seamus eulogy

   
                                   
                       
          What drew me away from a making-salsa day?--a gift from a friends bounty!  The death of a man I did not know.  A man who I will certainly now explore.  His poems were read on OPB enough to make me want to see more of a gift my ignorant soul must find and read.  Poetry helps us find meaning and breathe in our so ordinary life.
                                     

                                               Eulogy For A Man I Did Not  Know


                                               What Seamus did you see in us

                                               Spinning words into Irish shamrock lace

                                               Pictures grounding us in dirty earthly palette

                                               I cannot begin to speak your greenius Gaelic

                                               Looking to the garden maze of 100 square

                                               Jungle madness not close to straight rows

                                               Grains of Aztec gods in love bleeding red

                                               Their purple and pygmy torch lighting the way

                                               Through this right to live staking your gold claim

                                               Let light shine among us here

                                               Share sun with your crowding neighbor

                                               Pinch a leaf to give us space

                                               Offer water to a thirsty mate

                                               At the rising August sliver

                                               All the paths gone to tripping flowers

                                               Who would know now

                                               The hours and hours

                                               You tried to give food and soul

                                               To your lined May plan

                                               Oh if we could be so like your Nobel way

                                               But you are gone on this very day

                                               So to the frost will come

                                               To bring order to this chaos

                                               Where there was none

                                               The words you sung remain

                                     
                           

Farewell to SPRING

                                                            Farewell to Spring


                                        Going Forward Slowly


                                     Solstice weakening Winter

                                     Let there be fires

                                     Naked dancing

                                     We can rejoice

                                     The heart of winter has been ripped out

                                     We will slowly bleed into life Spring                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    


          When the vernal equinox was pregnant, I had this idea to interview Spring.  Now it's 57 degrees out and nothing even close to summer is on.  Rain and temperature has forced me by the fire--killer bread rising-- using whole soft white wheat and rye kernels--thinking of whole villages in medieval times going rave with visions from the ergot fungus in their rye.  I wonder what they thought of spring.  Easter and he has risen, eggs, rabbits, pagan fertility rites by witches around heaped-up  bonfires.


Paul said, " Frog madness noise searching for mates out there in the dark and that means time to stop bleeding the sugar maples."  Another said, "The pantheon of bulbs:  Crocus, daffodils, Spanish squill, chionodoxa."   I could never get enough or have  enough of them.  Maybe this explains my madness for bulbs.  "Optimism, after a dark winter."  "Hope!"  "The first ooh chartreuse leaves of Oemleria .  What is yours?  Tell me.  Comment!

My favorite ( which is not Spring)  was from my friend, Lloyd.  Not often do you find someone in this world that has the same distorted view of Spring, " is a season closer to the longest day of the year.  The corollary of this means the days are getting shorter and bare winter is a shadow on the sun.  Now, what do you think of Spring?  The bulbs are withered limp brown.  The leaves of the Indian plum are a non-stunning plain ole green.  Still got that optimism?  What dreams are molding from 90 days ago?

I remember 90 years ago it seems, when I was 19.  The world would be changed by me and you.  The tsunami force we thought we were has more than crested.  The cycle continues to spin.  The years that were beginnings continue going round and round like some old "Circle Game."  Stop and take inventory of dreams dreamt and realized and then count your blessings.  There is still time.  What I have learned from tending our garden is that Christ should not have said " the lilies of the field."  He should have said, " behold the poppies of the garden."  How the best, most vigorous effort was not necessary.  Never planted yet still the strongest kaleidoscope of blues, reds, and lavenders.

I have not been able to write because of Spring--you drive me into work frenzy.  Blame it on Spring.  The kids are gone.  I must blame my absence on someone besides laziness.  Planting and fearing psychotic rains, little creeks that should not be there at this time, rotting all of my seeds.  Fear not!  The corn will be knee high.  Tomatoes will be plump.  Have all of the expectations become empty?  No, we are waiting for the unripened fruits of Spring.  Are we always waiting for the next.  Perhaps winter is not villain.  Maybe it is time to redraw our plans for more Springs.

Can depression have any face in this?  What is it like to not hear the symphony of spring hope-thousands of frog bassoons  and it is only tinnitus in your soul?  Do you feel worse because you know you should rise to the ever present bully sound.  Pull myself out.

Yes, I am happy I survived Spring.  My fingers are to the bone.  Still, I am sitting back writing to you a day left in Spring.  I feel I need to continue Spring even tomorrow but especially now.

After 28 years and almost as many parties, we are taking a break (say new road$) but I can never forget our wedding that started our parties.  Beni Maiko is in her second flush.  I dedicate this poem to my beautiful wife, Marieke.



                                              28 Years


              From Amsterdam streets to bride


              From always lover to wife

              To know beyond doubt

              There is always that person

             Who has my back

             No matter how close the roiling seas
                                 
             Try to capsize our row boat

             All of the poems I have penned

             Add up to the most important words

              I love you David

Habemus papam

          In a conversation over the phone with my brother, Tom, this facetious question comes up:  "What do you think of your new pope?"  This is a topic that screamed for a rant though I never thought it would be a topic of a blog,  I will try not to drone on (maybe that will be a topic someday).  I still want to do a Spring thing, but for now habemus papam.

What I think is preliminary, verdict still out.

Let me begin by saying I was totally amazed that the media made this a # 1 lead story for days.  The adage if it bleeds it leads was not followed unless you consider the juicy scandals and intrigue behind the Vatican doors of homosexual priests, abuse of their bank (What is a church doing with a bank?  Let's hope the funds will be used for more things than keeping the princes of the church in their rich life styles and if cardinals are the princes does that make the pope the king?), pedophilia...are we talking about a church?  I think with 2.1 billion followers, members it might explain media coverage: I wonder if they count me and a lot of other folk because as they say: once an alcoholic always an alcoholic.  If your off the juice you are still an alcoholic though now you are recovering.  You must find the humor:  Argentina, Francis's home country is 90% Catholic though only 10% go to mass or as you would say are"practicing" kinda like doctors and lawyers.

As you know I am a recovering Catholic.  I have tried to overcome the brain-washing and imprinting from the womb.  I have tried to retain some of the bottom line Christianity which Catholicism has like Jesus's main tenet:   love your neighbor as yourself.  Is it weird that they say I am a Catholic first before they say I am a Christian.  That I follow the pope not Jesus.  I found it so interesting that all of the cardinals and church hierarchy wanted a pope that would keep and enforce the rulings and dogma of the church and keep the strict rules in place and the money.  All that I wanted was a pope like pope John Paul the XXIII.  A pope that would call the Third Vatican Council, that would embrace all men and women, a person who would not be a pharisee, or a money changer, or a theologian arguing how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.

Maybe Francis fooled the cardinal choosers.  I feel there is hope that things will change in the church. I love to use words like mendacity, hypocrisy, two faced, exploitation.  I hope he abandons these practices of the Church.   Makes these words of the past.  I hope the new words are:  liberation theology, humility, practiced poverty, the truth of Catholics and contraception, condoms to prevent the spread of aids,ooh masturbation, pedophilia, married priests, women priests, other faiths, Jews,   homosexuality, distributions of wealth, the truth, what would Jesus do.

Many orders like the Jesuits take the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and Jesuits take a fourth vow:  obedience to the pope (I wonder how that will work since Francis is a Jesuit).  When I was a novice at a Jesuit novitiate, I was astounded that the only vow that was followed was "obedience, brother," as father Master would say.  It meant blind obedience or as one of the spiritual exercises meditations (brain washing?) a Jesuit was to follow if you were told to water a dead stick (plant) you were to do it.  Orders  can get around the poverty by saying poverty in spirit as the feasts were overflowing with with wine--almost bacchanalian feasts of excess.  No worry about anything material brother, you don't have to worry the car is always full of gas and you will be invited to the richest peoples house--does this sound like poverty.  Need I say more.  I can't even talk about chastity as that has become a joke.  I remember the friend I had at the Novitiate.  There we were;  outside on the light-less Sheridan hillside, a Jesuit Novitiate (now a Scientologist bastion), watching the Perseid meteor showers when a hand moves to my side and I have to push it away and say I don't want to be that kind of friend.  He later left the Jesuits and became a priest and stepped in front of a bus in San Francisco because he was facing allegations of pedophilia.  Many of his "friends" are Jesuits today.  That is not to say all priests are molesters, or do not keep their vows.  I see the new pope is used to taking the bus and picked up his own luggage and paid his own hotel bill, and said the palatial apartments that are his now do not need redecorating--maybe there will be an intensive house cleaning not just of his kingly trappings but of the entire Church.

There are allegations of his not actively opposing the dictatorship in his home country.  We have all sinned.  If he was passive, I believe he now admits he should have done more and he has adopted the name of Francis of Assissi.  The first pope in thousands of years that takes a name that no one else has ever chosen that symbolizes peace and love of poverty.  I wonder how this will work out.

For me, I hope all of those words I mentioned come to the fore, and that the main phrase,"What would Jesus do?" is Francis's mantra.  Who knows how this will all play out.  There is hope.

And now a poem about a priest that taught sophomores that were not Alaskan meek lambs.  One of the priests that bankrupted the Jesuit Oregon Province( They kept a lot of properties like multi-millions Jesuit High etc. through lawyers slight of hand) which is an area of the west that goes north
to Alaska and east to the Indian reservations that were a pedophilia place for plunder.  I wonder how many more monsters Jesuit High School harbored that taught us.  Most of the records are sealed but Father Poole made the Oregonian headlines.  As you will see we did not go to the slaughter at least I know of no classmates that did.  I vaguely remember a picture of this smiling monster at a dinner with my lovely little sister, Lisa, on his lap.  How lovely acts of normalcy and natural affection come into doubt.  His mendacious religion rants to us were always, "Take it down to the principle."  This bald-faced chameleon ate at our home and we didn't know that the Jesuits were hiding a monster but they knew.  Shame on the Church and this is a word, pedophilia, that is no longer hidden from us.

                  Father Cess Poole


Some bad priests molest the weakest lambs

I know the devil is flesh

I have seen his bloody tracks

Black magic is flesh incarnate

Wheedles  his way inside

Talks in holy smack

Beelzebub uses a sneak attack

Invites you into an exclusive clubbing

I saw his chameleon face

Preaching to the human race

The façade they call go(l)d

It reeks green dollar bill mold

Talks earnest righteous and boldly lies

Sophomores see through fake and fable

He would invite us to the altar table

Eat the flesh drink of the blood

Repeat answer chant the rant

Take it down to the principle you say

The principle knew who you were too

Cover your eyes be the monkey

Abetting this sick molester junky

We did not want to share your heroin habit

Oh father cess Poole we knew

That you were only fooling not us or God

But some helpless lamb led to your slaughter

That was your only go(a)d

The words won't come. Momma said ther'd be days like this

                                Momma said Momma Said


             Sometimes life is so bogged down in the fire that needs to be built if you want to raise the temp to 60 degrees, the wood that needs to be cut for next winter as you eye the  dwindling stacks in the wood shed for this winter that Norm gave you, the weeds choking the garden till you can't breathe, the tiller that won't start and the words that won't come even if you didn't have to waste time bringing wood in or is that just an excuse--all the lists.  This whining will be brief though wining would be preferred--a vintage over-priced Oregon Pinot--oops there I go again.  The words would come but they would be slurred.  My good old inspirational friend with MS, Doctor Herb(acious) Orange, (what a name for a horticulture teacher) that no matter what difficulties he encounters can always say, "Life is good!"  I'm already feeling better but the words still won't come and the firewood still isn't in.  Ah, the word horticulture I love.  From the latin I wasted 4 years studying instead of small engine repair I could get that tiller running, hortus=garden and cultura=cultivating, agriculture.  When I taught Intro to Horticulture at Clark College, I would always start out with this politically incorrect pun I heard years ago which seemed appropriate for beginning students: "You can lead a hor-to-culture but you can't make them think."  So I am trying to think:  What poems for today?


The thing about leaving home is there is no firewood to carry in only a thermostat to turn up that magically brings heat

 

                                                               At Home


Leaving home why

Every place we go

No matter how nice it is

Stars as bright food as good

We say it is not where our heart beats

Where there are no voices but the echo we own

The deck room framed big in garden

How nakedness is free

No one watching only the trees

Screams of joy not heard

Sense of peace no paranoia

Doors not locked

Windows free to open air

We wonder why we leave

To remind us there are crashing waves

Mountain paths to find

So happy to stay home

Sometimes you wonder if bringing in the wood has a higher meaning than just staying warm.

