“The Silicon Tower of Babel”
The over utilization of technology, its abuse, is unweaving humanity at the seams. Human health, sanity, and spirituality are under attack. The boom of accessibility over technology has increasingly subtracted from the frequency of face to face human interaction as well as human interaction with nature. The result is a declining emotional and psychological health and a ******* of spiritual values. Each individual who values holistic health should limit the time he or she spends using technology that isolates them to less than twenty-four hours in a week. They should make more purposeful efforts toward interacting with nature daily and for periods of at least an hour at a time. Lastly, these individuals should labor to replace reclusive technologies with modes of technology that encourage face to face and group social interaction such as movies, Skype, etc.
Self-limitation of the use of isolating technology will begin to correct the twisting of our spiritual values and the social and physiological damage that has been caused by the overuse and abuse of technology. In James T. Bradley’s review of Joel Garreau’s book discussion of radical evolution, called “Odysseans of the twenty first century”, Bradley quotes Garreau when he says that technology will result in human transcendence. In “Odysseans” it is said that “The nature of transcendence will depend upon the character of that which is being transcended—that is, human nature.”  James. T Bradley, scholar and author of this peer reviewed journal says that “When we’re talking about transhumanism, we’re talking about transcending human nature. . .  One notion of transcendence is that you touch the face of God. Another version of transcendence is that you become God.”  This is a very blatant ******* of the roles of God and man. When the created believes it can attain the greatness of its creator, and reach excellence and greatness on par with its God, it has completely reversed the essence of spirituality. This results in the ability to justify the “moral evolution of humankind” according to Odysseans. And this “moral evolution” often results in “holy wars”. In “Man in the age of technology” by Umberto Galimberti of Milan, Italy, written for the Journal of Analytical Psychology in 2009, technology is revealed to be “no longer merely a tool for man’s use but the environment in which man undergoes modifications.” Man is no longer using technology. Man is no longer affecting and manipulating technology to subdue our environments. Technology is using, affecting, and manipulating the populace; it is subduing humankind into an altered psychological and spiritual state.
Technology, in a sense, becomes the spirituality or the populace. It replaces nature and the pure, technologically undefiled creation as the medium by which the common man attempts to reach the creator. The common man begins to believe in himself as the effector of his Godliness. Here there is logical disconnect. People come to believe that what they create can connect them to the being that created nature. They put aside nature and forget that it is an extension of the artist that created it. Technology removes man from nature (which would otherwise force an undeniable belief in a creator) and becomes a spiritual bypass. “According to “The Only Way Out Is Through: The Peril of Spiritual Bypass” by Cashwell, Bentley, and Yarborough, in a January 2007 issue of Counseling and Values, a scholarly and peer reviewed psychology journal, “Spiritual bypass occurs when a person attempts to heal psychological wounds at the spiritual level only and avoids the important (albeit often difficult and painful) work at the other levels, including the cognitive, physical, emotional, and interpersonal. When this occurs, spiritual practice is not integrated into the practical realm of the psyche and, as a result, personal development is less sophisticated than the spiritual practice (Welwood, 2000). Although researchers have not yet determined the prevalence of spiritual bypass, it is considered to be a common problem among those pursuing a spiritual path (Cashwell, Myers, & Shurts, 2004; Welwood, 1983). Common problems emerging from spiritual bypass include compulsive goodness, repression of undesirable or painful emotions, spiritual narcissism, extreme external locus of control, spiritual obsession or addiction, blind faith in charismatic leaders, abdication of personal responsibility, and social isolation.”  Reverting back to frequent indulgence in nature can begin to remedy these detrimental spiritual, social, and physiological effects.  If people as individuals would choose to daily spend at least an hour alone in nature, they would be healthier individuals overall.
  Technology is often viewed as social because of its informative qualities, but this is not the case when technologies make the message itself, and not the person behind the message, the focus.  To be information oriented is to forsake or inhibit social interaction.  Overuse of technology is less of an issue to human health if it is being overused in its truly social forms. Truly social forms of technology such as Skype and movies viewed in public and group settings are beneficial to societal and personal health. According to a peer-reviewed study conducted by John B. Nezlek, the amount and quality of one’s social interactions has a direct relationship to how positively one feels about one’s self. Individual happiness is supported by social activity.
Abuse of technology is a problem because it results in spiritual *******.  It points humanity toward believing that it can, by its own power, become like God.  Abuse of technology inclines humanity to believe that human thoughts are just as high as the thoughts of God. It is the silicon equivalent of the Tower of Babel.  It builds humanity up unto itself to become idols. In extreme cases overuse of technology may lead to such megalomania that some of humanity may come to believe that humanity is God.  Technology is a spiritual bypass, a cop-out to dealing with human inability and depravity. The misuse of technology results in emotional and psychological damage. It desensitizes and untethers the mind from the self. It causes identity crises. Corruption of technology from its innately neutral state into something that negatively affects the human race results in hollow social interactions, reclusion, inappropriate social responses, and inability to understand social dynamics efficiently.
It may appear to some that technology cannot be the cause of a large-scale social interrupt because technology is largely social. However, the nature of technology as a whole is primarily two things: It is informational; it is for use of entertainment. Informational technology changes the focus of interaction from the messenger to the message. Entertainment technology is, as a majority, of a reclusive nature.
Readers may be inclined to believe that nature is not foundational to spirituality and has little effect on one’s spiritual journey, it is best to look through history. Religions since the beginning of time have either focused on nature or incorporated nature into their beliefs. Animists believe that everything in nature has a spirit. Native American Indians like the Cherokee believe that nature is to be used but respected. They believe that nature is a gift from the Great Spirit; that earth is the source of life and all life owes respect to the earth. Christians believe that it is the handiwork of God, and a gift, to be subdued and used to support the growth and multiplication, the prosperity and abundance of the human race.
In a society that has lost touch with its natural surroundings it is sure that some believe that nature has little effect on health, as plenty of people live lives surrounded by cities and skyscrapers, never to set foot in a forest or on red clay and claim perfect health. However, even in the states of the least contact possible with nature, nature has an effect on human health. The amount of sunlight one is exposed to is a direct factor in the production of vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency has been determined to be linked to an increased likelihood of contracting heart disease, and is a dominant factor in the onset of clinical depression. Nature has such a drastic effect on human health that the lack of changing season and sunlight can drive individuals to not only depression, but also suicide. This is demonstrated clearly when Alaska residents, who spend half a year at a time with little to no sunlight demonstrate a rate of suicide and clinical depression diagnoses remarkably higher than the national average.
Dependence on technology is engrained in our society, and to some the proposed solution may not seem feasible. They find the idea of so drastically limiting technology use imposing. They do not feel that they can occupy their time instead with a daily hour of indulgence in nature. For these individuals, try limiting isolating technology use to 72 hours a week, and indulging in nature only three times a week for thirty minutes. Feel free to choose reclusive technology over social technologies sometimes, but do not let technology dominate your life. Make conscious efforts to engage in regular social interactions for extended periods of time instead of playing Skyrim or Minecraft. Watch a movie with your family or Skype your friends. Use technology responsibly.
To remedy the effects of the abuse of technology and the isolations of humanity from nature, individuals should limit their reclusive technology use to 24 hours in a week’s time, indulge in nature for an hour daily, and choose to prefer truly social technologies over reclusive technologies as often as possible. In doing so, individuals will foster their own holistic health. They will build and strengthen face-to-face relationships. They will, untwist, reconstruct and rejuvenate their spirituality. They will be less likely to contract emotional or social disorders and will treat those they may already struggle with.  So seek your own health and wellbeing. Live long and prosper.

foundational fluctuation
as flatulence is introduced
that’s right
**** jokes
pppfffrrrttttt
destroying families
undermining relationships
damaging friendships
ending love
breaking the mold
extinguishing the fire
eliminating the excitement
drowning fun
and smelling bad –
pretentious vegetarian
wind walker
kale excretions
cabbage attack
cauliflower bandit
spreading propaganda
and funk
while talking trash
about cigarette smokers –
I could go on for days
making egg comments
referring to the arrival of Eddie’s
big brown shark –

This is my modern English translation of Paul Valéry's poem “Le cimetière marin” (“The graveyard by the sea”). Valéry was buried in the seaside cemetery evoked in his best-known poem. From the vantage of the cemetery, the tombs seemed to “support” a sea-ceiling dotted with white sails. Valéry begins and ends his poem with this image ...

Excerpts from “Le cimetière marin” (“The graveyard by the sea”)
from Charmes ou poèmes (1922)
by Paul Valéry
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Do not, O my soul, aspire to immortal life, but exhaust what is possible.
—Pindar, Pythian Ode 3

1.
This tranquil ceiling, where white doves are sailing,
stands propped between tall pines and foundational tombs,
as the noonday sun composes, with its flames,
sea-waves forever forming and reforming ...
O, what a boon, when some lapsed thought expires,
to reflect on the placid face of Eternity!

5.
As a pear dissolves in the act of being eaten,
transformed, through sudden absence, to delight
relinquishing its shape within our mouths,
even so, I breathe in vapors I’ll become,
as the sea rejoices and its shores enlarge,
fed by lost souls devoured; more are rumored.

6.
Beautiful sky, my true-blue sky, ’tis I
who alters! Pride and indolence possessed me,
yet, somehow, I possessed real potency ...
But now I yield to your ephemeral vapors
as my shadow steals through stations of the dead;
its delicate silhouette crook-*******, “Forward!”

8.
... My soul still awaits reports of its nothingness ...

9.
... What corpse compels me forward, to no end?
What empty skull commends these strange bone-heaps?
A star broods over everything I lost ...

10.
... Here where so much antique marble
shudders over so many shadows,
the faithful sea slumbers ...

11.
... Watchful dog ...
Keep far from these peaceful tombs
the prudent doves, all impossible dreams,
the angels’ curious eyes ...

12.
... The brittle insect scratches out existence ...
... Life is enlarged by its lust for absence ...
... The bitterness of death is sweet and the mind clarified.

13.
... The dead do well here, secured here in this earth ...
... I am what mutates secretly in you ...

14.
I alone can express your apprehensions!
My penitence, my doubts, my limitations,
are fatal flaws in your exquisite diamond ...
But here in their marble-encumbered infinite night
a formless people sleeping at the roots of trees
have slowly adopted your cause ...

15.
... Where, now, are the kindly words of the loving dead? ...
... Now grubs consume, where tears were once composed ...

16.
... Everything dies, returns to earth, gets recycled ...

17.
And what of you, great Soul, do you still dream
there’s something truer than these deceitful colors:
each flash of golden surf on eyes of flesh?
Will you still sing, when you’re as light as air?
Everything perishes and has no presence!
I am not immune; Divine Impatience dies!

18.
Emaciate consolation, Immortality,
grotesquely clothed in your black and gold habit,
transfiguring death into some Madonna’s breast,
your pious ruse and cultivated lie:
who does not know and who does not reject
your empty skull and pandemonic laughter?

24.
The wind is rising! ... We must yet strive to live!
The immense sky opens and closes my book!
Waves surge through shell-shocked rocks, reeking spray!
O, fly, fly away, my sun-bedazzled pages!
Break, breakers! Break joyfully as you threaten to shatter
this tranquil ceiling where white doves are sailing!

*

“Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre!
L'air immense ouvre et referme mon livre,
La vague en poudre ose jaillir des rocs!
Envolez-vous, pages tout éblouies!
Rompez, vagues! Rompez d'eaux réjouies
Ce toit tranquille où picoraient des focs!”



PAUL VALERY TRANSLATION: “SECRET ODE”

“Secret Ode” is a poem by the French poet Paul Valéry about collapsing after a vigorous dance, watching the sun set, and seeing the immensity of the night sky as the stars begin to appear.

Ode secrète (“Secret Ode”)
by Paul Valéry
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The fall so exquisite, the ending so soft,
the struggle’s abandonment so delightful:
depositing the glistening body
on a bed of moss, after the dance!

Who has ever seen such a glow
illuminate a triumph
as these sun-brightened beads
crowning a sweat-drenched forehead!

Here, touched by the dusk's last light,
this body that achieved so much
by dancing and outdoing Hercules
now mimics the drooping rose-clumps!

Sleep then, our all-conquering hero,
come so soon to this tragic end,
for now the many-headed Hydra
reveals its Infiniteness …

Behold what Bull, what Bear, what Hound,
what Visions of limitless Conquests
beyond the boundaries of Time
the soul imposes on formless Space!

This is the supreme end, this glittering Light
beyond the control of mere monsters and gods,
as it gloriously reveals
the matchless immensity of the heavens!

This is Paul Valery’s bio from the Academy of American Poets:

Paul Valéry
(1871–1945)

Poet, essayist, and thinker Paul Ambroise Valéry was born in the Mediterranean town of Séte, France, on October 30, 1871. He attended the lycée at Montpellier and studied law at the University of Montpellier. Valéry left school early to move to Paris and pursue a life as a poet. In Paris, he was a regular member of Stéphane Mallarmé's Tuesday evening salons. It was at this time that he began to publish poems in avant-garde journals.

In 1892, while visiting relatives in Genoa, Valéry underwent a stark personal transformation. During a violent thunderstorm, he determined that he must free himself "at no matter what cost, from those falsehoods: literature and sentiment." He devoted the next twenty years to studying mathematics, philosophy, and language. From 1892 until 1912, he wrote no poetry. He did begin, however, to keep his ideas and notes in a series of journals, which were published in twenty-nine volumes in 1945. He also wrote essays and the book "La Soirée avec M. *****" ("The Evening with Monsieur *****," 1896).

Valéry supported himself during this period first with a job in the War Department, and then as a secretary at the Havas newspaper agency. This job required him to work only a few hours per day, and he spent the rest of his time pursuing his own ideas. He married Jeannie Gobillard in 1900, and they had one son and one daughter. In 1912 Andre Gide persuaded Valéry to collect and revise his earlier poems. In 1917 Valéry published "La Jeune Parque" ("The Young Fate"), a dramatic monologue of over five-hundred lines, and in 1920 he published "Album de vers anciens," 1890-1920 ("Album of Old Verses"). His second collection of poetry, "Charmes" ("Charms") appeared in 1922. Despite tremendous critical and popular acclaim, Valéry again put aside writing poetry. In 1925 he was elected to the Académe Francaise. He spent the remaining twenty years of his life on frequent lecture tours in and out of France, and he wrote numerous essays on poetry, painting, and dance. Paul Valéry died in Paris in July of 1945 and was given a state funeral.
Along with Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé, Valéry is considered one the most important Symbolist writers. His highly self-conscious and philosophical style can also been seen to influence later English-language writers such T. S. Eliot and John Ashbery . His work as a critic and theorist of language was important to many of the structuralist critics of the 1960s and 1970s.

#VALERY #MRB-VALERY #MRBVALERY

Keywords/Tags: Paul Valery, French poem, English translation, sea, seaside, cemetery, grave, graves, graveyard, death, sail, sails, doves, ceiling, soul, souls, dance, sun, sunset, dusk, night, stars, infinity

There once was a man who said you could beat the world with your words. That you could conquer an army with the knowledge of a greater narrative and move the legions of many with the action of one verb. I want to believe who ever can recreate the frameworks our race. The foundational narrative of our moral ethic, the guidelines mankind has been leaning on for millenniums. I want to know a alternative story, with made up words and no respect for a-priori intuition or tradition but a legend of unabiding experience that is unlike any tangent or discourse known. I want to reinvent another codex.  

I saw god as the architect I consoled in the grand tree house, with the grand green house sitting in a curious English archway. The telescope room was laid with bricks and from it I could see all that made me content. I felt the time changing before my eyes. Whether I was in compromise or not was entirely up to the seasons of Zeus.

I am now never afraid of myself, I almost died and I remember it all. I have known fear and still revere the quenching of it's animosity. I am only a swerving flake of inner rind. I am all that is exhausted of my honest dive for humanity. I am me finally, a shell no more! Man is the helplessness of lost spatiality in his own timid surrealism. I have never been satisfied with the explanations no matter how exhaustive! Revisited by the techni-color outlook of the turning millennium craze. The alleviation of all hopes when they turned out a dead end inthemselves, a lost avenue of my childhood.

I guess we all wanted that age-old rampant abuse of youth in ways that were neither aesthetically pleasing or unifying towards our own, best. I was tired of the beautiful sprites I grew up with. I was tired of locking myself in closets at nights and rubbing my face into the it's knotted carpet floor. I'm tired of the songs that advocated joyful frolicking into the drapped daylight. The oddities grow old and the used up phrase are clique now. I lost my mind seeing the years of my language frightened by the sound of my own breath. Grow into yourself. I am done with you anyways. I am done seeing them engulf a titanic drift of colorful intentions; flirting around the grand bonfire of the uncreated experience. I am lost with them. I question more than just our own value and I resign my thoughts on themselves for their own wealth and safety. When you want it said so bad but the forces of those unforeseen, creative hives oscillate and never stop it's steps into the night-legend. Then the world ends and was never in out of tension. I electrify my time and run into the a.m. frantic like a monkey, waving around and jesting my arms. I'm tired of the old music, in with the artifacts who architect the reverberation of my heart.

Your myth has lived into the century and I can see your ideas into the lives of all maniacs and the honest young, the deranged youth. We are amidst a heavy tension, i cry again. I want my mother's words three times a day and more on my weak hours. I am content in the alien maze of my music and want only the childhood campers to love me like a king. They gathered around at night, around the campfire. They initiated the song and dance with gaiety rhythm; that was the nights stars collided into bedtime. The same night I was torn by the dreams of an old horrid man who gave me no name and no rest from tear and horror. What evil is an anonymous the Will that censors awareness and knowledge. If it kills

So what then of the tribal pack psyche we all inherit. In days where beauty was up to chance. Our proximity to a woman was determined by breeding patterns and the realm of funds available for travel and food. What now in these days of the internet? When the whole world is at the tops of our finger tips and even more far away is the understanding we gain of our inability to have the cream of the world. We are in a great exaggeration of ourselves, of our will, and of our determined out-come. We have little but the pessimisme of our predecessors to guide our philosophies application. The translation of dream-world is perfectly out of reach for us and always for our posterity. From here on out we are a new age. A new age whose gates are christened by the ungenuine thugs and malevolent brand names of our civilization. We are faking it till the end. I am scared and drilled by horror and filled more with black premonitions. I wish I had eyes to see myself with a more generous charity but I don't and neither do you. What you see is an age of outward anticipation for the soring ribbons of undone realities.

The artist is the one who has seen the broad fleeting wisp of an out-of-world innuendo. It is the ethereal encounter with a cognitive defect that mimic as a supernatural sensation, this is seen by the artist as true humanity and rightfully so as it brings him to tears.

I always forget that we are always on the cusp. That we are simply a few bruised years away from reveling in the stained, sealed golden sunlight of the age that has came. What we do now is entirely crucial to our ability to be in unending sorrow and remorse. We see our people in a clearer way, for what they where struggling with, for what their reverie finally came to look like, ugly or gleefully self created, their vision of the world will always be our continual source of inspiration.

America’s Soul
Through the means of a company trying to appeal to your emotions to make a sale as I watched this
Pass before me I wasn’t taking in the foreground but what it depicted in the background a realness a
Testimony of truth was flowing at flood stage images bathed in purist knowing about place and the stalwart
Ideals that make up a fabric so rich and full family’s not just empty see through nothing really there pay
No mind but you and I our successes our failures caught in the back drop of mountains and deserts and
In a song an anthem a coursing river but one of a unique part of the world’s humanity identified by red
White and blue builder’s fighter’s lovers of freedom that didn’t come by dreamers alone yes they
Dreamed but then they infused blood and sinew muscle onto this lifeless skeleton their efforts are
Attested to by the sacred graves the head stones don’t tell the story of hardship sacrifice on battlefields
Domestic and hostile bone weary against all odds at times feeling all alone and there were those times
This was true but it was always known you were part of a great brotherhood and sisterhood though far
Apart in the physical sense never the less a great spiritual dynamism bonded you together at the
Farthest and narrowest stretching point steel was without equal in its intent and its effort the lowliest to
The mightiest carried the same strain of a heroic undertaking and inwardly looked the same and truly
Were the same there wasn’t class or rank just Americans pushing this grand experiment to its most
Glory filled conclusion and then at lands end the heart would be engaged to its fullest with hands that
Reached around the globe to any that were threatened or abused fear not our brothers we will lend
To you are strength and all of our resources fulfilling a moral duty to those who are less fortunate we
Have fought and achieved and the natural result will be a mobilized caring that endures through all of
Our history making a stronger unified self governing people the envy of the world not through cheap
Pride but the foundational excellence will give the challenge don’t settle for less don’t be reduced to
Settling for anything but the best monuments are built by many tyrants but let the people build them
From the costliest material and they will endure all generations it will push back ignorance send
Down lighting striking fear in those with ill will and promote the human spirit they will peer down from
Lofty heights undisturbed by petty squabbles those that contend for illustrious beacons forged and
Sprayed out from hammer an anvil in the dark nightly skies of heaven performing and making a sculptured treasure
That speaks truth and creates the sensation of a glory that rests on a people like no other that have
Touched the fringes of utopia with just enough realism to keep you grounded and not allow you to
Totter and fall back under false hood that causes the cycle to start all over again of being a slave instead
Of being free

There was a squandering ember that climbed her spinal chord
and lit the deteriorating birchwood on the peach-fuzzed tea lamps.

When those stairwells cramped and swelled with staggered liquid terraces
in the foundational pin-cushion that cradled family after family.

Woe begone chants that railed support beams moaning under elemental abuse.

A litter of ghost kittens coiling underfoot where the rug
used to yawn before the grandfather clock,
now senile and rotting with absent-minded tick-tocks.

Inside her streetcorner, the music was that
monkey hopping to street ***** blue notes on somber ropes.

The air thick with the regal, chunky vibe
of batting eyes, flirty sighs, and bourbon.

Between the buildings again...
embraced with the same warm feeling that
entrances your fingertips, lips, and ears when within a man's arms.

In this city, Love is those two birds on that same powerline
that bowed and ebbed with summer's sweet sigh.

you don't come around these parts asking
for gender "neutral" pronouns,
you want a grammatical theory?!
you want misnomer antics,
and "tautology"?
     i already said it!  
moon (księżyc) is a masculine noun,
while the sun (słońce) is a feminine
noun!
   the english, language, does, not have,
these type of distinction!
currently? what you're selling me
is rotten fruit, by god and grammar alike
are!
    how can you make this
false grammatical category falsehood real,
solely upon reading the nag hammadi
library texts?!
        oh, i have a grammatical "theory"
for you, you don't transgress certain
restrictions,
     i hate repeating myself:
then again: air-drumming comes with both
its perks, and its shortfalls.
    there is no "gender" neutrality
in the pronoun category,
the architecture of the english language
already allows a gender "neutrality",
but you picked the wrong category
of words:
    you achieve "gender neutrality"
by exploring the nouns,
which are gender-fused with ***
orientation (compliments) -
   english, oddly enough,
doesn't have this linguistic component...
oops, sorry...
      you cannot have "gender"
neutrality in the grammatical category
of pronouns...
but as all over european languages
show: you can call a moon a he,
and the sun a she...
            hence why islam is so
phallicentric...
       and christianity so gynocentric:
oh look, a copernican moment;
english doesn't have the capacity for
genuine gender "roles" for inanimate things
being ascribed genders
as other languages (other than english,
lingua politico, lingua franca) possess...
pronouns cannot be doubled-down on,
with "respect" to gender ascriptive measures
of revision...
      no!
               as i once suggested:
isn't english a language, peppered with
overt pronoun use?
     english uses too many pronouns,
+ given the deutsche schrapnell ref. -
what would you expect?
       there are laws of grammar,
that can overpower "laws" of man in
the current age...
        i end up in court with an i.q.
of a down syndrome person...
                nope, don't understand you,
oops... bugga bugga mongolian harmonica.
english already has gender neutrality,
but it's in the "wrong" category...
  it's, in, the ******* noun category of words!
nouns can be gender inclusive
  in other european languages,
as they can be gender exclusive in english...
pronouns?
    can i please, waste my time
walking through a gallery of the surrealists?
i feel like being an optic-parasite of
their work: honing in,
humming, and then saying:
             let's grab coffee & a postcard!
i simply do not have either respect,
or patience, for modern "laws"
that do not respect grammatical foundations...
if you do not respect grammar,
the foundational layer of language,
and you enforce this desolation:
   i don't mind, this is my
harambe... revision of the american constitutio...
  ah! cognitive dictionary search...
  this is my harambe amendment...
no, this is not where you make me say:
ooh ooh pikachu...
     this is there i grunt, punch,
     and then ask the question: huh?
like the motto of the american police
force:
       shoot first, ask questions later -
neco primo, quarero postmortem;
   oh ****... sorry.. postmodum... forgot:
             dead people can't speak, ha ha!

long before light graced
beyond my sealed lids,
a gray lady sat sewing
squares, "for foundation."

her accent was like the
magenta strips with
which she bordered:
a boy needs foundation,
boundaries to teach him
his boundlessness, dirt
in which to sink his feet.

and unlike my foundational
quilt, linked so firmly to the earth,
she faded
first to rose, and then
to silver pink before
                                   dissipating
into dusted petal wither.

i'll meet her on the next go around.

my sixteenth was bitter-themed
and my parents gave me
a mexican blanket,
colored like mother,
aqueous aquamarine
and patterned like father,
those angular and triangular
movements;
woven just like theirs,
to give me rest and
haven on the roads
of my inevitable adventures.

and when i am eighteen
the women of my family
will meet with needles
and spools, and wool
to click-clack and chit-chat
over my adulthood -

and when it is done,
i will behold azure
like the heavens
entangled with warm tones
and spun prayers
to cocoon
in the chill of
carolina's coast

not rooted,
not foundational,
but transitional,
I mean - tabernacle.
Following cloud and flame,
and restless for Jordan.

not stilted
not intellectual
but relational,
more than routine ritual.
Led by spirit, filled by flame
and restless for Jordan.