole heart to them."

And the Great Dragon lives among them, and watches over them still, and now, and in all ways.

Even unto the end of the World.

The Boy Who Walked On Air

Once upon a time there was a Boy who walked on Air. He walked not high on air, only a couple of feet. He walked not high on air, for it was only because his beloved, the Earth-Princess, would not let him touch her.

Others touched her. All the other people he had ever seen walked on her up and down in fact. However, the Earth-Princess told the boy: “You are special, you are my chosen. But as you may not touch me until we are wed.

And so the boy went, into the world, that he might find one to teach him what it was to be a man, and have a man’s work.

The first creature the boy found looked like a man, and worked on an anvil, hammering out golden horseshoes. this creature had many wives, all twisted and chattering and ugly, drooling all, and all surrounding him and fawning on him and even interfering with his work to gain his attention, though his work was to make the very gold horseshoes that fascinated them.

The boy told the creature his story, and the creature said, “If you would be like me, then you must provide practical services! See how many horses stand in my stable to be shod!” The boy looked, and saw horses that stretched in a waiting line all the way up to a far mountain, and beyond which the boy could not see. But most of the horses appeared old, and very old, as if they had waited long.

And the first creature swung his hammer, and gold exploded in thin flakes as he struck the horseshoe, and his blow exposed the dull, rusty iron he had plated. The boy saw the creature’s wives scatter as they realized what little gold he actually had, and the creature wept for awhile. But then he rose and started to plate his horseshoes with gold yet again, only to have scores of new wives drawn by the glitter, and the horses neigh outside as they paced in the cold, unshod.


The boy went on and found a second creature, who held a parchment tablet. With careful measurements the second creature was examining drawings of horseshoes. The boy told the second creature his tale, and asked why he examined drawn horseshoes.

And the second creature replied: “If you would be like me, then you must understand the essence of the gold horseshoe. You must understand the essence, for even the most solid gold horseshoe you may cast is but a pale reflection of the essence. Then, when you understand the essence of the Gold Horseshoe you may manipulate any base metal, even lead, even any object, yea black soil itself. You may manipulate it into the form of a gold horseshoe, and you will be a man, whose wives will never run away.”

But the boy looked about and saw no horseshoes, nor wives. He spoke of this to the second creature, who said that he could create a golden horseshoe at any time he pleased. He said that he could make a gold horseshoe, and attract many wives, and he simply chose not to at this time.


The boy went on to a third creature, whom he found poking a finger into he sand. The boy told the third creature about the first two foolish creatures, and the third creature said: “Those two foolish creatures! The golden horseshoe indeed has a pure essence, but the essence cannot be captured. And because the essence of the gold horseshoe cannot be captured it can only be reflected by the humble hand of an artist. See how I have drawn a gold horseshoe in the sand?”

The third creature told the boy to try this, and the boy drew a horseshoe in the sand. He drew a horseshoe, though it did not look much like one, and reflected that this artist’s drawing did not look like a horseshoe at all. But the boy felt better and said: “At least I can do this."

More, he soon found that, unlike this rather bumbling artist that the boy still knew he must call master for now, the boy was quite good at this. "I can do this, and now I am a man with a man’s work, and may wed wives, or at least the one wife whom I love.”

And though the boy had but whispered the third creature rose, red with anger. “Wives? Wives? Do you not know it is bad to be a Man, and that those who are Man walk all over Princess Earth’s face? They walk on her face and defile her, and should be ashamed.”

And the boy said, “But are you not as a Man, creature, and do you not walk as all creatures but I do, upon Her?” And the creature said, “Yes, but I am properly ashamed.”

“All I wanted to do was touch her face,” the boy said, and walked away, doomed to trod only upon the air.

Starting in a hollowed log of wood - some thousand miles up a river, with an infinitesimal prospect of returning ... I ask myself "Why?" And the only echo is "damned fool ... the Devil drives!

-Sir Richard Francis Burton

Snakes and Snails, and Puppy Dogs' Tails

Behemoth strode the Plains one day, the earth shuddering with each thundering step. Trembling in the grass, Rilke the Snail heard someone call his name.

Voice quivering, the snail replied: “Hello there. Who are you?”

“I am the great Behemoth,” the voice said.

“Are you anything like me at all?” the awefilled snail asked.

“In few ways,” the voice said. “Yet more ways than you think. I simply can do many things you cannot.”

“Like what?” the snail asked.

“For example, I am so large I need fear no predator,” Behemoth said.

“That would be nice!” the meek snail exclaimed.

“And while your eyes sit on two stalks,” the voice said, “my entire head looms high on my body, allowing me to see farther vistas than you could travel in your lifetime.”

“Amazing!” the snail said. “What else?”

“Where you crawl, I walk on legs thick as trees, the voice said.

“That is hard to believe,” the snail said. “But I suppose it is possible. What else?”

“I have a voice that can thunder across the Plains and strike awe and terror into all who hear it,” the voice said.

“I noticed.”

“No--I have not yet even begun to thunder!” the voice tried to boom. “And now I bid you--crawl here and bow and submit to me!”

Rilke the Snail pondered the last command for a moment. Then he stammered, “W-w-wait a moment. Why is your voice such a quiet whisper now?”

“Because ... er ... because I choose now not to roar,” the voice said. “Now--come bow to me!”

“N-no!” the snail said, summoning his resolve in the face of his fear. “No--you are a liar and you have gone too far--and I shall not obey your order until I hear the thunder of your true voice!”

Just then one of great Behemoths’s footsteps hammered the earth, making Rilke believe he was about to be crushed underfoot at any moment.

“Did you do that?” Rilke the Snail said.

“Uh huh,” the voice said, smooth and hissing.

