what do you expect to hear

being 

alone

in-the-world

is the way

things are,

don't you think, eh --

hello . . . hello . . .

hello?

tee time for the troublesome

 Polonium in your tea

(the senator said)

is Putin's pouring service --

No thanks, none for me

nor you for anybody

the projecting pretense of political pandering

 if I had

a spiritual life

I would meditate

on justice, mercy, 

ethics and morality

don't tell me that

love of God's truth

is not down and

dirty reflecting when

darkness is darkness

cynicism is cynicism

and false pretense of

loving and obeisant 

homaging God obviates

everything God is and

God loves --

we cannot be

such fools

as to believe what

gross and callous

lying fraudulent

piety down on one knee

thanking God for not

being God, but serving, 

instead, felonious falsity

button up

 I've taken to wearing wool sport coats in the morning. It feels dressy. I pretend I'm at home, not going into any building or office where I have to pretend to be a distinguished anybody with a professional uniform bought fifty years ago then closeted with wooden hanger while weight gathered and shrunk the fit of the fashion.

Now, age takes back weight and size and opens closet door. Spring scale in bathroom shrugs off pounds and whispers go to closet, retrieve jackets, dress yourself up, forget Maine casual fleece vests, present yourself to mirror and carry on.

Dog snores. He wears fur and baggy tail, doesn't care about pounds or mirrors, only walks, bowls of food, and good-boy treats.

We appear, we do not fear, we wear what we wear, contemplate our ear, then disappear.

ανακριβείς ηλίθιοι

What did the sooth-sayer say to Julius Caesar? 

Was it "Beware the idiots of March"?

History has such cruel inadequacies. Even today.

damn, that's some cold stuff right there

 I do not forgive our president and vice president.

It is not mine to do so.

So I inquired of God.

God said, "I do not know those two. I only know those from whom light shines."

chump unchange

 To the Vice President:

I am saddened and embarrassed by your comments and behavior toward the president of Ukraine.

The disrespectful ambush and posturing was an unbecoming and blatantly contrived  piece of political theater of the absurd.

My students, all of them felons, recognize a chump piece when they see it.

If you're going to stay as vice president, you'll have to do and be better.

sword of shame

 To the Secretary of State:

It is disappointing and sad that you sat there as a deflated suit as a brave leader and wartime head of state was mocked and ambushed by your boss and his junior.

Then, your post, affirming your complicity in the embarrassing event.

The samurai have a code of falling on one's sword when disgraced. You need not do that. But there is no coming back from the disgrace you aquiesced. 

Shame!

shema sabbath

 Meanwhile, back on earth, cars drive down road heading for town. It is Sunday [sic]. Are they heading for church? Will Jesus in the sacred scripture or holy rites gather them all for a camp meeting to reassess how the second coming of the American president would play out in heaven in hell in eternity.

The dog doesn't care. He goes out through barn door to drizzly icy dooryard heading toward diminished woodpile. It survived into March. Barely.

I wear red boxed flannel pj bottoms, brown wool insulated herringbone sport jacket, red and black Washington nationals baseball cap, old crocks with fleece inserts. I sit in the ersatz imaginary church of front room, species of orange juice and entemann's chocolate donut.  

My mistake.

It's not Sunday. It is Saturday. The cars are probably going to the dump.

I've been hoodwinked.

Cat on lap.

Water for coffee boiling.

I'm not thinking of any syphilitic unbalanced leader anywhere in this country.

I'm happy to grind beans for coffeepot on stovetop.

And enjoy this extra day I might have rued.

would we had courageous representatives

 Email to Susan Collins:

It is beyond embarrassment that the leader of your party, Donald Trump, has behaved so badly, rudely, and tragically toward the president of Ukraine.

You are a Maine Senator. I implore you to speak and act in such a way that assures the people of Maine and the United States that we are not being led down a very dangerous path in world alliances and untoward relationship with Vladimir Putin and authoritarian control.

Please do not shrug this off with platitudes and political rhetoric. We are in urgent need of true leadership. Are you up to it?

ignorance of history, by the ignorant of history

 Something broke 

in America today

in Oval Office 

two bullies

tore off disguise

declaring their cynicism

ripping off shirts

undressing to shorts

then naked in front of

everybody, howling

they are predator, 

bare-assing, defecating

on history, on decency

on America on 

american people

in their own kitchen

two embarrassing executives, one wounded country

 I watch president and vice president embarrass the United States in the presence of president of Ukraine in the Oval Office.

Ambush and bad faith.

American president chooses Vladimir Putin. No one is sure why.

Something seems very off.

