Commentary on:
Taking Your Inventory before Death
Note: We talk of death often in poetry, as well as love, I would think we have overdone these two issues after 7000-years, but it seems to be an ongoing interest among the masses, as well as individual; perhaps because these two areas are so mysterious. We think power, money and success can give us love before we die. And so we beat ourselves up to accomplish this, only to find out these are wishes and desires based on psychological needs, they are not the product of happiness. And by the time we figure this out, we are too old to do a thing about it. I often remember a scene in the bible: one of the holy men, standing along side four or five other men, talking at one of the gates of Jerusalem, and they are talking of simple everyday things. Perhaps the weather gets involved, or a neighbor in trouble. Something similar to that, or maybe they just talking about God, and how they used to be as kids running up and down the streets of the city; in any case, I thing of this, and when I’m riding or driving, or walking in cities and towns and villages throughout the world, and so forth and so on, I see this scene in reality. It is a great scene, and God had it put into the Bible for a reason. These folks are aging, talking about what they did; they are unconsciously preparing themselves, taking their inventory you could say, for another day. (1-6-2008)
Sunday, January 6, 2008
A Moment for Death (a Poem)
A Moment for Death
Perhaps it is part of death?
When my mother was dying it was her moment
you could say, her moment in life to remember,
ponder, recall all those little things she did, and
a few of those big things and all the good things;
perhaps this is an element, if not simply a
fragment of death, a gift from God, to make life
seem all worth while. Be accountable to ones self,
and God. Thus, had God not created death, or
that moment of recollection that comes just prior
to it, allowing time to reflect, perhaps, just perchance
He might as well had taken those precious moments
and vanished them, for they would only be moments
without the same value (would they not).
#2137 12-6-2007
Perhaps it is part of death?
When my mother was dying it was her moment
you could say, her moment in life to remember,
ponder, recall all those little things she did, and
a few of those big things and all the good things;
perhaps this is an element, if not simply a
fragment of death, a gift from God, to make life
seem all worth while. Be accountable to ones self,
and God. Thus, had God not created death, or
that moment of recollection that comes just prior
to it, allowing time to reflect, perhaps, just perchance
He might as well had taken those precious moments
and vanished them, for they would only be moments
without the same value (would they not).
#2137 12-6-2007
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Two Poems on: Beauty Grows Old, and "What is Important"
Two Poems on: Beauty Grows Old
(And commentary on what is important)
Song of the summer
(Along the Shores of Lima)
Oh, winter is gone and spring has fled.
Oh, days are long, and nights are dead.
And the ski is clear and the winds’
blowing warm.
Summer is new and the ocean wind meek
how it stops and creeps about—
along the shores, of Lima!…
death, oh death
and its faintest breath has a whisper
from the pacific gloom—
and it sighs under the pale skies
of the Lima moon.
Oh, winter is gone and spring has fled.
Oh, days are long, and nights are dead.
And the ski is clear and the winds’
blowing warm.
Written 1-6-2008 at EP, in Miraflores, Lima, Peru.
Once we were Lilies
We all shall lose thy beauty in the end,
a while longer thou shall see my friend.
Thy lips once soft, as silk, shall grow old;
once beautiful maidens, now lilies lain froze!
Beauty, oh beauty, now desolate.
#2136 1-6-2008 Written at EP, in Miraflores, Lima, Peru
What is Important?
It seems to me most people I see, as I look here and there, neighbors, and so forth, live in a circles, not realizing how they got to the circle, nor care; seldom do they leave it, and wait to die in it (this is Lima I’m talking about, as well as the rest of the world, and especially St. Paul, Minnesota where I also live, and in the Andes, where I live). In between, they survive, pray, eat, sleep, but never go beyond the circle. I ask myself, why do I think like this, perhaps it is true, and having an active life, going to war, and traveling the world, and trying to meet quest after quest, it is simple for me to spot such things—it is neither right or wrong, it just is. I see in the mountains (the Andes) Sheppard’s and in the valleys and jungles, folks doing their crafts, selling this and that in the Amazon, as well as in Guatemala, Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bali, Java, and so forth, making it from day today, whose families have been doing the same thing for generations, where poor is really poor, and most are uneducated, but how they love a simple book on their culture, how proud them become. They really haven’t missed much, to be honest, I mean, I seen a lot, but so what, it only tells me, people are almost all the same, worldwide, from India, to Cambodia, to the slums in Minnesota, Chicago, New York, and Seattle, to Peru. Poor is poor, and generations hand down their recipes to the next, and that is what my Russian roots did, my grandfather to my mother, and to me, but I kind of forgot what recipes they were, so I may be the gap in the generation chain, when folks in the future look back. So what is this all about, these words, comments: it is nice to be who you are, not someone else, not envious or jealous, or anything like that. We’ve chosen our lives as they are, for whatever reasons, and most likely they are pretty good reasons, so what now? A good question, perhaps whatever you’ve been dreaming to do, if possible, go do it, time is short. I found out most folks that want to take a trip around the world, could if they wanted to (stop this or that and they could come up with the money), but don’t, why because it is not that important. You see we can sell this or that do this or that to make it happen, but we don’t because this or that is not that important. I could have had 20-hourses paid for, but I traveled around the world 27-times, so I only end up with two, that is the price one pays, you got to count the cost. That is what was important to me yesterday. Today, I have a new plan, and that is what is important to me now, and I am working it. To all those young folks out there, get a plan, and work it. Don’t stop in the middle and say, ‘Well…’ and have an excuse to stop it. Work the plan out. Make a new one after that one is done. So many folks start and stop, that they never finish anything, and die saying, “If only…” or “I could have…but?” Do it!!
(And commentary on what is important)
Song of the summer
(Along the Shores of Lima)
Oh, winter is gone and spring has fled.
Oh, days are long, and nights are dead.
And the ski is clear and the winds’
blowing warm.
Summer is new and the ocean wind meek
how it stops and creeps about—
along the shores, of Lima!…
death, oh death
and its faintest breath has a whisper
from the pacific gloom—
and it sighs under the pale skies
of the Lima moon.
Oh, winter is gone and spring has fled.
Oh, days are long, and nights are dead.
And the ski is clear and the winds’
blowing warm.
Written 1-6-2008 at EP, in Miraflores, Lima, Peru.
Once we were Lilies
We all shall lose thy beauty in the end,
a while longer thou shall see my friend.
Thy lips once soft, as silk, shall grow old;
once beautiful maidens, now lilies lain froze!
Beauty, oh beauty, now desolate.
#2136 1-6-2008 Written at EP, in Miraflores, Lima, Peru
What is Important?
It seems to me most people I see, as I look here and there, neighbors, and so forth, live in a circles, not realizing how they got to the circle, nor care; seldom do they leave it, and wait to die in it (this is Lima I’m talking about, as well as the rest of the world, and especially St. Paul, Minnesota where I also live, and in the Andes, where I live). In between, they survive, pray, eat, sleep, but never go beyond the circle. I ask myself, why do I think like this, perhaps it is true, and having an active life, going to war, and traveling the world, and trying to meet quest after quest, it is simple for me to spot such things—it is neither right or wrong, it just is. I see in the mountains (the Andes) Sheppard’s and in the valleys and jungles, folks doing their crafts, selling this and that in the Amazon, as well as in Guatemala, Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bali, Java, and so forth, making it from day today, whose families have been doing the same thing for generations, where poor is really poor, and most are uneducated, but how they love a simple book on their culture, how proud them become. They really haven’t missed much, to be honest, I mean, I seen a lot, but so what, it only tells me, people are almost all the same, worldwide, from India, to Cambodia, to the slums in Minnesota, Chicago, New York, and Seattle, to Peru. Poor is poor, and generations hand down their recipes to the next, and that is what my Russian roots did, my grandfather to my mother, and to me, but I kind of forgot what recipes they were, so I may be the gap in the generation chain, when folks in the future look back. So what is this all about, these words, comments: it is nice to be who you are, not someone else, not envious or jealous, or anything like that. We’ve chosen our lives as they are, for whatever reasons, and most likely they are pretty good reasons, so what now? A good question, perhaps whatever you’ve been dreaming to do, if possible, go do it, time is short. I found out most folks that want to take a trip around the world, could if they wanted to (stop this or that and they could come up with the money), but don’t, why because it is not that important. You see we can sell this or that do this or that to make it happen, but we don’t because this or that is not that important. I could have had 20-hourses paid for, but I traveled around the world 27-times, so I only end up with two, that is the price one pays, you got to count the cost. That is what was important to me yesterday. Today, I have a new plan, and that is what is important to me now, and I am working it. To all those young folks out there, get a plan, and work it. Don’t stop in the middle and say, ‘Well…’ and have an excuse to stop it. Work the plan out. Make a new one after that one is done. So many folks start and stop, that they never finish anything, and die saying, “If only…” or “I could have…but?” Do it!!
Friday, January 4, 2008
United Nations Wants to Brainwash American Kids
UN Wants Spider Image
Some years back I wrote 55-articles on the UN, got a lot of my info from one of the three UN’s, inside information you could say, from an insider. Things have not changed much since those, not too far off years. As far as I can see, they should not be calling on Spiderman to boost their image, rather to clean the cobwebs out of their dirty closets, and they got a lot of them. They got free of a few of the dead beats, but there is so much corruption in the halls of that domain, a wash job is not going to do it.
From New York City, to Vienna, and on to Switzerland, where all three United Nations are, and its ten-year employees, whom hibernate, while drinking coffee and whiskey in there millionaires club (you see it only takes ten years to become a millionaire there, so I am told, perhaps less now; it is just a matter of sticking it out, knowing the right people, and keeping out of the way of the wrong ones); anyhow they stay in those dinning halls, while those fat checks keep coming. So I suppose I can’t blame them for wanting a better image—lest they loose their worth and the tax payers of America hold back their checks which often they do, to show them they are not kings of the hill: but now they want to force feed the American children, with this Spiderman charade, browbeating our children on all the good work they do for the world. Start in America they say, and end in Europe.
Marvel Comics is even willing to overlook the costs—why? Is my question? Are they that uninformed, or do they have a plan B? This is a question of course, I cannot answer, wish I could. Perhaps free publicity, tax breaks. I can’t figure it out. John Bolt, was right when he implied, it was an act of desperation on their part, I mean the UN, not Marvel, they already got the kids stoned on their products.
Some years back I wrote 55-articles on the UN, got a lot of my info from one of the three UN’s, inside information you could say, from an insider. Things have not changed much since those, not too far off years. As far as I can see, they should not be calling on Spiderman to boost their image, rather to clean the cobwebs out of their dirty closets, and they got a lot of them. They got free of a few of the dead beats, but there is so much corruption in the halls of that domain, a wash job is not going to do it.
From New York City, to Vienna, and on to Switzerland, where all three United Nations are, and its ten-year employees, whom hibernate, while drinking coffee and whiskey in there millionaires club (you see it only takes ten years to become a millionaire there, so I am told, perhaps less now; it is just a matter of sticking it out, knowing the right people, and keeping out of the way of the wrong ones); anyhow they stay in those dinning halls, while those fat checks keep coming. So I suppose I can’t blame them for wanting a better image—lest they loose their worth and the tax payers of America hold back their checks which often they do, to show them they are not kings of the hill: but now they want to force feed the American children, with this Spiderman charade, browbeating our children on all the good work they do for the world. Start in America they say, and end in Europe.
Marvel Comics is even willing to overlook the costs—why? Is my question? Are they that uninformed, or do they have a plan B? This is a question of course, I cannot answer, wish I could. Perhaps free publicity, tax breaks. I can’t figure it out. John Bolt, was right when he implied, it was an act of desperation on their part, I mean the UN, not Marvel, they already got the kids stoned on their products.
Bleeding for America
We are the great society (bound to the American way)
we fight and die for countries, insanely, and end up
with piled high bodies…like stacks of hay.
Even with the shortage of gas we invade, buy yachts,
and skyscrapers, homes on beaches in Costa Rica.
We are no longer nesters, rather, birds eating seaweed
or dope, booze, anything for a quick high.
We run our lawnmowers, dance in the rain, hang from
a trapeze, playing the wrestler games; a society in a
bubble, living like kings; evangelists stealing everything.
Presidents and Congress, murdering, while everyone
goes to the movie theaters, sit in a gaze, a trance,
as if in coffins, hibernating the winter’s away.
The darkness has not lifted yet, for Iraq; the war continues
in the back streets of Bagdad, and throughout the country’s
heated sands. The soldiers psychological profiles are piled high,
they are dying in the soil bleeding for America: yellow,
brown, black and white, with broken spirits; reporters
lying and dying, and all in bitter fatigue, so sad.
How strange it must be, to awake in a city that bleeds
and adult men, shooting at each other, night and day!
And somewhere in the sands, are groups of exhausted
soldiers digging muddy gravels. Boiling temperatures,
voices white from fright! But we still kill and fight, bleed
for America, under a flag that says: might is right…!
Bush, Bush, Bush, you will be out of office, soon, thank God,
and I voted for you, like a hungry dog, while among
those around me, whisper’s were saying, “Don’t,
he’s going to shed more blood.” During your régime,
there were no snow white blossoms ever seen, not for
so many years, only blood, blood and more blood
shed, how can you sleep, and not weep, all this blood
in the name of good. America, the last haven
for God’s people, what have we done?
Has not Vietnam, my war, taught us anything? Strange
Worlds may not wish to reach our shores, to eat our
turkeys and drink our whisky, and sing our songs. But
we cry “Remember the Alamo,” as if it is our
duty to incorporate them, the world at our hands.
Washington, the court of the Black Angels,
where sugar and cars and milk and drinking water
and dead solders, and armies are reviewed, from the
top of trees, like honey bees. War and silence, that is
the name of the game (keep it under surveillance,
behind hidden eyes, keep the people guessing,
walking in opposite directions), keep a balance
with the negro, and the same with the Mexican, or make
them bleed—steadily.
We are nothing but cows in a barn, being milked,
while being flattered with flowers thrown overhead,
and the poor soldiers die, as if they are someone’s enemy,
yet they know nothing of the countries they defend,
and such countries are really not our friends.
No rich man’s son will die today, just beyond the edge
the edge of the sands, where the ground explodes
terror and death lurk and linger, here helicopters
and boys will be left, heads blown off, opened chests,
guts laying exposed on their torsos, and those that go home,
so starts the sufferings all over again, a stringy line of
quivering animals trying to get help at the VA-hospitals.
It is all so immense, that at the end, we die for nothing.
1-4-2008 #2135
we fight and die for countries, insanely, and end up
with piled high bodies…like stacks of hay.
Even with the shortage of gas we invade, buy yachts,
and skyscrapers, homes on beaches in Costa Rica.
We are no longer nesters, rather, birds eating seaweed
or dope, booze, anything for a quick high.
We run our lawnmowers, dance in the rain, hang from
a trapeze, playing the wrestler games; a society in a
bubble, living like kings; evangelists stealing everything.
Presidents and Congress, murdering, while everyone
goes to the movie theaters, sit in a gaze, a trance,
as if in coffins, hibernating the winter’s away.
The darkness has not lifted yet, for Iraq; the war continues
in the back streets of Bagdad, and throughout the country’s
heated sands. The soldiers psychological profiles are piled high,
they are dying in the soil bleeding for America: yellow,
brown, black and white, with broken spirits; reporters
lying and dying, and all in bitter fatigue, so sad.
How strange it must be, to awake in a city that bleeds
and adult men, shooting at each other, night and day!
And somewhere in the sands, are groups of exhausted
soldiers digging muddy gravels. Boiling temperatures,
voices white from fright! But we still kill and fight, bleed
for America, under a flag that says: might is right…!
Bush, Bush, Bush, you will be out of office, soon, thank God,
and I voted for you, like a hungry dog, while among
those around me, whisper’s were saying, “Don’t,
he’s going to shed more blood.” During your régime,
there were no snow white blossoms ever seen, not for
so many years, only blood, blood and more blood
shed, how can you sleep, and not weep, all this blood
in the name of good. America, the last haven
for God’s people, what have we done?
Has not Vietnam, my war, taught us anything? Strange
Worlds may not wish to reach our shores, to eat our
turkeys and drink our whisky, and sing our songs. But
we cry “Remember the Alamo,” as if it is our
duty to incorporate them, the world at our hands.
Washington, the court of the Black Angels,
where sugar and cars and milk and drinking water
and dead solders, and armies are reviewed, from the
top of trees, like honey bees. War and silence, that is
the name of the game (keep it under surveillance,
behind hidden eyes, keep the people guessing,
walking in opposite directions), keep a balance
with the negro, and the same with the Mexican, or make
them bleed—steadily.
We are nothing but cows in a barn, being milked,
while being flattered with flowers thrown overhead,
and the poor soldiers die, as if they are someone’s enemy,
yet they know nothing of the countries they defend,
and such countries are really not our friends.
No rich man’s son will die today, just beyond the edge
the edge of the sands, where the ground explodes
terror and death lurk and linger, here helicopters
and boys will be left, heads blown off, opened chests,
guts laying exposed on their torsos, and those that go home,
so starts the sufferings all over again, a stringy line of
quivering animals trying to get help at the VA-hospitals.
It is all so immense, that at the end, we die for nothing.
1-4-2008 #2135
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Champion Poets
Commentary on Poetry: I don’t want to be like Robert Penn Warren, or W.B. Yeats, I like their poetry, but it ends there. Neither do I want to be like Allen Ginsberg, or William Burroughs, all good poets in their own way. Rather I prefer to join the ranks of the naturalness, spontaneity, free from rhymed couplets, romanticism, passion, Buddha, and leave the Elizabethans, to themselves. I prefer to shift a bit to the 11th century, or just before that era, when rhyme was becoming modernized, but not quite in place. Right there, there was a world of nature and mysteries and emotions to be written, told, and stories to be handed down, and memorized: addressing the times, its cultures, and heroes; and so I must take that period, with my era, and mix it with fragments and dreams, and all such things, and let the dead bury the dead. Let the artificial reproduce half the literature (they will anyway) and my kind the other half. It can be hard to live in a world where critics who write mostly criticism, discard themes, dignity, manners, this perhaps is a strong protest against all such things, but poets must reassert their right to represent the world, in a clear and genuine tone, it is our duty. We are only passing through, we leave behind what we write (we infect minds, or produce wholesomeness), the irate citizens will always get their full of whatever, but those who wish not to have their pockets picked, wait on us to circulate literature that is filled with swimming thoughts of such things I’ve already mentioned. And to these readers, and the generations to come, I write. (1-3-2008)
To Death: One Night More (A poem)
To Death:
One Night More
A while longer and thou shalt go;
yea, thy soft smile, thy face that glows,
uplifted, yet all to death must go.
Thy body now so helpless must die,
but not forevermore…
thou shalt lie!
For a little while our lives were bright,
now there is, no more light.
#2133 1-1-2008
Dedicated to E.T.S.
One Night More
A while longer and thou shalt go;
yea, thy soft smile, thy face that glows,
uplifted, yet all to death must go.
Thy body now so helpless must die,
but not forevermore…
thou shalt lie!
For a little while our lives were bright,
now there is, no more light.
#2133 1-1-2008
Dedicated to E.T.S.
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