Wounded in life, I seek to staunch the wounds of others . . . . --xoj

"Jack Spratt’s two centavo Guide to Redemption”
©2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

God's tapestry, all creation, my greatest value an attempt to live/love for: in gratitude, mercy, forgiveness, regardless of Age, Race, Creed, Gender, Gender Proclivities, or Generosity . . . seeking to make redemtion salvation & resurrection potential in all unique, precious, individual lives, human, plant, animal, world. . . .through words & images - Jack Spratt ... KISS

Saturday, September 8, 2012


120908 17:32 joy days & tears for my father

If she reads me, by which, I am thinking not my soul on the hoof, so much as what I write. She says little to nothing. Fortuitous! For should I know her daily attention, especially now, I'd be inhibited mute falling not silent but dead humiliated. Worse I'd become dust instant no crematoria required. 

For these days, so longed for, I'd give nor receive nothing differently; to suffer again the agonies forging the tensile strength within me; what I sense she saw upon our first conversation going on now five years ago. 

And my thesis is proven again; that to create, is to enter deeply beyond Heaven's Gate, near, if not on the throne in the lap of God embraced. And were all the rich and powerful to line the path I've walked I'd laugh ignoring their Whole or Tithe in offering for a taste of this life I've lived. So precious no relic of or the actual Jesus upon the cross twitching would compare in their collections of the arts of life. 

In Greenwich, Connecticut, then one of the three richest communities in the world, walking with my father through Hirshhorn's personal estate Sculpture Garden I innocently turned to him saying; "I own everything I can see."

Oddly indifferent. He who suggested that I read Kafka's "Metamorphosis" at thirteen or fourteen years-of-age; beginning a lifelong distrust of all governance including the Motor Vehicle Departments & The Vatican. 

And so again, once more, am I reminded of his many bequest in life; somewhat but not totally vacating his leaving me penniless at and after his death. He did call to say goodbye, but in retrospect it seemed then, and now, like the Christmas Bonus; "Have a Goose for Christmas, goose yourself out the door on your way home. Good night and goodbye." 

In another aside, another time, never repeated, he cried, "I'd like sometime to read the menu from left to right ignoring the cost." Penurious and niggardly to, not merely a flaw, but a fatal addiction; he at another time spoke longingly of conversing with H. L. Mencken to whose work dad directed my attention; lending me the, in abject despair: "I should be put to sleep like a rabid dog." No longer  reprised. 

However as he aged, returning to electricity and radar/radio waves, would he render the life and times of Nicolas Tesla. The last time after informing me, because I had no children, wife barren, a nigger daughter and versus my slavery to him he had dedicated his entire estate to my half bother because he, Stephen E. Spratt; Commander Chuck E. Cheesed named so long before had helped dad move one day. . . .My fatal flaw was in loving him attempting to invoke love for himself. Thus abandoning my love of art. . . .A fatal cause costing me years, more years, than walking with Randy to his grave.

Finally after dragging me to Hawaii where he previously indicated an interest in purchasing property where we, he and I, could commute for his final days in my care. Upon the first morning I set up my laptop showing him real estate listings . . . "oh I've changed my mind. . . . " 

Did you know, do you care, he did know that I've been around the world five times over and despise airplanes then and the thought of flying anywhere is like unto the Jew packed cattle cars to Auschwitz the shower then the crematoria. . . .known well in advance with wife and family all of them extending backwards and forward generations to be indifferently slain. 

I can go no further for to do so would invoke my loathing of he and his second son. To name either one again and thus reenter them in Google Search would lend them more than the shit it would take to bury their ashes. 

Too empathetic

Too sensitive

Too everything passionate

To live.

. . . just off the phone, she lives another day begrudgingly M and of myself I don't honestly care either way; my bottom line.

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

120908 14:22 God forfend

of all the women I’ve bedded in a lifetime Carol was the most lubricious a veritable fountain she was; almost but not quite too much for my pleasure but at that she was of all the most ardent in loving me as I did her. 

my too me not so odd penchant and proclivity of annotation the hour and minute of my dreams, moods, incantations, omens and runes have given me an overview of the actual ruin of my life. The cycles of despondence climax at the winter’s solstice finally fatally defined not by my sister’s admission of our maternal grandmother’s . . . oh . . . God . . . of course it was not her terror of death but the time and date of our maternal grandfathers faux suicide accident blowing his testicles off with a shotgun. Now if memory serves me well or a well as usual I remember his death the same date, different year, as Randy’s and Thomas Merton: December 10th. Christmas for me as always been a terror. Ruminated upon recently I realized that to me the birth of Jesus was also, in the package economy class steerage, fine print, also the fact of his dishonorable humiliating death. 

least i go too far further farther into numerology betraying my long fascination of if not covert addiction to divination I should equally mention that were I to encounter a woman amenable to my wild sensuality I would be utterly lost never writing another word nor occasionally wandering wondering what I will discover the accidental encounter with word disintegrating upon walls and signage or the astonishment of conjunctions between moods, mindful of prayers answered by seeing things two dimensional upon the ground or pavement in this case living in a halcyon village, town, second largest city in New Mexico The Land of Enchantment. . . .