Very off.

do you hear what i hear

 Unspeaking divinity

 Leans closer (one supposes)

To silent hospitality

We cannot hear God

We can only turn to see

Where sound isn’t 

honda ridgeline zafu, an unplowed parking

 sitting zazen in medical office parking lot

driving over slushy roads full of snow and rain

unmoving for an hour, windshield running wet

book is saying there is another spiritual dimension

energetic alongside this material one we breathe 

when we die we are there as it is here as we live

the obscurity of umbrellas

 I've decided to write a short novella:

    Chapter 1.

It wasn't a dark and stormy night. In fact, no one got killed, no wife was compromised, no knave redeemed.

    Chapter 2.

When the front door closed, it marked the last of many times rusty hinges held on until raincoated shoulders went out, down stairs, onto snowy slush steps descending to waiting car with motor running.

    Chapter 3.

In the morning, under foyer mirror, small table with housekeys and black gloves, a drying drop of water near edge revealed nothing more about what took place the night before.

--  fin --

All rights reserved.

All wrongs preserved. 

perspective, telescopic

Doris sends "The Consolations of the Telescopic Perspective in Disorienting Time", BY MARIA POPOVA.

The “Pale Blue Dot” photograph captured by the Voyager 1 (NASA/JPL)

 And so, on Valentine’s Day of 1990, just after Bulgaria’s Communist regime was finally defeated after nearly half a century of reign, the Voyager took the now-iconic image of Earth known as the “Pale Blue Dot” — a grainy pixel, “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” as Sagan so poetically put it when he immortalized the photograph in his beautiful “Pale Blue Dot” monologue from Cosmos — that great masterwork of perspective, a timeless reminder that “everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was… every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician” lived out their lives on this pale blue dot. And every political conflict, every war we’ve ever fought, we have waged over a fraction of this grainy pixel barely perceptible against the cosmic backdrop of endless lonesome space. (- Marginalian)

So much depends on how we see what we see when we see it as we see it.

The current view of this country and the world is close up, nose-smashed and eye-gouged, by men with large thumbs. who don't care about what is seen. 

wislawa and george

 A former student and friend from prison for 80th birthday last year gives me book of Poems New and Collected 1957-1997 by Wislawa Szymborska (c.1998)

In it, this:

Three Oddest Words

by Wislawa Szymborska

Original Language Polish

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold

A used book, 1st edition, well hand-noted, with ribbon page mark set to this poem.

I suppose, like the book, it can be said that nonbeing is also used but seldom marked or held.

My professor of Metaphysics in philosophy department of The Catholic University of America in Washington DC in 1968 would start each class writing on chalkboard “Being is, nonbeing is not.” It was enough for me at the time. But I’m not sure enough of what. He died in 2016.

I try to parse I make something no nonbeing can hold, but cannot. I try to parse my life-to-date, but cannot.

My friend and the woman in his life received into the world three months ago a baby girl. A star, Stella, no doubt, a stellar event.

Stella, the Latin word for "star," shines brightly in the word constellation, but stella words have been favored by scientists to describe earthly things as much as heavenly bodies. Stellar was once used to mean "star-shaped." That use is no longer current, but today biologists and geologists might use one of these synonyms: stellular, stellate, and stelliform. Poets, too, have looked to stella. John Milton used stellar in its infancy when he wrote in Paradise Lost "these soft fires … shed down their stellar virtue." Stellar shot into its leading role as a synonym of star (as when we say "stellar pupil") in the late 1800s. (Merriam-Webster)

I am fond of the three of them.

As well as Being and Non-Being.

Along with Thursday mornings.

And prospect of coffee.

Not to overlook Wislawa the poet and George the professor.

Cat on shoulder. Light snow beginning. 

Nuns from Neumz chanting. Monks from Barroux chanting.

Psalm 120

Levavi óculos meos in montes, * unde veniet auxilium mihi. Auxilium meum a Domino, * qui fecit cælum et terram. Non det in commotionem pedem tuum: * neque dormitet, qui custodit te. Ecce non dormitabit neque dormiet, * qui custodit Israel. Dominus custodit te, Dominus protectio tua, * super manum déxteram tuam. Per diem sol non uret te: * neque luna per noctem. Dominus custodit te ab omni malo: * custodiat animam tuam Dominus. Dominus custodiat introitum tuum et exitum tuum: * ex hoc nunc, et usque in sæculum.

I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from whence comes my help. My help will come from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not suffer your foot to stumble; he who keeps you will not slumber. No, he who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. The Lord is your keeper, the Lord overshadows you; he stands at your right hand. The sun will not scorch you during the day, nor the moon during the night. The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your soul. The Lord will keep you in your going out and in your coming out, now and forever. Glory to the Father..

For 

Now 

This

Is 

Enough 

hallmate

 I passed the buddha in the hall today

he looked tired

I bowed as I passed

he looked over at me and nodded

he's ok

just there in the hall with a smile

l'état, c'est eux

everyone seems paralyzed

how can a private so-called

citizen step into Oval Office

and run the country to ground?

republicans pray after vote thanking

God for their victory cutting funds

meant for children and elderly health care

their rape and pillage thank you to Jesus

it all seems berserk it all seems cruel and

comical these two men scissoring history

saying f*ck you to everyone, a coup d'etat

by sneering cynics with no restraining them

requies*

of course the "I" 

is afraid of dying

the "I" is illusory

illusions fear exposure

it is their death

voila!

to become non-illusioned

is to lose illusions

to become dis-illusioned

is to lose "two" or "twice"

to shunt off, move aside, 

duality

death is not the problem

dying is

the awareness of ending,

transitioning, stepping away 

from the two, the divided

other

I am dead now

dying will follow

relinquishing two

for undivided one

the silence of it,

this . . . rest*

facing book, changing socks

 Everyone has dozens and

Dozens of friends on Facebook

I am embarrassed to have none

Before Tommy died he would say

That everybody is so important, not

Him, he was nobody in world of elites

He was cranky. Why not? It’s respectable.

He had a friend. They went to Moodys for

Breakfast regularly, that’s all I know.

I have no friends, am nobody, live alone

With another, listen to snow melting onto

Porch roof, watch red cardinal on green feeder.

It feels winter’s back is broken, light stays

Morning sun moves north, pond begins to slush

Snow plow'd piles look down driveway, planning —

Emily said it for people like me — “I’m Nobody! 

Who are you?  / Are you -- Nobody -- too?”

Let’s face it, somebodies are important, no doubt,

Nobodies are unimportant. What a relief! 

Empty space, vacant mind, abandoned body —

The stuff of unemcumbrance, shutterblink still-life

An esoteric peek into what is obvious, something

New, a private collection of unexcelled images, a

Canvas with acrylics and a signature indicating

“I did this!” Yes you did. Good for you. Cheers!

So many books to face, this desolate company,

Finishing Irish novel Time of the Child, by Niall 

Williams. The simplicity of aloneness as no stranger

When ordinary life, like boots inside barn door,

Hold their place near open bag of bird seed

the search for peace and all good

we can use noble speech

to reteach this country its

loveliness, like Galway 

Kinnell's sow, it is necessary

for America to learn again

to speak with each other, not 

at, before we descend into

punching faces and shooting

heads with guns, our crude and

ugly language mocking and 

snearing putdown bully-words;

we have to learn to speak again

because words matter, and we need

to be created and the face of the earth

needs to be renewed with worded love

loving words, sounding loveliness 

considering the apocalypse

 i've been thinking about

shutting down the white house

sending the chief exec to DRC

in Congo to solve the violence

I think he could do it, he's so

skilled at making things efficient

perhaps he'll offer to build a hotel

a golf course a casino a sports arena

everybody knows how clever he is

how much a man of the people he is

how christlike and humble he is

who wouldn't love to adulate him, he is

probably the savior of the world, just

ask america's fundamentalist poseurs,

they know. God! How we need their

vision, their discernment, their charisma

Forget God, forget Christ. Get me a

modern-day christian -- they slay me 

they slay us, they eye new crosses

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae

 rugged rosaries

trappist and franciscan

will be held in hand

prayed through

a mon-day and mon-night

dog's snoring comes through ceiling of front room

he played in prison with service-dog-in-training earlier

walked with mistress across ice in dark to Hosmer pond island

peed in dooryard before good-boy treat and going upstairs

until then there are dentists to be dealt with

 We have materialized because we want to know

Perception requires body, senses, emotions

Ultimate reality is formless immaterial origin of breath itself

So here we are, attempting to know the unknowable by unknowing

When we awaken we will remember nothing of any substance

ayuh

 Let’s hear it

For Angus King and

Janet Mills of Maine —

As Maine goes

So goes the nation

そこにいる … soko ni iru … there we are

 Friends visit Japan

Send blossoms

Flowering us

when parental love is the question

 The historian says

When the people expect 

And demand honesty

From their leaders

It will show itself

But when we are

Deceptive opportunistic 

Liars we get deceptive

Opportunistic liars as

Leaders. We create them

Liars love our president

He is made in their image

And even if he pains them

And deceives them they take

Pride in their offspring

Once honesty and truthfulness

Were valued character traits

The ability to manage the good

That hid in plain sight and void

The evil that lurked in shadows

It is us

We parent new life

We foster and adopt

What needs care and love

It is we who shape and sustain

what she wrote

Woman entered shop thirty years ago during conversation.

Next time she came in, she brought this:

altar

 Buddha just sits there

Jesus just hangs there on cross

late at night, right here

heating system cuts in -- no

other, side by side