cycling between

cycling from rest to awareness within the crucible alchemical is compressed in duration and filled with many things: sparking words aflame metaphors and similes hilarious. A switch instantaneous thrown from horizontal to vertical vibrant with joy.

And of she I adore wondering will she find me well or ill company for now or longer? This reality? She inspires in me — a muse — a freedom previously unimaginable, a future where there seemed only awaiting the undertaker near or distant solitary. There are alarms where I live currently sounding in the night to which if long I hurry wrapped in whatever. I know the drill carried out on stretcher or within a black zippered bag bent-in-half the exit door.

Otherwise playing solitaire as dealt moment by moment knowing the point is not to win but play life as far as it goes and beyond. Bell Ringer or not.

Through frissons is this calm peace deeply growing glowing within whatever these moments of joy more than all moments before. Only The Audition will prove to go forward or reverse. Her final verdict these precious days yet as always the interlocutor is present my greatest audience who awakens me in joyful anticipation this I do now. Who seems to nod the distant leaf in favor of what will come. No cyclone of love just a gentle gyre the whisper seen in a dragonfly or hummingbird and ant or spider scurrying and then and now will always be the river of words gurgling within wanting out. Sometimes a flood others a tear more often gentle runnels/rills. Going on and on no longer terrified of distemper, dysfunction, short or long, dementia and then Alzheimer's lingering.

What drug is this peace? No aynodine palative but real moving forward wind in my face grinning beatifically. Leaning headlong knowing the ending is not near but a place for us together or apart life itself blessed either way. These extraodinary moments expanding as rain dropping on a still pond wrippling outwards concentric perfect.

Peace I say is within all of us.

Within inherent possible real.

Strumming wanting song

130513 22:19 MDT cycling between

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

beloved

Floundering falling down stairs laughing as I crack my head

somersaulting across rush hour traffic, often I wonder why my

consciousness and perceptions are merely a pocket pen flash light in the vast

darkness. Something akin to a stylus scribbling across the universal darkness scrabbling

Imagine yourself in a hushed expectant theater seven seconds before the show

a pin of light illumines the curtains and a hand appears to emerge beckoning

come hither

go

no go

terror

curiosity . . .

a fool for love I race into the void

The last thought before submerging in rest unconscious

awakening aware that I owe so much to the hitherto random kindness of women whose attention was dropped as the Widow's Mite—two cents equivalent—into the bottomless well of my self loathing

depression's despair

heart subsiding into stillness

last breaths panting

a fool for love I took prisoners along the way then sensing I owned them but became owned. Enslaved to Their Authority and at that I bridled and ran leaving the mementos of love behind memories as particles carried forward guilty of the singular sin of adoring them endowing them as GOD! Women, of course, are persons sans gender as angels are and in some vast sense resent the rarefied air atop the pedestals I placed them upon.

Long removed, exiled from, the womb and mother giving birth to me, i recognize only now myself given birth by each and every woman whose initial fleeting or lasting kindness resurrected me from a previous living death

Guilty as charged scourged and gibbeted dying again for loving too much a mere mite for their task of giving birth to the all of life.

Here we go again!

Well aware long long ago time amusements began with the 'holy show' worship; a time set aside from the ordinary to acknowledge the extraordinary . . . a momentary quiet allowing the silent to be heard into which music, song and dance were cast performed however now for me for you for all of us is endless din

wall-to-wall chaos

noise abounds

distractions prevail

of which and about I obviously am a player

just another noise maker a wee-wee whistle

but there is the stillness of slumber and dream in which I see things differently

knocked unconscious with awe clubbed to reverence

Wile E. Coyote bouncing back up atop the precipice

“One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession.”

- Sophocles

130513 03:00 beloved

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

love is not insane

. . . expecting nothing in return or reprise but freely given.

Love is also not fanatic or zealous forgetting its origin expansive. Never killing to prove itself a passion devoid of compassion or kindness.

Judgmental terminally so.

Drama/Trauma . . . am i too much or little—noth'n at all: arrangements made for the disposal of my remains remaining willing at a moment's notice to get off the merry-go-round. Memories abound/abide: the blessings and confessed regrets those about to do what I would gladly do: die. Finding—oddly—the will to be courageous enough to allow my heart one more beat.