In sleep I die and am resurrected changed beyond recognition with though accurate but a faint memory of who, what, why and where I was before these brief moments of rest i go. Consumers of entertainments never know the ecstasy of participation in anything save reduced by 999/10ths the mania/insanity of creating anything save in those 1/60th stroboscopic winks seeing God in orgasm. 

Both terrified, as in fear of The Lord, and unworthy the grace given, thus a runaway from my Self. It was known only to me in the flashing accomplishment of call it a wrap in the cinematic sense the deed done for once and forever the context now recorded and immortal . . . the situation now commonplace and I idle humiliated remembering touching the hem of God. 

I am only able to be myself with those about to die . . . even Dick Cheney should he ever need the grace I can convey. And at that I can trust so few who in their time together with me confess their grace, longing and regrets conversationally confessional. Otherwise I am as I am merely another guy, though few, who volunteers for hospice service fetching another container of ice cream or soda. . . . in some sense she is not a believer or even faithful but I know a knower when in the Presence and then all fetters fall away and I become something foreign to myself and she more so in her smiling laughter at my shameful language having read, oh dear God now over four hundred posts confessional explicit, no hold bared. No exceptions allowed.

Should I go on? Or save for later on the power flowing through me from sleep prayers answered? I have no sense of tomorrow for standing here now I see nothing but infinity . . . electrocuted when first seen “Be Here Now” so very long ago haunting me ever since a mantra chanted in rare times of terror or despondency.

Would fully castrating myself make M feel safe my simple child’s longing to stay more than a goodbye’s worth in her embrace? I am confident but no so informed the malignancy costing me the loss of one testicle is benign but of and for her I remain uncertain knowing she like I will refuse the savage results of medicine today as my son did, as Kern Flynn did, as Ralph and my dad did and I vowed upon seeing the physical and emotional costs for my own death should cancer seize me. Life is too precious to waste on mere existence staring up at a ceiling for decades immobile with this level of conscious mindfulness. 

These things I know too well while God remains mute regarding my sovereign right to end my life.

PS I refuse to retroactively “correct” grammar punctuation syntax since what I have written must remain intact; my sense the truth of “Poetic Licence.” 

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

120908 1056 ask response
Beneath the dark feathers near the scaly parts discovered my rage hideous now for it put the lie to my compassion and empathy for others having none for myself -- HYPOCRITE FRAUD BIGOT! Clawing my self rent asunder shred worse than the Fargo Shredder so oft alluded to. Viscous evisceration of mind & heart all that I’ve said of my enemies; those who stole my inheritance, my life, my self, the future, the present shat upon; I’ve done to myself in loathing this life lived until now.

“This moment?”

Yes! . . . 

For in writing I enter an impossible place, breathless ecstasy & mirth, breathing under water -- in outer space a Super Nova inhaling itself. 

Yet God speaks saying; “What the Fuck Chuck CHILL! . . . .Not in those exact explicit words but from the mouths of babes, not small girls nascent women in diapers but, panties of course high heels too; and one dude in a Fedora from Ecuador. . . .then the random chance kindness of strangers confessing.

No longer odd to so plainly see God in the poor, wannabe or becoming, grand in and of themselves of all colors rainbowed refracted eyes glimmering; genders and gender proclivities, creeds and degrees of sanity scintillating. 

Oh Sweet Jesus on a bobsled laughing across glaciers melting through gaseous fires erupting from kitchen faucets; waterfalls of fire: 

I’M HEALED NOW! 

Just a random Polar Bear adapted to icy swimming pools in gated communities & penthouses atop Wall Street, Inc. My ride a eighty foot long Supercilious Vanity Mobile my ordinary utility every day Escalade for the gardeners all Indian, Black, Mexicans, elderly senior citizens an outdoor convenience for my Stepford Wives and all those enslaved to me the passersby unionless.

. . . see, healed I can say OFU nicely nary a ruffled feather nor dropped scale and more better yet no flames with which to incinerate tax returns from the previous years betraying my cupidity. Pussy Raider and Dan Rather for fucking ever! . . . .oh yeah did I mention that the Mormons took over for the Mafia in Las Vegas?

