a writer realized late in life this time is eclectic not hectic

same 2 in photography and i no longer put expectations on

--can you hear me laughing? 2 me i feel as though a shuttle

cock flinging back and forth forth and back weaving a tapestry

of something I cannot know the pieces don't fit like a picture

puzzle with discernable edges oddly bizarrely configured and of

my laundry nearly a years worth still in the back of my car growing

mushrooms and oddly green squiggly things roaming gleefully singing

songs o u dirty old goat wash me NOW!

& of course the problem is that someone flung the box top away

with the promise of a Dick Tracy magic ring seeing through clothes

2 U i'm just an ordinary guy but i've seen my mother naked 2 it's

okay but the problem  see is i sees souls dancing crying dying and laughing

2  No 1 likes to have their dipstick drawn for a time they feel invaded and

on empty i just smile with your stolen dirty or clean panties in my mouth

grinning and leering and salivating in desire to know you real well in another

way had mom known me better i'd never have been given birth yet she knows

me well and swell rupture rapture or roaming the desert with Post-It Notes of

sin attached laughing a horny old goat i is

121017 19:07 converse

©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

life is 2 funny 2 take seriously i gave mine away for a door prize

arriving for the cookies & milk the bear ate me for a snack drooling

with greed 4 more and greater than that wanting to dance upon the

pedestal doing the hoochie coochie giggling with the crank twistin

the twist Chubby Cheerios style in a victory roll the war is all over hear

the bear humming? Know your ending soon dripping drool outta you

mind and mouth

121017 19:25 seriously

©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

We all have god

within us but can

only be god or like

god for ourselves

in peace and

creation knowing

the blessing of being

what

conscious

of having

no fear and then

then

we can give others

our peace piecemeal

manna for others

must be consumed

that they and all be

well

today the pool was not crowed and across it I saw her smile and I became her and she me and all was well swell I returned home eating M&Ms knowing myself having a chocolate fit need it it the manna of my brain then sleeping the sleep of the dead arising later on Manny called to ask something I realize it was still today not tomorrow or yesterday and I lived?! i bless people by sight looking at looking seeing the well or at the very least okay for now forever is their problem not mine. God gives us name before we leave and arrive here on the body of God called "Earth" or nest or whatever it is all the same Jerusalem the City of Peace Very crowded now and some go insane some go bliss and it is swell we all die and go back home maybe maybe not to do it all over again?

We are all we need having enough the rest must be shared

our daily bread

121017 1724 the right stuff U have it!

©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

true unreality

As a photographer I define myself as a taker not a maker. Reserving the latter for poetry, prose and journal keeping. True. There are brutal parts of my life mined reminding to others they are not alone as I was until seven years ago. Moving to The Land of Enchantment, New Mexico, The United States of America.

Traveling sixteen hundred miles wending my way towards a vision experienced in 1965 on my way to Mexico City. I knew instinctively I was home at last when crossing the pass between one place and another in the dark. From seven thousand feet looking across hundreds of miles. Experiencing a flashing lightning storm striking first here, then there, like brain synapses. Which now seems internally more like the Bicentennial Firework Show over New York Harbor. Yet for me silent, instead of many bangs.

I am now celibate for many reasons growing more so daily. Realizing now that all my life was baiting the tiger, or in my case the lioness of first mom, then wife, the lover, etc.

In a sense I have not merely been very bad ethically and morally but worse abusive to myself knowing nothing better. If you have God as your best friend, and I am not alone in this sense, seeing it across history. Not merely in Jesus. But many others who essentially remain nameless to all but a few who seek wisdom and truth.

If you want me to ignore you tell me about how sweet Jesus is and I will walk away in silence; not derision. True love is mutable, renewable daily, dedicated to maintenance, of not devotion, but negotiation, for what is todays agenda and purpose. It is the crooked made plain; a level playing field between God and Self--again--and again--not exclusive to me but many who were like me apostate, agnostic, nihilist, sexually promiscuous, etc. Name all the sins, guilts and shames. I've done it returning at last to the truth of my love who saved me so many times I have no other excuse for being alive.

