Prom Week, 1980
30.4.06
29.4.06
And yes...the Cedar story will continue...its very long you know and a very bad cold going on in my nasal passages. So a few poems in the interim and a gentle cry called release for things gone by this week. Very important things resolve in a matter of seconds sometimes and leave you wondering what all the fuss was about in the first place. The mystery of fuss, the release of captives and the forward flight of our feet into the next days and weeks that become the past even as we are folding the last letter and slipping it into the drawer labelled, "Let go now. It's all over."
And still, Time waits for no one in the final hours before the present disturbs the future with its curious assumptions and prophecies.
And still, Time waits for no one in the final hours before the present disturbs the future with its curious assumptions and prophecies.
Parts Of Joy
(for Nicholas)
Notice please the animals
how they are trapped
by pleasure, frozen
in desires of rub and sleep.
Even ants are on the verge
of something new each time,
concentrated into long lines
of pillage and search where
love and anger are sequential matters.
Cats balance on the edges
where rubbish contains the odor
of the thousand places they've been
as they wait and flee,
bouncing and sailing through
the air. They always know
where they are going
and perform with ease
that which is easy.
This type of thing becomes them.
(for Nicholas)
Notice please the animals
how they are trapped
by pleasure, frozen
in desires of rub and sleep.
Even ants are on the verge
of something new each time,
concentrated into long lines
of pillage and search where
love and anger are sequential matters.
Cats balance on the edges
where rubbish contains the odor
of the thousand places they've been
as they wait and flee,
bouncing and sailing through
the air. They always know
where they are going
and perform with ease
that which is easy.
This type of thing becomes them.
28.4.06
A Sad Sort of Reminder
There is no such thing as silence
save for the absence of curious other
noises and talks. One day we hold
a person and the next, it grows away
refuses our touches and grasps
until hope against hope
the child returns to the quiet ages
of our tired despondence that sounds
as loud as the absence of the prattle
quite below the hum of mirrors and sinks
in those peculiar hidden frequencies.
Old men and old women stay
like shade near the stronger solid trees
looking each the same in the sound
of thunder and the memory of lightning:
one moment flush with thoughts and dream;
the next, pushing out the last breaths with
a decided effort as if only living mattered
next to the chill in the rumble of an echo,
struggling to get up and just move.
As if there were options.
Children grow old too and move on,
must hear the familiar looming song-
one day but not now, maybe not this now -
covered in a succession of evolutions and improvements.
Prodigals, sentient little beings that we are,
dust to dust as the sayings go. We all come back.
A building up and then these inevitable erosions.
The closer you get, the louder it seems.
There is no such thing as silence
save for the absence of curious other
noises and talks. One day we hold
a person and the next, it grows away
refuses our touches and grasps
until hope against hope
the child returns to the quiet ages
of our tired despondence that sounds
as loud as the absence of the prattle
quite below the hum of mirrors and sinks
in those peculiar hidden frequencies.
Old men and old women stay
like shade near the stronger solid trees
looking each the same in the sound
of thunder and the memory of lightning:
one moment flush with thoughts and dream;
the next, pushing out the last breaths with
a decided effort as if only living mattered
next to the chill in the rumble of an echo,
struggling to get up and just move.
As if there were options.
Children grow old too and move on,
must hear the familiar looming song-
one day but not now, maybe not this now -
covered in a succession of evolutions and improvements.
Prodigals, sentient little beings that we are,
dust to dust as the sayings go. We all come back.
A building up and then these inevitable erosions.
The closer you get, the louder it seems.
24.4.06
The Sound of Olatayo
I've known people who were passengers
on high-jacked planes.
They were assholes before they hit Libyan airspace
and probably still are.
I've seen a black man
come out of the sea
like an aborigine -
Mexican sand on his face
and hair twisted into tribal knots
a week after he stormed out
of the Que Pas, a community college diner
where I met Olatayo Sowandi too,
watched him and the other Nigerians
as they listened to the sound
of foreigner's eating.
Not a word between them
and I recall how sweet their silence was
when I was in it with them.
But Mahdi came out of the sea
and I remember how angry he was
when the Arabs at the table,
Saadi Sartawi and his big pipe, Faisal the Libyan, Wassim
the Palestinian brothel owner's kid from Egypt,
kept calling him Abed all the time
instead of just calling him
The Sudan-ee, because
he was not their slave, he was just
from Africa and knew
how to make an impression
when walking out of the sea at Kino Bay.
I've known people who were passengers
on high-jacked planes.
They were assholes before they hit Libyan airspace
and probably still are.
I've seen a black man
come out of the sea
like an aborigine -
Mexican sand on his face
and hair twisted into tribal knots
a week after he stormed out
of the Que Pas, a community college diner
where I met Olatayo Sowandi too,
watched him and the other Nigerians
as they listened to the sound
of foreigner's eating.
Not a word between them
and I recall how sweet their silence was
when I was in it with them.
But Mahdi came out of the sea
and I remember how angry he was
when the Arabs at the table,
Saadi Sartawi and his big pipe, Faisal the Libyan, Wassim
the Palestinian brothel owner's kid from Egypt,
kept calling him Abed all the time
instead of just calling him
The Sudan-ee, because
he was not their slave, he was just
from Africa and knew
how to make an impression
when walking out of the sea at Kino Bay.
Firsts
There are so many firsts in life. The first time you have a baby, the first time you lose a tooth, the first time you stay out after school without permission and the first time you see a dead person or kill a live one.
The first time I did something I wasn't supposed to, it was Francie Vasquez leading me home by the hand but only to the corner where the old Atlantic Richfield sign towered over the fig tree next to old Mrs. Holland's house. We used to run errands for her (when we were old enough to tie our shoes). We'd simply knock on her door and knew if she needed sugar or milk, we could get a dime out of her. I barely remember her though or the way her house looked. The Atlantic Richfield sign far too important because it was on the Corner.
Some of us could climb up onto the billboard and walk on the platform where each month a man would come with a new sign to roll out onto the giant canvas, but I wasn't one of them. I was too chubby and couldn't do alot of the stuff everyone else could. I never did learn to swing on the pipes upside down without my hands but I could flip over it once or twice and backwards too. Everyone should grow up near a Corner like that because a corner is so many things...a place to sit and horse around, swing upside down on the pipes or to organize bike voyages.
In this case however, the Corner was the closest Francie Vasquez wanted to get to my mother whom she knew would be waiting for me with a Cancer Tree switch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. My mother had gone berserk looking for me that day. Kindergarten let out at 12:30 because I was in the 'morning class', a specific group of people that would stay the 'morning class' for the rest of our lives as opposed to the 'afternoon class', people who I can barely remember their names let alone their faces. That particular day I went to visit a sick friend. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? Donna Cole hadn't been to school for three days so I just took a right turn from the school stairs and headed on down to Brophy Avenue instead of going the 'back way' down Mayer like I was supposed to...past Mr. Williams fine gardens and Rosemary's old place, past the Peralta's and up my hill. Not this time. I headed up to 'no man's land' on Brophy where the rough families lived: Figueroas, Maestas, Carabeos and Vasquezes. I'm not really sure why they were considered dangerous up there because they always treated me as one of their own. Just like Francie did that day.
I was inside Donna's house. She wasn't really sick but her mom had been on a three day binge. She was living in a small rental under the Maestas place, two rooms and a kitchenette plus a water closet for the toilet. We played paper dolls for a while and watched some TV. It was a fine afternoon and the hours didn't really matter. They never matter when you are four years old. I was an early starter you know because my birthday was in November. I think it is the reason I'm always the short one in the group even if I'm taller than someone else. You just never get over starting life with five year olds when you are only four. Never get over it.
It must have been about four p.m. when Francie came banging on Donna's door. All she said is, "Meg, you are in BIG trouble. You've got to go home because your mom is looking all over for you." The look on her face, well, the look on her face. I knew she was right and anyways, she was already seven so she knew better than me what I had to do. I had to face facts. So Francie took me by the hand and Donna's face disappeared behind the dirty screen that was her lopsided front and back door. She held me by the shoulders as we stood on the Corner and looked me in the eye and said, "You are going to get a whipping. Don't cry." Then she gave me a shove and pushed me into the back alley.
There was my mom and in her hand, as expected, was the thin branch from a Cancer Tree with all the leaves pulled off. Those are really neat, you can hold the tip and run your hand right down the branch and the leaves come off pronto. Instant corporal punishment tools of the trade. I didn't really even get within five feet of my mother before she started swinging at my rear and the backs of my legs. My stomach was still sore from the gash I'd made when I climbed over the wall on Brophy and a Cancer Tree branch, the mature part, cut me wide open. It probably needed stitches but I'd never show it to anyone because stitches weren't my cup of tea. I mean, whose cup of tea are they anyway? I remember the first time I was told I needed stitches...Davy Dominguez had been horsing around with me while we watched everyone else play football in the Duchene's yard and he knocked me off the wooden railing and split my leg wide open. I hopped around a bit that time and didn't cry a tear. Just cussed and cussed and Bobbie Duchenes' stupid mom came out and put a band-aid on it. Bobbie was really spoiled and his mom used to keep him inside when it was hot because she thought he'd get sick or something. I showed my brother the gash and he said, "Uh oh, you need stitches," and repeated it, turning it into a Nana Nana BooBoo song. You're gonna get stitches, you're gonna get stitches. So nope. I'd take the beating I deserved for scaring my mom and never show anyone the gash in my gut. No way. She beat me all the way up both sets of stairs to our house and then some more in the living room and then she just sat down and cried for a while. She was always scared of that prisoner that got out of the town jail once. Although I never knew what he looked like, I can see him now...hiding out in the hills above our house. A murderer and my mom took some sort of pleasure in recounting the tale of the escaped convict that hid out in the hills there for a week or two before they finally caught him. She just cried and then she hugged me and it was all over. Francie always had good advice.
But this isn't about that sort of thing. This is about first times. I don't know but I think the first time you get arrested and booked, you don't really remember every detail. You don't really remember what the ink pad looks like or how big your thumb print is on the card. You don't get a copy of the mugshot and that is truly unfair. I'd really like one of those. It be a cool thing to keep in a family album like the one of my dad in the coffin. Some people think it is weird to want things like that but I think THEY are weird for not wanting them. Those are histories. And from the looks of me now, no one could believe that I faced three felony counts.
What I do remember is that orange jumpsuit and Francie, plus I remember the psycho I stayed overnight with in the cell. I remember the pancakes too, they weren't all that bad. I can see how a person could get used to free jail food and a bed to sleep in. The only problem is the roommates they put you with. Well, yes and no. I had two but the orange jumpsuit deserves more discussion. They took away my broken high heels, my black slit skirt and my gorgeous pink sweater with missing buttons and my panty hose. I really didn't want to give those up because panty hose make you feel thin but in jail, they help you to get out of this world should you want to. The cops are afraid you'll kill yourself once you get inside. They don't seem to worry too much if someone else might try to kill you though and they put people like me with crazy women who take drugs and cut out other people's tongues for kicks. But that's jumping ahead just a tad.
I put on my orange jumpsuit with Cochise County Jail in block letters on the back, turned over my possessions and stood at the iron gates looking at the mofo who had arrested me and was standing on the other side with his shit eating grin in full bloom. He was really enjoying it all. I was practically catatonic to be honest. I mean, I was in jail. Although I'd done alot of stupid things like burglarizing houses when I was six or seven, I never really thought I'd end up in jail.
He looked at me through the bars, up and down and said, "You know, when this is all over, I'd like to take you out for a cup of coffee." Yea, right. No one heard him except me but I know when and if I get to heaven I want to see him in hell. He was evil. When you are religious and a believer you think about stuff like that. I'd also like to see all the Lemony Snickets there on the other side of the final iron gates, looking at me and begging for a cup of water. I'd really like to see that. I don't want to see the judge there though, even though when they called him he refused to give me the option of posting bail because it was after closing time, small town you know. My one phone call to my brother was really a waste of time except that at least my family knew I needed some help. That was old Judge Helms, the hanging judge or sometimes, the marrying judge. No, I don't want to see him there behind the gates of hell. Afterall, he didn't arrest me for littering and certainly, he didn't look at me a year later while he was dancing with his wife at the Gadsden and flash a shit eating lavicsious grin. That was the state trooper, not him. No, he married me to the love of my life and got me to the Cedars for the first time. He gets off.So do the dentists who pulled out my teeth and the boys who made fun of me when they found out a fat girl had a crush on them. They all get off. They all were important in the scheme of things in one way or another and without them and their joys, rejections and pains, I'd be somewhere else. Maybe even working in a Dairy Queen or perhaps as a court stenographer or maybe even a barfly like an old friend I just met this summer at Elmo's bar and grill for the first time in twenty years. Barb looked awful. Divorced and still in love with the cad. Still making drunken treks between all the bars in Cochise County at midnight to see if he was there and dancing with someone else. I bought her a drink that night, several in fact and we laughed a bit and went our separate ways, hers being the Brewery or the Lowell Waiting Room. Mine, somewhere else.
The jail cell was beige and aren't they all some kind of drab color. I'll bet if they painted them orange there would be less recidivism. I'm sure of it. There is something about the color of those rooms that isn't impressive enough to keep you out nor enough to keep you in. The big door closed behind me and I saw Francie Vasquez sitting on one of the four bunks with a look I cannot describe. She was as shocked as I was.
"Meg! What are YOU doing in here?" Strangely enough, I had the same question. There was another in the room but she just turned her back when I walked in and placed something under her flat pillow. I told Francie my story and she just shook her head. She was innocent too. Something about embezzlement from the public school funds. I don't know and it isn't really important. She never really got out of the jail system and I heard that she is still in and out of them but that might just be gossip.
I was really lucky because they hadn't served dinner yet and after a half hour or so, chatting with Francie over the mutual problem we were having, a hand shoved three trays through a slot in the door. I can't remember what we ate but they did give us each a big navel orange. Francie told me not to eat it, that we'd be needing it overnight. I didn't really understand that but I did what she said. Francie always had good advice. I was trying pretty hard not to cry once I found out how slowly time passes in jail. It just crawls by. They don't give you a clock but you can tell by the way your body feels that time has slowed way, way down. No TV either. Just a bed and a couple of roommates and oranges that you save for some reason.
After we finished our meals we shoved the trays back through the slot. The other girl was watching me the whole time. She didn't talk but just stared and stared. Her eyes lacked a specific color. Finally though, she pointed her finger at me and said, "Come here." Francie didn't say anything so I did what I was told. The girl said, "I want to show you something." She pulled the book she had placed under her pillow and thumbed through it to the page where she'd folded down the corner and had circled a word in red ink. "This is what I am."
Psychotic.
Francie called me back over and told me that we'd have to stay awake all night. Our 'room mate' Francie told me, was traveling with her boyfriend in a van, dropping acid and smoking pot when they picked up a hitchhiker. Then they cut his tongue out. Just like that, lopped the poor suckers tongue right out of him. I heard later that they re-attached it though.
"We are going to play Oranges to stay awake Meg. We have to stay awake until she falls asleep. I mean it." So we started tossing oranges, to our roommate as well. We did that for what seemed hours until the other girl quit and went and laid down, then fell asleep. Francie and I took the bunks opposite and she made me sleep on the top for my own protection. You just don't find friends like Francie everyday and you have to remember them sometimes. You hope you'll see them once again, in heaven. That is where they belong because it isn't their fault. None of it is their fault really and even the psychotic girl probably had her reasons for doing what she did. God only knows.
And we slept, or sort of. I just lay awake in my bunk and listened to the silence outside. There isn't anything like the silence of a small town at night, dogs barking and no cars. The sound of doves in the morning is all you have in jail to know that dawn is on its way. I miss that place but not very much, jail that is. One night is more than enough for anyone.
......more to be revealed about Judge Helms, his secretary and that big trip up to the Cedars which, when concluded, my daughter remarked, "For any other family this day would have been abnormal."
There are so many firsts in life. The first time you have a baby, the first time you lose a tooth, the first time you stay out after school without permission and the first time you see a dead person or kill a live one.
The first time I did something I wasn't supposed to, it was Francie Vasquez leading me home by the hand but only to the corner where the old Atlantic Richfield sign towered over the fig tree next to old Mrs. Holland's house. We used to run errands for her (when we were old enough to tie our shoes). We'd simply knock on her door and knew if she needed sugar or milk, we could get a dime out of her. I barely remember her though or the way her house looked. The Atlantic Richfield sign far too important because it was on the Corner.
Some of us could climb up onto the billboard and walk on the platform where each month a man would come with a new sign to roll out onto the giant canvas, but I wasn't one of them. I was too chubby and couldn't do alot of the stuff everyone else could. I never did learn to swing on the pipes upside down without my hands but I could flip over it once or twice and backwards too. Everyone should grow up near a Corner like that because a corner is so many things...a place to sit and horse around, swing upside down on the pipes or to organize bike voyages.
In this case however, the Corner was the closest Francie Vasquez wanted to get to my mother whom she knew would be waiting for me with a Cancer Tree switch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. My mother had gone berserk looking for me that day. Kindergarten let out at 12:30 because I was in the 'morning class', a specific group of people that would stay the 'morning class' for the rest of our lives as opposed to the 'afternoon class', people who I can barely remember their names let alone their faces. That particular day I went to visit a sick friend. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? Donna Cole hadn't been to school for three days so I just took a right turn from the school stairs and headed on down to Brophy Avenue instead of going the 'back way' down Mayer like I was supposed to...past Mr. Williams fine gardens and Rosemary's old place, past the Peralta's and up my hill. Not this time. I headed up to 'no man's land' on Brophy where the rough families lived: Figueroas, Maestas, Carabeos and Vasquezes. I'm not really sure why they were considered dangerous up there because they always treated me as one of their own. Just like Francie did that day.
I was inside Donna's house. She wasn't really sick but her mom had been on a three day binge. She was living in a small rental under the Maestas place, two rooms and a kitchenette plus a water closet for the toilet. We played paper dolls for a while and watched some TV. It was a fine afternoon and the hours didn't really matter. They never matter when you are four years old. I was an early starter you know because my birthday was in November. I think it is the reason I'm always the short one in the group even if I'm taller than someone else. You just never get over starting life with five year olds when you are only four. Never get over it.
It must have been about four p.m. when Francie came banging on Donna's door. All she said is, "Meg, you are in BIG trouble. You've got to go home because your mom is looking all over for you." The look on her face, well, the look on her face. I knew she was right and anyways, she was already seven so she knew better than me what I had to do. I had to face facts. So Francie took me by the hand and Donna's face disappeared behind the dirty screen that was her lopsided front and back door. She held me by the shoulders as we stood on the Corner and looked me in the eye and said, "You are going to get a whipping. Don't cry." Then she gave me a shove and pushed me into the back alley.
There was my mom and in her hand, as expected, was the thin branch from a Cancer Tree with all the leaves pulled off. Those are really neat, you can hold the tip and run your hand right down the branch and the leaves come off pronto. Instant corporal punishment tools of the trade. I didn't really even get within five feet of my mother before she started swinging at my rear and the backs of my legs. My stomach was still sore from the gash I'd made when I climbed over the wall on Brophy and a Cancer Tree branch, the mature part, cut me wide open. It probably needed stitches but I'd never show it to anyone because stitches weren't my cup of tea. I mean, whose cup of tea are they anyway? I remember the first time I was told I needed stitches...Davy Dominguez had been horsing around with me while we watched everyone else play football in the Duchene's yard and he knocked me off the wooden railing and split my leg wide open. I hopped around a bit that time and didn't cry a tear. Just cussed and cussed and Bobbie Duchenes' stupid mom came out and put a band-aid on it. Bobbie was really spoiled and his mom used to keep him inside when it was hot because she thought he'd get sick or something. I showed my brother the gash and he said, "Uh oh, you need stitches," and repeated it, turning it into a Nana Nana BooBoo song. You're gonna get stitches, you're gonna get stitches. So nope. I'd take the beating I deserved for scaring my mom and never show anyone the gash in my gut. No way. She beat me all the way up both sets of stairs to our house and then some more in the living room and then she just sat down and cried for a while. She was always scared of that prisoner that got out of the town jail once. Although I never knew what he looked like, I can see him now...hiding out in the hills above our house. A murderer and my mom took some sort of pleasure in recounting the tale of the escaped convict that hid out in the hills there for a week or two before they finally caught him. She just cried and then she hugged me and it was all over. Francie always had good advice.
But this isn't about that sort of thing. This is about first times. I don't know but I think the first time you get arrested and booked, you don't really remember every detail. You don't really remember what the ink pad looks like or how big your thumb print is on the card. You don't get a copy of the mugshot and that is truly unfair. I'd really like one of those. It be a cool thing to keep in a family album like the one of my dad in the coffin. Some people think it is weird to want things like that but I think THEY are weird for not wanting them. Those are histories. And from the looks of me now, no one could believe that I faced three felony counts.
What I do remember is that orange jumpsuit and Francie, plus I remember the psycho I stayed overnight with in the cell. I remember the pancakes too, they weren't all that bad. I can see how a person could get used to free jail food and a bed to sleep in. The only problem is the roommates they put you with. Well, yes and no. I had two but the orange jumpsuit deserves more discussion. They took away my broken high heels, my black slit skirt and my gorgeous pink sweater with missing buttons and my panty hose. I really didn't want to give those up because panty hose make you feel thin but in jail, they help you to get out of this world should you want to. The cops are afraid you'll kill yourself once you get inside. They don't seem to worry too much if someone else might try to kill you though and they put people like me with crazy women who take drugs and cut out other people's tongues for kicks. But that's jumping ahead just a tad.
I put on my orange jumpsuit with Cochise County Jail in block letters on the back, turned over my possessions and stood at the iron gates looking at the mofo who had arrested me and was standing on the other side with his shit eating grin in full bloom. He was really enjoying it all. I was practically catatonic to be honest. I mean, I was in jail. Although I'd done alot of stupid things like burglarizing houses when I was six or seven, I never really thought I'd end up in jail.
He looked at me through the bars, up and down and said, "You know, when this is all over, I'd like to take you out for a cup of coffee." Yea, right. No one heard him except me but I know when and if I get to heaven I want to see him in hell. He was evil. When you are religious and a believer you think about stuff like that. I'd also like to see all the Lemony Snickets there on the other side of the final iron gates, looking at me and begging for a cup of water. I'd really like to see that. I don't want to see the judge there though, even though when they called him he refused to give me the option of posting bail because it was after closing time, small town you know. My one phone call to my brother was really a waste of time except that at least my family knew I needed some help. That was old Judge Helms, the hanging judge or sometimes, the marrying judge. No, I don't want to see him there behind the gates of hell. Afterall, he didn't arrest me for littering and certainly, he didn't look at me a year later while he was dancing with his wife at the Gadsden and flash a shit eating lavicsious grin. That was the state trooper, not him. No, he married me to the love of my life and got me to the Cedars for the first time. He gets off.So do the dentists who pulled out my teeth and the boys who made fun of me when they found out a fat girl had a crush on them. They all get off. They all were important in the scheme of things in one way or another and without them and their joys, rejections and pains, I'd be somewhere else. Maybe even working in a Dairy Queen or perhaps as a court stenographer or maybe even a barfly like an old friend I just met this summer at Elmo's bar and grill for the first time in twenty years. Barb looked awful. Divorced and still in love with the cad. Still making drunken treks between all the bars in Cochise County at midnight to see if he was there and dancing with someone else. I bought her a drink that night, several in fact and we laughed a bit and went our separate ways, hers being the Brewery or the Lowell Waiting Room. Mine, somewhere else.
The jail cell was beige and aren't they all some kind of drab color. I'll bet if they painted them orange there would be less recidivism. I'm sure of it. There is something about the color of those rooms that isn't impressive enough to keep you out nor enough to keep you in. The big door closed behind me and I saw Francie Vasquez sitting on one of the four bunks with a look I cannot describe. She was as shocked as I was.
"Meg! What are YOU doing in here?" Strangely enough, I had the same question. There was another in the room but she just turned her back when I walked in and placed something under her flat pillow. I told Francie my story and she just shook her head. She was innocent too. Something about embezzlement from the public school funds. I don't know and it isn't really important. She never really got out of the jail system and I heard that she is still in and out of them but that might just be gossip.
I was really lucky because they hadn't served dinner yet and after a half hour or so, chatting with Francie over the mutual problem we were having, a hand shoved three trays through a slot in the door. I can't remember what we ate but they did give us each a big navel orange. Francie told me not to eat it, that we'd be needing it overnight. I didn't really understand that but I did what she said. Francie always had good advice. I was trying pretty hard not to cry once I found out how slowly time passes in jail. It just crawls by. They don't give you a clock but you can tell by the way your body feels that time has slowed way, way down. No TV either. Just a bed and a couple of roommates and oranges that you save for some reason.
After we finished our meals we shoved the trays back through the slot. The other girl was watching me the whole time. She didn't talk but just stared and stared. Her eyes lacked a specific color. Finally though, she pointed her finger at me and said, "Come here." Francie didn't say anything so I did what I was told. The girl said, "I want to show you something." She pulled the book she had placed under her pillow and thumbed through it to the page where she'd folded down the corner and had circled a word in red ink. "This is what I am."
Psychotic.
Francie called me back over and told me that we'd have to stay awake all night. Our 'room mate' Francie told me, was traveling with her boyfriend in a van, dropping acid and smoking pot when they picked up a hitchhiker. Then they cut his tongue out. Just like that, lopped the poor suckers tongue right out of him. I heard later that they re-attached it though.
"We are going to play Oranges to stay awake Meg. We have to stay awake until she falls asleep. I mean it." So we started tossing oranges, to our roommate as well. We did that for what seemed hours until the other girl quit and went and laid down, then fell asleep. Francie and I took the bunks opposite and she made me sleep on the top for my own protection. You just don't find friends like Francie everyday and you have to remember them sometimes. You hope you'll see them once again, in heaven. That is where they belong because it isn't their fault. None of it is their fault really and even the psychotic girl probably had her reasons for doing what she did. God only knows.
And we slept, or sort of. I just lay awake in my bunk and listened to the silence outside. There isn't anything like the silence of a small town at night, dogs barking and no cars. The sound of doves in the morning is all you have in jail to know that dawn is on its way. I miss that place but not very much, jail that is. One night is more than enough for anyone.
......more to be revealed about Judge Helms, his secretary and that big trip up to the Cedars which, when concluded, my daughter remarked, "For any other family this day would have been abnormal."
22.4.06
First Iris, photo by Radical Ann Porter
Ode to the Two Pointers
Hanging the pipes between our clothes line
and theirs, a hand could borrow sugar
from our open windows, that close,
a two-pointer swung from his haunches, eyes all froze.
We came home running to see what was shot,
heard it all the way down by Old Man Riley's garage,
a two pointer, not a doe. Everyone heard it.
It was big news, big game and there he was,
draped over the squash and winter iris
looking out like that, just looking.
A pressure cooker steamed inside
the kitchen window, it tooted and hissed
as the buck waited to be butchered.
Takes a long time to cut up a deer like that,
and longer still, to bag one.
Times were pretty lean, the winters pretty cold.
God is as an animal, our fortress.
21.4.06
...so where was I? Oh, the best part (or maybe not).
I bit his hand, yes. I bit it very hard and it seemed to me the absolutely correct thing to do. We both grabbed for the keys with my teeth on his knuckles and his left hand reaching under his highly decorated left pocket to open the door and drag me out of the car. I managed to start the car and he managed once again, with one hand plus my teeth, to turn it off. Somehow he managed to get me out of the car and I started begging and begging, "No, no, you can't do this!" Then, "Please don't do this!" All the way back to his patrol car like that, pushing and shoving, trying to extricate the car keys from one another like kids fighting over a soccer ball and ready to tumble into the scrub oak at any minute. I'm not sure why some cops do the things they do but they wear uniforms while they do it and people in uniforms generally don't need reasons, they have authority. When you bite them in the knuckles however, they have the best reason of all and it is as if they almost can predict who will commit a felony and who will just sign that ticket and stuff it in a pocket book and move along and forget all those times the same cop leered in their window staring at their boobs with their shit eating grins just waiting for the right opportunity.
By the time we reached the patrol car, the struggle was not only in full swing but was turning a bit violent. He had my wrists together, they were hurting and was trying to lift them over my head using one hand while opening his door with the other. I was like a wet cat held by the tail. By then of course, my heel broke and I was half limping and half hopping. I can hardly imagine what it must have looked like had there been one soul there to serve as a witness but at Grace's Corners, the only witness a sign pointing in one direction to Double Adobe and in the other, to Tombstone, Arizona.
He managed to slide into the front seat of the patrol car and picked up his radio to call for assistance. I was still begging and really, even though I had my hands near his neck, it was all very friendly on my part. It was like a kid tugging on dad's pant leg asking for a fudgesicle on a hot day. It wasn't really what I'd call "resisting arrest, assault on a police officer and disturbing the peace". I was simply asking for him to reconsider....then suddenly his Brown Tie was in my grip. There it was and I pulled ever so slightly and then, there it was, in my hand and I held it there, not believing really what kind of trouble I was actually in. It was, horror of horrors, a CLIP ON. Just like that, one minute a law abiding teenager, albeit a speed demon, and the next, you've got The Man's Tie in your fist and nothing else. Nothing can save you then. There's proof. Fingerprints all over the little metal clips and his voice on the radio and all you can hear is "...backup. I need backup." Because you are a teenager you forget you've shared quarters with the District Attorney. You just don't realize those types of things when you are eighteen. There's lots you don't realize at eighteen actually. Like my daughter on the streets of Tripoli a couple days ago and I'm holding down the flank with my evil stares at the old leering men we passed by one after another. Some of them even warranting a "What you looking at, you old geezer?" And then they look away.
It was then that I just sort of gave up and submitted to what was apparently unavoidable. It happens all the time to folks like that. You do something stupid and then you are sitting in the FRONT SEAT of a patrol car with your nice legs crossed at the ankles and broken high heels, a few buttons missing from your pink shell sweater, your hair prettily disheveled and on your way to jail...all because you dumped rubbish on the highway in a 55 mph zone. You've no idea that one day you'll be a refugee on a highway heading north dodging bombs, telling the others you've picked up on the way out of town to keep their heads down; or that one day you'll reach the mightly Cedars and say, Oh My, so this is why I've come and where is that river Gilgamesh was talking about? It was worth the wait and the trip. It was definitely worth the trip.
The state trooper made some small talk and explained why I had to sit in the front seat with him, and in handcuffs, as opposed to the back seat where not only can one not escape because there aren't any door handles but one cannot reach a patrolman's tie either, nor his neck. I'm sure he knew how to tie a tie but it must be that that would require two hands and it is the one thing they simply don't teach them in police college. I'm relatively sure though they aren't advised to ride around with known felons, dangerous people, in the front seat of their patrol car after having told their supervising officer to skeedaddle and they'd meet for doughnuts or something later. In fact, he didn't have to explain a thing to his supervisor about the original crime but I was just too young, just too naive to know how much trouble he should have been in, the trouble both of them should have been in for sexual harrassment. I could have called old Dave Blunt, DA (name changed to protect the innocent wife of the Kung Fu freak). I could have called him with that one call but instead I called my brother Jack. That is what you do when you are eighteen and you have a brother named Jack. You call him. You'd call him all time if you could and you'd call the other two brothers as well to whoop someone's arse. That doesn't work though in the real world of police reports and orange jumpsuits. It doesn't work with psychotic cell mates either. For that you need a Francie. In fact, you need a childhood pal like Francie more than once. Sometimes you need them twice and I'll tell you why. You wonder where they are as you stare at the cedars from thabible. You wonder where they all are, the Francies, Bobbies and Marys.
So anyways... I went to jail. People go to jail all the time. It is a serious issue. It is especially serious when someone has just asked you to marry them and you know for sure that isn't going to work out at all. Who wants to marry a jailbird? Well, it seems, some people do. Some are suited to them quite well....
...is it time for a poem yet? I think so. Tomorrow is the 22 day of April 2006 and we've a long way to go...we need a rest stop it seems. Rest stops are always good...
Ode to My Monster
There you are you little Frankenstein,
I birthed you in marriage:
a village boy who read the garbage for news.
I was much better even when you cursed
all my living relatives and some of the dead.
We didn't know much then about creation did we?
You, my old glove. My masterpiece.
I, your beloved wife, your help-meet.
How I pray you'll live beyond me
so I don't have to cry when you go
but then I think, I couldn't do that to you either.
So the next best thing is to stage a duel.
That's it, we'll just trust our instincts.
Yesterday, I napped in front of your grandparents
while they fought. I was at peace.
The old man stoked his fire. Your grandmother cried.
They were waiting for each other to go.
Or maybe....it is this one that belongs here...maybe they both do. They are both very heavy things and like "they" always say: Everything's Connected.
Ode to Bill
There were so many of you:
Bills and Bobs and Marys.
Though now, you are dead asleep
in the White Mountains with the fish
and the Indians it's come to pass
that I remember you were the one
who never pulled my hair or called me fat.
In your final days before parting
from all the others - the lawmakers,
your father the judge who must be
quite old by now and older still,
I wonder, did you ever think of me?
Did you ever remember in your last moments,
your fine kind of kindness
to a red headed girl?
The long line of the law you came from?
Did you ever see the Louvre?
I bit his hand, yes. I bit it very hard and it seemed to me the absolutely correct thing to do. We both grabbed for the keys with my teeth on his knuckles and his left hand reaching under his highly decorated left pocket to open the door and drag me out of the car. I managed to start the car and he managed once again, with one hand plus my teeth, to turn it off. Somehow he managed to get me out of the car and I started begging and begging, "No, no, you can't do this!" Then, "Please don't do this!" All the way back to his patrol car like that, pushing and shoving, trying to extricate the car keys from one another like kids fighting over a soccer ball and ready to tumble into the scrub oak at any minute. I'm not sure why some cops do the things they do but they wear uniforms while they do it and people in uniforms generally don't need reasons, they have authority. When you bite them in the knuckles however, they have the best reason of all and it is as if they almost can predict who will commit a felony and who will just sign that ticket and stuff it in a pocket book and move along and forget all those times the same cop leered in their window staring at their boobs with their shit eating grins just waiting for the right opportunity.
By the time we reached the patrol car, the struggle was not only in full swing but was turning a bit violent. He had my wrists together, they were hurting and was trying to lift them over my head using one hand while opening his door with the other. I was like a wet cat held by the tail. By then of course, my heel broke and I was half limping and half hopping. I can hardly imagine what it must have looked like had there been one soul there to serve as a witness but at Grace's Corners, the only witness a sign pointing in one direction to Double Adobe and in the other, to Tombstone, Arizona.
He managed to slide into the front seat of the patrol car and picked up his radio to call for assistance. I was still begging and really, even though I had my hands near his neck, it was all very friendly on my part. It was like a kid tugging on dad's pant leg asking for a fudgesicle on a hot day. It wasn't really what I'd call "resisting arrest, assault on a police officer and disturbing the peace". I was simply asking for him to reconsider....then suddenly his Brown Tie was in my grip. There it was and I pulled ever so slightly and then, there it was, in my hand and I held it there, not believing really what kind of trouble I was actually in. It was, horror of horrors, a CLIP ON. Just like that, one minute a law abiding teenager, albeit a speed demon, and the next, you've got The Man's Tie in your fist and nothing else. Nothing can save you then. There's proof. Fingerprints all over the little metal clips and his voice on the radio and all you can hear is "...backup. I need backup." Because you are a teenager you forget you've shared quarters with the District Attorney. You just don't realize those types of things when you are eighteen. There's lots you don't realize at eighteen actually. Like my daughter on the streets of Tripoli a couple days ago and I'm holding down the flank with my evil stares at the old leering men we passed by one after another. Some of them even warranting a "What you looking at, you old geezer?" And then they look away.
It was then that I just sort of gave up and submitted to what was apparently unavoidable. It happens all the time to folks like that. You do something stupid and then you are sitting in the FRONT SEAT of a patrol car with your nice legs crossed at the ankles and broken high heels, a few buttons missing from your pink shell sweater, your hair prettily disheveled and on your way to jail...all because you dumped rubbish on the highway in a 55 mph zone. You've no idea that one day you'll be a refugee on a highway heading north dodging bombs, telling the others you've picked up on the way out of town to keep their heads down; or that one day you'll reach the mightly Cedars and say, Oh My, so this is why I've come and where is that river Gilgamesh was talking about? It was worth the wait and the trip. It was definitely worth the trip.
The state trooper made some small talk and explained why I had to sit in the front seat with him, and in handcuffs, as opposed to the back seat where not only can one not escape because there aren't any door handles but one cannot reach a patrolman's tie either, nor his neck. I'm sure he knew how to tie a tie but it must be that that would require two hands and it is the one thing they simply don't teach them in police college. I'm relatively sure though they aren't advised to ride around with known felons, dangerous people, in the front seat of their patrol car after having told their supervising officer to skeedaddle and they'd meet for doughnuts or something later. In fact, he didn't have to explain a thing to his supervisor about the original crime but I was just too young, just too naive to know how much trouble he should have been in, the trouble both of them should have been in for sexual harrassment. I could have called old Dave Blunt, DA (name changed to protect the innocent wife of the Kung Fu freak). I could have called him with that one call but instead I called my brother Jack. That is what you do when you are eighteen and you have a brother named Jack. You call him. You'd call him all time if you could and you'd call the other two brothers as well to whoop someone's arse. That doesn't work though in the real world of police reports and orange jumpsuits. It doesn't work with psychotic cell mates either. For that you need a Francie. In fact, you need a childhood pal like Francie more than once. Sometimes you need them twice and I'll tell you why. You wonder where they are as you stare at the cedars from thabible. You wonder where they all are, the Francies, Bobbies and Marys.
So anyways... I went to jail. People go to jail all the time. It is a serious issue. It is especially serious when someone has just asked you to marry them and you know for sure that isn't going to work out at all. Who wants to marry a jailbird? Well, it seems, some people do. Some are suited to them quite well....
...is it time for a poem yet? I think so. Tomorrow is the 22 day of April 2006 and we've a long way to go...we need a rest stop it seems. Rest stops are always good...
Ode to My Monster
There you are you little Frankenstein,
I birthed you in marriage:
a village boy who read the garbage for news.
I was much better even when you cursed
all my living relatives and some of the dead.
We didn't know much then about creation did we?
You, my old glove. My masterpiece.
I, your beloved wife, your help-meet.
How I pray you'll live beyond me
so I don't have to cry when you go
but then I think, I couldn't do that to you either.
So the next best thing is to stage a duel.
That's it, we'll just trust our instincts.
Yesterday, I napped in front of your grandparents
while they fought. I was at peace.
The old man stoked his fire. Your grandmother cried.
They were waiting for each other to go.
Or maybe....it is this one that belongs here...maybe they both do. They are both very heavy things and like "they" always say: Everything's Connected.
Ode to Bill
There were so many of you:
Bills and Bobs and Marys.
Though now, you are dead asleep
in the White Mountains with the fish
and the Indians it's come to pass
that I remember you were the one
who never pulled my hair or called me fat.
In your final days before parting
from all the others - the lawmakers,
your father the judge who must be
quite old by now and older still,
I wonder, did you ever think of me?
Did you ever remember in your last moments,
your fine kind of kindness
to a red headed girl?
The long line of the law you came from?
Did you ever see the Louvre?
20.4.06
Twenty Five Years On The Road,
Meeting Fred Tarr
Poetry being what it is and everyone's nerves all messed up....a good long story is just the ticket sometimes to calm down the souls on this night journey we are all on...in full daylight. How did I meet Fred Tarr? How did that happen? I know if I'd never come to Beirut, I'd never have met Fred Tarr...that much is a FACT. I could tell the yarn about brother John who found himself out on a salt flat in his rig a few years ago, his dentures on the dash. The cops sailing in and him there not knowing how he'd arrived to such a place, all coked and cracked out. They took him away and wouldn't let him grab his teeth. So he is toothless now and regrets only that fact about his lost weekend in a Peterbilt. But that isn't the story I want to tell. I want to tell the story of the orange jumpsuit. It is an old tale and one I've told so often that to do it differently is not only impossible but unwise. I'll try anyway because yesterday I saw the Cedars for the first time, the Cedars of the bible or the "Ardess's" as they are called around here and I'll have to ask my new pal Nicholas about those trees. 6,000 years old (someone told me but I don't believe it) and there we were at the bottom of those massive trunks wondering how we made it through a quarter of a century this week, together....married.
Where to begin? Does one begin the story of laying in a bed next to the Sacred Heart church where I photographed Ginsberg a year later (in the church that is, not the bed as Kent J. would agree, Alan and I had nothing in common to share in a bed). Does one relate that the person in the other room was the assistant District Attorney who later married a woman whose husband murdered a man for her sake and went to jail where he belonged in the first place for being such a Kung Fu freak? I guess that is a good tangent for a tale such as this and really, all good stories can start anywhere (Kate Braverman and I agreed on that one and we were the only two to understand how an earring placed on a table can start with a story about a visit to an old hermit interested in THA Bible and THA weather we were all about to inherit as a payment for our fine human deeds on this planet...we two knew that an earring is as good a place to start as any but the rest of the 'workshoppers' just sat dumbfounded and eerily adjacent to the table...and later the reading by the young Buddhist of the Cantos and my stupid question there which caused all the writers to jump up and leap into the cheese trays at the gathering...bear with me now, bear with me).
Point A (the magistrate's office at 5 p.m.) to Point B (the Ardess's of Biblical Lore) is a long journey with so many eddies. The first chapter of it though is found between pages 14 and 29 roughly (if you are reading the first edition) on a highway east of the Chirachauhas, north of Agua Prieta and south of the mineral mines. I was doing about 80 in a 55 mph zone. About right I'd say to make the 13 miles between two places a bit less painful. It was nearly dusk and the car was yellow, a Maverick to be specific. Everyone remembers that car although it was an average vehicle. I guess because it had a tendency to fly.
The redneck sharif sauntered up to my window with his usual shit-eating grin. Oh, he and I had met so many times before and would meet still another few times after. But this day would be our day, our real contact point. I just sat there grinding my teeth. How many times had this asshole stopped me? Five? Six? Oh, I'm sure he was counting. He issued the violation slip and slowly walked back to his car. I could see him in the rear view mirror and I must have waited for him to make that last, long look in my direction. Oh, he was an animal as men tend to be...as the men in Tripoli were yesterday as they stared at my daughter traipse by and I warned them with my caustic looks back. All the same, wherever you go...looking at things in the wrong ways.
I was wearing that famous outfit, my wedding dress only I didn't actually know it that day. A trim black skirt with a slit in the back, four inch wooden heels (as that was the style in 1980) and the most beautiful pink shell sweater. Someone once told me that back then, my legs were to die for but I couldn't see then what that old drunk was talking about....still a chubby little tomboy up at the reservoir (in my mind and still am really) taking fish off the hooks. I looked like a very hot secretary hahaha and ready for a ride.
As he turned to look, he hoped that I'd hint for him to return (the patrolman's fantasy it seems), I tore that ticket right in half and let it fall like flower petals outside the driver's side window. Two pink pieces of paper tumbling into the weeds but I had signed them and admitted my guilt. A very important crime in Arizona, littering. Almost a felony when you are dressed to kill but usually, not a crime which requires a sweet young thing in a pink shell sweater 'be arrested and handcuffed' for...no, it isn't that sort of thing.
He came stomping back to the side of the car, "I am going to have to arrest you for dumping rubbish on the highway." Have to? I mean have to?
No, not me. I'd never been in trouble unless you count that time my friends and I robbed three houses but I was only seven when that happened and we did get a fine Japanese flag and a real crystal ball out of the deal. I was a good girl. Good grades and everything good except for that thing in those rooms near the Sacred Heart Church within earshot of the DA from Syracuse. Where the hell is Syracuse Fred Tarr? Where the hell is Africa? Although I didn't know that my thoughts were like that then, I do now. And then some.
So I grabbed the keys and began turning them in the ignition. Fight or flight and I picked flight. The sharif though meant to arrest me and reached in to remove the keys from their place. So I bit his hand. Simple enough, logical too. Sunk my teeth right on into his awful and not very tasty flesh. I'm pretty sure that isn't what he had in mind for my mouth. He was hoping for something more tender from his famous little cohort in the black skirt behind the wheel of a yellow Maverick. There were so many that had hopes like that back then and I still don't understand why...I'm just an average person, less than average height and sometimes more than average weight with exactly one blind eye, can't see a thing on my left.
I still don't understand how cops know how to open a car door with one hand while their other hand is holding keys and being bitten but they do. They must have drills in police college like that where they learn to do all sorts of things with one hand. All sorts of things with their billy clubs and authorities with a shit eating grin.
...to be continued, it is a very LONG tale and we need to get to the Cedars. It's an awfully steep climb up those barren mountains, an awfully steep climb....and this is difficult reading. Don't even attempt to understand it until the end. And even then, 30-70% will walk away scratching their heads. Why this and why now? Why not. Afterall, it took me twenty five years to get to the Cedars of Lebanon:
http://www.keyway.ca/htm2002/cedars.htm
Meeting Fred Tarr
Poetry being what it is and everyone's nerves all messed up....a good long story is just the ticket sometimes to calm down the souls on this night journey we are all on...in full daylight. How did I meet Fred Tarr? How did that happen? I know if I'd never come to Beirut, I'd never have met Fred Tarr...that much is a FACT. I could tell the yarn about brother John who found himself out on a salt flat in his rig a few years ago, his dentures on the dash. The cops sailing in and him there not knowing how he'd arrived to such a place, all coked and cracked out. They took him away and wouldn't let him grab his teeth. So he is toothless now and regrets only that fact about his lost weekend in a Peterbilt. But that isn't the story I want to tell. I want to tell the story of the orange jumpsuit. It is an old tale and one I've told so often that to do it differently is not only impossible but unwise. I'll try anyway because yesterday I saw the Cedars for the first time, the Cedars of the bible or the "Ardess's" as they are called around here and I'll have to ask my new pal Nicholas about those trees. 6,000 years old (someone told me but I don't believe it) and there we were at the bottom of those massive trunks wondering how we made it through a quarter of a century this week, together....married.
Where to begin? Does one begin the story of laying in a bed next to the Sacred Heart church where I photographed Ginsberg a year later (in the church that is, not the bed as Kent J. would agree, Alan and I had nothing in common to share in a bed). Does one relate that the person in the other room was the assistant District Attorney who later married a woman whose husband murdered a man for her sake and went to jail where he belonged in the first place for being such a Kung Fu freak? I guess that is a good tangent for a tale such as this and really, all good stories can start anywhere (Kate Braverman and I agreed on that one and we were the only two to understand how an earring placed on a table can start with a story about a visit to an old hermit interested in THA Bible and THA weather we were all about to inherit as a payment for our fine human deeds on this planet...we two knew that an earring is as good a place to start as any but the rest of the 'workshoppers' just sat dumbfounded and eerily adjacent to the table...and later the reading by the young Buddhist of the Cantos and my stupid question there which caused all the writers to jump up and leap into the cheese trays at the gathering...bear with me now, bear with me).
Point A (the magistrate's office at 5 p.m.) to Point B (the Ardess's of Biblical Lore) is a long journey with so many eddies. The first chapter of it though is found between pages 14 and 29 roughly (if you are reading the first edition) on a highway east of the Chirachauhas, north of Agua Prieta and south of the mineral mines. I was doing about 80 in a 55 mph zone. About right I'd say to make the 13 miles between two places a bit less painful. It was nearly dusk and the car was yellow, a Maverick to be specific. Everyone remembers that car although it was an average vehicle. I guess because it had a tendency to fly.
The redneck sharif sauntered up to my window with his usual shit-eating grin. Oh, he and I had met so many times before and would meet still another few times after. But this day would be our day, our real contact point. I just sat there grinding my teeth. How many times had this asshole stopped me? Five? Six? Oh, I'm sure he was counting. He issued the violation slip and slowly walked back to his car. I could see him in the rear view mirror and I must have waited for him to make that last, long look in my direction. Oh, he was an animal as men tend to be...as the men in Tripoli were yesterday as they stared at my daughter traipse by and I warned them with my caustic looks back. All the same, wherever you go...looking at things in the wrong ways.
I was wearing that famous outfit, my wedding dress only I didn't actually know it that day. A trim black skirt with a slit in the back, four inch wooden heels (as that was the style in 1980) and the most beautiful pink shell sweater. Someone once told me that back then, my legs were to die for but I couldn't see then what that old drunk was talking about....still a chubby little tomboy up at the reservoir (in my mind and still am really) taking fish off the hooks. I looked like a very hot secretary hahaha and ready for a ride.
As he turned to look, he hoped that I'd hint for him to return (the patrolman's fantasy it seems), I tore that ticket right in half and let it fall like flower petals outside the driver's side window. Two pink pieces of paper tumbling into the weeds but I had signed them and admitted my guilt. A very important crime in Arizona, littering. Almost a felony when you are dressed to kill but usually, not a crime which requires a sweet young thing in a pink shell sweater 'be arrested and handcuffed' for...no, it isn't that sort of thing.
He came stomping back to the side of the car, "I am going to have to arrest you for dumping rubbish on the highway." Have to? I mean have to?
No, not me. I'd never been in trouble unless you count that time my friends and I robbed three houses but I was only seven when that happened and we did get a fine Japanese flag and a real crystal ball out of the deal. I was a good girl. Good grades and everything good except for that thing in those rooms near the Sacred Heart Church within earshot of the DA from Syracuse. Where the hell is Syracuse Fred Tarr? Where the hell is Africa? Although I didn't know that my thoughts were like that then, I do now. And then some.
So I grabbed the keys and began turning them in the ignition. Fight or flight and I picked flight. The sharif though meant to arrest me and reached in to remove the keys from their place. So I bit his hand. Simple enough, logical too. Sunk my teeth right on into his awful and not very tasty flesh. I'm pretty sure that isn't what he had in mind for my mouth. He was hoping for something more tender from his famous little cohort in the black skirt behind the wheel of a yellow Maverick. There were so many that had hopes like that back then and I still don't understand why...I'm just an average person, less than average height and sometimes more than average weight with exactly one blind eye, can't see a thing on my left.
I still don't understand how cops know how to open a car door with one hand while their other hand is holding keys and being bitten but they do. They must have drills in police college like that where they learn to do all sorts of things with one hand. All sorts of things with their billy clubs and authorities with a shit eating grin.
...to be continued, it is a very LONG tale and we need to get to the Cedars. It's an awfully steep climb up those barren mountains, an awfully steep climb....and this is difficult reading. Don't even attempt to understand it until the end. And even then, 30-70% will walk away scratching their heads. Why this and why now? Why not. Afterall, it took me twenty five years to get to the Cedars of Lebanon:
http://www.keyway.ca/htm2002/cedars.htm
Notes and Addendums to Twenty Five Years.....
Bear with me (Carmen, yer just a cat so I have to explain things to you). Carmen tends to forget things all the time wrapped in the sunshine on a warm spring day in Beirut.
I thought to end this blog now. Why? Because a part of me died last month. The hopeful part. The Shia part is only beginning to make itself known and I was born a Shia. I know that now. I love the underdogs. And just dogs. Even when they bite me and give me pink eye too. Winning comes through perserverence, it is the only way anymore. One must perservere.
In the next few days (to perhaps weeks) I am dedicating this blog to describing how I reached the Cedars of Lebanon. The ones in the Bible or just "Thabible" as Ali and I call it. I could say so many things in the interim and perhaps I will, like 'thabible' which is a relatively unknown Scrabble Term my son and I developed one day and just roared with laughter. Because I call it, thabible and read it now and then. It is a strange book that doesn't really make much sense until you read a few others related to it. I could say that my spice cabinet has things in it like Santa Cruz Chili powder and corn husks AND it has Sumac. It also has camooni which is a beautiful conjoining of cinnamon sticks, peppercorns, cumin, cardamon and rose hips.....makes a most delightful Arizona Chili Food. Personally, I know that between that and my idea to put a paging button on TV remote control devices...I could be relatively wealthy for my inventions. I could market that Camooni and give it a label and be rich by selling the 'mix' to a chain store like Albertson's or Piggly Wiggly...I could get rich. But I'd rather just tell someone to PLEASE go invent a TV remote control device with a pager on it so you can find it in the sofa cushions. You can keep the money. I don't mind. Money is an illusion anyway but a remote control is a reality.
So bear with me and I'll tell you the story of how I met Fred Tarr and stood at the bases of the Cedars in thabible with my hand on my heart saying, Oh My!
Let's get down to business...must be a circus in town what is dis, can I get a witness? - Emenem
Bear with me (Carmen, yer just a cat so I have to explain things to you). Carmen tends to forget things all the time wrapped in the sunshine on a warm spring day in Beirut.
I thought to end this blog now. Why? Because a part of me died last month. The hopeful part. The Shia part is only beginning to make itself known and I was born a Shia. I know that now. I love the underdogs. And just dogs. Even when they bite me and give me pink eye too. Winning comes through perserverence, it is the only way anymore. One must perservere.
In the next few days (to perhaps weeks) I am dedicating this blog to describing how I reached the Cedars of Lebanon. The ones in the Bible or just "Thabible" as Ali and I call it. I could say so many things in the interim and perhaps I will, like 'thabible' which is a relatively unknown Scrabble Term my son and I developed one day and just roared with laughter. Because I call it, thabible and read it now and then. It is a strange book that doesn't really make much sense until you read a few others related to it. I could say that my spice cabinet has things in it like Santa Cruz Chili powder and corn husks AND it has Sumac. It also has camooni which is a beautiful conjoining of cinnamon sticks, peppercorns, cumin, cardamon and rose hips.....makes a most delightful Arizona Chili Food. Personally, I know that between that and my idea to put a paging button on TV remote control devices...I could be relatively wealthy for my inventions. I could market that Camooni and give it a label and be rich by selling the 'mix' to a chain store like Albertson's or Piggly Wiggly...I could get rich. But I'd rather just tell someone to PLEASE go invent a TV remote control device with a pager on it so you can find it in the sofa cushions. You can keep the money. I don't mind. Money is an illusion anyway but a remote control is a reality.
So bear with me and I'll tell you the story of how I met Fred Tarr and stood at the bases of the Cedars in thabible with my hand on my heart saying, Oh My!
Let's get down to business...must be a circus in town what is dis, can I get a witness? - Emenem
19.4.06
13.4.06
The Last Letter
Z is compatible
for the morning revelation
as dawn bleeds over the palest star:
zephyr, zoraster, zero, zen.
Those in vaults
like diamonds where
the eldest prisoners tortured
are chaste, rehabilitated and ready.
Privy to the static
age old whisper: dia-gnosis.
Aftermath to etc., aftermath to was,
aftermath shall be the vague carress
of temptation a fancy term:
Mighty apocrypha tear down these walls.
Where are your villages, your birds?How many brothers walk?Fruit on the branch is willing.A door for entry, one for knocking.Cattle at the butchery, their eyes.Heavy melon carts, spring.Collars creased to the napes of necks.Twisting called spine.Blistery disk melts the sea's a cold blanket covering the earth.Clouds organize into shadows.Wind and too many crops.Disasters happen once, myths twice.Waves toss the work of towns into trees.Night vision turns sleepers into green.A general curled next to his pyre.
Memories fade, they fade.Survival is for brutes.
Z is for lightning.Birds laugh in the morning, dogs all night long.
The thunder said, remember me?
Z is compatible
for the morning revelation
as dawn bleeds over the palest star:
zephyr, zoraster, zero, zen.
Those in vaults
like diamonds where
the eldest prisoners tortured
are chaste, rehabilitated and ready.
Privy to the static
age old whisper: dia-gnosis.
Aftermath to etc., aftermath to was,
aftermath shall be the vague carress
of temptation a fancy term:
Mighty apocrypha tear down these walls.
Where are your villages, your birds?How many brothers walk?Fruit on the branch is willing.A door for entry, one for knocking.Cattle at the butchery, their eyes.Heavy melon carts, spring.Collars creased to the napes of necks.Twisting called spine.Blistery disk melts the sea's a cold blanket covering the earth.Clouds organize into shadows.Wind and too many crops.Disasters happen once, myths twice.Waves toss the work of towns into trees.Night vision turns sleepers into green.A general curled next to his pyre.
Memories fade, they fade.Survival is for brutes.
Z is for lightning.Birds laugh in the morning, dogs all night long.
The thunder said, remember me?
12.4.06
From Universal Physics To Submission
To The "weak forces" and "strong forces" of pure Chrarisma.
A link and a few thoughts as I've been through a heavy case of anti muslimist bigotry lately. You know...it is hard to be a muslim. Really hard even though there is this whole story regarding the "Night Journey" in which Mohamed (SAW) travels to the farthest reaches of heaven (outside the fallacy of time) and 'visits' a few folks. One of the folks he visits is Moses. (And I hope I'm getting the names right...tend to be a bit Alzheimerish after all that drinking I used to do.) Anyway, the two of them enter into a conversation after Allah assigns something like 50,000 prayers for the faithful Monotheists at the time. Moses (it could be Abraham here and my apologies if it is...it is important but not important to the kernel of truth contained within the digression). It is obvious that no one could pray that many times a day so the 'old' prophet advises the much 'newer' one to go back and negotiate. So he does. He ends up getting the amount divided several times, all the way down to where it is now, Five Dailies. Reasonable but still, in this day and age of commuting to work and throwing things in the microwave, it is still involves a conscientious effort. The older prophet still thinks Mohamed (SAW) ought to negotiate once again...but he doesn't. The older prophet (Moses) had a habit of pushing the envelope sometimes and this contains the notion of the need to clarify the 'old' protocols versus newer and more advanced, reasonable ones. Suffice it to say that the point here is that although Islam is aimed at making things "easier" it is still very hard to be one and shouldn't be taken lightly by the new convert. It stands as well that to 'aim' at converting others is not any muslims duty because it is an assignment too tough for the Average Batman.
I just met (online) a fantastic guy who has been an Islamic Scholar for many, many years. It is so nice to be able to just digress at will with someone like that even though he admits to not desiring a "conversion" or as some NewAge muslims call it, "reversion". He knows he isn't ready now and maybe he'll never be. So I told him that I thought that was part of the balance we need on this planet...afterall, it wouldn't do if the muslims got all the "good guys" on their side and left everyone else in the hands of shadowy religious characters and clerics. Sheesh, we have some of our own of that variety and sometimes I really wonder what we ought to do about that. Like Micheal Jackson for instance. He has converted. Oh dear me. Not the best PR but anyway...it isn't up to me or Joe Blow who gets to convert/revert. Some violent sects actually MURDER other muslims because they declare them "kafir" or infidels. Sheesh...some Sunnis call Shia the "Jews" of Islam. Now...that in itself isn't something to be ashamed of if one considers the basic premise of "all" living things created in a state of Islam but apparently, to some sects, being a JEW is the worst thing a person can be even though in the Koran they are called "The Chosen People" So maybe..it is actually a good thing to be part of that group at least I think it is. I've no problem with that sort of comradeship...none at all. In fact I adore the idea of "blending" because that is the whole point of Islam. It is a type of "evolutionary" science (built on the knowledge established in the other two great big ones, both faulty and non faulty premises as all good science should be based as much on error as it should be, on truth) that is literally no different from modern day physics which cites the "Universal Observer" as a type of 'entity' that observes all potential histories of particles WITHOUT influencing their outcomes. Of course, physicists KNOW that is impossible....the mere act of 'witnessing' causes the history of any given particle to change. It is simply a fact. But they have constructed a Theoretical Framework to contain their "God Belief" which states that the universe as we know it was created literally in the 'blink' of an eye and have dubbed it: The Big Bang Theory. Some of them admit to their God Seeking and some do not. It is surprising how many actually do admit to it when we have a real Galileo Age upon religious scholarship and thinkers. Death to the priests! Death to the Deacons! Death to the Rabiis! on and on like that. So...you get folks like Dr. Rashed Khaleefa murdered in his mosque in Tucson more than twenty years ago by Al Qaeda fundamentalists...all because he uncovered a code relating to the GEMATRIA of the Arabic language and perhaps, lighted on the reason for the existence of certain strange 'letters' at the top of some of our Suras in the Koran.
And lets remember, no one has a PHOTOGRAPH of the Big Bang either. Nor one of God. Both are "faith" based realities whether folks want to believe it or not and I am certainly not the first person to make note of it. Just passing along the scientific data you know...having such a strong interest in Acid/Base balance, Calcium ions in the channels of the heart and stuff generally related to things like Cardiac Output, brain death (Sharon notably significant right now to many), and that curious "democracy of death" that I sooooooooooo believe in having witnessed so much of it...having literally carried the dead bodies of infants in my own arms. Everyone ends up the in the same damn "God Hole" whether or not they believe in the potential histories of particles or the potential histories of belief patterns influenced by so many variables that it is no longer possible to calculate the weird idea that the universe had two more likely outcomes: instant collapse and nefarious cloud. Instead, the Universe continued on the least likely path and that is one in which the Grand Unification Theory seeks to 'tie' together using, infinite density. Ahem. Yeah. It is infinite alright, density that is. Least I think so.
Why am I talking about this? Because I can. It is MY blog hahaha. But more importantly I wanted to share a link that demonstrates the 'blending' of souls in this world and note that at one time, I was literally "tarred and feathered" for even SUGGESTING that there were people of all 'types' interested in our CRAZY religion...which obviously....if you follow my logic and aren't 'blind'...isn't so crazy after all. It is though, very hard. No doubt about it especially when there are those who seek to "label" others with all sorts of VILE DESCRIPTIVE ANTIMUSLIMIST TERMS because, let's face it...we have a terrible reputation to UPHOLD and others think we need, "a little help". And usually I would turn a blind eye to that sort of thing...turn the other cheek...offer my jacket when someone steals my shirt.....and actually I DID ATTEMPT that sort of thing....but apparently even the Christian Ethic and the Crystal Hugging Pagan-slash-Wiccan-Spell-Casting Ethic is a bit tired nowdays of the belligerence and has adopted hatefulness as part of their universal 'code'. Whatever....it doesn't really matter other than to discuss the difficulty level involved in actual submission and then, the relative ease of it once it is in 'place' and all the logic is stored and called up and applied to various situations NOT MENTIONED in the Koran, like Chinese Foot Binding as it relates to FEMALE CIRCUMCISION (which was mentioned), or for that matter, male. Or about that issue of Wife Beating which appears to the untrained observer as an INJUNCTION TO ABUSE as opposed to what it really is, a LIMITATION on the more or less, universal occurrence of what we call, SPOUSAL ABUSE. The Koran didn't leave out much in terms of application but it did leave alot of the details up to history and the common, everyday intellectual and theologian. Like any good thinking man's book should.
The story of one Shebati Zevi is in order. I came across Mr. Zevi in the course of reading the MORE THAN WONDERFUL ex post facto NUN, Karen Armstrong whom I cannot say enough wonderful things about. She tells is like it is. And she knows the story of Shebbati.....
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/RabbiMessiahMuslimSabbataiZevi.htm
....and now any lonesome readers here know it too. It is definitely worth further research as a trivial detail or perhaps, a gigantic detail of the shared potential history that goes ignored and abused in the constant stream of attention 'given' to us by the media.....and it isn't the only interesting tale. The best stories about the *prophets are the details the books of sacred evidence don't provide (they are numbered at around 40,000 in the Koran and not assigned 'gender'...for that you have to turn to the historians and Ms. Armstrong is the leader of the pack in that regard. If you haven't read her...you should.
And you should follow that link to other stories from the "insane" like Mike Shapiro. His is great because I remember EVERY SINGLE ONE of those arguments that I engaged myself with and especially the one about how two religions (and for whatever it is worth people still get into heaven even if they aren't muslims depending on their 'relative' ability to navigate in "cloudy conditions"...in fact maybe they even get MORE credit for a job well done under less than clear admonitions)...how two religions are named after "groups" or "ethnicities" and the third, the final word (and let's be honest here...there haven't been any more real prophets after Mohamed although there have been a number of fake ones from Jim Jones all the way down through Jimmy Baker and his lovely ex-wife and current wife who could have shared him had they 'copped out' and played for our 'team')..the third great one, Islam is named after a "condition" available to all men/women regardless of social strata and color.
Or maybe not, just maybe not all HUMAN BEINGS are being allowed to be MUSLIM. Because 'freedom of religion' isn't really a sacred human right in the United States now, is it? No. It isn't. Of course it isn't. It is a Christian state lest we forget that before ending this wonderfully long session of absolute religious anarchy. Meet Mike Shapiro:
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/michael-david-shapiro.htm
I think I'll run over and say hi to Mike. Sounds nice. We muslims all get along....more or less. When people generally stop pestering us about our milk, honey, water and oil.
To The "weak forces" and "strong forces" of pure Chrarisma.
A link and a few thoughts as I've been through a heavy case of anti muslimist bigotry lately. You know...it is hard to be a muslim. Really hard even though there is this whole story regarding the "Night Journey" in which Mohamed (SAW) travels to the farthest reaches of heaven (outside the fallacy of time) and 'visits' a few folks. One of the folks he visits is Moses. (And I hope I'm getting the names right...tend to be a bit Alzheimerish after all that drinking I used to do.) Anyway, the two of them enter into a conversation after Allah assigns something like 50,000 prayers for the faithful Monotheists at the time. Moses (it could be Abraham here and my apologies if it is...it is important but not important to the kernel of truth contained within the digression). It is obvious that no one could pray that many times a day so the 'old' prophet advises the much 'newer' one to go back and negotiate. So he does. He ends up getting the amount divided several times, all the way down to where it is now, Five Dailies. Reasonable but still, in this day and age of commuting to work and throwing things in the microwave, it is still involves a conscientious effort. The older prophet still thinks Mohamed (SAW) ought to negotiate once again...but he doesn't. The older prophet (Moses) had a habit of pushing the envelope sometimes and this contains the notion of the need to clarify the 'old' protocols versus newer and more advanced, reasonable ones. Suffice it to say that the point here is that although Islam is aimed at making things "easier" it is still very hard to be one and shouldn't be taken lightly by the new convert. It stands as well that to 'aim' at converting others is not any muslims duty because it is an assignment too tough for the Average Batman.
I just met (online) a fantastic guy who has been an Islamic Scholar for many, many years. It is so nice to be able to just digress at will with someone like that even though he admits to not desiring a "conversion" or as some NewAge muslims call it, "reversion". He knows he isn't ready now and maybe he'll never be. So I told him that I thought that was part of the balance we need on this planet...afterall, it wouldn't do if the muslims got all the "good guys" on their side and left everyone else in the hands of shadowy religious characters and clerics. Sheesh, we have some of our own of that variety and sometimes I really wonder what we ought to do about that. Like Micheal Jackson for instance. He has converted. Oh dear me. Not the best PR but anyway...it isn't up to me or Joe Blow who gets to convert/revert. Some violent sects actually MURDER other muslims because they declare them "kafir" or infidels. Sheesh...some Sunnis call Shia the "Jews" of Islam. Now...that in itself isn't something to be ashamed of if one considers the basic premise of "all" living things created in a state of Islam but apparently, to some sects, being a JEW is the worst thing a person can be even though in the Koran they are called "The Chosen People" So maybe..it is actually a good thing to be part of that group at least I think it is. I've no problem with that sort of comradeship...none at all. In fact I adore the idea of "blending" because that is the whole point of Islam. It is a type of "evolutionary" science (built on the knowledge established in the other two great big ones, both faulty and non faulty premises as all good science should be based as much on error as it should be, on truth) that is literally no different from modern day physics which cites the "Universal Observer" as a type of 'entity' that observes all potential histories of particles WITHOUT influencing their outcomes. Of course, physicists KNOW that is impossible....the mere act of 'witnessing' causes the history of any given particle to change. It is simply a fact. But they have constructed a Theoretical Framework to contain their "God Belief" which states that the universe as we know it was created literally in the 'blink' of an eye and have dubbed it: The Big Bang Theory. Some of them admit to their God Seeking and some do not. It is surprising how many actually do admit to it when we have a real Galileo Age upon religious scholarship and thinkers. Death to the priests! Death to the Deacons! Death to the Rabiis! on and on like that. So...you get folks like Dr. Rashed Khaleefa murdered in his mosque in Tucson more than twenty years ago by Al Qaeda fundamentalists...all because he uncovered a code relating to the GEMATRIA of the Arabic language and perhaps, lighted on the reason for the existence of certain strange 'letters' at the top of some of our Suras in the Koran.
And lets remember, no one has a PHOTOGRAPH of the Big Bang either. Nor one of God. Both are "faith" based realities whether folks want to believe it or not and I am certainly not the first person to make note of it. Just passing along the scientific data you know...having such a strong interest in Acid/Base balance, Calcium ions in the channels of the heart and stuff generally related to things like Cardiac Output, brain death (Sharon notably significant right now to many), and that curious "democracy of death" that I sooooooooooo believe in having witnessed so much of it...having literally carried the dead bodies of infants in my own arms. Everyone ends up the in the same damn "God Hole" whether or not they believe in the potential histories of particles or the potential histories of belief patterns influenced by so many variables that it is no longer possible to calculate the weird idea that the universe had two more likely outcomes: instant collapse and nefarious cloud. Instead, the Universe continued on the least likely path and that is one in which the Grand Unification Theory seeks to 'tie' together using, infinite density. Ahem. Yeah. It is infinite alright, density that is. Least I think so.
Why am I talking about this? Because I can. It is MY blog hahaha. But more importantly I wanted to share a link that demonstrates the 'blending' of souls in this world and note that at one time, I was literally "tarred and feathered" for even SUGGESTING that there were people of all 'types' interested in our CRAZY religion...which obviously....if you follow my logic and aren't 'blind'...isn't so crazy after all. It is though, very hard. No doubt about it especially when there are those who seek to "label" others with all sorts of VILE DESCRIPTIVE ANTIMUSLIMIST TERMS because, let's face it...we have a terrible reputation to UPHOLD and others think we need, "a little help". And usually I would turn a blind eye to that sort of thing...turn the other cheek...offer my jacket when someone steals my shirt.....and actually I DID ATTEMPT that sort of thing....but apparently even the Christian Ethic and the Crystal Hugging Pagan-slash-Wiccan-Spell-Casting Ethic is a bit tired nowdays of the belligerence and has adopted hatefulness as part of their universal 'code'. Whatever....it doesn't really matter other than to discuss the difficulty level involved in actual submission and then, the relative ease of it once it is in 'place' and all the logic is stored and called up and applied to various situations NOT MENTIONED in the Koran, like Chinese Foot Binding as it relates to FEMALE CIRCUMCISION (which was mentioned), or for that matter, male. Or about that issue of Wife Beating which appears to the untrained observer as an INJUNCTION TO ABUSE as opposed to what it really is, a LIMITATION on the more or less, universal occurrence of what we call, SPOUSAL ABUSE. The Koran didn't leave out much in terms of application but it did leave alot of the details up to history and the common, everyday intellectual and theologian. Like any good thinking man's book should.
The story of one Shebati Zevi is in order. I came across Mr. Zevi in the course of reading the MORE THAN WONDERFUL ex post facto NUN, Karen Armstrong whom I cannot say enough wonderful things about. She tells is like it is. And she knows the story of Shebbati.....
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/RabbiMessiahMuslimSabbataiZevi.htm
....and now any lonesome readers here know it too. It is definitely worth further research as a trivial detail or perhaps, a gigantic detail of the shared potential history that goes ignored and abused in the constant stream of attention 'given' to us by the media.....and it isn't the only interesting tale. The best stories about the *prophets are the details the books of sacred evidence don't provide (they are numbered at around 40,000 in the Koran and not assigned 'gender'...for that you have to turn to the historians and Ms. Armstrong is the leader of the pack in that regard. If you haven't read her...you should.
And you should follow that link to other stories from the "insane" like Mike Shapiro. His is great because I remember EVERY SINGLE ONE of those arguments that I engaged myself with and especially the one about how two religions (and for whatever it is worth people still get into heaven even if they aren't muslims depending on their 'relative' ability to navigate in "cloudy conditions"...in fact maybe they even get MORE credit for a job well done under less than clear admonitions)...how two religions are named after "groups" or "ethnicities" and the third, the final word (and let's be honest here...there haven't been any more real prophets after Mohamed although there have been a number of fake ones from Jim Jones all the way down through Jimmy Baker and his lovely ex-wife and current wife who could have shared him had they 'copped out' and played for our 'team')..the third great one, Islam is named after a "condition" available to all men/women regardless of social strata and color.
Or maybe not, just maybe not all HUMAN BEINGS are being allowed to be MUSLIM. Because 'freedom of religion' isn't really a sacred human right in the United States now, is it? No. It isn't. Of course it isn't. It is a Christian state lest we forget that before ending this wonderfully long session of absolute religious anarchy. Meet Mike Shapiro:
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/michael-david-shapiro.htm
I think I'll run over and say hi to Mike. Sounds nice. We muslims all get along....more or less. When people generally stop pestering us about our milk, honey, water and oil.
Hankies and Shrouds
Yours has hers already ironfolded
on top the armoire. She looks at it
now and then. Washes it. Puts it back.
Mine had hankerchiefs. I have perhaps
a dozen of them in a safe place
where they won't get dirty anymore.
Yours isn't into keeping much about.
So much work and she is so old now.
The shroud is her only effort.
Mine is gone already so I have these left
to protect for a while longer. I give one
away when it is important to do so.
They still smell like her closets.
Yours is always complaining of her bad luck.
She isn't worried about what comes next,
she knows it. She tries it on now and then for practice.
Mine made peach cobbler and complained
all the time but not to me. I can hear that
from yours and mine was already very old anyway.
She knew what kind of history repeats itself.
Yours has little eyes behind magnifying lenses.
Mine had sunken ones too deep to sink into.
Yours has hers already ironfolded
on top the armoire. She looks at it
now and then. Washes it. Puts it back.
Mine had hankerchiefs. I have perhaps
a dozen of them in a safe place
where they won't get dirty anymore.
Yours isn't into keeping much about.
So much work and she is so old now.
The shroud is her only effort.
Mine is gone already so I have these left
to protect for a while longer. I give one
away when it is important to do so.
They still smell like her closets.
Yours is always complaining of her bad luck.
She isn't worried about what comes next,
she knows it. She tries it on now and then for practice.
Mine made peach cobbler and complained
all the time but not to me. I can hear that
from yours and mine was already very old anyway.
She knew what kind of history repeats itself.
Yours has little eyes behind magnifying lenses.
Mine had sunken ones too deep to sink into.
10.4.06
Let's Talk Lisa-ese.
http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/alyric/jarnot.html
or
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=05/08/13/2356246
or hey...let's just dissect the person, not the poetics because that is how poetics are actually dissected even though there are those who strangely enough, disagree. All the while citing instances of homosexuality, religion, hair and eye color, gender, etc. ONCE the poet is DEAD and stasis is achieved and manipulated as some people see fit to manipulate political intentions in the work of others.....and in the religious affiliations of same. **EDIT: I do want to preface this however with the absolute conviction that this Lisa is a DAMN FINE ARTIST....I mean...she plays words like a piano. The outcome however of an "intent towards sentiment" of such great writing leaves me with a sense of powerlessness that must be the feeling of being an American Activist (of some sort or another). Lisa Jarnot's poems are successful in provoking feelings not only of political "I give up-ness" but simultaneously inspiring another poet to tremendous envy at her obvious verbal skills and prowess, the beauty of her verbal rivers. There is a sense of "collective guilt" that is disturbing in more ways that one and that cannot be ignored...
....I am not suggesting anything untoward this absolutely GREAT woman in the following...she sounds like a great LISA. Personally, when I choose to represent this "sociological" type of person in a poem I refer to them as a "LISA" because I happen to have known alot of REAL Lisas in my life (including my good pal Jambalaya from the bayou, my current LISA)...but if I really want to refer to this specific "type" of thing I call them a "Faith" or a "Courtney". My personalfavs. If only my name woulda been Bruce.
"It's sad but true that Lisa of Lisablog still doesn't like flying." from a blogentry here:
http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/lisajarnot/blog/
Why? Flying is great. It gets you to the liberal minded hotspots like the rainforest. Works for me anyway.
"Seven: The American Apparel clothing company. We at Lisablog have finally found a place to buy non-sweatshop underwear. The American Apparel store on Haight Street looks like the Gap, but it's cooler because the clothing is 100% made in the USA at more than minimum wage. And yes, I am willing to pay twelve bucks for underwear if it's made by someone who is not chained to a sewing machine. Check out American Apparel at Ethical Underwear!. "
Okay Lisa of Lisablog fame and now, Silliman-raceblog fame....so...you mean you want to take it out on the victims of your sort of capitalist hooey? I prefer to buy low cost items made by Syrians and sometimes Africans regardless of what they are chained to because we are all chained to something...sometimes it is even a name or an epithet. Or a racial slur or a bias. I wonder....twinkle twinkle.....(visual here is of that video blurring which indicates a dream like fantasy land ala Wayne's World...)..do you not see your ethnocentrism here?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~dreamsquigglesdreamsquigglesdreamsquigglesgigglestoo
....it was on that flight out of London. The day after would be one of the worst days in London tube history and I only hoped and prayed (later of course) that my face wouldn't be on some handy-cam so that I might be identified as a terrorist or something...yes I truly hoped that wouldn't be the case. That horrible event at CDG some years ago left me a bit fearful of being racially profiled even though my hair is red....and my face colorless. My point of origin however, not being the usual Upstart Locales like San Fransciso...tends to get me into some trouble sometimes. Like it did at Silliman's Not Friendly Blog of Bigotry and Heartache.
I settled in with my nuts and soda. Next to me were three people (and I am thinking that the young girl was named Lisa...at least she looked "Lisa-ish" to me, very blond and studious...chewing gum, that sort of thing). Her bald father had his reading glasses on and looked every bit the part of a "detached father figure" named something like BOB. I don't know why but I imagine he was a BOB. I noticed that MOM wasn't feeling very well. I think her name was Alice or maybe even Delores but most likely it was something unfathomable like Gretchen or Patricia. In any event, she didn't look too good but old BOB just kept reading and LISA just kept chewing her cud and reading a book with that little overhead light casting that supernatural nuclear family glowiness on the three of them, the type you see on planes.
MOM called the stewardess over and had herself a Bloody Mary. That is a nice way to fly through your fears and far be it from me to think that if you aren't feeling too well, alcohol is generally not a recommended tonic for the soul. It is a personal choice, one that I prefer to relenquish to preserve my REASON.
Then, MOM called the stewardess over and (I thought how unfair this was) got AN EARLY SNACK. That is just awful when you are hungry and they give a stranger something that you yourself aren't allowed to have because you feel pretty much, "okay". You've accepted the risks of flying and anyway, you haven't been to America since 9/11 and are really excited. But you'd still like a banana. I then asked, because I'm like that, perpetually nosey when it comes to another person's health on an airplane high up in the sky and far from GENERAL HOSPITAL....I asked, "Are you feeling okay? I'm a nurse...if you need anything just tell me okay?" MOM was quite pleased. I mean even BOB and LISA didn't give a big rat's butt about her nausea and distention, her cold sweat and palor. I asked the routine questions: Heart disease, diabetes, etc.? And MOM related that she was on a few tricyclics and that sort of thing...ANTIDEPRESSANTS. Which of course are not good Bloody Mary mixers. But anyway...I kept that to me-self. I told the nice stewardess that I was a nurse should she need me and she assured me that everything was under control and she was on the line with the SHIP'S DOCTOR...some aviation medic or something in Chicago, the heart of America. But she'd call me if she needed me, she assured me this...that if a SHOT needed to be given, I could give it if I could show her a license to practice on board a 747 far away from an ER.
Some time passed~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~like that.....~~~~~~~~~~~~~and then I noticed MOM had been placed in Reverse Trendelenberg position in the galley...on the floor with her feet up as if she was going into FULL BLOWN SHOCK. I was worried about MOM but "BOB and LISA" just sat there reading and chewing cud. How unusual I thought, but maybe I thought, how USUAL for Americans, how typical to care by 'not caring' or caring through 'ideologically caring' or even hey, just not giving a shit and talking about the gay flowers.
Then I got my call. The stewardess held me by the elbow and led me up near the cabin (if she only knew how dangerous it is to let someone LIKE ME* near the CABIN). The nice stewardess related to me about how MOM had seen a terrorist board the plane. I said, "WHA?" Yes...a man with a rag on his head. It made MOM sick to her stomach (never mind what the Bloody Mary did in conjunction with the PILLS FOR ANXIETY RELATED DISORDERS LIKE TOTAL FAMILIAL DISSOCIATION PATTERNS OF THE TYPE WE SEE EVERYDAY ON DOCTOR PHIL).
"But," I said...not realizing how important these things are to some folks nowdays who hate flying, "I'm a muslim*."
You shoulda seen the look in that stewardess' eyes. I wish I'd had a camera.
I never did tell MOM about my religious affiliations. I just kept a careful eye on her in case she should turn into a stark raving mad lunatic and we'd have to land our butts in FARGO or something. Afterall, I was in a hurry to see AMERICA.
~~~~~~~~~~~~but back to Lisablog.....
My question is, WHERE IS THE BEEF IN THIS WORK? Am I missing something besides the lovingkindness it invokes? What a downright lie, sorry...I mean I'm truly sorry for my honesty here but it has to be said. Lovingkindness is dead and writing rubbish like that is simply more of the same type of thing I so dislike about most modern poesy....gooserot.
It is gooserot and bracken. It is lichen and dross. Plus thrum. With a nice whole wheat muffin on the side and some "dancing tralala". The color of it is PINK. No backbone and little to say except for "isn't that nice".
In a world where nice isn't nice, it is a euphemism for dead. Certainly it is a myth that only the formalists have gone sterile and dry. The whole bunch (a majority of insurgent hugging acitivists) have gone completely numb to their own awful reality...the one where they penalize foreign labor because it is tied to a Singer....and you know what? I am not sure that it is true about all things foreign but it has become a strange mantra for folks named Faith and Courtney.
Sorry. And really...I hate to post this but my guts forced me to. That evil djinn that beats people up and curses. It ain't my fault.
http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/alyric/jarnot.html
or
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=05/08/13/2356246
or hey...let's just dissect the person, not the poetics because that is how poetics are actually dissected even though there are those who strangely enough, disagree. All the while citing instances of homosexuality, religion, hair and eye color, gender, etc. ONCE the poet is DEAD and stasis is achieved and manipulated as some people see fit to manipulate political intentions in the work of others.....and in the religious affiliations of same. **EDIT: I do want to preface this however with the absolute conviction that this Lisa is a DAMN FINE ARTIST....I mean...she plays words like a piano. The outcome however of an "intent towards sentiment" of such great writing leaves me with a sense of powerlessness that must be the feeling of being an American Activist (of some sort or another). Lisa Jarnot's poems are successful in provoking feelings not only of political "I give up-ness" but simultaneously inspiring another poet to tremendous envy at her obvious verbal skills and prowess, the beauty of her verbal rivers. There is a sense of "collective guilt" that is disturbing in more ways that one and that cannot be ignored...
....I am not suggesting anything untoward this absolutely GREAT woman in the following...she sounds like a great LISA. Personally, when I choose to represent this "sociological" type of person in a poem I refer to them as a "LISA" because I happen to have known alot of REAL Lisas in my life (including my good pal Jambalaya from the bayou, my current LISA)...but if I really want to refer to this specific "type" of thing I call them a "Faith" or a "Courtney". My personalfavs. If only my name woulda been Bruce.
"It's sad but true that Lisa of Lisablog still doesn't like flying." from a blogentry here:
http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/lisajarnot/blog/
Why? Flying is great. It gets you to the liberal minded hotspots like the rainforest. Works for me anyway.
"Seven: The American Apparel clothing company. We at Lisablog have finally found a place to buy non-sweatshop underwear. The American Apparel store on Haight Street looks like the Gap, but it's cooler because the clothing is 100% made in the USA at more than minimum wage. And yes, I am willing to pay twelve bucks for underwear if it's made by someone who is not chained to a sewing machine. Check out American Apparel at Ethical Underwear!. "
Okay Lisa of Lisablog fame and now, Silliman-raceblog fame....so...you mean you want to take it out on the victims of your sort of capitalist hooey? I prefer to buy low cost items made by Syrians and sometimes Africans regardless of what they are chained to because we are all chained to something...sometimes it is even a name or an epithet. Or a racial slur or a bias. I wonder....twinkle twinkle.....(visual here is of that video blurring which indicates a dream like fantasy land ala Wayne's World...)..do you not see your ethnocentrism here?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~dreamsquigglesdreamsquigglesdreamsquigglesgigglestoo
....it was on that flight out of London. The day after would be one of the worst days in London tube history and I only hoped and prayed (later of course) that my face wouldn't be on some handy-cam so that I might be identified as a terrorist or something...yes I truly hoped that wouldn't be the case. That horrible event at CDG some years ago left me a bit fearful of being racially profiled even though my hair is red....and my face colorless. My point of origin however, not being the usual Upstart Locales like San Fransciso...tends to get me into some trouble sometimes. Like it did at Silliman's Not Friendly Blog of Bigotry and Heartache.
I settled in with my nuts and soda. Next to me were three people (and I am thinking that the young girl was named Lisa...at least she looked "Lisa-ish" to me, very blond and studious...chewing gum, that sort of thing). Her bald father had his reading glasses on and looked every bit the part of a "detached father figure" named something like BOB. I don't know why but I imagine he was a BOB. I noticed that MOM wasn't feeling very well. I think her name was Alice or maybe even Delores but most likely it was something unfathomable like Gretchen or Patricia. In any event, she didn't look too good but old BOB just kept reading and LISA just kept chewing her cud and reading a book with that little overhead light casting that supernatural nuclear family glowiness on the three of them, the type you see on planes.
MOM called the stewardess over and had herself a Bloody Mary. That is a nice way to fly through your fears and far be it from me to think that if you aren't feeling too well, alcohol is generally not a recommended tonic for the soul. It is a personal choice, one that I prefer to relenquish to preserve my REASON.
Then, MOM called the stewardess over and (I thought how unfair this was) got AN EARLY SNACK. That is just awful when you are hungry and they give a stranger something that you yourself aren't allowed to have because you feel pretty much, "okay". You've accepted the risks of flying and anyway, you haven't been to America since 9/11 and are really excited. But you'd still like a banana. I then asked, because I'm like that, perpetually nosey when it comes to another person's health on an airplane high up in the sky and far from GENERAL HOSPITAL....I asked, "Are you feeling okay? I'm a nurse...if you need anything just tell me okay?" MOM was quite pleased. I mean even BOB and LISA didn't give a big rat's butt about her nausea and distention, her cold sweat and palor. I asked the routine questions: Heart disease, diabetes, etc.? And MOM related that she was on a few tricyclics and that sort of thing...ANTIDEPRESSANTS. Which of course are not good Bloody Mary mixers. But anyway...I kept that to me-self. I told the nice stewardess that I was a nurse should she need me and she assured me that everything was under control and she was on the line with the SHIP'S DOCTOR...some aviation medic or something in Chicago, the heart of America. But she'd call me if she needed me, she assured me this...that if a SHOT needed to be given, I could give it if I could show her a license to practice on board a 747 far away from an ER.
Some time passed~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~like that.....~~~~~~~~~~~~~and then I noticed MOM had been placed in Reverse Trendelenberg position in the galley...on the floor with her feet up as if she was going into FULL BLOWN SHOCK. I was worried about MOM but "BOB and LISA" just sat there reading and chewing cud. How unusual I thought, but maybe I thought, how USUAL for Americans, how typical to care by 'not caring' or caring through 'ideologically caring' or even hey, just not giving a shit and talking about the gay flowers.
Then I got my call. The stewardess held me by the elbow and led me up near the cabin (if she only knew how dangerous it is to let someone LIKE ME* near the CABIN). The nice stewardess related to me about how MOM had seen a terrorist board the plane. I said, "WHA?" Yes...a man with a rag on his head. It made MOM sick to her stomach (never mind what the Bloody Mary did in conjunction with the PILLS FOR ANXIETY RELATED DISORDERS LIKE TOTAL FAMILIAL DISSOCIATION PATTERNS OF THE TYPE WE SEE EVERYDAY ON DOCTOR PHIL).
"But," I said...not realizing how important these things are to some folks nowdays who hate flying, "I'm a muslim*."
You shoulda seen the look in that stewardess' eyes. I wish I'd had a camera.
I never did tell MOM about my religious affiliations. I just kept a careful eye on her in case she should turn into a stark raving mad lunatic and we'd have to land our butts in FARGO or something. Afterall, I was in a hurry to see AMERICA.
~~~~~~~~~~~~but back to Lisablog.....
My question is, WHERE IS THE BEEF IN THIS WORK? Am I missing something besides the lovingkindness it invokes? What a downright lie, sorry...I mean I'm truly sorry for my honesty here but it has to be said. Lovingkindness is dead and writing rubbish like that is simply more of the same type of thing I so dislike about most modern poesy....gooserot.
It is gooserot and bracken. It is lichen and dross. Plus thrum. With a nice whole wheat muffin on the side and some "dancing tralala". The color of it is PINK. No backbone and little to say except for "isn't that nice".
In a world where nice isn't nice, it is a euphemism for dead. Certainly it is a myth that only the formalists have gone sterile and dry. The whole bunch (a majority of insurgent hugging acitivists) have gone completely numb to their own awful reality...the one where they penalize foreign labor because it is tied to a Singer....and you know what? I am not sure that it is true about all things foreign but it has become a strange mantra for folks named Faith and Courtney.
Sorry. And really...I hate to post this but my guts forced me to. That evil djinn that beats people up and curses. It ain't my fault.
HAPPY HOLY WEEK (PARDON THE PURPLE LAMENTING COLOR YOU KNOW)....
Well it was a great day (Palm Sunday) and now we get to look forward to:
Secret Bible Week on ESPN, I mean, National Geographic, April 30 to May something, not Hejra time by the way.
I did however find it very odd that Islam wasn't mentioned in the program. Odd.
Whaddya suppose? Our technology exposed the Judas fallacy a very LONG TIME AGO.
Imagine my surprise. But then again, how many people in the world know that today is the prophet's birthday? About a fifth I imagine and most likely, more in the future.
"For that reason, the discoveries have proved deeply troubling for many believers. The Gospel of Judas portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus, but as his most favored disciple and willing collaborator.Scholars say that they have long been on the lookout for the Gospel of Judas because of a reference to what was probably an early version of it in a text called Against Heresies, written by Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, about the year 180."
Yea...what about the part when it ends before it gives the answer to the secret riddle, that of the cruciFICTION? And the curious notion that Isa was laughing all the time (according to the National Geo scholars, not me). Yea...I'll bet he did...he was in on one VERY important joke. Very important. A joke that led to the Holocaust and is now leading to other Holocausts, those of the muslim populations at the hands of...oh God only knows who...a combo gang composed of Born Again Christians and Zionists, Wahhabi Fundamentalists (not the smartest subset sometimes)....mostly they want to kill Islamic Scholars.....Shia.
The Shia are the THINK TANK of Islam folks. Remember that whenever you read about us in the news and all those terrible things they are saying about dropping a bomb on Iran. Remember that would you?
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/times-celebrates-the-gospel-of-judas/
Well it was a great day (Palm Sunday) and now we get to look forward to:
Secret Bible Week on ESPN, I mean, National Geographic, April 30 to May something, not Hejra time by the way.
I did however find it very odd that Islam wasn't mentioned in the program. Odd.
Whaddya suppose? Our technology exposed the Judas fallacy a very LONG TIME AGO.
Imagine my surprise. But then again, how many people in the world know that today is the prophet's birthday? About a fifth I imagine and most likely, more in the future.
"For that reason, the discoveries have proved deeply troubling for many believers. The Gospel of Judas portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus, but as his most favored disciple and willing collaborator.Scholars say that they have long been on the lookout for the Gospel of Judas because of a reference to what was probably an early version of it in a text called Against Heresies, written by Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, about the year 180."
Yea...what about the part when it ends before it gives the answer to the secret riddle, that of the cruciFICTION? And the curious notion that Isa was laughing all the time (according to the National Geo scholars, not me). Yea...I'll bet he did...he was in on one VERY important joke. Very important. A joke that led to the Holocaust and is now leading to other Holocausts, those of the muslim populations at the hands of...oh God only knows who...a combo gang composed of Born Again Christians and Zionists, Wahhabi Fundamentalists (not the smartest subset sometimes)....mostly they want to kill Islamic Scholars.....Shia.
The Shia are the THINK TANK of Islam folks. Remember that whenever you read about us in the news and all those terrible things they are saying about dropping a bomb on Iran. Remember that would you?
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/times-celebrates-the-gospel-of-judas/
9.4.06
8.4.06
http://www.drsoroush.com/English/Interviews/E-INT-HomaTV.html
How to uncover a faulty argument. Now...I've no idea about most of this other than you can scribble "Hojjatieh" nowdays in your search margins and get a plethora of negative thinking about something relatively UNKNOWN (well it isn't going to stay that way, I assure you). I mean, sheesh, you can hardly get that many references to the Bush Family Dinner With Hinkley Before The Reagan Assassination Attempt. You know what I mean? Like someone out there wants us to BELIEVE something as opposed to reason that the Iranian Prez is talking about the West's horrible greed for a Nuclear Energy Monopoly and their horrible ability to make the UN into their own personal Rottweiler complete with a Pitbull companion called the IAEA. Damn.
But lets look into the one faulty premise in this otherwise well constructed article. Why not?
READY, AIM, FIRE!
"I know that these people have infiltrated not just segments of the press but also layers of the Revolutionary Guards; they have spread their ideas there too and have created a situation in which a disturbed and unbalanced mentality towards the outside world has emerged among us."
Well...there we go. WE KNOW THEY HAVE INFILTRATED THEIR OWN GANG. Oops. Nary a mention of what else has infiltrated and in fact, that exists as a complete denial of the possibility that Westoxication is a real entity that sows seeds of violence, pornography and oppression not only in Iran but throughout the entire effing world. For money. And this guy's personal whatever, agenda?
And then...as if that wasn't enough to convince this old war hero, we get to the SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE later on in the 'text'...the nicely produced article about aren't we nice ain't we great holistic people text:
"Of course, I have a complaint against the council myself. My complaint is that all these violent groups, which sometimes go under the name of Ansar-e Hezbollah or under the name of plainclothesmen, emerged during the 20 years since the establishment of the Cultural Revolution Council and I was one of the first victims of these violent people, at the University of Esfahan, the University of Tehran, the University of Mashhad, and in Qom and Khorramabad."
Oh..I see. Yer objective aren't you? And that little tiny group that has beat the US/Israeli WAR MACHINE not once but TWICE, is the bad guy?
Oh. I get it. What next, the plague? That article belongs in the READER'S DIGEST, the one with big letters for old people who can't add without their fingers and toes.
The world so full of hand-me-down
languages and gospel, the cruci-
fictions to the Judas Cradle.
What is the real story here and why don't people put together the actual quotes? Like that part, universally pretty much agreed on:
"Why have you forsaken me?"
Indeed. Now of course, Isa wouldn't say that....if he were a figurehead as in a God.
Of course not and nevermind that part out in the desert where Isa is being tempted with Las Vegas, Amsterdam and Hong Kong...that is just silly. God cannot be tempted people!
It ends up with such bitter discrepancies and hypocrisies in the Catholic Religion...the so-called principled faith of human rights as we find here:
http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=15354&sec=33&con=56
If Catholics do choose to marry Muslims, the document says, they must be sure to baptize their children and avoid signing Islamic documents or swearing oaths, including the "shahada," Islam's profession of faith.
Wha? You mean, the Catholic Faith supports Polytheism? Yes. It is a polytheist theology which lacks even the minimum amount of logic. The MINUMUM amount like: God doesn't ask for help on the cross. Simple. And he doesn't fast nor can God be tempted...he isn't that sort of deal...he is much closer to something they call in physics, The Universal Observer of the Many Worlds theories (hard to believe that astrophysics itself is completely WEIRD but people go along with it hook, line and sinker....old fishing term here as dictated by the paradigm).
But back to the realdeal: http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/gospel_of_judas/
This is an article (several actually) about the rumours circulating regarding the gnostic text of one Judas Iscariot...a much misunderstood figure in the Catholic faith. Labeled everything from a thief to a pauper to a suicidal maniac. Now...this text has been 'floating around' the market for quite some time with various stories (read: lies) about how "no one wanted it enough" to raise the cash to buy it. Huh? Like even that crappy painter (well he ain't so crappy) made a nice turnover on the Sunflowers. I mean come on folks. Get real, it was as is the usual, in a bank vault in SWITZERLAND. Anyway...the rumour is that it has some curious little statements within the fragmented pages like this MIND BLOWING one:
JESUS SPEAKS TO JUDAS PRIVATELY
Knowing that Judas was reflecting upon something that was exalted, Jesus said to him, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal. [36] For someone else will replace you, in order that the twelve [disciples] may again come to completion with their god.”
Okay. Now let's plug in the Islamic version of Judas Iscariot's real role and it goes like this....Allah literally changed Isa into Iscariot and only the two of them (Isa yes, Iscariot maybe) knew it was happening. Well...lets just say our story fits much more nicely within that context. You get Isa (Iscariot) up on the cross begging for someone to 'take him off, they don't know what they do, why have you forsaken me' ...i.e. that whole....THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING TO ME!
The nice article provides some other excerpts like the following:
When Jesus heard this, he laughed and said to them, “Why are you thinking in your hearts about the strong and holy generation? [37] Truly [I] say to you, no one born [of] this aeon will see that [generation], and no host of angels of the stars will rule over that generation, and no person of mortal birth can associate with it, because that generation does not come from […] which has become […]. The generation of people among [you] is from the generation of humanity […] power, which [… the] other powers […] by [which] you rule.”
Yup. It would take a full 600+ years for Mohamed to be born. Literally, from the same line as Abraham....a common thread via the wombs of women connecting prophets. Like, Ali Mu'mineen shared a common womb with Mohamed...he too assassinated by yet another "Iscariot" type. Unavoidable...big plan you know. Very, very big plan involving the Fuel of the Fire Man.
72 VIRGINS?
THE COSMOS, CHAOS, AND THE UNDERWORLD (substitute Ghul here or simply, "the unseen" which is a fundamental belief in Islam)
“The multitude of those immortals is called the cosmos— that is, perdition—by the Father and the seventy-two luminaries who are with the Self-Generated and his *seventytwo aeons. In him the first human appeared with his incorruptible powers. And the aeon that appeared with his generation, the aeon in whom are the cloud of knowledge and the angel, is called [51] El. […] aeon […] after that […] said, ‘Let twelve angels come into being [to] rule over chaos and the [underworld].’ And look, from the cloud there appeared an [angel] whose face flashed with fire and whose appearance was defiled with blood. His name was Nebro, which means ‘rebel’; others call him Yaldabaoth. Another angel, Saklas, also came from the cloud. So Nebro created six angels—as well as Saklas—to be assistants, and these produced twelve angels in the heavens, with each one receiving a portion in the heavens.
*Of course linguists are now saying that virgins can also transliterate into "grapes".
It gets a little far fetched there due to ommissions and what we call "worm holes" that destroy old documents like this....but it does say something VERY interesting about the substitution story we Muslims hold to be true based on a variety of notions including superstition, actual documentation and common sense:
The other apostles pray to a lesser God, Jesus says, and he reveals to Judas the "mysteries of the kingdom" of the true God. He asks Judas to help him return to the kingdom, but to do so, Judas must help him abandon his mortal flesh: "You will sacrifice the man that clothes me," Jesus tells Judas, and acknowledges that Judas "will be cursed by the other generations."
Flash forward to the payoff...the ransom (after Judas has been taken into a 'cloud' of some sort by Isa's bidding, and may or maynot have been 'in on it'):
[…] Their high priests murmured because [he] had gone into the guest room for his prayer. But some scribes were there watching carefully in order to arrest him during the prayer, for they were afraid of the people, since he was regarded by all as a prophet. They approached Judas and said to him, “What are you doing here? You are Jesus’ disciple.”
Judas answered them as they wished. And he received some money and handed him over to them.
Well of course. He went along with it. The transmutation already en force. Isa was no longer Isa and Iscariot no longer Iscariot. Of course a person has to have faith to get this far into the story.....but at least the story makes some sort of SENSE in the real world of finger pointing and blameworthiness.
WHY IS THIS SO INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT TO CHRISTIANS AND JEWS?
Biblical scholars said the Gospel of Judas differs from the four New Testament Gospels in at least two important ways. First, it portrays Judas not as the betrayer of Jesus but as the most favored of his disciples, the only one who truly understood Jesus.
Some scholars suggested that view -- if it had been accepted -- might have lessened anti-Semitism over the centuries. "The story of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas gave a moral and religious rationale to anti-Jewish sentiment, and that's what made it persistent and vicious," said Princeton University professor Elaine Pagels.
Of course it is not all that important to muslims. We already accept the logical premise and the logical question posed in the Koran itself TO the other two so-called monotheistic branches of Islam and that is, "Why do the two of you (Jews and Christians) argue so much when in reality, you share the same durn books?"
Like the Da Vinci Code.....this "news" story isn't news at all to muslims. For a backwards crowd...we are way ahead in the plot. The big scheme and the multiple evolutionary layers of simple God Belief or as Thomas Jefferson would have it, "Deism" although that misnomer was attached to his Islamophilic way of life (just look at Monticello would ya?). Way ahead. Da Vinci was banned here in Lebanon but I've no idea why....oh yes...the CHRISTIANS here wanted it that way. But if news gets out about that sort of thing we always get the bad end of that schtick. Always.
The only real question for a muslim is "Was Iscariot aware of his physical change into another likeness?" I would suppose not because of that last testament on the cross...that thing where he cries about being 'forsaken'. Why me? Like I always say, Why Not Me? I mean...someone has to do the dirty work in the scheme. And the work wasn't really dirty at all. It was carried out so that it could come to light 2000 years down the road in preparation of something else. A greater understanding of Islam perhaps and maybe even, one day, peace. Although from the looks of things in Iraq right now I'd say it still isn't time for peace because we have to sort out the Judas Iscariot of Islam, Muwaiya. Muslims of course believe it will eventually come about (Isa's return to the realm of earth's atmosphere) to SETTLE THE DIFFERENCE OF OPINION created by the church elders and the Jews (who denied Isa anything more than Professor Emeritus status).
What is clear to me however is that the Catholic church has become nothing but a think tank and that think tank promotes propaganda of the worst sort. It has been doing it for at least 19 centuries and really revved up its BUSINESS VISION around the 7th century C.E. Right about the time Heraclitus fled the coop and wasn't heard from again, having stated openly that Mohamed was indeed a prophet. He tested his followers then to see if they would be loyal to God or to Heraclitus and when they demonstrated what every leader is bound to LOVE (in this case he was incredibly disappointed because he had JUST openly admitted that Mohamed was indeed a prophet from the line of Dawood (David)) ....he simply walked away because he knew teaching people the truth is tough business...it gets one killed usually. The story of Heraclitus and the new followers of a thing called Islam ends right there....the Roman leader disappears, never to be heard of again.
Flash forward to: Iraq. Here we are. Imagine my surprise. NOT.
For poets/linguists only, and athiests. Can't forget the athiests in the crowd that are just TOO GOOD for us pickaninnies:
http://web.utk.edu/~unistudy/ethics96/dlm2.html
languages and gospel, the cruci-
fictions to the Judas Cradle.
What is the real story here and why don't people put together the actual quotes? Like that part, universally pretty much agreed on:
"Why have you forsaken me?"
Indeed. Now of course, Isa wouldn't say that....if he were a figurehead as in a God.
Of course not and nevermind that part out in the desert where Isa is being tempted with Las Vegas, Amsterdam and Hong Kong...that is just silly. God cannot be tempted people!
It ends up with such bitter discrepancies and hypocrisies in the Catholic Religion...the so-called principled faith of human rights as we find here:
http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=15354&sec=33&con=56
If Catholics do choose to marry Muslims, the document says, they must be sure to baptize their children and avoid signing Islamic documents or swearing oaths, including the "shahada," Islam's profession of faith.
Wha? You mean, the Catholic Faith supports Polytheism? Yes. It is a polytheist theology which lacks even the minimum amount of logic. The MINUMUM amount like: God doesn't ask for help on the cross. Simple. And he doesn't fast nor can God be tempted...he isn't that sort of deal...he is much closer to something they call in physics, The Universal Observer of the Many Worlds theories (hard to believe that astrophysics itself is completely WEIRD but people go along with it hook, line and sinker....old fishing term here as dictated by the paradigm).
But back to the realdeal: http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/gospel_of_judas/
This is an article (several actually) about the rumours circulating regarding the gnostic text of one Judas Iscariot...a much misunderstood figure in the Catholic faith. Labeled everything from a thief to a pauper to a suicidal maniac. Now...this text has been 'floating around' the market for quite some time with various stories (read: lies) about how "no one wanted it enough" to raise the cash to buy it. Huh? Like even that crappy painter (well he ain't so crappy) made a nice turnover on the Sunflowers. I mean come on folks. Get real, it was as is the usual, in a bank vault in SWITZERLAND. Anyway...the rumour is that it has some curious little statements within the fragmented pages like this MIND BLOWING one:
JESUS SPEAKS TO JUDAS PRIVATELY
Knowing that Judas was reflecting upon something that was exalted, Jesus said to him, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal. [36] For someone else will replace you, in order that the twelve [disciples] may again come to completion with their god.”
Okay. Now let's plug in the Islamic version of Judas Iscariot's real role and it goes like this....Allah literally changed Isa into Iscariot and only the two of them (Isa yes, Iscariot maybe) knew it was happening. Well...lets just say our story fits much more nicely within that context. You get Isa (Iscariot) up on the cross begging for someone to 'take him off, they don't know what they do, why have you forsaken me' ...i.e. that whole....THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING TO ME!
The nice article provides some other excerpts like the following:
When Jesus heard this, he laughed and said to them, “Why are you thinking in your hearts about the strong and holy generation? [37] Truly [I] say to you, no one born [of] this aeon will see that [generation], and no host of angels of the stars will rule over that generation, and no person of mortal birth can associate with it, because that generation does not come from […] which has become […]. The generation of people among [you] is from the generation of humanity […] power, which [… the] other powers […] by [which] you rule.”
Yup. It would take a full 600+ years for Mohamed to be born. Literally, from the same line as Abraham....a common thread via the wombs of women connecting prophets. Like, Ali Mu'mineen shared a common womb with Mohamed...he too assassinated by yet another "Iscariot" type. Unavoidable...big plan you know. Very, very big plan involving the Fuel of the Fire Man.
72 VIRGINS?
THE COSMOS, CHAOS, AND THE UNDERWORLD (substitute Ghul here or simply, "the unseen" which is a fundamental belief in Islam)
“The multitude of those immortals is called the cosmos— that is, perdition—by the Father and the seventy-two luminaries who are with the Self-Generated and his *seventytwo aeons. In him the first human appeared with his incorruptible powers. And the aeon that appeared with his generation, the aeon in whom are the cloud of knowledge and the angel, is called [51] El. […] aeon […] after that […] said, ‘Let twelve angels come into being [to] rule over chaos and the [underworld].’ And look, from the cloud there appeared an [angel] whose face flashed with fire and whose appearance was defiled with blood. His name was Nebro, which means ‘rebel’; others call him Yaldabaoth. Another angel, Saklas, also came from the cloud. So Nebro created six angels—as well as Saklas—to be assistants, and these produced twelve angels in the heavens, with each one receiving a portion in the heavens.
*Of course linguists are now saying that virgins can also transliterate into "grapes".
It gets a little far fetched there due to ommissions and what we call "worm holes" that destroy old documents like this....but it does say something VERY interesting about the substitution story we Muslims hold to be true based on a variety of notions including superstition, actual documentation and common sense:
The other apostles pray to a lesser God, Jesus says, and he reveals to Judas the "mysteries of the kingdom" of the true God. He asks Judas to help him return to the kingdom, but to do so, Judas must help him abandon his mortal flesh: "You will sacrifice the man that clothes me," Jesus tells Judas, and acknowledges that Judas "will be cursed by the other generations."
Flash forward to the payoff...the ransom (after Judas has been taken into a 'cloud' of some sort by Isa's bidding, and may or maynot have been 'in on it'):
[…] Their high priests murmured because [he] had gone into the guest room for his prayer. But some scribes were there watching carefully in order to arrest him during the prayer, for they were afraid of the people, since he was regarded by all as a prophet. They approached Judas and said to him, “What are you doing here? You are Jesus’ disciple.”
Judas answered them as they wished. And he received some money and handed him over to them.
Well of course. He went along with it. The transmutation already en force. Isa was no longer Isa and Iscariot no longer Iscariot. Of course a person has to have faith to get this far into the story.....but at least the story makes some sort of SENSE in the real world of finger pointing and blameworthiness.
WHY IS THIS SO INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT TO CHRISTIANS AND JEWS?
Biblical scholars said the Gospel of Judas differs from the four New Testament Gospels in at least two important ways. First, it portrays Judas not as the betrayer of Jesus but as the most favored of his disciples, the only one who truly understood Jesus.
Some scholars suggested that view -- if it had been accepted -- might have lessened anti-Semitism over the centuries. "The story of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas gave a moral and religious rationale to anti-Jewish sentiment, and that's what made it persistent and vicious," said Princeton University professor Elaine Pagels.
Of course it is not all that important to muslims. We already accept the logical premise and the logical question posed in the Koran itself TO the other two so-called monotheistic branches of Islam and that is, "Why do the two of you (Jews and Christians) argue so much when in reality, you share the same durn books?"
Like the Da Vinci Code.....this "news" story isn't news at all to muslims. For a backwards crowd...we are way ahead in the plot. The big scheme and the multiple evolutionary layers of simple God Belief or as Thomas Jefferson would have it, "Deism" although that misnomer was attached to his Islamophilic way of life (just look at Monticello would ya?). Way ahead. Da Vinci was banned here in Lebanon but I've no idea why....oh yes...the CHRISTIANS here wanted it that way. But if news gets out about that sort of thing we always get the bad end of that schtick. Always.
The only real question for a muslim is "Was Iscariot aware of his physical change into another likeness?" I would suppose not because of that last testament on the cross...that thing where he cries about being 'forsaken'. Why me? Like I always say, Why Not Me? I mean...someone has to do the dirty work in the scheme. And the work wasn't really dirty at all. It was carried out so that it could come to light 2000 years down the road in preparation of something else. A greater understanding of Islam perhaps and maybe even, one day, peace. Although from the looks of things in Iraq right now I'd say it still isn't time for peace because we have to sort out the Judas Iscariot of Islam, Muwaiya. Muslims of course believe it will eventually come about (Isa's return to the realm of earth's atmosphere) to SETTLE THE DIFFERENCE OF OPINION created by the church elders and the Jews (who denied Isa anything more than Professor Emeritus status).
What is clear to me however is that the Catholic church has become nothing but a think tank and that think tank promotes propaganda of the worst sort. It has been doing it for at least 19 centuries and really revved up its BUSINESS VISION around the 7th century C.E. Right about the time Heraclitus fled the coop and wasn't heard from again, having stated openly that Mohamed was indeed a prophet. He tested his followers then to see if they would be loyal to God or to Heraclitus and when they demonstrated what every leader is bound to LOVE (in this case he was incredibly disappointed because he had JUST openly admitted that Mohamed was indeed a prophet from the line of Dawood (David)) ....he simply walked away because he knew teaching people the truth is tough business...it gets one killed usually. The story of Heraclitus and the new followers of a thing called Islam ends right there....the Roman leader disappears, never to be heard of again.
Flash forward to: Iraq. Here we are. Imagine my surprise. NOT.
For poets/linguists only, and athiests. Can't forget the athiests in the crowd that are just TOO GOOD for us pickaninnies:
http://web.utk.edu/~unistudy/ethics96/dlm2.html
Gerrymandering, Lebanese Style:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=15&article_id=21428
The absence of a coherent policy is obvious in all aspects of Lebanese life, from inadequate implementation of rules and regulations, to the illegal exploitation of natural resources, to chaotic urban and rural planning. At the same time, the nature of the Lebanese system renders it difficult to hold government officials accountable for ultimate executive responsibility.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=15&article_id=21428
The absence of a coherent policy is obvious in all aspects of Lebanese life, from inadequate implementation of rules and regulations, to the illegal exploitation of natural resources, to chaotic urban and rural planning. At the same time, the nature of the Lebanese system renders it difficult to hold government officials accountable for ultimate executive responsibility.
6.4.06
The Pelvis
As women we must
protect ourselves
and daughters:
from green card seekers
and noise makers,
from insufficient funds
and defects in plumbing,
from hosts of maurauding males
and temptation get thee behind me,
from wrinkles
and cysts the size of a golf ball,
from eating disorders
and too much salt,
from underwear stains
and chalk dust,
from history written by victors
and Victor's history,
from having children too close together
and infertility,
from drinking in the closet
and DUI's,
from rapists
and adulterers,
from monsters under the bed
and ones under the sheets,
from slashed wrists
and overdosed best friends,
from so-called loves
and reading Lolita,
from talking too much
and talking too little.
We women must protect,
virginity in all of it's guises,
the way it follows us to the grave,
held in our pelvis
in some part of the bone.
II
He is the kind of man
who gives back
what he took
so long ago it doesn't matter anymore.
A boy who pilfers an apple
attached to a string
in the corner market stall.
III
Getting caught.
As women we must
protect ourselves
and daughters:
from green card seekers
and noise makers,
from insufficient funds
and defects in plumbing,
from hosts of maurauding males
and temptation get thee behind me,
from wrinkles
and cysts the size of a golf ball,
from eating disorders
and too much salt,
from underwear stains
and chalk dust,
from history written by victors
and Victor's history,
from having children too close together
and infertility,
from drinking in the closet
and DUI's,
from rapists
and adulterers,
from monsters under the bed
and ones under the sheets,
from slashed wrists
and overdosed best friends,
from so-called loves
and reading Lolita,
from talking too much
and talking too little.
We women must protect,
virginity in all of it's guises,
the way it follows us to the grave,
held in our pelvis
in some part of the bone.
II
He is the kind of man
who gives back
what he took
so long ago it doesn't matter anymore.
A boy who pilfers an apple
attached to a string
in the corner market stall.
III
Getting caught.
5.4.06
5:55 GMT + 3, for Me and Haneen
Doesn't everyone want to say something
just everyday, special? Every day is
so great or not so. Maybe it wasn't nice
the way the man looked at me today
while I bought a plug for the generator.
Maybe it isn't cool to be American.
Maybe I should have said I was Russian.
Maybe I should have hugged him.
I don't know. His eyes were somehow
not to my liking. I guess he could say the same.
Maybe that isn't what could be said though.
How about all that money that I spent,
hundred thou after hundred thou after hundred thou
every lira to a foreigner who couldn't understand
me and vice versa until I banged my head
and said, Damn it! Just damn it all.
Little Haneen laughed. She is only two
and knows the feeling.
Not quite sure but it was raining, still is.
April is cold this year and very wet.
It is 5:55 GMT + 3 or so.
I'm sure to the east there's a hell hole
and to the west there's a bunch of girl scouts and boy scouts.
Maybe up north there is some snow.
Down south, some kind of weird dancing.
Here it is, 5:55 and I've got to go now.
Hope the car starts. Hope is all there is.
Doesn't everyone want to say something
just everyday, special? Every day is
so great or not so. Maybe it wasn't nice
the way the man looked at me today
while I bought a plug for the generator.
Maybe it isn't cool to be American.
Maybe I should have said I was Russian.
Maybe I should have hugged him.
I don't know. His eyes were somehow
not to my liking. I guess he could say the same.
Maybe that isn't what could be said though.
How about all that money that I spent,
hundred thou after hundred thou after hundred thou
every lira to a foreigner who couldn't understand
me and vice versa until I banged my head
and said, Damn it! Just damn it all.
Little Haneen laughed. She is only two
and knows the feeling.
Not quite sure but it was raining, still is.
April is cold this year and very wet.
It is 5:55 GMT + 3 or so.
I'm sure to the east there's a hell hole
and to the west there's a bunch of girl scouts and boy scouts.
Maybe up north there is some snow.
Down south, some kind of weird dancing.
Here it is, 5:55 and I've got to go now.
Hope the car starts. Hope is all there is.
The Best Beatles Song:
Back in the USSR. Nothing like that tune. Reminds me of antiques for some reason:
http://www.bisbeemarquee.com/mag/?ncr=51
Back in the USSR. Nothing like that tune. Reminds me of antiques for some reason:
http://www.bisbeemarquee.com/mag/?ncr=51
Headlines/Captions
(Found poetry, the only one I've ever written which demonstrates how easily Flarf, Found and that other baloney is, to write....anyone with a newspaper can come up with something damn fine...but is it their own?)
Getting off
hunt for militants,
commentary by
A War That Cannot Be Won,
women make breakthrough
in Jedda, Cairo makes
belated progress,
Denktash sees hand
being forced
While:
Westerners in the Gulf
Fear Backlash-
la vie de nos
enfants vaut
mieux que vos
sales guerres
-Lahoud and Hariri meet
for 75 minutes
(sitting, astonished, together)
Farmers take government
to task,
Sectarian agendas are part
of the problem,
So:
The Australian Embassy Begins
Wine Promotion Week-
-This is Not Terrorism-
a one night outdoor performance
(umbrellas recommended)
Starts and Ends
on the Same Day.
(Found poetry, the only one I've ever written which demonstrates how easily Flarf, Found and that other baloney is, to write....anyone with a newspaper can come up with something damn fine...but is it their own?)
Getting off
hunt for militants,
commentary by
A War That Cannot Be Won,
women make breakthrough
in Jedda, Cairo makes
belated progress,
Denktash sees hand
being forced
While:
Westerners in the Gulf
Fear Backlash-
la vie de nos
enfants vaut
mieux que vos
sales guerres
-Lahoud and Hariri meet
for 75 minutes
(sitting, astonished, together)
Farmers take government
to task,
Sectarian agendas are part
of the problem,
So:
The Australian Embassy Begins
Wine Promotion Week-
-This is Not Terrorism-
a one night outdoor performance
(umbrellas recommended)
Starts and Ends
on the Same Day.
4.4.06
DOA
http://www.maddogblog.com/2006/03/vote-for-me-rip.html
Bisbee, Arizona City Councilman Bob Kasun was re-elected Tuesday in a landslide (246 to 83), in spite of the fact that he died nine days before the election. Councilwoman Luche Giacomino, who was also re-elected even though she's still alive, said, "I am just tickled to death that Bob won." Nice choice of words.
RIP, Bob Kasun. A good friend of Jack Porter of "Jack and Fish".
Death is the only democracy.
http://www.maddogblog.com/2006/03/vote-for-me-rip.html
Bisbee, Arizona City Councilman Bob Kasun was re-elected Tuesday in a landslide (246 to 83), in spite of the fact that he died nine days before the election. Councilwoman Luche Giacomino, who was also re-elected even though she's still alive, said, "I am just tickled to death that Bob won." Nice choice of words.
RIP, Bob Kasun. A good friend of Jack Porter of "Jack and Fish".
Death is the only democracy.
3.4.06
Kamping At The KOA in AmeriKKKa
Man, that was a great kampout. Trucks speeding by and Winslow just down the road. The canyon in the distance and that old watering hole on the horizon.
Was such a great summer in the New Grand Canyons.
Photo by radical ann of course.
Was such a great summer in the New Grand Canyons.
Photo by radical ann of course.
XRAYS
(For Telch)
The bones of Bayruth look like buildings
before the flesh and secrets
have been carried off by the organisms
there, faces that carry
the look of assassinations as well
on eclipse days as ordinary ones,
a type of sudden death syndrome.
The fruit vendors to the kaak trolley spies
have a winsome glow when the sun
is skewed regardless of the sea's intentions.
Some there, roll their pants up to the knees
and others fall apart on xray, shoulders
and legs, tiny little feet and these poor
sell squares of the old film so the others
might view the little silver slivers rather than suffer
the myths of going blind.
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/countries/story/0,,1119062,00.html
(For Telch)
The bones of Bayruth look like buildings
before the flesh and secrets
have been carried off by the organisms
there, faces that carry
the look of assassinations as well
on eclipse days as ordinary ones,
a type of sudden death syndrome.
The fruit vendors to the kaak trolley spies
have a winsome glow when the sun
is skewed regardless of the sea's intentions.
Some there, roll their pants up to the knees
and others fall apart on xray, shoulders
and legs, tiny little feet and these poor
sell squares of the old film so the others
might view the little silver slivers rather than suffer
the myths of going blind.
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/countries/story/0,,1119062,00.html
Sit A Spell
This thing shows up at my door
looks like a fellow but you can
never really tell about these types.
I say come on in, it isn't as if
I didn't expect you afterall.
The calling cards are all over
the place and I don't bother trying
to throw them away anymore.
I'm sorry for the rubbish even.
It isn't as if I didn't know you
were around, didn't know
you were so thirsty. Saw
you walking the other day
hands in your pockets, head low
then you looked up as I tried
desperately to turn away, act
as if I didn't know you.
That kind of thing never works anyway.
You catch the blank stare, the angry
grimace twisted-up in a vehicle
morningtime taking the kids to school.
You see her there in her place
as if you are in a peculiar mirror.
Someone else sees the same thing
same time and you laugh at it
but it isn't the same when you are alone.
It shows up at the door to hound you
about unpaid bills or grievances
without even saying a word...
just sitting there and looking around
as if the objects collected really mean
what it is that they fail to mean.
Sitting there, and then crossing the legs.
When he crosses his legs it means he
isn't going to leave real soon or anymore.
Likes it. Really-really likes the silence
of it all. He only pretended to thirst,
to look shabby for the attention
and the chance.
Always sees the chance this fellow.
Real sneaky like that and gets even
by not getting even. By sitting there
in the mirror he brought in his tiny pockets.
*Yes, the stories are vague now. Point taken. But that guy keeps showing up...never done with his battles over this old hag's soul.
This thing shows up at my door
looks like a fellow but you can
never really tell about these types.
I say come on in, it isn't as if
I didn't expect you afterall.
The calling cards are all over
the place and I don't bother trying
to throw them away anymore.
I'm sorry for the rubbish even.
It isn't as if I didn't know you
were around, didn't know
you were so thirsty. Saw
you walking the other day
hands in your pockets, head low
then you looked up as I tried
desperately to turn away, act
as if I didn't know you.
That kind of thing never works anyway.
You catch the blank stare, the angry
grimace twisted-up in a vehicle
morningtime taking the kids to school.
You see her there in her place
as if you are in a peculiar mirror.
Someone else sees the same thing
same time and you laugh at it
but it isn't the same when you are alone.
It shows up at the door to hound you
about unpaid bills or grievances
without even saying a word...
just sitting there and looking around
as if the objects collected really mean
what it is that they fail to mean.
Sitting there, and then crossing the legs.
When he crosses his legs it means he
isn't going to leave real soon or anymore.
Likes it. Really-really likes the silence
of it all. He only pretended to thirst,
to look shabby for the attention
and the chance.
Always sees the chance this fellow.
Real sneaky like that and gets even
by not getting even. By sitting there
in the mirror he brought in his tiny pockets.
*Yes, the stories are vague now. Point taken. But that guy keeps showing up...never done with his battles over this old hag's soul.
2.4.06
The tHinG in ESPERANTO
http://www.thejeunessedoree.libsyn.com/ live but nearly unintelligible haha!
Oh man...Casa Grande with his ancient clocks via Beirut, talking about:
What is it? Well it certainly isn't that old yarn about my drink with the BeeGees!
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/AZCOCthing.html
http://www.thejeunessedoree.libsyn.com/ live but nearly unintelligible haha!
Oh man...Casa Grande with his ancient clocks via Beirut, talking about:
What is it? Well it certainly isn't that old yarn about my drink with the BeeGees!
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/AZCOCthing.html
1.4.06
Shocking Death of Poesy.
Rhymes. Oh dear Lord In Heaven. Thanks Joe.
http://thejeunessedoree.libsyn.com/
And the battle hits...
Striking where and when it is appropriate. Keats Dead? Oh God no!
Rhymes. Oh dear Lord In Heaven. Thanks Joe.
http://thejeunessedoree.libsyn.com/
And the battle hits...
Striking where and when it is appropriate. Keats Dead? Oh God no!
Dear (Redacted),
And it is amazing what the difference of one word is between parties, "in" versus "something else"!
Perhaps Whitman is the man to offer sage advice in this matter. Yes, Whitman is the Shia American who would rather die fighting than die missing one shaved hair from the grave.
"The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of races."
"The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into any thing that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer . . . . he is individual . . . he is complete in himself . . . . the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not."
"Past and present and future are not disjoined but joined." The Miss agrees to this. It is in a simple twist of time within a piece that the most universal concept is achieved without one ever knowing they've been bent backwards upon their own self and selfless reckoning. The fallacy of time is well known. That the sun continues to rise and set as it goes around. Abraham commented on it and found that the Moon too sets, dies out or shows up without notice early in the spring mornings and perhaps later in the fall. Not gods he said. Not gods.
"The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is today. If he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides . . . . . and if he does not attract his own land body and soul to himself and hang on its neck with incomparable love and plunge his semitic muscle into its merits and demerits . . . and if he be not himself the age transfigured . . . . and if to him is not opened the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations and processes and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shape of today, and is held by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave—let him merge in the general run and wait his development. . . . . . . . Still the final test of poems or any character or work remains."
Grass, the handkerchief of the Lord he said. Yes, he said that as well as to celebrate the loser as well as the victor because all were in battle together. One wonders what old Walt would think to say now? It is the denouement of his oratory it seems. And Lloyd George to Toynbee wouldn't be at all surprised I think.
It is such that the state here has agreed to depose the governor. So they say or, so someone tells me so I won't be estranged from my own self. This is what the Lady has agreed to.
To put it simply, Whitman must have been my great great grand uncle. What has gone missing though in places such as the Silliman? What young Asian man was quoted as saying, Brainwaves with line breaks? He probably knew more than he was thinking!
Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty- topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!
Death comes to us all it seems and how I fear death for some peculiar reason now that I know how much I've missed all these years fretting over something that really wasn't worth fretting over. It must have been what the priests told me and how they scorned the slightest lighting of a candle under the old science lab! How they repudiated any kind of little thing!
Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!
Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;
This is the lexicographer or chemist . . . . this made a grammar of the old
cartouches,
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.
It is such that even the tiniest news alarms me anymore. The slightest touch can disrupt the Anchorite. Yes, Anchorite. Do not love those little windows!
It is not going to be Persia one hopes. How they've gunned for our type for so long and those of the other sects with their own heritage in mind! Everyone with an agenda but could it be that blood runs thicker than water? Or is it, knowledge of a certain type runs only to the few? It is, inspiration that achieves the most and at night, inspiration is the only song a person hears save for the occassional flare up of the dogs outside fighting over a scimpy meal. That little female up on the roof had her ears cut off by the Syrians and fed to her. Her imagination must run wild and now, her safety assured...she must want to return to the pack very soon. Her eyes well now with poly-mixins. If only a person could just go live with the dogs where one belongs!
I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric product,
And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.
Yes....yes. I was shown this orchard in a dream. Resembled what one might expect a partridge in a pear tree might look like. It was only a tree with perfect spherical fruits ready to be picked. I was gifted that night and then the evolution of all dreams descended on me only, when I awoke, I could not speak of it thoroughly or at all! I was a mute. Try as I might I could not achieve any part of it in a word or in a million. Now it is such that bits and pieces light up now and then of that vast period of canonical awareness but I've resisted the temptation to make use of it just yet. It needs some time to rest on the soul. To understand what part of it might be useful and what part might be just the stuff they want to hear. The sell out. There are bigger things than being understood and even bigger things than being known. Much bigger. A heaven where dogs can talk.
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come for-
ever and ever.
It is so. They are all over and to describe what they look like to the others is like talking to peas!
No...it was no lazy smile. Just a kind of jaundice.
And a cough. Terrible cough and memories of TB. That summer was a long one with the two of them en hopital. I think it was then I knew I'd have few to stand up for me in this world. And you? When did you realize such things? I'm almost embarrassed doogs to think that I am only just now getting an understanding of this thing called life. What a dingbat I must have been then when we first wrote like this. I must have been terribly idealistic then.
But as the hadith said...go to your mountain with your goats and stay there. It will one day be over and you'll be none the wiser.
And I should like to hear the name of anything between Sunday morning and
Saturday night that is not just as wonderful.
....and google it.
Cordially,
LJ Thomas
And it is amazing what the difference of one word is between parties, "in" versus "something else"!
Perhaps Whitman is the man to offer sage advice in this matter. Yes, Whitman is the Shia American who would rather die fighting than die missing one shaved hair from the grave.
"The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of races."
"The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into any thing that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer . . . . he is individual . . . he is complete in himself . . . . the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not."
"Past and present and future are not disjoined but joined." The Miss agrees to this. It is in a simple twist of time within a piece that the most universal concept is achieved without one ever knowing they've been bent backwards upon their own self and selfless reckoning. The fallacy of time is well known. That the sun continues to rise and set as it goes around. Abraham commented on it and found that the Moon too sets, dies out or shows up without notice early in the spring mornings and perhaps later in the fall. Not gods he said. Not gods.
"The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is today. If he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides . . . . . and if he does not attract his own land body and soul to himself and hang on its neck with incomparable love and plunge his semitic muscle into its merits and demerits . . . and if he be not himself the age transfigured . . . . and if to him is not opened the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations and processes and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shape of today, and is held by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave—let him merge in the general run and wait his development. . . . . . . . Still the final test of poems or any character or work remains."
Grass, the handkerchief of the Lord he said. Yes, he said that as well as to celebrate the loser as well as the victor because all were in battle together. One wonders what old Walt would think to say now? It is the denouement of his oratory it seems. And Lloyd George to Toynbee wouldn't be at all surprised I think.
It is such that the state here has agreed to depose the governor. So they say or, so someone tells me so I won't be estranged from my own self. This is what the Lady has agreed to.
To put it simply, Whitman must have been my great great grand uncle. What has gone missing though in places such as the Silliman? What young Asian man was quoted as saying, Brainwaves with line breaks? He probably knew more than he was thinking!
Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty- topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!
Death comes to us all it seems and how I fear death for some peculiar reason now that I know how much I've missed all these years fretting over something that really wasn't worth fretting over. It must have been what the priests told me and how they scorned the slightest lighting of a candle under the old science lab! How they repudiated any kind of little thing!
Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!
Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;
This is the lexicographer or chemist . . . . this made a grammar of the old
cartouches,
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.
It is such that even the tiniest news alarms me anymore. The slightest touch can disrupt the Anchorite. Yes, Anchorite. Do not love those little windows!
It is not going to be Persia one hopes. How they've gunned for our type for so long and those of the other sects with their own heritage in mind! Everyone with an agenda but could it be that blood runs thicker than water? Or is it, knowledge of a certain type runs only to the few? It is, inspiration that achieves the most and at night, inspiration is the only song a person hears save for the occassional flare up of the dogs outside fighting over a scimpy meal. That little female up on the roof had her ears cut off by the Syrians and fed to her. Her imagination must run wild and now, her safety assured...she must want to return to the pack very soon. Her eyes well now with poly-mixins. If only a person could just go live with the dogs where one belongs!
I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric product,
And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.
Yes....yes. I was shown this orchard in a dream. Resembled what one might expect a partridge in a pear tree might look like. It was only a tree with perfect spherical fruits ready to be picked. I was gifted that night and then the evolution of all dreams descended on me only, when I awoke, I could not speak of it thoroughly or at all! I was a mute. Try as I might I could not achieve any part of it in a word or in a million. Now it is such that bits and pieces light up now and then of that vast period of canonical awareness but I've resisted the temptation to make use of it just yet. It needs some time to rest on the soul. To understand what part of it might be useful and what part might be just the stuff they want to hear. The sell out. There are bigger things than being understood and even bigger things than being known. Much bigger. A heaven where dogs can talk.
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come for-
ever and ever.
It is so. They are all over and to describe what they look like to the others is like talking to peas!
No...it was no lazy smile. Just a kind of jaundice.
And a cough. Terrible cough and memories of TB. That summer was a long one with the two of them en hopital. I think it was then I knew I'd have few to stand up for me in this world. And you? When did you realize such things? I'm almost embarrassed doogs to think that I am only just now getting an understanding of this thing called life. What a dingbat I must have been then when we first wrote like this. I must have been terribly idealistic then.
But as the hadith said...go to your mountain with your goats and stay there. It will one day be over and you'll be none the wiser.
And I should like to hear the name of anything between Sunday morning and
Saturday night that is not just as wonderful.
....and google it.
Cordially,
LJ Thomas
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