120528 05:57

    We remember in this season of Memorial those who fought and died giving their all for us living in freedoms previously unknown. Yet our planet home remains in war and rumors of war to be embroiled issues thought resolved in The War Between The States -- Civil. In whose remembrance ideals of free will struggled to define and proclaim continued here as everywhere unresolved. Spoken of but still unrealized.
    I served in waiting the call to lay down my life--too--defending these freedoms and by grace avoided the death eulogized both sides the ideals regarding slavery. Innocent of both suffering and death in old age now wonder the intent the horrors of war and those words spoken afterward:

“ . . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
            --The Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania  November 19, 1863

    Neither part of The Constitution nor The Bill of Rights, specifically invoked or so named or defined, it remains to my youth and old age best blest the ideals for which I would still die.
    Predeceased by my children who in citizenship and by birthright would have also sacrificed as drummer boy or nurse -- cook, doctor or General -- their lives. I prayerfully now ask how we collectively “Of -- By -- For -- the People” have become the engine of profit not prophecy.
    Measure for measure, tamped down, stuffed full I too am tempted to criticize as is the popular coin of those who otherwise have little vested interest than to annotate their ignoble passage across this stage of life. My roll call of nobility grows larger daily and inconsequential by compare i chew the words: cynic and skeptical, seeking their flavor and definition in real flesh and blood terms regarding the value and meaning of life.
    With each heart beat I grow closer to The Maker of Us All in creation life lived and left behind to what end do we live? What truths self evident incarnate in a corpse taught? Or will the students left those who follow will their lives be informed instead or mutilated in the maw of war without end?    
    Enough.
    I see no valor in the victor or vanquished merely destruction. The Family Of Mankind dismembering itself in folly for ideals profited versus the right to live self derived and freely without laws save the hearts eyes vision manifest in harmony now.
    Redemption or Reparations nether will slake the fury within me In patient confidence do I await the giver of all names Nameless to inform me my purpose to have lived or to live again or lay eternal dust

Of all the graces of God in man, charity, or love, is the greatest, 1 Corinthians 13:13

    . . . of what part The Creators epitaph Do No Murder is ignored or not understood?

enough
maybe perhaps maybe not it is enough
we share the dawn over saw tooth rock Organs
measuring  from solstice summer to winter’s solstice the next shortest
day afterwards then the next longest a rebirth for ones whose lovers are absent
separated by distantness immutable illimitable

v1 120525 07:42
f2  120527 11:58

120526 13:56

Messages within bottles drown in the mire of what’s left in my leaving
or sent payback the child who loved unconditionally those who smote him
growing crippled for a time until now whole complete finished forgiven resurrected
forgiving all who would or could do it all over again as death no longer has dominion amen


“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity...Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." --Melody Beattie

120525 03:53
"God willing, and the creek don't rise . . . "

    I will endeavor to no longer share the threads and leading's which form my current education; the where, wherefore and why of yours is my concern. And it is my sincere conviction that the function of Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha and the legions of others whose divinity will forever remain unknown to me are/were in essence teachers.
    The primary function of teaching is leadership in the following sense: it seeks to replace itself, fully conscious the inevitability of death--not merely the death of our body but institutions, cultures and civilizations. . . . Even this planet, our home. In the process of teaching it is astonishing that the teacher is taught and the student becomes uniquely more than what was taught. A gift that keeps on giving and bearing the only interest worthy of life's attention.
    Instead of rail against the obvious failure of oligarchy--or any other form of tyranny. Or as I sense it, institutionalized folly lead by ambition and greed become oppressive. Obviously not salvific in or by any means, measure or kind. Were we to be fully educated we might better serve our selves and others that they too live fully and free. Otherwise we become like those who send children laden with bombs to destroy themselves and one or more others in THE NAME OF THE CAUSE. Or as they would have it: "In the Name of God!"
    Win/Win.
    Not I win you lose.
    Since in the process--apparent--is the destruction of our home; communal: not communist or socialist but collaborative and/or co-creation; a world inhabitable for all life not just a few who hoard everything. Ambition and competition become addiction, nothing is ever enough; no more noble than crack cocaine; or a lunatic excuse for more.
    Selfishness.
    What is power?
    How do we define absolute good?
    Follow the money honey it will show who wins and loses.
    I know my death is near and dear since it will provide the next experience. Though I will, like all others, have no idea what lays beyond. The "God willing" is simply my prayer that I serve as servant to others that they too my have my wealth and more; all that they can carry or use.
    The "Rising Creek" part is my experience--first hand--of those whose lives end in dementia then Alzheimer's disease or any of a number of other forms of death by slow disintegration . . . "Death is not the worst that can happen to men.” --Plato
    When we fear anything it owns us. It is oxymoronic that those who rule use fear to control us collectively and individually. Of course I 'fear' God but only in the sense of absolute respect and would be neither God's or any man's pet. . . . But then as with any adversary it should be an agreement to disagree, not I'll kill you to prove my superiority: to you, your family, your anything or everything. Or the what, who, why, where and when of Good.
    I understand that "God" is not exclusively Christian, nor is Jesus "Christian." That said I will close with John 8:32 "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Or as Gandhi said "There is no God higher than Truth."

120524 04:23
    Ideal & real are separated by light years of difference. To think otherwise is wishful, or magical, thinking. I know this best since it was formerly my position to be fixed and immutable, but then not even God, or what we consider the absolute highest power, is such.
    To have and to hold, to lay up or lose, are issues inevitably decided by the value and meaning of life it self. And for me the issue is decided towards the truth of free will and choice, won at the cost of many lives sacrificed to keep this possible in real time.
    As we close on Memorial Day, in America, the day is experienced differently by those who seek a holiday from the normal grind of keeping alive by labor. For me today is extraordinary, the birthday of two very special people no longer with us. My son and a man who was a surrogate father to me. Their lives and deaths have altered mine by intersection or coincidence? I don’t think so.
    Nor do I think it an inconvenient truth that we live, essentially free, because of the efforts of those who remain or are departed in efforts to nurture our right and privilege to vote or not. My thinking and feelings have been fundamentally and irrevocably altered by recent events. Cause and effect, birth implies death, both should be celebrated equally yet death in and of itself is avoided at all costs in the ordinary of our time.
    I received notification that I was in jeopardy of being evicted from my HUD augmented rental apartment for issues of cleanliness. Despite my maturity, wisdom and experience I went through the “why me--why not me--this is a pain in the sit down” and then dealt with the issue; procrastination is the theft of time. The result is a forced integration between my ideal and real life manifest in spades.
    I have an articulated sense of the ideal person, Jesus, as being perfectly balanced between male and female, equal in definition: thinking, feeling, sensing and intuition. Thus He is not some vague object or subject of idle speculation to me. Though I fall flat on my face attempting to emulate His ideal I always get back up and continue the struggle and will continue to do so until I can no longer get up in death.
    My point is that within the chaos of current reality we must work towards tolerance, understanding and the possibility of Love not Vengeance. Since we are all equal in the eyes of What Jesus spoke about, but not exclusively of His definition or time 2,000 years ago--as citizens of the world we must seek what give life equally to all of us.

"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

. . . an afterthought or two: Political debate has devolved into argument thus become a lunatic asylum for idealistic rhetoric while our children are now sacrificed for the profit of both the politicians and those who fund their campaigning that they remain in profitable power together. Seek Truth Always be sure of your resources:

http://www.brainpickings.org/    today: . . . excerpt from BBC’s 1959 Face to Face interview
"I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral.

