Oozings

 

From time to time I find want to argue with Words With Friends (WWF) about words such as this one:  "Oozings" is TOO a word. (blowing Raspberries) As evidence I offer an example of its use by on of the greatest poets of the English Language, John Keats who wrote of "Autumn" (in her personification or as a goddess) "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours."  (notice too his use of apostrophe which I may have mentioned in a recent FB post)

I suppose the problem lies in forgetting about the use of participles as nouns, and as a noun it could be plural and that is how Keats uses it.  So many apples we can watch dozens of pressings and oozing after oozing--that would be more than one, so yes, oozings will work.

You might also note the over abundance of vowels I had to choose from in this round of WWF left me with few options from for maximum point which added to my consternation.  And what, exactly, is one to do with four Es?  

I will relent and repent on my stance on the word "frack."  "Frack" is another word I tried to use that WWF outlawed, band, dismissed or failed to recognize.  My logic is that if the participle "fracking" is a word then "frack" must be a word.  However, I now consider the word a lexical aberration.  The base form of the word actually comes from "fracture."  However, I would still argue that in popular culture the word "frack" was used constantly on the TV series Babylon 5 (1993-1998) so it should be a word if it has any kind of common use as a replacement for the other "F" word.

Rant over.  Thanks for your consideration.

Blogger, my old friend, How have you been?

This is the Windmill on Windmill Island.  I love this picture
because it looks like it's out in the country.

     I can't believe it.  I've recovered my old blog!  It is like a long lost friend.  I haven't been able to use in in years.  I deleted a post I didn't like from 2018, and that was the last time I used it.

    Some people don't like blogs anymore since they've kind of gone out of fashion.  When was I ever concerned about fashion? I love this because it is a both journal and photo record of things I've done and a remembrance places I've been, and it has lots of musings, stories and poetry.  It is an everything kind of place.  I'll have to get out my vacation pictures from 2019, the trip I took to England, Spain, and Morocco.  Ah, I'm so happy!  See you again soon with lost of creative stuff!

Flying Things

It was made of broomsticks and rags and old, old wires, but—it flew!  YES, it flew!  Only for a moment, that is so, but it flew!! Flying Thing #1 did fly and young Tommy Malloy was ecstatic.  It fell and crashed to the ground and broke into a hundred pieces; but that didn’t matter, because it HAD flown, and that meant that the possibility had become an actuality even if it was only for a moment.  Tommy danced about the wreckage of his Flying Thing #1. which was in pieces and scattered about in the field.

            Tommy then set out to build Flying Thing #2.  He poured a great deal of time, money and enthusiasm into this project. At night he dreamed of this marvelous machine in flight—and he saw himself in all the papers: “Tommy Malloy creates Flying Thing!”

            When he finished it, he looked at it and thought it was a thing of great beauty.  He started it up.  It wobbled and ran about the field.  It sputtered and strained and popped, but it wouldn’t take to the air.  He adjusted a few things, refueled it, primed it, turned it toward the wind and started it up again; and again it wobbled and sputtered and strained and popped.  Then after many tries, Flying Thing #2 hissed, screamed, choked and died never having, left the ground.

            Did I mention that Tommy was a very religious person?  When he was crestfallen for the failure of Flying Thing #2, he blamed himself for his failure—Not that he was wrong to build Flying Things, no, NO; he felt certain that God had given him a great gift to build such marvelous contraptions as the world had not seen!  No, not that, his error was his arrogance, ego and pride—his heart was not right, he decided, and that led him to dismantle Flying Thing #2 because, as he said to himself over and over again, “God has shut me down! And there is nothing I can do about it.”  He believed that he would have to purify his heart, and when his heart was right, God would call him, in the right time and place, to build Flying Things.

            And so Tommy became even more religious and spent his life trying to purify his heart so that when God called him to build his Flying Things, he would do so successfully and with purity of heart!  He married dutifully, but lovelessly, raised his children according to the will of God, worked hard at a job that he didn’t care for, with a boss that over-tasked him and paid him enough to keep him barely above poverty—for which he gave thanks to God in all things.  And he continued to spend years of devotion to God and to his church. 

Time passed by and Tommy was getting older and older.  Once in a while he thought about his Flying Things—even toyed with an idea for building Flying Thing #3—a little less weight here, lighter materials there, a different angle--but no, he would think, God had shut him down for his sinful pride and his many imperfections.

In time, Tommy died never having built his Flying Things.  He came before Almighty God.  It wasn’t quite like he imagined.  God was in a bar and looked like he would be more comfortable among bikers than preachers.  He was smoking a cigar and drinking shots of bourbon.  The piano player was playing “Stairway to Heaven” on a honky-tonk piano in the background while God poured a shot of bourbon into to Tommy’s glass.  Tommy, being religious, refused to drink, so God, being God and all, gave it to him straight:  “Tommy,” he said, scratching his whiskers, “I gave you a gift!  Son, you could’ve built the most amazing flying things to the joy of everyone, IF ONLY YOU HADN’T BEEN SO DAMN RELIGIUOS!!!

Pasteboard Masks

Here's the passage from Moby Dick I'm reading in the video if you need it:

Hark ye yet again--the little lower layer.  All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.  But in each event--in the living act, the undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts for the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.  If man will strike, strike through the mask!  How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?  To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me.  Sometimes I think there's naught beyond.  But tis enough.  He tasks me;  He heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.  That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.  Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.  For if the sun could do that, then I could do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations.  But not my master, man, is even that fair play.  Who's over me?  Truth hath no confines.

The Dark Side of the Mountain

The Fates slept.

What can I say? They are old women after all, and old women have a right to doze off. I know, I know, they’ve always been old so what difference did it make on this particular day?  

Who knows? The spinning, measuring, and cutting must get pretty old after a while, and if it gets to be a little too rhythmic and monotonous, then who can blame them if, on one hot afternoon in the underworld,they just kind of nodded off.  

The point is, they weren’t watching when Sisyphus suddenly heaved that boulder over the top of the mountain.

Well.  That wasn’t supposed to happen.

Sysyphus blinked.

It took a second to take it all in.  He looked down and watched that great boulder, that he had worn smooth and stained over the years with his old blood and sweat, tumble and bounce down, down, DOWN that incline which he had referred to once, in his silent thoughts, as “the dark side of the mountain.”  By that he meant that he had never seen that side before--like the dark side of the moon--the unknown, mysterious land that had offered such promise if that damn stone ever made it over the peak.

He watched its clumsy descent for what seemed like forever until he could see that boulder no longer but could only hear its great thunderous crashes echoing throughout the vales of Hades’ domain.  Then it was silent.

A great smile cracked across his face, and soon his voice ripped the air with a great howl of triumph such as had never been heard before in all the universe so that it reached even up to Olympus.

It did not, however, wake the Fates; and the great resonance of his voice altered nothing there in them as they slept.

Still, the joy born of thousands upon thousands of years of persistence and pain tarried in him a little while as Winged Victory swooped in and kissed him.

Then as quickly as she came, Victory left him in sober silence on the mountain top.

Haunting thoughts wanted to bubble up from the depths of Sisyphus’ mind.  He tried to suppress them--shove them back down again with all the strength of shoving boulders, but it couldn’t be helped; they bubbled up anyway, and they bubbled up grotesquely, like hundreds of dead bodies, muddy, stinky and rotten, surfacing almost instantly in the Stygian River--too many they came, and too fast to shove back down. The thoughts shaped themselves in an almost visual smell, a kind of a great stench blending itself of all rotten things, and they all somehow began to murmur together as they formed into one, single terrible thought, a whisper, it was, and then a hiss like a demon:

“Now what?”

Unable to answer the question, Sisyphus sat down on the precipice of that mountain and spent a long time thinking.  The clouds of the underworld swirled past him. Overhead a chill wind circled down around him and pushed his hair from his face.  His brow was deeply furrowed, and his mighty, calloused hands stroked his beard.  Then he stood quickly and resolutely, and he hiked down that “dark side of the mountain”--a journey of many days.  

He found his boulder.

He stood beneath it.

He gave a great heave and started rolling the boulder up the mountain.

When the Fates woke, they looked down and thought it odd that Sisyphus was on the wrong side of the mountain, but they were satisfied, after some deliberations among themselves, that nothing had changed at all in the Underworld.

Passion

Mother Jenny

Mother Jenny is the first riddle I ever made.  It was back in about 1983 or 1984.  I was working in the Meis Department Store art department in what was called, "the Sign Shop"  It didn't pay a whole lot, but it was one of the most fun jobs I ever had.  I got to actually create a lot of the signs and silk screened posters for the entire chain of the Meis stores through out the midwest.  It was such a fun creative place to work.  The rest of the department involved about 4-5 artists (the ones that draw the sketches in ads for the clothing sales) who were really fun and creative people that I loved working with.  I started pinning my riddles to the bulletin board every week and challenged people to guess them for a candy bar.  I made an illustration for each riddle and when I was finished them, I sent them or gave them to my best friend at the time, David--now Father David who pastors the Romanian Orthodox Church in Indianapolis.  He and his wife Janene (Orthodox Priests can be married) have been good friends of mine forever and I think he still has those riddles somewhere around his house after all these years.

Just as I've always done with my illustrations for the riddles, I make sure that my illustrations have nothing to do with the answers to the riddle, so it won't help you to try to guess based on the pictures.  This video is shorter than the others, but it is my first attempt at a fully animated cartoon.  I think I've got about seven or eight hundred frames--a lot of drawing!  And a lot of mistakes that I had to correct and then timing it to the music--Whoa, do I have a new appreciation for the old-time animators!

Here are the words:

Mother Jenny has four,
to help her through the door.
Mother Jenny has nine--
that's why she feels so fine!
Mother Jenny has three--
what could they be?
Those three with their twelve in a basket
Must lose twenty-seven to see a casket.

Musical Chairs

 I don't really exactly think of myself as a liberal.  I like to think that I just think.  I do acknowledge that my views most often agree with those people who are categorized (by themselves or others) as liberal.  Being somewhat self-reflective (also a characteristic of liberals) I have started to ask myself, "How did I get to get to be this way?"  Is being liberal genetic?  Is being liberal the result of early influences? (my mentor was cool and liberal so I want to be cool and liberal)  Is being liberal just going along with the crowd where liberals hang with and liberals are just plain old conformist--thinking liberal to fit in with liberals?  Or is being liberal the result some deep underlying set of values that makes someone a liberal?

I don't know the answer to that for sure, but I know when I first realized I was a liberal.  Oh, I don't know that I could have put it into solid words since I was only three years old at the time--and just barely three at that.  It was at my birthday party.  My Mom and some other adult lady set up games to play.  One of those games was called Musical Chairs.

You remember Musical Chairs don't you?  It was a lot like a reality show--slowly eliminating people until you have only one winner left.  I didn't fully understand the rules when we started playing.  It seemed really fun at first marching around the chairs to the music like a dance, and then the music stopped.  Everyone started sitting down.  I was lucky because chair was right in front of me and I plopped down because everyone else did.  But two little girls had to go for the same seat and were pretty aggressive about it, but one did beat the other out.

I freaked.  What an awful game!  I felt so bad for the little girl who didn't have a seat.  Hey!  somebody set the game up that way--that's not right!  I didn't like this game as it was, but then--oh my gosh--the adults took yet another chair away!  Even though one little girl had to go without a chair, you'd think, well, at least there are enough chairs now--but NO!  THE GAME WAS RIGGED!  There would NEVER be enough chairs for everyone.  More and more children would be eliminated until one clever fat cat was the only one left with a chair.

What makes me a liberal is that I have this crazy idea that everyone should have a chair!  I don't care if it is the nicest chair in the room, or the wobbly folding chair.  I don't expect absolute equality.  There will always be rich and poor in this world, but by golly, everyone needs to have a job, a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, the ability to go to a doctor when they are sick and something to live on when they get old or become disabled--that's the chair--that's what it is.

What we need to ask ourselves is, who is taking those chairs away?  And, yeah, who is hoarding up those all those chairs anyway?  Man, if you've only got one ass to sit on, what are you doing with all those chairs you don't need?  Okay, so, you don't like taxes, I get it.  But what are you going to do about the chairless, then?  What?  What do you mean that's not your problem?  That the Chairless just need to work harder?   OOOOOOOHHHH that makes me mad.  You took their chair in the first place!  YOU FATCATS with all the chairs set this game up!  It is the nature of the YOUR game to ensure there are NOT enough chairs!

So off I go on my liberal ranting and people start whispering to each other "Don't bring up politics when he's around."

An elder in our old church once asked my dad, "How can you vote democrat and be a Christian?"  My dad is too nice of a guy to ever express his feelings directly to that elder, but I heard him mutter afterward, "How can you be a Christian and a Mason?"  Not that there is anything wrong with people being in the Masons necessarily--it is a form of Rosicrutianism with private secret beliefs.  Mostly it was, at that time, kind of a good old boy's network.  Sorry about the rabbit trail there, but the point is that, in a great twist of irony, and in spite of conservative fundamentalists, I am a liberal in part because of the Bible.  That whole business about human beings being created in the image and likeness of God, means you see God in every human face.  Would you seriously not find a chair for God if he walked into the room? 

God is on the street corner holding a sign and we call him a bum, and we shout, "hey, get a job" and accuse him of fraud.

God is in a Palestinian child.

God is a Central American Child crossing the Mexican Boarder into America.

God is stuck on a mountain in Iraq and running out of food and water.

God has cancer and he has no health insurance.

People say they believe in God as they take his chair away from him and blame him for his own situation.  "Should have been quicker"  "Should have worked harder."  "Should have made better decisions."

But the God, I know and love is just the opposite.  "You have no chair;" he says, "here, take mine."  He doesn't seem to like Musical Chairs either.

Jonathon Edward McGuire McGuin

Where has the time gone?  It has been a while since I published anything new.  In fact, I'm still not publishing anything new.  This is a riddle I did a while back but must not have put on my blog.  This is before I tried my hand at animating.  These illustrations I did a long time ago, but not as long ago as I wrote them which, was the 80's when I was working in the sign shop for Meis Department Stores in Terre Haute Indiana.  Here's this riddle:

Jonathon Edward McGuire McGuin
Has a most extraordinary chin,
So he can get his singing sung
While playing outfield with his tongue.

The Lake on a Cold Winter's Day

         It has been the most amazing Winter this year. Stunning really.  (Don't forget, I capitalize the seasons, seeing personality in them) I have a video of the lake posted above, but not of the blizzard we had here in Michigan last night which left us buried in drifts.  I believe I heard my son swearing this morning at about 4:30 when he got up to go to work and had to dig out.  He drives a jeep and is proud of the fact that he can just drive over it.  I take it that today that he actually had to dig through the drifts and was none too happy about it.  Folks here are tired of "the white stuff" as they tend to say, but I am not.
     I have never been a fan of Winter.  When I lived in Abu Dhabi for three years, I never missed it one bit, but what I have hated is the cold, the dark and the grayness of it, not necessarily "the white stuff."  Most winters in recent decades have been just that--grey, dark and cold, but this winter there has been so VERY MUCH SNOW and it has been SO VERY, VERY WILD that I have been mesmerized by all the power and beauty he has sent our way.  Snow makes a difference in my mood.  I can be a little inclined toward seasonal affective disorder, but all the brightness of the snow and that it seems to be constantly coming down, either in large, gentle serene flakes that sparkle and make me sit with a hot drink and just stare out the window for what seems like hours on end; or that comes in great, powerful blasts of white dust devils--a thousand snow queens spinning and dancing whipping up pure white dunes that cover houses and streets and bury shoveled walks in a matter of minutes.  Between the gentle brightness of it and the awesome power of its storms, January has lived up to its name: Janus, the god of two faces: peace and war.  He rages and roars and then he turns and lays out a landscape that is calm and pristine, bright and beautiful. I don't think I've ever known a happier or more satisfying Winter than this one.

St. Nicholas Boxes 2013

Well, I wasn't quite ready for St. Nicholas Day this year, but I still made them and gave them away.  Thought you all might like to see.  I based it on the song I wrote about the Four Seasons, which I've come to regard as a Winer Solstice song.  As you can see here Saint Nicholas is sandwiched in between representations of the four seasons right between Autumn and Winter, given his St. Day is the 6th of December.  The printing was done at Kinko's and the color is off from my original choices so that the Four Seasons look a bit more jaundice than I would like them to have been.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Christmas counter-weight candle holders

Since my wife and I divorced, I find myself at the age of 57 starting over in my life.  It is just me and my son, Peter living in this old house on 29th Street in Holland, Michigan.  It is often quiet and peaceful and there is now a lot of time to think--especially about the years that remain to me. Having spent pretty much my whole life determined by what other people want--first from my teen years by a very controlling, highly conformist church community, and then again in a marriage that demonstrated a great similarity to the church community--I suddenly find myself on my own. So...who am I?  What are my tastes and desires?  What kind of a lifestyle reflects who I am?  I've never really had thoughts like that before, and I certainly never felt free to pursue  thoughts and desires like that.

Well, the house is mine by our legal judgement, but the stuff that filled it is gone--or mostly gone--including the Christmas ornaments.  But I find myself, after many sour and unhappy Christmases, wanting to unearth the joy and the magic of Christmas.  I especially miss the Swedish candle holders that hung on our Christmas tree.  I ran across them back in the 80's at Pier One, but haven't found them since.  I bought about 4 or 5 and then people noted how much we liked them and some friends gave us a few more.  Once Christmas was over they went on sale for cheep and I bought as many as I could.  We lit them up on Christmas Eve and Epiphany every year.   I won't begrudge my ex-wife for running off with them since they hold as much charm and sentimental value to her as they do to me, but I miss them.  So this year I decided to make some of my own.  Thought I'd show you all.

Painting the bottoms.  I used shish kabob sticks for the shafts

 I curled wire to make the hooks so they hook on the tree.

Here they are hanging on the curtain rod and I think they will work pretty well  Candles go in the top part.  The trick is to keep the weight at the bottom so the candles are balanced.

This is a painting from Carl Larson that helps give you the idea

Well this project and Christmas in general, is one of many things I am doing to live life with some vision.  Christmas seems like a good time to do that; a time to celebrate birth, redemption, new life, gifts and the like.

Writing for their lives

Jabari Mahiri and Soraya Sablo, from the University of California—Berkeley, looked into the writing practices of urban African American youth, many of whom were not motivated to do normal school writing.  What is interesting is that they found that many of these students who were not willing to write in school were often prolific writers in their own world after school.  These students were, in my own words, often alienated by their school world, finding the academic writing far removed from, and not relevant to their world.   Mahiri and Sabolo make the case that teachers should begin to include new definitions of literacy in the area of writing to encourage writing in school.

        Mahiri and Sablo cite quite a bit of previous research on the topic on the first page of the article.  One notable quote came from an author doing cross-cultural research, Street says: “…literacy is ultimately political.”  That little quote had quite a bit of pack to it and left me thinking, and wondering if that were true.  Isn’t literacy just being able to read and write?  What has that to do with politics?  For that matter, what can I, as a teacher, do about politics?  Then I thought about recent events in the state of Michigan with a state agenda that is huge and seems to be all about not paying for an education at all.  If this trend continues, Education will then become the privilege of the wealthy, mostly white male establishment.  These are people who can afford to send their children to exclusive private schools, while public education will continue to suffer.  When rich, white males—either politicians or owners of large corporations—dominate government, then the assumptions about what is valued in education will be those of rich, white males.

        That said, this still leave the problem for teachers of urban schools of how to develop literacy among African American students who feel alienated by traditional school writing—I think this is also true of many other minorities and of low-income working class white students.

        What Mahiri and Soblo seem to be suggesting through the authors and previous research the cite is that teacher should turn to  “vernacular writing.”  That includes things like oral story telling, diaries, letters (chat?), it also includes looking at “rhetorical devices common to African American literary language.  Can a connection be made between the “specific descriptions of knowledge structures taught in school as they relate to the knowledge structures constructed within nonschool social settings?”

        What Mahiri and Soblo do is they worked with two teachers, given the pseudonyms: Ms. Brown and Ms Parks, who would be willing to try working with African American students in a new way that would use their authentic writing out-of- school writing to examine literacy in a new context.  Finding students willing to share their work was not easy.  These students were leery of the system and while they were unwilling and/or unmotivated to do traditional schoolwork, Mahiri and Sobolo found that they were often prolific writers outside of the school context.  They selected two students who were willing to share their poems, plays and rap lyrics with them for the project: Keisha and Troy

Here is a poem by Kisha

Dreams

I have so many dreams to remember,

So many moments to cherish.

My life had no light until…

You, burning upon the sun;

To kiss you is a dream come true,

A moment to cherish

To have the pleasure of being

Around you is a blessing.

When you simply speak,

I am speechless.

When you smile,

I am paralyzed with life.

There isn’t a word in the world

To express the way I feel for you,

Not one.

But you, you are like the ocean

That glimmers in the night,

Like the birds that cry in the morning

I wish I could hold you forever,

But I dream you will stay with

And hold me

With incredible strength

Your features are so beautiful

They would blind the normal eye

But not mine

You are a dream and I

Want to have you

Over and over,

Again.

The authors then point out a list of literacy competencies that they can find in the poem, such as the use of simile and metaphor: “you are like the ocean…like the birds that cry in the morning”; oxymoron: “When you smile, I am paralyzed with life.”  What I noticed was the easy accessibility of this poem across culture.  Keisha’s play in rap form was more “cultural” in its language—more like a rap or flow:

Jus’ Living

Jus’ livin’ on the eastside taking a chill,

Watchin; young brothas being shot and killed.

Coming up fast, clocking Kash

Niggaz be having dreams, getting sot,

But it can’t last.

But at the same time the doing the crim,

Sitting behind bars without a nickel or a dime,

Can’t come out and kick it,

But I’mma wicked old fe-mac and that’s how I’m living.

The authors comment that this sort of writing reflects Keisha’s “desire to make sense of and rise above the circumstances of her own life.”  This makes the poem less universal than “Dreams” but also makes it perhaps more authentic writing.  The Authors report that her play, “has and intricate plot, well-rounded characters, and complex thematic considerations.”  She seems to have an eye for details.  The setting for the play is Oakland, California and her descriptions, again according to the authors are precise and detailed.  The plot centers on a young man who is pressured into a gang.  With no job prospects he turns to selling drugs for a living.  When rival gang members try to kill the young man, his mother, trying to protect him, gets caught in the crossfire and is killed.  Keisha later told the authors that the play was based on her older brother and their mother.

        What I take home from this article is that the authors are showing us the authentic writing from the world of urban African American high school students and modeling for us how such work can be analyzed for many of the classic benchmarks used in traditional school writing: similes, metaphor, plot and character development and much more.  But by using authentic writing from the lives of their students, teachers can tap into material that is more motivating to their students.  As Mahari and Sablo conclude: “ …it is erroneous to conclude that writing, in and of itself, was unimportant or ‘uncool’ to these students; rather, the yesisted what they viewed as the unauthentic nature of many of their experiences with academic writing.”  Writing was important to them for a number of reasons.  Two of these reasons are particularly important.  First because, as the authors note, it helps them to make sense or “come to terms” with the world they live in; and second writing provided a “safe haven” from the unsafe and traumatic world the live in.  

River Song

Back in 1999 I was still reeling from the bubble bursting on my religious delusions and the poem I wrote here reflects where I was at that time and in some ways still am.  Rivers are so symbolic of so many things: time, life, commerce, faith, love, connecting us, separating us, uniting us, dividing us, it is our history, our ancestry, life, death, from the cradle to the grave and returning again; from the rain, to the river, to the sea, to the sky to rain again and to repeat the cycle forever and ever.  The River flows on and on with out stopping.  I find that I am in that river, a part of that river--for a while, perhaps forever, and that's okay.  The River will flow long after I am gone, just as it was flowing long before I was ever around and yet, in the River I've always been around and will always be.  I guess you might say I kind of lost my faith there for a while.  I guess that wasn't such a bad thing.  I guess you could say I found a River.

Anyway, I wrote this poem/song not from my mind at all.  I wrote it like a prophecy.  I didn't worry about sanity or reason or anything.  I wrote it as a song, sort of, but only recently found a tune to put it to.

River Song

What is life, now?
Is it some kind of illusion?
A dream that we all share, now?
A common confusion?

Then I'll sit down by a riverbank
And listen to the babble.
And the babblin' of the River
Will be a brand new Bible.

And I wonder 'bout the animals,
Do they have a soul and then,
Do they die and go to Heaven?
Are they plagued with mortal sin?

And what about those insects?
Does an insect resurrect?
Does he rise like leaven to an insect heaven?
Does he finally get respect?

And when the dream is over,
And I'm restin' 'neath the clover,
Go listen to my river babble,
"Kenny's crossin' over like a starry-eyed lover."

Twistin' Turnin' River
Runnin' windin' ever
Everything deliver
Blood o' gold and sheen o' sliver

Dyin' Dyin' Death defyin'
Here to Lethe and back again.
Only truth and no denyin'
Always workin' always tryin'

She pulls my heart. She cleans my sin.
She's where I'm going.  She's where I've been.
End to end and round to round.
I listen to that River sing
A liltin' laughin' lovin' sound
That'd make me almost want to drown.
Make me almost want to bring
And end to breath and everything.
Then she gives me life all over.
Gives me hope and makes me see
The glory of a river lover--
This desperate soul recover
From delusion's fantasy
And all the things he cannot see.

What is life now?
When the supper things is done
And we gather 'round with Riley
And we has the mostest fun.

You can listen to the witch tales
That the preachers shout about
An how the goblins 'l getcha'
If ya' don't watch out.

Or you can listen to that River
As she trickles over stones,
As she winds her way to heaven,
as she cleans your rottin' bones--

For time, she is a River.
And space is muddy water.
The galaxies are eddies
And we can go no farther

Than the milkweed on the wind.
Five billion little souls, a driftin' in the air
Who fall into the current
And can't get anywhere.

But if I let the River take me.
If I let her have her way,
I'll flow with her forever
And ever in a day--

In the undulating movement,
The gentle push and shove
Of the never-ending river
And her never-ending love.

The Stonemason's Son

Last Sunday was Eastern Orthodox Easter.  And though religion has a greatly diminished role in my life these days, I still retain some sense of God, and am still a Christian.  I still confess the Nicene Creed, but put more stock in a quite simpler creed: God is Love.  To that end, I feel that Jesus is the incarnation of Love and all that he did on earth was Love and heal.   That is what the Christian must do.  It is what Christ showed us.    No judgment, no condemnation of anyone—just Love.  So thinking of Jesus the son of the stonemason Joseph, I found myself writing a song for this season.

White Violets

Do I like white violets the best? 

 I think so. 

Then I wonder if it is because they are

more rare than the violet violets;

and would I like the violet violets better if all

I ever saw were white violets everywhere

and then not a violet one to be seen anywhere?

I think I would become bored with the white ones.

 Ah, but look, there are the children

who are a little of each--

no, these are the loveliest of all.

The children are always the ones

That bring a spark to the eye

and calm to the heart.

Mocking Birds and Holly Trees

There are mocking birds in the holly trees
jabbering as they do.
Mocking Buddha and the Dalai Lama, saying,
"You have anxiety"
"You are living in the future"
"You have regret"
"you are living in the past"

And I say in return
"Thank you, little brother.
Thank you, little sister."

Then there is nothing.
Only the holly tree with its waxy green leaves,
those bright red berries,
the mocking birds,
the wind, the sun,
and me.

In the eyes of my children

Picasso Van Gogh

standing in slush.

busy street corner.

closed café.

heavy traffic.

a tense trench coat.

a fist full of roses.

tight fingers.

drops of red on

dirty white snow.

giving beauty;

getting pain.

ignored.

people pushing past

going somewhere/nowhere.

Okay, I’m experimenting.  Thinking of William Carlos Williams.  Using images and minimalism.  Accenting end-stops with periods.  Thinking of Hart Crane and his “Thomas A. Ediford” line.  Misusing grammar to say something,--not new--but else.  Else what?  Just else.  The poet--artist on a snowy, slushy street corner like a little match girl—giving roses that no one takes—desperation squeezing his hand on the thorns—“giving beauty, getting pain”  We are not here to sell.  We are not here to make a buck.  We are here to love.  We are here to shed light and beauty.  We are here to create wonders and miracles.  This is the essence of my subversive thoughts: the love of money is not love at all.  It is animal drive.  But I say, we are gods.  We must shed the animal.  Gibran said: “work is love made manifest.”  But we have said, “work is money and we are beasts, and we place a market value on our work.”  We have sold ourselves for cheep.  I will offer roses till I bleed--and do not think that because I give them freely that they are worthless.  I am on the road to Shangri-la.  Where is Shangri-la?  It is in the heart.  It is like a seed in the heart.  I am the garden of Shangri-la.  And when I die the seed will grow and in that place the roses will bloom.  The poets and artists will pick them and stand on cold street corners saying, here, take them, they are free come and take the roses of Shangri-la