Rilke summoned up his courage and said, “I don’t believe you--do it again.”

But just then, the footfalls thundered again, except Rilke realized the tremors were growing faint, moving away from him at a fast, if bone-jarring trot.

The instant’s relief soon gave way to despair, however. He crawled along his path, despondent. All the great Behemoth had asked was unquestioning obedience, and in reward who knew what the snail would have been given? Would he have been brought up to ride upon Behemoth’s head as if on eagle’s wings? Would he have seen the world from the clouds, more world than he could ever travel in a thousand lifetimes?

And Rilke the Snail wept.

*******************************************************************

Then the next day, as Rilke the Snail moved along a leaf on a large tree’s branch, the earth started to quake again. Not daring to look, the snail dropped his head and prostrated himself (at least as much as is possible for a snail). And he cried out in his very loudest voice, “Oh great Behemoth, forgive my unbelief!”

Suddenly, Rilke’s entire body was moving through the air! He opened his eyes and raised his head, to see the enormity of the being before him. Even one of the appendages was enormous, holding Rilke and the entire leaf by its stem with amazing gentleness and control.

“What is this? What is this?” the giant face said, one moon-sized eye peering at the snail as the giant creature’s voice made the whole forest shudder.

“Forgive me, Behemoth,” the snail said. “For I see now that your voice can thunder just as loudly as you said, and how wrong I was to doubt your power.”

“And when did you do this?” the great Behemoth said, curious and with humor.

“Why, just yesterday,” the snail replied.

“We had no conversation yesterday,” great Behemoth chuckled, his chuckle like an earthquake. “Little snail, do you have any idea how many serpents hide in my shadow, claiming to be me and enticing their prey to come closer? Little snail, the only way you survived was by being willing not to fall for this trap--even if to do so you thought you were challenging me!”

“But ... if I had questioned you would I not have been crushed?”

Great Behemoth shrugged. “Perhaps. But then, why would I feel threatened by the insult of a pretty little snail?”

And Behemoth placed Rilke the Snail upon His great back. “Come, snail, ride upon me,” he said. “The world is so much larger than even Me, and there are such wonders to see!”

There’s a king on a throne with his eyes torn out
There’s a blind man looking for a shadow of doubt
Ther’s a rich man sleeping on a golden bed
There’s a skeleton choking on a crust of bread

King of Pain ...

I have stood here before inside the pouring rain
With the world turning circles running ’round my brain
I guess I’m always hoping that you’ll end this reign
But it’s my destiny to be the King of Pain

-The Police, "King of Pain"

Intensive Care

No heroic measures, she said,
partly lying.

Like bannered knights
in stainless steel they
prance, scalpels, forceps like
sharp hooves sparking from tile
cobblestones, or
rattling old bones; though lions
roar lightning, against darkening skies,
and turn on them
permanent, overcast eyes.

In hospitallers’ whites
tight jerkins still unstained,
not long, as the clouds rain
thunder. And in Fenrir’s
very face they don
their armor, but for it all
are swept under the rush
of the Waters
and the roars
of Leviathan.

Hangatyr

Ghosts winter
in my house, and I allow them, so long
as they do not bother the pregnant Man
who gnaws down the walking tree
the World Tree, where Sky hangs.

“Do not muzzle the ox,” I make sure
to say, “ - that carnivorous ox -
that treads out for you the
Ghosts, of holy
men.”

I took a guess and cut a portion out of my heart
He said that's nowhere close enough but it's a damn good start
I wrote the secret that I buried on the wishing well wall
He said I've seen one... it follows that I've seen them all
We spoke of human destination in a perfect world
Derived the nature of the universe (found it unfulfilled)
As I took him in my arms he screamed I'm not insane
I'm just looking for someone to understand my pain...

It's a long way out...
I'm gonna make it out

-Five for Fighting, "Devil in the Wishing Well"

Blaspheming

One cannot sacre
who would not profane.
One cannot prophecy
who would not blaspheme.

One cannot love
what he would never
kill.

Just Some Old Wednesday, in Frisco

I’m here, in
this Spanish Mission
so fatigued, but
knowing I will
still work to
write what
the world
must hear but
cannot see
for lack of

one

eye.

A Crack, in the Less-Than-Cosmic Egg

There is a low rumble of
thunder in my fist, whispering:
the Irish have a wonderful saying--
Never give a sword
to a man who can’t dance.
I wonder if they let men dance
who can’t use a sword.

Quite an accident of chance, that
in the dust of a dirty Western town
where potato-famine refugees
must have come, or through which
they at least passed, at least once,
I bought a bullwhip.

Because it fit my hand.

An extension of my arm, I’ve felt
its leather: well-cut strips cured hard
(or so I’ve gathered). Woven, braided,
tapering lines, from ends palm-wide
to tails needle-thin.

A whip is easy
to maintain.

Just keep it oiled.

Back and again, I’ve let the coil
unwind, quick, and dusty, dun-colored
lightning lick at a target: flat, square,
or round. The barrier of
sound breaks an instant before
wood splinters; a double-crack,
but no illusion. In the continuum
two vibrations gel; the distance
from touch to break
becoming a lack. Something
I command like second nature.

Seemingly the whip's devoid
of mind, but through me I find my
senses opened, and loose and fenceless
the muscles and nerves pull it all in,
yet ease the focus. Sail on
the tide of energies.
Then, again, suddenly tight
the lashing goes from subtle, passive,
to accelerated growth, and action.

Were this a ship tackle would whirl
and mast creak as sails unfurl, and
into the wind we’d be tacking. Cracking
the whip again and again, I’d
chuckle and rage and flay my own
back; push myself to say, to myself:
“Together, we make
this place. ... Together.”