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

dream house or home?


120908 07:57 house dream

Not often but when I do dreaming of Susan, the bride of my youth, I see her differently from while we lived together and then in strange houses. Awake now I am bewildered for within there was a disheveled room like the one I write in; the bed unmade for days covered with blue towels my shorts for dirty feet. 

Yet otherwise the house was home the furnishings neat and tidy modest middle class but . . . oh . . . it seemed vast populated by Susan, Randy and Jodi . . . all seeming well and at peace. Randomly we discussed upon this and that, Randy and I, upon the living room floor with a silent radio between us. 

Suddenly he turned it on to some such rock n’ roll I’d never heard before. Rising I left him since I detest distraction of any kind and roamed the rooms unfamiliar and saw that the children had separate rooms nicely appointed astonishing me for at the end of Randy’s life and before Jodi abandoned me they slept in the same room in a poor communal Christian group home we in poverty as I am now. 

I often dream of Susan with strange children never with Randy or Jodi knowing her differently better possibly more a friend than a spouse. Time meaningless then save for my profession freelance whatever carpenter photographer had I begun to write? Always near a telephone attached to the wall or my belt unknowing the police etc including Google would know my every move had they cared, then or now?

Suffocating in sadness I arose just now remembering we’d begun after 20 something years more nearly 30 to be friends. Intimate in sharing ourselves. 

What fell upon me that impelled from her embrace like a piano unexpected falling from the sky? For all that we’d been through together I’d told her; “I want a divorce and it is nonnegotiable whereupon she fled to cry alone above face down in the attic where we sleep no heat in winter nor cool in summer vast open loft wood rafters . . . when did she say tearfully first ever actually no tears for Randy or Johanna at internment; “I want my husband!” . . . watering Johanna’s ashes entering the roots of the rose upon my grandfather’s grave the latter on me hyterical beside my son’s

I well remember, always, the sharing and the anonymous ‘husband;’ who me? No. Never though the vows renewed twice than thrice I never sensed husbandry to the silent woman she remained throughout.

But now I am wife/husband/lover/pet/slave to God like Rumi only he said and says it better. Yet occasionally I return to she who became a priest and I a beggar mendicant naked in the desert remembering the love I had having me now for her still. 

Such a love for God having me having the Beloved is no excuse for I disbelieve in divorce even if I am married to God. 

For me love has always been a passion more nearly a rage savage changeable and volatile not a tomb to rest in. Or of such do i define myself now . . . forever? . . . blest in peace no matter what how or why i live or die in God. Home at last! . . . my tears still falling undecided sadness or joy both i guess

and Annie when she sees hearing me cry vocalizes newly her comfort for me laying upon the keyboard of my life

. . . synchronicity? No discourse become dialog 

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

time like now is flowing unremarked infinity a virgin river moving 
conscious only of itself. Each insertion new for the river is never the
same from time’s eternity springing from earth bounty renewed reprise
always premier always rehearsed moving sinless to the tree of life 
wherein to reach from root to leaf and the be recycled again renewed

120908 06:55 now
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

perchance Love dreaming me or me dreaming of love?
Love is all I’ve ever desired, sought, longingly forever
it seems not that Love has found and embraced me
having not having being had me by Love actual real 
tangible and flowing through all the moments triaged
prized and spent grudgingly or freely with others by
choice or chance love a verb is meaningless unless 
given and for me my eternal shame unforgivable is that
I could not until now forgive myself for not receiving it
as now obvious having; over-under-NOW! 
parenthetically 

4M&Thanks


120908 06:21 perchance
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

wrong for right right or wrong
in haste and fury I have left those
I loved mostly stoic stone women
who knew not what I was or to do
with me hidden behind a mask of
pretence being ‘nice’ yet now left
i realize that i knew them not for
what they hid from me as well

nothing no thing or self is lost upon
the flood tides of infinity save my
unknowing until finally blest by death
to molder or resurrect in heaven face-
to-face with what? Send back ‘Like?’
Man’s laws are false reactive unlike
the TEN annotated as emphatic by many
yet actually emergent from primeval
minds ignorant of civilization before
time began millions of years ago codified
in the land we call Iraq by Gigamesh a
King benign or evil? Power itself is its
own reward since those in power define
the good or ill for all others save for the
few who define themselves by knowing
nothing of being banished abandoned 
or rejected by anyone or thing sovereign
free fearless in life or death! You can be
directed not lead for you must know the
truth of yourself -- all of it none rejected.
Love is balanced between all elements
greater than the powers of men humble
the essence of God who in faith I know 
wrote the laws of intention upon the flesh
of all life ignored enslaved by indifference
all is equal in death or life a right to be alive

