I haven't had a good rant for awhile, so I thought I'd indulge.  Mix things up a bit.

Finding Waldo

I’m amazed at how complacent people can be about spiritual things. Seriously. “Well, if God exists, he would come down here and prove himself to me.”  Right.  Makes me want to slap my head feeling like somehow I just became part of a Three Stooges movie.  Or this one: “If God really wanted me to see something, he’d put it on that billboard next to the highway I use when I drive home after work.”

Sure, we all want things to be easy, especially important things.  But how logical is it to expect every good thing we want to just come walking in our door, and every good book to have a flashy appealing cover?  What would you think of me if I said: “Until Queen Elizabeth comes and proves to me that she is real, and royal – I shall not pay taxes or use her stamps?”  Sounds fair, yes?  Well hey, I have high standards; no respect for the Queen until she comes and proves herself to me personally.

Things are so much worse in the Television Age, where children learn from infancy to sit and be served, and are constantly bombarded by commercials trumpeting to them that they deserve only the best, and they deserve whatever they want.

So, why put any effort into anything?      Why look past your nose?

Maybe because when every good thing doesn’t just come waltzing in the door with ease, well, that can get  depressing.  It’s really not such a good feeling when expectations have been built up so high.

The most powerful people I know have such common boring names and don’t look powerful at all.  And the most powerful books I have ever read have all been nondescript with worn or bland covers.  Some of the most gentle souls I have ever met look like brutes, and some of the softest and most frail feminine flowers I have ever met have actually been brutes.   So, I no longer understand the concept of a person relying on their own expectations.

It doesn’t work for frozen dinners – they never look like the package!  Yeah, it is easier, but, it is also lazy and illogical.  Sure, it helps if you stir those frozen dinners, and slit the cover like they tell you to.   I guess, if you put some effort into it, you have a chance for it to look like the ‘serving suggestion’ image.

 

Waldo should jump out at me any time now.

I’ve had the book open all day.      I think that’s fair.

 

Choices.  Friendship is a series of choices.   Close friends are those you feel safer about choosing to share more of your intimate emotional self with.  Lasting friendships are people who habitually make choices in your favor, and you reciprocate. 

Hey, it's random photo time again!!!  ( I took 1600 digital images this summer.)   The first two are from Kansas, the last one is from Colorado)

     

LADY OF MY ACQUAINTANCE

 

Your voice tells me you are tired

Of trying to ignore some things.

Your heart is filled with good desire,

But trapped, with gilded strings.

 

Your eyes tell me you are empty,

Confused and walking all alone.

You want to live life simply,

Like you were, when you were home.

 

Your spirit tells me you’ve been crying,

And seeing things you don’t want to.

You are a help and yet you need some.

That much, I am like you.

 

Reach out dear one, touch me,

And know that I love you.

Together you are always free.

I’ll do, what I can do.

 

OYSTER DRILL

 

The air is hanging silent

Like a blackboard never used.

You make no sound

You hear no sound

You hardly ever move.

 

And yet through all the dust of death

And murky tears of blue

I look into the sea of shells

And still I can see you.

 

I feel the pain you never show

I see the things you’ve seen

I know the way your spirit flows

You never have to scream.  

 

My Chemical Regression

 

Turn up the radio.

Give me some smoke.

Turn down the light,

And fire up my dope.

 

I want disembodied.

I want a toke.

I bounce to the music,

And I float like smoke.

 

Yeah, I’m buzzed into darkness,

But I can see,

There’s a place in this world,

Where I can be free.

 

Numb in the dark,

And floating around,

I return to the womb,

And soft muffled sound.

 

Let’s roll . . .

 

 

ONCE IN AWHILE, A SPIDER

 

With beauty to enchant you,

She shines among the dew

 

Builds a web of friends,

And gently lures you in

 

With actions so beautiful,

And motivations so evil.

 

 

 

CINDYESTELLA & I,

Adventure at Satis House

 

The wind blows here

The wind blows there

The wind blows garbage

In her hair.

 

It made her look so bad, she thought

And wished that she were free,

She tried to wash the garbage out,

And promptly named it me.

 

For down her nose she looks at me,

To swat me like a fly.

She’s nothing but contempt for me,

She’d applaud if I would die.

 

She hates me!  She hates me!

Only I’m too low to hate.

While casting for a trophy fish

I’m a tree that took the bait.

 

I’m a dream that’s come to haunt her,

A stain upon her face,

I’m nothing she wants to put on,

Her crowded trophy case.

 

She’d like to get rid of me,

Wants me to go away,

But I have no where else to go,

So here is where I’ll stay.  

 

 

 

THERE’S A HEARTACHE

THAT GOT CAUGHT IN MY EYES

 

There’s a heartache that got caught in my eyes

The starving man who looks, but can’t eat the food

Laid before him, soon puts out his eyes

You know he would if he could.

 

I feel the catgut that is twined around my heart,

My heart is throbbing, but I can’t cut it loose.

The string is cutting, it is bruising my heart.

My mind is caught in an emotional noose.

 

Why are the best gifts the ones that hurt most?

Why do I see what I do?

Why can’t I see only things that I want to?

Why must I live like a ghost?

 

Like the poor man, that sweeps the museum,

I care for art, that can never be mine.

The fancy rich man can buy diamonds and keep them

But I still work in the mine.

 

I feel the catgut that is twined around my heart,

My heart is throbbing, but I can’t cut it loose.

The string is cutting, it is bruising my heart,

My mind is caught in an emotional noose.

 

HOW GREAT IS YOUR GOD ?

 

I've been watching, and I haven’t heard anyone else say this yet. 

I’ve been waiting. 

So, . . . I guess, I will just go ahead and ask. 

 

How great is your god, really?

                        How great is a god who must rely on mindless followers to kill women and children? 

How great is a god who must rely on adolescent suicide bombers to see his wrath expressed?

How great is a god who apparently thirsts for the blood of women and children?

How great is a god who is pleased by followers marching in the streets chanting “Death!” to this country, or to that country?   “Death!” “Death!” “Death!”

How great is a god who is glorified by someone sawing off the head of a helpless prisoner?

 

How great do the followers of such a god really believe their god is, if they hide among women, and fire from behind children, and wear no uniforms, and build schools and houses over their bunkers and ammo dumps?

 

I have heard it said; “Submit, Convert, or Die” is the gospel invitation of such a god.

Somewhere, I guess,  I am missing the appeal of this. 

I mean, If I Convert, aren’t I supposed to strap a bomb onto myself and Die anyway?  -killing as many women and children who don’t Submit as possible?

Where is the appeal?

Okay, okay, once I Convert and blow myself up,  - then I get celestial virgins forever.  Got it.

(But isn’t that very mutually exclusive;   -my virgins forever?)

 

That, then, is based completely on my faith in the delivery of those goods, in the future, by my god, for ME (and tough luck for those women and children I kill when I die a martyr, right?)

Okay, I guess that brings us back to starting over at the top, doesn’t it? 

(return to first question).

 

 

Here’s a collection of my shorts. 

The only place you can find more of my shorts than this,

would be in my laundry hamper.  

 

(Yes, I did enjoy writing that.)

 

 

GOVERNMENT

 

The world is round

And spinning fair

Kept in motion

By blasts of hot air.

 

 

SMALL TALK

 

Small Talk refers

Not to conversation

But to the mind.

 

 

UNSOCIAL

 

People scream

And people talk

I’d rather listen

To a rock.

 

 

EMPHASIS                                   

 

Can you hear MEEEEEEE?                                     

Can YOU hear meeeeeee?                                     

Can you HEAR meeeeeee?                                 

CAN you hear meeeeeee?                                      

 

 

IRONY                               

 

The blossom buds                                             

The blossom blooms                                                     

The blossom dies                                              

And brings forth fruit.

