if i love

If I love. . . .Of course I do, deeply, flowing, arid and flood, I do. I do flow like a river of stars to arise white mist upon dawn burnt down between the thighs lubricious, sensuous, emergent, fecund from darkness the Ohio River Valley flowing into the distant sea moaning with steam whistles, now and then remembering the childhood of me.

. . . if ever I had a near home it was there beginning at five and he who remembers lofted by dreams return near seventy-three again that young buck in the flesh nascent flesh beginning again to beg that God be real and of course God is. Not some old man like me or older by considerable time adorned in white with as mine a five o’clock shadow and beyond seemingly from a bag of white sugar jelly donuts covered . . . dare I say we birth one another renewed?

. . . arise and slumber porpoise playing the wake of time in schools or solo at time breaching the glass silent to splash or plash like the paddle wheeled towboats reflecting the moaning steam whistle trains passing in the night’s milk run across from me in Kentucky.

Who else could/would remind me of the first and only love lasting until now resurrected in dreams! the most sensuous touch her hand upon the back of my head . . . . then infant then young man . . . last seen on a portapotty in senility asleep . . . she awoke at first sight and laughed remembering the chicken I attempted to toilet train.

There across ice floes Liza bore her baby child fleeing from the slave catchers and dogs to safety where decades later I noted the iron forged manacles displayed in the hidey-hole at The John Rankin House first stop on the Underground Railroad . . . oh please . . . if now would you bury me there where my heart resides high above the river seen from near that attic of safety.

I dream and in dreaming go backward and forward in time before and after this physical life could be having been. Becoming eternal in faux death sleep otherwise discontinuous splintered restructured transparent glass flowing like God throughout time.

 . . . like god before the name was given and long after language dies.

. . . 02:22 of the myths, memories, omens and portents, recorded or not, lay moldering somewhere east of the Mississippi. The waste of myself - detritus - in landfills - the only vital part of me is this or these relationships to the tapestry woven and decorated by Creation, or The Creator, or what seems to speak to me both in the dark and light of now. At times I am the loom, others the thread, and remember that I have no special claim, yet had I had one I’d give it away to all as my heroes did.

Late to form, formerly mere impressionable clay, I took from others their disdain and remedied my pain. A form of control or preemptive damage control. . . .to presume their truth about me mine.

One should never forget God laughs, not at but with. Add there is a time of change, leaving and rebirth for everything in eternity.

What was endured is now celebrated; the dings fondled for the forged me as I am unknowing of what will become yet confident and at peace tho I am written upon the void. And who but me could adore and reverence the night.

Starless
 . . . i grow extinguished

130227 01:08 if i love
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

M wrote to say there was a problem with today. Which I, of course, will not detail here. So to say that I will miss her begets regrets beyond the unknowing where she will not be today with me.

I’ve heard that life is a painful affair but then the alternative sucks so some say.

laughter!

Intimacy once meant merger of the carnal kind of and for which i exhausted my sense of longing to know what love is or is not . . . then being found, a stray, by M and brought along more nearly to manhood . . . a self more than adult male aging rapidly growing gray so to say I am a man is closer to God than most would think the words mean since between you & me to be is simply fabulous. An intimacy with which one builds bridges beyond any toll tithe toil.

. . . it follows: I am celebratory of births, as well as deaths, being co-equal for which/within the tutelage of M I’ve come to know what real intimacy is . . . yet there are others: . . . shamelessly men as well as Lions and kittens, elephants and whales mice and sometimes even lice are nice.

Orgasms nice but fleeting pleasure while friends in joy are forever intimacy beyond silence eternal vaporous expansive ascendant
. . . to be here now worth every fractured nose falling down stairs yet ascended again.

To wit the purpose of my wandered maundering is gratitude for several women whose souls as well as bodies I’ll never know biblically literally but virtually for those words they spoke not to me but of and for themselves:

Maria Popova http://www.brainpickings.org/  comes to mind blowing me away and apart daily but then we share Anaïs Nin as lovers.

add:
“There are moments when the sail flaps. Then, being a great amateur of the art of life, determined to suck my orange, off, like a wasp if the blossom I’m on fades, as it did yesterday — I ride across the downs to the cliffs. A roll of barbed wire is hooped on the edge. I rubbed my mind brisk along the Newhaven road. Shabby old maids buying groceries, in that desert road with the villas; in the wet. And Newhaven gashed. But tire the body and the mind sleeps. All desire to write diary here has flagged. What is the right antidote? I must sniff round. I think Mme. de Sevigne. Writing to be a daily pleasure. I detest the hardness of old age — I feel it. I rasp. I’m tart.
. . . "To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions—there we have none." - Virgina Wolfe

Ricocheting Star to Star over Edna St. Vincent Millay happy birthday today and the four thousand pound gorilla in the bunch http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page add et all to my daily dalliances http://www.dailyliteraryquote.com/daily-literary-quote-share.htm
http://chasingtailfeathers.tumblr.com/archive busy busy busy boy http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ . . . my point? Merely that the news and movies and TV are gnat farts on the far other side of my saw tooth sun dial; The Organ Mountains marking the marching seasons back and forth eternal with or without my annotation . . . at lease until they become as Muhammad said; “ . . . come to me.”

To be the best you can be learn to read. To write: write; but to write well: read more.

“When the fight begins within himself, a man's worth something.” - Robert Browning
“The language of friendship is not words, but meanings.” - Henry David Thoreau
"What do you think of God," the teacher asked. After a pause, the young pupil replied, "He's not a think, he's a feel."- Paul Frost

130222 07:32 love affairs
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

puppy yet

A bit of the puppy yet remains within chasing my tail in circles and biting it . . . for kicks and giggles, simply mad with joy . . . then too gratitude. 

. . . for what I know of Jesus I remain ashamed at times to name myself ‘Christian’ and above all -- of course -- adore best his Father. No longer alarmed by His silence who now seems bemused yet consoling of all my yearning. To follow the prophets of all religions is no shame for they the famous and infamous . . . the ones burned at the stake . . . oh Dear God how many I know of and now weep for their loss. But celebrated in what remains behind their leaving.

. . . reveals beneath the slate patio of my mind stones flipping rhythmically discovering myself the Enemy of myself as I am now flinging it into the void wherein skipping stones finding energy to move beyond never sinking but fragmenting and disappearing to reform.

. . . transformed: lust for laughter and gratitude yapping in rhyme & rhythm asymmetric seeking a voice. Lambs & Lions, Cats & Dogs merger is all the end is love & peace be with you

. . . be well.

“Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

130222 05:29 puppy yet

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Lady Day: Billie Holiday

I am to myself shameless in confession of all that composes my thoughts yet conscious that there is another to whom I profess unknowable in any other venue. Too serious not to find laughable. In derision and joy perpetual into which nothing else can enter . . . what fear can death provide me now?

My education continues in random eclectic ways aware or mindful, more so now then ever before, the nature of my perception and source/resources manifold available to all. Add: an abiding faith that this that moves me is inherent to all life . . . additionally: i would have it no other way. I am not this body, these thoughts, impelled by something grander than all that I can see of The All/Om/God or at the very least what is commonly understood as “god.” 

My earworms are not exclusively musical but collective. A ‘mashup’ of all that preceded me; as much mythical as methodical/scientific as metaphoric/metaphysical. It is in this sense that I relish being an Aeolian entity working upon itself -- that which changes and that which is changed by evolution or revolution . . . a life lived for others as was those who form the pantheon of my heroes: known and unknowable. The before and after of everything created by any means or measures.

This is not about ‘me’ but ‘us.’ All we who live and have lived or will; should time and consequence allow. 

