We know not the times or the gifts that are ours specifically and unequally you see someone at a
Distance walking through a pastoral scene away and down a hill at first by voice recognition you
Know who he is this grandfatherly figure brings a flood of feelings and moods to brush your soul
With the telling of wonder of intimate days and moments you have shared so often you smile as
He naps quietly and then a night comes where for one reason or another you get involved and the
Whole night is used for this activity the next day being Saturday you relax and in the late afternoon
You at first just set for what you think is a moment but the previous night delightfully and pleasantly
Catches up with you sleep affords you this non cumbersome trip of ease and you awaken and it is dark
At first groggy disoriented just like in a dream this logical but off answer is provided then you finally
Figure out what is going on what surprise and pleasure to know you have been ambushed by a slight
Tiredness that robed you in sweet bliss then trimmed it in solace you stir yourself and do minor things
Until it’s the bed time hour but instead of the normal lights out its turn away from the computer shut off
The television **** all the lights but one and then just purposely luxuriate in the soft amber glow it
Provides set the rudder to take you to sweet wonder as you drift to unspoken destinations these are
Truly simple joys where the need to be careful comes in we know even creation and all its splendors are
Fragile a great rush of water with four feet of foam froth and power charges down it has a twin that is
Separated by this mass of rock that rises upwards of fifty feet the water falls over it in a different way
These strings of water that cover the face from one side to the other and they are accompanied with the
Sweetest mist so you have this forked water show on both sides of powerful water all this glory of white
Power rushing then falling and then the center piece contrasted to this sense such power and mass and
The water is shear as it tenderly descends the mist is truly natures kiss the sound is the embrace the
Engulfing privilege we possess and own as humans but this could be harmed and ruined in so many sad
Ways thats why we are extraordinarily careful we want to preserve it for all times as human beings my
Friends we also can by indifference and lack of understating can harm friends that in their own right
Are spiritual streams that come from great spiritual head waters that were pristine and then one greater
Than all of us caused such harm and destruction in the purist place a garden I wrote and posted Fertile
Ground the great mind of Lincoln said in his day and he meant it for all of our history a nation as great as
Ours can and must be sustained yes our armies and navy are a part but in his speech He says if
“Destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher as a nation of freemen we must
Must live through all time or die by suicide what constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and
Independence it is not our frowning battlements our bristling sea coasts the guns of our war steamers
Or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army these are not our reliance against the resumption of
Tyranny in our fair land all of them may be turned against our liberties without making us stronger
Or weaker for the struggle our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms our
Defense is in the preservation of the spirit that prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands
Everywhere destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around you own doors
Familiarize yourselves with the chains of ******* and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them
Accustomed to trample on the right of those around you you become the fit subjects of the first cunning
Tyrant who rises” sound words of wisdom that benefit all men we can’t release our responsibility and
Expect a continuance of our freedom this is careful part of this piece Thomas Jefferson had this to say “I
Tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and his justice cannot sleep foe ever” what more
Prized possessions do you own than family and friends but if we deny and ignore our duty to be men
And women of righteousness how can we complain when civil authority in all manners deteriorates it
Can stand on no higher moral ground than we the people ourselves maintain we are the streaming
Waters of good or bad that flows through relationships ungodliness is a reproach to any nation by their
Fruits they will be known like it or not eat sins treats fine but know this the soul that sins it shall surely
Die it is a law an all living and loving father died to make sure no one could be a tyrant over you only
Yourselves hold that power every devil in hell can assault you but never can he claim victory until he
Sees the white flag of righteousness flying and it is saying I surrender my life of freedom bought by the
Pure sacrificial lamb God’s own son you could practically tell he was human they whipped him with a cat
Of nine tales with metal and bone he struggled down the Via Dolorosa each step declared your freedom
The song says He could have called ten thousand angels and it wasn’t nails that held your Savior to that
Cruel cross he had the ability to see everyone of us he knew how bitter and hard life would be if you
Walk it without him He said my burden is light and my yoke is easy it might sound obscure today but it is
Just as real walk beyond his love in disobedience and you will be punished by the god of this world and
Then he will take you to his fiery home as his subject I wrote before you are his greatest trophy he has
You on display in his lair because you are the greatest treasure God has not golden streets
You fist loved me and my brothers and sisters the tears that I cry in private it says this is doing the work
Of the savior increase my tears and sorrow because too many of them are hurting and know not your
Comfort lost in a savage world not any longer their own a usurper took them captive love replaced by
Cruelty is their lot if they could only see your painful longing as you look for them to come home every
Day they would truly break ties to this fallen world and fly to your presence they believe the lie that they
Have it figured out what sadness they are left with and they never have tasted your sweet spirit they
Mistake the boundless love they feel as if it were your spirit of intimacy outward love doesn’t reach
Inner depths satisfying to the point one person who cried stop no more I will die his love is truly deeper
Than the sea even the universe and Carl Sagan a man of science he was an American astronomer
Astrophysicist cosmologist author science popularizer science communicator sounds impressive but the
Reality he had an assistant and she had to be brilliant to a degree to be working with him but she was
More she was a born again Christian many were the years she loved and sought to help him not to just
Love the Cosmos but love the one who made them her persistence was to no avail you can make a god
Of many things even science how tragic he can be a warning guard your heart and you will preserve your
Soul

Going to include Fertile Ground that includes Streaks of Jefferson and Most Hated Twins I put on there
Lincoln said we should read such things

This important if you haven’t read it

Fertile Ground
O thou great Jefferson in whom dwelled the fidelity of a nation of free men.
Thy secretes can be viewed as we watch you live and breathe the life of a grand Virginia planter
When one is a student of nature and observes its subtle lessons becomes its master and ally. The next
Step of going to lead men is reasonable when taken into count the natural gifts that were refined in
Quiet fields and hills in lengthy times of treasured solitude that is not to say there won’t be difficulties
But to a merchandiser of lofty thoughts this is of little consequence. There are issues that must be
Divined through the protracted business of hard arduous study. Man’s soul drifts in and out of the valley
And hills taking unconsciously truths that exist they are everywhere but can be buried in life’s clamor.
To purposely walk across a field with your with your senses open will usher you into a place quiet
Unsettling if you are one who is uneasy in your own thoughts because the vistas will allow your mind to
Extend it to the far reaches ordinary thoughts will jump over conventional restraints and give you
Profound insights Jefferson graduated from this school of higher learning for this very important time
This man of stature arose he flung freedom’s door wide open walked through set down at his desk and
Masterfully penned immortal words, to this day time hasn’t diminished any of their importance or there
Revered excellence this document would go unparalleled in type and execution, in forming the basis for
Human conduct it would forever alter the landscape that that had existed before its grand arrival.
The stinginess of former centuries were at long last over the mind had finally
Liberated the body the willingness to do for one’s self had taken the lead there was no
Turning back, these actions would recommend them as a people. Their credentials intact now they were
Ready for the world stage a new birth of nobility walked into the human condition and it wasn’t
In the least bit hesitant to speak thoughts that had long been silenced.
The trouble today stems from the lack of understanding we have about the truth,
Of what oppression would be unleashed if our form of government would be allowed to be dissolved we
Love the dream but deplore the reality. That this system will only work when we are involved. It has a
Built in detection device, you can’t use its rewards without paying it back with service.
The results will be contagious you will be left with a weak sickly government.
The remedy simple everyone has to be its central guardian.
This does not mean that it is weak this was the way it was created it is as strong as you
Are willing to have it know this it will always be dependent on human involvement.
We might not like it but we are making a choice freedom will be loosed or bound by our decision.
The product that we deal with is very supple and ever changeable it becomes whatever form you pour it
Into this is in accordance with its nature it also is a gauge of those that handle its virtues and shows if
You have had reverence or contempt. You will be left with honor or disgrace did you carry forth the gift
Or allow it to waver the children of the next generation are watching.
Streaks of Jefferson
In freedom’s blessed glorified sky through streaks of immortal gold his visage we behold
He looks upon the fields of liberty that he and the founding fathers sowed he sees the
Richness America has become he also beheld her struggles catastrophic wars abroad
And the most painful the one that divided the nation marred it with southern and northern
Blood saw the affable the sad giant Lincoln take the reins of discontent hold them by
Shear will and with uncommon sagacity guided it back in line to fulfill its destiny as the
Powerful fount that would always pour forth waters of freedom for all of earths peoples
Total unconditional acceptance of liberty and all the fruit it bears to establish a
Government like no other this golden grain has waved under bluest skies and brightest
Sun light its rich harvest has gone to darkest prison cells Mandela was sustained by it
For twenty nine years and by its moral purity it fed the lives of those that over threw
Apartied and Mandela finally freed by principals it avows rose from prison clothes
To wear the mantle of president of his country and the honor of the man instilled
Quality that transcended political office Jefferson not to be disrespectful to his progeny
Whispers today’s politicians could do well to look on this African model of good
Stewardship of public trust with that Jefferson faded back into the mist pray that’s
Not the fate of this country
Most hated twins
Who are these two desperate characters revered but feared by all
To make their acutance few will volunteer those who know them well
All can tell by the drawn face and the tears that swell the pool where wisdom has her rule
Achievers welcome them as honored guest they withstood the test now they the richest blest
At mornings first blade of light they strike with all their might they the quickest to fight
Timorous to afraid how many have dwelt by waters undying well only to die unfulfilled
But others tried and they fell the well is to deep its where darkest shadows creep
We will be lost in these new surroundings the familiar there will be water there too
Yes stagnant unmoved guarded for naught its benefit was for the traveler going places
For you it will be your grave marker he talked and talked but venture on never
He said he was the clever one as his countenance slowly turned to stone killed by apathy
Green pastures call to find them in yourself health you will install
Few are they that were meant and born to reside in the same place you must go
If you stay rebuild the common and ordinary your monument then they will admire
Who stood to long and with all intention he gave it only words action was the wonder that was missing
Treading a narrow path in the end if you buried or squandered your talent divine wrath you will face
Cast your seed far and wide how can you not see the need sorrow has them tied
Push back the encircling darkness with the light in your heart that God did endow
Go and answer the door your guides are here I want you to meet two friends Pain and Adversity
Two finer companions you will never know Washington and his men befriended them at Valley Forge Concord, York town. Lincoln met them first at Bull Run Antietam I think he gave a little speech at Gettysburg. One birthed a nation the other saved a divided one.