Father of Thunder.

But under her gaze the storm abates.

“Show me a trick,” She has just
said, the crowded party far from
the desert, and with the whip my hand
draws back, and forward, and a flick of my wrist
will telescope my being into a flexible
baton, twelve feet long.

Bending, behind me now, I let
the tan tail roll and twist, unconstricted,
until just in position. A sudden twist,
and the lax tip springs forward
with a hum and a whiz--wraps once, twice
around her waist, with nary a hint that
I’ve caused her pain.

Maybe just the little she likes.

Almost as soon as the whip has wrapped,
I tug, friction locking the strands
around her, tightening
an embrace. I don't know why
I fear the coils will break, but
don't. This time neither do they
crack. Cannot. Not to do what
they need to, sinuously.

“Not bad,” I hear her say, a little
impressed; a little patronizing.
Her hand stroking the coils as
I pull them loose. Eve, to my sign
of Snake. “Not bad.”

And I wonder if she’ll come
when I ask.

If she'll leave the party
with me, together.
Together, when we've made
this place.

If it will fall
apart without us.

While we make
another world.
Together.

Charybdis, Moderne

My mother weaves
meats and fruits
from rolls of monies while
my brother builds trenches
for doves.

My little sisters
laugh soap bubbles
while the Other gnaws
giant bones
of dinosaurs

that are not even hers.

My uncle breaks communion
wafers into his tomato soup
and makes chains
of bookbinding glue.

My Father sells
- or gives away -
encyclopedias and
numbers and Words.

And says yes,
Beverly Hills is nice, and
yes, he’d like living
there ...

Only, not too much.

I take
after him,
you know.

Charybdis

My family is grey

Gifts are running past

Unnoticed
Unseen

eyes only know the red
cold iron burns us away from

Honey
and milk

sweetened, with barley

wandering
bumping

through a hall our heads on

ceilings


caving
in for a moment

it is red

I see
I am

Grey.

Welcome to existence
Everyone's here
Everyone's here
Everybody's watching you now
Everybody waits for you now
What happens next?
What happens next?

I dare you to move
I dare you to move

-Switchfoot, "Dare You to Move"

“In the classical Tarot, you are the Devil. The Devil card is based on Dionysus, ‘Zeus of Nyssa,’ counterpart to Apollo and chieftain of the gods in his form as Lord of the Shamanic Dance. The earthy physicality of the Devil can breed lust, so the Devil's call to return to primal instincts often creates conflict in a society that believes these instincts must be kept under control. Challenges posed by our physical bodies can be overcome by strength in the mental, emotional, and spiritual realms. Dionysus is also a symbol of enjoyment and rules our material creativity. The Devil knows physical pleasure and how to manipulate the physical world. Material creativity finds its output in such things as dance, art, hunting, and sex. All of this may seem intimidating and even evil, but remember that the self-actualized person is able to accept the sensuality and usefulness of the Devil's gifts and incorporate and accept the dark urges without indulging them in their simplistic, corrupt form.”

Heaven died on just one night:
Eve dead angels could not tread
lanes on which whose travelers, dead
lacked not grace for the still
insight ...

In the Ruins of St. Andrews' Cathedral, Hallow'e'en, 1987

Hear I, no longer, that mourning keen
That brought to a megalith scene.

Nor remember a nighted moon hued jade,
nor silent curs who never bayed;

but a scorching wind, of remnant June,
and whistles of a revenant tune;

and dead, a hand that broke through sod,
‘Til others joined, to stand and nod.

And Wagner played there, on the dark
where dancers ringed, in that park;

spastic soon, and mocking Saints,
blind to their own stench, and taints.

And dead, did lovers still find glee,
A cold lust shared, for she and he.

But no tears shared, in their sight,
save for fears, of too-soon Light.

That Festival broken, by a knell:
a tolling wake, a far church bell;

new stars that spoke, in their place,
and told each: find your carapace.

Until panicked, did bodies race
before sunrise, to find their space,


Unbeknownst, save for my face;


A glimpse, just
as I turned.

Free Verse (1981-2004)

“Come, little singers,
laud me some beauty,
then taste the blood
of my wounded lyre,

“Do you really know
the shadows
that flit and flirt,
about my pyre?

“When Athens is in flames,
and Thebes laid open wide.
And run, as you will.
There is no place to hide …”


Balladeer once, but nevermore.
I’ll sing no more
songs of transcendent beauty.
Of sunsets, worth their gold.

But who will call, to answer
my rage?

What hate drowns all else
in its wake?

The anger that burns within,
gnaws, grinds away, until
every edge is smoothly
razored.


“All my verse, it has been felled,
its End foretold, its death-toll knelled …”


by the Cain that lurks
in every man. Oh, He is
the ultimate killer.

But sing no songs for me.
No ballads for the fallen
in battle.

Not until you know, at least,
What this hand,
I once thought mine
—by pen or sword—
is capable of

When my God has refused me
even a voice to plead.

And my own demons

Answer instead.

... a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But IN you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

-Ranier Maria Rilke
from "Buddha in Glory"

The Latest, Eldest Edda

The moon was cold and clear;
sea and wind crossed the lea.
But through the tavern fell a silence;
doors opened to the sea.
With the chill, there crept in fear;
and mulled wine lost its glee.
for, framed 'gainst stars, there stood Man,
God and killer, in one body.

The patrons eyed him fearfully
but never a word was spoke.
It was the shaking tavern-keeper
who, the tableau broke.
"Old friend, what do you now and near,
whom we had long thought dead?
How good it is to see you here, come
share our Salt, and Bread."

One good eye laughed, as Tygers laugh
when filled with a killing lust;
a sword whose naked, sharpened shine
would never be tinted rust.
And unbidden, did his memories
break out and share their flesh.
And form the tale of he who they
had only, long, thought dust.

One eye patched, the other grey,
The Man sat among them there.
Brooded, drank, and showed his thoughts
though not a word did share.
Beyond that stare, though, did they find,
the truth—and the Prince of Lies.
Of not long before, a battlefield,
amid corpses, and the flies.

There, somewhere, the Last War had raged,
until all armies’ fall.
With no hand left, on either side,
to raise a rally call.
But as he lay and felt his blood
irrigate muddy ground,
Within his ears, did Heaven’s trumpet
blow with Hell’s own sound.

This Man, was he lifted up;
placed on a new horse, to ride.
And traveling, now, did he find
the Devil at his side.
"Old Friend," did the proud Devil say,
"I see your End grows nigh.
Ride with me, pillage, by my side;
again, be the most High!"

The Man said nothing, and soon found
Even the Devil could burn.
That, to all great offers,
some might stay taciturn.
"Come, Old Friend," the Devil did say,
don’t, to me, play profound.
Look to those you have been bane;
the blood you've fed the ground!

"You belong to me,” the Devil did say,
“It appears in every sign.
Nor does it do, to fight your End
when after, your world is mine.”
The Man drew sword, whispered, harsh,
“I’ll not serve a Beast so … small.
All you must needs do is take me,"
said he, free after all.

Now later, his dark ale finished,
he placed his Cup back down.
Without a word, out door he strode,
what more, without a sound.
Not again did any see the eye,
the one good eye’s long stare,
But ever, with his ravens, he rides,
even if Valhalla is bare.

At first a childhood, unlimited and free
of any goals. Ah sweet unconsciousness.
Then sudden terror, classrooms, slavery,
the descent into temptation and abysmal loss.

Defiance. The child bent becomes the one who bends,
inflicts on others what once he endured.
Loved, feared, rescuer, wrestler, victor,
he takes his revenge, blow by blow.

And now in the vast, icy void, alone.
But hidden deep within that adult heart,
a longing for the original world, the ancient one ...

Then, from His place of ambush, God leapt out.

-Ranier Maria Rilke
"Imaginary Career"

They are waiting to take us
into the severed garden.
Do you know how pale and
wanton thrillful comes Death
on a strange hour? Unannounced
unplanned-for, like a scaring,
over-friendly guest you’ve
brought to bed.

Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings,
where we had shoulders
smooth as ravens’ claws.
No more money, no more fancy dress,
this other kingdom seems by far the best,
until its other jaw reveals incest, and
loose obedience to a vegetable law.

I will not go.

Prefer a Feast of Friends
to the Giant family.

-Jim Morrison
from “An American Prayer”

Stones

Does anyone ever pause to think that if standard Christian doctrine is true—you know, Jesus being God, and Son of God, that whole thing—that it makes Him the world's most cosmic … motherfucker?

"God” is what dyslexic philosophers try to get not to shit on the carpet.

That soft, white plush their blue-collar parents always dreamt they'd have when they sent the kid to the best Ivy League schools, thinking he’d wind up a doctor or lawyer. An engineer, maybe. At least a securities broker.

Something … respectable.

Gods usually shit on the carpet anyway.

No more cognizant of the aspirations of parents than of their children; only knowing their masters have left them alone for too long, a poor dumb God, with no better way to deal with His anxiety than to whine, plaintively. To tear apart toilet paper, and paper towels, and newspaper.

Especially newspaper. Everything He can get His hands on, until everything is in tatters, not a Word is left unfragmented, or unsmudged.

I wish I knew what it is with Gods and paper.

I don't own Gods that often. Though there was that once, in college.

My three roommates outvoted me on whether to get one. You can guess who wound up taking care of Him though. Letting Him out when He needed to void His bladder, His bowels. Playing with Him when He was ready to come back in.

He was a smart God, and I could roughhouse with Him, wrestle and grapple, try out my judo, my arms protected against His bite by a heavy leather jacket as I sought to trip Him up. But for all the ferocity of our struggle, all I had to do was give Him the signal that it was all over, that it was time for Him to calm down, sit quietly.

Discipline your Gods well. They’ll only love you the more for it.

He was a mixed breed. Shepherd, mostly. Same kind of mix, if a remarkably different in appearance, as a God I had in grade school. Big brute of a thing, that one.

My grandmother understood what that earlier God meant to me. Baba, we called her. My grandmother, I mean. The name means "Old Woman." Though in a good way.

Baba would bring over good things for Him to eat; none of the prepackaged, usual God-food for Him. Huge roasting pans of leftovers from her own table: a lot of rice, and potatoes, and gravy - but always meat. Baba was a small, if stocky woman, painfully kind and gentle, but she knew. Gods are natural carnivores.

Fierce He might be, but she never demanded He be anything other than what He was.

I loved being at her house. In her kitchen, with her cooking. She fed me well too. Better than anyone before, or since.

He was the light of my life, this quirky brute of a God, one of the only such lights after Father moved out. That is, until my mother's lover got rid of Him.

Story is my God barked during the day, and our neighbor worked nights. I don't know if that was all so true. The neighbor never complained where I saw or heard. And Mother's new man—who may have become her husband but to whom I never got used to—wasn’t the kind to care all that much about his neighbor, anyway.

Perhaps he felt my God barked too much at him.

In any event, that God was mine, and that was enough for Him to be hated by Mother’s new man. I came home one day, from school, and my God was gone.

That God I had in college was gone soon too. I could see it would happen, which is why I voted against getting one in the first place.

