Mac

Oct 172006
 

I’m watching television—a Vietnam War documentary. It’s about the cruelty, the insanity of war. People weep. A wife of an American Vietnam War veteran says her husband’s name is not on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. She says it should be. She says he went into their garage one day and shot himself and left her a note that said, “I love you, sweetheart, but I can’t take the flashbacks anymore.” So his name should be on the wall, she says. I agree and I sit here and I weep.

 October 17, 2006
Oct 172006
 
Child: Mommy?
Mother: Yes?
Child: Why did you just tell someone they can’t sit with us?
Mother: She is a black woman and black people are not allowed to sit with white people.
Child: She’s black?
Mother: Yes.
Child: It’s the color thing again?
Mother: Yes.
Child: Is color important?
Mother: Sometimes.
Child: The color of people is important?
Mother: Yes.
Child: Do black people talk differently?
Mother: Sometimes.
Child: Uncle Alfred talks differently. Is he black?
Mother: Good heavens no!
Child: Are black people bad?
Mother: No more questions please.
Child: Johnny Russell is bad but he’s not black, right? I mean because he sits with us.
Mother: That’s enough.
Child: What are colors?
Mother: You wouldn't understand, honey.
Child: Mommy?
Mother: Yes.
Child: It’s really hard being blind.
Mother: I know dear.
Child: So how will I know when someone is black?
Mother: Don’t worry dear, I’ll tell you.
 October 17, 2006
Oct 172006
 

She left her scent in my nostrils.
It lingered there like an erotic marker,
a cloned sister siren—insisting, beckoning
—enthralling me; not allowing me
for a sane moment to forget her.

 October 17, 2006
Mar 092006
 

Sweet street nights turn off your dark lights
and sing along with me.
Slick city boys hang up your little toys
and sing this song with me.
You’re so way cool, a modern day fool
just lookin’ to break the next rule.

Sweet street nights turn off you’re dark lights
and dance this dance with me.
It’s about clubers and drugers and all kinds of lovers
who think this stuff is all free.
They’re windin’ and grindin’, slippin’ and slidin’
all the time lookin’ but ain’t never findin’.

Hot city girls straighten your curls
and spray on a costume for me.
Show me your assets and tell me your story
while you write this song with me.
It’s about clubers and drugers and all kinds of lovers
who think this stuff is all free.

 March 9, 2006
Feb 272006
 

you ask,
why loneliness?
i ask,
why mosquitoes?
or love?
or humans?
are they all the same question?

 February 27, 2006
Feb 212006
 

Have you seen me? Anywhere?
she asked.

What?

I’ve lost myself and I’m hoping
you know where I am.

Well, you’re here.
You know, right here. Now.

Not really. It’s not me.
It doesn’t feel like me. You know?

I’m sorry.

Thank you … but will that help?

Well, how did you lose yourself?

I’ve been in love …

And?

… and he left.

Oh, I see.

Yes.

So you gave yourself to him
and he took you with him
when he left? Is that it?

Apparently.

That doesn’t make sense.

Does it have to?

No, but it would help.

It would help me?

Yes.

Do what?

To get your Self back.

 February 21, 2006
Feb 112006
 

          I walk around the lake to wake up my cells and strengthen my heart and all the other good things walking does. Yet the walk always gives more than that. Just to be inside the unconditioned air is a natural pleasure too often missing from my common day. To socialize with the sights and sounds of nature as both observer and participant is as perfect as it gets when allowed to simply happen.

          I wonder if the geese and ducks and gulls walk and paddle and fly for their health? Of course, I think, mostly to accomplish their survival needs, like eating—and that’s for their health. But sometimes they seem to enjoy flying for the fun of it, the joy of it—and to practice. The gulls are especially good flyers—show-offs sometimes, impressive to me, an admiring (envious?) flyer of machines. I often wonder if any of them wonder about us.

          It's winter. Bare-limbed trees (except the evergreens) display their singularly different, sometimes intricate silhouettes, their limb structures so clearly displayed against the still-lit quiet eventide sky, reveal their heritage—their family characteristics.

          I am awed by the diversity and beauty of it all even in this small park. Then there is the ever-fascinating activity of people watching … and sometimes meeting. The park is a good place to visit.

 February 11, 2006
Feb 062006
 

Unwittingly, though unerringly, she lives by her script—the coping tapes, the survival codes, the ones we write in childhood to get through each day to the next. Unchallenged, thus unrevised, her script crafts her future as predictably as we mark the movement of the stars.

In her early pubescent days—the heavy-burdened days of her young and tentative womanhood—she sought the mother love she’s never had from boys whose nature-driven bodies sought something else.

These collisions of mismatched wills and wiles, of offers and compromise—acceptance of disguised, deceptive, and fleeting fulfillment—refined and sculpted her nature and fate.

She gave the boys what they wanted. Oddly, to her, at times she enjoyed giving them what they wanted–and what they gave to her. But when they were done she was empty again. She did not feel loved.

Now, in her tightly-bound woman world, romance as she knows it abides ever so briefly to protect her from the certainty of common life, the reality of change and loss of which she is most afraid. It is tricky to manage though. It is increasingly demanding to keep reality at bay. The pain of unmet expectations in another ill-conceived, starry-eyed adventure—one more self-scripted romantic failure, is a moment of utter, bitter confirmation that she is surely unworthy of worthy love.

Yet, loyal to script, each painful encounter is new. She is caught unaware, fully surprised at this great, awful, unwanted, unearned suffering of a kind and measure so very familiar to her should she dare to give it even a passing sideways glance for an honest moment or two.

For her denial of authorship, the cost is high. Unremitting tears well up from deep reservoirs of longing where love so desperately wants to be.

Oh, dear woman, your release awaits you on the other side of your sorrow, should you choose to love yourself … at last.

 February 6, 2006
Jan 022006
 

We are the arrogant animals, the out-of-step ones—the ego-driven, tantrum-throwing destructive ones. We are the prideful animals and the delusional animals all at once.

While a deer is busy being its noninvasive self, we are busy invading other humans or defending ourselves from human invaders. At this moment, as I write, somewhere a lion is killing another animal in order to feed itself and its family while we compose beautiful music and kill other humans in order to … I’m sorry, why do we kill other humans?

Of course the Book says that the first son of man murdered the second son of man. So what did we expect?

Some among us believe we are the guardians of this planet. They tell us they know what is best for us all—that they know what fish should live where, and what grass should grow where, and which humans should live where, and I suspect that soon when they "evolve" a little more, they will denounce God for allowing volcanoes to erupt and they will attempt to prevent Him from doing any more of His great and diverse mischief.

We have had hundreds of thousands of years to improve—to modify our violent natures—and we have failed miserably to do so. Yet because we are the delusional animals, we don’t really think about things like that too often.

Instead, we imagine ourselves to be a species apart—a non-animal species of an infinitely superior nature. As proof we direct each other to consider the wonders of our truly magnificent deeds and accomplishments. We enshrine our DaVincis and Einsteins in order to reassure ourselves that we are the intelligent species, the evolved species, far removed from the animals.

Of course, as needs be, we fail to earnestly consider the all-too-human contradictions inherent in our DaVincis and Einsteins. While we loudly and repeatedly laud the remarkable accomplishments of these icons of human superiority, we quietly and easily demote their other contributions—DaVinci’s advanced weaponry designs and the first most urgent consequence of Einstein’s e = mc2 — apocalyptic death and destruction, which proved beyond any doubt that we are far more efficient killers than all other creatures on this planet.

Yet, in our fleeting moments of unadorned self-appraisal we wise and superior guardians of the planet are obliged to accept the unspoiled truth that we can't even make a leaf.

 January 2, 2006
Dec 292005
 

I don’t like pretense and posturing when
I encounter them in others, and when I
sense a hint of either in myself, I reject it
quickly—swat it away like it’s a venomous
insect about to poison my system.

These two desperadoes seem diametrically
opposed to what we most naturally seek,
which I believe is an authentic, honest Self.

Still, I remember the awkward adolescent
days when pretense and posturing often
served as temporary pseudo-Selves handy
for trying on different personalities in the
sometimes very unsettling search for identity.

These interlopers were useful back then,
especially when ones’ Self felt like some kind
of elusive, wispy, character-playing, now-you-
see-me-now-you-don’t head games on a
hormone-rattled, stressed out teenager.

It was a relief when they were no longer welcome,
when I had finally defined and embraced what
I believe it means to be a man.

 December 29, 2005
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