a diminished fifth for diminished thieves

Hey You, front run this...




Home loan, greed dream, blood food

we are a standing wave of liberty
who no longer have a home
for the land we loved that bore US
turned out just to be on loan.

freedom's hopes flow with jagged
clinks from crooked claws of greed
where once glades of égalité
stood sentry to a dream.

we bought the tale of working hard,
staunchly paying with our blood
raising families honestly, tho
worried sick as how to pay for food.

we never minded, much, your directors
& thought your boards were somewhat quaint
until, like jackals in a pen fed gravy
coated tidbits from a genuflected saint,

you lost fullness in your outlook
and sold your word of honor for slightly less
than what it takes to wink and nod
and down a drink, your hand up someones dress.

well it's time to pay the piper full and proper due,
with compound interest and with force,
for playing such loosely intoxicating
counterpoints, non-violently, of course.

If you'll look inside your bonus envelopes and
somehow see OUR million nearly triggered fears,
it's only all that glitters giving your eyes forecast
of coming storms, through cringing bitter tears.

Toasting Ghosts and other simple pleasures

iam reading thru the HalfPastHuman latest book of the Bardo that we seem to be approaching. Go there. Buy it. Read it. Come back. We can chat. i'll wait.

or, if not, before you go...

i've got a bottle of Laphroaig here that's mostly full. join me for a glass. it's my toasting the dead bottle. i'd be honored if you'd care to share it with me.

i've always thought this guy had a real way with
simple words and simple rhymes that say things
that aren't near as simple as they may seem.
who knows...we might yet waken from this fey dream.

Namaste

AUM
Asatoma satgamaya
Tamasoma jyotir gamaya
Mrityorma amritamgamaya

Lead us from the unreal to the real.
Lead us from the darkness to the light.
Lead us from mortality to immortality.


Thank you Billy.

Auguries of Innocence

William Blake

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

Burning Down The Mission with Jimmy

Way to go Jimmy!

I heartily and fully concur with what you have written recently regarding the institutionalized discrimination against women and girls and its basis and ubiquity. I applaud you.

You tell me there's an angel in your tree
Did he say he'd come to call on me
For things are getting desperate in our home
Living in the parish of the restless folks I know

You have really opened a can of worms though. By calling out the patriarchs on this one little character defect they share, you are agitating for far more than just the welfare of half the human race. You are seeding the thought that discrimination of any sort, and, by implication, it's cousin, entitlement AND the horse they both rode in on, are on notice that morally and evolutionarily they are to be terminated, with prejudice.

Everybody now bring your family down to the riverside
Look to the east to see where the fat stock hide
Behind four walls of stone the rich man sleeps
It's time we put the flame torch to their keep

You have just fired a massive volley in what may prove to be a thousand year headlong war with structures that have been refined over a period ten times that long, which have been inculcated and beaten into successive generations, incorporated into our languages and hence our brain structure, and most probably bred into our genome. These structures have been antigened into our bloodstream inoculating us against and protecting us from questions, from independent, critical thought, from disobedience, from our self.

Burn down the mission
If we're gonna stay alive
Watch the black smoke fly to heaven
See the red flame light the sky

I realize there have been skirmishes in this war since at least Lysistrata's time 2400 years ago, but the goals that were sought in those skirmishes were discrete and local things like stopping a war or voting rights acquisition and on a much smaller scale than what you and the other Elders have set forth here:

"The justification of discrimination against women and girls
on grounds of religion or tradition,
as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority,
is unacceptable."

You have just let fly a challenge that has the potential to and a requirement of a complete restructuring and transformation of what has, sadly, come to pass for civilization on this planet. If the conditions you enumerate are to be resolved they will need to be, as they already are being, taught as wrong to our children and the children of our children unto the seventh generation, verily. The overturning of these conditions will demand the same but more of the fearless and fervent dedication and singlemindedness that established them, over millennia, in the first place.

Burn down the mission
It's our only chance to stay alive
It's our only chance of living
Take all you need to live inside

You are calling on the human race to consciously choose to evolve and the evolutionary direction you have enunciated just happens to point away from Abraham (Ibrahim) and ALL his quarreling, vindictive and dishonest progeny. You have laid another piece of wood on a fire that, hopefully, will soon flare up and consume the destructive and antagonistically backwards understanding of life incorporated into those three religions at the root and cause of the inbuilt and core component that results in this discriminatory treatment of women, children and the "other". I have the beam I've removed from my own eye ready to add to the conflagration. I've been looking forward to this for a long, long time. Maybe we can roast some peanuts.

Deep in the woods the squirrels are out today
My wife cried when they came to take me away
But what more could I do just to keep her warm
Than burn, burn, burn, burn down the mission walls

This declaration you have made also carries within it notice of termination for most economic and financial structures that, now imminently threatening to collapse taking huge swaths of dreams and lives with them, are predicated on disparate valuations of individuals and peoples. These institutions and structures have engendered and encouraged as much if not more strife and discrimination and death than the religions they have financed. This shouldn't be surprising as the largest, most corrupt and power hungry of the three oldest professions and the one which joins its twin, cassocked brother in abusing, raping and pimping their younger sisters out as prostitute, is that of moneychanger.

Now everybody now bring your family down to the riverside
Look to the east to see where the fat stock hide
Behind four walls of stone the rich man sleeps
It's time we put the flame torch to their keep.

You are a good man Jimmy Carter. Thank you for your courage. Thank You, Elton, for your words and music.

in order to get here,


we said goodbye to the packing inspector,


and had to go here,


like this,


past here,


picking up a bit of eau de skunk here,


Trevor relishing the freshness,


and then in the fullness of time and with the cooperation of the synchronicity sprites we happened along a park in this guy's birthplace here-


and while i may not be a strong activist, Mr. Chip (short for Chip off the old Shakti) channeled my long and unwavering loathing for St. Ronnie and his voraciously greedy and exploitative cohort and their foul and bitter legacies by symbolically doing to the memory of St Ronnie what has been done in his name to the non-have-mores for so unrelentingly, singlemindedly, simplemindedly long...


After conducting what we all agreed was a fitting and overly generous pre-centennial celebration of the dying gasps of republicanism we continued through here,


to the house, where after two days of sleeping i did another 300 miles south where Chip in his quest for that perfect full body rub looks like this


he cleans up well... so we did and met these guys at the HDBC


these guys at my folk's house


saw this


and after approximately 3500 miles of road was able to relax on the deck and see this


and this


as we contemplate the ephemerality of peach trees...


Namaste