Our Body Earth, June 24-July 8, 2014, looking “down there“ from the plane window

I wonder, why does she, this Earth, suffer cuts?
Flying through her breath, looking down,
I see new landscapes and know these are parts of our body,
She is scarred with dirt roads, fences, and mines in lines and squiggles and depressions.

Circular fields with roads chopped clear to the center
Appear as sundials of the gods,
Unreadable clocks ticking, or waiting.

Square fields of skin cells arrogantly claimed as our own,

Depleted, burned,
Having given their all, lie fallow,
In need of water and nourishment.

This renegade geometry not of her design will be reclaimed, in her abundance of time.

We cut our self and then look away
As though the bleeding water will know how to stop or where to flow.

Rivers governed by sturdy muscle and cartilage and tissue.
Dirt, rock, vegetation
Arteries divide and subdivide, reaching and stretching
Determined to feed all

But for now, I can see her compassion, this earth
Allowing a cut so that we can see it heal
So that we might cut more carefully
Empathically thanking her for this generosity:
An education she knew we needed.

I look down through the window and see in these river veins and arteries
See in the trees lining the feeding flow,
My initials, as if she wants to say hello
and please, protect us.

Though you are not aware of us, I am aware of us.

She interrupts this etch-a-sketch cloud hubris
with a mountain range, or a storm,
Erasing all we've done to her, and
Taming a desert with an assertion of stark, voracious beauty.

She sheds impurities, a volcanic pop

Cities look like sores, roads as intricate tattoos

We skedaddle here and there purposed with mind-stuff
which she tolerates and we recount, with gravity
As if to make us matter to her.

But she doesn't need reason to care
About that which is herself.
I feel us and am grateful for the tear in our eye.
She is loved. I am loved.  You, are loved.

The Question Mark, June 9, 2014

At precisely 2pm, last Monday, on a grassy hillside in Piedmont Park just outside the dog run, I had to stop.  Martha was with me, which might be why it happened.  Never underestimate the hidden power of man’s best friend.

She stood directly over me in the way that dogs do to make sure their drool, generously offered, never misses exposed skin.  She needed to cool down, and I needed to lie down.  I had been thinking too much, like always, and felt exhausted.  The grass was cool on my back, and this ground felt solid.

I was thinking about the letters in my name and why I was seeing them everywhere.  What?  Everywhere.  Think about it.  My last initial, Y, appears in every tree a multitude of times.  Each new branch creates the letter.  You could also say the letter Y is a pictorial representation of a tree branch, but my ego likes to see it the other way.  My first initial, E, is pretty easy to spot as well, as my mind seeks order from the apparent chaos of the woods.  The letters of your name are probably there as well, but I wasn't looking for those.  C'mon, we all saw this as kids, until our vision left us.

Coincidence or crazy, this day was becoming too much.  I couldn't unsee nature’s insistence that she had my number, or rather, my letters.  This must her way of saying, first, that she’s literate, and second, that she's aware of this part of her; namely, me.  We are part of each other, so shut it.  No problem!  Also, please, if this isn't a Chiffon margarine commercial and you’re (we're, I'm) really male (what?) or other, please don’t get hung up on the female gender pronouns.  I mean, we (you, us) just assume you're (we're, I'm) female (what?), like ships and cars and cats.  But not dogs, because dogs are always assumed to be male.  It's a binary thing.

Avert your eyes, I thought.  Look up.  I looked up toward the clouds from the cool grassy hillside near the dog park.  Martha had distanced herself by a measure one might call “healthy.”  She knows me.

Everywhere!  The letters E and Y drifted by, lazily.  Muggy summer days provide more than enough raw material for a full-on attack of the alphabet.   Please rain and empty this delirium from the sky!  That plea did not work, so I tried another tactic.  I closed my eyes.  It’s not there if you can’t see it.  Everyone knows this.  A few seconds later, I opened my eyes only to confirm that what we all “know” isn’t necessarily true.  There it was, as big as a Macy's parade balloon:

?

Stay still; don’t move.  My best bet was to appear relaxed, calm, intentional.  No one walking by will be able to shaky-finger me into an asylum!  But wait - this is America.  We don’t need proof of anything; just a few words said with feeling.  Everyone knows this, too.  One heartfelt “J’accuse!”and it’s over.

