We sail on a ship called “Earth, Our Island Home*”,
Shackled and bound galley slaves skimming star-capped electromagnetic waves.
Smash your irons and break your bonds if you dare,
Jump into the Empty,
Uncaring black sea where there is
No treading space to breathe,
No lucky lifeboat,
No luxury liner with safe passage to Mars,
No opt-out, even for taskmasters cracking cat o’ nine tails on blistered backs.
*Book of Common Prayer 1979, Eucharist Prayer C… Read the rest
In the worst of times, We the People, left to our own devices, have always tended toward lawbreaking, hatred, and cruelty.
In the best of times, we have been held in check and guided by our better angels, a reliable system of self-correcting, democratic government, and the leadership of conscientious and courageous people in all fields and at every level of American society who possess keen insight and unwavering true north moral vision.
It has always been and ever will be both “the best of times and the worst of times.”*
Outcome TBD.
*Now is worse than most times.… Read the rest
When I consider a line on a desert floor,
4.3 miles long, marked off in 11 yard increments worth 20 million years each,
and take in the time and distance since our kin first tamed fire,
1 million years tucked in 2.5 feet of that 4.3 miles,
and then discover that every name
ever spoken or heard
fits neatly in 0.4 inches of that 2.5 feet in the 4.3 mile, 13.8 billion years long line
stepped off on a desert floor,
I find the breadth of my life is less than the width of a human hair
(do I even need to tell you how small that is?).… Read the rest
I chuckle–morosely–anytime I hear a religious person state their belief that someone surviving a life-threatening event such as a shooting is “god’s will”, especially when someone else dies. Quite a god you got there. Sounds a bit capricious, sort of like Zeus.
There are shootings all the time. Some bullets hit their mark, others don’t. Some people live, others die. “Time and chance happen to them all” reads Ecclesiastes 9:11.
What’s ironic in the case of the current “subject of discussion” is the widespread belief that a bullet that missed him is regarded as a sign of a god’s favor and somehow makes him an “instrument” of that god’s will.… Read the rest
A pass to the slot
A flick of a stick
A puck in the net
Done dirt quick.
One flag lowered
One flag raised
For the first time in life
Which one to praise?… Read the rest
’Tis grief.
For story unwound
For truth obstructed
For lies unbound
For faith deconstructed
For country splitting
For Lady spayed
For Liberty flitting
For patriots betrayed
For servants abandoned
For dirt poor dying
For now open-handed
For despots thriving
What I am feeling
’tis grief.… Read the rest
2025 = (2 + 2 = 5)
No.
2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4.
2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4.
2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4. 2 + 2 = 4.… Read the rest
Slow, arcing convergence.
What are the chances?
One in a million?
A little more headwind here,
A little less tailwind there.
Totally different outcome.
“Time and chance happen to them all.”
Old words written truer than new ones hastily spoken.
Here we sit in the glow of our screens,
Survivors of a thousand near misses.… Read the rest
ἀντίχριστος:
Limp, slouching wolf of unbridled appetite and self-love
Cloaked in a FAKE! “Made in China” tunic of an ancient itinerant Jewish preacher
And immigrant
Who didn’t give a g-damn about politics,
Head crowned with 47 red-tipped, gilted thorns and a
Halo of Lies.… Read the rest
For E.C.
It was a most excellent “36th birthday” . . . /s
I shared CHEEZ-IT communion with E.C. and held her hand.
I watched her go down the tube slide “One more time!”—many times.
Thinking her Dad was trailing behind her (a physical improbability), she stuck her head back into the maw of the slide, cupped her hand to her mouth, and called out:
“You comin’ Daddy? You comin’?”
How does an “almost” 2-year-old girl learn to amplify sound with her cupped hand and call out around a blind curve and through a tunnel? From whence comes the courage?… Read the rest
And I went to see the doctor of philosophyWith a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his kneeHe never did marry or see a B-grade movieHe graded my performance, he said he could see through meI spent four years* prostrate to the higher mindGot my paper and I was free
—“Closer to Fine”, Indigo Girls
*personal note: twelve years
17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.
18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.
11/5/24
My ballot is a match.
I strike it and
Burn down a joker’s house of cards.
Fight fire with fire and
Forge a Freedom House.
I vote
’La.
(one week later)
11/12/24
Wait.
What just happened?
I’m confused.
I struck a match
and fought fire with fire
but the joker’s house of cards didn’t Burn.
(Freedom House just a “concept”)
I ask AI Chatbot:
Why didn’t the joker’s house of cards Burn?
AI: It_is_coat_ed_ with_flame_ re_tar_dant_ Lies.
Me: How can it Burn?
AI: Self_im_mo_la_tion.
Me: What do we do?
AI: Let_it_Burn_____Stand_ by_to_ launch_ res_cues.… Read the rest
There are three things not worth defending—no, four you should walk away from:
a con man selling cheaper eggs,
a nation trading its birthright for a blow* of traitor,
a “concept” of a country,
a church that fails to recognize an antichrist when it sees one.
*spelling correct. reads as intended.… Read the rest
The social media apps and texts started dinging around 6:30 this morning (we already knew).
Friends reaching out, grieving, trying to process.
I tossed a couple of scripture grenades on Facebook using the flawed “Swing the ‘two-edged sword’ so it means whatever you want it to mean!” methodology of exegesis to get it out of my system and kick a dent in the side of the moment.
Yesterday, and then again today, two Facebook “Friends” from high school (one of whom I honestly don’t remember) showed up, as if on cue, to reveal their theological obsessions with genitalia and scatology by regurgitating debunked lies in an effort to explain why it was necessary for them to vote into office—again—a white man who is a manifestly horrible human being, sexual predator, criminal, and traitor over a biracial woman who is a manifestly decent human being, the wife of one husband, law-abiding, and true to her oath.… Read the rest
“Woe . . . They say that what is right is wrong and what is wrong is right; that black is white and white is black; bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.”
“As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats its folly.”
(a “two-edged sword” cuts both ways)… Read the rest