College being such a fluid time, we were sure to part ways at the end of the year; find new places to live, and Gods weren't always allowed. Sure enough, we had to give ours away. I'm the one who didn't wanted to get one in the first place, and I think I was the only one who was all that bothered when He had to go.

I heard He went to some farm out in the country, where Gods are allowed to run free.

He almost got Himself put to death, though, when on the first day one of the first things He did was kill fifteen chickens. But He redeemed Himself with the irate farmer by the third day, when He chased two big, mean Gods from the farm next door away from the children.

That was over fifteen years ago now.

For the life of a God that means it's just about certain He's dead by now.

Sometimes I wonder how.

I wonder if He had someone there, someone to scratch behind His ears gently, holding him, while that needle slipped into the vein, just under the skin.

Kind of like Baba died, in my arms, on a spring night not too far from Easter, with snow falling outside windows that would not open, no matter how many doors had closed.

A good God deserves that much.

You can keep all your bullshit about how to treat a God. Keep all the stores that specialize in high-priced, jewel-studded God-collars for Him; keep your high-tech electronic tracking chips so you can find your God when He gets lost. To hell with all your millions of brands of kibble to feed Him with, agonizing over it as if it makes a difference, just because all the other God-owners do.

Me? I'll wonder whose really there for Him at the End. Who will sit there with Him when there is no one else; to stroke His time-wearied head softly. Give Him an embrace.

Grace Him with one last kiss.

When Time comes, as it must, to ease that poor bastard's passage, out of this world.

Cathedral Ruins

Through the blizzard,
in the tree stand I see the
evergreen spires on hillsides
bear the snow, heavy,
as pagan giants' limbs.
All movement is
stillborn; I hear it
flutter down through the storm.
The cutaway up the ridge
opens up the doors of
an emerald cathedral;
I hide behind a spire and wait,
looking up, looking down.
Cardinals and bishops
are nowhere to be seen, but
Red Squirrels take shelter
and mockingly throw
incense from the pines;
even though I only hear
them move, and can rarely see.
When I descend from the tree,
the wind at my back
will push me past spires fallen
into the narrow paths.
Snow will muffle
my every footstep.
But I stop every few
and look back.
Lot’s wife be damned.
Though I will not go
that way, I feel, for now,
there is no harm,
every once in a while,
in looking back.

Cockroach Consciousness

Time. Time for the weather. It’s been thirty days. Forty. Days and nights. They have to go together.

The Prophet scuttles across my hardwood floor.

He picks up dust and grains of sand. Ask how many grains of sand are on my floor and he probably knows, dammit. I’ve forgotten to sweep today.

“How many grains of sand?” I say. I think I see him shrug. Just before my foot comes down on his carapace with a crackling crunch, like the breakfast cereal I ate as a kid.

I’ve got to stop giving them names.

Roaches are supposed to be one of those animals that can tell the weather. And earthquakes. Prophets.

Prophets, it seems, are best at forecasting doom. Ironic, in a way, given roaches that haunt my kitchen room can withstand so much. So much poison. So much radiation.

So much crushing existential angst?

Roaches are interesting as models for bottom-up artificial intelligence, you know. Program the model roach with a few simple parameters - seek food, go to/avoid light, hit a wall and by default turn left or right (nice political analogy there) - and the behavior that results, if unpredictable, is rather lifelike.

But where is the "soul" in which everyone wants to, needs to believe?

They need to add that the real ones breed fast, too--again, just like prophets. There's your spritual angle. Kill them all and they’ll still repopulate an area before you even have a chance to say, “What the hell?”

Sometimes I think it’s too simple. Barometric pressure tells you the weather. OK, maybe not the pressure itself, but the changes in it. Odd seismic vibrations for an earthquake. Vibrations that aren’t so small when you’re tiny enough for my foot to squash your carapace.

A barometer or seismograph can give you the raw data. So can my trick knee.

(Four operations. Major ligament reconstruction. What a trick.)

Roaches are supposed to be one of those animals that can tell the weather, and earthquakes. Must be that sixth sense.

If it’s so simple, how come the weather-guy can’t give a better prediction on TV? A barometer could give you the raw data. Or a seismograph.

(What d’you know? Here comes the next Prophet now. The psychics I always visit never seem to prophecy that I’m going to stiff them on their fee. Wonder if he knows I’m going to step on him, eventually?)

Do roaches just listen better? Or do we just cut them more of a break, when they guess wrong?

Hell, I cut mine a break all the time.

The Prophet--the latest Prophet, I mean--is scuttling about very agitated. I think we have a cloudy day coming tomorrow. Maybe rain. Maybe snow.

Things are changing. That much I know. Change is coming.

Wow. I’m good.

Best A.I. you'll ever find. Too bad I don't have a soul.

But maybe you always look like you know what the future holds, if you run around agitated, predicting change.

I should do it more often.

But all I know is change makes my trick knee hurt. Makes me irritable.

Makes we want to slam it down hard, on whatever scuttles across my floor.



Run, little Prophet, run.

After the Storms

Dark blue winds shatter

the crystal vase in the hall;

now someone has heard.

Waiting for Lightning

Charged grey air. Autumn.

A feeling thought redeeming,

thought would save … dying.

I Never Was a Gardner

Lies, Lies, Lies!

A writer crafting lies.

"Believe none of us ..."

The words aren’t even mine.
Stole them from John Gardner’s
journal.

Published after he died.

Not even his journal, then.
Not anymore.

More damned lies.

Hemingway, proclaiming that the goal
of a writer is to pen one—just one—
true sentence.

Is it that sentence?
Or is it itself a lie?

What does he mean by “true” anyway?
True to my heart? (My heart? That lump
of muscle in my chest, that pretends
it feels, when it’s just stealing
the idea from my brain?)

True to my experience?
The experience of a brain
that has evolved to fool others,
and through the ability
to fool others can fool itself
most of all?

True, by virtue of a proper metaphor,
when a metaphor by definition
is not what it claims to be?

Or can it be? What if the mask
something wears is its own face?
Does he reveal himself by it,
or hide? Or both?

Life, my child, is like a great ocean.
The waves rise, and then they fall …
They rise, and then they fall …
They rise, and then they fall …
They rise, and …

You know, that’s a pretty
nauseating question.

Nausea. Satrte. The overwhelming awe
at - and absurdity of - existence. Why
is there something, rather than nothing?

Why do we ask why?

Ask, with our words.
Words. Damned words,
that lie half the time,
and then can’t capture the truth
when they try to tell it.

Half the time? How would I know?

And if I know, why can’t I tell
when each half is?

Nausea. Sartre. The overwhelming awe at -
and absurdity of - existence. But then I
remember. Remember the things I love
can make me nauseous with awe.

Plane rides. Parachute drops. Landscapes,
that stretch out beneath me as I gaze over
precipices at bare peaks, or those dappled
with snow under half cloudy skies.

Fresh snow, on a November hillside,
with long stems of grass poking up through,
and me suddenly overcome with stage fright
as I drive past, even though
I’m the only audience.

A first look. A first kiss.

Soul kiss.

Do you have to believe
in the soul to have one?

Because I don’t. But I do.


Damned lies.

It's all
damned lies.

"Believe
none of us."

Upon High Lands

Upon High Lands

I prepare myself

a sacrifice.

(I don’t get it. I mean
are you preparing
a sacrifice for someone?)

(Or are you the sacrifice?)

(Or is the sacrifice
to you?)

You have said it.

Is that not how a man
once proclaimed ...?

(What?)

...

(Proclaimed what?)

Nothing.

(I mean,
I just don’t
get it.)

With the Furies

Again,
She had a party.

The Great Witch,
I mean ...

Kali , and Odin
both came; crowns
and garlands were Hers,
and monsters,
and Beasts that
dwelt among the flowers,
with sharp, azure eyes,
and tiny, fuzzy,
ticklish ears.

I saw a little one, hidden
amid the grass, enjoying
the sight of great and
terrible Gods, capering,
as children.

The ouroborus, not minding,
straightened, and slithered
past smiling Sister Snakes
and girdling, Midgard Serpents;
the blossomed, not minding,
merely there.

But Guardian-bird, Bright-plume,
Strange-beak, No-Raven,
(as opposed to, say,
kabuki-raven)
was mortified.

Wait, the One-eyed
One cried,
it's over! Again!
The bird has spoiled it,
for Everyone.

Again ...

America, I Mean

I saw that bumper sticker again today. The one that says, “God bless America.”

Why? Is She sick?

Not God, I mean. America.


Maybe it’s just me.

Every time I hear a prayer asking for God’s blessings, my first thought is of someone sick. Someone ill. Someone hurt.

“God, bless Grandma Bibby, please. The cancer is eating away at her, and when she looks up at me, it’s as if she doesn’t know whether oblivion is a good thing or a bad one.

“When Grandmother looks up, I don’t know either.

“I don’t know, and more don’t know what to make of the world.”


Is America in that way?

I mean, do all the Hondas and Mazdas and Mitsubishis with all the bumper stickers, zipping around quicker than a motherfucker, is that what they imply. That America is crying, I am ill?


I doubt it. But maybe it’s just me.

I certainly have heard the sermons lance out from the TV and talk radio pulpits, and damned but if their view of America doesn’t seem dim.

Apocalyptic warnings abound, right around the time these preachers will teach you that decadence festers in all the streets.

Gay agendas and gender benders and Reefer Madness.

Wickedness and sodomy. And what of all the drunken revels. And college girls giving it up to the sound of Aaron Neville, and unbridled lust.

Isn’t that just what the Beatles told us is all we need?

The wrath of God will vent, pour burning oil down, they’ll warn, unless sickly America repents, and takes up its crowns of thorns.

That America would deserve a blessing, I’m sure. Or something close.

But if it were real, wouldn’t it just as much deserve an opiate overdose?

A needle, slipping just beneath the skin. An end to its misery. Why, if America is so bad, for you and me, do they pray for Her a blessing, rather than a cleansing? Why don’t they ask for America’s fall, so that they can set up their tall, 40-foot Jesuses, and build the estate they’ve always wanted.

A great mirror to the Taliban. Omar and Osama can send love letters. We’re your biggest fans.


Or could it be me?

I almost forgot. On top of it all there’s another kind of soul we ask blessings for. Protection, for someone who could be in harm’s way.

“Abba, guard my friend, Aaron, would you, in those Afghani mountains, where the bombs drop in pillars of fire, and a faithless woman back home has shredded his heart, and I wonder if he’ll seek the arc of a bursting shell to complete the job.

“Abba, guard Aaron, when the ones who have sent him there are the very ones to forget him as they chase shadows of ghosts in other lands.” In Poppy’s Name we pray.

Do the drivers in those bumper stickered cars see America as the battered and outnumbered soldier, boldly standing fast as the enemy shatters the perimeter, storms the twilight ridge on which our man makes what looks like a last stand?


I don’t. Though it could just be me.

At Cowpens, and Gettyburg, Normandy, I know the story may have been different. And if it came to all that, I’d stand by the man, or woman, on the hill.

But a lonely warrior, on the verge of being overwhelmed, has little more than heroism to tout. And I hear the same people, shouting “God Bless America!” playing the age-old game. The game that says, “look how blessed we already are. It is proof of God’s favor.”

Welcome to our bistro; what will it be today? Would you prefer the flavor of our cobbled tautology, or the freshly toppled eschatology?

But when the favor seems gone, when the blitzkrieg through Kabul and Khandahar have gone from current events to ancient history, and the “Mission Accomplished” banner have been re-furled, what in the world do we have left?

When the body count rises, and flag-draped coffins slide off the ramps of the psychopomp transports.

Then virtue miraculously shifts, from what is measured by success, to what measures are brought against us. The world is the Devil’s playground again, as if God has abandoned power in this sphere. And the saints are always beleaguered, and in need of every blessing they can get.


It could just be me.

But how can they be making their plea, when they just moments ago put Her on a pedestal? America, I mean?


When, like She were a white Tyger stalking Her gilded cage, they proclaimed that She was the strongest, the smartest, the fastest Beast on all the Earth?

Then again, for now She might be.


I’ll admit to my own impatience, with the wine of discontent, at times. You see, I’ll make you admit that a cottage industry seems always to arise, amid the flies and rats of every ghetto. Just because it isn’t quite settled, you know.

There are remnants of slaveries, long past and more recent. But it seems the prophets are unwilling to concede, that any progress at all has been made, as if the passion to complete the job will fade, without the righteous indignation.

As if to concede that we’re halfway there, or more, might make us complacent on the trek across the desert, and we won’t finish the job unless we believe we’ve hardly started to walk.

Maybe it’s just me.

But I think it’s not true. I think that the fire of beginnings can never be re-stolen, unless for other beginnings; and the despair of knowing how far we’ve walked, and thinking we’ve gone almost nowhere, would damn our drive all the more.

And so I empathize, with the same frustration that drives the bumper sticker guys, sometimes.

But they mistake the look in my eyes, when they think it makes me their brother. Because the old Arab proverb is dead wrong. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

Because, my friend, America has already been blessed.

And that’s the test. What are we going to do with it?

I have a friend who knows what questions to ask. He’s newly joined a far older cast of Chosen People. And he weeps, inside, I know, over the struggle in his own peoples’ souls, over that word. Chosen.

What does it mean to be God’s favorite child?

Is there any wonder that that claim could inspire ire? That what might transpire is backlash, with teeth that gnash and bite. And snarl, “You think you’re so special?”

He knows some of his People actually want to say it. Yes. I am.

But so many others hear the word chosen, and see it is a calling. Not a special privilege, but falling on them, a special burden. To lead by example. Not to take from the world, but to give.

Who is America, I wonder, that anyone should ask for blessing for Her? Magnificent Beast, strong and astride the world. Already blessed, beyond compare.

What a mockery, that any filthy egotist would dare think She should have more. To hoard even more blessings to Herself, when She should call on herself to give.

That’s the America I live in hopes of seeing.

But maybe it’s just me.

I know the spirit driving that car, in front of me, with that bumper sticker, isn’t likely to be so generous.

“God Bless America,” it says to us.


Why? Is She sick?

God, I mean?

Or maybe it’s just me.

excerpt from "SunDown, at Gordias"

Was the psychonaut's
solution to the psycho knot
psycho--or not?

(Or naught)?

The Hitch

The Hitch

You know.

You know more
than you let on

Much more than you betray

Great slimy angel-whore
you've been good to me

You really have

been swell to me

Tell them you came & saw
& look'd into my eyes
& saw the shadow
of the guard receding
Thoughts in time
& out of season
The Hitchhiker stood
by the side of the road
& leveled his thumb
in the calm calculus
of reason.

-Jim Morrison, from "Paris Journal"
published in THE AMERICAN NIGHT
(Among the last lines he ever wrote)

The Hitchiker stood by the side of the road and leveled His thumb in the calm calculus of Reason. In a light and airy season, I eased up on the accelerator, and stopped, by that side of the road.

Thinking.

The Hitchhiker got in, on the passenger side. And I was thinking, about something I might talk about with him. Thinking, that there once was a house, a house that Plato built.

The construction materials weren’t his, of course. He’d stolen them from Pythagoras, who’d stolen them from Arjuna, who’d stolen them from Gronk-a-a-Obunk. Still, as I looked at the Hitcher, I for the first time was sure, from the knowledge voluminous reading had given me and taken away, that Plato was responsible.
Perhaps the Hitcher had, for kicks, tried to break on through the walls of the Cave, but now, all he seemed to be doing was going down a road. The road was the only way home.

In Plato’s world, I remarked to him, like a Russian doll nested inside a bigger doll, ad infinitum—ad astra, ad nauseum--was the continent called Mathematics. And the biggest republic in Mathematics was a society called Calculus.
This society was ever in change, given its amazingly powerful economy. And, self-centered as the citizens of that society became, the culture devoted itself to, well, itself. To the study of its own change.
At least how this should be done was open to debate. One tribe, who called themselves Derivation, looked to living in the present and wanted to know what the immediate rate of change was. They liked to preach that they lived in the here and now.
I think I knew one once. Apparently living in the here and now involves dressing in all manner of saffron gowns. Or chanting. Or lighting one’s self on fire.
I wouldn’t know, you know. I don’t live in the here and now. In fact, I’m not even here, right now.

The other tribe in the kingdom of Mathematics did quite the opposite. Reactionaries that they were, they kept asking: “Where did we come from?” They wanted to return to their Golden Age, an age that never really was--though apparently it did involve gold, especially that sent by little old retired ladies who watched a lot of TV and liked the word “Hallelujah.”
Ms. Rigby, we hardly knew ye.
Though the reactionaries could have been called Reverse Derivation, they were ashamed of being inadvertently associated with Derivation--and “their kind”--and called their own tribe--of course--Integration.
I think they thought it was a free act of will. But in that belief, like the act, I think they had no choice.

