Cancion Mixteca from Paris,Texas

For The Lion On The Lamb Now Gone

Not Much Thought About A Visitor Now Deceased

They killed a mountain lion in Connecticut. I don't know why: because it didn't belong there, because it ate a pet, menaced a grandfather, held the town in it's metaphorical carnivorous jaws - or just because they could.

We have the technology now to find out how the mountain lion came to be in Connecticut, a place where mountain lions were pushed out by human encroachment ( if they were ever even there) a hundred years ago or more.

DNA evidence showed that the cat was from the Black Hills of South Dakota - a sacred place to the Plains Indians - two thousand miles distant.

That mountain lion walked two thousand miles only to be shot by strangers. What was it looking for? Elbow room? Maybe a place without fences or Wi-Fi?

Or was it a messenger from a holy place carrying a warning? What happens when the sacred meets the profane? What comes to pass when a spirit endures two thousand miles of Wal-Marts and Burger Kings?

 "Honey, there's a sacred being tipping over the trash cans on the patio. Better call Spirit Animal Control"

Come Here My Love - This Mortal Coil

Island of Lost Children

Another call for Calm and Unity

More dead children

More anguish,

Terror, loss

Another call for Calm and Unity

How do we recognize violence

Before it is unfurled

Madness?

Another call for Calm and Unity

How do we deliver this message

in every language

for all to hear and understand?

Another call for Calm and Unity

Insanely, this blond man proves that

One person can make all the difference

Or is it only true in the delivery of pain and evil?

Who will be his opposer?

Another call for Calm and Unity

We will mourn, rage, despair, spit in disgust, cry helplessly -

Maybe conclude that the whole damn thing has gone sour

And then we must stand up,

calmly, united,

and get to work

tipping the scales

back the other way

Dog Day

The haze settles

in

blurring the hills and

trees

a wet blanket

smothering

scattered thoughts,

slow movements,

sweat beads

ants on my skin

the curtain stirs

hardly a breath, slow

quiet now here without

children

a stuffy humid

mausoleum

with what seems suddenly like

all the time in the world

to think and to sweat

and none to live

Boris = Farewell

Barry Adamson - Can't Get Loose

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgzWZWnfc9U&feature=BFa&list=PL1D397B6EA954F6F0&index=37

Dark and Stormy

Eye teeth missing from

a brown smile

shoulders, bones

like birds.

You sailed this sea before, and

it crushed you.

Tonight you hear singing

and want to join them

as you watch the refrigerator tech work

all focus, bustle and

know-how.

I'd hire you,

that's for

goddamn sure,

if I had a pot to piss in.

The heat is coming to press us down

close to flat

to see what we're made of

In the morning

I'll talk about rights

and how we are

privileged to take them away

from less privileged people,

responsibly, 

and with a 

properly credentialed

legal signature

Call it power

stretching it's wings,

or call it crime,

or call it health care.

Aren't you the guy

blackening your own eyes

in the all night theater,

still

The 4:30 owl

is back again,

resident for some years now,

do you know me?

Your voice is startling,

clear and mournful,

and so very strange,

when heard out of context

And what is your context,

here before dawn,

feathered neighbor

lamps for eyes?

Waiting for the break of day

to knock off work

To knock off

as the day breaks

while a soft voice

speaks low to someone,

but it isn't

me

Respectfully and With Thanks

Choke Cherry Moon

For the last several nights
I've been disoriented
nearly certain
that the pregnant yellow moon
hanging in the warm still night
is the midsummer's full moon
known also as the
Sundance moon.

It's a hard hot year for those dancers
if there are any
and I'm sure there are.

They suffer and burn out there
under the tree of life
under the sun
that never flinches or blinks
for their prayers,
for the people,
for creation -
so that we may live.

They sleep on the earth
under the stars
under burnt skins and cramping limbs
under the blanket of prayers
woven by the supporters
with prayers of their own.

They will see Death,
just over there,
and they will fear it
with an immediacy many there
have never known before,
and they will dance on,
harder,
fighting.

They will almost see God,
and for a time
stop doubting
and surrender.

Scream of bone whistles
shrill
breaks your heart
makes you spin
the sound of these souls
unguarded

Osimala Yelo !

The spirit moves
brushes your skin
whispers, breezes-
close at hand -
sparks in the dark steam
half formed
behind the sun.

They will rise before the sun
audience to the morning star's chilly silence
majesty
never noticed before
this day.

Hoka! Hoka!

The drum drives their steps
The singers feed their hearts,
carry their minds from suffering
and back to it again.

They have come to honor
a commitment
to give their flesh and tears and pain,
because it is all they have to offer that truly belongs to them,
they will struggle
and they will break free
earning us another year
rededicating themselves
gathering spiritual power
for the good of others.

Matakuye Oyasin
We Are All Related

Faces in the dirt
forehead to the good Earth
bosom of the Mother
humble
they sweat
and dance
and cry
naked before Everything.

I can feel the drum stir me
even as my inner ear
pretends not to notice.

Wopila,
for everything.