120908 04:44 wrong
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

if ever I should leave you it may be by death
or choice but in my leaving never presume 
assuming it rejection or judgment yourself
unworthy for as Jesus left those villages and
persons who declined his affections I leave
to find my own for until now and forever have
I sought this joyful peace or it finding me now
i bless you as God always has love freely given
expressed or incarnated inhabited the home
of one moveable a feast for everyone my love
as is God’s is forever our only wealth & being

120908 05:55 error
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Adversity? 
in the end 
we writ in 
black ink 
across the 
prevailing darkness 
of eternity 
will disappear this 
species erased our
home lifeless gray

120908 04:21 Adversity the Poem
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

adversary


Attention to myself, balanced equally between extrovert or introvert, is greeted with curiosity. About not so much what is said but that anything is said at all. Since of, or about myself I, after many years of life, still find myself commonplace and unworthy of anything; praise or blame nor flames. ('flame' being typical of writers dedicated to erotica; indicative of "eat shit and go die someplace out of my sight" versus "you made me orgasm my brains and want to have your children in my body":) Praise!

Epiphany or synchronicity, the latter C. G. Jung implied is an outward manifestation of an inward event: thought, prayer, longing, request, etc. Or what I sense implicit in Mick Jagger's: " . . You don't always get what you want, but what you need . . " For which I am, in gratitude, very thankful; it describes my life perfectly and conviction that; Nothing is for Naught = Nothing is for Nothing. . . .No accidents.  

Some say, "Make of lemons, Lemonade" yet for me the issue is stasis as described; "Being between a rock and a hard place."

Pardon or damn me for my language -- I am indifferent either way -- but as indicated elsewhere mother had the mouth of a drunken sailor. 

I, from birth until now, have been fucked over by experts; abused/raped by words slanderous and behaviors outrageous. All of which I have accepted not as fearful but as blows; myself between the hammer and anvil being forged into something hard, sharp, refined, a weapon perhaps but now an agricultural implement; a plow? 

Essentially the above is preamble to what follows. I have been posting in four different places: Facebook, Google, Opera and now Culture Book -- same content -- different audiences. My thesis: to "cast my bread upon the water" . . . to see what happens. Facebook is now deleted leaving me three venues. Amongst my adult peers, the choice is obvious; not only childish but like all communication media it is now a sewer of artistic lying: commercialism. . . .personal and corporate. 

On Culture Book, the newest to me and apparently, in the plethora of "Social Media," NEW! I have received more response than my first site: Care2.com. From which I was expunged without reason or cause given no warning or appeal. 

Culture Book is interesting in preeminently the audience read books and in several significant instances are authors and poets. One, a young man of talent if not actual genius, refusing my request to be 'friends' has dedicated, at times his valuable, to me mind, in attack of what I write. Know me in the following: familiar with the best of either discipline, photography or writing, I have never entitled myself as either remaining is awe, mute about or of myself. . . .The same is true regarding my service at hospice this humiliating sense of unworthiness. 

God, with cause, remains invisible and the efforts of authors or photographers, are to me, post-it-notes pasted upon the IS, OM, The Author of Everything or I AM, defining The Presence in unique and extraordinary ways -- especially those without sponsor or franchise create independent of motive. 

I am, like all life, anonymous, unknown, unknowable, emigrant, a stranger in a strange land to live then die anonymous. My intention and arrangements made, I will be ash spread upon the desert sand or merely placed in a dumpster then landfill. . . .Coincident, M, my beloved has similar intentions; she at birth was so small and still -- she was placed in a 3 lb. lard can, a coffin swaddled in discarded hand towels, until she sighed and was accepted as living. 

What we do between birth and death -- a package deal concluded beginning and ending. Is what defines our life to ourselves. Yet we are an original unique one time only issue; to me, all seen as special and more worthy of live than myself. 

The authors and photographers I closely follow are monumental. Their lives and art hopeless to compete or better. I began to write as a palliative to occupy myself, what or such, time as I 'lived' not wanting to be alive. My tears inconsequential to the ocean of joy and suffering surrounding me afloat within. Yet here I remain anonymous treading water waiting to drown in death. Those who praise or flame me tell me I exist otherwise i would be nothing; a zero.

“A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.” --Elbert Hubbard 

Lamentably I am unable to read the full text, sadly unfamiliar with the site’s requirements, however otherwise whenever I see your name I do so.

120908 01:23 adversary 
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved