Just a few more 30+ year old poems written back when I was but a wee little brat in school expressing a few of my annoying opinions. 

 

MASKED

 

I listen to the words you speak,

But all I ever hear,

Are words someone else has spoken

Falling on my ear.

 

You say; “Hello, how are you?”

“The weather’s nice today.”

“See you later alligator.”

“Have a happy day.”

 

You smile at everyone you meet

And never pick your nose.

Your actions don’t say who you are

So no one really knows.

 

I’d like to take your mask off,

Or pull it out six feet,

And let it snap back on your face,

And knock you off your feet.

 

 

VORTEX

 

1 2 3,  A B C

The gargantuans are free!

Help!  They’re after me!

I cut my finger off.

 

Stick your finger in a socket

Steal a radio and hock it

Wrench your eye out of it’s socket

Smash it in your pocket.

 

Hop aboard the old caboose?

Stick my head into the noose?

Start the train and pull away

Have anything I’d like to … gasp?

 

Yes

“If I thought that my answer were being made

To someone who would ever return to earth

This flame would remain without further movement

But since no one has ever returned

Alive from this depth, if what I hear is true

I answer you without fear of infamy.”                                         (Inferno, 27  61-66. Dante)

 

My custard is black and my blueberry’s brown.

A bird is eating my worm.

My elephants flying and my whale’s crawling by

While the maggots in my porridge do squirm.

 

There’s a straw in the eye of the tar baby too

But the fox done pulled out his fist

And after brushing his teeth and licking his chops

Began eating that tar baby goo.

 

There’s nothing else to live for

The whole world’s full of shit

This is that.

And that is it.

August 7, 2006

TINMAN

School is terror, gallows terror

I run to catch the bus

For if I don’t, I’ll meet boys

That love to beat me up.

Mom can cook, Dad is mean

And I’m a little runt.

We had a spelling bee at school

But I could only grunt.

The teacher asked a question

I spoke out the answer.

Everyone began to laugh

My heart beat faster, faster.

I took a bite out of my desk

It bit back hard at me.

I told a friend that class was dumb

And that’s when teacher hit me.

There’s always someone smarter

But teacher says I’m dumb

Now I talk hours to my lunch pail

And want to suck my thumb.

In the corner was my nose

The teacher put it there.

But I acted as hard as I could

To show I didn’t care.

So teacher taught the class to write

While I was in the corner

Then she brought me back to class

I soon preferred the former.

Teacher says you cannot talk

And do your studies well

So I proved that I can

I wish she’d go to hell.

The popular kids all stay away

From me, I have the plague.

Misfits, Outcasts, Stupid people

Are the friends I made.

“Rusty Tinman, ha ha ha

He’s a sight to watch

Hit him in the stomach

The head, the face, the crotch.”

We played baseball with a bat

But some kid, he hit me.

Life is just a hateful plot

I wish that I were free.

Found a pretty girl I like

But I make her puke.

Thought maybe it was her

But 13 is no fluke.

Pam calls me a baby.

Alan calls me a twerp.

Jenny thinks I’m funny.

I think their comments hurt.

“Rusty Tinman. Ha ha ha

Har har har har har!

Rusty is a Tinman!”

Now this Tinman has no heart.

More rank old stuff I wrote as a wee lad :

BORROWED BEAUTY

 

SAPLING OUTSIDE ROOM 104

OLD HOUSE AT NIGHT

A strand of silk across a gulf

Dark shadows roughly loom

The patter of rain in an old trash barrel

A silent empty room

 

A water-stained old bathtub

Dead leaves in a window well

The drone of a dying lightbulb

The wish to live and tell.

 

 

 

Those are my pictures of the Anastasi Manitou Cliff Dwellings.  Which do you like best?  (I prefer the upper left)

OOOOOhh. . .    A friend still had a copy of my first poetry book, TINMAN, that I printed way back in High School and he brought it by for me.  (Great for me, maybe not so great for you!)   I haven’t done any poetry for awhile, so. . . why not dredge up and post some rank old stuff I wrote as a wee lad way, way, back in grade school?     Okay, I think I will.   Your indulgence is requested.  (You may wish to look away briefly.)

 

RAINSHOWER

 

The wind blows clouds like tumbleweeds

Across the sky

And hissing raindrops moisten sun-bleached bones

So chapped and dry

 

Plink, plop

Plak, pliss

Wood, sand

And brush are hit.

 

Missiles to diamonds

Diamonds to pearls

Sit and glisten

Run and swirl.

 

Crisp like foil

Fresh like moss

The land smells sweet

It’s heat now lost.

 

The mist is heavy

The ground is wet

Cascading down

The rain was sent.

 

 

 

MY FRONT YARD

 

October’s gave a party

The leaves by hundreds came

The Ashes, Oaks and Maples

And those of every name

 

Miss Weather gave the music

Professor Wind the band

And jolly was the sound

In my unseen fairy land. 

 

 

Semantics

(Edited and condensed from New Scientist Print Edition 26  July 2006  Andy Coghlan)

"Electric currents applied to the skin can speed up wound healing. It was reported 150 years ago by the German physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond, it has been ignored ever since.

Now Josef Penninger of the Austrian Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna and Min Zhao of the University of Aberdeen, UK, have demonstrated that natural electric fields and currents in tissue play a vital role in orchestrating the wound-healing process by attracting repair cells to damaged areas.

The researchers have also identified the genes that control the process. "We were originally skeptical, but then we realized it was a real effect and looked for the genes responsible," Penninger says. "It's not homeopathy, it's biophysics.”

 

Oh.  Okay.  Now that it’s  “biophysics”  I guess we can stop ignoring it.

 

3000 foot down, but not out.

 
We rode the miners’ cage down the shaft by a hoist cable, until the darkness ended and we were 1000ft underground staring into the lighted drift cavern of an old gold mine in Cripple Creek, Colorado.   Our guide was an older good-natured man who was an experienced miner himself.  He spent most of the  seventy’s in humid ninety-degree heat, three thousand foot underground in the nearby Ajax gold mine.  He began showing us how hard rock gold mining was accomplished, from the turn of the century, until now.   

Our guide explained how drilling and blasting was done and how ore carts were filled.   Then he mentioned that, as fun as all of that might have sounded to us, miners had a quota of one ore cart an hour that they were expected to fill.   Well, I have to admit, that would add to the stress of what already appeared to be a very dangerous job.  Then, our guide mentioned that World Heavyweight Boxing champion; Jack Dempsey, had grown up nearby and worked in the gold mines when he was a young man.   He told us that Jack Dempsey got fired from the mine he was working at, because he could not keep up with the one full ore cart-an-hour quota.   He said “The reason I am telling you this, is that just because you fail at one thing, does not mean that you won’t be a success at something else.”

 I thought that was a neat little point he made, so I wanted to recount it for you here. 

Look around, you never know what you might find.

Well, the less I say, the more popular my little site seems to get.   LOL.   I don't know wether to just appreciate the fitting irony of this or if I should consider learning something from it. lol.   Anyway, The Turtle is back in the house tonight. Lets see....

When I was much younger and still growing up instead of out, I used to find quarters and other coins regularly on the ground in parking lots.   So much so it became a joke with my family.   They didn't understand it. I confess I didn't either.   It made no sense to me that so much money could just be lying around in plain sight and no one pick it up before I did.   It began to dawn on me that maybe not everyone walked their path the same way I did.   Nope, there are some people who walk with their heads held high and who, as a result, rarely see what or who they are walking on, or where exactly they are, or anywhere much other than where they plan on going.   I guess I am more reactive and have always sort of walked with my eyes wide open in wonderment trying to take it all in as I passed by.   I like other people who are also like that.   I don't much care for dealing with proud arrogant people who aren't teachable.   They have always annoyed me.

Sometimes in life you just have to walk through Samaria.   There is no way around it.    No matter how good you might think you are, and how righteous you think your personal path to be, you can still find yourself in a strange land, surrounded by people who don't agree with you, and who maybe you don't even have a very favorable opinion of (sort of like Mom dragging me out to the shopping center, lol).   You can fix your eyes steadfastly on your goal of getting out of there, for your own sake, or you can wonder just why you are there, and what you can learn from being there (what coins you can find on the ground) and, maybe you will even see someone you could help while you are there, if you are looking.

The more mature that you think you are, and the more confidence you feel in your own abilities, the less desire there seems to be, to keep looking.

I remember the disciples once rebuked people for bringing little children to see Jesus.   LOL  I can just hear them saying in deeply pious and serious tones: "This is serious stuff, it's very deep, it's for adults, not little children!   You don't understand, initiates must pass through several levels to even begin to understand the basic teachings, and to apprehend the whole concept of holiness"   And Jesus rebuked them.    He told them to allow the little children to come to him.    He even told them that the way to become the greatest in the Kingdom of God,  -was to humble themselves and "become as little children."

Well, I guess maintaining a sense of wonderment and looking around, maybe isn't such a bad thing. . .     And, maybe, I'm not the only one who doesn't like to deal with proud arrogant people who aren't teachable.

  

 

 

 

 

"Where there is no Passion, change is seldom born."  - The Sea Turtle

 

WHERE DID YOU GET THAT IDEA ????

 

“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about!  That’s how things are supposed to work.”

 

Where do you get the idea that things are supposed to be better than they are?  Did someone tell you they are supposed to be better?  Where do you get the idea that things are supposed to run smoothly and flow perfectly?   Where did you get this concept of perfection?  It doesn’t really exist here on this earth.  You can’t say well, I went to Wisconsin and everything there was perfect and just the way it should be and that is where I learned about perfection and now I carry that concept around with me and compare everything to that.  Maybe it came from television?   No, even before the advent of reality TV there were commercials and Monday Night Football.  (Televised utopia was always interrupted by tampon commercials and people missing kicks and dropping passes. . .)

 

So, what makes you think things should be better than they actually are?   If you’ve never experienced paradise, where then did you develop your concept of it and your faith that it is attainable or even possible?

 

Cats don’t seem to have this innate understanding that things should be better than they are.  I’ve never seen a cat pout because it jumped and missed catching a bird.    In fact,  I’ve seen  cats hop around on three legs, after an amputation, without pouting or being angry that anything was amiss.    No, and they also don’t fuss at me about the weather when it is too hot.  They do fuss at me about food and water when they are hungry or thirsty, but they never fuss at me about the weather, I guess they must have some understanding that I can’t open a can of sunshine or of cooler temperatures for them.   How strange.   How could they know that?

 

So, if man were just like the animals, why do we always conceptualize that something could be better than it is, and complain about it when things don’t live up to our concept?   And where the hell do we get that concept?  In the womb?   We don’t really seem to learn it and there is plenty of negative reinforcement that we encounter contrary to our utopian concepts,  so where does it come from?    I can’t make an acceptable case for it being mental, or organic, so is it spiritual?   

 

If it were a concept from a past life, or if I were created elsewhere in paradise and then born here, why would I only be mindful of this one concept and forget everything else?  Such redundancy seems impractical.   Do the cats live in a state of innocence, in harmony with creation, while I cannot live so because I have knowledge that things are not as perfect as I think they could be, and I have the ability to always conceptualize things being better, cooler, brighter, and more pleasant?

 

“For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. *   wrote Solomon -- Ecclesiastes 1:18

 

A few pictures as promised from my recent trip.  (Many more posted to my Xanga Photoblog  http://photo.xanga.com/The_Sea_Turtle/ ).  These are from Graham Cave, MO State Park, Danville, MO.  Can you find my friend the toad in the first picture?