deathless prose?

I question the concept of being other than biodegradable. Seeing what was before and after the advent of man. Equivocal towards naming, claiming and imaging The Creator anthropomorphic. Which seems at best a conceit to aggrandize those who have no other way to excuse their behavior.

Utopia or dystopia seems little matter when you consider that everything dies: Mountains, monuments, continents become obscure - eventual dust. . . . to gyre and return in another form, re-manufactured in Black Holes.

Gandhi, far wiser than i, in my lexicon and pantheon, did not imply but explicitly stated: “THERE IS NO GOD HIGHER THAN TRUTH.” - or so my refrigerator magnet says to my continual chagrin until now that i have begun to validate and redefine my dreams, imaginings and sense of periodicity allowing the river of others flow through not mind but mindfulness, not conscience but consciousness.

Given the relative immensity and infinitesimal my favorite vision remains two glass funnels conjoined; the apex of an egg timer? through which passes--what?

. . . to Be Here Now: confessing/admitting/submitting all the conceits/foibles/follies remembering being the ventriloquist dummy of reporters who occasionally referred to ‘deathless prose.’ Chagrined the prostitution of our talents genuflection before the fools: The Congress of Baboons. Merely another form of criminality. I digress. What matter the characters of harum-scarum who should by all rights be scourged then gibbeted for treason against the commonweal. 

. . . but then what is life for but to act in our time?

Honey Bunny follow the money and know the fools for what they do, not what they say. Remembering they, in self-congratulatory conceit, reward themselves endlessly. Whatever you may think we are owned by “The Man” with the most money - at least in this life. Slaves one-and-all.

130303 05:47 deathless prose?
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

dreams inconvenient

She drove a pink Cadillac Eldorado convertible. And was that fine age of a woman ripe, mellow and wise; tasty in prospect. Haunting my dreams across the years. 

A different kind of woman than my mother who also drove Cadillac cars. About each there was to me a deliciously dangerous prospect. One, my mother dangerous in the extreme -- volatile. The other was like all my longing: wise, perceptive and accommodating once I knew her; being so bold was I to approach. 

Strange these dreams having me rude and wise, crude and divine. But then there were those several of The Mary who showed me not her face but accepted me as I am filled with faults imperfect and at times lecherous.

In life or death I imagine I’ll never be perfect in anyone’s eyes save mine. Since I am by nature curious about all things. A collector of not experience but of motives, even mine. Sensate? No! Sensual!! In my mind, to see is to own: possess and ravish; the common and uncommon of all that I perceive neutrally no longer wishing to own, possessing only myself. 

There are these dreams reprised unacknowledged yet by accumulation become familiar . . . that in no small measure inform me above all things I prize the commonality of mankind. By stealth and subterfuge - disguised - moving innocuous across the random rouge behavior of men finding no one place for me and happily so. Ghost that I am, touching pulses.

Moving backwards and forwards in time.

The woman of this previous, oft repeated dream, was like The Mary in a sense for she - silently or by gesture - reminded me of the commonality of all life. None captive, slave or owned save by her/him self experiencing it.

So it is not She of the bubble-gum pink ride or the many enclosures, homes/houses, I visit inhabited by women I’ve known passing onto this time of annotation but specifically now aware of those among us who self anoint greedily aggregating authority. Those I sought to give me a mirror of who I am. My cupidity and folly now lays as dust beneath my feet. Like this body that writes, soon to be blown across the desert no longer venal. 

The process of writing up one’s dreams reveals meaning by accumulation. The one great dream of my life, begun in childhood, took decades and five repetitions to understand. And at that several entries in memory to apprehend. 

Good things come to we who wait; understanding the motive and method applied to sway our lives . . . what impelles our behavior to do or not do anything at all.

As for she, of the rude pink vaginal ride, I can only say, astonishingly she was a Madam who employed me as delivery boy presenting compensation through a letter box. The front door of a convent/country club otherwise in the common landscape of our culture. Long will I remember the furtive eyes seen briefly. The smells and voices of a harem inside beyond my reach. 

Fortunately.

The keeper kept -- imprisoned.

130303 03:16 dreams inconvenient
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

the arch of time

Over the arch of time science, as much as metaphysics, have become equally important. Melding a pragmatic awareness, less wishful thinking, more broadly real. Brutal, at times, discovering myself the enemy who leads me astray with grief, sorrow and ideals I’ve not been able to let go of until now. Objectivity is strength to anneal an otherwise tremulous position on those I love/loved: past, present, future.

Not a monotone nor steel but a flexible gyre of energy surround the core of my perception and disinclination to judge or mourn the having or loss.

“Born to be wild - live to outgrow it.” - Lao Tzu

. . . discovered as fortunate in my life to not be mired in love the way I longed to be. How long it took, absent consciousness, the love I gave fallen upon stone. Wherein to persist would be to attempt not only the impossible but criminal activity; to change that which I professed love when in fact I longed to have the beloved define me instead of myself.

Long bewildered by several who forgave their assassins in the act at life's departure. I know now, of and for myself, what I give and its power . . . 24/7/365 is something I do with myself and The Author of Life and no other.

Equivocal, until now, in the extreme. Oblivious the unfolding of me, a myth impossible, being too serious to be real or attempt and fail.

Advantage to me being, several times a week, in a pool of water charged with the energy of several, if not all, who share their trials and responses. Details of their how while I sense their why. No longer curious about how it is that I receive this energy but embrace and celebrate the changes invoked . . . the process of alteration and change. Sensing there will never be a: I am there! complete, whole and accomplished. Its a process not a goal.

Add: I have a sense of departure from whence to when being a contributor versus a consumer.

130223 13:55 arch of time
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

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