The intellectual thing I should want to say is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say.

The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple: I should say, love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet."
--Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

120516 07:46
a brief soft shoe shuffle for Emily Dickinson in 12/10 time . . .
nothing I say may I consider worthy lasting beyond the utterance
within the context of this life of little consequence as living an
eternity daily mindful the time before time became remembered
seeking the time after time forgotten from which words are minted
spoken through me not mine alone but the property of The Author

120517 05:52
International Chartreuse Distress wearing Life Vest a polar bear in The Salton Sea should I become rather than leave impossibly the company of God

And in the wandering and wondering leaving behind beloved's one after another through their death or mine to them through attrition triage or parse the final definition is key to who judges whom as worthy or not intimacy

In childhood as an inconvenient convenience to all and sundry loving them as a child or pet I came to sense myself in a Fun House Horror Mirror Maze Carnival of becoming what was said and expected of me faithfully Rubber Child disposable

Defining meaning of life changes moment by moment escaped the pressure cooker of dependence once begun the journey is its own goal since death’s democracy has no fear within it and the hammer blows of suffering forge the sword and plow shear of self become

What?

Whole participant in the collective consciousness that the old ways are too old the definitions worn thread bare institutional lies enslaving me no more becoming a we an us responsible

Suffering experiencing deeds become loves salvation through love in love with All Of Us

120518 01:44 family departures
A skip and drag routine intervenes between my times at La Posada and otherwise not there; referred to generally as just hospice.

"Death is not the worst that can happen to men.” --Plato

Of death there are degrees. Some live a life uninhabited and unknown, oblivious to beginnings and endings. Others fret and sweat the small stuff attempting to control what is beyond the ken of man. And of those in the glide path going Home I watch since it is my job to make sure they are not in other forms of jeopardy imperiled.

And in them I see, sometimes peace, other times distress, and then sometimes decline then the end.

In no particular order: on one hand birth the other death each in a natural order. Life long or short, really is a question of quality versus quantity. The nurse whose father was there last time was not there this time. And in the telling I was told by the one telling  her father lost suddenly that day or the day before at forty. If you know the how and why of death life becomes precious beyond price.

By commission I was taught to inhabit and incarnate whatever I could know of Jesus who, to me at least, first vanquished death. Then I discovered Buddha who at the end said he longed never to return . . . and do it all over again. But that was five hundred years before AC/DC. . . . will any or all of us ever learn to walk away from our fear?

So in these closing days of my life I admire the people I’ve come to know as family those present and those absent. There is one volunteer aged eighty nine I am especially fond of. After a long absence he returned from convalescence--bladder cancer/a long dance. He was speaking to a friend who like me is close as we three are well aware. An aside, least I lead you astray: there are those very young adolescent who are part of our family who in losing their friends, pets, parents, et al, have realized a need to give comfort and succor too. Ideals impossible in an ‘ordinary’ hospital given all the political manipulations.

I called across the foyer to them both. “Curb your mouth she’s a friend.” He laughed, she giggled all three knowing his penchant and proclivity of being a curmudgeon. The “Catch 22” he was a bomber crew member flying Liberators in World War II. He, not alone, it is a privilege to be intimate with.

120518 02:41
Road Side Crosses & other markings passage
Odd this practice of remarking the place and time
Something like the crumpled wrapping paper and
ribbons littering the end of Christmas kids playing with
the boxes not the gifts

The baby pigeons beaks raised in expectation
eyes closed in sudden death first seen at four

The others friends, school mates, mothers
fathers young and old in repose open casket

Tree divided a man electrocuted by lightning
The friend crushed beneath a car on lookers gawked
blocking first responders a curiosity his eyes flashed to me
who he had introduced to the first sex worker who when I wanted
to talk said “Let’s Mount UP!” Oh well such is life glorious no shame or blame

120518 03:38
Intrigued by concepts pondered endlessly is the sense in which a child lives out the unlived life of their parent. Or. In my case the unlived lives of those of mine who lived and passed before me,  the aborted brother/sister or other child or children also.

I am at times furious with my father or Father of All of us and would contend with either or both together that i finally know myself loved or wanted at all.

Recall a moment in bliss floating upon an inter tube oblivious that I was at vast distance upon Long Island Sound from safety. And he my Dad swam to me in peril of his own life drawing me back to safety in his black knit penis revealing swim suit. . . . Oh god, he was hung like a horse. And other times alone together when he sacrificed his time to mine. In the minority yet never complete recompense the times he stood silent by while mom beat me nearly to death. Wounds, contusions, broken bones, naked standing in winter locked out can and do heal but those slanders defamations and denigrations never really go away though forgiven for/from either of them.

Why me? I’ll never know fully save that in intimacy I’ve been told too many similar stories to remain silent forever oblivious the pain of others made Banzai Trees contorted.

Runes, ruins, myths, omens, portents signs upon walls and dreams crushed pennies saved from city pavements spied speckled like the stars above in night adored. I seek clues about their legacy to me as a bequest from their parents reaching back into prehistory. A place wherein the unknowing name given was passed on and on to me to finally lay at rest this heritage of suffering.

She said we are no more important than a grain of sand--thus found Blake.
He said read Kafka and I better know both he, myself and all others who purport to serve . . . and now weep for their gifts to me both the parents and The Parent(s) of us all. Rapture or rupture I’m ready to end this ecstasy of playing with words.

. . . there is no end to/of love everything is a portal to something else and death no end rites of passage journey on infinity

. . . perhaps not so odd the though he wanted me sans clothes when together in the end our travels together mom however loathed being a woman and would flame me when I ogled her--less the last time before the white gild handled refrigerator coffin buried

“Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.”--Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)

“This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.”
--Buddha

120518 07:21
in the best of times i say ‘nothing is for naught’
in the worst of times I ask “WHY ME?”
& maybe at the 10,000th incident i receive answers worthy of record maybe not

120519 00:46
Let us now praise famous men/women, and our parents who begot us . . .
    In a sincere, appreciation and fulsome gratitude do I acknowledge the many who I would praise yet remain slave nor slavish to none not even God.
    But some I would praise more highly than others simply for their spirit of inquiry and curiosity pushing the boundaries of the human psyche beyond the limitless reaches of both God and all Creation.
    At the inception/inspiration of this post I had in mind Maria Popova for her manifold gifts apparent in Brainpickings. And other women who, of needs, will remain nameless for now. In this, my childlike, construct and perception: men seem most fixated upon goals achievable  while women see potential undefined and nurturing prize that. Upon the endless dust of creation neither leave traces save upon the sentient. Creation is not a product but a process self-rewarding; an act of love beyond price or praise.
    At full flood there is within these moments a choir of thoughts possible. Yet sticking to my compendium of encounters, clues and stumblings in the past 24 hours I will say this.
    A Blog is by its nature not definitive but born from journal keeping; the most intimate act possible in humans, solitary, recorded. For me without aggrandizement, pretence or illusion I write to heal others who like me suffer obscenely--in my case, make that past tense--and so it is apparent prayer.
    I am willing to be one pebble piled like The Tower of Babble to reach truths I know extant. And if I seem fractious or fatuous it seems a small price to pay so long as those few who read these words are engaged in the eyes of their heart and the hearing of their feet as they journey as well all do in life or death.
    As for myself, this aging white boy from Greenwich Connecticut and the halcyon Ohio River Valley born and breed, I don’t care to live another moment. The motive to publish has nothing to do with either immortality or any quantitative measure or treasure.
    Think of yourself growing and gestating into a new life undefinable yet worth every tear God might bestow the labor in delivery which for me is mere play. And for God’s Love I would be anything, mendicant fool or otherwise.
    I undergo constant redefinition both of intention and by experience. It is not a singular event like Jesus upon the Cross. Nor is it the sacrifice, of protest a Buddhist self immolating, that I would have you memorialize but these things in your own life and consciousness.
    What follows, from this day forward, will be an annotation of a life and work lived. Apparently fractious but a seamless continuity to me; a reprise of childhood sans the hammer blows forging a self/soul. Love is acceptance of everything including our selves unlovable. From this basis do I ask you to love yourselves and ask, for in asking you will receive from the Author of Creation.
    In closing, for now, one or two caveats: Be Here Now & Do No Harm . . . it is not you or me but we who must find the answers least we be no more.




   

120516 03:03
    Can I speak of grief? Of course I can from my experience. Yet every experience is unique to everyone in that we are all individual. A priest, knowing my history, asked once what he should, or might, say to a father who had, in backing up a truck, crushed his five year old son to death. In reply, “Just listen. He will tell you what he needs but give no chapter and verse.”
    Presumptuous, perhaps, in retrospect I sense my intuition correct. Better yet when I hear the phrase attributed to Jesus: “Let the children come unto me.” Given the loss of two and the absence of the other children by estrangement what I heard broke my teeth yet now in hearing enter His embrace as the child he meant.
    Somehow, and oddly, my questions and reply's seem more urgent not simply for service at hospice; the clinic--not the field--an entirely different experience. For there I learned to consider the needs of staff as well as the patients and their families/friends. It is not so much what I say or do but how they feel that concerns me. Sincerely I carry them in my heart and wonder at what I write since my prayer is continuous and inarticulate ... sometimes I fight to withhold my tears. Since not only is it “unmanly” by some standards to cry but I would rather they receive my acceptance of their pain by me unchanged.    
    Empathy, compassion and mercy are qualities unremarkable by outward signs; not something worn but something lived; to be. Of particular note are the family members of staff who pass there. Regardless degree, kind, nature of service all participate in significant ways. It is a family into which one can be adopted as familiar seen in new and alarming definitions as well as strangers embraced. There, more than one would expect, who healed leave on their own two feet.
    I see life, love, god and myself within each and everyone regardless their health. And pray that when I die I will have the courage to remain unchanged until the end not defined by the cause singular. But, perhaps, that too is vain of me to ask. It is in this sense, a prayer for myself, preemptive.
    I see our PTSD returning warriors as much in grief as in extremis emotionally. They sould be offered healing as well as our 'enemy.'
    It is not by science/psychology or religion/spirituality that we can be healed but both since to respond in love is to accept them exactly where they are and need to be in this time and situation.
    While I remain conscious of Jesus’ healing of others and raising the dead. I see now that it is a process involving the patient as well as the source of healing--intimate--in that love wills the will of God for both. It is something on the order of magnitude equal to loving thy enemy. Effective in the long and lasting term, better than drugs or palliatives, and no nasty side-effects or hangovers.
    Love is objectively indefinable. It is Islam’s ideal that God has many names, too numerous to mention, so too with Judaism. I, being a image recorder/creator am acquainted with the fetish nature of symbols which by it’s nature suggests cults.
    Subjectively, God is Love, present, personal, specific to each persons experience and responds to requests. So long as it’s not a new Escalade ... maybe, maybe not ... it wouldn’t do a thing for me. We all die and in the end even Jesus said, “Thy Will Be done.”   
    On an even more personal issue. I used to wonder while I wandered through everything: ‘What is definitive?” And thus everything became too important to attempt and fail. I know better now.
    I know nothing of the art and craft of writing and potentially a bit more about photography. Yet the more I learn about life, the more I know that I know less, than there is to be known. So if I lead you astray forgive, please, my trespass. Have mercy for both of us and let us know Love at last together.
    Be well
    Beloved
    Death has no dominion
    i know that!

PS In childhood a friend once described me as a tank into which rounds were fired yet I kept moving ... the crew inside, although wounded continued on....a recent insight. Happy in my solitude, my nature, I close with the following:

Loneliness, like flu, is "infectious", study finds
Tue Dec 1, 2009 3:06am EST
SINGAPORE, Dec 1 (Reuters Life!) - Loneliness, like the flu, is contagious, U.S. research shows.

It can spread among groups of people and women are more likely than men to become "infected", according to researchers at the University of Chicago, the University of California-San Diego and Harvard.

Using data from a large-scale study, they found lonely people tend to transmit their sad feelings to those around them, which eventually led to them being isolated from society.

"We detected an extraordinary pattern of contagion that leads people to be moved to the edge of the social network when they become lonely," said University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo, a leading U.S. expert on loneliness.

The findings were published in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Before losing their friends, lonely people transmit feelings of loneliness to their remaining friends, who also become lonely.

"On the periphery people have fewer friends, yet their loneliness leads them to losing the few ties they have left," Cacioppo said.

"These reinforcing effects mean that our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater," Cacioppo added.

Because loneliness is associated with mental and physical diseases that can shorten life, Cacioppo said it is important for people to recognize loneliness and help those affected before they move away to the edges.

For the study, the team examined records of the Framingham Heart Study, which originally studied the risks of cardiovascular disease for more than 5,000 people since 1948.

The study has since been expanded, and its second generation, which includes another 5,124 people, was the focus of the loneliness research.

The study showed that as people become lonely, they become less trustful of others, and a cycle develops that makes it harder for them to form friendships.

Societies seem to develop a natural tendency to shed these lonely people, something that is mirrored in tests of monkeys, Cacioppo said, adding that this makes it all the more important to recognize loneliness and deal with it before it spreads.

(Writing by Miral Fahmy; Editing by Paul Tait) ((miral.fahmy@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: miral.fahmy.reuters.com@thomsonreuters.net, +65 6870 3813)) ((If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com))

PPS what makes me do barrel rolls and loops amongst the starry nights soaring or in free fall . . . .

--John Dryden
“Beware the fury of a patient man.”

--John Milton
"So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life."

036. Flower Shower
Subhuti was Buddha's disciple. He was able to understand the potency of emptiness, the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity.

One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him.

"We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness," the gods whispered to him.

"But I have not spoken of emptiness," said Subhuti.

"You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness," responded the gods. "This is true emptiness." And blossoms showered upon Subhuto as rain.

120515 0538
    In any and all events it is shame to lay waste to a mind, body, much less a soul. Yet we hold the measure and means to do both wholesale unto extinction, ourselves and all life known, in the bargain. To aspire health, wealth and wisdom seem impossibilities in this time and place near pointless. In our brief history and culture, a thin and inconsequential veneer to our home, upon the marble we call earth. Within the larger contest of all marbles seen and unseen. Questing for life by our definition “divine?” Our bodies alone are filled with life inimical to our well being held in check by curious defenses at least 90% our responsibility and participation.
    Our sense of peace and equanimity.
    Do I protest the Factory Farming of our psyches or bodies? No. Since it is ideal, at least for me, to Love my Enemy and grant that enemy the right, no matter singular or corporate, to exist as I do. Free, whole and well. Call that Liberal to which I would quietly say, ‘No it is conservative of my sense the Truth spoken, immutable, by He who I call brother. And not He alone but for all the prophets of Freedom to be at all individual.’
    In the final moments of our time together, my father choose to shred my right, in whole or part minuscule, to his estate based upon choices not inimical to me but to him. By choice and chance the list grew intolerable. He weeping sober myself silent gazing and grazing the content of his intention. My sole surviving daughter called a Nigger so offensive I fell speechless and not simply for my knowing we are all biracial stemming from an original pair most likely black in origin. Or that I provided him with no heirs to carry the ‘family name’ forward knowing too well my age and the tubal ligation of the bride of my youth; taste and choice in women thereafter.
    For a lifetime before when questioning the origin of our sir name he’d say, “We’re from a long line of chicken thieves and barn burners!” And I when more nearly mature than before knew the name differently. And not for alone the Spratt who lived on Wall Street in the home of The Exchange property become; chased and badgered with the rhyme implying theft of alms for the poor who he, under Tammany, administered. Or the one who lived on Long Island holding and breeding race horses and slaves.
    By inference or implication I knew we came from Vikings originally, possibly Berserkers, who raped, pillaged, killed, maimed and/or burned our victims. Then in a latter time settled in Scotland, Ireland, England when they were ignorant the collective “Great Britain.” Where the rhyme is recorded, initially, in A Child's Alphabet of Friends.
    No. Frankly I am bored by heritage only fascinated by legacy. The bequest from generation to generation by deeds not fortune or fame. Mythology oft bespeak truths too fantastic to believe yet in simplicity remain a thorn in our sole; a stigmata in the soul.
    If I weep now, for I do, the privilege of serving the Lord’s Blood in a pewter cup, possibly consecrated by a Spratt, Dean of Westminster Abby and buried in the vestibule. Curious. Lady Antonia Fraser confirmed my suspicions while I was the only photographer to ever get them together without bushwhack, she and Harold Pinter. He later allowed me access to the stage upon which I photographed a dress rehearsal for Trinity Repertory Theater an American premier, a play whose name escapes me now, so long ago it was.
    A point of order and recent--at the moment--discovery: I might well be a fly, yellow jacket or mud wasp pollinating from origin either waste or glory. In any case I was never satisfied to record the light reflected from anything but seeing/seeking the glowing fire from within.
    Let us now praise famous women/men who before us stood defiant and self-derived the obscenity called education provided vocational pap for nascent slaves to serve “divine rights” of Royalty or Politicians to so rule our lives.
    And in the end of my quest regarding our sir name I fell fascinated by a legend or myth beneath the one in question: “Jack Spratt could eat no fat..” It was suggested that there was before a “Jack The Giant Killer.”
    Farther I did forgive my father. In doing so became able to forgive myself the fury and welcomed my poverty as St. Francis did to his satisfaction.
    Grinning to anyone who will listen I describe the lascivious imaginings of misspending his wealth indiscriminately fathering children with women of many colors and proclivities populating a world soon to be no more.

120515 00:10
    My dream, were I to attempt expatiation, was like a chess game times five, vertical and twirling in complexity beyond three or four dimensions, possibly five!?
    In these brief moments of consideration, while brewing coffee and voiding, I came to sense it the work of a mind, mine, being willing to accept that our consciousness is vastly more complex than I’d previously considered. Yet mine in particular, more willing to accept, without apology, in child like innocence, the divinely salacious, height, width, depth, and breadth of it as common among we the species called mammalian.
    Visualization in two dimensions reminds me of black & white representations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, of which I am too little familiar otherwise ... something looked forward to. Perhaps should I live long enough and God allows.
    Perhaps I should introduce the various elements, conscious, preceding this event stellar. Today I met for the first time a woman within whom a cancer had grown blocking her esophagus rendering her unable to speak, drink, or eat, or fully breathe, dying slowly--clearly. To witness this in however brief moments I was in her presence was like watching a person drown and starve to death too slowly; completely helpless. And at that the witness of my son, by implication my father and in consequence my persistence in smoking cigarettes extenuated beyond endurance regardless my empathy.
    Earlier I’d requested a doctor to sing my DNR (Do Not Resuscitate). What evolved was a debate regarding the futility of it in current context litigious, political, moral or ethical conducted in 5/8th time. Of equal futility is my willingness to donate any or all parts of my body that another could/should live since mine are essentially worn out by age.
    God! How I adore Jesuits and others of comparable compassion in debate. Being a fool for words adored as well, I, among friends say of myself report: “Jousting with Jesuits.”
    Then too I’d been in the presence of she whom I adore unreasonably and sensed our love making fully clothed in public more fantastic than anything I’d previously longed for physically or within my two dream encounters with The Virgin Mary.
    In childhood I’d been presented with, as fixed, immutable, gospel, The Bible and Shakespeare. Yet in this context, the day and dream, reminded me of my first self-derived/discerned Truth spoken and attributed to Voltaire: “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Perhaps not verbatim yet adequate in this context.
    Suffice it to say that more important then context is the apprehension of the potential Mankind’s reply to God’s love and the passion/compassion within both.
    Process not fixed in stone ... the journey more important than the goal.
    Terminus?
    Could it have been being in the Presence? A conversation unspoken yet illustrated? Possibly annotated by a yin and yang of yes/no in black & white? If so or if not why do I now cry open eyed in joy?
    With humor my potentially only saving grace; I’d rather Truth from the Source than anything said of Him, Her or It. And if I pretend any value to so teach that anyone else can achieve the same end before we collectively stand in the court of consequence inconvenient and incontinent the truths we ignore.
    For me, finally, death has no dominion.
    A final and parting shot across the bow of my own bigotries. This dream seems to indicate that I must, in truth accept the failings of myself, unforgiven until, now the maundering's of those for whom my words, thoughts and  conclusions, remain essentially inconsequential, superfluous and the squeaking a gnat. I would contend with God but to Mankind I remain convicted that we are the body politic and the only ground of Truth potential in context: here and now. More simply said, “We must become the change we want to see in the world.” --Gandhi

http://forum.quoteland.com/1/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=586192041&f=099191541&m=1...

120514 04:57
    I tend to visualize the highest power as a multi faceted gem and then all life of equal complexity. It would seem simplistic but I refuse to accept the idea that we ‘create God in our image or vis-a-versa.’ Since for me the conjunction of events and elements of my life so often indicate otherwise filtered through my skeptical mind and conception/perception.
    We learn differently through this prism and no one way better than another . . . if you wish to know what love is hug a leaper or mongoloid. I as a cipher, and being superfluous, am conscious that the leaper is me, the mongoloid is many I’ve encountered. And in general terms, in past representations of myself, I though of “The Elephant Man” or Quasimodo until I was better informed that they were more wise and loving than I’ll ever be; to my shame.
    I am potentially better informed about death then most people I know. It follows that I reserve an anger towards indifference to life in all forms upon or within our nest, what we call the World. And regarding suicide, having contemplated it near daily for most of my life (see Enneagram: Type 4), I hold a special reverence for the freedom of choice--to breed or not breed--to destroy one’s life or not.
    My daily ritual of collecting quotes has come to be an education I dismissed as impossible in childhood, the information inferred or implied indicated that I wasn’t worth the effort therefore I never really tried. But like the mongoloid I loved emphatically. It is a precious quality available to all; thinks pets and children who know better than to allow prejudice and bigotry to dominate their perceptions.
    Happily I maintain the virginity of my mind in the following sense: if Jesus had no children than by adoption I am His kid. And not His alone but the child of Mohammad, Einstein, Confusions, Buddha and so on and on and on.
    Factually I have nothing new to say on the issue, “The Truth Will Set You Free”, etcetera. If money, fame, immortality were an issue I could easily repackage the available resources, in much the same way pharmaceutical corporations do aspirin for profit. As for prophecy the idea of predicting events bores me and regarding the issue of protest and descent the hidden governance of corporations posing as individuals has aborted many of our rights to free speech.
    When ever I hear “Right To Life” I privately and quietly ask “What Life?”
    I have larger issues to ponder than the ideas/ideals most fear and guard against thus making themselves good consumers of any authority figure or cult that comes along--it is all process, grow where you’re planted and expect/welcome change--that’s real life.
    The education I eschewed is essentially vocational beginning and ending in a reward: better pay for doing something that sucks the life & soul out of you.
    We generally operate with a fraction of our potential, immensurable, immense, while last year alone 7.1 million children died of preventable disease. I can hear the argument ‘but they were ignorant, a different religion or color than I!” Greed is selfish, love Generous. I am subsisting on less than the national poverty level via Social Security yet remain wealthier than most of the worlds population--and at that without complaint except for the pompous politicians who purport to serve me or us. In a sense think of them, plus their corporate sponsors, as murders. I once thought of German cars being wrapped in the flesh of dead Jews--I still do--yet apply the same concept to SUVs wrapped in the flesh of our dead children mutilated in useless wars.

--Ernie Pyle
When Ernie Pyle, the famous World War II correspondent, was killed on the Pacific island of Ie Shima in 1945, a rough draft of a column was found on his body. He was preparing it for release upon the end of the war in Europe. He had done much to promote the myth of the warrior and the nobility of soldiering, but by the end he seemed to have tired of it all:

    But there are many of the living who have burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world.

    Dead men by mass production—in one country after another—month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.

    Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.

    Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.

    These are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn’t come back. You didn’t see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France.

    We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That’s the difference.

“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”  --H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken

. . . in a way it would be better if I were retroactively aborted, or merely remained silent.

120512 03:51
    I have no idea and no memory of what I post from, day to day, hour to hour, save the memory of phrases and ideas . . . or dreams that propel me from ‘rest.’ I refuse to obey the ideal that I must sleep a contiguous eight, seven, six or five hours. It suits me not. For those who ask, in general, I am generous with my time and for a few overly so going so far as to be for them a nurse if need be in the sense I am neither poo, pee, or blood adverse. But in that statement betray myself and fear being kicked to the curb by the one thing I overtly and consummately find, life, love and meaning for: hospice work; yet like the ministry have so little time left to gain the requisite degree proclaiming my right to do or be so.
    I am a person ‘on fire’ with knowing the value and price of each and every moment. And too well aware of death but more the victims of war on both sides. In that I am convicted that death is not the end of what writes ‘immortal’ or not, prose or poetry, or the faltering attempt to cram a new life into a small vessel of time as in think cosmically and act locally.
    Organically growing from my arising methodology of collecting quotes, astonishingly wonderful way to learn to ‘write’--and I’ve never be able to apprehend the difference between crystals and prisms metaphorically . . . or like mirrors and windows, glass is a gas, crystals are something else altogether at least to me in the rock polisher of my mind more precious than any other stone.
    In any case this ‘morning’, for it is still dark, opening my quote files in Jarte: multiple tabs, WordPad on steroids, the entire alphabet available, I fell across Tennessee Williams: “The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”, then remembered “Suddenly Last Summer” which like several experiences continue to tumble in my memory until they become transparent.
    If you were to ask all and  sundry relatives, wives, lovers and friends they might well say the I did perpetrate ‘evil’, or no good, did them dirt, especially in my leaving and like the one who suggested I volunteer at hospice I continue where led daily in homage and reverence for them as well as for what I’ve become: bliss, joy, confident in voice, act and deed, at last in these fleeting moments. A warriors mind and poet’s heart; “Today is a good day to die.”
    The sweet baptism of a child is but a dedication, the baptism of fire, quite another. A choice made for whatever reason or season in ecstasy, terror, during mid to later years, is substantive.
    I gave my heart to Jesus over the telephone in St. Petersburg Florida long ago, then my soul recently to God in private. Of the former I fear I’ve made a bit of a fetish, at times nearly a cult figure. Yet of the latter God, unknowable, yet present the song of the wind playing the Aeolian Harp of me best blessed by vagrant breezes and typhoon obvious. Doesn’t mean I’ll not fail nor that I can speak for the personage of many names but I will arise again to pantomime seeking the Elephant groping blind. No birds alight on me like Francis but dragonflies yes and whales too and even snakes in dreams have baptized me. . . . again and again.
    Yet obviously my tap root is in Jesus and my leafy arms reach and find before God all the other prophets sent to heal our suffering individually and collectively. In love there are no boundaries only love itself--its own justification--just like life.
    My sole intention is to aid you in finding your soul magnificent. . . . and we’ll be fools for Love together. Blessings of the day Mothers -- no regrets.

“Prayer reaches out in love to a dying world and says, "I care." --Dick Eastman

"The sheer rebelliousness in giving ourselves permission to fail frees a childlike awareness and clarity. ... When we give ourselves permission to fail, we at the same time give ourselves permission to excel."  --Eloise Ristad

120510 23:38
broken by intent or askew the family born into
we are two so familiar in the eyes of one another
maybe in another time we will be lovers again
making babies and household all that now no
longer feasible  the feast of youth long past half
generation apart so now friends met by accident?

I would be her female to her male conjoined 
healed and wed together imagined bliss if only
it were so this no divorce friends forever life
we seem of a time before time was measured or
treasured as the rule of life that begins and ends

in truth i had no sense of having a soul worth keeping
save for her healing the various sundry ills beset me
insanity of course wishing to die soon by my own hands
type 2 diabetes a broken heart literally and figuratively
and a towering rage apparent only to her there too was
grief inconsolable and she said yes to a cup of coffee
gallons ago

her home visited once per annum celebrating Thanks
giving her birthday and Christmas rolled into one is my
Mecca come Jerusalem Ganges and Bodh tree pilgrimage
my calendar set the New Year the longest day after the
shortest her birth God is zero Jesus eight Mary twelve yet
i’ve no house save these words indwelling impelling
flight unvisited save for once or twice the syntax telling
she has no sense of value in her self save what she says
by ritual quote and I don’t write for her but God and my
self welded had i the grace of Rumi or Shakespeare to
tell the love between us I’d say more but this must be
enough for now it is finished until I cry again we are
beloved by God who in loving us is unable to make
us love ourselves let alone one another in trust
120511 00:28 4m

staring into the abyss staring back at us
in retribution the evil intent is exorcising 
ourselves becoming the abyss multiplied
oddly destroying and/or other wise teach
ing them to be more terrorist than we with
might sans right to kill three million there
fore the 5 thousand or so they destroyed?
did we not teach the slayers of Oscar Romero?
the keeper is kept
the slain slays us
what part of ‘Do no murder’ is misunderstood?