       Bearing Gifts To Nothing

Can man ever change his flaw

Single I stand not wanting to be right

Asking only the chance to plead my cause

I cannot say but here is my light

Generic masses hold tragic failings

They die of greed  or mutiny

In Dutch phantoms or Caine sailings

Swearing oaths god damn their inability to sin

Who will kill you ugly hydra

I can only pique make you madder

Only to suffer as poor Phaedra

Does truth care does it matter

Blame the gods for such faulty workmanship

Or the stars not you dear Brutus

Your fathers worshipped the flag why not shit

One mans questions are koto notes in the wind 

Island or continent time grinds to sand

Despite our breathings for all our toilings

So I try to forget I am a weak man

Foolishly bearing gifts for nothing

                   

When our horse loses, when life looks empty and bleak there is always this hope.



                                From Despair


                         No spring will come

                        They have won

                        The rats have eaten  my seed

                        The tulips are frozen mush

                        Hope has died

                        Me too inside


                        Kerry off

                        Carry on

                        The world must grow smaller

                        To touch each man and woman

                        So there can be no lies

                        Where we look into each others eyes

                        Sharing love as lovers do


Sometimes the words come but they were not the ones we wished.


             Suicide By Cop


When a poem must get out

Coyotes  howling

Doors unlocked with found keys

Fleshy cells remembering another night

When I saw your eyes in my head lights

Not a deer on the highway

Looking up at me like that one in Grass Valley

Pleading but knowing death

Was close at hand

Wanting it to be over and gone

I hope you died instantly homogenized

Reformed into something better

But why did you make me a murderer
                                    

It's all about LOVE

                     Be my Valentine!  Sending out hearts to all the people I love.   Love and Valentines Days:  thinking back.  Wow, that girl in fourth grade, Cherie Dedmore.  Surprised I even remembered her name  Wonder if she is still alive.  First girl that I didn't know how to react with--just peach fuzz--you know love is just a four letter word except I didn't have a clue but I knew the word from my dad's service station:  **** which rhymes with lucky.  Didn't know what it meant though.   I knew so little about the four letter word:  LOVE!  And then there was the guilt of the forbidden fruit that Catholic schools and teaching put on our backs. I lived it.  I am a recovering Catholic.  St. Augustine saying," It wasn't an apple on the tree.  It was a pair on the ground."  Sex was made to make you feel dirty and not talked about except in the confessional.  Back in the early sixties sex education was limited to restroom walls and our snickering friends who found their dad's playboy.  I know because at eleven I was the colonel of the urinal at Pop's station.  My duty was to keep the restrooms clean after school.  I read some weird stuff before I scrubbed it off.
                     So, "What's love got to do with it?....(Is love) just a second hand emotion?" sings Tina. There are many kinds of love:  Fraternal, maternal, filial, sororal, unconditional, gay, lesbian, friend, platonic...  I want to talk about romantic love between two "partners for life."  Love and sex.  Sex and love.  One without the other is like a reuben without the pastrami.  A peanut butter sandwich without the peanut butter.  A chocolate cake without the chocolate.  When  two are enjoined, it is possible to experience heaven on earth if only for fleeting moments.  To go somewhere where many people in love have gone before.   In these poems I wish to wax silly like Maccha sang "It's just another silly love song."


              Blue Sky

Kind of blue sounding

People say there have been prettier ones

Than you

But they are now so wrinkled

They have not met

You

I see you I believe

Maybe my eyes were shut

Now I see

You

Where and when I found such luck

Discovering the phantom orchid moth


            Song

When I see you so pink

I think of such incongruity

So bold a clashing color

In this autumn gold Ginkgo time

The sunset deepens on your face

To make the rosy fingered dawn envy

                                                           

Love without reciprocation is sad.

 Checking Out A Library Book

Like so many books on a library shelf

I came and saw you in the stacks

Would I choose knowledge very rare

Borrowing this book

Wanting more than osmotic stew

Standing in front of you  

Looking at so many unknown pages

Grabbing it from the row

Chasing each word as if my last

Tattooing chapters relentlessly on my soul

Feeling needles

Hoping you would read me too

Love the fine print

Then open wide

Hey, we had an earthquake out in Yacolt, Hemingway, just recently.


                    Delirium                                                  


I felt tremors

Aftershocks falling down the Richter scale

Still twenty minutes after

Tremblers

Some adrenaline rush

Like only a stealheader would know

Then times it geometrically

That is true love

It is not all about sex

Your head nuzzled in my arm


And then there is obsession again.

                 Red


She was the devils helper

             Red

I should have known

I could not help myself

I was magnetized to her

Like there was nothing else

That mattered two cloven hooves

I am going to ride it out

The difference between life and living

               Breathing

Breathing in pure oxygen

Then all hell breaks loose

Cant be stopped

             Damned

Happy Valentines Day Star, May, Oliver, Finnian, Caty Lynn, the amazing Maisy, and the beautiful Hannah.

I could go on mushing.

defining Hell

               

            Or as Pop used to say, "What the hell?" or," I'll be go to hell."or just "Go to hell!"



                Here we go.  What is HEdoubleQ to you.  There are many things I am when I live in hell.  Certainly,  I don't want to go or visit.   Sometimes, I find myself in hell despite trying  not to be there. I try to be in it less and less.  So, the Reenster's  spins HAPPY for her 2013 word.  HAPPY seems to me to be the antithesis of HELL.
                Which brings me to one of the few ancient jokes I remember.  Think Dante short.  Guy goes to hell.  (Hell is all about making choices)  The devil says, "Would you like to decide what ring of hell you wish to reside in eternally."  Satan takes him through various very bad places.  Visualize standing in volcano lava reaching for a cup of water that spills before you can bring it to your on-fire lips...etc.  Finally, they come to a ring where people are sitting around tables drinking coffee knee deep in shit.  The guy very enthusiastically just grabs a chair and a cup of coffee and sits down.  He says to the devil, " This is the place for me."  Lucifer laughs and says to every one" Coffee breaks over.  Back on your heads."
                   Hell isn't always fire.  I remember my dad giving me the threat of the strap and me crying, "I'll be good."  Does being good send you to heaven?  Does being bad qualify you for hell?  What is a mortal sin?  Hell, I don't know.  I'm going to confession.
                                         

   Father Forgive Me


For all of my sins

Most were not intentional

You said that mitigates

I only have hope

To be forgiven

For things that I have found wrong

Made grave damage

I did not know the outcome

You say I should have

Havoc not able to be foreseen

Blind to stupidity

Just blind

I quit smoking Camels at 63

Do you understand sin


Some people equate evil and hell.  Lucky are you who have never experienced evil; but if you had maybe then you would believe in hell.  Could hell be the absence of light?  What would an eternal nuclear winter be like--no gardens, no fragrant flowers, not even snow drops in winter to give us hope.  Only Hell-ebors
                                                                                   
                                                                                            

     

                   Fright Night

The muscle moon was pressing down

For some it is enough to push one over

Drive them off the beam

He said no

Admitted there is evil

He could not deny it

Good he could feel

If he touched softly

Tried to bring some Spring into his bones

That heavy Winter full moon

Branches so transparent not able to hold it back

The rain is muddy puddles

There are no reflections

No pictures on refrigerators

Only weighted pounds of bleak nothingness

There must be good somewhere

Hard to see with this dim light

I am afraid of this night

When the muscle moon is on


There are personal hells.  Do we choose them?  Depression?  Lack of hope?  Giving up?

                                              My  Sick


                        When I go off the beam

Like ole George the Indian and his little mutt dog Sportie

  Is a 45-calcopkiller speeding bullet left the gun

Cannot wish the trigger back done

Collateral damage

Who or what took  the shot

Self inflicted pain

Wallowing in a whirlpool of blood

Flowing from my gashed heart

Trying to swim out

My hurt will not stop flowing following

Flailing desperation getting sucked under

Gulping for breath wanting out

Releasing to the down deeper pull

Now fighting back for breath

Now wanting death

Not wanting out

Fondling each squirting artery thrust

Tourniquet tourniquet stop red to black

Reaching up to the outstretched hand

Slapping it away

Silent hope it will reach out again

Who can explain rejecting easing of pain
                                   
    It is a certain kind of hell insane

Some kind of immersion in masochistic glee

Sick when I go off the beam














                 

Defining Heaven

                                    "Everybody wants to go to heaven..."


This "What Defines Heaven" is a philo-theological question I have obsessed on.  I have written reams of paper searching for this answer.  I cannot say if I am a believer or not.  My friend Danny said, "Do you always look at things for the best?"  I see no alternative.  I want the  best for you and me and everyone.  If it is your heaven,  then I would like to visit.  I want to live in heaven.  Doesn't it feel so good?  Let's go!

My very dearest priest friend, Fr. DeJardin,  now deceased,  came to a kinder interpretation of Catholicism as he aged.  He believed theologically that all people would have the chance to enter the gates of heaven--very similar to Mormanism.  He also introduced me to Teilhard de Chardin, another Jesuit, who was prosecuted by the Church for his belief in evolution.  My favorite interpretation  of Teilhard's was that we humans play a role in the evolution of heaven.  That the alpha point of primitives would evolve/become the omega point of some human heaven on earth.  Doesn't that sound great.  Like we could actually create a heaven here on earth.  Let's evolve!

Then there is a largely held  belief  by many on the after-life--reincarnation.  Basically, how we transmigrate through many lives and forms to achieve a release from the physical into a more perfect spiritual world.  That's why they are always telling us men to get in touch with your feminine side and they say stop being a donkey.  This belief, too,  is saying that you have a personal responsibility to change or evolve into something better.  I cannot help but think this in turn would make the world better.  Let's believe!

Oh, oh!  Now I'm preaching like Mr. Flora Wonder.  It's fun!


"Just the poems sir, just the poems

     
                             How Rich
                   
                       If you are the person

Who must have a clear cut around your home

Then you have not committed to faith and love

You have risked nothing

You have lost even

Where will you spend your whordes

What will you get for it

The time is coming fast

Then it is over

As we have known it

The Omega prophecy is here

Not some ticker board bouncing speculator numbers

Happiness fat gardens friends

All will dwell in harmony


By being in the now do we live in zen heaven?
             

More Now


I hope I see you in heaven

But why would you like to leave this

Does a man need more than 40 acres

Not able to love them enough

Tethered to a dream

Why wake up

Why proclaim there are many mansions

Better than our fleshy bodies

Someplace far off we do not know

What is the matter with now

There are many paths to heaven, Grasshopper.

                         Salvation

I have been on the bus

I sat in the back of the bus

Rode to the blackest star planet

There seems to be a heavy dark plastic tarp

Can’t get it off

Fear strangling my breath

Gravity so heavy

Can’t get out from under it

A room with no doors

A planet with no light

The shuttle  nowhere in sight

Losing my hair gray despair

Technology will rescue me

Liar

Pharmacology will heal me

Liar

Religion will save me

Liar

POETRY

I believe in many heavens

                                 Nirvana Nirvana 


A snowflake in my hand

To be frozen suspendimated eternally

Would could it be that good

Resurrected into the clouds

Could you leave this fermented soil

I like visiting

I want to come again

I am not ready to forsake

Picotee pink begonia breasts

Autumn sun spinning gold in your hair

To not dwell in this our house

We call loves kissing madness

Would being immortal mean

There are no bodies to touch

No feasts of excess to share

Not to hold all that is us

Go away JesusBuddhaMuhammad

I want you darling 53

And finally, going back to my Christmas blog:  Heaven is grandchildren:  Defining Heaven

                                                                               

Confession of obsession

                                           Confessions of Obsessions

I promised you in my first blog, " In the Beginning," an expose' of my obsessions.  Confessions of obsessions.  I hope I am more forthright than our hero, Lance.  Still, there are things that we hide even from our closest soul-mate.   Sometimes even from our self.  I will give you a few and you will have to wait for more juice to come over the ether net.

Let me be perfectly clear (was it Nixon who always said that preface before he lied?)  you know what obsessive compulsive is.  Some people are bred with restraint.  Some have enough as to be at the edge, not of this political buzz-word cliff; but of a real precipice.  And a few have no boundaries.  I fall somewhere between the latter two.  I wish to preface this blog:  There is nothing wrong with obsessions if they do not hurt others or yourself.

Do you know what it is like to loose total control?  Have you ever lost control?  If you think that you are in control and your best, honest, true love says you fall beyond the range of normal in your habits/ desires in a certain area; do you believe him/her.  Is it intervention time?  Disbelief is easy.  There are others like you--worse than you.  There's that saying again, "Don"t laugh at yourself.  There's always someone worse off than you."  I don't believe I'm out of control, but then there is the total tally of the seed catalogs.  I get on a lust jag for seeds and I can't help myself.  Did it bankrupt us?  No.  Is it a sizable portion of my SSI check?  None of your business.  Will I recoup the cost in savings from my garden?  I need to share more.

In a discussion with my son, Tyson, we talked of how the onions, garlic, potatoes, squash,cabbage....
in the winter larder can be purchased much cheaper in the grocery but that there is such satisfaction in knowing that they are organic and that you grew them and they are yours when you cut those onions and spuds into a stew.  AND. There is no way I can monetarily justify the flower seeds except that they are food for the soul.  What does your soul need to feed to stay alive.  Baby Joe, more white water.  David B, another rare guitar. Mikey=steelhead. Yarn Reenster? (To the tune of)These are are a few of my favorite... obsessions... I just had a dream about you--I think it happened--I think it was real.

planting those seeds/their miracle

                       Waiting out May

How can you be so cold

The middle of May

A week past my birthday

You hail like there is no Mary

I know you can turn ice crystals

Into steamy breath with your hot glance

Then psychotic cold again

To freeze my joyous heart

When will you let me warm my hands

Smothered in the folds of your black earth

Plant miracle seed that will feed

  My body and soul



channeling seeking obsession


  Koan:  A Little Death


You cannot turn the tide of who you are

I found me in a thunder storm sheltered by a cedar

When that flash bang comes in a branched church

You have reached the end of your search

All things seem harmony shared

The noise of birds as if they cared

The yellow cry of a sea of buttercups interrupts

I too am a part of us

Just once to be there on that day

When Beni Maiko is the reddest

To freeze into that reaching wild sea

and there really was Tulipmania


                                                                       Tulipmania


                                                         Oh my Tulips my precious Tulips

                                                         Where have you gone

                                                         Whose hands are you in

                                                         You they fondle like Turkish bulb thieves

                                                         But you are to grow with me

                                                        Color fullest with me

                                                        Be alive in the Spring

                                                        You shall

                                                        We will

                                                         Swim back home in richest sea foam

More from the Moss Man

                                         

                         A message from the Moss Man

                         Amusing I hope it will be

                         Wisdom falling like hour glass sand

                         Time emptying to the bottom for you and me




     On Sacred Ground the moss is abundant because we live in the shadow of a mountain.  When the rain comes, always in abundance there are big creeks and little creeks besides our year-round Basket Flat Creek.  All of these have names and my favorite one was captured by Idlemotion (Tyson) on Flikr. This is a picture of the falls on


                                 



            Marieke Creek


You cut a little deeper into my heart

Every day month year

You are part of the view

We can never forget

The electric green moss 

Cloaking the silvery falls

Give Sacred Ground blessings

It is here where we live

Walk to open your eyes

The beauty is contentment

If you can only stop

See what surrounds you



                           Anatomy of a Waterfall
                        Or
How The Dissection Of It Pertains To Life


We come into this life a baby bare

We leave a graying bald

Lucky are you

That know nothing but happy smiles

Are you becoming a baby again

That forgets even bodily functions

How old are you not yet you say

Can still walk laugh talk in no gibberish

   Are you restless to get to where you are going

Memories of back on grandpas farm

Youths romantic simpler life 

Became the good ole days

That were great and not so good too

What will you remember and forget

Can I find again that football sized avocado

On a country rode somewhere east of San Diego


                        
Getting In Sync

Can you hear the heart beat of Gaia 

Thump thumps in deep tuba tones

Look out what do you see

Mirror mirror of yourself

Sitting on an empty shelf

Look what is reflecting beyond 

What noise is in the picture besides your face

Just the world you are connected to

Can you join in all the life around you

Harmonize with all that is found old-new

How can we change society

How demeaning is our society to individuals--cattle call # 1.  Recently, I have been exposed to what our culture has become.  So I don't read the directions:  Flying, Buzzers, bells going off "Sir step over there please."  Wanding: "Sir, you have something in your left pocket."  (Pack of Camels, I've since quit again to avoid this--I didn't know it could be a bomb.) Again. "Sir, you have something in your left pants pocket."  (One thin dime--After this trip I didn't know I had a cent left.)  3rd scan, "Sir, you have something in your right shirt pocket."  (I  didn't know I could start a forest fire or bring a plane down with a toothpick.) Now I'm getting worried.  "Please let me go home, I couldn't stand another hurricane Sandy.  I'll be good."

Second case--cattle call #2.  My son-in-law Scottie, who I must say I have become very fond of in the last 10 or so years.  He has taught me how to be a better red neck.  I now go out to kill fish and Bambi as he has taught me well.  Every time we go out to fish he asks, " You have your license."  "Yes boss, in my wallet."  Well I did have my license when the gamie asked, "Can I see your license?"  "Una problema sir, this is last years license.  I'll go check to see if you have a current one in the system"  Sick feeling.  I thought I might get a warning--nope.  "Your mandatory court date is set for 8:30 January 7."  "Do you know how much it will be?"  "It's up to the discretion of the court."  Wow if he would have told me then it was a class C misdemeanor punishable by 90 days in jail and a 1000 dollar fine and a revocation of my ability to obtain any sports licenses for 2 years, I might not have forgot about my court date until 7:40 Monday morning the 7th.  (It takes 45 minutes to get to the courthouse from our  neck of the sticks.  Traffic accident on I-5.  I think I could have made it on time speeding, thinking of the excuse I gave the cop about why I was speeding.  Don't think it would have flown.  So, I can't find a parking place close.  3 blocks away, pump the meter with 7 quarters, don't know how long this will take, off running, forget to lock the truck, still in range--beep.  Line all the way down the front court house steps. Where do I go. Talk to the guy in front of me in line--looks like he has had some experience down here.  "Talk to the lady at that desk after you get through the metal detector."  "Step back sir, one at a time."  They have to say that all day.  This time I search my pockets--not that same dime.  I think I'm cool, walk through.  Beeeeep!  "Step over here sir."  I was wearing my bib overalls and oops there is my tire pressure gauge and 2 pens in the top pocket right below my face..  He hands me my keys, pens, gauge, and the dime.  I say, "Keep the change"and he doesn't think it's very funny.

I hand the volunteer old lady at the desk my ticket and ask where I should go.  "I'm sorry, I can't read that small print."  She asks me my name and I find the K's for her on the 4th page.  I walk into court room 2 and the clerk interrupts the august proceedings to tell me to take my hat off--hey, I didn't know I was in church.  I sit by a couple of cute girls and ask what is the procedure here.  The cutest and closest says you can raise your hand if you wish to plead guilty then you can go next.  Oops, I also forgot my hearing aids so I can't hear #@#$.  She says go talk to the district attorney.  I talk to the d.a. (a girl maybe 30) and tell her my name and I can't hear you know what.  The pompous ass asks who wants to plead guilty.  I raise my hand.  The judge asks me my name but is flustered because he can't find my case because guess what the d.a. has it and she asks me to go outside with her.  It's like tv getting: you have the right to...and I say, "This whole process is very demeaning from getting inside this courthouse to here."    I tell her my story and she keeps going on no previous... and I say, "What's your bottom line?"  She says, "80 dollars."  I say, "Can't you go any lower?"  She hesitates but 80 bucks is already written down.  Get to go up to the bar, start to say something and he says that you can take this and shut up, or plead not guilty to 90 days, etc. I get one smart ass thing in when he says you will have to the end of February to pay it and I say that would be great because my 47 percent check will be in the mail by then.  I couldn't understand his rush to get this over as it was raining and he just didn't seem like the guy who would golf in the rain.

What's the point of the pictures of Basket Flat burning man and my cattle call experiences?  Society is sick.  Justice is not even a point to be listened to or cared about.  The whole experience of being a cog in a giant grinding wheel, a cow coming to the slaughter house,     (Where is the autistic lady that designed a more humane method?) is so sad.  "Just a number not a name"  Why can't we get crazy if it doesn't hurt anyone?  Did you hear Paul Hanlin's fireworks at burning Flat?  Did it wake you up?  I know his address if you want to turn him into the man.  Vince Kelly and I at our reunion had the same conversation we had 50 years ago.  That was Vietnam.  Now it's Afghanistan.  I didn't want to rant and the man makes you afraid that if he hears you, you will be in even deeper into his system.  Like Voltaire advised me to do:  "Cultivate your own garden."

                           A Hippy  Dream

When the darkness was but a youthful lark

I could ignore its flight

Now the wings block out every strand of light

There is only craving the light switch

Fingertips trying to catch my fall

The pavement racing towards me

Wanting you to save me

I am still tempted by the precipice 

Do not want to be an apostate or  apostle

Only to protest in bed Lennon like

To want a peace that is something more

Than between the sheets 

Of newspaper sensation and talk show truth or lies

That gossip around and only draw flies

No one recognizes Ruth or truth

Faces no one believes were ever real

We must escape our personal hell

Try once again to communicate

Out of this selfish strife

This complicated thing we call life

Spend all of our energy

Creating love and peace