How I Clean House

Huh.  I'm not sure about this woman.  Look, she's talking to herself.
She's wandering all over the house.  What on earth is she doing??

She's having a two way private conversation.

Whaaa??  That's NONSENSE!

Don't listen to what she's saying.  Watch what she DOES.

What's she doing then?

Everything, man.

Heavy Mist Aug 2 2018

                                                Heavy Mist Aug 2 2018

The long golden grass is so beautiful under the comforted sky

Golden grass and green green trees
Who have dug their toes down deep
And woven a basket there to hold the water
Under the ground;

Who catch the sun with their leaves to spin into sugar

And when the air marries the cloud
They drink the wine from the sky.

The heat of the great sun these last weeks created a sky blue and bright
As bald as a skull 

And clear as glass

But today as I travel up the mountain
I'm in the cloud of the presence
Where the water marries the air
And the grass is golden
And the trees are brilliant with life.

For the Common Good

Most people see politics as a war on all fronts, with the right people winning and the wrong people losing.   This is a paradigm of human nature, especially now, because at least in the United States of America, we are so overstimulated.

Politics is a part of human life - inevitable - and human nature is such that there are people hungry for power.  Hungry ghosts, as it were.  It is a tragedy when they win.

I see politics as an engagement on all fronts, with mutual benefit for all parties.  This is the evidence of a successful ecosystem.  It's a big circle that feeds itself.

If we join hands, we too can make a circle.  Win-win.

No Reservations July 25 2018

It looked like an alternative
And Lord knows, you needed one.
You travelled so far and saw so much
And in the end there was no place to rest your head.

Everywhere we are
Hounded, lured out, banished, enticed..
There is an illness over the world
An insatiable hunger that ends in extinction.
So the wreckage of the past
Is the landscape of our future
And we spring off the mark into our suicidal marathon.

We dream of home, though,
Of escaping the lie of it and
Of running into the arms of it, both.
Regretting what we left behind
Longing for what we hope to find
Some kind of sanctuary
If you cannot rest where you are,
This is tragedy.

You were a bard of our time
Travelling eternally and telling stories to send to home
Received in Everytown, yet rarely home.
So, is it that you travelled so far, so fast, so much
Or that you ran for your life until your heart burst?

Migration has been a factor in human.
Through long centuries
We have swirled across the lands
Knocking over boundaries
Flooding into new territory
And moving the earth.
But we are here and gone.

So, you had to go.
It wounded us, but you will stay in my heart
As long as I can hold your memory.

You connected us with other people
Through the communion of the table
There is no higher calling.

You had to leave, again,
For good or ill.
It wounded us, but I will hold your memory
I will care for Home and the Land of it
Awaiting the re-union.  How long?  Until I rest it in.

You were cold, someone said
As if every day were buried under a little more snow.
Shock, brother, it looks like shock.

If only you could have stopped!
There is a garden.


For Anthony Bourdain.

X___________________ Dec 18 2016

X_________________________   Date Dec 18 2016


I do not know where I am from
Because I live here, far from my origins.
I live scrambled amidst so many cultures
Slowly dissolving and amalgamating.
The long story of resource war and incessant migration.

It may be why we lose God, God being replaced by younger rulers;
With all this turnover, God always belongs to someone else;
Is elusive, or terrifies you
And your God, the one you grew from,
Has been either denied any language, or very badly quoted.

Eventually, all Gods names are dropped
And the only one indicated is
X______________
Marking the place for you to fill in, or sign.

Anyway, X____________, I have become
Very honest with you, transparent,
Because I think you are better
Than many have been led to believe
And I am still talking to you.

So the worst is avoided.

We are still together, X__________ and I
Perhaps nameless, sort of refugees in the big exploded culture I grew up in,
Or, I shall say, secret
As in, Secret Name that No-one Else Shall Know.

Hard to pronounce. 

But this much is true.

Underneath it all, there is a ground upon which I was made
It hasn't mattered where
On earth
My ancestors have all walked the ground of secrets.
And I am a secret of blood and water
Of the River beneath, 

Inside the clay on the wheel.

Trees

Trees

We whiz down the road lined with poles and wires, boards and pictures,
They hook the eye because they are close and we are whizzing by.

There is green behind all this.
Soften the eye, open the gaze

The trees are waving
Enthusing in the wind.
Soft palettes of every green
Shining in the light, drawing in the shade
They move
And we breathe.

We stop in town for a beer at the bar
And wander outside to sip.
An old music buddy strolls up
And fishes a cigarette butt out of the pail on the ground.
Then he finds another for a friend who doesn't come in.
Small talk. We buy him a beer. He slurs because he has no teeth.
His eyes are bright and blue, his face a little lopsided and caving into lines. 
He is winsome and cordial now.

I look across the street.  Buildings and wires.
Softer gaze
The trees
They are waving in the wind.  I breathe.

I Hate My Hair. Jan 22 2015

Jan 22 2015

I Hate My Hair


Child,
Perhaps you are disgruntled
With your body and your parents
I tell you,
Your line has survived
All of history, so far!
War, famine and pestilence
Volcanoes and floods
Hungry crocodiles and packs of wolves
Not all lines survive to the next generation
Not that THAT matters

But you
YOU, child
Are here, now,
Squalling in spite of the odds.

Sidney Barthell 2016