And to think, at one time I sought the pink sugar cone of cotton candy handy at carnivals and sideshows. Bimbos and sluts, not intrinsic, but merely in my imaging: peace and pleasure in their arms safe at last. I was born after fifty-eight-hours in my mother's womb. Why would I want to return to make love with her? Instead I've grown to a full maturity now in recognition that I longed merely for her to love herself and leave me alone in solitary peace.

Remembering the moments of ecstatic joy lending flickering glimpses of God and Truth. Post or prior coital; "Did you remember to put the trash out?" Or. "Are the children asleep." Odd. Very  odd to realize God with me from first to last and beyond. Yet more so now apparent!

I have explored many women and creative activities: painting, music, sports, war making, the list is endless and yet none did it for me: no bliss, no rest, no hope. Worse. No completion until I said I am a recluse, introverted, slow to process either love or anger. Saying; “I should have been celibate.” At the same time recognizing the complicity between both. Indifference being what I did to myself.

That is, of course, until I met the last and great martyr.

Indifferent and indecisive in and towards myself. I am now decisive to the point of needing caution that I do not destroy people I otherwise can hold in prayer instead of bed or faux friendship.

If I give you my attention, initially it is merely being civil. If you steal my time you will do well to know that I can and will destroy you. Love is not a sweet thing sentimental; rather and farther a violence and passion beyond most human understanding.

Creation beyond The Big Bang theory. . . .The before and after nothingness.

We, you and I, and all of life is made from the same stuff as the stars plus one key ingredient: water. . . .Recently on my way into water aerobics, the only reason I am not in constant agony from arthritis, I saw a young man with a one gallon bottle of water near a brand new pickup truck. I paused saying; "WOW! A vehicle that runs on water!"

"No!" The young man replied; "I do: one gallon a day!"

Expect war between the haves and have nots'. Not over jobs or money; but water. Think about living aboard a vessel, as Ship of State, or like a submarine to a sailor. To bathe one gets wet turning off the water, sudsing, then rinsing all in the space of three minutes. We can go days without food but without water a day or two.

You do not know the value of anything until you lose or come close to losing it. The world is maladjusted in so many ways by over population . . . think the number of cities near oceans and rivers soon polluted beyond use by any means or measures; water costing more than any other resource. Tucson has a life span of maybe another two decades before becoming a ghost town. As for Manhattan it may well soon be under water.

Think.

Seek the truth for yourself.

Add all the rest of us--as well. Or just dying of thirst for living potable water. Or just for laughs; having a cigarette basking in your bathtub exploding.

121017 04:09 unreality truth
©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

our time

For me this is the right time, place and generation; bridging the Depressions as I do.

My parents were born, and grew to maturity, during the Great Depression creating a family during a dark and turbulent time of change. And then educated me based upon the expectations of poverty not wealth. Possibly I examine their motives and coping more than most simply because I was born curious?

Born in 1940 at the beginning of World War II; approximately one month before Pearl Harbor. Historically I was swept into the great migration afterwards. My parents left me with my maternal grandmother Mamalu as they sought a new home for one year. The home they settled in was Greenwich, Connecticut; a bedroom community for New York, New York. I had no sense of the towns place in the general lexicon of "good address to come from." Equally I had no sense of it being home but instead just the place where my parents lived while I had another distant home beside the Ohio River, Ripley Ohio.

All my dreams, lifetime, have been reconciled and explained. And clearly understood as lessons for my teaching. Thus the new ones, this morning's, prove to be astonishing leading me to question, being curious, their providence, meaning and context in and around the before, during and afterward of my soon or maybe long awaited death, and release from; "I don't care if I live or die; depression." Understanding myself as I do is more a result of suffering from birth until quite recently when joy became obvious and peace my stance in another time of significant change. I am at peace within myself regardless the chaos surrounding me buffeting all others both younger and older or the same age as I.

Poor. I find poverty a boon since I am not subject to the addiction of being entertained by television. Unavailable without subscription to a monopoly; Cable or Satellite Broadcast.

There were times during my life television played a significant role. Abstaining from it, these past six years, has lent me a different experience of time. No longer slave to their schedule I gained freedom to prioritize my life around other creative concerns. Part and parcel of my current sense of youth approaching my seventy-second year. Preferring silence to noise, reading versus vacuity and when curious about current events I listen to National Public Radio reverting to the joy of my youth before television.

Last evening I listened to the Presidential debates and was taken with my sense of what was implied and what was factual; a curious truth actual. Like most men I have a special interest in  the female and things, costumes, makeup, etc. available to women for changing their appearance. The how and why, becoming obvious, now that I see women as equals and adore more their intelligence and wisdom than their bust line. The same, it now seems, was true as a child for those of color lived one street behind my grandmother's home. They would pass by my solitude laughing with their friends and peers. I came to admire them more than my few "white" friends for a host of reasons made obvious by listening, instead of viewing, the debates.

Accustomed to being abandoned, despised and suffering alone my observations were both a joy and a curse. Listening instead of watching the debates I concluded and am convicted by a vastly different apprehension. Mr. Romney is by any common cultural standard or norm viral handsome and, in a sense, a poster person for success. Mr. Obama on the other hand is merely a man of substance not appearance and in a world soon to be all brown, or of color, versus toothpaste white better integrated into the future while Mr. Romney is now the past.

A student of aesthetics and behavior I fear Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan; trusting Mr. Obama as an ambassador for the future. Remembering his Nobel Award for Peace and the current awarded, Europe, there is an uncommon wisdom betrayed by the Republican agenda too reminiscent of a pointless bankruptcy and war.

America, once a savior, is now a nation of aggression and torture. Possibly in it's last gasp or grasp of power throwing around a weight it can no longer afford?

I doubt that many could afford my tuition in the University of Hard Knocks. Atypical of most young men I speak with in the course of my social life, I do not appraise a person by their appearance but substance. The who they are, and by inference and extrapolation, the what they will become following closely what they say and how they behave.

We are at war with ourselves over racially divided associations and expectations. I could and can argue either side of any issue; no longer willing to prostitute my mind to vanity. Expect the war to continue for space, water, clean air; the health of nation in this world cannot be exclusively defined in terms of mind numbing boredom doing factory jobs. The jobs Romney promises are even more so; boring, small pay, women made breeding stock for wars yet to come; their children cannon fodder for wars engaged preemptively for the sake of power not justice. Truth is difficult to find in a time of appearances versus substance.

In closing I would remind you that tho I have no communication with the biracial child adopted by my heart and her daughter. I will advocate for those of color for they are the future and I am not. Many of the current political arrangements were rehearsed successfully after the last Great Depression in favor of the rich. The only reason this time is called The Great Recession is attributable to Republicans and their obvious disdain of "colored" people unworthy of counting as employable.

Be well, vote, thinking for yourself; and for heaven's sake remember that people of color fought to protect our right to vote in the first place. They were there at Bunker Hill.

Add: We are one family created equal under God. No part of which is to be despised. In death we return to the Creator our souls without color, gender or creed.

121017 01:46 our  time
©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Life goes on with or without Us

I remain an American citizen tho it shames me to be so, and white, and from Greenwich, Connecticut mis-educated by their School Board. Possibly it is for this alone that I write?

Given my altruistic nature and choices published it would be well for me to never see or hear from the shit head who is by biology etc. "my half-brother" for I may could or might simply look at him and destroy his genealogy backwards and forward in time including myself just for the fun of doing it.

Kapish?

That said, I will say the following: We The People of American will survive the depredations of those two Republican assholes running for election as Commander-and-Chief of America. However I doubt that we will will survive our feelings of helplessness, indifference and suicidal tendencies. If I am in part, or whole, or completely delusional; any part of Jacob, John or Jack in history; or merely a wanna be Jesus upon the cross covered in blood, shit and piss, dying unknowing the love of God who for the moment was silent . . . well what the heaven? Let it be!

