A stolen election? (the best analysis yet)

http://www.crisispapers.org/essays/get-over-it.htm

Some silliness for a change (not mine)

The Hokey Pokey (as written by W. Shakespeare)

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within.
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Pokey,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.To spin!
A wilde release from Heaven's yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely thou canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt.
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.
~

Read this...then tell me if you still feel good about what we are doing in Iraq

(http://www.iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=31878)

Will the South EVER rise?

FOCUS: Alabama Vote Opens Old Racial Wounds
www.truthout.org/docs_04/112904W.shtml

Something light for a change

(first crush..real name...actual event)

Joanne

No other girl I knew had hair like that,
with soft 's' curves adorning, rippling down
as perfect foil to that patrician neck.
And as my dreaming roamed twelve feet ahead
I could see nothing else.

When she glanced back, I thought I owned her,
thought I was her only universe, until
as monitor, she broke my reverie,
manipulating time, and space, and me
"You've been looking at me all morning"
...and I was nine again, and could not speak.

Oh, pardon me, has it been sixty years,Joanne,
since I last saw you look at me ?
I HAVE been looking at you, yes it's true
all through that fourth grade morning--all my life.
~

Reciprocity

Alone,
and riding its momentum
out across the chasm
of an unreflecting void
is Voyager,
its waning, hopeful beep
an act of faith; there lies within
a particle of us—
ready to embrace the one
who looks inside.

It is a shell of nothingness
without a dream to nourish its long night,
a worthless orb of metal in a cold black sky,
hope thrown into a phantom alien hand
unseen, unguided, yet unknown to God,
a Flying Hollander condemned
to yet another seven year eternity.
Still not a journey, no, not yet—a vanity,
until it meets its purposed end.

So is a love impossible,
a non-reality, a formula alone
until it is returned.
Like Voyager, its effort laudable,
like stick to fire, indifferent
'til it's burned.
And he, without a lover
will not understand:We do not fall in love—
we love, are loved;
create and are created,
know, and then are fully known.
~

If this does not shake your conscience...then you too, are a war casualty

Its idolisation of 'the face of Falluja' shows how numb the US is toeveryone's pain but its ownNaomi KleinFriday November 26, 2004The GuardianIconic images inspire love and hate, and so it is with thephotograph of James Blake Miller, the 20-year-old marine fromAppalachia, who has been christened "the face of Falluja" by pro-warpundits, and the "the Marlboro man" by pretty much everyone else.Reprinted in more than a hundred newspapers, the Los Angeles Timesphotograph shows Miller "after more than 12 hours of nearly non-stop, deadly combat" in Falluja, his face coated in war paint, abloody scratch on his nose, and a freshly lit cigarette hanging fromhis lips.Gazing lovingly at Miller, the CBS News anchor Dan Rather informedhis viewers: "For me, this one's personal. This is a warrior withhis eyes on the far horizon, scanning for danger. See it. Study it.Absorb it. Think about it. Then take a deep breath of pride. And ifyour eyes don't dampen, you're a better man or woman than I."A few days later, the LA Times declared that its photo had "movedinto the realm of the iconic". In truth, the image just feels iconicbecause it is so laughably derivative: it's a straight-up rip-off ofthe most powerful icon in American advertising (the Marlboro man),which in turn imitated the brightest star ever created by Hollywood -John Wayne - who was himself channelling America's most powerfulfounding myth, the cowboy on the rugged frontier. It's like a songyou feel you've heard a thousand times before - because you have.But never mind that. For a country that just elected a wannabeMarlboro man as its president, Miller is an icon and, as if to proveit, he has ignited his very own controversy. "Lots of children,particularly boys, play army, and like to imitate this young man.The clear message of the photo is that the way to relax after abattle is with a cigarette," wrote Daniel Maloney in a scoldingletter to the Houston Chronicle. Linda Ortman made the same point tothe editors of the Dallas Morning News: "Are there no photos of non-smoking soldiers?" A reader of the New York Post helpfully suggestedmore politically correct propaganda imagery: "Maybe showing a marinein a tank, helping another GI or drinking water would have a morepositive impact on your readers."Yes, that's right: letter writers from across the nation are unitedin their outrage - not that the steely-eyed, smoking soldier makesmass killing look cool, but that the laudable act of mass killingmakes the grave crime of smoking look cool. Better to protectimpressionable youngsters by showing soldiers taking a break fromdeadly combat by drinking water or, perhaps, since there is a severepotable water shortage in Iraq, Coke. (It reminds me of the jokeabout the Hassidic rabbi who says all sexual positions areacceptable except for one: standing up "because that could lead todancing".)On second thoughts, perhaps Miller does deserve to be elevated tothe status of icon - not of the war in Iraq, but of the new era ofsupercharged American impunity. Because outside US borders, it is,of course, a different marine who has been awarded the prize as "theface of Falluja": the soldier captured on tape executing a wounded,unarmed prisoner in a mosque. Runners-up are a photograph of a two-year-old Fallujan in a hospital bed with one of his tiny legs blownoff; a dead child lying in the street, clutching the headless bodyof an adult; and an emergency health clinic blasted to rubble.Inside the US, these snapshots of a lawless occupation appeared onlybriefly, if they appeared at all. Yet Miller's icon status hasendured, kept alive with human interest stories about fans sendingcartons of Marlboros to Falluja, interviews with the marine's proudmother, and earnest discussions about whether smoking might reduceMiller's effectiveness as a fighting machine.Impunity - the perception of being outside the law - has long beenthe hallmark of the Bush regime. What is alarming is that it appearsto have deepened since the election, ushering in what can only bedescribed as an orgy of impunity. In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqisurrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civiliantargets and are openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics,journalists - who dares to count the bodies. At home, impunity hasbeen made official policy with Bush's appointment of AlbertoGonzales as attorney general, the man who personally advised thepresident in his infamous "torture memo" that the Geneva conventionsare "obsolete".This kind of defiance cannot simply be explained by Bush's win.There has to be something in how he won, in how the election wasfought, that gave this administration the distinct impression thatit had been handed a get-out-of-the-Geneva-conventions free card.That's because the administration was handed precisely such a gift -by John Kerry.In the name of electability, the Kerry team gave Bush five months onthe campaign trail without ever facing serious questions aboutviolations of international law. Fearing that he would be seen assoft on terror and disloyal to US troops, Kerry stayed scandalouslysilent about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. When it became painfullyclear that fury would rain down on Falluja as soon as the pollsclosed, Kerry never spoke out against the plan, or against the otherillegal bombings of civilian areas that took place throughout thecampaign. When the Lancet published its landmark study estimatingthat 100,000 Iraqis had died as result of the invasion andoccupation, Kerry just repeated his outrageous (and frankly racist)claim that Americans "are 90% of the casualties in Iraq".There was a message sent by all of this silence, and the message wasthat these deaths don't count. By buying the highly questionablelogic that Americans are incapable of caring about anyone's livesbut their own, the Kerry campaign and its supporters becamecomplicit in the dehumanisation of Iraqis, reinforcing the idea thatsome lives are expendable, insufficiently important to risk losingvotes over. And it is this morally bankrupt logic, more than theelection of any single candidate, that allows these crimes tocontinue unchecked.The real-world result of all the "strategic" thinking is the worstof both worlds: it didn't get Kerry elected and it sent a clearmessage to the people who were elected that they will pay nopolitical price for committing war crimes. And this is Kerry's truegift to Bush: not just the presidency, but impunity. You can see itperhaps best of all in the Marlboro man in Falluja, and the surrealdebates that swirl around him. Genuine impunity breeds a kind ofdelusional decadence, and this is its face: a nation bickering aboutsmoking while Iraq burns.

To Cindy

Somehow you were old, at 17.
I knew that you were dying,
and wouldn't last the summer,
but I took you home with me,
my college past, my life beginning
just as yours began its close.
Those ninety miles meant frequent stops to rest,
your coughing more severe,
and I could only hope my deep concern
would help sustain you on the way.

Two months more, I clung to you
and you to me through every day—
to hospital with my sister,
to my church to pray.

I know not where they buried you
or if they knew your fame—
or of the musicmen you served
and took from them your name.

I only know you were my first
and in your final days
my very own, my Cinderella
'35 most mortal Chevrolet!
~

The poem is true. My first car (a piece of junk but
it still ran...barely) after college (and it was my sister who she carried to the emergency room after a home accident) had been owned over time by both the concertmaster and the principal flutist of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. I bought her from the latter gentleman for $50.00.

Quote of the day

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing elsethat he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizationsgrow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races buildothers." ~Clarence Day, writer, (1874-1935)

Disturbing...must read!

Iraqi Suicide Bombings: the Strausscons and Likudites Sowing Chaos Kurt Nimmo....I also believe it is no mistake U.S. "military planners" are usingwhat are essentially Israeli tactics in Iraq, including fronting theirown "insurgent" groups to engage in terrorism (most recently andsensationally, the abduction and execution of CARE's Margaret Hassan).Israel has a documented history of doing these sorts of things to weakenPalestinian nationalism, including covert support and funding of Hamasand even creating ! a bogus al-Qaeda cell in Gaza. In fact, as NoamChomsky points out in a foreword to Livia Rokach's "Israel's SacredTerrorism," the Zionist state "may have had a substantial role ininitiating and perpetuating violence and conflict" in order to avoidmaking peace with its neighbors (since obviously peace is diametricallyopposed to the idea of Greater Israel)...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7525How can one oppose war but support our troops' war crimes? Joshua Frank....Clearly no warning was put forth by the US military prior to thebombing of this hospital. And now that the troops have hit the groundrunning, more war crimes have been committed, and in fact captured onfilm. Sadly, the images taken by a NBC news crew embedded with USsoldiers fighting in Fallujah which show the execution of an unarmedIraqi prisoner -- is not an isolated incident. Writing for his blog,ex-Navy Seal, Matthew Heidt, expla! ins the odious rationale forexecuting an unarmed prisoner of war...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7542Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 23 November 2004 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member editorial boardThe Free Arab Voice....The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in al-Fallujah reported that adetachment of Resistance fighters in the Resistance-controlled southernpart of the city and in the eastern al-Fallujah neighborhood ofal-'Askari mounted a powerful attack on the al-Wahdah neighborhood. In areport posted at 12:35pm Tuesday afternoon Mecca time (1:35pm localtime) the Mafka! rat al-Islam correspondent confirmed that theResistance controlled al-Wahdah although there were still some clashesgoing on with US forces outside the outskirts of the neighborhood...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7529US mistreats Iraq civilians: journalist AP....Saadi said he saw a few people, including a woman and child, killedby bullets as they walked toward the mosque. He and others were taken toa railway station north of Fallujah. Women and children were separatedfrom men, who were kept together in a room so dirty it felt like "ananimal barn". Eventually, about 400 men were crowded into the room.Lines formed for the single toilet. The detainees were given water butno food during their two days at the station, Saadi ! said...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7538Witnesses say US forces killed unarmed civilians Kim Sengupta , The IndependentAllegations of widespread abuse by US forces in Fallujah, including thekilling of unarmed civilians and the targeting of a hospital in anattack, have been made by people who have escaped from the city. Theysaid, in interviews with The Independent, that as well as deaths frombombs and artillery shells, a large number of people including childrenwere killed by American snipers. US forces refused repeated calls formedical ai! d for injured civilians, they said...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7530Fallujah Refugees Dahr Jamail, Electronic Iraq...."I would like to ask the whole world-why is this? I tell thepresidents of the Arab and Muslim countries to wake up! Wake up please!We are being killed, we are refugees from our houses, our children havenothing-not even shoes to wear! Wake up! Wake up! Stop being traitors!Be human beings and not the dummies of the Americans!"...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7522The Road to BIAP David CornDays ago, I was speaking with a security consultant freshly back from atrip to Iraq, and I asked for his prognosis. It's terrible, he said.We're not winning. "What about Fallujah?" I inquired. "Hasn't the citybeen retaken?" "Forget Falluja," this former military officer said. "Allyou have to know is the road to BIAP cannot be traveled safely."BIAP--that's the Baghdad International Airport...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7539The People Judge Bush Sara PowellACTIVISTS FROM around the world convened at New York City's MartinLuther King, Jr. High School on Aug. 26 for the Iraq War CrimesTribunal. The New York meeting was one of a series of such tribunals,held in places as diverse as Kyoto, Istanbul and Belgium, to hearwitnesses' accusations that the current U.S. administration hascommitted war crimes in pursuit of its Middle East policy, specificallywith regard to Iraq. An earlier tribunal collected evidence of allegedwar crimes! committed by the Bush administration in Afghanistan. Thecurrent series will culminate in a tribunal in Istanbul, Turkey in 2005.Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7540Evidence mounts of US war crimes in Fallujah Simon Assaf, Socialist WorkerIraqi doctors have accused the US military of committing a war crimeafter they destroyed a neighbourhood clinic during the assault onFallujah. Dr Saloum Ismael of Doctors for Iraqi Society says missileattacks on the Popular Clinic on 7 November killed a number of patients,staff and two senior doctors-an orthopaedic surgeon and a radiologist.Amnesty International believes up to 20 Iraqi medical staff and dozensof civilians were killed! in the attack....Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7536Iraq: No democracy under occupation Socialist WorkerGeorge Bush and Tony Blair invaded Iraq with 140,000 armed soldiers andbombed the city of Fallujah to dust. Now they claim democratic electionswill go ahead on 30 January. Iyad Allawi, the politician appointed byWashington to run Iraq, has said that elections could be "delayed" inFallujah and other centres of the resistance without it invalidating theoverall result. Democracy then will be available only to those who donot resist an illegal occupation by a! foreign superpower...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7537US-led troops raid villages near Baghdad Aljazeera.netUS-led forces swept hotspots south of Baghdad on Wednesday in a push tocapture the area before key January polls. The launch of the hugeoperation on Tuesday came as the international community threw itsweight behind the tight timetable for Iraq's first post-Saddam Husseinelections. In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said theUnited States would add an unspecified number of troops to its forces inIraq and beef up Iraqi forces ahead of the 30! January vote...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7535Fallujah and the laws of war Richard Hoffman....The United States and world media have focussed on one incident thatoccurred in full view of a television crew-the slaying of adefenceless Iraqi prisoner. It has been portrayed as an isolatedincident. On the contrary, all the independent evidence establishesbeyond any doubt that the killings and destruction committed by USforces were so gross and deliberate that the name Fallujah will berecorded in the history books alongside such infamous atrocities as the19! 37 bombing of Guernica, the crushing of the 1944 Warsaw uprising andthe Vietnam War...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7533Official statement Bellamy speaks out for children in Iraq UNICEFUNICEF today again expressed deep concern about the devastating impactthe hostilities in Iraq is having on the overall well-being of thecountry's children. "This protracted fighting and instability iswreaking havoc on Iraqi children," UNICEF Executive Director CarolBellamy said. In addition to the ongoing difficulties of living amidstdaily violence and widespread insecurity, children are also sufferingfrom the inadequacy of basic services! such as water and sanitation,Bellamy said. "Latest reports are showing that acute malnutrition amongyoung children has nearly doubled since March 2003," she said...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7532Jazeera slams Iraq minister's terror slur The PeninsulaAl Jazeera said the possibility of taking Iraq's defence minister HazimAl Shalan to court for his defamatory remarks that the network was aterrorist channel, was not ruled out. "We are studying legal aspects ofthe minister's public statement, as it puts the lives of Al Jazeera'sjournalists and other employees in Iraq to serious risk," a chanelspokesman told The Peninsula yesterday. Shalan told London-based SharqAl Awsat that Al Jazeera was terrorist ne! twork...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7531Mass Offensive Launched South of Baghdad TINI TRAN, Associated Press WriterSome 5,000 U.S. Marines, British troops and Iraqi forces launched a newoffensive Tuesday aimed at clearing a swath of insurgent hotbeds acrossa cluster of dusty, small towns south of Baghdad. The series of raidsand house searches was the third large-scale military operation thismonth aimed at suppressing Iraq's Sunni Muslim insurgency ahead ofcrucial elections set for Jan. 30...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7524Iraqi Journalist Tells of U.S. Captivity MARIAM FAM, Associated PressAn Iraqi journalist who stayed in Fallujah to report on the battle forhis hometown says he and hundreds of other civilians who eventuallyturned themselves in to escape the violence suffered tough, sometimeshumiliating, treatment from American and Iraqi guards. Abdul-Qader Saadisaid he was subjected to multiple searches and interrogations; wentunfed the first two days; was blindfolded and handcuffed; and had tosleep for days in a wooden ca! ge buffeted by cold winds at a desertdetention camp...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7523PETITIONON BEHALF OF UNNAMED, UNNUMBERED PATIENTS AND MEDICAL STAFF OF THEFALLUJA GENERAL HOSPITALAGAINST THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ASSOCIATION OF HUMANTARIAN LAWYERSLos Angeles-based Humanitarian Law Project/International EducationalDevelopment (HLP/IED and San Francisco-based Association of HumanitarianLawyers (AHL), submitted a petition to the Inter-American Commission onHuman Rights of the Organization of American States on behalf of"unnamed, unnumbered patients and medical staff both liv! ing and dead"at the medical facilities in Falluja. The Commission had authority toinvestigate human rights violations committed by a member State of theOAS and to seek remedies for victims...Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:www.uruknet.info?p=7490www.uruknet.info: a site gathering daily

September Afternoon

Even the rain is old.
Its drops no longer dance, but sag
against old walls and trees that wish to die,
to cast off all their green vitality,
for gloom is no regret, but coveted;
the molding leaves already down
are avatars of gods we buried,
left behind
in old brown faded towns
that cherish their demise,
and cling to crumbling history
like that old rain that stains my memories
and hastens my decay.
~

Aslan

C.S. it was, who said you were unsafe.
That I should watch, and listen,
laugh as you would leap
upon the rock beside me,
bringing chaos to my ordered life.

I thought old C.S. was a bumbler
when it came to formulating faith
(I would have argued hours with him)
but he knew more of manifesting lions
from a ragged manuscript
and faded memory
than anyone I know of
in a post-enlightened age..

How much of raw perfection in your stance,
creating, singing, warring,
peeling back the false,
and roaring with the pain
of the exposed and wounded truth.
How much beneath your mane,
that childhood vibrance.for the quest,
that archetype of Christ?

You may not leave for me
the luxury of fresh forgetting,
for your heart exudes its life--
not for my sin, instead
my faint, protected passion,
insulated from the blood you shed
in that wild glory on the hill
where death was to your taste alone,
while those less sanguine mortals
ran away in fear.

I still tremble, Aslan. But not for fear of you,
or guilt, or penitence.
I look across the rock, and see myself
within your fiery eyes--the tempest of your breath
upon my tepid skin--
aware that I may never know
the splendor of the vanquished, self-imposed
...that I will never sing, and roar, and die
...and even at the ending, cry...beware!
~

Dear President Bush

I did not compose this letter, but a lady named "Jo" has graciously consented to let me copy it, since it also represents some of my own confusion.

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. Ihave learned a great deal from you and understand why you wouldpropose and support a constitutional amendment banning same-sexmarriage. As you said, "In the eyes of God, marriage is based between a man a woman." I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination... End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them. 1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is, my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them? 5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it? 6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?7. Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here? 8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbiddenby Lev.19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves? 10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev. 24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Reasons to keep breathing

"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error." ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

To my Doorstep Visitor

...and so you are off, to heaven I see!
(the Christian's hegira of virtue and glee)
and I with a word to the Lord may attain
the salvation you speak of, the balm for my pain.

But we've spoken already, this Spirit and I,
and I'll have to inform you, his realm doesn't lie
above fuzzy clouds, or out past the sun,
much closer, in fact--the one you would shun

for his fuzzy religion you can't understand,
keeps his creed undefined, his demeanor quite bland.
There's a curtain of silence and awe when he prays
and he doesn't much care who might scoff, or who stays.

So I'll not deride you, though I covet some power
to love you more dearly, hour by hour
when compassion is missing, but never conceit
and passion is that which you save for the street.

What madness, this heaven of feathers and wings,
of harps, pricey yellow brick roads and such things!
What journey or dream could you possibly share
with one like myself, who is already there?
~

Words I wish I had said

"Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance." -John Keats (1795-1821)

The Theologian

It wasn't just an evening stroll,
for God was hiding, and I thought to meet him
there, on his own ground.
I heard that he was everywhere;
were I to give him half a chance,
he might appear.

The way was much less clear;
at length I chose a suicidal stream
that in its progress guided me across the plain,
gaining in elan,
before the precipice appeared.

But in its last crescendo,
there was only stillness that I saw
subsumed within the waterfall
in little glimpses,
dashing to the stones.
~

One World View

It is at best a silent teacher
this pin-point of reflected light...
this ball of blue and green
floating on the cooling rock...
this eminence that time congealed,
and in its wisdom
drawing forth the questions
as a heavenly grace,
eclipsing answers.

It has learned more than you and I
for its frail shell of atmosphere
will not repel the titans, always,
and embracing them, thus wounded
weeps and shudders, storing up within itself
a heritage one day released
to all its children deep within the womb--
and then across the star trails, roaring
once again upon its journey
when there is no one to hear.
~

The Nephilim

They were the giants, only five feet tall,
who walked upon this ground
and sang of war and coastal drums,
who drained our tears, and gave us spring
upon cold pages, marched us through crisp summer
to prismatic light.

Do you not think there is some madness
in the hours that enter,
winking on and offand snuffing out the heroes
daring to be born?
What do we make of them?
...the Nephilim?

I think I shall be there
when the years turn inside out
and the ages fly off unrecovered,
crumbs of history soon brushed away.
Will there be ghosts to cry at me?
...the Nephilim?


Why should it matter?
What might that bumbling clone presume to write
within the frame of some new thousand years,
that I cannot?
Or, might I not be he who wrote it all before
upon a parchment, or a wall within the cave?

Thus written, is at best
a bit of slurry for a drooling sigh,
off, and on...and off.
Ah...you see, no matter of its merit;
art is for the moment of the thunder or the sigh--
for the thousands and for one,
and with the thankful coda
that we are not gods.
~

Miscellaneous musings...

One tends to watch the aging process as a victim. If time is a servant as well as a master, victimization is a self-inflicted hoax. One does not change, to be sure, bodily decay, or the wear and weathering of things. What one can do, is to keep an eye on the servant, who enjoys the process of betrayal. Might we masters collect some interest of our own, some shameless exploitation of that which we call entropy? Forget about accumlated wisdom; we have no corner on that. We can, however, find a newer angle, a wider lens, a sudden realization that some of the pages were stuck together, and there's more inside. What, if anything, does aging have to offer? It's just another way to keep open, to discover that there is more joy--more great stuff to do. The news is bad enough, but it's not our news. Shall we have a go?

Tomorrow

Which world is ours to choose?
an empire all our own...
our corporate bellies fat--unyielding.
our eyes incapable of tears,
our haughty hearts umoved?
Or will it be
a globe whose shores are lined
with those who scan horizons
for the ships of peace returning
full of that most precious trade,
the cosmic intercourse
of love?
~

Thoughts from an Earthling

I tire of spectral figures
stepping from the shadows,
pointing with their bony fingers
at the boat that waits
upon the blackened river,
flowing to a fated pier.

Tell me, spirit, of your origin..
Was there a spirit slime from whence you came--
a spirit bang as counterpart
to all the wildness of our infant universe--
a micro eidolon exploding
on the other side?

You will not answer.
Fate and fear are wedded
in a silence that will not prevail,
for spirits of the light abound as well;
I hear them laugh, and weep,
and speak to me of joy
beyond my sight.

I have one challenge to your spirit pride:
Lest you be unaware
that in the splendor of your great celestial choir
you do not have it all.
Remember when with earthbound ears
you heard the "Ite missa est?"
Then through your earthbound tears
you sang in antiphon, with all the church triuimphant,
"Deo Gratias."
~

Tribute to resource...

"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary,how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows howto combine them." ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)

Before I Wake

I tend to scry in dusty shops
and in forgotten attics, where old pictures
wait their resurrection in my eyes;
I want so much to look behind them,
move through the layered images of days and years
stored like some overlapped transparencies
that never fade.
It's true enough; brown paper-shrouded mystery
makes all surreal, though one may understand
that well before the light rebounded to the lens
the old and somber bearded men
already knew they would not smile again.

They are complete; I am compelled
to gaze upon these yellowed images,
and like Ezekiel see sinews,
flesh,
a verity retracing time,
and placing my own pre-incarnate plane
inside.
It is as if I am a traveler,
yet strange before the womb that bore me,
far away, between a land I knew
and one where I am known
.
I know these silent men, for I am one with them.
They are my own.
~

Prescience isn't everything

" I think there is a world market for maybe
five computers."
~Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1958

Revelation

There!
in the half-light
from a picture seen a thousand times
now unexpectedly a portrait shows
from that occluded world I met
not long ago, and saw old truth
emerging...do I see it now, again,
and is it mine?

Then it occurs to me that truth is
like that—
teaching from a world of shadow
crystalizing suddenly,
but best revealed half-hidden,
for I cannot take it all.

There is a time to covet the obscure,
to send the lamps away in order
to reveal
the highest art that streams
from an unconscious world
to which we shall return

just as the night has its own mystic
light
to consummate the day.
~

floccipaucinaucinihilipilification*

in light of the last two elections in this country, is the reason that if the electoral process does not change drastically in the next two-four years, I intend never to vote again.

* (the act or condition of estimating as worthless)

To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe:.

1- That the exit polls were WRONG...(remember - they have been used for over a decade and considered reliable)2- That Zogby's 5pm election day calls for Kerry winning OH, FL were WRONG. He was within a less than 1/2 % point margin of error in his 2000 final poll and previous polls for other elections.3- That Harris Poll last minute polling for Kerry was WRONG. They were also within a 1/2% point margin of error in their 2000 final poll. 4- The Incumbent Rule #I (that undecideds primarily break at the end for the challenger)was WRONG.5- The 50% Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent doesn't do better than his final polling)6- The Approval Rating Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent with less than 50% approval will most likely lose the election)7- That Journalist Greg Palast was WRONG when he said that even before the election, 1 million votes were stolen from Kerry. He was the ONLY reporter to break the fact that 90,000 Florida blacks were disnfranchised in 2000.8- That it was just a COINCIDENCE that the exit polls were CORRECT where there WAS a PAPER TRAIL and INCORRECT (+5% for Bush) where there was NO PAPER TRAIL.9- That the surge in new young voters had NO positive effect for Kerry, even though it was the largest number of youth voters 18-29 ever and a huge jump from 2000 and they were over 55% in favor of Kerry.10- That Bush BEAT 99-1 mathematical odds in winning the election.11- That Kerry did WORSE than Gore against an opponent who LOST the support of SCORES of Republican newspapers who were for Bush in 2000.12- That Bush did better than an 18 national poll average which showed him tied with Kerry at 47. In other words, Bush got 80% of the undecided vote to end up with a 51-48 majority - when ALL professional pollsters agree that the undecided vote ALWAYS goes to the challenger.13- That Voting machines made by Republicans with no paper trail and with no software publication, which have been proven by thousands of computer scientists to be vulnerable in scores of ways, were NOT tampered with in this election.Some Examples: (There are many more, but I won't list them all here - this is to give you an idea)* The City of Gahanna in Ohio discovered a discrepancy that gave 4,000 votes to George Bush. After media scrutiny, city officials have admitted to an electronic "glitch" that caused the problem.In Broward County, FL, errors in software code caused a referendum on gambling to be completely overturned. The error caused totals to count backwards after reaching a ceiling of 32,500 votes. The problem existed in the 2002 election as well. However, the issue was never resolved by the manufacturer of the electronic voting machine.In North Carolina, a Craven County district logged 11,283 more votes than voters and actually overturned the results of a regional race. For more info, go to:http://www.blackboxvoting.org www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm

Soldier

I must have marched the Appian Way
in triumph, for I hear the drums again,
and I am called by stouter hearts
to march among the men

who make their peace with death
and breathe it in the fight
as seeping blood might feed
their lust through the exploding night.

I want to feel the shiver on my spine
when cannon steel
tears into quivering flesh
before white flags appeal.

Oh yes, I tremble too
when sallow-bellied fools negotiate.
I want to be a patriot
before it is too late.
Lord, make for me an enemy
that I can love to hate.
~

This personalizes it

Please look at some of these hundreds of
very touching pictures:
http://72.3.131.10/gallery/1/

What I am thinking about today...

Thinking about man and his existence, it
occurs to me that the realm of the spirit
(love) is the only reality.....all else....the
physical world we see and feel....what
happens to us......is just circumstance, the
proverbial ship passing in the night.

KERRY WON OHIO JUST COUNT THE BALLOTS AT THE BACK OF THE BUS

"Most voters in Ohio chose Kerry. Here's
how the votes vanished"
www.truthout.org/docs_04/111404Z.shtml

The Last Village

He never thought to be a warrior.
He never saw the spirits of the old ones
in the fire, when the women sang
of heroes' rest between their blankets,
mindless for an hour...of the impending day.

He slept alone. No maiden smiled upon him.
It was well, that he alone preside
when all the breathless warriors would return
then grey and still amid the maidens' song
about another rest that cut the evening light
and drained it; he, the restless one
remained to cover them--restore them to the earth.

And was it then in vain
the warriors rode away? One time to gain
within their youth, the old ones' mist and smoke
that most would never see?
He thought upon it. He had seen them ride.
He saw the glory on their faces,
knew the nation's history was there inscribed
though for a moment, as they rode into the sun.
He was one with them, and time was laughing.

One
stood by
to chronicle the end,
to blow the feather of a nation fast away
and crumble through his fingers
that last memory.

And I still hear the war cries somewhere.
I still hear the maidens singing.
~

How Far Away

Distance closes in,
defining its intrusion into space and time;
the rock within my garden,
once a landmarkon that spot,
at first half-hidden in the soil,
scarce appeared...
the wagon lurched, and pioneers cried halt,
made camp, and dug it out
to make a fireside table for the coffeepot.
Now it serves my thoughts, arresting them
before I send them shooting forth again.
It has its day,
a constant in a whirling mode of change
.
And was it different from all others?
Imprisoning the moment I created?
I know that the Atlantic beats upon the continent
a hundred hills beyond this plain.
I know what forces play in fantasy,
for I can ride Magellan's bow,
selecting from my memory
the smell of must upon the ropes below,
the ether of the sea
though I am inland bound.
Distance is my friend, my highway
to a life that I once lived,
to a land I may have walked
...or to a freedom, just a touch away.
~

Thanks to AWAD

The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and willproduce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized andenriched with foreign matter.
~Joshua Reynolds, painter (1723-1792)

At the Louvre

It happened
on the celebrated stair to La Gioconda's gallery,
and for a breathless moment I could trace
insensate marble back through centuries
when something there within its stoic chill
began to churn
and breathe
and surge like heartblood
beating through its veins--
resounding to the mallet blows'
refusal to relent in their seduction
of its brittle flesh.

It was an enharmonic agony
of pain and rapture
not alone for Nike but for me;
the ship was gone
and Victory's pounding wings
will never mount the wind, defy salt spray.
Men say her face would make her mortal--
they would marry wound and glory
while I stand in awe.

Samothrace is my own obsession
stunning sense
and memory
and every impulse that I have
to walk the Louvre beyond that staircase
leaving Victory behind.
~

Two new sites

that you should visit if you love to read and discuss good poetry. Both are friends of mine, both offer bushels of content to a friendship, and both embody my own concept of passion for life and literature. I hope you like them as much as I do:

http://mountingparnassus.blogspot.com/
http://masterswitandwisdom.blogspot.com/

-Dean

This blog

is still an infant, and still rough in its development. If you have any questions about it, you may send them to me in an email (click on the envelope below) or make a comment for everyone to read. It is great having you on board!

Remembering Miss Martin

Select your heroes carefully, she said, and I learned why.
for here my smaller world was left outside;
within this studio was Boulanger,
and bookstalls by the Seine,
and Canterbury where her art
took on the patina of evensong,
so graced in studied nonchalance.
.
She could transport me there, with but a single phrase.
It was as if one could partake of home,
and make of it Elysium wherein perfection lies,
where newfound wisdom listens
to the stillness teaching.

I feared her,
for my fingers would not follow my commands;
her piano could not sing for me—-but most of all
I feared her patience, for she had no need to dramatize
that chasm in between her chair and my disgrace.
In her cold tenderness,
(a shell so thin I dared not shatter it)
I also feared her love.

Now forty years since her last breath, I think of her
inside that studio, an island ship festooned
in fading portraits,
musty scores,
and bound for shores where poplars chant
in whispers that I never heard before.
~

Centering Truth

Between his hands,
the god-man held the orb, invisible,
the sole reality,
the spirit breath.

Then all he knew
would fade away--
dissolved
and dissolute.
~

Birth

is like taking a swim in an ocean of air. Around us is everything from fetid garbage to experiences of glorious beauty, and sometimes we must sift through the garbage to find the pearls. The swim period will end after a time, and that which awaits is even more to be prized. Bring it on!

Ponder this...

Do you ever learn from your own poetry? I do, all the time. It's not that I'm such an all-fired great poet. In fact, my own assessment of my work is that it is only about one step up from lousy, and has a long way to go before one might show up as good, let alone great.

But something inside me is telling me something, and this is the way I get a chance to hear it. Sometimes it only dawns several weeks later, and sometimes someone else must point it out to me.

The point of all this is that poetry is beyond being useful only because it permits self-expression, or because it is engaging, or challenging, or life fulfilling. It teaches me, and sometimes I am truly amazed--not at my own wisdom, but at the audacity of the higher self to shake me, sit me down, and tell me to shut up and listen. Not a bad thing.

Tihc Nhat Hanh said it...

"The seeds of joy and freedom are buried deep in our consciousness. If we do not water these seeds, peace will never be obtained. We run away from ourselves because we do not want to touch our pain, suffering, anger, or despair.In today's society, everything encourages us to run away from ourselves and look outside for happiness. So it is important for us to learn to embrace our pain, anger, and fear in a very tender way, to accept them, and to make our peace with them.The energy of mindfulness will help us. When we do this, a transformation takes place and we touch the deep peace, joy, and stability that are within us."

Time's Ineptitude

Was it a yesterday
the spirit highway opened,
or tomorrow? I forget.
Its realm is uncongested, scarce beset
by death or by regret;
the traveler is instantly at home.

A silent revelry prevails
as seconds greet oncoming centuries
we thought were left behind
and incorruptible.
A man may gather time without intent
and spend it on some soft historic whore
or on a spotless virgin
of a new ten thousand years--
gone and still returning, sum
of a new ten thousand fold...
and days are old
are still to come.

Do we take time
and sift it through our fingers?
Or are we the ones manipulated
by this fashioned curse we saw
when planets turned
to lose and gain the sun?
And will we fashion that old dream
of Edison and Wells,
or is it done?
For Armstrong won
two seconds of his youth
two hundred thousand miles away.

I think the dinosaurs will play
in Einstein's time
a hundred thousand years ago
...someday
~

From Howard Zinn....signs of hope

"We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions toparticipate in the process of change. Small acts, whenmultiplied by millions of people, can transform theworld. Even when we don't "win," there is fun andfulfillment in the fact that we have been involved,with other good people, in something worthwhile. Weneed hope. An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe,slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To behopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. Itis based on the fact that human history is a historynot only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice,courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in thiscomplex history will determine our lives. If we seeonly the worst, it destroys our capacity to dosomething. If we remember those times and places-andthere are so many-where people have behavedmagnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and atleast the possibility of sending this spinning top of aworld in a different direction. And if we do act, inhowever small a way, we don't have to wait for somegrand utopian future. The future is an infinitesuccession of presents, and to live now as we thinkhuman beings should live, in defiance of all that isbad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

Election Fraud? How about this as a test?

It seems to be fairly simple how to determine if there was really fraud. Take one of those small counties in Florida where the results were overwhelmingly for Bush, but where the makeup of the population was overwhelminglyDemocrat.....and do a house-to-house exhaustive poll of how they actually voted. Those who voted for Kerry would see it as in their interest to cooperate (in order to justify their efforts). It wouldn't take too long with a dedicated team to go in there and do it. How to pay for it? People like Soros who have the big bucks and wanted a change, should be very happy to finance it! Now, if you agree, how do we get this idea to action? Room for your comments below!

A Slice of Truth

"(There is) a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts: a sense sublimeof something far more deeply interfused,whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,and the round ocean and the living air,and the blue sky, and in the mind of man;a motion and a spirit, that impelsall thinking things, all objects of all thought,and rolls through all things." ~Wm. Wordsworth

Dean

A thought for Today

Mindful of the need to practice "mindfulness"--let me be purposeful in everything that I do.

Getting Started

Just to get the ball rolling, I'll post one of my poems. You are very welcome to comment upon it, and I do not resent even severe criticism. Critiques are one of the important ways we learn, and any of my own stuff on here is fair game. In addition you are always welcome to post any of your own work here, or even to comment upon happenings in the world, if you choose. I promise to react to your posts, so please come back often. Now.....WELCOME!

Roots

Here let me rest a little while.
Where the soil is lush and yielding,
where the trees reach out
in one magnificent embrace of mother earth,
silent teachers of an archetypal love
that history could not disclose.

Here let me co-create,
to meet consanguine shadows
rising from maternal clay—here in the heartland,
where my dust congealed,
where the breath is shared again, again...

Moss invades the headstones.
My fingers trace the names, while souls conjoin
and know that flint spark birthed within the cave
burned hotter still in pilgrims' breasts,
still spreads its heat across a continent,
flashing in the eyes of youth,
smoldering upon the page's edge
and poised to leap and dance upon the open hearth,
or to destroy.

Enter, solitude,
and in that place where roots descend,
reach forth as tendrils intertwining with the past,
there grows a new tellurian peace to trace the sun,
earthbound and free,
still calling from the ground to sons unborn,
"Remember me."
~