 

 

FLORAL FRONT             

 

When I look upon the wall                                              

And see the paper there,                                                  

I’m reminded of the frozen smile                                   

I see upon you dear.                                                  

 

 

 SHADOWS

 

Shadows are so poetic

They come in different shades

And ours, fools that we are,

We think are all man made.

 

It’s really a  kick to read over this old stuff I wrote  +30 years ago and still be amazed by some of it.    It’s exciting when it still lights me up.  What was this doing in my dustbin?   Anyway, I did a quick edit of my old book, and I am energized to post some things.   At the current rate, though, it’s going to be maybe two weeks or so before we get to those.   Yes I’m a tease (if anyone is actually following any of this) but it is timely to mention, considering what I’m posting up today. . .   

 

I should probably say a few things about this next batch of poems.  There are a lot of them.  They are chaotic and twisted.  That was my world view at the time.  They weren’t written to be pretty or enjoyed. Quite the opposite.  I’ll spare you most of them, and only post up three examples.

 

Poem 1   -Nursery rhymes were much more important when I was growing up, than they are today.  They represented innocence and wholesomeness and were held dear by everyone who despised me.  Naturally I wanted to cut them up and make them bleed. The poem expresses how upside down the world was for me.

 

Poem 2   -No nursery rhyme better exampled this than ‘Mary had a little lamb’ with all of it’s religious symbols and idyllic imagery.  Well, this was my idyllic version.  It conveyed my psychopathic lack of sympathy for any pain suffered by others – especially others who were popular and idyllic and who were everything I was not.   I rather enjoyed feeding Mary to the gator.   (In case you don’t know, a ‘moat’ is a water filled trench dug around one’s castle to keep unwanted people out.)   

 

Poem 3  -This poem I chose because it has a story to go with it.  I actually turned this in at school, for a creative writing assignment, to the stilted teacher who was also the faculty sponsor of our student council.  Ha ha! Surprisingly she gave it back to me with an A- or B+  or something  and said absolutely nothing about it.  LOL.  I bet if I turned this in today  -I would get arrested, and questioned, and expelled from school. . .   

 

 

GOOSE YOUR MOTHER

 

Mother Goose was pregnant

So everybody knew

She’d been messing with that weed again

That grows behind the shoe

 

The children were all horrified

To see animal passion

So Jack ran in and grabbed their plumbs

And in the corner smashed them.

 

The pieman then threw quite a fit

Granddad twice struck noon

Jack sat on his candlestick

The cow stayed on the moon.

 

Georgy Porgey had an orgy

Jack Sprat ate a knife

Peter picked a peck of worms

And King Cole smashed his pipe

 

Little Miss Muffet puked her crumpets

Mary’s garden filled with weeds

And from a tub there was heard a shout

“Faggots are we three!”

 

 

WATCH THE GATOR WEIGHT

 

Mary had a little lamb

She thought it was a goat

She took it with her everywhere

To bathe, to school, the moat

 

The gator thought them quite a sight

And tore into them both

Don’t want to make the gator fat

So next time use a boat.

 

 

 

I HAVE TO LAUGH

 

A saber sliced into the tree

The thud was coldly loud

The head bounced off the blade

And cruelly rolled around.

 

Both hands slid down inside the neck

And tore it slow apart

Gushing blood upon the corpse

A lovely madman’s lark.

 

Who soon was in the street again

Licking the blade with his tongue

Looking for trick-or-treaters

And more good Halloween fun.

 

Till stabbing from the shadows

Both hands and saber fell

Splitting a child’s head apart

“Gee, Halloween is swell.”

 

The child fell back stiff as a board

And all his brains ran out

And soaked his hair and costume fair

Where rose a silent shout.

 

The other child stood horrified

Blood bursting from her eyes

Watching the blade push through her chest

Too young to make a cry.

 

“Halloween is a great time

To have fun with your friends.”

Just make sure you stay alive

And do not end up dead.