How can I idolize the entire human race?

I do.

Do you value yourself enough to ask the fearful questions of why you do or do not do anything? Does your son or daughters have to leave you forever to lend you the suffering requisite to ask God for help? Would it be too much to say that the widows and orphans of Darfur or Tibet, or the Tibetan Nuns self-immolating need and want help?

Laws are useless; remedial instead of proactive. I am a covert Quaker. Yet I refuse to be or join  anything but instead am a citizen/denizen of the cosmos. Although I do wear the Jerusalem Cross and am willing to live and die upon; it I am taken with God. As are you; as well. Few if any ever ask the meaning of freedom or free will or responsibility and/or participation in anything but themselves. Masturbation is not a sin but merely a waste of passion. If you do not take responsibility for your health, 90%, not 10%, you are wasting the precious gift of life.

As for me, merely Mrs. Spratt's old, and still overweight, fat boy; white and ignorant, dreaming of The Great Mother Earth I met barefoot, she not me, in Jamaica outside White Wing at dawn sweeping her door stoop and her mocking, smirking, grin, knowing I'd bed or wed her in a nanosecond second. . . .Well she like M remains in my longing to be loved by a woman in all the ways a woman and man, woman and woman, man and man can love one another. Sex of any kind being merely a 7% part of what love is. Just a facet. A mode of expression. The children of which are the future but if sterile or otherwise unable or not desiring to practice making babies or puppies or lambs or lions. . . .Folks there are 40,000 or so children dying daily who need love, touch, attention, just like you or me.

Some asshole prostitute for profit said "Be All you can Be" join the Army. The abuse and misuse of words is the greatest obscenity akin to the Darfur woman forced to bite her son's penis off. I have little concern that the Islamist Extremist will take my idea and use it. They are doing so daily just like the Senators and Congress people are in our Beloved Once Grand United States of America.

If I know the Antichrist I know him well for he is me.

Potentially.

Why do I not walk into a public place explosives taped to my body, and destroy anyone, and everything within the influence area of the explosives carried? I am loyal to God who has no hands, feet or eyes with which to change you or me unless we change ourselves to give instead of take meaning from others.

For years I feared Christmas, the nadir of my life. No amount or quality of gifts could ever make up for the year-round-year-long suffering endured. Now everyday is Christmas celebrating the birth of all children all the world round . . . puppies, kittens, wolves, wasps whatever life biological imperative--thanks to Walt Whitford--to me as divine as I want to be for you--merely a teacher as we both step or are swept off the stage by Shepard crook or whatever . . . unknowing whether to be worm shit, ash or dust or Angel's sans 70 some odd young maiden's breasts to dance across. God is within you and me should only we stop refusing to ask for what it is that is potential and choose between doing or not doing harm to others.

Explicit in birth is death. The celebration of Christmas reminds me more so of this fact, my maternal grandfather, Thomas Merton, my son Randy all died on December 10th.

The Church misappropriated December 25th to use as a holy day what was a pagan celebration as old, older than people of polliwogs were on the planet: Winter Solstice, The longest night and shortest day. The next is M's birthday the 22nd. The next longest day. Beginning the march back to Summer Solstice. In general I avoid the public knowing that women or any woman as kind to me as M will tear me apart--The Fargo Shredder--Evisceration, without anesthesia; I will never die but live on in others all others who love and will act towards the commonweal. Those who cause woe live in hell for eternity.

I am not Jesus, or God, or anything like either or neither of them. I am merely a very patient old man who ate the grief of losing the love of a future watching my son drown in his own blood.

Life is to be it's own reward.

We are born, we live, then die. . . .going to Heaven or Hell.

In some curious way this is more real than God is to me: Truth.

Neither in a rush for death or away from death uncertain whether to live another day or not. I know the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops lobby and their influence on the issue of "Right-to-Life."

Right to life without justice? Endlessly enslaved by politicians and Presidents who war preemptively? Create, or cause to create death; singly or massively? If you love love you must participate in the dialog and action or be just what you are to yourself alone and lonely.

Curious to know, knowing I'm curious, what's next?

I was taught by my mother; dad being indifferent in life and death. Then taught by nuns, not merely the one's Catholic; Sisters of Mercy plus other religious orders; more-or-less same/same. Also the Tibetan Buddhist Nuns, who now, more than fifty, have self immolated in protest the rape of Tibet by China. And planned selection of a state sponsored Dalai Lama.

Neither they, nor I, perfect or attempting to be perfect. Only God is perfect. Who in some oddly wonderful way uses our imperfection to be love for others and ourselves. In compassion and empathy. I wonder now, in forgiving myself, my trespass and trespass against others. My lack of compassion for myself. Am I not just like all others a fraud and addicted to whatever?

Weeping.

I guess I'll have to go in the bathroom and make faces laughing at myself, speaking in Randy's voice; I'd rather be pissed off than pissed on!" . . . in some small way daily from birth until beyond my 'death' I've been crucified by my Self. . . .so do me a favor just shoot me.

121016 04:30 life goes on with or without Us
©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

It is what it want's to Be: Life Love God

It is what it want's to Be

121015 04:36 divided
Divisions between men and women are difficult enough; in and of themselves.

During my last tooth cleaning I stopped the young woman's hand to say; "One more thing! You are well rid of a man who would only use you now in youth for his pleasure and seek another later on. We men never grow up. I am not attempting to seduce you; being old enough to be your father; or worse your grandfather! It is only that it has taken me seventy-two-years to gain the wisdom I've just given you.”

She, laughed.

Though in abandoning her he also withdrew support for their two young sons and is currently living at home with his parents?

Retrospectively I realize I preach wherever I go without ordination or seminary. I am free to be a clown, or jester, to gain the attention of women: Our majority oppressed, abused and enslaved part of the global community.

Being a "Bastard Catholic," an Episcopalian, catholic sans Pope. I am now less divided between sophistry for love and being a poet.

121016 00:01 reality

I just awoke with a sense of being vitally/virtually zero. Aware that I am, to myself, not a legend; or anything. Not an author, or blogger, but just another life; well aware that I am at, or near the end, of all that I've known as "my" reality. This endgame part of the play has a distinct movement in the musical sense like a concerto. Or as a play; the closing act.

Smiling. I realize that I love the generations following mine because I am conscious now that all the preceding generations faced the same issues; or those who follow will or might. It is wonderful to be anonymous and I no longer need or be greedy for another, one or many, to say “Oh Jack! You are a genius or I want your attention and your body be my lover;” or whatever.

I love calling myself "Lurch." For several reasons. Principally: by age I am losing my sense of inherent balance. Both physical and mental--More laughter at myself--Laughter being the divine antidote to death.

Mine of course.

My ridicule of anyone, deserved or not, is as consequent as barking at the moon. However I will share this for your delectation and edification IT gets more better:

Life it self; is it's own reward.

To be nothing; receiving the slings and arrows and vicissitudes as St. Sebastian did, dying and/or resurrecting or reincarnating in another form. Let's say for the humour of it; as a cockroach or wild boar/bore. Or more specifically, in my experience and expectations: a nest of dead baby pigeons, is to so love God (you do know by now that God is real, not just a figment of my aberrant abnormal imaginings?) is really worth/worthy of all my attention and devotion! More so, than my just stubbed toe! Or the coral snake beneath my pillow; or between Cleopatra's lovely succulent breasts.

That said, of God or M, I so love both either or neither together or apart that it is irrelevant what sex or not they are. I had conceptualized that M might be my my son Randy or daughter Johanna infeasible due to periodicity but the ideal of love is worthy of all power and glory; and so either way, or neither, it works for me in real flesh and blood terms.