“There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people.”
--Robert Frost

“Weak people cannot be sincere.”
--La Rochefoucauld

“As long as I know myself to be a coward I shall be unhappy.”
--L. Frank Baum

. . . recent posted research suggest the demise a time of dinosaurs
caused by their flatulence the next dying off will be due the fatuousness of those who purport to serve and protect
the time of war is impracticable and never the ‘Will of God’ save only those who ‘by divine right’ elect themselves as faux demigods ‘God’s Will’ generally implies do no murder nor harm least wise will we be naked crying and playing with cockroaches and rats who’ll survive us upon a bare gray ball pocked with not comet strikes but nuclear f__k you very much Exxon & Uncle Bob Cheney Howdy being wooden and voiceless remains the dummy.

“Don't pray to escape trouble. Don't pray to be comfortable in your emotions. Pray to do the will of God in every situation. Nothing else is worth praying for.”
--Samuel M. Shoemaker

. . . black arts practiced by young children waffling joy sticks playing drones seem benevolent compared to
FBI, NSA, CIA, HLS et al who I anticipate burying me alive the grave i dig with my mouth let it be so i’ll die soon anyway as will we all . . . but what of the children?

“One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.”
--Aldous Huxley

“A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.”
--Andre Gide

“When three people call you an ass, put on a bridle.”
--Spanish proverb
http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/random_quotes.html
"It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" --Jesus in Matthew 4:4 --- all above quotes save Jesus’ were collected randomly this day, date, time
. . . least I bore you to tears or self immolation or otherwise to grasp your posterior with both hands and kiss it goodbye also see, please: Going Solo: A Brief History of Living Alone and the Enduring Social Stigma Around Singletons
By: Maria Popova http://www.brainpickings.org/

close session search and write 120510 10:36

can hardly I call it a game or play these moments at awakening when as in the now distant past I’d play Bible Bingo random selection greeting the new day the impact is similar yet the results often strange in difference between now becoming a new eternity lived in a day and sleep a death welcomed without expectation of resurrection again

events of these past several days irrevocably changed me lessening my romantic ideation to something harder less squishy and in my random encounter with quotes collected or new to me I find affirmation of questions and resolutions asked yesterday and long before only more consciously emphatic

it is enough to orchestrate the elements intention to completion in anything we do all is a self portrait anyway rendered yet it oft seems that we hurl our first new born into the night well hearing no splash the sound of one hand is silence best applause derived comes from within yet in another time or conjunction confluence intercourse with another is affirmation of both the origin of love and random mention

providence or divine inspiration seems pretentious but is not all life so the fact of free will alone should give us pause to kneel or fall prostrate in supplication the gifts denied or accepted responsibly for others that they not merely exist but thrive in these brief moments between the beginning and end of infinity

do i capitalize or punctuate these prancing words or like Einstein stand a fool grinning before God in the end who is no White Man with Gold Tooth grinning amused flashing from behind a vast snow white beard an antique Santa Claus playfully

indubitability reading came first orgasm second finally in closing days ecstasy playing with words
father was a marvelous fencing master who having run me through the heart with ‘you have diarrhea of the mouth’ early and often followed with ‘a monkey with a word processor could write a novel,’ and by extrapolation poetry epic or doggerel and between God and Man indifferent to self lays silence as death when last I after many similar verbatim's asked why ‘I didn’t know any better.’ . . . the critic? he loved to mutilate words as i did and do mangled

. . . no, like Lincoln the silence his address at Gettysburg miss thought a prayer The Sound of One Hand echoing . . . “Oh love will make a dog howl in rhyme.” - John Fletcher

120510 03:46 final 08:41

He said, my father, first god of my knowing
“there are those of kindness & others of cruelty”
describing composers, conductors, musicians and
others of genius among whom he sought acquaints
compelling me to familiarity with Kafka, Mencken
and more the lesser known contemporary to our
brief time together In his last lingering heart beats
he called me to say goodbye though enraged with
his overt indifference to me his final gift was a self
knowing more valuable than any treasure or measure
rod Separately we have come to know the genius of
God

120509 0706 #1

“I too must attempt a way by which I can raise myself above the ground, and soar triumphant through the lips of men.”
--Virgil

120508 18:28
    I write to make sense of the chaos surrounding me in ordinary time.
The theft of time by those who purport to serve, not just me but us, who attack with negatives imperiously prejudging us guilty. Ask me for a shirt and I’ve give you mine plus pants shoes and socks. Steal them and it is a different matter.
    Throughout these events, both the treat of being homeless and the ravishing attack by the IRS I came to wonder not ‘why me’ but what is this happening for? And eventually what can I learn from them--the event and players; to game the system? I don’t think so.
    In freewill, skewed by love versus fear, it is encumbent upon us individually to adapt, improvise and prevail. If not triumphant to survive with dignity and respect for our personal souls. And at that I remember the Jew who mooned his executioners in contempt for their presumption to kill him, his family, his community for being Jews. How alike we’ve become in our export of greed and terrorism imperially self-righteous; not democracy since in reality we have none but the illusion.
    Yet this applies equally to religion, governance, science all of which are mirror mazes experienced by our expectations in which experience proves the reflections to be distorted, the mirrors untrue, one small, the other fat, another invisible with no way out.save the faux Messiah purporting to give us reprieve and succor should only we consume this or that remedy in blind belief. Justice? There is none! Save within the kernel of God inherent in all life. And ‘it’ is in essence TRUTH transparent not sequestered for the few who grow fat in conceit that they alone know it.
    I judge myself as harshly as those who have led us to become terrorist to the world. I could name names but it is pointless to irk the ire of the unjust lest I be buried in sand alive or buried in red tape. Suffocated either way.
    I am not now nor have I ever been “A True Believer” in Eric Hoffer’s definition in any one or thing institutional and in sincere confession asked God to be true and God is truth, all else falling far beneath that bar. To be true to one self is to embrace all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly and divine then chose which center to live from. I fail this again and again yet fallen face forward in the dreck I get up and keep moving the goal always beyond my grasp yet the journey is the goal in itself, love life. Be here now.

--Dag Hammarskjold (Statesman)
“Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up.”
“It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity.”
"Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible; not to run away."
"There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life's point of no return."
“Time goes by: reputation increases, ability declines.”
“You wake from dreams of doom and--for a moment--you know: beyond all the noise and the gestures, the only real thing, love's calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn.”

--Horace
“He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.”

. . . and in the end I will never forget being led to read Kafka’s “IN THE PENAL COLONY” previously read at age fourteen then lost but too well remembered save for the title.

120508 06:55
pardon me while I disappear
the landlord threatened me with eviction
the tax man is weighing my genitals with one hand my purse with another a meat cleaver front and center in her belt
bureaucrats attempting to measure my competency in cost benefit bean counter ways the immeasurable profit of a cup of water given to the dying imprisoned in a glide path as I too wend my way towards where they go a superfluous man like they like all of life eventually like politicians who join the parade stepping like geese lock kneed because they can exercise power in only one way by raping the poor for their benefit simply because they can

I too was and remain a rapacious bastard filled with longing for power yet fundamentally altered by “The first will be last and the last first” and now sense in the end we will be measured by our treasury of how we treated the poor and unholy washed in our time and place death become my goal in learning that when we learn to die we learn to live each and every moment prized

I wonder why I take these few moments in peace to steal what is mine sacrosanct peace absent fear of being sodomized by them kneeling naked upon the dark cold cement floor naked as they prance and shout gloat and smirk their right to be as they are to me thieves of my right to exist as I am and will eternally remain

essentially I do so in honor and reverence for those who did so before me loving and forgiving their assassination justified in order to keep the peace their control by terror those who disagree and in whatever wisdom tradition conscious that the choice is mine to elect the highest power versus their faux fear mongering lip service avoiding the draft the wars they send other peoples children to fight for their profit in some small innocuous way remembering In Flanders Field, Red Badge of Courage, All Quiet on the Western Front and James Jones and on-and-on who in ‘deathless prose’ told another version vision of what lay beneath all the hype and vainglory

there are the few against the many who like smoke taint the mass of greed gone mad wreathed not in glory but in plain flesh and blood willing to love despite the insanity since those who kill are just like they killed bearing a kernel of grace choosing not but to disdain in addiction to obtain some other reason to glorify institutionalized law-of-land imperious unclothed rapacious bastards regardless of gender just like me who chooses to be otherwise power to the 99% the six million and the sixty million who were but a few victims of greed.

it is said that calamities come in threes, is that all there is
the measure of justice is not who wins or loses since both sides do
Solomon said divide the child in half the one who said I give up loved the child the other wanted the child alive or dead object/subject the first “proactive the second reactive”

"There is no way to peace peace is the way" –Thich Nhat Hanh

. . . in the end it is only the Buddhist who self-immolate their protest against the abuses of power and create nor fight in wars . . . perhaps this is my funeral pyre yet to be ignited; stop the world I want to get off

120508 01:13
i'm a girly boy, or go have carnal knowing of yourself Arnold
   
"Man loves little and often, woman much and rarely." --Anonymous
"Men wonder when and where, women wonder why?" --Billy Joel? . . . cannot find it for accurate attribution, not exactly a paraphrase, but if Billy didn't say it he should have.

If I choose to remain celibate it is not for the want of a man, woman or sheep
it is that a prophet in his own home is a fool to the mate, qualities lost in the quantity of mechanics sustaining a life together
& i for 1 am driven to distraction by the thesis that marriage is 'divine' or the ideation of Mary Magdalene & Jesus as an item
Yet sighting either or both together or individually I sense we miss the point: attraction, desire, contractual/covenantal consummated, children or none the goal ideally and in time is Friendship otherwise marriage is a legal real estate issue only successful if renewed daily
Or is it that we sell our lifetime for a pot of lust then buyer's remorse?
or marry because it is expected as normal
4 me the issue best told is two individuals
whole complete able to love the other
to the extent of letting them be
themselves with or without
the other
free to leave and return or not.
In point of Order women mature early accelerating into truths unimaginable to boys who lag behind and usually die at adolescence regardless age fame accomplishment or wealth otherwise -- unspeakable acts crimes against women and mankind can never be justified by custom, ethic or morals situational or institutional
in the end rushing towards us not a rogue comet but simply the fact we've been fruitful and multiplied beyond the capacity of this bus regardless who sits in front or back
nothing save God is forever we know this as fact
unknown to the tribes that established the ideals
way back when there were far fewer of us
or are we no more divine than cancer
& i 4 1 love much and rarely a few close
to me in this place and time
does this make me a pansy queer or a 'girly boy' true to the ideal of the greatest love is forgiveness and acceptance what is better qualified as tolerance
might is not right it is ridiculous

"Learn to ... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not."
--Henri Frederic Amiel

"What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires an accomplice."
--Charles Baudelaire

3:1 messages in bottles
suspended night becalmed sea fingers dandle
wolffish nibbling my bait for The All stars revolve
while somnambulant the tarmac sea stable as a
grave unconscious bait for the whale beneath
agape jaws ready to inhale me whole until when
if ever a cold rigid touching bottle with messages
as stars within waiting for me to read? a luciferin
small fish like plankton nothing
120505 01:29 -- 120507 19:47 -- final

120506 03:08
“NAKED BIKINI CARE WASH & WAX”
Given cutbacks in everything especially by those self-congratulatory who reward themselves with raises, lifetime security and endless measures to destroy life in other ways--Congress having congress with itself-- one should not be surprised at the extents to which we who care are driven to acquire funds to serve others

Finally found a new and only home ever for me so late in life I volunteer in an organization running 24/7/365 giving loving compassionate care for the dying who miraculously sometimes go home on their own two feet unlike the hospitals running a similar schedule who more like Midas Muffler Shops in-&-out often causing either death or worse problems for which we pay like the Chinese who send a bill for the bullet that killed your beloved

A special and personal living grief: a beautiful slip a girl a former Marine in an otherwise innocuous medical procedure had her bladder perforated and the remedy is escalating daily at this point it is only $60,000.00 promoting profits

Of Turnips Traumas & Tragedies
Agape constrains me from further details regarding the Marine yet it is axiomatic that the powers that be cannot squeeze blood from turnips and what goes around comes around. Or the Silver Standard: Do unto others as you would have done to you. . . . or is that “THE GOLDEN RULE”? or, in this Kafkaesque novel: give a bureaucrat a job and watch them serve themselves onanisticlly with not only your tax dollar but ethics and morals bought and sold by Exxon . . . oh yes, of course when you go to buy a gallon of milk you don’t think of the Africans dying of pollution extortion greed rivers of tar or your children and theirs to follow will have no air or water consumable oh well my thoughts are addressed to the too few literate and am too-well-aware my vote inconsequential yet I know the Marine stood watch to protect my right.

My point?
Oh yes! Of the five-hundred-or-so who came to buy clothes, furniture, televisions, et cetera, just a guesstimate, as I photographed them between lifting and  toting things, the customers would often remark, “My mother, My Father, My Child” & and-on-and-on died there at the clinic or at home; hospice was there for them

Forgive please this modestly angry screed and trespass my intention was otherwise to annotate the number of peers, friends, strangers and myself who are dedicated to avoid Hospitals, Pharmaceuticals, Doctors and Medical Insurance  CEOs who award themselves with $103,000,000.00 annual salaries + bonuses + stock options + executive isolation from the people who died because their claims were denied, mangled, malpracticed, not to mention indifferent exclusion and legalized economic slavery

Of relevance is my wish to die without aid from those who purport to serve fallaciously the cost benefit analyses doesn’t equate my grave will be the dumpster instead . . . my DNR is about to be authorized and best yet I was educated in The Greenwich Connecticut Public School System to kill people with my bare hands and many of my classmates stole all my money the kernel of which I saw my grandmother alter waist and hems of blue jeans for anyone who needed it

Since The Thought Police have access to every site, porno or otherwise, every email and telephone call and their minions ready to execute by any means but considering Black Opts I’ll probably die of either a chemically induced suicide heart attack or better yet buried alive or maybe a listing drone poisonous maybe I’m insane as they will claim just like Russia

. . . but then we’re already in the Cuckoo’s Nest aren’t we . . . pardon me while I roar off in my gigantic SUV and run over a few pedestrians or bicyclist while sexting on my cel phone if they’re lucky they will die instead of being paralyzed for life no need for hospice then

barking laughter coupling whoops of derision ricocheted caroming the baby poop beige halls
my lover knew exactly the nature of ribald photography depicting fellatio in a daily newspaper
once recalling an entire run The Sunday rotogravure cover depicting in detail the various and
many implementable mechanical modalities of preventing the birth unwanted children by 
inadvertent dalliances which sadly unused between us resulted in a foetus shred disposed in the
sewers of Manhattan with baby crocodiles flushed by parents from children’s circus trip grown
gargantuan inhaling entire school bus’ of children and their nannies drivers and keepers

retrospectively there had been one or two others women before whom I could naked stand their
recommendation: write! and before the last taboo of restraint mother who replied ‘you don’t need
my permission to write’ not then knowing either of us the consequence that impels words from my
loins through the speaking trumpet dad’s double stainless steal shot glass so like the image dreamed
of two glass funnels conjoined a modern version of Aeolian Gabriel's horn Maynard Ferguson ripping
brass High C above High C above that  ‘Yesterdays’ “Haven’t got the chops to do it again Jack” & he a
student of Gurdjieff and Miles who ignored me back stage Newport the image like us all gone soon U me 2 everything governed by Exxon meet and greet your posterior and kiss it goodbye two handed

frozen chocolate dipped with chopped peanuts covered banana she haply accepted free to pose
laughing bare midriff and succulent crop top squeaking really!?! irreverent, rude, salacious when
asked what was your intent I shrugged my shoulders kicked up black ink dust off the terra cotta tiles
twirling my eyes like a strippers tassels Alfred E Newman grin what me worry? Tom Wolf was her special
friend before me and when she said ‘my photographer’ by way of explaining my presence as her
taxi driver schlepper sho 'nuff honey child would you like to walk home i whispered into her pink shell ear
beneath gold brocade hair Lucy in the sky with diamonds reflected in owl glasses never in bed or ‘lay byes’

we double teamed Gloria Steinem two foxes and a dummy for which and others award showered then
the photo editor who though he’d given me a job otherwise sat upon my images with a glass eye his pants
around his ankles took me into a glass office where no one could hear other than the alcoholic chief
photographer who sat mute while he the cyclops artist tore me new orifices all over my body when
he ran out of things to accuse me of taking away his job winning awards the stupid copy boy didn’t know that
the majority were derived from stories discovered by me on the streets ‘have you essentially said everything
you wanted/needed to say? Silence then I suggested if he asked me the time of day that he should do so only in
the presence of a guild steward and never spoke to him again. Another photographer and I would speculate
the implantation of a cancerous prostate in rebuttal to his asinine presumptions the photog become a shrink

of the lover she who had two & i two about to lose both but not at that point in time she said ‘never change’
but that’s my secret name ‘chance’ its my nature said the scorpion to the frog both drown like the child who
would could can’t be born the affair magnificent died ever and always grieved she & all the women in my life
who inseminated me with words to come now here beloved like da Betsy G and 4m i a fucking terror with
camera and words am immolating my heart all over again here now be

120504 00:40

120501 2322 dreams
    To expunge earnestness and reveal an essential irreverence towards myself; excluding self deprecation--my primary self defense towards the “too stupid to live” messages received, implied, or inferred. About which it was common for me to encapsulate in the phrase “preemptive damage control.” Which, later, in it’s turn become “the dance of Avoidance.” In both cases I became mute, watchful, no, hyper vigilant for I knew the boarder between order was about to be breached. I was a mini death this short circuiting of myself.
    In the cold light of sobriety sans my typical awakening with dreams, visions and dialogs--who in their turn become a sort orgiastic slow building orgasm of confluence, apparent to me, yet irrelevant to those who might read me with indifference. I can only say that even the Bible, at times, was merely defaced byproduct on dead tree flesh.
    Writing began as an attempt to heal the insanity of grief. Not merely the lost children, the unlived life abandoned as painter, sculptor musician dancer or lover. All the things that impelled me to twitch and writhe in joy since infancy. Through the agency or device of journal keeping. My consciousness becomes focused like an ice pick thrust into the night; a lightning rod through which like Frankenstein I become vivified.
    I was then and remain an ecstatic. How else can I reconcile the hammer blows as merely justified punishment. For what? Living?
    It follows that I had my love affair with the nights alone, safely cocooned in the sanctuary of my bed. And of those nights the many pets who slept with me that I could stroke awake or in my sleep, of those blest friend I model my love for everything.
    In my dreams, various and seldom populated with terror, there remained one repeated. Always initiated in a dark subterranean passage. What slowly, with repetition, became the basement of what I only came to know fully on the fifth and last occurrence.
    Paved with large flat stones arranged in various levels, ramps, mazes, odd openings in the walls through which would be screams, cries for help a full spectrum of colored lights flashing or exploding. My cowering passage, at first was short, with each reprise came a few more feet gained. Toward the latter phases I would stroll cocky and knowing . . . in some sense the phrase “crooked ways made plain.”
    Always naked I emerged through a basement bulkhead bifurcated door which I closed behind me and walked away. At some distance I turned and saw behind my course an enormous crenelated castle with banners gently waving above the battlements. Only then did I realize myself upon a trackless desert laved by moon light.
    In recent time I’ve come to correlate my ‘great dream’ with my birth as described by mother. She claimed it was 58 or 59 hours of dry labor in Christ Hospital, a Catholic Institution. No mention was made of the whereabouts of my father. He may have been playing a gig or merely otherwise absent. I’ve only shared this with an emphatically trusted friend whose knowledge, experience and birth was equally hazardous and imperiled. The reply: “Impossible she would have died!” Resonates still.
    In the not too distant pass I had my horoscope drawn and the insistence of a gay, nudist, Episcopal priest and Jungian psychologist. It too lays waste, someplace in the wake of my journey, as are most of my journals, publications in print, words and photographs--everything up to approximately 2000. Yet I retain some sense, the sight, mostly oppositions near vertical and the message I was to “speak truth to power”, had a poets mind . . . and . . . that is all, carry on.
    My friend dismisses divination of any type with the simple statement, “put in a change order.” And then later would comment some verification the position of stars and planets influencing a general disposition or predilection.
    I had from first to last, yet I live, a child’s simple faith in love. An ineluctable force that I could love people into loving themselves . . . if not ever loving me. Since it is love given without condition or hope of repayment we give to the Origin of All Things and motives and intentions. I love, nonetheless those who cannot, will not, ever love themselves.
    Love your enemy as yourself, is a stone upon which I crumple my teeth, still, and so define love at it’s base rock foundation as simple acceptance, my enemy, my self, the right to be.
    I pivot and twirl upon the spike finally convicted that the world in we which to live must have love possible. And in my leaving let me have the courage of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to, naked, thank my keeper, forgive my executioner and then have my head torn off; hanging by wire. . . .Slumped, headless and naked upon the cold, dark, stone floor--Nazi Germany very near the end of World War II--little did I know, until recently, he conspired to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
    Or Emily Dickens: “Called Back.”
    Equally: Gandhi blessed his assassin.
    These heroes of mine, of and about them I have queried, my quest answered. We can ask all we want yet God is the final arbiter thus we must do for ourselves, in love, the only thing left--Love.
    Odd conjecture: I once saw the Jews as sheep lead to slaughter shorn their dignity, yet now I see them heroic in love, their sacrifice possibly messianic for all time. Vengeance propagates vengeance. And the end of war will be the end of our species. Let their loss be not in vain . . . never to slay again.
    I need not be RIGHT of left wondering since “vengeance is Mine, said The Lord our God.”
    Of dreams, journals, ecstasy and horror, I can only say; pay attention to the height, width, breadth and depth of what you love and/or fear.
    Perhaps, possibly, maybe, maybe not, I’ll have 1 Corinthian’s 13 tattooed upon my forehead inverso to read while shaving least I lend the impression I’ve had my face in a bag filled with sugar coated jelly donuts.

"I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself." --Michel de Montaigne