All the reasons

why the wrong president is in office. Anyone who does not agree should be prepared to explain why the reasons are not true:

(after clicking on the link below--scroll down a bit for the actual article)

www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/voter_fraud.html

Pernicious Insight

"Oh, the kitty, the kitty, the kitty!"
my litle sister cried,
as the screendoor closed behind me
on the kitten's neck.

Regrettable, I thought.
For what at ten I knew of death,
was like penumbra
on a cloudy day,
and little more of her,
at three.

Her state of shock and grief, however,
threw the flashing sun at me
and I, amazed,
could see how poignantly
I loved her.
~

In my Studio

I know that I must not exist

in synchronicity with you

nor may my soul create

within this lumbering

and evanescent form,

an odyssey of light,

no, not alone--

it takes a higher self

that I do not remember very well,

to make it swell

within a breathless chest--

that this is art!

That search within goes on,

for what is there that speaks?

What tiny cell is fired,

freeing up the stuff to change

a universe?

Or is there mystic sperm and egg uniting

there within a spirit womb,

there in a microscopic cosmos?

Might there be a spirit bishop

or a phantom God

to launch the swarm of particles

in Botticelli's mind?

There go my children,

fending for themselves

and never looking back

upon their hollow birthplace.

You and I are equally

without a clue to where we came from,

how or why, or what the process means.

And when I graduate to death,

quite willing to forsake my breath,

not wonder, (for a heaven of answers

surely is my hell) I'll not neglect

as my last opus, to create

a gracious God who may

receive my gratitude.

~

Connection challenged

I just remembered.
It nearly got away from me...
the day you died, nine years ago.
Even then, you let 800 miles come between us;
you are closer now
than you were then--

you simply died at your own hand,
and that was it. That passageway
is now as filled with rock.
I heard you call just once
although you typed hellos,
i love yous, notes like that,
and then the probe comes through
once in awhile.,
getting just a little better.

I will wait
and further store my love
like bricks of gold
stacked in the vault
somewhere near that damn tunnel,
800 spirit miles
of instant flight for you,
solid mystery for me.

I have time.
I'll wait.

From a better poet than I:

"Show me the suffering of the most miserable;
So I will know my people's plight.
Free me to pray for others;
For you are present in every person.
Help me take responsiblity for my own life;
So that I can feel free at last.
Grant me courage to serve others;
For in service there is true life.
Give me honesty and patience;
So that I can work with other workers.
Bring forth song and celebration;
So that the Spirit will be alive among us.
Let the Spirit flourish and grow;
So that we will never tire of the struggle.
Let us remember those who have died for justice;
For they have given us life.
Help us love even those who hate us;
So we can change the world."
~Cesar Chavez

Read what Cindy Sheehan has to say

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sheehan/sheehan10.html

The Inner Circle

(Thanks to Barbara Mades for the inspiration)

I've learned to deal with funerals.
They celebrate a history both far and fresh,
cementing it with closure just as earth
would close a grave.

There's not much room for victory,
despite the words of triumph in the rite.
But all the faithful ones
who could and would be there,
looking at the moment of departure
saw transcendence
at the bedside or the battlement
and drew upon resources
that they never knew they had--

not I, apart, spared from
the crisis, glory-drenched,
that turns good-bye
into transforming art.
Not I, the chosen one
to see the flight
to timelessness.

It is this tiny brittle stone
in shattering
that marks the apex of a pathway
that humanity or other
walks no more.
The confraternity of those
who walked with them until the end,
alone will understand.
~

Some words we need to hear

"A Feast of Death "
By William Rivers Pitt /T r u t h o u t Perspective

Now thou art come unto a feast of death. - William Shakespeare, Henry VI

On Tuesday, some took solemn note of the fact that the total number of "Coalition" fatalities from the invasion and occupation of Iraq had reached 2,000. On Wednesday afternoon, that number blurred upwards again to 2,015 dead soldiers. 1,821 of those served under the American flag. Fourteen US Marines died on Wednesday when their vehicle was shattered by a large bomb. Six other Marines were killed together on Monday, and a seventh is reportedly being held hostage. Two more Marines also died Monday, both from car bombings in separate locations. We are only three days into the month of August, and 22 US soldiers are dead. 54 died in July, 78 died in June, and 80 died in May. The occupation has lasted 868 days. More than two thousand soldiers, almost all of them young American boys and girls, have had the life blasted out of them because they were sent by their commander in chief to find weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Those soldiers who remain, those soldiers who have been redeployed into the war zone two or three times already, wait with grim resolve to be brought home to their families whole and sane and safe.

Acclaimed novelist E.L. Doctorow has penned some words about George W. Bush and his understanding of death and this war. "This president," wrote Doctorow, "does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country." "But you study him," continued Doctorow, "you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life. They come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq. How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing."

The occupation of Iraq is almost a thousand days old now, and as the self-serving justifications for invasion wither in the desert sun, as the neo-conservative "Bush Doctrine" collapses in a swelling flood of blood and total failure, as more and more people see impeachment as a moral necessity, as those who stand in opposition wonder what they can do to thwart a corrupt and crazed administration that exists entirely without checks and balances, there remains one act of defiance and strength and solidarity that cannot be ignored. On Saturday, September 24th, there will be a protest in Washington DC. This gathering could possibly dwarf all previous demonstrations against this administration. That weekend will see far more than a protest. On the 25th, Progressive Democrats of America will host a wide-ranging strategy session at the David A. Clarke School of Law on Connecticut Avenue. The purpose of this gathering will be to prepare progressive legislative and electoral strategies for the 2006 midterm elections. That Monday the 26th, activists will be walking up and down the halls of the House of Representatives to lobby congresspeople to demand a withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

That is for September. This very weekend will see another gathering in Dallas, Texas. The Veterans for Peace are holding their national convention from the 4th through the 7th, and will be celebrating their 20th year as an organization of military veterans committed to ending war, and specifically to ending the occupation of Iraq. Among those who will be speaking in Dallas will be Dahr Jamail, the courageous journalist who spent months in the most dangerous places in Iraq so he could tell the world what is really happening there. Michael Hoffman, a lance corporal in the Marines who participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and returned to form Iraq Veterans Against the War, will also be speaking. Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq, will be speaking as a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. Those who would defend Mr. Bush and his deranged war policies are fond of labeling dissenters as unpatriotic, un-American cowards. In Dallas this weekend, there will be a journalist who risked his life over and over to report the truth of Iraq from within. There will be a Marine who fought in Iraq and returned to organize against the war. There will be a mother whose sacrifice and sorrow is beyond description. There will be hundreds of veterans who have served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere, who stand now for peace and the end of the occupation.

It has been a hot summer so far, and this feast of death continues in Iraq with no end in sight. The Veterans for Peace, the Gold Star mothers, the Iraq veterans, the journalists who have seen the reality of Iraq, and the hundreds of thousands coming to Washington in September appear to have every intention of making this summer hotter still.
~

An Odyssey Untouched

In the beginning was the truth transcending
Alpha and Omega--too dazzling to catch
the human eye.--too patient in its vigil
through the trillion years of night. And
there were gods aborning, fanciful creations
of the creatures from the sea,
who learned to breathe and watch
the warfare in the sky and finally to write
about the wonder of it.
.
Then there was El, Baal, and Elohim,
Astarte, Gaia, Artemis
and hundreds more
upon their heavenly thrones
who played among the dust and lust
of Earth, and made the Nephilim
to rise from bones, and blood, and art.

So humankind cherished their gods
and goddesses, but at a decent length...
it would not do to genuflect too much,
to bare too much of angst
before the peerage bar, to tremble
as one more is turned away
short of the mercy seat-though justice
cries somewhere, and that lament
is strained.

And there were some who looked beyond Olympus
to the trees, the starry trails,
the ether of another time,
the silent void that speaks of worlds unseen--
and some are watching still.
(Some look back at them as quanta flash
across the ether, forth and back again!)

There are no heroes in this self-effacing song.
No dragons slain, no perfidy one may lament--
A boy in wornout coveralls may see the glory
his allowance could not buy...but then, alas, forget.

He sees his counterparts and wonders.
Do they wonder too?
Do they look back before their birth,
ahead beyond the tomb?
Do his feet retrace the prints of wonderers
who walked the timeline, knew they did not walk
as prisoners alone,
both breathing and creating history?

The boy sweeps up those sixty-seven years,
departs the stage
and violates his youth with wisdom
no one wanted, a breath of history
that no one understood, and few regret.

Souls have their day upon each earth home.
Some reach out when interfering eyes have closed,
creating mystic openings they never knew were there.
Others feed on prayer...alone.

Then It is All Souls Day
and time is but an artifice
that lets the work be done;
it is the enemy of little boys in coveralls--
of high school graduates like you.
Remember?
You seized the little summer there
before the car was loaded for the trip
to academia...the precious time
for meadow basking underneath the clouds,
the time to entertain regret
for words you did not speak
to that shy pretty girl who smiled at you
the day her life crossed yours.

You were the one who wondered.
You were the one to store up lifetimes.
You were the one to cast out gods,
creating new ones, fallible
but somehow more enlightened,
more accessible when awe, not fear
is the transcendant path.

It is a day for souls to gather.
It is a day for songs, and weeping,
looking back and forth along the timeline,
unashamed to introspect.
It is a day to know salvation never was
an instrument of God, but of ourselves.
It is the heaven only we create.
~

Just for fun

Unique

Were I inclined to be
a double personality,
I might impart to such a phantom twin
the power to create within
a prototype of his own self,
and then there would be three
or none at all,
if you may follow me.

Such magic maunderings
do have their way of teaching
that the quality to be unique
that may be present in the mind
quite possibly defeats itself
by replicating, don't you see?

...and finally, perhaps to sigh,
to draw it all within
and disappear.
~

Another Road Less Traveled

They are nothing
if not taciturn--these spirit travelers.
They do not shock, or ridicule,
for they are single-minded in their quest
for timeless realms where magic dragons play
and roar for joy that cannot be contained
unless they are ignored for brighter flames
that drown the seas around their mystic shore.

They are not much
for words or diadems of thought to sway
the psyche, win the day, or call to arms
a soldier, surfeited with war or from
a restive peace. Theirs is the steady breath
to leave one breathless, voiceless, more removed
from what a dawning day reveals than they
had ever been before, and more in tune
with universal song,

although they do not sing,
for their metier is listening. and that
is quite unspeakable--they do invite
us yet, to take their hand and come along.
The journey is not wearying , and rest
awaits the patient ones. Vacation at
the cosmic level is the prize received
unending and forever new,
~

Challenge me!

I am an independent thinker. While I am no better educated, nor more sophisticated or knowledgeable than the average person who has been to college, I do have very unorthodox opinions about God, society and politics. It is highly unlikely that anyone who comes to this blog to read, will find all of those opinions compatible with kira own.

This being the case, why don't you raise an issue or two? When you disagree with me, tell me why...or at least ask me why I take that position. Tell me about yours, and why you take it. Invite me to argue with you. (I promise to be polite and respectful). This is the only way I know of that each of us may grow, may learn, and may ultimately be better informed. If we go about as little islands that no one else may visit, how do we impact the world...how do we express what we believe. How do we encourage thinking? As for me, I hunger for this. Is it not worthwhile? May we not grow together, and perhaps ultimately influence someone else as well?

You may respond to the blog directly, or contact me by email...read down to learn how. Will you come out of the closet? And, no, there is no implication to the question. :-)

Further thoughts on meditation

Openness, it seems to me, is the primary ingredient in producing a satisfactory meditation. Obviously success, positive benefits, or at least gratification are the goals of any worthwhile activity. However, in meditation, one may not concentrate on those goals in the actual process. If ke places kiraself in a postion of assertion, there is no room for the benefit to "get in." Only a faithful confidence that one is doing the right thing, has any real hope of producing satisfaction. This seems to be true, whether the inner journey is truly into the self, or an opening to some sort of divine intervention. Obviously one must be committed to the concept of meditation as something desirable, but as soon as one starts looking for revelation, or immediate fulfillment, the opportunity is lost. When I can tell myself (and then forget the effort of telling) that a deeper immersion into the realm of the spirit (however I may define that) is in itself worthwhile, that is when I become open to the often amazing experience of transcendance. It doesn't seem to happen to the same degree every time, but I seldom emerg from my period of meditation without some very positive impressions of the experience. For the novice meditator, it is worth "hanging in there." Meditation has become my way of praying. It is not a time for self-examination, valuable as that may be. It is a time for wonder and awe...the numinous in action.

My religious faith--as of 7/10/2005 (not a poem)

Universal Mind is my God, and I am part of it. If dualism is wrong
(and every indication of it points to that.....friend vs enemy, good
vs evil, God vs Devil, white vs black, right vs left, truth vs
deception, we vs they, ours vs theirs, public vs private, sin vs
purity, triumph vs surrendur, moral vs profligate, loyalty vs
betrayal, justice vs license, procreation vs lust, power vs
appeasement) and God is not a being (if he is, biblical
descriptions of "him" make him a lousy one)...then Unity is the
order of the universe (anything else is incomplete) and UM both
surrounds and is inside all that is. It is love, and nothing else. It
is what captures me and captivates me. I do not pray to it,
although I do express my gratitude for the state of order it rules.
How that state of order was created, if it ever was, is beyond my
understanding, or ability to define. For me to try to approach such a concept would bring us right back to dualism again. It is I,
and I, in a state of incompletion) am it. It is the only God I have.
Yes, call it the spirit of God if you wish, and in that sense,
Genesis was correct. Spirit--Universal Mind--moves over the
face of the waters. I feel it groaning...inside me.

Quizas

Across the universe a quantum flashed
"Hello" to resonate a billion, no
a billion trillion miles behind the plane
on which I stood. I missed it, but the one
apart did not, and dialogue began,
perhaps a son of man saw flames leap out
a billion ages hence. Perhaps the spark
that eyes could never see ignited war,
or peace, or some outrageous fantasy
within the newborn mind of God.

Perhaps the quanta still flash forth and back
in that same frail, persistent prototype
of love.

Perhaps we miss it still.
~

Prologue to Eternity

I draw into the artificial womb
and travel from the day upon my breath
until dimension fades, a silent shift
occurs, and there is no more self to pad
the absolute, yet from the depth emerg
the wonders of an ambience that I
shall only know in full when breath is gone
and I slough off this cumbrous body for
a flight of some flirtacious fantasy
which I perceive is hovering, perhaps
in readiness beyond the mist.

Until that time I long to tell you more,
but cannot, but to say that even this
is more than words or wonder will allow--
no god I ever met would try to speak
of it, nor lover of the truth reveal
that which I daily see. and know, and feel.

What tumult lies within the thought that you,
the reader, may elect to come along
one golden day--or let it slip away!
~

At her interment

I know.
I know that love is old
and that the young
can slough it off as merely
hormonal--cosmetic preparation
for maturity, but they do it
at some peril as a life retreats
behind some shadow it contrived
for self-protection--
some reality it built to stand
against a deeper longing--
teaching it to whisper at them,
"Not a chance!"

Yet there is older wisdom,
pulling at the years and entering
its wiser plea to "Stop!
Go back before it is too late."

And each will hear,
and most will turn away
and gather up the years
until the day fades
like an aging coverlet.
And then the stone is set
until it too returns to dust,
and even love forgets.
~

Her hundreth birthday party

It was quiet in the meeting room
just down the hall, as I came in.
I knew that she would be, as well.

And there she was, propped in her wheel chair,
body in pink jumpsuit, cocked
far to the side, not quite asleep.

For her, there was no false facade.
One saw, and got a mumbling ancienne
and no apologies.

Then suddenly it was time
for people, punch, and platitudes,
kids and candy mints and cake.

The honored guest forsaken,
just as if she were not there,
reached out...I saw her once,

accepting then one small remembrance,
but too late, the speaker
had already turned away

and I, but for the press of day,
had need to cry; they missed it,
souls who turned hello into goodbye.

The small ones never really knew you, mom,
and that's ok; your spirit longs
to break away. The authors

of the books you knew, will soon
make room for Elna in their dusty rooms
along a corridor in paradise

where dusty reticence is blown away
by one enchanted newborn breath
of joy.
~

Upon this Rock

Join with me now in the creation of a faith;
may yours become the portrait
of the father of a God.
Give us the words
that we may spread the glory 'round.

Faith is the flight, we're told,
to know that which cannot be grasped
....that which is not,
in fact, it is beyond
no thing at all.

What it becomes, is footsteps of the mind
directed well past any time we know
or any universe;
we may elect when we may go,
but never when we may return.

But isn't that the nicest thing
about a faith?--
that there are no demands...no limits...
nothing to define.

And so on second thought,
you need no words at all.
~