It is true that most men never grown up but merely old. True of me even now for I labor to concatenate the fragments of a self broken into shards. My experience with love is discontinuous, like most, if not all, of us, oddly misshapen and misinformed. I learned, with difficulty, decades ago the phrase anger is not assertion . . . not precise or verbatim but adequate for my intention, for now. Like it intimacy was sexual and oddly impermissible in any manifestation other than through marriage. I do not harbor thoughts of random freely experiences of “one-night-stands” with any one. Not even Ava Gardner when she was eighteen or as she was when she died . . . knowing that my vision of woman is informed by information neither male nor female but possibly both (thinking the image of God as exclusively male is repugnant to me.) And despite all the pleasure of sex I’d rather have intimacy now . . . with either the numinous or another of any gender, age, race or proclivities.

My version/vision is that I sense, think, feel and intuit the beginning, middle and end of everything.  Hard won through failing my ideals. But most especially in attempting to find within another the mirror that might magnify myself as more than merely nothing lovable, unworthy of life itself.

I have gratitude beyond expression, in any manor, for these passages from one attitude to another and cannot, or refuse, to prescribe a script other than to seek within yourself a truth for which you are willing to live and die for. To know yourself you must become intimate with all of it: good, bad, grotesque and ecstatic.

Now if I propose love as eternal I know this as true by experience, since it informs my intentions towards those who then, now and in the future tell me otherwise . . . redemption, it seems, at least to me, always possible if only we can sincerely say yes and accept the invitation to truth. Such love is within all life. Though for the most part lost in confusion, ignorance, denial . . . indifference.

. . . if you profess being a Christian you must be like Christ. Not merely talk about or visit once in awhile. The same is true of Mohammad or Buddha or any one of a host I could name and do solicit for guidance. 

As  witness I do not need to prove or apologize but lend an ideal of finding such things for yourself and my only limitation is that you seek this not as power but as love least it become idolatry. The rule of love is fearless.

. . . doing no harm.

. . . to close: During infancy I was suffused with music of all kinds -- remembering my mother crying when Lady Day died -- hum a bar and I could tell you where it came from The American Song  Book . . . impossibly I did the same with all the words and phrases of conversations and slanders aimed at me: burs stuck in my craw . . . just now and then hating being white and middle class knowing myself as just another crow

130220 04:57 shameless

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

what loves

Loving what loves is knowing love without desire for the beloved or the lover but is just love observed.

In such as this is the origin of all meaning and source of becoming when all else is gone . . . when love comes again. Neither had nor having but being pure is what love looks like when seen as what you give.

What I seek in the still darkness of pre-dawn each day is not affirmation or inspiration but feeling the sheep’s wool before my tent to see if wet or dry -- sometimes merely moist -- my mind wandering into the abyss of itself and seeing this painting reminded me of those times I’d gotten lost in the rendering of things I saw visually. Prizing not the seen or rendering but the being lost from time and society for just a moment of bliss. It is this that keeps me awakening and not longing to never awake happy with either estate.

No.

Happy. Like tide comes and goes while joy is eternal before the light and after the dark.

A rouge thought? Could it be that we all life are imprinted by God!
. . . ineffable -- ineluctable exposition in one word the unending narrative of four letters: love.

. . . 130218 06:57 . . . i’m going to let this go. Not in abandonment but simply because by chance I’ve come across other random remarks annotating thoughts, praise, gratitude for the creativity of others: astonishing to me and uncertain who was the author?

Face-to-face with creators I’ve always made certain to praise something specific sans hyperbole and superlatives . . . no gushing fawning fool to seem . . . and am bold to say that when in similar circumstance with THE CREATOR I will know disappointment with formerly held ideals of perfection for either of us. But then I recognize my failure to be for others what seemed required. Happily in peace knowing only that my love endless even if in adequate their need real or imagined . . . humiliated it has taken me so long to grow a soul that was there all along . . . .
of course we grow by failure falling flat upon our face not in supplication petition or prayer but utter despair. Grief is a gift since it measures one facet of the gem we all are.

The heart of creation continues, stunning, staggering and beyond all expectations: perfect in itself.
. . . praise that which from all blessings flow; the who not the what or why

130217 04:44 what loves
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

authority

Should I now genuflect, kowtow, bow, curtsy, kneel or merely grovel at your feet kissing them?

Authority, by experience, superficially benign while seeking to eat my lunch; then something far worse biting my heart and extinguishing my life. Authority, in general, seems intent upon survival at any cost regardless Darwin’s suppositions mangled to individual survival; not the body politic; the species or the Earth for that matter.

Yo-yoing between bed and throne, having forgotten to take my medication causing the trips, many, and loathe to return the dreams that continue to haunt my sleep. Regarding not the obvious concern for those about to die but their stewards--the Business of Death. The aftermath of leaving hospice continues to query my consciousness; in that I had presumed to die there standing up. And happily so since I love people. In specific, not the herd.

It then seemed best to sacrifice myself than to continue in what had become apparent: my inconvenience to the administrators. A moment of anxiety until I thought perhaps it was time to move on. Having had a recent near death experience I know the value of such time as remains to be alive. And having accommodated the random aspects of life in our time I was less inclined to abide the sure snark of their presence, never benign.

At that, I should have paid them for the experience; both the coming and going. It is possible to grow your soul in isolation but not a personality capable of swimming the sea of chaos . . . much less . . . thinking of Jesus: striding the waves becalming them. How many of my heroes died before their time being assassinated and forgiving their assassins! I too forgive they who dismissed me arising to another life. One once thought impossible in this individual much less while traversing the closing days of it, near or far.

. . . 07:34  If I spend the treasure chest of my love unto the last dregs, it is renewed with dividends. Yet I do protest and suggest for others that what is spent upon infertile ground is a waste.

But then what do I do with my dreams? How to respond? Serendipitously I hope! From birth until now I have labored to turn the slings and arrows of vicissitude into cupid’s messages not intended to annihilate me. A pincushion with pins scattered like grapeshot I do not twitch and writhe upon the stake planting me in place. In most previous cases I’ve waited patiently until the moment, not mood, seemed opportune to scamper silently away to the residence of my solitude and solace of my soul.

However in some instances my leave taking has been grotesque and lingers as does the leaving of hospice. Add, the awareness of my love for people manifest there is no longer possible beyond random kindness to those whose lives and deaths intersect with mine in the ordinary of my life.

Would it have been, in other circumstances, best to buss her posterior in obeisance? I think not; since there are many things worse than death.

“Everything keeps its best nature only by being put to its best use.” - Phillips Brooks

She who was unable to feed herself who’s birthday was to be on (Saint) Valentine’s Day had passed and there I stood dying myself the waste hurled upon me by a mercenary mind. Actually I’d been fed the gall several times before and come to shutter the sight of her--not the one past but the one present who--sought to void upon me all her anger.

To close: I am reminded, this long afterwards, I am subject to wondrous sychronicities in words and events at other times and places. So my protest falls mute in awe that something better may be the offing. And therefore regard the event as another excursion. Then too I must remind myself that even the best I’ve ever heard of, or known, have bad days. Yet after several there by the same author I quit.

. . . 23:12 perhaps I misspeak framing what is essential: is any institution about the truth or only true to itself. i.e. religion is about God but not God. . . .add: my daughter died in a similar institution alone in an iron crib packed one hundred to a warehouse room. I doubt that I will ever expunge my guilt for that choice. My experience is the motivation for my anger with authority. Any why will find a how . . . if I cannot tend to the dying I can tend to the living who have no sense of life’s value.

130210 03:06 authority
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

root of joy

Roots of Heaven reside within all life should it pray for realization day & night. Not by ritual or rote but by ordinary life itself. And those we call family is all life.