The Hitchhiker leveled his thumb, as if to ask whether I was even there.
I told him no, and I told him to get back in.
He did. It was an easy step.

Reason is logic. Logic has steps.
Each step butts against the one before and after. Nicely, there is no room in-between to sneak in the “great unwashed.”
On this, at least, in the Cave where those had stepped outside a model of a cave could believe they had broken on through, the tribes of the Derived and the Integrated could agree. The republic of Calculus might be split, yet e plurius unum.

It was One. It had to be One. Because The One was Perfect.

It had better be Perfect. In the world of Plato, everything genuinely “real” was.
And if they weren’t in the world of Plato after all, if there were no such world, that would be really, really bad.

For one thing, all the road signs would need to be changed.

I pressed the pedal and turned the Great Wheel in the calm calculus of the season ...

Reason is calm. Reason also can be Discrete. Or Reason can forgo privacy.
That, by the way, in the republic of Calculus, is called being “Continuous.”
But in either case, Reason’s steps of change are constant. If you can get over the tricky hurdle of agreeing to stick to discretion or continuity.

Occasional troublemakers always seem to step out of line, but they are caught and sent to gulags. Or reservations. Or Cleveland.

The Derived staked their claim to Reason’s constancy by saying if you derive anything enough times, you get a constant.
Of course, when you Derive one more time, you get Zero, Zilch, Nada. Nothing.
Did I mention Zilch?

This made the Integrated nervous. Reverse course too late, when you’ve derived down to zero, and try to integrate zero ... well, hell, you can’t.
It could be anything.
You know, it could be Everything.
It could be Nothing.
Ex nihilo ... nihil?

The desert moon was bright, an eye in the Void, and I drove the Hitcher on. We had seen no one for miles, but, all smiles, he sang, like he had all the Time in the world.
“Tiiiime,” I sang back to him, “is on my siiiiide ...”
He looked at me as if to say, No, it’s not. Wrong poet.
I looked back, as if to ask what he meant. Me being out of Time.
Perhaps I had met my killer, on the road. He squirmed like a toad in the leather seat, and nodded back in my direction. Indicating me.
“Well, I’ve never met myself,” I said. “At least, I’m not sure I’d recognize me, if I did.”
And, as if eager to be hitching a ride back in the other direction from the passenger seat of my car, he stuck out his thumb again.
“Smart-ass,” I said.
He brayed. As if to say it’s good to be a large mammal.

But maybe he was right. Maybe, just maybe, if we turned back--maybe, just maybe, with a little ... (luck?) ... we’d make it to L.A. before the dawn.
Slamming shots, with any luck. With luck, we could even be to the Whisky-a-Go-Go, before it finally closed for the Night.
With Luck. I always liked Luck. She has nice legs.

We could even keep going, a convertible sailing out over the water, into the West, until we crossed the Pacific to the other side, until we ended up in Tokyo, maybe, or Shanghai; into the West, until it became the East. Until all polarities ceased.
Like it or not, the Hitcher was with me now. We were going my way, down my road.
My way, where the liquor is quicker, the blood is thicker, and old Uncle Albert is waiting for us to say we’re sorry, playing Schrodinger cradling some Gordian Cat, as we beat Uncle Al with his own dice once again.

And the only thing that matters is chasing down the sunset, until it becomes the world’s first unwasted dawn.

Memorial Day

MEMORIAL DAY

Do you remember...?
Broad brushstrokes
lashing from vacant eyes;
stolen from smooth bronze
Skin?

Do you remember...
A smiling, seated Buddha
tossing you a skinny ball
From days before the child’s
eggshell castle was
too crowded?

Empty shell of metal film
pounded into fingertips near
skin, withered and blackened,
fragile, but untorn.

That painter’s hand is a mummified ghost
of silenced flesh and unkind corrosions;
the stone, overhead,
left him, your living
curse.

Meeting, Presumably, the Son of a Man

Alone, in the desert
I met a Man. From the sand
he had forged, and now carried,
a mirror. Like a light
burden.

Blinding, the sun
flashed in its movements,
obscured any other
reflections.

He could have been
a mirage, of course.
“Who are you,” I said.
“I am that I am.”

“Do you know what you’ve said?”
said I. “Do you know what
you’ve presumed?”

“Do you know what you’ve asked?”
said he. “Do you know
what you’ve assumed?”

Polarities

Winds, caked ice
onto my face;
lost in concepts of glory:
an ultimate race.
Struggling, I plodded,
through arctic snow,
possessed by a dream
that terrible to know;
treading, treading,
alien land,
where no man, by right
should have strength to stand;
but vision was mine,
of wonderous crusade,
'til a snow cave
became my palisade;
I looked down,
to find quest done;
a heap of golden skulls
had I there won, and
I played there,
among scintillant bone -

having come not to take,
but to add my own.

A Matter of Course

Of course I died last week,
and speak

The run of a river leaves no wake;
the proud dog hobbles in sorrow;
the clouds gather rust.

Of course the words are upside down;
the sage is a child, whining,
the Woman gives birth to dust,
and Sky rots under us.

Of course the pit is bright,
the sacrifice is brought to slay us;
the killer loves us all
and brings us baskets of fruit.

Of course he does.

Of course
He does.

Kundalini Yogi

Mantra, chakra
gobbledygook-goo,

I am exotic.
How about you?

Sage, mage,
Old Man & the Sea.

You seek a master.
How about me?

Why not
me?

TeLu Proverb

The world is drowning in information
--and starving for wisdom.