C.J.Sellers

by C.J. Sellers

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.

Hellbender Press, East Tennessee’s environmental news mag, may be returning as soon as January 2010:
http://www.metropulse.com/news/2009/nov/25/hellbender-press-plans-return/

An online film about new realities and new possibilities via Internet communication and collaboration

by C.J. Sellers

I.

I am the mother of “Fringe” who some say is a son-of-a-bitch (that makes me the bitch of origin). I gave him the name “Taylor” but now  he’s a hybrid of him now/him then so for the purposes of this poem I’ll refer to him as “Fringe Taylor”.

What of this nefarious person who was born more artist than citizen, born of an artist out on the fringe? “Spawn-of-a-fringe-bitch” (I coined a new epithet).
What of them?

I freely admit I am a Mother Bitch who encouraged a son’s phantasmagoria (read: delusions, psychosis, mania) if the allusions were just him, if the dangerous ideas were his choice;  his poetry and art, his to keep or give.
I called that freedom and eschewed medication.

Sparing the rod too, I tried not to mold him too much, to belittle nor otherwise oppress except when he didn’t do the dishes or keep his room clean or clean the dog up–no Internet. I didn’t teach him to fear dirt or darkness. I didn’t send him to the public schools that prepare for future slavery, uniformity, mediocrity, and blind obedience. I didn’t encourage him to covet, to consume, crave for approval, or live on credit, and by not doing so,  unleashed upon the harsh and authoritarian world, a new breed of crazy, starving artist, one without baggage.
For I insist his artists’ worth is not  in what quantifiable commodities are produced.

As other mothers polish A+ report cards, praise their childrens’ conformity with pride at this promise of high-paying job, I do not hide from you my guilty pleasure to see this young man sleeping happily outside, free, more or less with a backpack of worthless stuff and a thrift store guitar just pickin’  tunes and scribbling doodles in a notebook under the stars and among The Travelers.
Any pity in my heart is reserved for myself for harboring any foolhardy expectations for what would be or that he would always be at my side.

Some say poetry is more how the words are arranged. Some say art is how the medium is plied or paint laid. Some even call conversation an art. These may be the experts who say this, maybe the sideliners, spectators, or sometime-dabblers who don’t know what it means to be free much less express freely. Some just assert their bias. While they hate the cliche, I suspect they hate it so because they may live the cliche whereas Fringe and I accept these words that come upon like second hand clothes. My son ornaments them and makes of these his own clothes; he wants to think his own thoughts; choose his own words; be his own man. Whatever comes of it = Not cliche.
And I was the reckless author of him, this living story that went on to be a song of Himself.
I am Goddess, He is my art at a distance.

II.

A doctor tells me on the phone they have my son, that he’s crazy, delusional, psychotic, maybe even schizophrenic and they have him on medication. I don’t get defensive, I am truly alarmed but my true words and reasons are unhinged as I ask appropriate questions and navigate the institutional system. Soon I’m smiling, knowing they can’t see the smile growing on my face (relishing this private freedom). I’m smiling as my heart restores itself to faith when they describe his suspicious quirks.
They don’t know how they undo their work to release him to my “protective” embrace.

They’re releasing him because they say the medication’s working and so they pack him on a bus to me so we can have Thanksgiving together and I am thankful, I don’t wait to give thanks ’til Thanksgiving: that strange holiday that supposedly celebrates celebrating coalition, good food, and mutually independent volition. I don’t believe those pioneers who broke bread with the “savages” were as frightened then as our herd of contented Americans are now, such easy pickins for The Man, so ripe for harvest.
(I can’t wait to see him.)

III.

Fringe Taylor got on the phone then and told me about The Harvesters and what “the harvest” means. He said there are belief harvesters there now, he’s there among them. (This is supposed to be more of his delusional thinking.) But I, his mother, mother of his mind, I see the metaphor and understand.
I wait for the bill to come in the mail.

While there’s time before the bus back home departs, Fringe tells me of his travels, of long walksand hunger, meals stolen, and confesses he is craving for his first “legal” whiskey in a bar he hopes to share with me, his mother, his closest family and lifelong friend. He describes drug experimentation past and done. He tells of books, ideas, and wondrous things, of strange people and places (but spares the fucks), describes beautiful fireworks observed from a mountaintop, where he spent the night in some temple and I ask if he saw the forests burn in Los Angeles. Though he was there, strangely, he did not. It was there he was found naked and wandering (read: out of his mind) and was soon incarcerated. He says he cut his dreads off while in jail, where he was sent for panhandling.  But not because anyone told him to– because he saw “the signs”. (Don’t think it’s drugs, he wasn’t on them. I’ve been assured that he was tested.) He proceeds to tell me of apprenticing to a western psychic, of interstate bus rides and concert tours and crowds, of peyote and graves in New Mexico and of solitary pilgrimages to nowhere in particular, of friends he’s made, and love, about new music, and a world clock that he swears someone said connects EVERYTHING and is directed from above by four invisible people on a plate, suspended by a bird.  I wonder if this is crazier than believing in God. I am so proud of him and of us, of This. How many mothers hear their sons speak and hear their souls unleashed in the words?
Doctors point “word salad”, my heart paints poetry.

by William Blake

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is God, our father dear:
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew.
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.

I enjoyed watching this video again. Howard Zinn discusses the idea that violence and warfare are “Human nature”.

by C.J. Sellers

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.

One of my favorite films. When I first saw this so many years ago, it was an eye-opener. I later picked up a copy of  Fritjof Capra’s “The Tao of Physics” and began to find my place in the order of things, as part of the interconnected whole.

by C.J. Sellers

Tonight
Bone wonders why he goes out
wandering at night.
Why all this looking
in windows wrongly?
What? For spite?
He asks himself.

Bone’s so disgusted with himself.
“You don’t care ’bout nothin’,”
he says as he undresses to go.

“So what’s wrong with you?”

He can’t defend himself
from himself. He answers
shyly, “I think I may be
looking for someone
and I wander if it’s true.
No I wander even if it’s not true.”
He laughs even though
it’s not funny at all.

He does wonder.

Is it even a him or a her?
Is it even a him or a her?
Is it even a him or a her?

Bone struggles for a face.

It’s getting even
worse as the days go by.
Bone goes through the days now
faking his way through
waiting for the moment
waiting for the sun,
waiting for it to…
go down so he can slip out.

Sometimes Bone hears them arguing.

Sometimes they’re making love.
Sometimes…

Sometimes they’re making love.

Sometimes he gets thirsty
while he’s out.

Maybe he wanders because
when he dreams he’s
lost, alone, out in
some wasted space
with no one in sight,
not for miles. Not,
no not for miles and miles.
This makes him feel like
such a child.

This makes him so hungry.

He hears dogs barking in the distance.
He hears a car start and drive away.
Then so much nothing.

And Bone wonders if this is
the way things outta be,
if he should be alone
and if so why? “What did I
ever do so very wrong?”
he asks aloud
to the mirror.

He imagines the pain, and
imagines again, the pain
of the cuts on his knuckles
if it breaks.

Sometimes he brings along a bone
or some bacon. Now the dogs are
his friends. He goes and gets
something now. Something for
the ones who are
not his friends.

He’s got his answer
and it makes him angrier
than it should.
Now he’s so angry
and he’s so angry,
he’s so angry
and he dunno
why.

If fades again.
But he knows it will return.

Sometimes he hears a child cry.

So tonight he hopes luck
will work its magic,
he hopes it will all work,
work itself out.

He hopes this time someone
looks out a window,
looks back at him and
he knows, he knows he
don’t care if they like it.
Just let them look
at him once. Let
them see his…

Look out,
look out the window,
come and look, come. Now.
Yesterday. No, way back when.
Way back before all this began.

LOOK AT ME. Pick a fight. Pull out a gun.

Sometimes he wants to open the window
and go right on inside.

He’s so bored of waiting.
He’s so tired of wandering.

Tonight
something will happen.
He can hardly wait.

He licks his lips and shifts.

Unarmed and unguarded,
he goes out, he goes out
and leaves. Bone leaves
his sad self behind.