Monthly Archives: August 2004

The Divorce

Just leave me here, would you?
We all die alone.
There’s no one to call
and no movies been shown.

It’s all sentimental,
that crap, anyway;
so just leave me here
and move away.

Just leave me here, would you;
and go live your life?
There’s not much adventure
in being my wife.

It’s all just tradition,
that stuff, anyway;
so go on
and be on your way.

Don’t bother with crying
or clutching your hands.
Just trust in your God
while he laughs at your plans,

and teaches you lessons
you don’t understand
that make you a woman or man;
and survive it the best that you can.

Just leave me here, would you?
No sense we both crack.
Pack up all your memories
and please, don’t look back.

It’s all sentimental,
that crap, anyway;
so just drive off
and I’ll be OK.

Just leave me here, would you?
Don’t bother to call
and I won’t leave the light on
for you in the hall.

It’s all a tradition,
that stuff, anyway;
go on, leave me
and just move away.

Don’t bother with weeping
or wringing your hands.
Just trust in your God,
that its part of His plan,

and remember you’ll never
full well understand
just what makes you a woman or man.
Start over, as long as you can.

1998

I’ve only written one song that reminds me of how much I owe to John Prine, as a songwriter. And it’s not really just his style alone — there’s a little Tom T. Hall thrown in for good measure, as well. This is another song from the Undertown Cycle (Frequent Reader, you will recall that’s my attempt at Springsteen’s Nebraska. Written, perhaps poignantly, shortly after my own divorce became final, this is one half of the picture.

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On Auspicious Times

I wonder at the most auspicious times
that by some random system are proclaimed
and why those correspondences we find
ourselves at odds with should take all the blame

The moon, for instance, in its wane and wax;
The seasons, as they go and come again;
The numerals assigned like colored tacks
to calendars devised by human brains,

As if in the whole world mankind’s belief
about the way the universe is made
means anything at all to a small leaf
or changes how it perceives light and shade.

I wonder how the world devoid of man
survived through countless eons and evolved
without the logic only we command,
and managed, with its riddles yet unsolved.

I ask the mockingbird to state its case
for choosing the best moment to proceed,
and swear I see a smile upon its face
that seems to say, “Why don’t you learn to read

a book that needs no glossy title page,
that promises no esoteric lore,
that will not guarantee you center stage,
but may instruct you nonetheless, in more

than what you think important, or germaine?
What book, you ask, contains such heady stuff?
The book of life, that you seem to distain;
but against which, your knowledge is mere fluff.”

I wonder at the most auspicious times
that by some special school are found and named.
It is no wonder that we act so blind.
That we think we have knowledge is to blame.

17 AUG 2004

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No Small Talk Left

It takes perhaps at most an entire day
depending on the company and scene,
but at some point there’s nothing left to say
and words become superfluous, obscene.

It’s not because the topics have run dry,
or even that some common ground is lost.
More to the point, it becomes hard to try
to fill the void when all don’t share the cost.

And then, the simple comfort of two souls
that understand without the need to chat,
outside the ego’s posturing controls,
becomes a treasured place of beauty that

rejects the more gregarious and finds
in silence, peace, for body, soul and mind.

17 AUG 2004

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Last Night’s Storm

Last night a storm rolled slowly in
the thunder muffled by the air
so heavy, like a mortar’s crack
or heavy rifle silenced with
a potato at its barrel end,
wrapped in layers of gauze;
it could only slowly make
its way along the pea-soup night
and felt that it was far away
instead of at our doorstep.
The rain was more like sour sky-sweat
that leaked from cloud-pores; it did not fall
but oozed out in the still air like
the world had run a marathon,
the moisture dripped along its brow
and heaving chest, coating hot and salty
the gasping, overheated ground.

10 AUG 2004

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Before Attending Miss Teen Louisiana Training

We do not want to go and sit
for three long hours of this shit.
We do not think it well-spent time
to learn to walk the judging line
or show your beauty, just skin deep
to leeches, dilettantes and creeps.
Revealing if our wallets reach
quite deep enough, that’s what they teach.

But we will drive, in monkey suits
and gag ourselves on their false fruits,
suppress our thoughts, lest they betray
the fact that we despise the way
these things are run, and come about,
attempting to smooth out the doubt
that if you have good looks and poise
(at least as deemed by vapid boys)
you don’t need brains, or self, or sense
just ego and experience.

Alas, the time is drawing near –
hair washed, clothes pressed, complexion clear.

So off to some great hotel, we
advance to meet sad destiny.

In my back pocket rests a check
which writ, will debit self-respect
and add more funding to the cause
of empty, self-indulged applause.

There is no up-side to this thing.
There are no praises I would sing
to lift up pageants as some good.
I’d pull the plug, if I but could.

08 AUG 2004

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Thoughts on the 9/11 Report

Well, I have done it. Purchased the “official” 9/11 report. And read it through, at least at this time on a cursory level. I will re-read it in detail, of course.

There are a few things that trouble me. They are as follows:

1. A war on terrorism will not succeed. That is because terrorism is the symptom, not the cause. The cause is a state of global affairs that gives rise to the belief that terrorism is, for many, a justifiable and perhaps the only viable alternative to advance their agenda to the point where it will be considered.

2. If we are to engage the problem of alternatives to terrorism for those who now employ it as their sole means of communication, we have to start looking hard at the fact that we are a single human family. National “rights”, and boundaries, really must have no meaning if we are to address, fairly and honestly, the grievances of one group of people versus another. The fact is, that as a human species, we are in effect a single family — albeit in some cases only distant cousins.

This makes EVERY war in effect a civil war. Brother against brother — for the majority of religions on this planet accept as one of their tenets some degree of universal brotherhood.

3. With respect to that universal brotherhood. The United States must make a statement to the world, and must lead the other “so-called” civilized nations in one very important point. We must accept Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Druidism, Wiccanism, Sufism, Voodoo, Santeria, Ba’hai, Sikhism, Confucianism, Atheism, and all the rest, as absolutely equally viable paths to that exclusively human (at least, human-claimed, for none of the other species that have evolved and existed for millions of years on this planet have found it necessary to indulge in the nuances of comparative theology) province, enlightenment. If we are capable of being enlightened (as we claim), then we need to accomplish it. That means returning spiritual truth where it belongs — to each and every individual.

4. We need to focus our resources not on exerting our influence through military might, or covert operation, or corporate interest, but through demonstration of our principles by enforcing them upon ourselves. Eliminate special interests. Eliminate preconceived biases. Restore (or, rather, considering our own systematic programs of terrorism that checker our own historical national agenda — vis a vis the Comanches, for exampl?) “justice for all.” Not justice that meets our needs or serves the expediency of the moment, but justice that punishes our friends when guilty, and praises our enemies when they are courageous and in the right.

5. Finally, we need to think long and hard about something that G.I. Gurdjieff once said, that was almost echoed in Obama’s recent speech at the Democratic convention: “As long as a single person is in prison, no one is free.” No matter what the reason — because prison population, like terrorism, is a symptom. And to address the cause, we cannot continue to just build more prisons and graveyards. Or schools that teach rigid ways of looking at the world. Or churches that preach hatred and xenophobia in the guise of building their own brand of “chosen people” to pit against the rest of the world.

Ah, I could go on.

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Thought for the Day

Paraphrased (and adapted somewhat) from a wonderful book, The Telling, by Ursula K. Le Guin:

There were no “original” human words for God, gods, or the divine. The bureaucrats who formalized spirituality into “religions” made up words for “God” and installed state or cultural theism when they learned that a concept of deity was more important in the cultures or states they took as models. They saw that religion was a useful tool for those in power. But there was no native theism or deism. The word god, to authentic, original human beings, human beings living in accord with the laws that govern all life and to which human beings are not an exception, was a word without referrent. No capital letters. No creator, only creation. No eternal father to reward and punish, justify injustice, ordain cruelty, offer salvation. Eternity was not an endpoint but a continuity. Primal division of being into material and spirutal existed only as two-as-one, or one in two aspects. There was no hierarchy of Nature and Supernatural. No binary Dark/Light, Evil/Good, or Body/Soul. No afterlife, no rebirth, no immortal disembodied or reincarnated soul. No heavens, no hells. The original human system, the one that resulted in the evolution of the human species from neanderthal to cromagnon to homo erectus to homo sapiens to homo sapiens sapiens [a process which bureaucratic religions all insist was the point at which evolution ended, being no longer necessary, contrary to the principle that in order to progress, to survive, a species must evolve or die] was a spiritual discipline with spiritual goals, but they were exactly the same goals it sought for bodily and ethical well-being. Right action was its own reward. Dharma without karma.

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