Flawed then less so now still dysfunctional in deeply personal ways I remember my newspaper days.

"God has entrusted me with myself."
“If you wish to be a writer, write.” --Epictetus

"If you want to write, read."
"Use Do words, not Tell words." --Carol McCabe

That and ten thousand books brings me to this post . . . be careful I exaggerate my accomplishments regarding the number of books read. Remembering Ben Franklin's intention to do so in his youth; impossible these days. Read quotes, fall in love and submerge yourself in that author. . . .If only I had the time and life left to do so!

If I am creative it is because various venues have given me joy, more so writing than any other for I runaway from myself, the bag water of carrying me from pillar to post through the ordinary days of my life. 

& if you had any idea of exactly how precious water is there'd be no more fracking allowed. 

I am very grateful for spell checkers in word processors and Jarte is, I believe superior in that it introduced me to Word Web Pro and in many other ways as well. That said I write with difficulty not familiar with grammar, punctuation, spelling and a host of other issues I am aware of. 

You should be aware I've been a bad boy/man in many ways. Carol was my lover, pregnant, abortion; end of story so far as the relationship went. She once said to me; "don't ever change." And that became the preface of our end -- another rend in my heart. 

To create anything, other than yourself, is often a thankless act. Like flinging you heart into a dark well, no splash-no ripples-no sound. Yet oddly the ecstasy is worth it, at least for me it is, since it expands daily drawing me beyond my flaws into conspiracy with something much better than me or  could i ever be. 

Headlines and captions were my first awareness of punch. What captured the readers fleeting attention. Then came my photography column -- thanks again Carol who also got me a gig teaching at the University of Rhode Island Photojournalism for which I had no degree qualifications. I loved doing it, loving the kids and adults who came my way. No lecturer. I would seize upon a 'live-one' and use their work to draw the rest of the class into conspiracies with their vision/version of the world; seeing what they were looking at unique to them.

Now I am aware of Twitter and the nature of short; coupled with Opera's reflex posting of whatever I write to Twitter. So the first sentence is a harpoon drawing you in. Or. At least a brief exposition of what I intended in the first place. Usually lost in discursion and follow-on thoughts. Everything above this is preamble to my gratitude for those who praise or flame me in words. . . . too rare by half. 

Those long lost, long ago days, when the editors received a letter the formula was for one letter there were 1,000 who thought about it and more who would if the could; considering themselves inadequate.

"GI rapes girl in Formosa!" Then what? He gets off end of story. Nothing is said of the family, the community. Raped and abused by slander I am sensitive to the issue and not surprised at those who instead of protest in words, votes or through the chain of command, simply go berserk. Running amok mechanically puncturing with firearms anyone in the crowd. It's whose fault?

I am a journalist, first and last, and think myself a temple whore in the corp of servants -- The Temple of Truth. In the olden days to be a prostitute was noble.

Forget your gender inhabit your virgin soul. Being well; maybe becoming better. To be whole is a process not a goal. . . . or merely an unfolding; or blossoming. Water lilies grow from the nutriment of decay.

120905 20:44 dysfunctional 
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Life simple becomes more so when stepping up to the crematoria one of the 6 or 60 million slain to be real soon gone, scraped of the sole of God's shoe; the world's a curb as in curb your dog?

Generally I don't eat much meat of any kind and still wonder how or why I was flushed with gallons of antibiotics at the Hog and Pony Show carnival of hospitals for Profit. Can't be or espouse too much Snarky here since I'm part of the solution or problem either side of the bed you wannabe. Experientially it was more being lofted on a grease rack instead of hot air infused with confusion silently dripping drop by centimeter thinking of the woman CEO of United Health Care Insurance receiving $103,000,000 annually for what her gated community and $15,000 @ night delightful vacations away by far from the peons or pee-ons. What ever floats her boat doesn't float mine. 

. . . is that too assertive or aggressive for the weak out there?
. . . i've curbed my rage it become quite docile now
. . . beware the anger of a quiet man whose son was destroyed by the medical community
. . . & daughter left in custodial care like China

Yes life is fast in the slow lane old farts home. 
I engage people randomly my surveys windup here. The pharmacy front was shambles boxes all over the floor. "Inventory - out-of-date?" 

'No. New shipment have to make room for them.'

"Oh well it beats the tar out of being unemployed."

'Yeah a lot of old folks walk the isles taking inventory though just to have something to do.'

Me thinks: "instead of waiting to die so the two Parties can say something like "Welfare Queen" or "Who needs Old Folks anyway?" Problem is; "who needs the young, the ones with rings in their noses or brown skin, forget the black they're useless to begin with, forget the Native Americans they're all drunks!"

Spoiled Brat, noun? Won't give up anything, sits on the toilet stuffed with money and won't let go profligate lobbying though free with stolen money to curb reforms or purposed regulations. Is that hypocritical of me to criticize? 

My pet dragon laves me nose & toes panting in praise no longer willing to destroy my former childhood school chums. Too late for me my mind will drool out my posterior first dementia then Alzheimer's for me hand grenades cost more than gasoline and I won't embarrass the Supreme Court by self-immolation on Their Front Steps. G. W. Bush wasn't elected he was a shoe in.

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/04/160541977/mickey-edwards-on-democracys-cancer

120905 12:44 life simple
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

"Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other's good, and melt at other's woe." --Homer

In prayer i whisper 'thanks' for those who pass in my presence, or those who remain for another day. I now their suicidal ideations life long everyday . . . helpless i don't ask why since I too have similar thoughts and i do converse with god who speaks not to me save through the agency of those i see daily, monthly, annually or not at all. I must be mentally ill in the lexicon of politicians and their minions the prostitute psychology. 

I am not professional in the sense of having credentials to tell or sell you anything what I do I do for love and you know love by what you're dying for daily -- a job? St. Francis once said of love perfect is to cross the rainy winter night and be denied access to what he called home the door locked. A burr? Yes! I chewed on that for ever in the rock polisher behind my mouth.

God is better seen in the poor than those who merely talk about or pretend to be "him?" dare i say spurious? I called Fr. Denis last night asking what did you mean or imply, "a double negative is ___." He is vastly better conversant in theology and I use and abuse him sparingly since he is like M silent. 

. . . I was in the back of the shop fixing a rental clarinet mind blank with ecstasy focused. Dad said,"I'm good, I'll eat up the street." Someone had asked him to lunch and I lay upon the floor laughing seeing him eat concrete and asphalt. 

Denis is dense. Rich. Generally silent. To me fabulous. What he had said he said was "A double negative is a positive." but what I heard when he said was refracted in my perception was . . . loose transliteration something I do all the time being spiritually dyslexic; 'I was slandered indubitably.'

http://www.yourdictionary.com/double-negative

I met some friends of Susan's brother, or brothers, who took me in for a bath and dinner off the Inter Coastal Waterway, Susan and kids were absent -- more-or-less permanently. The guy was off the schooner Ishmael. They gave me a joint, smoked, then discovered myself crawling beneath a gigantic round oak table over the multiple paw foot legs . . . crying hysterically muttering 'why do I have to be crucified over and over?'

. . . like the many myths, omens, portents, dreams, runes and ruins of my heart; I've often wondered about that &/or my dreams of or about Jesus. 

. . . the tears gliding behind my eye glasses is about all i have left of my awe and fear of anything or envy . . . It's all about you . . . don't see what I see -- see what you see.

120905 05:35 psalm of thanks
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

It's all about you
what you see when you look at anything
Perception is fickle and unless you close your eyes and look inwards
the world will tell you anything to get your attention. And for me I see inside
you looking not at me but television. I seek not your attention to me but the sensation and noise of silence. An old man now I remember blackboards and white chalk of Dover both seen now in reprise. Diagrams drawn on the blackness of memory emerging in time remembered everything changes and everything is an illusion calling God will provoke/invoke a response yet the God's of television are jokes. The news medium itself once a temple of truth for me not so much in what I read there but their sending me out to collect images to flag their stories and when I said such-and-such they ignored me since my images were merely flags to grab your attention. And now I seldom seek the wisdom of others in quotes since I'm being fed inspiration from just plain folks. Suicide ideation is more common than not and you'd be surprised who thinks about it daily besides me. Yesterday a visiting nurse came to check-me-out explaining that Medicare keeps records of what every doctor says of me then requesting some validation of a remark said in retrospect; "Today is a good day to die." 

"You know I'm going to have to report this?"

"I don't care."

I'd looked into my lover's green emerald eyes and the Sphinx spoke silently locking into place our reality. Metaphorically I heard the tumblers clicking as truth opened. The portal of eternity is at your next breath. 

As is ours. 

WE, She, U & i have control of the volume of violence allowed flowing  into the stillness of self thus our health by any description is 90% our choice to either listen to the singing silence within or attend the volume of violence spent to entertain us. Persuading us to consume indifferently the presumed authority of those who would rule us just for the pleasure of acclaim offering nothing but lies and palliatives to achieve their fame.

The rest, 10%, is just physics and biology; not punishment. The trip is worth the price. Or is it when considering at birth we're given a tour guide at the very bottom in very small print; 'in accepting this trip you must die' and today or right now is okay with me since I know my lover knows I love her and will find her anywhere we go far or near light years apart. 

Next time you pass a mirror think about the last time you looked through plate glass seeing inside all your hunger pressed against the glass.

Step forward entering you desire for joy knowing death will never end it.

oh yes--It was Crazy Horse who said it, "Today is a good day to die" He wasn't crazy it was his horse; his ride. 

120905 03:56 you

if we are as we are what we consume as advertised lies let us eat bankers for lunch politicians for brunch Supreme Court Justice? Thomas as indicated by Anita Hill he's just dog meat let us start one by one eating them who have canalized us for centuries better yet don't eat them feed them to the pigs swine dressed in the gore of children not theirs sent to war returned addled be well do no harm

120905 1130 pink sliced lunch meat

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

I am not unalike the genius of advertising saying; "Let Mikey eat it!" 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYEXzx-TINc

My intention and ideation is for you to eat yourself. Metaphysically not materially.

Or.

Metaphorically in the following sense; you are not what any one tells you are. In my case Mother was God and she told me more through her behavior than the questions she asked or the wonderful, at times, things she said. The most mystical was something like what follows; "In life we must learn that we are no more significant than a single grain of sand." . . . eventually I added 'upon the beaches of time.'

. . . after thought later on: in time nothing is lost neither the grain of sand nor the soul who writes delight living dying nightly for your virgin rebirth in life or death all Heaven or hell the hangover for you avoidance. Denial not a River in Egypt.

Just now? i'm not certain-sure-confident since Creation/evolution/adaptation/creation is process not goal. . . . a process of discovery?! A new President, pill or car, is not a new savior/messiah. No one is The Savior save the One who died on The Cross . . . I parse, triage, prize the time, the act, the words and still come up with Jesus leaping from galaxies to Milky Way always ahead of me panting in his wake.

Lovely isn't it? What mom said!

I hunted for years any attribution finding William Blake instead:

“Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled.” 

“To see a world in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.” --The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1790-1793)

"The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art."
"When I tell any truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do."
“When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!” 
"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough."

. . . copy and pasted from my Quote Book. Upon discovery I felt a hood dropped over my head and slumped upon a bed without sheets, just a mattress cover covered by royal blue towel; the bed and pillow naked for days, the sheets awaiting laundering -- my head upon the same color hand towel over my pillow; my feet naked upon the shorts I wore to keep the mattress from becoming dirtier.

Thomas Merton said it differently, not better, in that when bereft of love (he used the word God) in a desert no sea in sight of need and suddenly a tsunami would envelop him. . . . 

At times, sometimes, in the under toad of the tsunami I am ecstatic since within the tumult drowning in love *God* . . . i don't write poetry not knowing how or why but it writes itself across the helplessness of my blighted heart. laughing at and with the author of all times and things God of course . . . in writing that, what I call a 'string' . . . I saw Aesop's frog and scorpion crossing the river of time drowning. 

Remember when I sleep I die no sound can awake yet resurrected from sleep I do see things anew newly born different in context time and import. 

It was then I recalled at attention in the rain bored out of my brain until I saw a raindrop hanging on my full metal helmet . . . the world in view upside down and backwards . . . i've been to Heaven many times over . . . yet never stayed because I thought myself unwelcome by my own standard self-loathing. 

Aware that my inheritances have been stolen by those who in childhood I attended school with. Their gain, mine as well, since in poverty I see God better. And they having nothing but money mere material. In prayer as Jagger said; "you get not what you want but what you need." 

Despise New Music, Rap, Hip Hop? Why? God speaks through many voices. Yet most worship, if at all, the word not the spirit. The Book not who wrote it . . . the why . . . not the how. To me verified by the few I trust, only women, my sense the Bible an owners manual for individual interpretation of how and why to live at all: less Kings, Judges, Prophets, Saints, Angels, Priests real and faux. If I have reverence for The Church it is merely because it was my portal. Wherein I tarried not overly long.

. . . here thinking about all the Gideon Bibles idle in no-tell-hot-sheet motels across America now idolized like the car was a "Saggon Wagon." Dad drove my tuition declined, a Ferrari, it never got me laid. My Porsche did her ass beeping the horn in Cos Cob Railroad station commuters drunk with alcohol or money obliviously indifferent and I laughing uproariously . . . been there, done that, if bumper stickers were tattoos when looking at me naked you'd only see camouflage OFU endorsements. Don't think WTF instead think why not?

Irreverent? No. Since I speak to those who like me were raped by parents, relatives, strangers and politicians . . . friends who were otherwise adorable. Rape and abuse are equivalent. Sexual penetration by a male into a female vagina at age three, six or nine the maiden head cannot grow back but the wounds in her mind never.

Or so I once thought. After being castrated by mom's unreasonable bigotry it grew back my masculinity independent of her wanting to dress me in girls clothes. My penis is not my scepter just what it is, not a Sword of Truth imposed, inserted, inflicted in Her or any woman it was beaten into a plow shear for a purpose: to till the fertility of your boy or girl virgin soul. If I offend your idolatry hard cheese -- tough spore.

I'm not a doctor making profit from healing you. Why? Because you heal yourself; if you seek a reason for yesterday/tomorrow which obviously by the laws of perception begins within what you see within the tofu of your brain. The process is by Buddhist called 'mindfulness;' why did I fear fell/fall think runaway? So on & on. Simple, really.

. . . what was or will be is nothing compared to the fountain of love within you for now. Now is sometimes agony a pain beyond standing yet I see people of all colors, creeds and genders who in age are bent walking and if you see someone, including me, as savior or god ignore them for god is best found within you. Rumi is significantly more than a poet for he saw god present, invisible and silent within Rumi's self, what he called his heart . . . sometimes his eyes . . . his nose . . . or toes. More better sighing in his ears.

I am dense as marble, like Marble Head, a place I know since my best friend drown there in my absence . . . could i have saved him? I don't know or think so since my friend is with me in the sense that I live his life for him and maybe, possibly, impossibly, maybe not he lives for me still.

So in some sense the dawn over Marble Head is for both this ending night. 

Be careful out there it's chaos -- violence -- remembering what you loathe or love owns you. Indifference is living life dead; deadly to all others.

120905 04:45 labor
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved