I remain my mother’s lover
though long dead she remains
a figure of fixated fascination
for her ejaculatory proclamations.

In Life Class, Art Students League
glooming North Light Lit
looming white flesh of woman.
I turned to a female student and
said: “qu’est-ce-que c’est?”
oblivious the question mark?

She replied, “qu’est-ce-que c’est?”
Our volley went back-and-forth
until in frustration I asked in English;
what does it mean?

“WHAT DOES IT MEAN!”

“The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.”--Matsuo Basho

Never intimate emotionally or physically after a lengthy dry birth
i soon learned to never ask anything of a woman
personal until now

“Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.” --Erma Bombeck

. . . nonsensical but it made me laugh
mother & me that is, multilingual she was
i a pox of inappropriately tinctured seductiveness remain

xoj 4m

120415 11:22

http://my.opera.com/JackSpratt/blog/2012/04/15/what-does-it-mean

120415 03:20
    I am conservative in the sense of reaching back to origins and honoring them.
    Each of Mankind’s advances have convulsed, more like St. Vitas than logic, reason or compassion. Not  three forward and two back. but many. Then, a few advanced, subsumed  and buried in the sand. Mountains of vanity, cupidity and greed, beguiling and enslaving all life surrounding them; their monuments like mountains will return to sand, ashes and/or dust.
    Inevitable doom is inherent in all birth beginning at conception; biological or egotistical. If you will, these are the facts of life, not ‘Da Birds and Bees.’
    The prancing, preening, passion of ruling classes is always to rationalize selfishness. The obscenity of this posture, so actually unnatural, is it is most often, then and now, justified as “Divine Right.”
    The locus of conscious endeavor is to destroy anything that is OTHER. The institution, culture or civilization that holds and wields the most advanced weaponry is in timeless time, The King for a Day. . . . nakedly in eternity: a fruit fly.
    Who are your prophets?
    What profit do they aggregate?
    At what cost and to whom?
    In the company of those whose mission is to serve others--about to die, dying or dead--is a curious wisdom and joy. Truth is made obvious -- all life dies taking nothing with it. Those addled young people, veterans of war, who homeless wander our nation are more like Jesus than any person of rank, stature, eminence pretending to mediate between God & Man.
    Questions are more important than answers.
    Why is it the natural earth, water, wind and fire erodes vanity, destroying instead of saving.
    My faith is immutable in life, either way, absolute. Upon Sinclair, Huxley and Orwell are no more, nor less, prophetic than those the majority claim to adore.
    Irreverent?
    My reverence is total love for the origin of it all life.
    Thence to the divinity inherent in you.
    . . . Be it, the only truth that moth, rust and decay cannot not touch.

I am
what i is
a girl named Johnny
reborn this hour: Wanda June
dream angels neuter conjoined
internally eternally infinitely intimately
Sister Sun Brother Moon
Nancy boy girl Muscularity
Wanda Jack Jumping over Cat in a Hat
Wander Woman Wonder Man
Jesus Magdalen
Claire Francis
Teresa John

The child who first hugged me leaving her panties who knows where
over whom my father roared with laughter recounting her mother’s protest
Awoke me catapulted vertical
we two become One
Innocent @ four years old on a red tricycle
hot not then now dreamed reprise

 . . . could be an erector set poem?

 4m

 120413 23:34

120412 00:31
    “ . . if I speak with the tongues of Angels and have not love . . “ I am a fraud!
    Upon cats paws this dawn arose a simple truth. I was incapable of forgiving myself the pain, suffering and abandonment of those I professed to love. And who, in their way, and to the best of their ability, loved me. As for myself, until that moment, self-love was forbearance grudgingly given. Thus my “I love you” was actually  greed begging them to love me. True love will let the beloved go, to return or not. Love is what you give, a verb not a noun, unconditionally.
    In flesh and blood terms, how it works in real like, my relationships have been failures . . . in some cases attributable to me, or partially/mostly so. The forgiveness I sought and received seemed to lay the issue to rest. Add, I confess to a vanity, thinking in poetic terms, that I held those I’d hurt in my heart, mind and prayers.
    Not good enough.
    It didn’t work since I twirled, Dervish like, the nail not between my toes, but through my foot. The metaphor applies only to Sufi trainees. Think ‘spiritual training wheels.’
    Gentle as a vagrant breeze, or Annie`s request for attention, flew in this realization. As I’ve pondered it through the hours since, with little rest, I became convicted the issue was justice. And that beneath it all I simmered, enraged, blaming that which I could not change either for those I loved, others close at hand or the world. But most of all I resented deeply the injustice of it all personally.
    Ostensibly I’d transformed the process of “Being between a rock and hard place” to “Being between the hammer and anvil.’ As in swords transformed into plow shears.
    My “Nothing is for Naught” -- “Nothing is for Nothing” implies to me, the sacrifice of Jesus, was pre or foreordained; purposeful, had value, meaning and consequence. And that I would, if called, lay down my life for another similarly without expectation of applause, gratitude or affirmation. Knowing that The Author of Us and Everything intended my death to serve, at the very least to save another’s life, and nothing more.
    Another way of illustrating the same ideal is to say: “There are no accidents.”
    However I’m still laughing over: “I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road." --Stephen Hawking
    Thank God for my sense of humor especially when applied to myself. And i do.
    Farther. My reliance upon synchronicity, using the Jungian definition, equally implies that this morning‘s revelation was from the same source of love that all the rest came, and continues, even now, to come from. Add to which my first “conversion” experience centered in an Old Testament reading about a father losing multiple sons by execution.
    Having read, yet unable at the moment to recall accurately “chapter & verse” either the Book of Jobe, or Jung's writing on its significance. I remember, and remain impaled up, Jobe’s lack of outrage; the injustice done to his children, estate and himself; his faith remanded immutable. . . . I’ve just crucified my Self!

120410 09:31
    Writing, initially, was masturbatory. Furtive gratification sought in an outhouse. Toilet paper: the lingerie section of J. C. Penny’s Catalog--always best--but more often Sears & Roebuck. With my family reunion waiting their turn in the facility. “Are you okay in there?!”
    Welcomed and forgiven now: the parental edict, “too stupid to live.” In hindsight a gift, it kept me silent in an alchemical retort/a pressure cooker. My thoughts, desires, curiosity caroming and ricocheting within a dark cave. Later redeemed as prayer echoing amongst the stars. Answered.
    Angelica Huston, in my eyes a forever Stone Fox, once mangled ‘orgasm’ as “organism” in a film set in Ireland. Research fails me regarding title and author. That said, in a linage stemming from Norse Tribes transplanted to Scotland then Ireland: Orange. I find the Irish to have a better understanding of God than most other tribes global.
    Ala:
    “God asked Adam if he wanted to stand up to pee?”
    “Yes”
    “Fine.” Then turning to Eve proclaiming, “To you I give multiple orgasms.”
    Those first writings, a photography column at the Providence Journal, were harried by commitments to: staff photography, teaching photojournalism at the University of Rhode Island, freelance assignments for a variety of National news services &/or publications and family. The latter became my preoccupation. At the time of my son’s diagnosis with Leukemia I fell blind to all else.
    To paraphrase Albert Schweitzer; 'You don’t have to be an angel to be a saint.' I am neither and aspire to nothing more than witnessing The All/The I AM. Never claiming to be a ‘nice’ person, I only pretend to be to keep myself outside the ‘cuckoo’s nest.’ I find joy writing now not merely the brief ejaculatory pleasure of ‘a happy ending.’ In seeking forgiveness from those I abused and betrayed I have begun, over and over, to seek to forgive myself.
    And now I write to the self I was, as child and adult, as well as those, who like me, stand upon the trembling cusp of death ready to seek relief: “Stop the Merry Go Round I Want To Get Off.”
    “Take up your cross” is branded upon my lips. For better or worse I am wed to this self. Damned either way? I don’t think so since I am willing to live and die for my truth . . . least I offend our brethren, all fellow travelers in this pretty blue & white nest hurtling through space . . . my brand is the Jerusalem Cross.
    Yet as before and always I remain a dust mote traversing a soon to pass shaft of light, superfluous.
    The joy of God is endless grown from a time before time was noted . . . Not a once-upon-a-time pleasure to be held immutable or egocentric.

“ 14:04

    I’ve come to distrust those who know not of chicken excrement between their toes.

    And it is she of emerald eyes, barefoot racing through peary groves, who blest then ordained me

    So odd to be adorned in her presence bejeweled each confessing an obsession with common stones worn smooth in rivers flow or erupted and graven by hands so long prehistory

Peans to those who forbore this black hole event arising a new something unknown as yet gestating . . .
is this/that/the womb of God?

Poem & Illustration from Journal of Sacred Work http://journalofsacredwork.typepad.com/
120408 0521 Easter Morn 
    The ‘pearl of great price’ is you. It has no value to others save the source from which it came; and goes towards. And in this sense do I attempt to integrate: "We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born." --Meister Eckhart . . . into this day and the ordinary of my life.
    I have never experienced success with the classical exercise or forms of meditation. Instead I fall asleep and ‘sleep the sleep of the ‘damned’ or ‘perchance to dream’? No I don’t think so for it more like surrender to me either way.
    I value river stones over gems. The metaphor is exclusive to life lived here on our planet which is equally our nest so dependent upon the work of water is it. For here we are all family; cells with in a whole body, no part of which is to be feared or despised, loved and accepted without exception.
    Virgin Birth, Death, Resurrection are to me like stones in the rock polisher of our soul; without gender or physical insemination. Here I am thinking of Confucius, a bit of Buddha, Mohamed I know to little of and obvious of Jesus who tumble together like stones in a flooding river through my mind consciously. More often than not empty, save for the flow of being awake or asleep.
    Eckhart implies the reverse of my sense of: St. Peter admitting us to Heaven; for St. Peter unlocking our preoccupation with survival (immortality, safety and wealth) and admitting Heaven into us.
    Sins of omission/commission are crimes I’ve committed and projected upon those against whom I protest or hold in angry regard. This is passing away slowly. Yet my boulder of prejudice and bigotry, though lashed and laved, remains rough, intransigent. If I can forgive myself perhaps the boulder will become the river. All mountains, in time, become deserts. We cannot change the world, or cosmos, only ourselves. “Nothing is ours except time.” --Marcus Annaeus Seneca
    I am not ashamed to confess synchronicity. To be led, as I experience, in joy, through gardens of thoughts tilled and expressed by others in order to better express my own. (paraphrase) --Michel de Montaigne

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Kumbh+Mela

“In the great scheme of things, what matters is not how long you live, but why you live, what you stand for, and what you are willing to die for.” --Paul Watson

120406 02:57
    My cheek on His cold bloody feet, I wept. He was human, could and did die, growing tremendous doing so. Vision, memory or imagining? Is His resurrection potent in us? I remain a gnat amidst giants. My footprint in eternity a mere two square feet. To celebrate joy we need suffer pain; near or absolute loss.
    As witness to my time I’ve fallen away from the celebrity of most rich, beautiful, hansom. Moving closer to the abyss I hear His words, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” In the dark starless night I rise to suffuse myself with quotes. There finding a common tread throughout recorded history traversing all boundaries even death. A common will to live with, love, compassion and mercy
    I remember being ill, not long ago, in need of intensive therapy, massive infusions of antibiotics. A fellow sufferer, a daughter, shared a story about her father.
    He was one of the very few surviving the destruction of the battleship U.S. Arizona. She went on to share her awe of his disregard of fear. Telling me of his insistence that she transport him, instead of an Ambulance with medical technicians when involved with a stroke or, perhaps, a heart attack.
    Of saints and sinners, the deranged and composed, I love them all, their transparent reality. Life lived tolerantly.
    When I stroke Annie’s fur I am reminded of the sound of snow falling upon a windless winter night. In turn I remember being transported to a distant Methodist Church at Easter to collect varicolored eggs and chocolate bunnies . . . the rich green lawn racing beneath my feet during the hunt . . . the dirty brown sandstone bricks . . . but best of all are memories of my mother and sister’s joy at the day.
    Experience His martyrdom and weep with me the loss. Resurrect the Love learning the joy of unconditional relationship, fearless. No exceptions allowed.

“Just as a flower, which seems beautiful has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of a man who speaks them but does them not.” --Dhammapada

“ 07:40
    I no longer cry or grovel when so led to see the above quote instantly leaving what I wrote. “Suffer the little children . . . “ no longer makes me furious in the Memorial Mass. If it was said then/there or was quoted by another priest to slake my anguish -- the lost children of my love.
    In these moments I become the child I was, redeemed and reconciled to the harm and pain I’ve committed upon those I’ve left behind. In body but never in heart or mind. I return to Serpent Mound, Randy upon my shoulders, seeing a six foot black snake he began to wiggle and plead that I let him down. He then squat next the snake hands upon his knees. Did he speak? Pray or commune? I’ll never know. But his quest reminds me of mine at four, same posture, discovering a nest of baby pigeons upon an alleyway, eyes dead beaks open, a rictus of hunger yet.
    Why oh why did they die. Resonant still the question unanswered. Being this broken vessel incapable of the commission i still ask why any/everything.
    The snake coiled  slept on. The nest, snake and question remain. A nodal point. Gyring higher and deeper the cyclone of love moves onward from resolution to experience.
    Our playground grows from one universe to another infinity. Onward the journey renewed.

--John Andrew Holmes
“It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.”

illustration borrowed from: Parabola Newsletter: Learning to See, April 5th, 2012

“ 21:11 . . . I am slumping towards exhaustion lingering in a sense of futility and molested words personal torn from the flesh of my journal. Do I publish or allow them to disappear into the Dumpster? Hell is for me noting more than waste. He lives on.