I laugh about those who seek to know God by reason of insanity/logic/science etc. Infusing mice with "Saint Drugs." When an ignoramus, ignoble, fool such as I; can laugh at the entire history of civilization. You know I'm just like God nominally/nearly/neither? And I don't have to pay BIG PHARMA a fig or cent for their prostituting humanity as guinea pigs: who me? Of course me! Why not be crucified for profit so some other asshole can have another Escalade? It is merely quantum physics we all have none at least for your sake I hope so those colostomy bags are a pain and humiliating to empty. “Reekiness” is a phrase that either Randy or I invented, or coined he also said “peeju” but me thinks that’s his mother’s word. In either, or all, or most cases; what I think when I think about or see certain persons who know themselves scatocephalic. Why would I tell them when I would not trust them to take my sandals to the cobbler to repair the sundry broken strap? Or merely to dust them? For too me there are like in appearance a one million dollar bill making of itself a dog turd.

Oh Sweet Leaping Jesus, doing somersaults over the Himalayas; am I glad I’m not at hospice anymore. Like the army, I wouldn’t take a million to go back and do it again or over again. In the case of hospice; I’d not take a trillion seven times a trillion to go back.

Knots measured at sea tied, in why they call Samuel L. Clemens “Mark Twain.” Well folks the rope with the knots incinerated my hands, my mind, my self/soul/soles and went up in a gnat fart; no wisp of smoke--nothing no thing left.. I've left this ship of fools with all the prancing naked pretenders who would be imperious as Hitler before God in an endless Woodstock, the movie, seeing each soul destroying him.

I understand that the assholes in congress of baboons voted themselves a congratulatory raise while strangling the world with bankruptcy. Shit-for-Brains: one and all. Odd they could agree on that! I guess the Robber Barons are going broke too 2 two in tutus?

Insane? Of course I am! Making the same mistake over and over of loving you; much less god or M. It is my will for you; that you love yourself and then conspire with all the Saints and Angels and Goddesses and God-like women/men people who respond on Culture Book.Com. Anything less is merely a cesspool of commericality, fame, fortune, greed, cupidity, pretence, illusion oh well what the hevean why bother going on? Vanity is limitless.

I adore the image of Romney and Ryan clinging together in a cesspool of their own greed. Attempting not the swallow their own waste; much less the waste of women they would castrate. Setting Women's Rights back to the time of The Great Plague. Possibly, maybe, maybe not, they should just line up all women before the sea and destroy them like the Al-Qaeda dudes in Pakistan.

It used to be, when writing, I'd become frantic not to lose a single impulse or inspired thought/idea. Now, however I feel free to pee whenever, too often, the need arises. It follows that occasionally when idle I seek http://www.ighome.com/ my new 'home page' and the scuttlebutt there. Leading me to the following confession. Looking back, forward and at now.

I would say/think mommy/daddy made me do it. Whatever I concluded; it always was being victim to power. Now that I love God and will do whatever God suggests I am squarely placed upon my own recognisance to lay up or let loose whatever is within my responsibility and ability to change. It took me too long to be here, now, as I am. Yet in Randy or Johanna's cases; they knew God long before I did/do/now. My long past/dead son and daughter, plus the one who refuses to let me wish her happy birthday November 5th.

To be a teacher, once and always, is to be more noble than priest or pope. In that to teach someone to love themselves is precisely what God does for me. Note: tense: does, not did: it is a process not a magical drug or pill or miracle. God within, God without, surrounding; all invisible. How did I--or we--miss this? By idolatry and cult. Religion and those who purport to serve the public: should be taxed, possibly more than the average joe or jane, heavily. They have become not benign but malevolent killing more than creating love.

God to, for, by me can be any Goddamn self or thing, object/subject; God wants to be. Add, and I am, fine with that. Better, or more better than that: at peace, in joy, ecstatic to finally reconcile the 6 Million Jews and all those intelligentsia destroyed by Joseph Stalin; hereafter known as the 60 Million.

How many years after touching the hand, of the hand, that touched Thomas Merton's hand, did it take me to realize that I should have taken off his shoes and kissed his toes? The Dalai Lama.

©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved