“I’m not making any point;
I’m just asking a question,”
said the young woman as
she was ushered to the
guillotine.
The crowds all gathered
ecstatically as life once
again lost all rational
meaning.
The answer was perfectly clear;
if you want to get along,
you will stop asking questions
and simply, innocuously,
ignorantly, uncritically,
unreflectively, and perhaps
most importantly cowardly
be of mindless good cheer
like almost every one
else there,
everywhere
and of course,
here, here, always
here.

Ignorance usually wins in the short-term.
The Lamb wins in the long run.
The challenge is to remain firm
and enjoy the interim fun run
of living now
and following the Tao,
breathing deeply,
weeping freely
and laughing in true community
with the Holy Trinity.

Is it true that capitalism decapitates
the creative energies and saps
harmony from the human race?

Is it true that striving for the almighty buck
is America’s favorite pastime and
frustrates the countless down on their luck?

Is it true that poets are a dozen per dime
in this system of worth by counting
while words count for nothing most of the time?

The capitalists cry, “Just give us the bottom line,”
and Dow and Jones and S and P and Nasdaq
all agree that all will be fine on down the line

for those on the top rung of the teetering ladder,
but not for the 99% who stand looking up
and eventually say, “Oh, what does it matter?”

So, no need to ask if capitalism decapitates
the creative juices.
It squelches life of its myriad uses
and brings it down to single digits
of animosity, jealousy and hate.

All hail the Almighty Buck.
It seems the God of Creativity
is plum out of luck.

The breeze off the Big Lake
cools wet bodies worn from
weeding, weeding, weeding
in the now summer sands.
Thank Thor for the ease
of pulling just with hands.
The weeds relent and release
their roots yielding to those who
understand that East of Eden
must be tilled again and again.

A friend used
the word
redolent.
How rich, savory,
wonderfully
indulgent.
No, not indulgent,
for who would wish
to indulge
oneself in lost love’s
painful
remembrance
besides, perhaps, the
masochistic?
And so, poignant
comes to mind
as it was in reference
to a momentary,
flashing, good,
but painful
remembrance of
deep love
lost in years
but forever
harboring
sweet and
salty tears.

Empty one’s self
of all that
neediness
and one will be filled
with the love that
casts out
greediness.
Enter again
God’s loving domain;
be washed
with the
saline waters
of life eternal’s
refrain, again,
again and again
we are called to
enter the tomb
and find the
womb —
not of Eden,
nor East of Eden
anymore,
but the Realm
that Jesus came
to restore —
our home, here,
there, everywhere —
forevermore.

Every action has an equal and opposite
reaction Sir Isaac told us,
so in light of nine dead,
Southern politicians followed
political correctness.
Then, naturally, sales of Confederate flags
blew through the roof,
but instead of flying all over the land, they
will hang in dank, downstairs dungeons
for awhile and what more Newtonian proof
do we need that sin reacts opposite and fast?
And it hides underground only to pop up later
falsely claiming absolute truth.
So stay alert, watchful and mindful;
be innocent as doves with eyes
on the heavens and wise
as serpents close to the ground
and you will see that evil surely
will be found.
It’s not going away anytime soon,
but you have the tools of mercy,
justice, peace, patience, kindness,
self-control and power from above
to greet that evil with God’s eternal,
life-giving love.
The Lamb wins.

Someone wrote that water is so
important that it forms the land
where we live but seek to leave
for that very water — that im-
portant. We were thrust out
with an earth shaking quake as
determinative of the future as
original sin and with that first,
painful, necessary gasp of air to
grab our first breath we want to
turn and dive right back in —
like standing before an O’Keeffe
in Santa Fe, New Mexico then ris-
ing off the ground, hanging above
it for a pregnant moment and diving
right past and through the peduncle,
receptacle, sepal, petal, stamen,
anther, pistil, stigma, ovary, vulva,
mons veneris, labia majora, labia
minora and plunging back into the
womb happily, giddily like a little kid
diving off the end of the dock at a
North Woods lake on a mid-August
evening and coming up snorting, spit-
ting, laughing, coughing and knowing
he is home.

In the Mid-South, I was an damn, urban, Yankee boy.
In the Dutch north, I was a renegade, wise-ass, half-breed Swede.
In retirement, we joined a mostly gay church
only to be told I was something they didn’t need —
it seems as an assertive, straight, alpha-male, I did annoy.
So, now on Sunday mornings, we mostly stay home.
My wife does mixed media sculptures and I write a poem.

I spent some idealistic time
in the inner city
thinking I could take pity
on the poor and soon
all would be fine.

But my stay was short
and I headed to
the college scene
to cry against the war so obscene
and ponder things to sort.

So, here we are all these years later
and the more things change
the more they remain the same
goes the cliché,

and Adam, Eve, the
snake and Abel and Cain
still have something to say
about a world seemingly
gone insane.