Candy
i should call her
after the first 2 pennies found and delivered upon the cold marble countertop of a Candy Store
like buttons endless in variety and leading beyond my childhood sight into the dark
my face reflected slavering in glass which would satisfy my hunger?
how to choose just one
all i could afford
being four
&
like she
of emerald eye
i soar ever upward in astonishment
her name is more mysterious, metaphysical, mystical
unutterable manifold like all those of God
To Have, and Have Not
in the meantime ladies and gents
Step this way
a feast
on http://www.brainpickings.org/
i can’t send them money
but give em’ a plug
120424 0444

120422 20:21d
    Never in winter, there, remembered. Save the one aside a kerosene heater, naked in a copper washtub. Abandoned at five. She on her knees hands washing me, the whispering heat hissing. Christmas?
    No.
    Forever afterward--always summer.
    Out of school, into the Packard buried under trunks, crumpled on the back seat. Or in a bus. Or trains. New York so hot it sucked off my shoes crossing tarmac to a terminal darkly looming . Pennsylvania mountain crossing, air conditioning broken; a tag upon my shirt, ‘Do This If Lost.’
    Or ‘Found?’
    Alone.
    My maternal grandmother’s house, an imposing edifice. Red painted brick and white trim. Second Street, National Highway  Route 52,  passing through the night village in rain; truck tires whooshing. Upscale for that end of town closest to Cincinnati.  Same distance as the designator showing the way up river from the Mississippi leading southerly into a starry night sea. Heart quickened in sweet agony approach knowing the inevitable annual divorce. Snatched back hurled forward again.
    Barefoot or in shoes. “Get ‘um quick, slip in the screen door quiet like.” Stomping in the dark. She’d reach in, turn on the kitchen light; beneath my feet cock roaches scurried. Our excursions were seldom ended in darkness. Except for prayer meetings Wednesday nights in the 12 over 12 Methodist Church faintly illume with bug lights snaking from the dark above.
    Upon the pew back enthroned.
    “GET DOWN!” Stage whispered she!
    “no”
    I fell off thumping resonant in the gloom echoing through the nearly empty plain windowed sanctuary. She, leaning over my prostrate form, forming the fatal word, spelling “I’m going to ‘M_U_R_D_E_R’ . . . There was no ‘you’ just her crooked forefinger like mine, then and now, pointed between shocked eyes glazed upward.
    That night I danced circles around her chanting, terrified what was to come upon arrival her home; “Oh Mama Lu I love you” over and over all the three blocks way; my execution site, darkly silent awaiting, our arrival. light turned on, she laughed and holding my shoulders, no higher than somewhere between her knees and waist, she boxing, like paint mixing back and forth between cans, pouring her love in my face smiling. I was King once more, the only male child of her body in a generation of women.
    Married at thirteen, she the last in a family of eight with seven brothers ‘farmed out.’ The father dead from cancer. The farm hand married and took her. First birth at fourteen, second at nineteen--my mother. Fatherless at four she’d say only he died in a hunting accident.
    Later inquisition, of all seven brothers, indicated it was a shotgun wound to the groin taking twenty days to bleed out, self-inflicted. Perry Hill was otherwise a circuit riding Methodist Minister and an expert hunter.
    There was a darkness shrouding my childhood. Not only the imagined nakedly snow covered stubble field flecked red beneath the barbed wire fence shot gun rested against my grandfather slumped. My beloved son would die on the same date: December 10th later on.
    Unspoken legend: to survive Christmas assured another year of life to face other sudden departures.
    There were others there, in Ripley, Ohio, death taken, accident, shot, fallen, mysteriously. Children roughed, men somber women with flowers. Wakes open caskets. Small wonder I wander stone gardens of memorials for peace in perpetual communion. Here, now, Las Cruces, New Mexico, finally home, the cemeteries littered with memorial toys; tiny forms sleeping beneath. Special is this boarder place melding  melting cultures. Christ Crucified  limp in anguish scourged; dripping blood. Not triumphant robed in glory resurrected. Both traditions reside here birth, life, death, life renewed.
120424 04:07 final-final

120422 10:55
"Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."
 
"There is but one blasphemy, and that is injustice." --Anonymous

    This attribution always brings a feral grin to my persona:
"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." --Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
    The tuition payments, plus interest and penalties, is beyond counting, in THE SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS. Which unlike all other institutions of ‘higher learning’ is not, essentially, vocational.
    My orgy of reading began early, the public library my only refuge and sanctuary. The women Liberians, oracles, became fetishes in both senses. Now I have too few heart beats left to pursue the writings of those I adore fully save for their quotes as posies collected and encircled with fibers of those whose lives I’ve shared.
    I am now just past the advent of my third year volunteering at hospice. The gap within my journals & images, such as I have kept (very little) is yawing, silent, and now recognized as humiliation. What I was before, am now, will become, washed away. The fruit fly of me squashed against a headlamp of an onrushing train. . . .and humbled more by the love of those about to pass forever remembered in prayer and gratefulness.
    He lay there, last I saw, him unable to eat the food I would deliver. His face variegated and adorned with a beard reminiscent of Orthodox Icons of divines. I presume, but do not know, his passing yet. I am not allowed to record the specificity of his face but can retell the depth of “ . . . oh, you too?” discovered in converse.
    Perhaps, possibly, maybe, maybe not I write this in his honor. He is but one of many whose bequest to me is enormous, unspeakable, nakedly intimate and the only truth I now know.
    We die, each and everyone of us, the moments fled, appraised as glorious at the time when there will be no more seconds left. Not literary artifice, nor clever implication: My days are an eternity, each awakening, the dawn of a life reborn; new. Resurrection or reincarnation meld into a knowing explicit to my perception forged on the anvil by knocks, a sword become plow sheer . Grateful for them all, the blows struck, my hymn of Thanksgiving reprised.

"Virtue refuses facility for her companion ... the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road." --Michel de Montaigne

Montaigne's axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed as that which least is known."

120418 0002
    Toys from childhood; fondnesses recalled .
    A tricycle upon which, at 4 or 5, I would flee the oppression of a constant wariness. Speeding the alleyways of wartime St. Louis. Alone now and too long forgotten the joy and the little girl who, grasping me about the waist would silently enjoy the ride; sometimes.  She came to me in a dream riding it from the gloom into the light of us together conjoined smiling at me. (See C. Jung anima/animus. We are 51% dominant gender and 49% “other.”)

    A kaleidoscope, dented, cardboard, second-hand, carried well into recent years; now lost in another leave taking. The fright fleeing flight to anywhere but there left behind. So dependent upon the gestures, trashing's, sidereal glances of accusation that I was the problem.
    I think they may have been correct. I adore the phrase, “kaleidoscope eyes.” It is not what they saw in my somber appraisal 20/20 observation, leery of the woman who when not silent could explode; while dad was either comatose or indifferent. It was the internal mastication of everything and estimates of consequences. My consciousness recalled as being inside the dented tube; thought refracted in technicolor, silent save for the clink, clink of turning. I could read in her eyes the advent of killing me had I’d not known not to cry. But then, like the others gone now, she could kill with words as well.
    Odd how we can recover physically but emotionally only with an dedication to being whole. No longer broken inside and out. Or merely squashed like a speckled gray and white moth upon the snout of a Greyhound Bus.
    I was exiled to my maternal grandmother’s care. She lived on the Ohio River and behind her home was a huge tree amongst whose roots I played. Toy trucks, tanks, lead soldiers . . . I took and lost an image; the knees of wife and grandmother side by each. Returning I was grief stricken to discover the tree decapitated later on.

    Recounting the joy continued now. The tricycle was escape. The kaleidoscope still twirling refracting music, light, thoughts, conclusions possible exceptions now. Knees and roots, The Tree of Life, every leaf of consequence to the origins of everything falling and being recycled.
    My root is still there. All the elements in place. And only now do I know that though I am/was “Christian” the crown of the tree sees over every definition of prophecy swayed by what makes the Aeolian Harp musical.
    The scars are healed. Now I know no fear of death or dying, quickly or slowly, since all things are in their place and within is a place for everything. Peace and Love be with you. Too.
   
    An afterthought: Considering the current decimation of privacy--confession here--I too was the inquisitor of both parents as to the who, what, why, when and wherefore. Mom gave me the “Yha But!” She’d been told she wasn’t worth the salt in her bread. As for dad, “I didn’t know any better.”
    Children love unconditionally. It is not dependence it is the purest love I know, at least in this life. To forgive our parents their failings, then forgive ourselves for the contusions, concussions and convulsions we carry forward those things we endured have an end. The end is freedom from hate and indifference towards all life, no exceptions.

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” --The Talmud

. . . The kindness we give to another may be the only kindness they’ll ever know. Inconsequential to us, but to the other it may save their life. As for wives, lovers, children and dogs they/we all should remember the kindnesses and forget/forgive the harm.

. . . a parting shot. Under the tree, after Sunday Supper, I’d play checkers with my granddad. The folding board  sitting upon our knees. The only time I won he rocked back on his chair and the pieces fell to the ground. I’m still laughing; even had a dream that he was God laughing at me. Carl Jung: Grandmother = Great Mother, by extrapolation, Grandfather = Great Father? In either or any case he always was fond of telling me, “You are as crazy as a--either--bed bug or June bug.”

120421 08:08
    If you read me, thanks, if not it’s okay by me, bye-bye. I take not myself serious for as found round and around I’m told we come from the same origins the rapist, raped and the lost never found.
    As for the Tree, The River, Boats Barges and Trains. In dreams of peace loving I return the origins of my perceptions trained by steam whistle and tow boat plash, stern wheel then both, fingering the night with their moan and light. The only home I’d ever known until Now. . . .between the knees the tree . . . whatever.
    . . . nowhere near Molly Bloom in a tutu

120418 15:53
    Of tides, time, and lunar cycles, I am well acquainted, but like a clam better served at high flood happy.
    I weep too easily for public intercourse. Regardless Mozart or Jimmy Hendrix. And for me to read 1 Corinthians 13 publicly I become incoherent . . . not squinchy eyed but wide in joy the tears flow.
    I am late in life to discover and fabricate a career. My voice finally free the censure or applause of others. Which well may be, for me, now--not fixed but fluid--a better understanding the koan “The Sound of One Hand.”
    “Monkey Mind” aside I’ve been dialoging internally since the first blows stuck upon me in childhood. Surprise overwhelms me  and laughter shakes the window sashes. My only companion Annie is accustomed and complains not. It tickles me to roll my eyes, wiggle my ears and flap the wattles, warts and jowls hanging from my skull like a damp threadbare dish rag. But when I stick my tongue out mimicking her kisses she stares wide eyed attention assured. We are each other’s favorite toy.
    To the point: I wonder why I do what I do, or anything, minus the obvious. But that is the filter through which flows everything around me coupling the things I cannot see or hear manifest/manifold in and to other senses.
    The only marketable skill I had was once mystical in the sense it combined a plethora of elements executed in milliseconds. A mash up melding technical knowledge, instinct, intuition, feelings and senses inseminating that frozen bit of time captured; a photograph. All this is now commonly available, like the Nickel Penny Arcade Masturbator dad and I would speculate about. We called her “Granny” in homage to Tom Swift. . . . kinda’ sorta’ like those photo booths, close the curtain and giggle unisex.
    I have no ambition left save for the play of words and images caught in time and briefly held. To float in empty space as I once saw in a dream, Michelangelo’s pietà; the end of everything. Its going to happen eventually, whether by fracking, giving the earth enemas, or Ritalin dispensed for the inconvenient child leaving their synapses aberrant for generations to come, should we as a species or life form still be around. The end by Fire or Ice is a lovely metaphor. All the while mercantile greed is hurling us stealthily and subversively into individual termination today thence the world.
    I judge myself by the same standards.
    It is appalling that The Thought Police are now covertly viral. A virus more insidious than Ebola devouring Free Speech. I’ve amputated my few associations with charity, or political protest, on the Internet, being it is a lost cause. Seen though my eyes, the powers that be, killing us, obliquely, are factory farming our psyches . . . slavery is the norm. We ciphers victims all of our own, self-congratulatory/self-revelatory publication.

1204 05:29
    Why am I restless, sleeping briefly working longer? I’ve been touched by several people, literally and figuratively, with their questions invoking my own. This continuance of the above; inspired by the image of myself as a lab rat, white, red eyed, whiskers twitching curious. Nay I’m more the church mouse filled with stored hymnals and prayer books just a nibble here and there about the edges--The Great Big Book--residing on the lectern . . . a cuddly ball of brown fur. Innocuous and benign; superfluous/supercilious. L.O.L.
    I could look up Voltaire and his wondrous remark about God’s laugher and our being too--and here I’ll ad lib; self-righteous to applaud and laugh along. Although in Voltaire, I remember he implied: terror/terrified.
    If whores and tax collectors were good enough for Jesus I’ll follow his lead. After all laws create law breakers exponentially . . . well . . . maybe not for those who clothe their crimes institutionally.
    Oh well just an afterthought.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH:
    I am a closet painter, musician, poet, sculptor . . . well maybe, maybe not . . . any or all or none of those.
    The hospice volunteers had just been feted: breakfast and a movie--MIRROR/MIRROR. I waited to see, the credits,  who had participated in this slaying of Disney’s neutering of fairy tales; shear genius all told.
    As I walked to my vehicle I was approached by a middle-aged African American, sleek, muscular, well dressed. He approached me and said, “My mother died there ##/##. Thank you for your care.” I, in principle and in general do not advertise my association; I’d forgotten to remove my volunteer badge after the event.
    Lifetime habit, carrying a recording device, I looked down and reflexively annotated the moment, surprised afterward that it is habitual, this looking for lost pennies who resemble me. The interstice between us and the numinous is never as great as it seems. . . . and her angelic face is etched in the best camera we all have; the heart.

120419 00:37
    I am loved now, with a transparency inconceivable and lifetime longed for.
    There is no motive to redact, vacate or expunge past relationships. Nor to rationalize and thus avoid responsibility for not being able to receive the love proffered. Nor is it a clever recitation of Rumi’s recommendation, “that we seek the barriers within ourselves.” I humiliate myself, the greed for love, buried within my profess to others. Rendering my expression of love, seen retroactively, a manifestation of need/greed. Fill me please -- I’m on empty.
    The term, “inappropriate loyalty,” is not indicative of disloyalty to those loved and loved still--present, past or future. In point of order. I awoke filled with gratitude and recognition my ongoing love for the Anglican Communion, expressed in America as The Episcopal Church. That I have not attended ‘church’ in years does not mean I don’t still love it. My communion is with hospice now; the staff, patients and volunteers. Is it false to say that I celebrate peace and gratitude daily wearing that consciousness as an invisible skullcap or vestment? My sense is that of continual prayer not isolated to forty-five minutes one day per week. In the end if I am not accepted as loyal then I have less meaning or value than a grain of sand.

120421 00:51
    . . . that was then, this is now, the wheel turns grinding my vanity to a finer dust. The future lover, fact to face, will be God. The personage of many names who awoke me again with the simple sense/message that I adore writing. It is nearly obscene; the laughter and tears spiraling around in my head. My sense of humor is that I might just be ‘crucified’ chemically or at the very least incarcerated in The Cuckoo’s Nest. OM the ALL is primary yet there is nearly equal protest the injustice of the 6 Million and the 60 Million Russians and the millions of lives sacrificed to end the insanity.

    "Not being able to govern events, I govern myself." --Michel de Montaigne
   
    I need regurgitate, at least here, my snarky skepticism regarding the choices of those representing my nationality. My chosen vocation, as in “The Shoe Maker should stick to his last,” is tending my soul and the souls of those who care to follow the communion/community of Higher Consciousness.
    I am incited by a recently heard remark from a man whose dedication for justice I respect, if not actually admire: Elie Wiesel. Is that Snarky? Inferred or implied, given his age, a bit more antique than I, he will have words with God about the 6 Million. Ignoring completely the 60 Million.
    Free Will is not a comfortable dodge, nor is Democracy, in reality, not how we are governed. Neither is easy to take responsibility for, to participate or process . . . any more than it is easy to do the same for our self/soul/mind. All institutions and nations, in one form or another, solicit the franchise of God as absolute power and force. Prancing about vainly decrying their choices as justice retributively delivered.
    All God’s children are in the same sandbox with God. There is no “Let Mikey do it.”
    Those who profit from crimes against humanity, on both sides, miss the message: “Thou shall not kill.”
    And in closing may I remind us that God by any name, in recent history--the minor part of our recorded time on Earth--is essentially now defined as beneficent, slow to anger, merciful . . . go on read it, Paul said it better in: 1 Corinthians 13 . . . essentially Love not Retributive.

    “THERE IS NO GOD HIGHER THAN TRUTH,” Gandhi, who forgave his assassin.
 

120417 04:04

In times of parting I am suffused with grief

the moment our terminal separation

A child whose loss would be enormous;

ending the best real love ever known.

Once time remembered perceived most bereft

perchance looking into the azure ceiling saw

two children's balloons white tethered,

seeking heaven together.

. . . discovered later this date:
"Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love." 

"Sadness is but a wall between two gardens." --Khalil Gibran
 

. . . then remembered
"Learn the alchemy that few human beings know, that when you accept what difficulties you have been given, a door opens."
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." --Rumi

Love is an astonishing experience, in that 'To Have & Have Not' is reverent to the origin of All Love. To die this moment from joy knowing this, i am quartet blest discovering there is no boundary in life and death marked. All definitions from gender to religion, or other governance, will pass away leaving Love, what we sometimes call "God."
. . . another level, this date: I have begun to curate flowers found, no longer by attribution cataloged since there is only The One who speaks through us. . . . in some sense I see us all passing vessels upon a night sea becoming Speaking Trumpets to one another on the way to oblivion; let us be kind to one another in the journey.