“You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.“ - Epictetus

I scarcely know myself as I was or will become. Never totally a lump but nearly more so than ever before. Since the peace I know is certain and eternal--extending before and after this corpse I inhabit.

Sensing now the way between Heaven and Earth is fraught with what we must do for ourselves leaving the Author of Life to other greater matters.

For myself I wonder wandering through the many suggestions of M. Actually few in number but having great impact. First was hospice service and when retired from that she suggests now that I write a ‘book.’ But my sense is that in my wildest daydreams I do imagine something fictional, a sugar coated pill as anodyne, take one and call me if the distress continues, an aspirin for our life's and times. Episodic seems more representative of my way; the journey that brings me to today: eternal in a moment continuity. Poetry seems better for those moments of ecstasy; few since The Massacre at Newtown.

To speak of the art or craft: writing now seems not the effort to record so much as the effort to see what is, as it is, and not as I would wish to see it. Else the ideal would fall flat as some sort of conceit and aggregation of ambition. Factually I am happy with these maundering I do from day to the day as enough. Save in the sense I continue to grieve for the parents and those who like me, as I was, still wander blindly through life. Living not but merely subsistence existence.

Oddly?! My eye wandering across the multitasked window before me fell upon: “God has many names, though He is only one Being.” - Aristotle . . . and I would speak of that: the many names and ways we are inspired to live, long or short, in these closing times of love as we knew it. . . .in ecstasy or agony I would know and celebrate it all now.

Neither noun, love nor God, but verbs as living and giving never epitaph or graven. As nature ever renewing evolving into what is to become. Never remedial. . . .what do I inflict or infer? The children murdered are fine but their parents and the society which allowed the crime is challenged. I seek the motive not the method seeing prayerfully those who forgave their assassins in the act not by ritual but reality. In some sense, deeply, we’ve slain the earth.

“Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.” - William James

. . . I integrate what I find: an interplay between what I write and discover . . . coincident? No. Serendipity or Synchronicity. I’ve yet to discover a single ark, covanential or floating zoo, within which to place exclusively/discretely all my trust. No single religion or governance worthy exclusively for all my thoughts. All institutions, like myself, have a lifespan; a beginning, middle and end.

I once feared being apostate to myself; failing all ideals briefly or however long held. But now I have no concerns for myself since I sense this biodegradable self-motivated and educated thing rides upon the winds before and after all that is. No one special or unique since what I advocate is within all life and best defined by one word: love. Add kindness and life as love is possible.

130207 05:39 roots of heaven
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

betwixt

Between polarities of dream and awakening, perilous lay, the arch of thoughts resolved. Sometimes forgotten between habit and morning ritual; then: times amplified and unavoidable.

If I find peace in my ignorance is not to say I do not battle it but that there is a source of instruction attributable to submitting to the flow life wearing away: aggression, assertion and acceptance of what is. Hesitant to name God since the verb means so many different things and for the most part idolatry.

Too well do I know my dance of avoidance to not tell it in other ways non-fictional. Today’s fiction becomes a fact fixed and immutable until it is worn away by experience. The deeper I rend my self/soul the more I fear, unlike most, I never was imprinted with trust. Fearlessly tearing farther I know myself better and trust that.

In person I cannot console so much as be there for one who queries. Knowing this better by the agency of those whose solace I sought in times past -- continuing daily by the course of my study to find both wisdom and knowledge with greatest emphasis on the former.

Considering the above I wonder is it wisdom by attrition? Or merely acknowledgment of my way or path traveled to what end? I would rather be myself than any other or ideal. Since my sense and conclusion is that this is what all whose words I read or have heard is what they sought and found. Their acclaim, celebrity or success does not fit me for I would be smothered in their robes; a flea in eternity.

Then factually I do adore: the scientist and saint of any gender, creed or race. And sense our extinction is inconsequential for the force/energy which begot us. Feeling strung upon an invisible string; beginning before and lasting after all that we know will vanish. What urgency can I feel knowing that?

130203 08:52 betwixt

The faults I find in myself are sought to remedy them. Not by palliative but at worst to accommodate, contain and restrain them. I celebrate both rage and ecstasy; the height, width, breadth and depth of all that I know and experience. Yet I find no blame for it is ill to contain rage for long smothering my middle way. Or the life I do live in reality; the ordinary of my life.

What is extraordinary is unbidden by any conscious effort the remedy for what has been the nadir of my life: being unwanted, unworthy of attention, a fool, an idiot. All the facts of life, the achievements, awards and celebrity have no lasting value in what I sought. And when people I know well or poorly speak of “God” I know nothing of what they sense beyond a brand name.

Yet if I can leave nothing of value, having eaten, excreted and died -- no curse but blessing in that -- I do witness God as as my savior, lover and friend. Best teacher I have ever known. Lead to seek and see what is ineffable. Bold to say I never was psychologically imprinted with anything but the why and what found in these previous days . . . a child’s prayer: “please be real!” Answered in uncommon ways. Anyone of which could be remarked monumentally but are not save in the history of my words annotating the process of from whence to where and beyond.

A runaway, not from, but to this -- loyalty inexpressible save by behavior and choice. A loose canon upon the decks of slave ships.

. . . 130104 05:42

Gyring thoughts hurl me aloft, strung together as pedals of roses in bloom--words--compassion incandescent with passion; suck me into oblivion the river of time behind and before me.

At lunch yesterday, M, said; “Why not write a book’ . . . ? (Though) Who me? But then in recognition of the two or so thousand pages those kept and lost--why not? I have!

But then previously I’d perceived books as accomplished things: fixed and immutable and what I write writes me across the void; darkness, not a star in sight.

I am not sad to so late discover the love of words at my hand and mind since I suspect most of us: this generation and those to follow, if they will, or do, suffer, in the majority, being disaffected and unwanted: the many of us who are an increase degrading the lives of one another by our number.

The race, this species, is beyond the point of no return; privacy shorn and no one individual unique as those I read remaining save the sense we are chattels to the rich who factory farm us injecting strange and exotic synthesized chemicals for cosmetic and commercial--mercantile--purposes: cupidity/calumny/usury.

Of fiction I can only say, by experience, they are the vestibule of intimacy. Hinting at what waits within yourself; the greatest experience one can know, if sought, inferior only to the souce of all being: The All.

My prayer for all life is this: imitate no one except yourself as being the best you can be for now and eternity.

. . . 130205 12:21
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

preemptive

I care little for the time I inhabit being exhausted with the mercantile mind of lawyers and business people. But then, of course, I speak from experience. Could it be exhaustion with myself?

I think not since I am somewhere between worm and butterfly in the chrysalis stage so to speak. And such luster or glimmer, I may -- or may not have, is attributable to the suffering of not merely myself but all life so treated at the hands of those who take versus those who give.

All good and ‘proper.’ ‘Legal’ so to say or as established by the Plutocracy as “ALL GOOD AND NORMAL” Even religion resides in the shameful shadow of greed, power absolute: abusing all that differ.

Curiously science and religion are melded in me via the handbook of life; and here I speak not merely of The Bible but all wisdom books. Add to which the voices of all who cared enough to risk censure and trial by standards inimical to free thought. Behavior and choice: cookie cutter ‘normal.’

To write is nothing but a con to sell you to yourself; at least it is for me: now.

Gideon fleecing God in order to discern/divine what he should do. Has in our time become The Great Con. Shearing all people of their human rights. Well what the hell, in for a penny may as well be a pound. Include all the animals, the sea, the air, the water and food we eat.

Spaceship Earth, our home and nest, to which we all are emigrant stewards of, is beyond the point of no return; what it was before we polluted it. Water, essential to life, is more valuable than all the gold in the world. All that is, is all that was, and all that will ever be.

130130 08:49 preemptive
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved