From A Window on Avenue C

quiet,
children's voices
chatter in the background
a little afternoon music, muted

puddles still on the walkway
now dappled with sun
light breaks from between
buildings, laying a band
of bright across the path

trees, leaves ripple
in a small wind
squirrels cavort and gavotte
any afternoon
from this window

blessed, blessed, blessed

The Clown Kachina

The Clown Kachina

If you are hungry then I

can Feed you love, but my

blood, or sex, or the

shell and stripes I wear,

will all leave you

nowhere.


If you are thirsty then I

will pour spirit into your

home, but I am not the

body that is bread, nor

the Savior's cup flowing

into eternity.


I am only the

skeleton on the mesa,

the clown kachina,

the voice of

headless John

calling from your plate:


"...that that decreased


I spoke of is true,

and our hunger

and thirst are

for Him."

October 1990


[click title for source]

And falleth on his owne feet whanne he falleth out of highe place...

"... a beste of uncerteyn heare (hair) and colour. For some catte is whyte, some reed, and som black, som scowed (piebald or calico) and spenked in the feet and in the eeren... And hath a gret mough and sawe teeth and scharpe and longe tonge and pliaunt, thynne, and sotile. And lapeth therwith whanne he drynketh... And he is a ful leccherous beste in youthe, swyfte, plyaunt, and mery. And lepeth and reseth (rusheth) on alle thyng that is tofore him and is yladde by a strawe and pleyeth therwith. And is a wel heuy beste in eelde (old age) and ful slepy. And lith sliliche in awayte for mys and is ware where they ben more by smelle than by sight. And hunteth and reseth on hem in priuey place. And whanne he taketh a mous he pleyeth therwith, and eteth him after the pleye. And is as it were wylde, and goth aboute in tyme of generacioun. Among cattes in tyme of loue is hard fightynge for wyues, and oon cracceth and rendeth the other greuousliche with bytyng and with clawes. And he maketh a reweliche noyse and horrible whan oon profreth to fighte with another. And is a cruel beste whanne he is wilde and wonyeth in wodes and hunteth thanne smale wilde bestes, as conynges and hares. And falleth on his owne feet whanne he falleth out of highe place..."

Bartholomew de Glanville, who is better known as Bartholomew the Englishman, completed a widely used encyclopaedia in about 1240. . . . translated from Latin into English late in the 14th-century by John Trevisa:

look for you yesterday, here you come today

I think that the coming depression/ weather crisis is going to make anything in the remembered past seem tame.

We have messed, without caring what the consequences, for too long in too many different pots.

The problem? Mother Nature and Papa Economics have rules that operate regardless of whether we "believe" or not.

"During the past half century, the annual number of Atlantic Basin hurricanes has been as low as two and as high as twelve. The percentage of such hurricanes making landfall in the United States in a single year has been as low as zero and as high as 86%, in 1985, when six out of seven storms made landfall. "

Remember kiddles, that's a maximum of 12 not an average

Rita = #18. . . .

And a final word from Papa Economics: rising tides only raise those with boats. The rest of us drown. . . .

oh yes. . . .

[posting without caps because this computer has issues with the shift key, and it just isn't worth the effort. . . .]

the march -- oh, the march!! it was one big brawling, gorgeous, energized and energizing chunk of amazing humanity!!

there were vets from wars all the way back to ww2, there were grandmas and grandpas, the middle aged, young marrieds, couples pushing twin strollers, two year olds on daddy's shoulders, babies in carryalls on daddies' backs. eight-year-olds looking somber. huge four-man papier mache puppets, signs taller than the people carrying them, blacks, whites, yellows, peaches, and greens. a wonderful, glorious amazing mix of young, older older, people in wheel chairs, people with canes, people on power carts, people on crutches; people who ran, who walked, who danced, little people who skipped, people who limped, people who smiled, people who cheered, people who wept, people who remembered, people who hoped, people who planned, people who played, people who chanted, people who clapped, people who shouted, at least one person (me) who did a howard dean scream.

people glad to be there, people sad to be there. people like me, wondering why the hell we were there, AGAIN. . . .

A DAY FOR HOPE, COMMUNION.

the george bush rape and burn company should be very afraid. . . .

I wanted to leave something pretty big to hold this blog for a couple of days until I can get back to a computer, and was thumbing through my poetry file. Found this.

Yes. Tears are running down my face just now, not only for kimmy and Uncle Beatle, not only for Phil, and his family, but for all of us on that blog, who became so much a family. Or more than a family. I've seen a definition of family: family is the place where people have to love you. So more than a family? Where people love you even though they don't have to.

Kimmy

The first line is for Uncle Beatle (and my son); take time for yourself and take care....love

Broken Oak, Broken Birch

The first day my eyes didn't see black
I saw Rachael chewing your boot,
and when she looked behind me for you and wimpered
I did too.
The boot hung for 12 months
on that post by the barn.
Sweet Rachael died on the road
crossing to look for you.

We threw out the tickle chair
(no one else called it that)
Mom bought the recliner for Father's Day
for you boys
and when you piled on the tickle fight I was having
with your brother
we broke the oak frame
holding it together
togther
we broke the oak

And that broken down chair
sat by the house
too painful to move
your gravestone that
broke oak

I moved your boot not long ago
about a month after I handed you to Jesus
(Sorry it took so long)
Your voice no longer answers messages.
The chair is in the dumpster today.

Your ashes are in 18 states, a mighty river,
and the Ocean.
The pillow that saved your life in Phoenix
went with us on that family pilgrimage in your car.
And lay on the gravestone of our favorite childhood
author, and went to the peak of the Green Mountains.

Your Mother brought back moss
from that upthrusting granite where we left your ashes
(you can see fifty miles)
There is a Birch above
with the same branch broken as the one
by your memory garden

broken birch
broken oak

Posted by Phil from Iowa at August 6, 2004 08:38 PM

Thanks, Phil ♥

Meter Maid?

Please, everyone be sane, stay safe! ♥

Lovely Rita

Lovely Rita

Absolutely no comment ~~

שלום

שלום

One day I stood on the steps of the Capitol and read the names of people from a little Polish village. It it seemed to take an infinitely long time and I stumbled. Just names, and ages. I didn't weep then, but I am now as I remember that list ~~ from babies to grandparents. All perished.

· Albanien: 600

· Bulgarien: 11.000

· Dänemark: 50

· Deutsches Reich: 165.000

· Frankreich und Belgien: 32.000

· Griechenland: 60.000

· Italien: 7.600

· Jugoslawien: 55.000-60.000

· Luxemburg: 1.200

· Niederlande: 102.000

· Norwegen: 735

· Österreich: 65.000

· Polen: 2.700.000

· Rumänien: 211.000

· Sowjetunion: 2.100.000-2.200.000

· Tschechoslowakei: 143.000

· Ungarn: 502.000

Simon Wiesenthal, שלום

Hatrick?

click pic for larger image

Hatrick?

As I mentioned earlier, Fema reported in 2001 that the three greatest possible disasters facing this country were a terrorist act in NYC, a hurricane/flooding in New Orleans, and a big earthquake in San Francisco.

I went to China in 1979, three years after this one. Tianjin, hundreds of miles away from Tangshan, had so much damage, that three years later the park across the street from my hotel (the former Victoria Park) was full of people living in scavanged shelters (houses made from the bricks of downed buildings. Some of them, touchingly, built around trees). This is the news of that earthquake. . . .

Integration of Public Administration and Earthquake Science: The Best Practice Case of Qinglong County



The magnitude 7.8 Great Tangshan Earthquake (GTE) occurred under the city of Tangshan, China, on July 28, 1976. When the dust settled, a quarter of a million people had died, and only a small handful of buildings were left standing. Emerging from this tragedy is a public administration best practice: public administrators of Qinglong County integrated scientific knowledge and monitoring by lay public, and prepared for the Great Tangshan Earthquake. Although 180,000 buildings in the county were destroyed, not one life was lost in the county due to the devastation (one person had a heart attack) while over 240,000 people died in surrounding areas.

Anyone think FEMA will do as well?

Rats? Mice? Everybody? How soon, Lord, how soon?

Soon!!

"You get the impression that we're more than listless. We're sunk."

Too pessimistic? Maybe not. Rumors are flying through various departments of longtime senior Bush loyalists looking to jump, but with few opportunities in the private sector to make the jump look like anything more than desperation. Almost daily, complaints from Cabinet level Departments come in to the White House about lack of communication coordination on even basic policy matters.

"What happened was that some of the best people who were working in the Administration during the first term, but who weren't necessarily Bush campaign members or weren't particularly close to the White House, jumped when they saw opportunities being filled by under-qualified but more politically connected people," says a current Administration senior staffer in a Cabinet department. "In this department we lost three quarters of the people who should have been encouraged to stay, and most of them left simply because they had received no indication they would be considered for better or different opportunities. And many of these folks would have stayed."

Surrender Dorothy!

Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?

Send in the . . . .

"... They made a decision to protect property."

A bridge so near. . .

eye of god

Gretna is not the only community that views New Orleans with distrust. Authorities in St. Bernard Parish stacked cars to block the roads into their parish. But Gretna's decision has become the symbol of the ultimate act of a bad neighbor, gaining notoriety partly from of an account in the Socialist Worker newspaper.

Gretna officials have been deluged with angry e-mails accusing them of racism. On Thursday, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Gretna officials "will have to live" with their decision.

"We made a decision to protect people," he said. "... They made a decision to protect property."

This isn't going to stop haunting me, so I may as well go ahead and say it. So you've suffered. You are afraid you are going to die. You are thirsty, dehydrated, deeply in danger. You gather your last strength, and walk, stumble, wheel yourself in your wheel chair the final miles to the only remaining exit close enough to you.

And you find police, shooting, at you. You shall not escape. You have been condemned by that line of blue, to die.

Will we ever know, really, if anyone from that group did?

Some days I wish I believed in Hell. . . . I know some really first rate candidates. . . .

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

So how is it that the heart doesn't go ahead and just break?

Is it possible to have too many cakes on your Birthday?

a stolen birthday cake. . .

Thank you everyone for all the Birthday wishes ~~ on the blogs, on the phone, via the U.S. mail, and, most of all, from your hearts. . . .

I love you, too. Ya'll make life fun!!

Where have all the flowers gone?

The crosses are gone

The flowers

And the boots

Left in front of his cross

At the first camp to bear his name

Left to honor him

Left to honor them all

All across this country

Are shrines along the roads

Honored by all

Not in Texas

Where have all the flowers gone?

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes "

200,000,000,000

That's 200,000,000,000 dollars, folks.

$200,000,000,000

And who's going to administer this?

Karl Rove. That's who. The man who has perfected the art of stealing elections. Wonder how he'll do with dollars?

Just in case you thought the world wuz getting just a little better. . . .

I won't link this, but copy/paste if you want to look. Take some tums first.

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=230334

A local church is relocating 198 blacks to our all white town!!!

A local church here in our small town in Arkansas has decided to take in 198 of the refugee blacks from New Orleans.

Now let me start off by saying there is not one single black in this town, and now they are bringing in 198 of these raping, murdering, thieving, blacks.

What the he** can we do?

Damn, i just starting buying our house here, and have only made 5 payments so far.

I need advice please.....

No comment (dear God what could one say?).

Hat tip to Renee and Pam ♥

Kiddles, listen up

Love at twenty is a piccolo,

pleasing and piercing.

At thirty-five, a string quartet,

sweet and mellow

Over sixty?

Full orchestra

Carnegie Hall

Toscanini

harmonics of a lifetime

What, am I krezzy?

Nobody in their right mind could take pleasure in the pReznit's performance this evening. So I'm going to post about something completely other: about human resilience and capacity for joy. Regardless of the situation. They're good traits. I think they're hard-wired. Gives me hope. And that is what I'm needing.

Here you go.

Wedding bells in the Houston Astrodome

A walk down a cot-lined aisle signals a return to ritual

Lm Otero / AP

Bride Rebecca Warren, dances with her groom Joseph Smothers after they were married in the Houston Astrodome, a shelter for hurricane Katrina evacuees, on Wednesday.

♥ click title for story ♥

Simple, really

The part that

holds hard things

sharp things

rough things

does the work

gets calluses

The palm could be

twenty.

Then turn

the hand over

The part made for

public display

for beauty

to show off jewels

That is the side that

has grown as old as

your years

So choose

Simple, really

Simple, really

The part that

holds hard things

sharp things

rough things

does the work

gets calluses

The palm could be

twenty.

Then turn

the hand over

The part made for

public display

for beauty

to show off jewels

That is the side that

has grown as old as

your years

So choose

"Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"

asphodel

from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"



Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup
upon its branching stem-
save that it's green and wooden-
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you.
We lived long together
a life filled,
if you will,
with flowers. So that
I was cheered
when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
in hell.
Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers
that we both loved,
even to this poor
colorless thing-
I saw it
when I was a child
little prized among the living
but the dead see,
asking among themselves:
What do I remember
that was shaped
as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
with tears.
Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
though too weak a wash of crimson
colors it
to make it wholly credible.



~~ William Carlos Williams

. . . yet another colossal and bloody disaster . . .

DefeatPropaganda

Strike One: 9/11

Strike Two: Iraq

Strike Three: Katrina

YOU. ARE. OUT.



Thanks Edwin ♥

Time for a Break. . . .

During my one semester in teachers' training, I tried to tell my class that poetry was everywhere. Their faces told me they believed I lied. I didn't. To wit:

Ernest Daltroff be praised for this 1919 utterly midnight masterpiece aphrodisiac of ancient bone-dry leather and golden blond, cured tobacco with perfectly orchestrated notes of carnation, linden, iris, vetiver, ylang-ylang and lime tree leaf. At its core-of-the-earth base is a weighty collection of vanilla amber, cedar, patchouli and musk. Tabac Blond is one of the very few parfums of its kind that a woman with full, pouty, scarlet lips and a racing pulse would wear. Its potent, swarthy, sinfully dark and earthy qualities are enough to send a nun to the dark side ... and beyond. And that is its triumph.

And who could resist? Must run off now to eBay and get sum. . . .

"We told her we loved her, and she said she loved us"

Are there enough tears? Ever? For this?

★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆

Debbie, who is 47 and uses a wheelchair, had carried her painkillers -- 60 Loratab 10s -- into the attic. And she asked the girls to swallow the pills with her to end the suffering.

"She kept on saying, come on and take 'em," said Tiffany, who marked her 16th birthday in the Baton Rouge River Center shelter on Monday. "I just kept telling her we were going to be saved, but really, I didn't know."

Amanda swayed her mother from suicide by talking about her future.

"I said I want to finish school and have a job and have kids and have a husband," Amanda said.

"She was miraculous. I couldn't believe it," Debbie said of her younger daughter. "I was so proud of her. She just screamed like that for hours and hours. Her and Tiffany kept saying we weren't going to die up here."

★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆

Read here.


Thanks Indy ♥

Thanks Renee ♥

The Future

Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that's an order!

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant

You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder

Things are going to slide ...

There'll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You'll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin'

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby:
it is murder

Things are going to slide ...

When they said REPENT REPENT ...

Copyright ©
1992 Leonard Cohen

Sit Down and Shut Up

It seems to be accepted that "beggars can't be choosers." So if your home is gone, your animal companion is gone, maybe your husband, wife, or children are gone, you are a beggar. It's too much for you to ask where you are being taken, on whom you are to be dumped. Just sit down and shut up.

Question: When will the Revolution begin? How long, oh Lord, how long?

The dance of the hurricane

The intervals getting closer, the storms getting bigger. . . .

Race or poverty? Poverty and age played its role perfectly in their dances with Katrina.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beautiful, Paine. I'm stealing this one, if you don't mind. Like to take it somewhere. . . .

8.3% of whites live in poverty.
24% of blacks live in poverty.

Get the picture?

~~~~~~~~~~~

That's real good. Put it that way and I feel good posting Dr Dean's comment:

“We must ... come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not.”

ThanX, Paine ♥

dream and dreaming, wake. to what?

Noah's Wish ?

clicky ---> Noah's Wish

Was, perhaps, that he hadn't forgotten
the Unicorns. . .

After the rain,

Aaron Broussard, the President of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana

I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, Emergency Management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" and he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you." Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday… and she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing] Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For god's sakes, just shut up and send us somebody."

Last Year at Marienbad 

This Little Candle Light of Mine

I'm gonna let it shine
Let it shine all around
Let it shine



Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.

~~ Teddy Roosevelt

Clicky --> Sparkeplug Foundation



And thanks, terrintokyo4dfa