I sense no script or prescription available so I make up life as I breath: one breathe at a time

with undertones/frissons of concern that I wound or mortally kill the will to live as they are in others leading them astray?!

. . . and what will i do: when, or why, i am kicked to the curb beneath the wheels of a passing Escalade driving fast past; the operator oblivious/indifferent to my dismemberment or quadriplegic remains? Joyously intoxicated with a mechanical device distracted a cellular telephone/computer texting, sexting, talking about what?

Or by they: M, P, The Interlocutor?

. . . worse? by “i” myself!

Conscious always, the remains of those still here, partially . . . complete the list yourself, never forgetting Jesus sleeping beneath newspapers under an Interstate bridge alone covered in lighter fluid set ablaze. . . .much less the foe or friendly victims of war.

More drama/trauma? Or things as they are. Reverent to all—even those irreverent to themselves save for their smug gloating greed. Never fulfilled or satisfied. Their passage annotated with corpses, mutilated, molested, taking no prisoners. — or — otherwise enslaved. Unremarkable actually but so am i.

08:58 What fine madness this dispassionate acceptance? The gratitude of an old man for love's first fiery rage should be reserved for The Interlocutor—oddly or not—seen in even my assassins. Once thought love's heart is acceptance and thence from there . . . experience . . . stone cold sober my current addictions: cigarettes and coffee

. . . feint parry thrust the match continues

clanging foils or silence panting

130512 0808 love is not insane

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

apprehend even this even that? twofer

Apprehended: I love indiscriminately. Tho betimes would strangle or bend others to another posture towards themselves. Regardless of any other consideration; silently—benignly—lovingly? Jesus said “shake the dust from your sandals . . . “ yet I carry them forward in mind and prayer hopelessly in love. Confident all will be well . . . eventually?

Knowing life's resilient fragility, yours and mine (I simply must stop this communication covert with M? & P! The Interlocutor!) work as prayer, not rote. Nor ritual choice—but actual.

Incongruous oxymoronic this to speak of face-to-face myself in life when I have more life while desecrating virgin white space across the monitor of my mind. Remembering once long ago writing in obverse white upon black same/same story lunatic eejit boy laughing slumped slumbering too stupid to live or so I was demonstrated by abuses of many kinds; we all are, abused—I mean—and imperfect too.

Two is the issue not the invisible oft silent interlocutor but another who speaks affirming what was once a chrome lawn ornament, a gazing ball immutable, shedding all love, becoming a bird bath splashed by two women I love unreasonably M&P me thinks the interlocutor as well?! 2

“Take the A Train” oh lovely Duke of Ellington—as best I recall or remember—“i ain't nothing special, nothing to see, pardon me while i disappear” evaporated in love like a jelly fish left too long upon the beach burnt by the Sun.

The act, get your mind out of your pants, of creation, is regardless of form, or forum, to enter All Creation before during and after everything experiential.

I have a friend, to whom I've promised my car, when I've left. Who once, in a great while, will change the spark plugs and/or lubricants; standing before the open yaw, hood raised like a symphony conductor gesturing the down-beat. His baton a wrench in one hand the other open in supplication.

Oh Dear God! HELP ME NOT DIE FROM LAUGHTER!

. . . or sadness too, since his mind was nominally fried: overdosed on Ritalin, for his parents convenience—common practice now. Responsible for enormous profits by gangsters dealing licit drugs. . . . those who cannot create destroy for fun and profit. The creation I advocate is within each and everyone of us.

05:08

Returning to rest I dreamt: no one raised from death, sight restored, or walking on water. Just my thesis regarding the resurrection is within all of us. Potent, available, in real time, and not Jesus alone. But all wisdom figures preach, essentially the same, teaching compassion, mercy, love and kindness. Each in saying yes can become a light, no matter how dim in the world, instead of sink hole, darkness, sucking life and light out of the universe.

06:03

As by custom I go back-and-forth between writing and quotes finding inspiration therein betimes manically focused on my own words.

Astonishingly for one so ignorant as I, it seems now that awakened is a wannabe poet, in poverty since that which I call “I” learned too well to remain indifferent to myself. Ambivalent. Indecisive. Shrugging my shoulders, pawing the ground impatiently, when asked what did you mean? Eyes rolling individually unknowing.

Literature seems divided, equable, between telling and doing; the latter causing an experience versus report or apology or argument in the former. Carol, not the first or only, to briefly infect or inflict, affirmation within me I could “write” or perhaps should. Nonetheless she said; “used do words, not tell words.”

The Wisdom books of all history are easily carried and pointed towards as ideal, or idol, but in some, turn and devour all conceits.

Virtual or near death actual, having walked away abandoning all I once considered 'me', a self absent soul, in no regard do I play with resurrection/reincarnation. No joiner and too hard a case pragmatic about Creation it seems of needs self imposed that I must prove to my solitary self the truth. For which I live or die.

. . . oddly returning to my initial 'great dream' wandering the moon light desert naked bereft of direction sighing, at time laughing or crying, yet confident convicted of direction; the narrator always returned to—in whatever guise. . . . it is always possible to be vain in false humility.

—did I mention the faint, silent, sense of: one hand clapping in applause?

. . . to raise or swat! an eagle plucked cooked and eaten

why is there no angst nor laughter just joy?

being here now

quiescent

130512 00:57 apprehend

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

This matting dance circling feinting withdrawing. Should be exquisite; but it is what it is: a dance. Requiring the participation, responsible, two partners recumbent leaping shouting sighing still weeping and crying for joy and sorrows revealed. Tragic or divine—bliss either way.

But I lie. Since becoming avid for the affirmation: I am, I live; seen at last, as other than a dust mote—in sunlight—slowly descending into oblivion—ignoble or noble becoming nothing. Helpless happily at that.

Stillness reverent awe filled astonished

akin as like bliss ecstasy drown this vessel swamped

incapable to imagine the outcome or ending

life and love not ending but a process

sure

certain

convicted decapitated and resurrected

for a fool, a penny discarded, found as well as a pound

abandoned found . . . a widow's mite two cents tossed into the communal need

(joyous laughter at the prospect)

surrender submission quiescent

equanimity

recognition of love at last, lost or found, either way once touched always

remembered

what remembers?

There is whiplash between us in time—two hours before or after?

What, where, why is she? With M I've learned to not ask. To be jealous. Why not P?

Just thrum the hum of what is.

Otherwise suffocation—the purpose of free will is freedom

. . . an Aeolian harp resonant awaiting the next caress a vagrant wind strummed

130512 06:48 even this—even that?

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

it is a gift

. . . in service the dying, and those living—undecided about fears—it is a gift to serve. A gift of which I've had the privilege lifelong: up front personal face-to-face; my children, friends, parents, strangers, relatives, myself actually.

Awakened from a deep deadly dream I realize that I've lost it, the dream I mean. Discovering an essential and humiliating truth: it — is — has been — will always be: impossible for me to articulate my love commensurate with the experience. . . . a longing howling deeply within buried alive. I wonder why since by nature and choice I am not shy.

Fearing nothing, admiring no one in any jealous sense, only celebrating their Self/Soul manifest silent, quiescent or shouted. I dream, dreaming and dream that which goes Bump in The Night: my bare feet hitting the floor running to write, remember, understand, the exquisite, words, stories, questions and yes, sometimes, explicit answers; only for myself this dark crystal glowing within—organic—whole.

The scenarios, myths, omens, portents, movies, entire new vistas opening before me through doors long closed. No fear, no terror, all good. Betimes difficult understanding. Lingering long afterward mysterious yet aware their having been at all one-upon-a-time.

The Great Ones, like the one resident now, lingering, long; my naked self in moon light desert alone moving: Wandering? Wondering? The latter, floating through long darkened tubes random to see what I saw and now cannot remember details of. Only the privilege of being at all. Submitting to the sense beyond all proof of a beyond death.

A lovely death in itself. This sense—fearful—only of destroying “Had She Said Yes” a cohort beloved at first sight but impossible until now. The leaving of—submitting to—a being alone until death takes me to what? Implied or explicit a love fertile together inferred. Together or apart bonded in the flesh. A two become one.

I own nothing, save this moment, this now, these choices; yet sense this is the path across the unknowable towards the scarcely understood.

Yes and Yes, to her Yes, is mine added. Clearly amplified.

addendum: The undertoad singing through my dark memory of this dream reminds me of railroad enthusiast their: tracks to known destinations . . . my dream's destination unknowable yet within black dark walls: an underground passage, subway or sewer bourn — eejit boy — its a birth canal! Not the River Styx or Rubicon flowing.

Yes, I be a fruitcake full of nuts and rum. Oh Yes! And candied fruit, eternally fresh.

addendum/addendum or PPS

it is not by vanity or boast but to suggest that you dear reader the few attend your dreams as well discovering yourself beloved whole/holy to the interlocutor The Source of all Longing and Love.

130511 22:10 it is a gift

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

when?!

If not you who or me why not now to be pregnant with the inevitable change giving birth to the infinite now.

Giving birth to a self is birth, life, death, resurrection, minute by second creation's evolution expanding contracting recycling. Neither contextual or situational but both blessed either way.

Music to my soul the winds of change inevitable constant, in sure certainty of resurrection in another time unknown for now unknowable before time was a memory silence.

What owns me is the illusion that I own anything. Possibly even the delusion: myself tenant, transient; since now I sense myself nothing at all . . . but what writes?

Why? Why Not?

Status Quo Ante Bellum: what was before birth, innocent of fertility . . .

. . . in context: a vision gleaned from seeing my mother in a bathing suit at the age of my witness Herself as nascent mother of me.

Add: I am in transition from one shelter to another=home. At times aggrieved, others, sans expectations, of potential delights or more joy than ever imagined. Too magnificent and beyond all longing. Having been here before on the cusp of what is next, death? Life? whatever! It will be itself regardless, not fate, maybe Karma.

The stillness I know now is flowing to another moment in time; and time, of course, in context, is irrelevant. So the only thing I bring with me is myself; possessed, owned, inhabited, incarnated or not. (laughter, guffaws, giggles, sighs but best: grinning) “Had She Said Yes” said yes expansively even now growing: Yes to Yes.

Ah, the folly of love, known at an age, near the ending of everything. . . .

yet love is all: kindness

if I were a poet, a wannabe, maybe a might: I would attempt to delight you with yourself the experience within --- a butter knife thrust through titanium

capture credit Hector Mediavilla Picturetank sapeur

130511 04:28 when

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

grace

No human is, or can be perfect, all are fallible, yet capable of grace. I am happily so. Having my dysfunctions known. Amongst them able to choose, to use, or be used, by them mindfully. In the process losing any fear of life or death or envy of the grace in others I know. It is an estate that must be given away in measures large and small as kindness not greed. Thus gifting allows grace to grow. The only profit and accrued wealth I care about.

At that, this I know best, my dyslexia is a gift. Understanding what I can change and cannot. This life I live is like all others having a beginning-middle-and-ending; different only in my choice of narrative, coupled with attention to the interlocutor. Who I call by various names, not beckoning but seeking answers. Variously, but at the moment, merely “dipstick.” At other times: friend, lover, mistress, muse, playmate, sandbox buddy of any gender or none.

All my myths, omens, portents, personal to me, are pointless since I can find them in others defined differently. Not mutually exclusive but their gift combined with mine; potential and pregnant experienced in this moment, this now.

. . . and the other loved knowing this moment may never be again: the sky blank, black, a void devoid of stars: the emerald, brown or blue or as mine hazel what I think of as turquoise never ever to see ever again.

He preceded me bearing three or four giant bottles of root beer in the grocery line. To which or whom I remarked; “I guess you really like root beer.” No response. Then as he paid I noticed Airborne Wings upon his cap, his silence might be attributable to hearing loss given his age. So I asked, “What Division?” . . . no one and nothing is merely anything . . . remembering what he said with tears of joy in my eyes . . . in parting I said “God Bless You” . . . having no authority other than my admiration. So, we both, were blessed in a way unaccountable.

“Today is a good day to die”

What I know as “The Warrior's Creed”

has nothing to do with indifference

courage in the face of life better expresses it.

The peace I know inexplicable, ineffable, unaccountable what I know better with each passing hour eons ago is what historically attributable to Jesus and others at their end. Daily in the ordinary of their time given freely away to all in kindness thinking momentarily of Anne Frank.

Once long long ago the new day was celebrated but now each moment. Sharply focused revealed in high contrast the tapestry of time invisible timeless unending

capture credit Hector Mediavilla Picturetank

130511 02:42 grace

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved