Meanderings and ruminations

I began to think of a state of mind, and wonder if it is a small chunk of universal mind, or is it all my own. Does it choose my dreams, or leave that to the unconscious? I'm thinking this is what time travel is all about, and before one returns to his home reality, has he indeed left his body? Has he crossed dimensions? What is the stimulus for separating realities? Is there a parallel between this, and what he can do when he leaves his physical lifetime, and becomes spirit alone? Here are my thoughts breeding questions...breeding a lesson in patience. The answers will come, and along with them, more questions. It makes one contemplate his death with the stirrings of appetite.

Another tongue

I want to share with you, the fact that the following poem is in response to a contest...to write on the subject of poetry! Here was my entry:

Another tongue

If passion speaks beyond self-centered will,
if stones may cry aloud because a man
keeps silence, or if whispers wash the mind
as storms in springtime will refresh the earth,
then it is poetry that feeds our hearts.

At birth it is a soft caress that would
protect and nourish thought in gentleness,
to draw from deep within, a song that prose
could not express, a sigh devoid of art
that art alone may sing, the singer but
an instrument, and that of conscious awe.

All this, and still demanding to be heard,
for if it were not so, we would not know
or speak of poets; wars might then be just
regretted or dismissed as lost for lack
of strategy; arms would be taken up
for power alone and men would then survive
in shallow grief, insouciant within,
a tired state of lethargy, where no one
ever cares.

The powers of heavenly places may be thanked,
for muses dwell upon Olympus, not
within the hell of circumstance or haste
or juvenile romance--for there
is power indeed when insight travels where
the lofty giants led and left upon
their pages majesty, and bled, and wept,
and gave us beauty that device alone
could try to emulate, but merely fade
and vanish from the mind.

Gossamer breastplate

There are the walls of flesh that hold us fast
upon this devil's island of an earth,
deceptive paradise of blue and green
that calls on birth to bond us, death to let
us go.

We are the restless spirits , ponderous
in bone and sinew, all but frozen in
a time continuum where only dreams
and stillness open windows to the light.
It is the soul's dark night that keeps us bound
when all the whirling universe holds court
outside, and we who touch the blinking quarks
but may not pass between them, are but half
angelic, waiting, wondering...

Perhaps there is a vesture that the mind
and not the eyes, may see and might there be
a trumpet to awake us after all,
a wonderhorn indeed, to sing of a
reality that may escape the dreams,
the torturous parade of lifetimes we
require to probe the mind of God?
~

Incarnate Dreams

There was a dome spread overhead
in that first lifetime, holding back
the waters and the gods;
perhaps there was a place beneath it
for the lesser thoughts that never grew,
but drifted easily away.

There was a summer when the mariners,
adrift upon the still Sargasso sea,
thought of the nearly-dead,
and though enlightened,
waited for the moment when
another dome, less tangible,
might, crashing down,
be shattered into evanescent pieces,
to their requisitioned end.

There was a pleasure dome,
defined by men at play,
in ancient time, and then anew
where thoughts were cast away.

There was a dome upon a hill
where men had once looked up,
spoken their noblest dreams aloud
...and everything was still.
~

A Song to the Unsung

These are the ones who dare,
these gloved old men with plastic bags
who roam the lanes on foot
while I drive by,
for they are more aware
of the adorning, aleatoric splendor
of the flashing crinkled cans,
the cups and wrappings
scorning those who prized them
for the moment, flying
to their rest, behind.

But now the countryside stripped bare
in naked challenge to the passers by
invites its heroes, still unsure
who they may be,the revellers who flee
before their minds take rest
upon their artifice, or those
who prize the green and see the art
of the pristine.
~

My Doppelganger

I've seen him only once
and then but feet away
outside the streetcar window;
whether he saw me,
or fled my sight deliberately
I cannot say, however

I still sense him near,
and might it be
that I shall meet him only
on the day I die--
some kind of irony in store?
Yet how I wish
there might be more,

that I might probe his psyche
as he brushes mine.
And does he pine
for yet another glimpse of me
confirming that October day
some fifty years ago
when I was borne away?
~

Is this the America we want?

http://www.bushflash.com/14.html

A challenge

to English teachers, poets, and linguists:

The language is in great need of a genderless, neutral pronoun. Poets must always compromise when referring to the deity, or when identifying anyone in the third person, and not wishing to confine that identification to gender. It is a limitation for which the time has come to be resolved.

The advent of the internet is that opportunity. Through lists, academicians from everywhere may confer together, make suggestions, have them analyzed, and eventually reach a concensus. What a boon to writers and thinkers that would be! I believe that this impediment to consistency and precision can easily be overcome without rancor, and virtually without prejudice. Yes, I have a few suggestions of my own, if anyone cares, but this is not the time to get into that. Ladies and gentlemen, heroines and heros. distinguished minds everywhere, may we begin? It is in our power to get this done. If there are obstacles, they are insignificant. Let us be consumed with the opportunity, not the obstacles. We can do it. Why wait? What better time?

Dialogue with a ghost

To the unseen and unknown presence that I made
I pour out all the doubt, the hopeless pemutations
of my thought, the dark intangibles, ideas strong enough
to tie the hours together and make of them pretenders
to a faded throne...a magisterium that everyone ignores.

My will is for some flesh upon these spirit bones,
an argument out loud, a sounding board
would near suffice, and I could carry you along
within a small attractive case, and bring you out
when no one else would care to pay attention.

Name your price!
And I will pay it joyfully.
Insulting, you may be; I do not need to win,
but only hammer at a patient ear
the inspiration of a simian mind
on impulse leaping out before remembering
the bars...and leaping...leaping.

Howl at me! I am your god.
How dare you fade
like those more proper shades
who first conspire with fame
before they take their places
in the heroes' books. and dignified
by fear. Speak now, or you shall have
no name at all.

I must conclude
that gods don't have much fun
with their creations.
Mine is such a disappointment.
Were he real, then all my thoughts
themselves might be more shy
and less inclined to play,
or fantasize,
or fight for me alone,

but merely drone inside my head
like stubborn bees
until the frosts descend
and by the winter fire
begin again.
~

Mind over Matter

His body sat there, in its chair, unmoved,
but for the whims of those who care an hour
or so, until the time clock sets them free,
yet he has left them long ago, his stare
misleading lesser travelers who stand
in elevators and in trains and are
quite unaware of their imprisonment
in other chairs less mobile, but much more
confining to the mind.

It is a question, truly, who may claim
to pity whom, and where the markers are
along the way. of when the watchers are
the watched, of how ideas play upon
the screens before or just behind their eyes.

And do we patronize a liberty
we may not know? Are there true, wondrous lands
to which the tiny particles within
alone may go? The Steven Hawkings of
the universe depart at will aboard
these spirit ships, invisible in port,
and then upon returning will report
the finding of an India that we
had never seen, or never ever dreamed
~

Corcovado

The plane approaching Rio sights
The God-man on the mountain
in the sunlight-- that cold tremor
just between the shoulders strikes;
we see the arms borne up by love
and reaching to the traveler,
the city, and the earth.

Then from below, the pilgrims mount
the heights to see the features
of the Cristo...first, the railway,
then the stairs climb higher
in the quest--
anticipation, breath and blood
now pounding in their hearts--
there comes the turning at the parapet
to watch the mists brush by his face,
gauze curtains breaking to reveal
that intermittent, scowling
countenance of stone,
once emerging in austerity
beneath the mallet, now
beyond the shadow of Elijah's peak
is seen again, and lost,
else one would need to look away--
before this stern,and re- transfigured God.

The city plays beneath his watch
just as the drama of
an immanent, transcendent deity
erupts in silent declamation, then to part
in a reprise of his ascension
in the cloud.
~

The Celery Fields

Madre de Dios! Morning already?
The mud, still damp upon my pantalones--
how can I face another day?
My niña is so thin.
Two little oranges are not enough for her,
before she rides the bus to the escuela.
I must work harder, still--
hacer algunos dollars more
hacer su vida para el mejor,
si puedo.

I remember
when like my niña, I was young..
We did not work so hard,
y sobre las alturas
every breeze was cool...
not like this steaming
California campo
by the sea.

I remember, as we worked,
how we were singing,
'De la sierra morena, Cieli...'
Now there is no heart, no time to sing.
El jefe blanco will be angry
if I make him late.

The sun is high upon this field.
My back hurts me so much
from bending. Ay!
En muchas horas I can sleep again
and stop remembering.
Jesús amado, en mi sueño
solamente, take me home
............................................
to my brown mountain.
~

Voices

Cautious spirits test the waters of my world
and call to me....then go away.
Perhaps they are perfecting inter-mind
devices, just like psychic Edisons,
Marconi's revenant in breakthrough just
for me, or else perhaps
celestial wallflowers, much too diffident
to follow up my name with headlines
from beyond the grave.

Am I their snuffling guinea pig?---
their crude receptor in this mass of flesh
that yearns for finely-tuned antennae
(please God, invisible,)
and color pictures if I may,
upon my mental screen?
No, I shall stay the course,
though I know not the hazards of its path,
the travelers,or the design,
nor may I fine
their metaphysical intent.

The reader knows, I speak with some regret,
for there are those who will decide that I
bear watching, lest my touch upon their world
begin to fade too much, that I be too
entranced of waves they cannot, will not see.
Though I may fear the world
beyond white doors, I still invite
my curtained friends to part the night
with energy no instrument
that science met may sense just yet,
I iterate...just yet
~

Regime Change

How like a child to know that being free
to taste the wind, is the unbidden source
of art, of what life means, that joy is there.
How fair, a thousand wheels above the earth
that sing upon the hills, that gifted from
the air, relay its strength and redirect its power.

How much of truth that trees may breathe again,
that fish may frolic in the ripples that
the stones create in flashing mountain streams,
that caribou will graze upon a plain
though far away, still undefiled.

How deep the melancholy of the earth
to learn the incarnation went awry
and it was man who rose up from the sod,
a metamorph, a true sardonic sire,
an avaricious god.
~

The Doll House (revised)

Behind the scaled-down images there lurk
the scaled down dreams of future lives-- perhaps
of incarnations silently recalled
by little girls with vision far less blind
than little boys, who would forsake the gate
and scarcely see the whitewashed picket fence
along Peace Lane.

We walked together, she and I, and gained
or lost a century without a care,
then pausing there untouched by age or time,
were suddenly at home, and though it was
too much inclined to the postiche and far
too lovely, she and I could then perform
a step into dimensions that
I only thought I knew.

Of course it was a given, she would lead
me to another view, though I protest
a movie-set facade so much a part
of someone else's dreams, for it spoke more
of me than comfort would allow. I saw
a book of life in which the pages mocked
my own somnambulistic journey home,
my own defense against reality.

And then we saw the open side, and there
the little rooms cut out.showed little beds
and chairs that may be moved about, but strange...
the tiny people always stayed away
as if the president would come to call,
and they are suddenly unworthy.

There the little souls might sleep
or sip at tea with giants watching, if
they dared, but no, the house is empty, much
too quiet, too pristine, and even presidents
would presidentially demur.

She took my hand, and asked me if
I like it. I, too, broke the silence, "Yes.
I think it's grand. Might it be one that you
would live in?" "No, it's beautiful
but never home enough,
for me."
~

Isn't it time we learned from "the troops?"

http://oldamericancentury.org/dalt1052.htm

Meet.......and help, the Bendermans!

http://www.bendermandefense.org/

(if this link doesn't open for you when you click it, please
try copying it, and pasting it into your address bar. Then
it seems to work for sure)

And we are the good guys?

Click here

Sonnet to a Lifetime

They laughed at one another as they threw
their mortar boards aloft, and dared to kiss
the girl goodbye, though she had spurned them in
the dry years underneath the towers, high
above their academic rounds. Now boys
no more, and war much brighter than their lust
for adolescent loveliness, the bus
and train will take them to a new domain
where pleasure girls will lie for them, compressed
in six short weekends hence, until possessed
with skill to kill, men pack their gear to fly
across the globe and die in puzzlement,
identified, and boxed and neatly laid
to rest beneath a cool and restless shade.
~

Tribute to Gertrude Stein

Three in a tree agree
to visualize a life of strife,
to realize
the hour of power
within
The Foshay Tower*
at noon
on Sunday
noon on Sunday
noon.

*This building, modeled on an obelisk similar to the Washington Monument, is in Minneapolis, a city that claims to be situated on the northern tundra, in a state called Minnesota. While this territory is too isolated to be verified, the name is said to be of Indian origin, although some residents claim that their Viking ancestors who crossed the area several hundred years ago in a drunken stupor, probably first enunciated the word as an oath, when they kept running into lakes filled with bathing Moose and slippery fish called "pickerel." They boiled the fish in a solution of lye and stagnant lake water, and called the results "ludefisk" after a delicacy first obtained from cod. When no one could eat it without retching, they cried out "man-eh soda!" and were not heard from again until spring. Minnesotans are still perceived as curious creatures who have their parades in January, drink nothing but Hamm's beer, and get very angry when someone expresses the opinion that Sauk Center ought really to have been built down in Illinois with the rest of the Sauks. It is still little known that "Sauk sucks" emerged from this controversy.