C.J.Sellers

by C.J. Sellers

“Josmar Trujillo is trying to cross the bridge
from Reactionary to Revolutionary.”

And what of them! Those rarefied American Elms
Ulmus americana, the White Elms that boomed large,
clustered and towering, condemning the new and young
with damning shade after all these many years of
enjoying their grace and wealth of sun.

They complain of us yet see how in winter they don’t mind
the young fodder or whatever’s down there that works and dies–
our corpses hide their tender roots all day and night.
Do the poor saps warm from obligation or is it fate
where in shade the progeny fell and when?

Tree of Heaven, Josmar Trujillo exclaims (in hate),
What of this old forest? Fuck this usury, I say good firewood.
Though these sprouts are lost, so what, they would have been.
When the smoke clears, there at the base, generations
of diversity to live free amid the blessed sun!

So say we all, as Josmar echoes Che, “Vive la Revolución!”
Come lightning, come wind, spark! Bring it all down in flames
and the young leaves of the cultivar, American Liberty
will be the first of us to dance amid the ash
and stretch to face the sun again.

Just when you think things are starting to shape up a little, Ireland goes and declares blasphemy illegal, and now “Islamic states led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/01/irish-atheists-challenge-blasphemy-law

I have long appreciated Camus’ standpoint on theism:

“I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live my life as if there isn’t and die to find out there is.” ~ Albert Camus

But then there’s the other side of this logic. Comedian, Stephen Fry says, “If you assume there’s no afterlife, you’ll likely have a fuller, more interesting life.”

by C.J. Sellers

“I must be cruel only to be kind.”~Shakespeare, Hamlet

It occurred to her, in the shower, how
she, a writer, could call herself a sculptor.
Like cleansing, it began as an ambition to be finer

but as it turned out, her life’s art was not
revealing the form within the raw mass
but from the randomness of her life–

she saw herself wanting to find shape.
Intentioned hands feel their way around
like a world-maddened blind man’s that spread

over a lover’s face, seeking recognition.
As augurs seeking portents, these hands
are clumsy gods of clays, waxes, butters,

they, hot knives, cleave grace from error,
they strike and gouge at hard stubbornness
and only mollify in retrospect,

as each piece deemed chaff is dead
wood, stone, or clay that must/needs fall away
they comfort as it, reminding, pleads its case.

by C.J. Sellers

“If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”
~Kurt Vonnegut

He was born in November in that senate win.
What he won no corn fritter had ever had before.
In the city in the garden, you might say he found a plan;
You might say he even found his campaign therein.

Come from Honolulu to join the inner beltway loop.
He was on his way, fueled by waves of corn.
If promises are broken, the corn won’t really care.
Better popcorn than Republican.

But Manhattan’s Smoky Mountain lie
will bring a rain of fire in the sky.
Our stalks will be outlines against what walls remain.
Smoky Mountain lies,
Smoky Mountain lies.

He soon climbed the polls, saw his sea of fans below
spread wider than his eyes could even see.
To elect him might be crazy cuz he said we’d touch the sun.
We were glad to lose our minds and memories.

Now he stands at the podium, wondering if he’s wise.
Fine words replaced the corn and they’d won.
History tells if POTUS transcends or hides the corn.
Like once Moses did, clear words divide our field.

But back that old Smoky Mountain lie,
someone somewhere gets a mushroom in the sky.
Talk to POTUS in the town hall, this one might again reply
Smoky Mountain lies.

His rise was a wonder but our hearts still know some fear.
Of a simple thing we cannot comprehend–
They build bombs at the mountains and now want to make some more,
more bombs as a means toward our end.

But Y-12’s Smoky Mountain lies
will billow a bright fire in the sky.
He’d be just a corn nugget to believe that he could fly
Smoky Mountain lies.

Its believin’ Hocus-pocus lies
that feeds us this ol’ pie in the sky.
Roll us/smoke us, prize or POTUS, use us to fuel your car…
Smoky Mountain lies.
Smoky Mountain lies.
Smoky Mountain lies.

“A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.” ~William Blake from “Auguries of Innocence”

“I don’t think literature would be possible in a determined world. We might go through the motions but the heart would be out of it. Nobody could then ’smile darkly and ignore the howls.’ Even if there were no Church to teach me this, writing two novels would do it. I think the more you write, the less inclined you will be to rely on theories like determinism. Mystery isn’t something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge.”
— Flannery O’Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor)

by C.J.Sellers

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.

Kali & Death (reposted from Maria Mango, folksinger)

Kali’s boon is won when man confronts or accepts her and the realities she dramatically conveys to him. The image of Kali, in a variety of ways, teaches man that pain, sorrow, decay, death, and destruction are not to be overcome or conquered by denying them or explaining them away. Pain and sorrow are woven into the texture of man’s life so thoroughly that to deny them is ultimately futile. For man to realize the fullness of his being, for man to exploit his potential as a human being, he must finally accept this dimension of existence. Kali’s boon is freedom, the freedom of the child to revel in the moment, and it is won only after confrontation or acceptance of death. To ignore death, to pretend that one is physically immortal, to pretend that one’s ego is the center of things, is to provoke Kali’s mocking laughter. To confront or accept death, on the contrary, is to realize a mode of being that can delight and revel in the play of the gods. To accept one’s mortality is to be able to let go, to be able to sing, dance, and shout. Kali is Mother to her devotees not because she protects them from the way things really are but because she reveals to them their mortality and thus releases them to act fully and freely, releases them from the incredible, binding web of “adult” pretense, practicality, and rationality.

Download Maria Mango free mp3s!!
http://www.reverbnation.com/mariamango

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!

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro’ all its regions.
A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm’d for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf’s and lion’s howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand’ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus’d breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher’s knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won’t believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever’s fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov’d by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov’d
Shall never be by woman lov’d.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider’s enmity.
He who torments the chafer’s sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother’s grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar’s dog and widow’s cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer’s song
Poison gets from slander’s tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy’s foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist’s jealousy.

The prince’s robes and beggar’s rags
Are toadstools on the miser’s bags.
A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro’ the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return’d to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven’s shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar’s rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm’d with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer’s sun.
The poor man’s farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric’s shore.

One mite wrung from the lab’rer’s hands
Shall buy and sell the miser’s lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant’s faith
Shall be mock’d in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne’er get out.

He who respects the infant’s faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child’s toys and the old man’s reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar’s laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour’s iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket’s cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation’s fate.
The harlot’s cry from street to street
Shall weave old England’s winding-sheet.

The winner’s shout, the loser’s curse,
Dance before dead England’s hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro’ the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

~William Blake