White hair, blue suits and red lips
ruled the decorous front line.

She wandered up like a silly duck
about to squawk at lions.

She stood tall for a child,
at the podium, as all the rest had,
even those two, three times her age.

She’d walked up there to protest,
but to their surprise, she talked about
the voice itself in a sing-song way.

She let her voice go high
and then very low and swung her arms wide
and up as if she really would just give up

And one leg pitched out to the side.
She might have even flapped.
I don’t recall what all she said
amid this circus act.

The whole room was confused smiles
and silence before she walked away.

Defying sense,
the old folks spent millions on a new
nuclear weapons plant that day.

It occurs to me that I am a preacher and so are you. Everyone is biased and we wear our bias/colors like plumage, some of us to bond us to a group out of defense or to better attack, which may still be some sort of defense.

On my pulpit, as an ex-patriot of the herd, I wear no colors in particular. Mine are a kaleidoscope of holograms reflecting the whole of creation, just what I can see from my vantage, this little spot here that I own, I own all that I survey, you included. In my ex-patriotism, I’m for no one in particular and everyone in general.

I just want to tell you, from my soapbox, that the sting you feel from the preacher man/woman on the corner is not from what is said or from accusing silence, but at the implication that you are not of the same ilk, that you, one or the other, are an alien object, not you both the integral subject. What stings you is the sense of disunion that comes from the absence of love.

Three quotes on love that illustrate my meaning:

“Love is not just looking at each other; it’s looking in the same direction.”
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.”
~Anais Nin

“Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”
~ Oscar Wilde

You can ignore the man on the corner but you can’t escape him in your heart. And you will never reach your enemy if you call him the enemy. You will never know his love if you tell yourself he is not capable or worthy of yours. Never love the lie that we, as individuals, are separate from the whole of creation and from each other, it has been proven untrue, not just in our hearts but by modern science! When I’m dead, I hope they put that on my tombstone so I can keep preaching love from the grave.

Cheers!

Woman is a jar of untold jellybeans.
Who keeps a jar of jellybeans? Why?
Who wants a jar of jellybeans, jellybeans?
Who knows the jar of jellybeans, jellybeans?
Who owns the jar of jellybeans, jellybeans?
Answer: Just the woman. I say it oughtta be the law.

“We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.” — Arthur S. Eddington

You think that crazy comes on gradually (least I did), that you have time to head it off at the pass, so to speak. Not for me at least. No, not in the least.

I think of crazy people and what comes to mind are like I dunno, gray and fearful, mumbling, twitching bunnies,  (though some not so tame).

I’m fumbling for words here…

Ah, what do I know of crazies? I’m talking to myself right now on a computer, seems less strange but it ain’t  necessarily so.  The doctor says I don’t seem crazy and so there’s none of that *tension*, you know… talking ’bout crazy stuff is just somethin’ we like to chat about now and then.

For instance, did you know crazy people are not strangers to reason. Their reasons just aren’t the norm. Or so I’m told.

Sanity is friends with the empirical I gather. The empirical is just that which can be proven …to a doctor. We’re supposed to agree on what’s “real”.

Tchyeah right.

Why don’t they see the gift it is to flee from reason and the tyranny of consensus? Don’t tread on me. My crazy don’t need a reason. I don’t have no  hang-ups or fixations, what have ya…

I don’t need a reason nor some professional validation to accept what I see clearly here before me: this ghost, this inexplicable, ridiculous apparition. I’m not even afraid of it. No, I have to laugh, just from startling when I catch sight of it. Otherwise, there’s not so much to be jolly ’bout at the moment. So I don’t mind the ghost(s) even if you can’t enjoy them.

Yes, there’s more than one.

I know what you’re thinking, it’s what I thought before this, those Hollywood ghosts, those Poe-ish, Gothic ghosts and so forth but no, sorry to disappoint.

This ghost right here appeared sitting in our old rocking chair. But I tell you, and try to imagine this, ha-ha…get this…
it’s just the soul

OF THE CHAIR!

Ain’t that a hoot?
hahahahahaha

And it talks.
hahahahahaha

And what it talks about is so boring!
hahahahahaha

You know, if you could imagine what a chair would know…
hahahahahaha

Well now I know. If you don’t have a sense of humor, then be glad you don’t see  (and hear) my ghosts.

Oh, one other thing I found out here,  crazy people don’t think they’re crazy.
But I do. Ipso facto, I’m not.
hahahahahaha
Whateva.

Are you comfortable? Would you like a chair? Oop, don’t sit there, not in that one…
hahahahahaha

Oh my goodness what she just said about your ass…
Ahem…let’s leave it there
shall we?

[Author's Note: "Powys' Ghosts" was inspired by the works of John Cowper Powys wherein ordinary things have spirits and lives all their own and communicate with one another, even human spirits.]

Personality is the only permanent thing in life; and if truth, beauty, goodness, and love, are to have permanence they must depend for their permanence not upon some imaginary law in a universe half-created by personality but upon the indestructible nature of personality itself. ~ John Cowper Powys, from “The Complex Vision“

Venus Libertina, my Sophia,
death’s muse who would be widow,
now peers through my prison window,
whose invention’s she, the gods’ or man’s?

What her seekers set in motion:
those Zoroastrians sought her union
with the King of Gods–did they there, that hour
merge me, mere Yeshua, syncretic:
Aeneas, Buddha, Mithras; Mazda; Horus?

Beyond the din of captive bodies and their ignorance,
beyond armies claiming mandate of the Logos,
beyond enslaving orthodoxy, beyond ideal,
beyond form’s confusion, beyond the lie, beyond words,
hear you how my muse sings forth
endless, inhuman excogitation?
So why then do the Romans call this morning light
love’s seed and inspiration?

Magna Mater to no one, she beckons, “End,”
trotting out her hot, barren orb
slow and languid ’round, a careful compass,
erstwhile, men contrived their epics, magic
mysteries, tragic and comedic skits in the
quintessence of her dark, emblazoned skirts.

Insensate, she elucidates the divine path,
seen past, of small part finds our humble earth.
Her mandala lucubrates secret truths
awaiting a nirvana to be parsed.

You, Judas, once mused how my captors praise
the many stars and not the One. I’d have laughed,
yet, my gaze was fixed upon impending gnosis.

There’s precious nuance praxis hinges on.
If I should say, “There is no darkness here
without some light,” could faithless Peter
build a church upon what he thrice denied?

They’ll paint my Venus pale, a virgin,
for Constantine’s militia will hate the women.
Sprung from a rock was their Mithras.
They’ll deign Peter rock, not you, Judas,
nor Mary Magdalene nor Judas Thomas.
For you my friend, just “traitor”.
I am sorry. You understood Us.

For you, dear Judas, not for silver,
for a kiss, I offer bread as parting gift:
follow and own your own cross to Pleroma.
Mind silent, we’ll both find Libertina.

"Safety Net" by Pulizer-Prize-winning political cartoonist, Tom Toles @ Washington Post.

I’m a patriot and I have declared war on the American poor.  No American should be poor, period. America is too good for poverty. We’re better than China, India and all the rest who treat their people like parts easily replaced daily like dirty socks. I LOVE AMERICA, my family, my neighbors… I love everyone, in theory…I can also demonstrate TOUGH LOVE for the whole world by not giving in to the temptation to lower our American standard of living just to compete with the Third World. Let them fight for our scraps if they won’t raise their own standard for their people. Let them be the ones who keep giving up and giving in. Let them be the slaves but not Americans. We are the land of the free, home of the brave and that’s not a cliche if we truly are free. It’s a joke if we’re not. I’m brave enough to admit I’m a Hater. God how I detest poverty. Do the poor dress nice? Do they smell good? Do they talk about anything fun? Are they ever having fun? Admit you do too; own up; every American hates poor people and poverty. Even the American poor hate their own poverty, they hate themselves when they take a handout because America is too good for charity. We Americans are all too good for it, without exception.

By raising the stakes at home, we declare war on the poor everywhere. To hell with poverty and anyone who wants poverty to continue to exist here. To hell with anyone who thinks it’s part and parcel to American Capitalism. The only corporations who want Americans to be poor are the ones feeding off their sick and dessicated, walking corpses. Those corporations need to die out and quick. Yes, we need to send them to the hell they would make us remain in, the hell where America continues to suck majorly: the bizarro world of the broken system, insanity, failure, and obsolescence.

After years of sitting on the fence regarding health care, I’ve finally settled in favor of single payer healthcare to salvage our broken system (though it would be better, IMO, to scrap the system and start over,  I’m being practical. This is a fairly quick fix.) In fact, I find now that due to the changing needs of the marketplace that favor flexibility and innovation, I’m in favor of a number of socialist improvements that would strengthen the American workforce.

The deciding factor was my realization that technological advancement and market demand for innovation will render jobs obsolete faster than Americans can adapt for some time to come (it may eventually level out but not for the foreseeable future). Innovation means regularly dispensing with the old. That equates to jobs and people. And I’m not talking about COBOL people trying to compete in our present marketplace, I’m talking about everything changing on a dime and suddenly they’re singing, “Brother, can you spare a dime?“. We’re in a technological boom comparable to the Industrial Revolution. This is our Technological Revolution. The market demands we respond quickly with highly specialized and skilled labor. If we don’t take care of our people, there will evolve a new poor, not just what strict authoritarians have traditionally considered as those who fail. Telling them to man up is tantamount to declaring, “Let them eat cake!” We’ve seen how well that went over. Share the cake Americans. There’s enough for everyone. If we don’t, America gets a major FAIL.

Conservative arguments against measures to ensure the general welfare always have a moral flavor. But their attitudes were traditionally against rewarding the lazy or stupid. They favor education but are strongly against free handouts. “Nobody gets a free lunch!” In theory, with Capitalism, the cream is supposed to rise to the top and the dregs to the bottom. That’s no longer the norm. The new paradigm is more like Russian Roulette. Some win, some lose, and it’s remarkably random. This new random poor will contain some of our smartest and best who were simply just unlucky if luck fell in favor of innovation in a different direction. We still need them sound of body and mind and stable enough to respond to new demands.  We can’t afford to let anyone fail.  Especially not Americans who can adapt and learn new skills and continue to make a contribution to the betterment of society.

As it stands, you go to school, do well, get a great job, do great on the job working for a great company but still, you may be quickly rendered obsolete if new technology emerges that matches public demand. We need a safety net to allow people time to learn and adapt, ESPECIALLY people from rural areas who have less access to jobs and higher education. We need solidarity across the board, coast to coast, rural to urban, across all sectors. As it stands, a safety net only exists for people who already have economic security going into the job force and throughout OR people who are already poor. What good are they to progress and innovation as they are, unskilled and uncouth? The “safety net” for the poor is not such that adequately lifts them from poverty so they can keep America on top. You know the saying, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime”. This is NO LONGER TRUE if it’s a one-time opportunity. That man or woman is going to need to learn to fish differently maybe two or three times in their life and they will need time to adapt. As for the poor, the poor don’t get the chance to learn to fish for the good jobs, no matter how smart or capable they are. If they don’t have the education, they are eliminated from fishing. They are useless. So I hate the poor. Let’s get rid of them by assimilating them into the comfort of the middle. There’s a reason there’s less crime and violence in the suburbs. If everyone had their basic needs met, we’d be restored to a more idyllic era on the social level. So long as some flourish at the expense of others, there will be violence and crime. Eliminate violence and crime by eliminating poverty. Go on and hate it if such violence of emotion may motivate you to action on behalf of the common good.

In the diversity of America, we have a significant class disparity. I’m not against the rich, just the poor! We are not so diverse, we are mostly moderately poor. Very few people are actually rich and even fewer own corporations. If the cream actually rose to the top, wouldn’t there be more rich people in America, assuming America is so “great”? Problem is, coming from money doesn’t make people smarter or better at their jobs. If we commit to classism, we’ll be less competitive. Classism is not a moral viewpoint, it’s based in greed, selfishness, and bigotry. The old fallback arguments about taxes being a theft of labor are just lazy thinking in our present world when no one is actually free from risk of the bullet of poverty that hits at random. Conservatives and libertarians need to catch up to the present now, before they become victims of their retrograde thinking. The poor are no longer just “junkies, welfare moms, and drunk, deadbeat dads”. They are potentially anyone at all at any time.

From poet, Kenneth Patchen’s “Journal of Albion Moonlight”:

“I hate the poor. Once again: I hate the poor. Oh yes, the kingdom of heaven – through the eye of the needle; but I have no use for their heaven, I could invent fifty better ones in a single day. I was born of the poor. I never had enough to eat. I never had decent clothes. I couldn’t stomach it. I said: I won’t be poor. I go hungry often enough now, but I am not ‘of the poor.’ I am richer than the richest banker. Because: I hate the poor out of my love for them. Until all men unite in hating the poor, there can be no new society. Stalin loves the poor – without them he could not exist. The revolutions of the future must be directed not against the rich but against the poor. To be poor means to be blind, demoralized, debased. The poor have been the slop-pails of capitalism, repositories for all the filth and brutality of a filthy, brutal world. Do not liberate the poor: destroy them – and with them all the jackal-Stalins that feast on their hideous, shrunken bodies. How the Church and the false revolutionaries draw together: love the poor – for they are humble. I say hate the poor for the humility which keeps their faces pressed into the mud. The poor are the product of cruel and false society. Lift them to the stars; tell them to walk proudly on this earth: the cathedrals and broad roads were made by the labor of their hands; it is the duty of all true revolutionists not only to restore these things into their hands but also – and this is the key – to put them into their heads. Empty stomachs, empty heads: fill both with good food. Don’t shove Peter the Great back into their throats.”

Get sick once without insurance and it can ruin your whole family’s ability to adapt for a long time to come. That hurts America’s pride. Morality aside, that’s not good for this country’s work force. Having a cowboy attitude for Lady Luck bestowing wealth at whim is stupid when you have to gamble with four to six years of expensive schooling beforehand. What a waste of money. What a waste of time. What a bore.

Our educational system needs updating as well. Education is too expensive and brief.  Education must be ongoing. A college degree in our present system saddles our children with debt at the outset. What’s the purpose of that? Is the piece of paper really necessary? Is that an impressive reward if it’s a degree in some obsolete programming language? Who cares? Like that will win you a job in three years when your shiny cool fresh-out-of-college-job disappears. In the spirit of Web 2.o Socialism like Wikipedia, all classes should be broadcast online for free and Internet access to educational materials, lectures, and syllabus should be free to all. Some are already. It’s time to end the impediments to Americans who want to gain the skills necessary to compete on the international technological market. People who are sick or eating out of dumpsters are not going to be able to adapt and compete intellectually. Employers should not expect people to come with a degree. If they’re not going to offer on the job training, they should just offer an interview and competency test to demonstrate proficiency. Anything else is discrimination. Requiring people to pay for their right to compete for a job is discrimination based on class.

To think of a new model for the job marketplace, use the success of Wikipedia for an example. If Wikipedia came in editions that were only available for purchase, that would be like the old encyclopedias that have, like print in general, become increasingly obsolete. If people don’t like that edition of Wikipedia and it’s fixed in that state, unable to be corrected until the next version arrives on the market, that edition having failed could mean the failure of Wikipedia in toto and would mean the end of future Wikipedias. A more flexible and adaptive type of information matrix would take it’s place. Wikipedia is the success that it is today for the very reason that jobs are being rendered obsolete. Wikipedia’s success would mean that Encyclopedia Brittanica would fail. All those smart people at Brittanica lose their jobs. Are they out on the street? Or should they log on and help to continue to improve the new, adaptive Wikipedia or Linux or provide open-source software? Well, there’s no job and paycheck in doing so, however, it’s an activity that’s in the interest of the common good. It’s volunteerism that is nowadays, more or less taken for granted. It’s labor expended for one’s fellow humans with no pat on the back. You never get to see these gift laborers who share their wealth of knowledge and expertise for good. How can we ensure they don’t die of starvation or illness for continuing to improve a system that rendered their livelihood obsolete? With a new safety net provided in favor of innovation.   Socialist Capitalism 2.o.

I honestly think that most corporations will be in favor of this improvement of the American workforce. They are presently looked at to provide benefits but if everyone has benefits, their competitive incentives will be of a different kind. Instead of people competing for the best job to get fringe benefits like comprehensive health care, now how about the best corporations offer Lasik surgery or physical therapy or a newly beautiful set of teeth? Or a company credit card? Sure, some have this already but in general, I think this type of improvement (eliminating the bottom) could lead to a shift in quality of life all the way to the top. America’s new “American Dream” will once again, inspire emulation rather than revulsion from the world for being fascist and outmoded. If our present tactic was working out we would be more competitive than we are. Don’t tell me Americans in general aren’t motivated by the finer things and that this method won’t make America a better place to live and work! That aside, the sad fact is, unless America provides a better package to working people, America will not compete with China or elsewhere. We’re going to have to address the fact that Americans are not motivated to excellence by the promise of their basic needs being covered if they do well.  We’re motivated by our individual affinities. This will not change. From a moral and free-market standpoint, rewarding Americans with something they actually want, not just need, is win/win.

Between walls and hills
where green booze bottles
splay fragmented among the dead
fish and coal fly ashes,
beside shores where too much
or too little grows well,

Between body bags and body farm,
diseased needles and crusted,
discarded, bloody condoms
that in this Sodom tells
of love or desperation?

Between tidy lies and lawns,
between votes cast, lots pulled,
and elections bought or won,
freedoms lost, greased palms,
and bills crimes committed
by lobbyists and politicians,

Between cracked panes and arrests,
twisted arms and vain protests,
obscenities and wrists vented,
bullet-riddled premises
or alerts to 911 sent,

Between the shots and bombs
fired or lobbed in revenge
at peopled church pews
or from or at a Muslim
(it makes no difference),

Between commercial breaks,
and the sweet mountaintop wastelands
of Southern Appalachia, my home,
where Bibles were once
banged but now are hugged,
where creeks and wells
polluted with cow dung
and pesticides, coal
fines and rubble come
from what began a
mountain but is now
a pillar of salt,

Between the ears and in hearts
too preoccupied to hear or feel,
between U.S. and them,
and prayers for us and ours,

In a barn beneath a golden calf tarred
and papered with devalued cash
that was once our dreams and labor
lies a new and naked child,

And what of it?

[Author's Note: The title, "Between Lots", as well as the first paragraph are references to two short poems, listed below. "Lots", "Sodom", "Pillar of Salt", and "Golden calf" are all references to the Bible. This poem is staged outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, at the foot of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, specifically, at the foot of Clinch Mountain, in "Rich Valley". On the other side of the mountain lays "Poor Valley". Once upon a time, beyond this point was considered the "Wild West" and I live along the Wilderness Road settlers once traveled to get there. This mountainous region was populated with a stubborn breed of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, later turned Southern Baptist. My husband's family is of this ilk, the Whites and Sellers families. His Whites came over on the Mayflower.

The poem is generally about the degradation of the demarcation between the old ways and the new and the rural and urban here in this place.  At various points, it's about a loss of individual identity, loss of faith, loss of blissful ignorance of what goes on elsewhere, and about theft of value and "family values".

The stanza about politics is about the loss of faith in people in positions of authority who write the laws Americans live by. It's a story told from rural/conservative point of view, invaded by an onslaught of "liberal depravity" and midway through, the urban idyllic is suddenly attacked by the conservative when guns are fired at peopled church pews, this is a reference to a shooting at a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville.

Here and there, I've blurred the line between the urban and rural with fuzzy logic, confusing the point of view. This is an expression of the Quantum Aesthetic.

When I wrote it, I had recently read "Between Walls" by William Carlos Williams and "Between Two Hills" by Carl Sandburg. My intention was to fill in the space between the lots characterized in these poems and give voice to the anguish of losing an idyllic, agrarian social identity. It's both from my perspective and not as I'm a liberal living in an highly conservative area. I'm no fundamentalist but I cannot remain truly separate from the perspectives of my family and neighbors here in rural East Tennessee.

Other local news/cultural references include the TVA coal ash spill, mountaintop removal, NPS contamination of water in this karst region, the UTK body farm. Larger issues (local to national and world lots) include the wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan, and national politics.  As of 2009, fewer rural people own a computer or often use the Internet than in the cities and urban suburbs.  Much of this news is brought here via the television.

"In ...Appalachia...where Bibles were once banged but now are hugged" is a reference to the threat of religious relativism and postmodernism denying the authority of a single doctrinal narrative. Here again, about loss, the church has experienced an increasing loss of new membership over the years. Young people increasingly look elsewhere than religion to find the meaning of existence.

Additionally, there is symbolism in certain pairings and choices of wording that I won't get into here for the sake of brevity.]

Between Walls by William Carlos Williams

the back wings
of the
hospital where
nothing
will grow lie
cinders
in which shine
the broken
pieces of a green
bottle

Between Two Hills by Carl Sandburg

Between two hills
The old town stands.
The houses loom
And the roofs and trees
And the dusk and the dark,
The damp and the dew
Are there.

The prayers are said
And the people rest
For sleep is there
And the touch of dreams
Is over all.