Monthly Archives: December 2011

Banjo

Around my block
crows berate,
busses bray
lawn mowers growl
neighbors kvetch
bumble bees perambulate
incognizants plod along in a line
sunk beneath dreaming.

My banjo helps to seine the day’s
news from between the noises
a hardened heart
a wandering wife
a sunken fishing boat
a new car
a lost job.

Slowly it starts to ring
first plinking along in sorrow’s key
then brightly tin-hammered
then ringing like sunshine on cotton fields
ringing like John Henry
banging away at the pit face
of that coal mine
where by God no steam drill
can stop him can beat him
baby it rings like silver
all the way to Canaan
glory hallelujah damn.

Bookstore

I stand facing
the conquered armies of Carthage
the rotting nobility of Rome
the seesaw twinkling of cities
blooming and dying
all along the fertile crescent
slave ships rising slowly at anchor
amphorae of wine and olive oil
piled on sun bright docks
awaiting passage
beggar children asking for coins
feral packs of dogs
defending their territories
kings and drunkards
fat whores with crooked teeth
and all the fishes of the sea
undulating in their fishy homes
beneath the mirrored stars
sprinkling the sea
with the breath of Gods.

And that is only the first three shelves.

The Beach in Winter

The rain blows sideways and the ocean tumbles in long rills of white and grey, diffusing into the sand and barely holding its own against the sky. A seagull patrols outside our window, constantly turning his head from side to side, watching our movements for a gesture that might suggest a meal. Swaying curtains of rain are drawn over the tide pools that burst with life in the summertime. Flower beds surrounding the hotel are buried in water, forming tiny moats. Life at the beach in winter is about the next friendly conversation, the next cup of coffee and changing out of wet socks.

Using Gifts

If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?

—Stephen King

Think Global, Occupy Local

From the morning’s inbox:

On Tuesday Dec 20th, Lucas Fielder – PBX operator at the Vancouver Hilton – stood up and spoke for better wages for himself and his coworkers at his Union’s Candlelight Vigil. He was fired the next day.

UNITE HERE quickly organized an emergency delegation to demand justice for Luke. Yesterday, Thur Dec 22nd, over 35 people gathered at the hotel, only hours after Luke was fired. They stormed into the lobby of the hotel and met with the General Manager. They then marched over to City Hall and delegated the city manager, Eric Holmes, letting him know the injustices at his "city owned" hotel.

At this point, Luke has not been reinstated to his job. There will be future actions and I will keep Vancouver4Peace updated, as you have all been an incredible support for the Vancouver Hilton workers!

The Way Down from the Gallows

“The only way down from the gallows is to swing.”
– Tom Waits

Coffin Corners

In the houses of new England, where the steep and narrow staircases turned at the landing, they often built niches into the walls so coffins being carried down the stairs could easily make the turn. Death at home, in bed, was a fact of life no less than cooking in kettles hung over a kitchen fire and sleeping in unheated rooms. Passing a coffin corner on your way downstairs to breakfast every morning would have been an unremarkable reminder of what daily life told you in myriad ways, that life is brief and death is inseparable from the day to day experience of life. Mexico’s day of the dead makes the same point with a twist of mordant humor thrown in. In the USA of the 21st century maybe we fear death so because we have lost our friendship with it.

Word Recycling: syllogism

An Irish porn star.

Car Prowlers Are Getting Bolder

In the curb in front of my house there are rusted iron rings that were used to tie horses, back when horse drawn wagons delivered milk and eggs and canned salmon in my neighborhood. The rings tend to crack the concrete over time. Last night someone pulled a hunk of the cracked concrete out of the curb and threw it through the window of our car, looking for anything valuable. The guy at the repair shop says this is happening all over now and that car prowlers are getting bolder. People are even leaving their cars unlocked to avoid the broken windows.

Inhaling Shooting Stars

Today I walked across the same parking lot as yesterday and sat in the same cubicle, while the crab nebulae and the spraying Geminid meteors overhead made it hard to concentrate on my email. I flicked my desk light on and stared at my laptop screen, but the tons of space rock whistling in from the far reaches of the galaxy took my mind to a place where Microsoft Oulook does not deliver.

Last night, opposite the moon’s part of the sky, these interstellar visitors looked like heavenly messengers. I wanted to inhale them.

These bright, frigid mornings…

The Canada geese were huddled in the only sliver of the pond this morning that was not frozen over. Their avuncular mood does not change on these bright, frigid mornings. They greet the day with the same stolid optimism on the days when the sleet blows sideways and the sun seems gone for an eternity. Where are the men to match them in their world view?

Seen in Portland

A bumper sticker: My Dog Gives Blood. Can Yours?

(um, no, we like fresh at our house)

What the 1% Knows

Big capital is stone cold. It takes “risks” when it can get house odds, that is, when there is no real risk at all. It always leaves the back door open and the getaway car running. All great fortunes throughout history have been built through theft. Today is no different, except that theft has been legalized.

The 1% is planning for 100 years of class war. They know climate change will create a world wide band of desert 40 degrees north and south of the equator. They know global population will plummet by 80% and no nation state will protect them from social unrest when the conversation turns from the lack of jobs to the lack of food and safe drinking water.

The irony is that mankind’s salvation does not ultimately lie in creating these desperate and lonely islands, but in the gracious cooperation we are seeing in the Occupy movement. In fact, it is the only reason we are here today.

What Happens Next

Here is what happens next with Occupy. The 1% are now realizing that they over reached. Throwing so many people out of work created the greatest danger of all: giving workers the time to think. The 1% knows that their privileges are at stake if the masses stay unemployed and restless much longer. Every lever of instant money creation and worldwide government/corporate collusion will now be pulled to try and put enough people back to work in order to anesthetize the Great Awakening. Nothing to see here. Move along. Get back to watching Dancing with the Stars. This is already underway in the USA.

Unfortunately, the toothpaste won’t go back in the tube.