Peter Murphy

Heeding The Call

It's hot enought to melt a pale dude today, for certain. The kids called me this morning. Just two weeks away and already you can hear change in them - growth. The sound of their voices, one at a time, pulled directly on the loose frayed ropes of my heart. So that's good, it's still there. Humid now, and I spent the afternoon drifting in bed after and before work. It's that again - work as much as possible, not to get ahead but to stay afloat, which I guess is getting ahead but barely. That gets old, and you know what? So do I. Trying to gear up for the overnight shift.

Sunny, Dry and Blue is The Sky

Sunny, dry and blue is the sky
on this picture perfect summer's day.

I am making my way to the hospital
in the service of a paycheck,
first stopping for coffee and swinging
by the public library where the newspaper said
the Nazis would be,
but they're not.

You see they have a monthly White Pride meeting there,
those silly buggers, or at least they did until recently,
when there was a disturbance of some kind,
and so now they've been asked to go away.

Today they're coming here
to demonstrate for their right to free, if ignorant, speech.
While at the same time, other people are planning to
exercise free speech and their own rights to free assembly
nearby in order to inform the Nazis that their presence here
is not appreciated.

I see no evidence of either faction right now,
just a few people sitting on benches
out on the Common enjoying the day,
and six or seven cops,
stationed here and there,
socializing with each other and enjoying the overtime,
and a couple of people with tight smiles saying Jesus,
handing out pamphlets, and warning us all to
REPENT.

Henry Weighs In On Darkness and Light

Psycho Therapy!

Now That's A Headline

"Truck Spills 14 Million Bees"

Can't Nickname The Truth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_cm8T3yWE8&playnext=1&list=PLFBECE6EA89DACC9E

Soul Food Challenge

Now that our souls are crushed to bits of bitter spent coffee grounds, I would like to put forth a challenge to you, dear readers. I want to know how souls are built, what feeds yours, what makes it grow and thrive (if it is growing and thriving)?

 I think I could write a thousand pages in a weekend about all the enemies of the soul and revel in it, but what about the protectors of the soul, it's friends? For me, that means having to dig deeper.


This speaks to a dilemna I experience when I sit down to write, in that generally what comes out of me is kind of dark, and I end up asking myself if more darkness is what the world really needs and being disappointed in my writing.

It seems to me it's the soul - it's light - that needs the help, and maybe we have a unique opportunity as writers to do something about this.

So I ask you - reader, visitor, lurker, friend - what feeds your soul?

Soul Killer (It's The Little Things)

Perpetual generic and name brand bombardment, laugh tracks and shit radio, day time television, shock jocks and cock blocks, Hollywood insiders and the thing that makes us forsake our own lives for a glimpse of that. Plastic surgery (I mean, what drives it), Just For Men, very young girls with provocative writing across their butts and the malls that define them. Standing in line, of any kind, not so much because time is wasting and you're missing out on doing something important, but because time is wasting and you don't know what else to do. Inertia, pointless repetition, mediocrity in the mirror unblinking, programmed repetition, hit radio, fake good times and forced laughter. Drowsiness unearned but unshakable, mental fog, physical lethargy - men in groups and women in groups. Struggle without end and the absence of struggle, and how some people cling to the idea that they are ill, broken, ugly, old, untalented, a victim, and how time slips away on them while this occurs. Woo girls and boys and the lump they put in my throat, but most of all that it's rigged for us to achieve our greatest possible human potential as consumers.

Foi Na Cruz

Life In A Day Trailer

What a great idea. I'd really like to see this.

Pedestrian

Two hours of walking and I
remember the plight of the pedestrian:
lone occupant of a parallel universe
invisible to drivers for whom
the world is now designed.

Sweat, sore feet and time to think
at a natural rate of speed.
Time to see...

The intimacy of smell,
both foul and pleasant-
car exhaust, sewer water, garbage
fermenting in the heat.

You are careful not to let your
face or your words
register disgust
out of respect for the context -
some kind of understanding.

Woman's hair products,
a variety of summer trees and plants,
the sudden extravagance of maple glaze.

.45 Grave

45 Haiku

I'm a year older.
Car and computer break down.
Hey, that's close enough!

Youth And Vigor Brought to You By Minor Threat

Independence Day Fireworks Display

Another year of bringing the kids
out to the Independence Day Fireworks Display.

You have to get there three hours in advance
to stake out space on the ground to spread your blanket
and then find some way to keep the kids from disappearing in
the crowd or killing each other while waiting for darkness to fall

And when it's finally dark, you get to reflect for a second
about the passage of time, about how much they have grown
and changed since last year doing this same thing.

It's Jack's year this year.
Every explosion wrenches a vocal response from him.

"Christmas colors!"
"Blueberries!"
"Raspberries!"
"Cherries!"
"Golden hair growing out of a head!"

The crowd covers the entire field in
large numbers marked by
their glow stick wearing children -
subdued this year,
we're all a little tired -
despite the magnificent finale
that leaves Jack upside down and spent -
or maybe that's just me.

Jack's wide awake, and for him
this is just one more in a series
of best days ever.

Birthday

Dragged between
the opposing forces of
gratitude and horror
I find another year gone
a greater number reached

I also find it impossible
to understand.

Life can seem
both
too short
and too long
at the same time.

Let's feel good
about it
today though,
shall we?