Government decides some mutants are more human than others.

We argue taxes. And we argue marriage. Hmmm.

We argue dolls and villains and monsters, and zygotes.

We are the comic of life and death.

 

IV. Coda
… Now that my ladder’s gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

I sat me down to write a simple story
which maybe in the end became a song
In trying to find the words which might begin it
I found these were the thoughts I brought along

At first I took my weight to be an anchor
and gathered up my fears to guide me round
but then I clearly saw my own delusion
and found my struggles further bogged me down

In starting out I thought to go exploring
and set my foot upon the nearest road
In vain I looked to find the promised turning
but only saw how far I was from home

In searching I forsook the paths of learning
and sought instead to find some pirate’s gold
In fighting I did hurt those dearest to me
and still no hidden truths could I unfold

I sat me down to write a simple story
which maybe in the end became a song
The words have all been writ by one before me
We’re taking turns in trying to pass them on
Oh, we’re taking turns in trying to pass them on

 

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.

Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.

Robinson Jeffers

Be Angry at the Sun (1941)

once upon a time when I was small

Swayne Britt told us fantastical stories of ridiculous things, and fantastical stories of real things. He made us Cowboy Beans for lunch.

Once, when my parents were having a party and Swayne was there, a little English boy asked him who he was. Swayne said, ‘I’m a cowboy, son.’ The little boy looked at Swayne’s shirt and trousers, shook his head and replied, ‘I don’t believe you, Mister.’

You know what Swayne did? He put down his beer, got into his car and drove back to his house on the other side of that dusty city. He came back about an hour later all dressed up in his chaps and stetson and neckerchief. He winked and smiled at that little boy and said ‘Now do you believe me, son?’ That little boy was completely lost in the magic. He was in AWE. I bet he remembers that to this day.

And that’s the magic. Some people just have it.

Yeah, me and Laura, we loved Swayne Britt. We loved him a lot.

Let’s step way-y-y-y back to Friar Giovanni da Fiesole (1387-1455)

Take peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within our reach is joy.

There is radiance and courage in the darkness could we but see; and to see, we have only to look.

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their coverings, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard.

Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, and wisdom, and power.

The day breaks and the shadows flee away.

Why isn’t peace on anyone’s platform?

Remarkably, the goal of peace does not appear.

IS THE word “peace’’ disappearing from our national conversation?

Armies of talking heads, bloggers, and op-ed opinionators assault us daily on every subject . . . but rarely on peace.

When was the last time we heard a national leader of either party, especially one running for president, put the goal of peace at the center of a political platform or place it among our highest national aspirations?

(Oh, for a long long while, we do know what to do… beterian… to improve.)

Guy Davis.

We all need more kindness in this world
we all need more kindness in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more kindness in this world.

We all need more hugging in this world
we all need more hugging in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more hugging in this world

We all need more laughing in this world
we all need more laughing in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more laughing in this world

We all need more sunshine in this world
we all need more sunshine in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more sunshine in this world

We all need more peace-times in this world
we all need more peace-times in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more peace-times in this world

We all need more friendship in this world
we all need more friendship in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more friendship in this world

.
.
.

A Song that Says It’s Naughty To Magnify the Small

Seeking authoritive morality
To lead us to our vision
To live less fallibly,
To stop failure’s incision,
Is our repetitive dream
Just beneath the known,
Stitched each day like a seam
That binds us to the hope we’re shown.

For we all know of our yearning
And the imperative of our need,
We all see reality’s turning
Love in the face of greed.
Yet horror is left unsaid,
Caustic blame that’s never fair,
Graphic agony that fuel our dread,
Encumber our want to care. 

So we leave what’s worst alone.
We delegate our shores:
Join weakly to intone
Our dream, as if we’re whores
Who curb the rhythm of life,
Weak contending under threats.
Do we believe, reviewing strife,
We’ll see the instant violent nets
Closing in to disrupt our plan?

Whether passionate or tame
Each within our animate race,
We have a duty that drives the whole
From which a few prognosticate.
We walk from mountain to shoal
Where too few will legislate
Our vision and leaning to need.
And here our souls, our surety,
Our governance written by the freed
Shall carry our will and purity.

It must, it seems, be still recalled
Each finds no place to hide,
Nor fails work when called
To liberty never denied,
Not lost in conformity, hidden in nerves,
Nor lost to cult or loosely tied
In populist slogan that swerves
And sways through our dangerous day.

When trouble cloaks, becomes persistent,
When fears annoy, won’t go away,
When emptiness become consistent,
When hopes are lost in perplexities
Or controlled by causes remote,
The curious seek the complexities,
Others entrench in the rote.

Many seek comfort in diversion,
Ostensibly relaxing, secured
In claims of light reversion
To simpler things, like what’s inured
To lifting the self, distinct from the rest:
Pursuing, demanding to keep
Preserving and lofting the best,
‘Til our better efforts must leap
Away from ideas that heal.

This is the price denial must keep.
Is this the ache tired citizens feel?
Confronted by fear and by threat,
Bent in the forum of civic concern,
Impotent sketches of slow defeat, and yet
Is there no other way for people to learn
That when most of the world is worried
And agony’s millions alert; 
challenge dramatic and flurried,
Our future either gentle or curt,
Ambitious roam in and through,
Peace still rough and tumble,
Tomorrow is squeezed on me or on you,
No practical plan to escape the rumble,
If cosmic, natural, or imperial;
These caustic options are revealed,
Will we retreat to the ethereal?

Instead we forge and we hammer a shield,
Our victory is long before battle!
Improve our goals, real and chattel,
Our humane gifts, compassion curled
In strength we have found here together,
Not towers of rare and inspired,
Not magic stoked with mystic feather,
Not experts endorsed when hired
To mimic hope until we’ve agreed
We’re merely tokens, opinions in court,
Gleaned response, polled queries of need:
How wise is this answer? “Sell it out short:
Gluttony must keep us invisible
To hope no one sees what we’ve gained.”

Is our best so rare, indivisible?
Is common the safest, in truth or if feigned?
Is purpose hiding in cranky abstract
Giving too little and too little great?

Each day we give lies to this pertinent fact,
“We cannot ignore conspiring fate.
If you will use us, Abuse us, All Right,
As long as the pay is on time,
We’re better here, far from the worst.
We comply to the game, call it sublime,
Knowing those lessor are cursed.”

Please notice it’s we paying the bill 
And drawing us to face it.
In all our lives: We’re able to fill
Our needs, our dreams, if we chase it.
Our world is huge not the smaller it’s claimed.

We seek and find cooperative deals,
Partners help the small and the great;
Break risk to join in repeals
Of all but continued good fate.

Unhook from the habits that lock us to loss.
Unhook from the stories invented for wars.

Be part of the ideas we toss
To each other to pry open doors
To industry, commerce and governing fair;
With leadership to guide our plans
Bring us tools, not threats and high tare.

Like our ancients, our families, our clans,
We clock blood for this day to endure,
Progress made by ignoring patter
And keeping from trouble or cur.
Why should the trivial matter?
Why stay for only approval?
We each have deeper concerns than that.
Why justify, scorn, force removal,
Instead of solution, fair and democrat?

Why plan or plot any false hope,
Or prop goals in mutual rigidity,
Leaving us detached and static,
Tied to life’s constant turbidity?
Find the gate through strife’s erratic!

Why sell dreams, or myth or song
In automat lyric airwaves?
Why tune to hawking that’s wrong,
Mere drama, politics, close shaves?
When as clear as the sky that’s curving the light
Our beckoning insists to us all,
And annoys as strong as the great that we see?

It’s our promise shadowed on history’s wall:
The past we’re from and the hopes of the free.

It’s initiative growing in faith’s provocation
That fear and diversion won’t bury.
There’s no reason to leave the care of this nation
To sponsoring, to agents, nor hustle nor hurry;
Not sly, nor secrets hid in the back
as grief is alliance with less.
We win when we work on our lack,
Joined in our plans for the best
Becoming our lives every day.
Choose the highest, the moral, the true.
Let each of our lives find this way.

Let forums see the eagle flew;
Has never left grace to defeat,
Is never blind in bright sun
Nor bent in cataclyst’s heat.
We nest in the innocents’ life,
Soar in the query of truth,
Stillness above the strife.
We signal bright justice, temper our youth,
Always for better and always the part
To secure our contentment to peace,
We bring to the gates of our heart,
Our symbol’s strength in the fleece
That’s soft in the depth of this land.

No empire or keeper of keys
Can know better than any
That motive and hope is our way:
The insistent calls of the many,
Bringing our best to the day.

Needs lots of work!! – 1985 Brian Hayes

We human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell. —Kafka

Guy Davis – We all need more kindness in this world !

My experience, my recovering:

There’s cancer to care for.
What’s good for me is she died in our bed,
sleeping delighted,
stunned day to day in our love.

And also, there’s Hitchens:

Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span.

However …

“If there is light in the soul, There will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, There will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, There will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, There will be peace in the world.” — Chinese Proverb

I AM the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool–then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob–the crowd–the mass–will arrive then.

Carl Sandburg

MEMO TO A NATION’S HEART

There is such a thing as healthy community. It is clear that the people’s viability requires a network of effectiveness. Informed progress is imperative. It must step from answering need –the key to both survival and prosperity.

The desire to fulfill is a strong human force. Participation in tangible efforts toward success is not a burden. It is, in a healthy culture, a remarkable opportunity of privilege, creating a vibrant common wealth, not merely in market economies, but where it matters the most, in the fabric of society.

The world is dynamic. Its legacy and primary resource: our ingenuity. There are those that pierce inhibition to challenge habit and shape wisdom. Problems can be severe; hopeless when viewed from the peaks of yesterday, and change may seem as chaotic as crisis.

But we will embrace a positive vision of our future and work toward an America that survives her dream. Vision is required. Wit is required. Action is required. The unforeseen is our beacon. Compassion is our only restraint.

We can inform the centuries there are vistas of our welfare yet discovered. We can prove diligence again, demonstrate our skills, and dispel the cathartic for the healing itself.

“People who think shouldn’t be alone with their own minds.”

find who said this

slobber all over their amygdala

email the remainder

“He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.” ~Camus

“The arms, held tightly to his sides,
are as expressive of emotion as the sound
we imagine we hear coming from his mouth.”

Strength by love.
Tears by error.
Alive by gift.

Slake:
To abate;
To add water;
To become relaxed;
To become less decided.

I no longer want to tell you stories. You’ll do that. You survive on stories. Few your own. You won’t be helped with mine because you won’t be helped with more. Trading stories and suffering stories is the era you are. And. You are not good at it.

Damn you.

There’s easy things we can do. Waking things. Slaking things. You do not use the word slake. You do not try to satisfy. Lost what the word means. You don’t know still. You don’t know safe.

Calm is not important. Sweet singing is forgotten. Civility is cheap. Abrasion is your story. We cannot raise this barn.

Damn you.

You pilfer pageant. Trammel honor. Waste tears. Elevate trite. That’s an insult. Check things over. Look back a few years. Tell me when wisdom is what you’re looking for. Cite sacrifice.

Damn you.

Tell me when tenderness, tolerance, shelter, warmth, love and celebration is on your mind. Make these news.

I’ll tell you this. Sinking is a story you enjoy. Your politics proves it.

Candidates will tell you a story.

Damn you.

“We’re a small team trying our best to improve the way the world learns.”

:::woot:::
Are you interested in turning this into a business? Maybe with some VC funding?

“I’ve been approached several times, but it just didn’t feel right.

“When I’m 80, I want to feel that I helped give access to a world-class education to billions of students around the world.

“Sounds a lot better than starting a business that educates some subset of the developed world that can pay $19.95/month and eventually selling it to some text book company or something. I already have a beautiful wife, a hilarious son, two hondas and a decent house. What else does a man need?

“With that said, if you are a social venture capitalist and are looking to deploy capital with the highest possible social return per dollar invested, we should talk. I think you’ll find that there is no more measurable, scalable and high impact way to educate the world.”

Try this search.

+ “the skin I want to be in” 

Try this search.

+ “the dream I give you”

(function(){})();

::: burp ::: 

nobody knows men
nobody knows women
we always touch strangers

brave

all of us weak
all of us tender
splendor to dedicate