Panicked, I saw three options.  First, I could pretend I didn’t see it, even though the closing-my-eyes thing didn’t work.  Second, I could chalk it up to being a fun oddity projected from the mind of a quirky, healthily-distanced, persanimal named Martha, though she seemed to be ignoring me.  Or, I could accept the invitation, and ask it a question.  But, if I ask, what if it answers?  And what in the hell do I mean by “it?”  Oh what the heck, let’s ask.  It’s not like I was taking the same risk as meeting a guy off grindr.

The End*

==================

*It so sucks when you don't get the whole story, doesn't it?  Update:  July 8, 2014.  I've been reading "Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God?"  by Frank Schaffer.  The title is actually a bit misleading (though good for talk shows) because the author explains why he does in fact believe in God - the God within.  He makes a most compelling case for inclusion and justice, which to him, along with kindness, are the cornerstones of Jesus' teachings, and the foundation of the Christian religion.  I agree.  He also makes the point that the notions of inclusion, justice, kindness, joy, generosity, and service are not exclusive to Christianity.  Indeed, no single religion or belief system should be thought of as exclusive or superior.  They differ mostly in the trappings, ceremonies, dogma, and such, but when all of that is stripped away, we are left with something so simple, and so profound that all human beings can access it:  communion, or connectedness, fostering and sharing the above traits.  It is an understanding that we (which includes everything in existence) are in this journey together, as one.  I've had some tough lessons, because well, some things just seem too far-fetched to be true.  That said, it is my faith and belief that bring imagination to life, and so, I choose to believe.  I choose to stop the cycle of harm, of hurt people hurting people.  It ends now.  So too does manipulation of others (we all do it in subtle ways), and of allowing myself to be manipulated, however benign.  I am not a pawn.  My life is my own, though part of a larger fabric, as is yours.  (Let the debate about what constitutes "hurt" begin!  I think some things just need to be left to individuals to discuss and decide.)

The Fine Line Between Hypocrisy and Personal Truth Keeps Shifting, May 2, 2014

A baseball player represents quintessential Americana

Identifies as a hero earning a seven-figure income

Speaks of queers with AIDS, men of color in jail, foreigners

Keeps secrets

Pleads color-blindness as black folk have slept at this house.

A Southern Baptist sings “Glory, glory, Hallelujah!”

Interprets Bible verses for the lost

Stands in viewing booths, dick through hole

Keeps secrets

Proselytizes against the alleged sin of homosexuality.

A legislator votes for environmental protections

Shakes hands in the Green Room under the Gold Dome

Votes in favor of allowing guns everywhere

Keeps secrets

Instructs voters that what we need is a New Deal.

A military leader sends troops to fight for freedom

Consoles families over lost limbs, lost sons, and lost minds

Protects oil reserves, hires contractors from Halliburton

Keeps secrets

Commands soldiers to respect superiors, salute.

A patriot flies his flag, supports unjustified wars

Recites the 1954 words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance

Walk past the homeless vet in a wheelchair begging for money

Keeps secrets

Declares that real Americans don't rely on handouts.

A public school teacher molds young minds

Works long hours for little pay

Goes to court for lying about changing answers on exams

Keeps secrets

Teaches pupils that honesty is a mark of good character.

An addict attends twelve-step meetings

Listens to experience, strength and hope

Laughs over a drink at Happy Hour

Keeps secrets

Teaches a newcomer not to do as he says, but as he does.

A thinker believes in science, logic and reason 

Rejects religious doctrine

Criticizes and rants on facebook

Keeps secrets

Redefines free thought as his thought.

A revolutionary sheds light in dark corners

Challenges cultural norms, endures condemnation

Deconstructs minds, cult-like

Keeps secrets

Transforms a man who does not know himself into a monster and then into a man

A Galilean Transformation (Perspective), March 26, 2014

This is a record of an imaginary and unsolicited intervention, not of the 12-step type.

It begs for a mirror, with places for teacher/students on both sides of the glass,

Ready to leap god knows where,

Grateful that the magic of chaos is that it resolves into order.

I was too sensitive, weak, spread thin by ideas and opinions owned by others, for sale.

I was told I had split apart,

each side entrenched on opposite sides of the mirror, in a family feud.

Two selves damaged, angered, and enraged, glowed red
with the pain of a love assaulted,

or a delusion dissipated.

I was told these things about this epic sibling rivalry.

Then I was told that love can do what love does, bridging divides.

The problem and the solution came prepackaged, custom-fit not included.

I went to bed eyes strained

I had been unable to blink from dry eyes

No water, no food, no break

Mix Atripla with white powder and print yourself a ticket to funky town.

That’s what they told me, accurate by omission.

I look up at the ceiling at night

and romantically imagine star-spirits bouncing around, like cutouts from Matisse’s Jazz,

pieces of memory, irregular, but more alike than different.

The patterns appear inside closed eyelids,

doses of bright light having bombarded the retina for an unhealthy amount of time,

creating tiny dry rivers of blood ink that scratch designs inside the thin membrane.

These cut-outs, these patterned spirits, must be more.
I need them to be.

They must be guides for the soul, in case of death.

I hold tight to this explanation to dam the madness pouring into my eyes.

Instead they are an April Fool's reward for surviving
a make-shift reprogramming worthy of any successful ex-gay ministry.
Its words about wisdom (there are none about knowledge) seem more selfish than wise,

taking all the idea-space, traumatically and bluntly and relentlessly,

because a problem (they) created demands a solution and their track record speaks as eloquently as a mute.

Hindsight will have its turn if it isn't told to shut up.

The Navajo two-spirit is already on the move, soul searching. 

Not split apart like they said but rather two wholes
separated by a physics that divides light from darkness,
two equals forced apart by men playing the role of an absent god.

Seeing and truth-telling - both tasks befitting kings, and writers.
Lies told become my truth, and you, a fool.

Do not get naked, leaving fear on my floor, pointing and calling it mine so that you will be right.

Being right has never helped a relationship.

I am a man and you can have neither my space nor my time, nor any part of me,
though I do not own any of these as you claim to own many things and people and

innocence,
which love can only know but never own.

Yet, this faggot (took back the word) is free while you are enslaved by chains not always worn by you.

These chains are borne in secret, sub rosa.

This cock-sucking man-boy is chained only by choice,
never by the yellow gossip spread round by your many jaundiced lips.

Grasp at integrity in a process that feels like rape
if you want freedom from their doings and a dulling of the sharp edges of the remaining brokenness -
which their hubris keeps in focus, to keep me in line.
Oh!  To be as perfect as they -

the great bearers of Inconvenient Spiritual Principles Ignored.

Speak of good and bad - that will distract from the pain of right decisions.

But the real pain was only to one person, over and over and over,
So, excuse yourselves.

Freedom, your Highnesses, is not yours to grant, or bestow, or reveal, to the poor, poor unenlightened.

It is mine to claim and exercise either peacefully or ferociously,

as you wish and as I abide.

Keep your hands off this fierce feminist.
And do not label him with the ephemeral truths of a former boy who knew not his own person,
but knew only to fear and then to react, as would any series of chemical equations, subtracting from a greater good.
To all who play the game:  Fuck you!  I love you!
This is the anger the right-sized must endure.

I hired a friend to take out a half wall

That was partially hiding my living room.

With true craftsmanship, he replaced the wall:

Three metal poles laced with two sets of five cables each, evenly spaced.
This created a grand staff for music.

I plan to hang notes and maybe clefs and time signatures, and keys

made of sheet metal or card stock or magnets.

The interior wall felled,

I turned to music, which is trust,
and which would keep at bay those other protective, healing places
- monstrous for those who never get "it" and feel crushed into the you-fit-here-blue-box
that comes in only one size, with (mistaken) promises of stalking and eye-rolling.
They know this because they have time, while the others have not-yet success.

So be it - just more collateral damage from warring spirits.

The floating, empty staff reassured me that loneliness, like music,

lives on a canvas of silence, anticipating melody.

I am alone, ready for an original tune

I write, and

rewrite, new melodies for each becoming.

Rules of composition be damned, this is ad lib, structured improv.

I no longer intend to hear forever the music of the now and here.

(Later)

Stars appear in multitude,
Endless, cut only by a waterfall of rich, dripping red.
This must be the  physics of delusion, but of
old behaviors or new freedoms?

A liberated man choosing whether to fear or to love, or rather
How he would love.

His truth-quest painted in ambiguous red, just asking,

On which side of the mirror do you stand?

Where is the forgettable grey,
with its meek hello and quiet presence,
stronger than all things black and white?

Grey, the equalizer of all decisions made freely out of love,
without coercion?

This would be the grey of both/and, not either/or,
the color of blessing and damnation,
depending upon the mirror and the man.
Yet there was only red.
Many reds.

Perspective changes imagination to a nightmare,
an invitation to a warning,

a Buddhist temple to a biohazard tattoo,
A Celtic cross to a demon,
fair skin to boils,
beauty to abuse -
these mostly in reverse.
Perspective colors all lives.
(The idea that one life is worth more than any other is everything that is wrong with the world.)
Old thought softened, made malleable, inviting
more shades, vibrancies, meanings, interpretations.

Red is sustaining, mindful love,

Red is intense physical connection.

Red is the color of a booty-call, the lipstick on a pig,
the twitching lust of a tweaker remembering cock and muttering what needs to be said and
using words you fed him in order to protect you.
Red is the color for sharing in groups, for spreading love like seed.

Red is intriguing and satisfactory and full of adventure and promise and truth;
It invites companionship for a night and
elbows out loneliness.

Red is a wild weekend and

a lifelong romance.

Red drenches teacher/students on both sides of the mirror,
a force of mind, rich with perspective.

Red effortlessly spills over the furthest horizon, creating spaces for new paths trudged.

Red offers affirmation after an anonymous fuck with a man also made for loving;
Cockfights do not preclude dates, nor love after sex,
as do lies and deceit, which rot all beauty.
Red quiets without killing the imperious urge, the beast that never goes away, the life-force.

Red is a visionary third-eye giving a positive thumbs-up, sometimes without a faceful of scorn.

Red is a reminder to see truth, speak truth, and be truth.
Yours, mine, ours?  Yes, if it is the one fluid truth.

Red is patient, undemanding, and forgiving,
but loathes a good heart being played a fool.
It is Sagan's star-stuff of spirit, and of affectionately pursed, wet lips, ready
For You, and now, for Me,
Apart.

We are separated by perspective and by personal conviction.
I have never been any other man than the one you've always known,
though you may have seen my shadow when made to dance,
as puppeteers do.

Baffling, April 8, 2014

People still baffle me, and I probably baffle them, too. But let's never talk about it, because that would be all mature and stuff.

Bad day?

My day has been terrific. This is just a general, obvious observation that has been swirling around in my head for a few months now. (Warning: lengthy babble ahead.) People go in circles, fueled by assumptions, presumptions, speculation, some truth, some truthiness, a peppering of lies, some fear, courage, arrogance, mistaken personal interpretations, egos large and small, self-loathing and self-loving, a variety of degrees said to bestow "expertise," and a very human tendency to put other people into boxes, while rarely, if ever, allowing them to climb out or to just say, "Hey! That's not me," and believe them. That last clause about believing is important - but probably less so than just backing off, graciously, acknowledging where you end and the other person begins. I've suffered at the hands of the box-putters, as it were ("boxers" sounded too ... canine), and it has been unbearably painful trying to free myself without insulting anyone in the process. People take it so personally when you reject their box, when really the only thing you want is for everyone to be happy. Maybe we take the old mirror metaphor too far. I don't see myself in everyone else any more than they see themselves in me. Not every reflection means something, no matter how much I've written about it in amateur poetry (see below) and no matter that I have at least 24 mirrors in my house. (Geez, people will run with anything if they see it in a photo.) It just seems we rarely engage any more in the one thing that can fix, or even prevent, human mishaps, which is direct, in-person, honest communication. (I'm pointing at myself, here, too, so no one think I'm being a snarky prick again.) Anyhoo, this is just what's on the mind of a hopeful cynic, that being me, primarily.

Ancient Bones - A Tabloid Story

Today is the right day to post something silly and fun, written in June, 2000.

Ancient Bones – A Tabloid Story

PROBE OF ‘FEDERAL DITCH’ MAY REVEAL ANCIENT BONES

In what could be the discovery of a new race of beings – perhaps from another planet – insiders’ close to the unearthly uncovering of bones behind a Berkshire Road house say that answers are hard to find at this early stage of the excavation.

Neighborhood resident Jerry Kaye reported that about five month ago he began hearing strange song-like noises rising from deep within a brick-and-mortar drain at one end of the ‘federal’ ditch, constructed during the civil war under the pretense of hiding troops from the Yanks.  “It was like those five tones from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, -- da, de, da, dahh, da,” he exclaimed.  Thinking that perhaps it was his vivid imagination – “from the gin” – he at first discounted the eerie emanations.  Kaye is described by other residents as ‘colorful,’ and can often be seen walking his miniature pick-a-poo with a cigarette dangling in one hand, tumbler balanced in the other.  “That dog must walk itself,” spat resident June Bugg in her thick Southern accent.

The singing ditch took on new importance, however, as others with surrounding property also began noting strange and bizarre occurrences.  George Gouviea became a believer that something was amiss when, around the cocktail hour on a lazy Summer afternoon, he decided to water his drought-stricken hydrangeas.  “I was pulling the hose down to the back yard, and then heard ‘da, de, da, dahh, da’.”  He had heard of Kaye’s earlier brush with the bizarre, but thought that it too was his vivid imagination – “from the scotch.”

But it all became credible when during a neighborhood-wide spree of illegal watering (in the extreme drought conditions, outdoor watering had been banned), the ditch flooded, washing away years of discarded neighborhood trash (much of it was lesbian erotica, say sources close to the activity – but that’s another amazing story!).  Under the remaining rubble, strange bone-like fragments appeared jutting through a thousand-year-old bed of rock.  Unwilling to touch the sketchy skeletal remains, Kaye and Gouviea contacted the local Agriculture Department field office, in an effort to get soil samples taken.  “High acidity might prove that we’re dealing with the abnormal here,” the pair insisted.  Before that wacko week of weird discovery ended, amateur archeologists from several local state schools had cordoned off the area, picking and probing for what might lie beneath, hoping to be the first to unearth the unearthly.

“There is a chance that the abnormally high acid levels are the result of using Miracid throughout the area, causing undue accumulations in this low-lying ditch,” cautioned one well-placed observer.  Similarly, the discovery of a partially-damaged child’s toy -- The Farmer Says -- leads some to speculate that that is the source of the five-tone melody heard by Gouviea and Kaye.   

“We’re all really so very, very excited about this, even if it just amounts to a hill of beans,” June Bugg reflected. 

From Inside the Prison, November 13, 2013

Monsters are real and they are created by Other people and they live in the mirror in the prison that is my mind.

I look up at night and the red glow of the Power button on the Monitor floats up the wall in the shape of a Skull in the prison that is my mind.

Darkness isn’t a Lack of light; it is Form and Movement, free, flying across the ceiling in the prison that is my mind.

I am told to shut up, to roll over, to Play dead, and to pretend I am asleep while it Fucks my mouth in the prison that is my mind.

There is no air and no water and I Gag on it, vomiting, in this prison that is my mind.

I look around checking that Nothing has been taken, that Nothing is being put up my ass while begging that Something be put up my ass, that the others validate my Lack of trust in the prison that is my mind.

How will you Harm me?  When will you Hurt me?  How can I outmaneuver You?  These are the questions I Ask in the prison that is my mind.

No, This I will not see.  Put the Needle back in my arm, Used is fine and hot and that makes us one and connected and I know this is so Fucked up but his headlamp only shined enough light to help find a vein that Took the hepatitis into the already-toxic body - such is the memory in the prison that is my mind.

Faces of friends are interpreted as enemies that coldly and with cruel intent reveal the truth about loneliness and the damnation of an insatiable appetite for love in the prison that is my mind.

On the Mirror, tattooed in fading blood, I see the words fight back, and I summon enough Courage not to lose sight of the Reflection that might take Substance and rescue me from the prison that is my mind.

Then, freedom!  Courage mixed with reflection yielded substance that unlocked the door of the prison that was my mind.

--------

Note:  A good resolution, ending on a happy note, as it were, has been long in coming.  I am grateful to be here.  (November 20, 2013)  Still am.  Oh good grief, I have been so foolish.  (November 26, 2013.)  No, you have been you.  (December 23, 2013)