'Put my hand in the hand of the man from Galilee,

that song keeps playing in my memory, and I recalled

Or I thought I did, I imagined he'd walk with me
and talk with me
Along life's merry (or was it narrow?), way

a light touch, his arm around my shoulders,
as boys are wont to do,
I axed 'im,
help me fill the darkness behind my eyes,
which I think may have been blind, at that time,

I have memories like that.
packed away in old memes. That mean something...
Gold-something...
color maybe, Goldfarv? Bloom.
Right, my augmentatious savant
looked it up and I sorted what I recalled

Google The Global Brain, Howard Bloom,
where he named a kind of
category of knowability. Memes, he called them.

And I thought, memes mean something more,
not Dawkins's, nor Bloom's, but these,
heteromemes bubbling out my belly button,
look real close.

Here a seeing being done, words appearing...

fractally featureless by the time a clock could have been imagined,

the point of the story was made,
and there is no end in sight.

Pop. Another apocalypse bubble collapses by mortality. Whaddyaknow?

What remains when a bubble pops at a positron level,
after the charge is touched and
the tension-power-loss collapses the bubble?

You should think, you know atoms work, this way.

Touchy bubbles disappear when their form is disinformed,
the wall of a bubble,
one quanta of power thick,
vanishes
as the charge that formed it flees.
That bubble,
not cloud-based, random super positioning,but
elect
tric-magi-tech, a touch screened
at the quantum accounting point of real-ification,
but, probably,
a bubble,indeed,
powered, one way or another, with a single charge,
Go, that's it.
(I charge thee, son Timothy, go)
That's all an electron does.
It goes, as soon as any sense can be made of it,
outa here, oughta hear it, clear,
ping. No charge, no bubble, but next sure as...
No, ah, when I think about that..

Hell,
somethi' from nuthin musta hapt one time,

but ya'll take no heed, this voice,
m'fallin angel, Tantan, droppin' in ol-fren, tricky hybridbast...

Noah was a tellin' Ham the truth
found in wines that moved themselves aright,
slurry tongued, and laughin' but pisstoff.

The idea of somethin' goin' south in a family,
that started up again when
ever Noah started drinkin' old wine, sayin' sbetter'n...

Old story, God damened 'em, not me, I just
built the box.

Who told you I was naked? Noah queried Shem.

-- aye, ye know, Noah was drunk,
No excuse, but you know.

Things were said, that maybe could be forgotten, after a while,

But those father wounds a man imagines worst
are the one's his son's forgot.
Forgot can't be forgiven it seems, sometimes...

The story being told is complicated. See,
the Bible is a lens,
not a map.

I've looked so long through that lens,
that I began to see the bubble formed around me,
charged powerfully with fear,
'yond my bubble monsters lurked.

But, my bubble bumped another,
purest of happenstance,
the bubbles merged and merged again,
their power building to a wave,
crashing to the shore and no more
was I bubbled in my safe place.

I found this trail up from the beach.

It got me much farther than this, should you ever
visit me.
Did you regret the defeat at Ai,
or were you
Aachen, bold?

No, irrelevant, obtuse allusion to Yahshua,
that's not in the stack,
that card's about as relevant as McLuhan's hair of the dog.

Information unformed begins to boil deep in me.

Somethin', ain't it?  All them three meter dishes shrunk down
to the size of a spoon, a teeny weeny spoon, a coke spoon,
like on Miami Vice, back when.

Satellite TV changed the desert, fer sher, but 4g, brohan,

that was the trick. Elect trick.
Future, on demand, where outhouses are still de rigueur.

Before you know it, country kids,
too poor for any but outlaw dreams,
can audit courses at MIT,
if somebody
shows him, it can be done, prove t' him
it works, faith can make things happen,
but
happening as an event, in the Deep Field,
is sorta hard to nail down to one thing,
until the very last
Planc-sec.  
Astrophysics is part of the metagame, fer sher.
But
there's some stuff that takes some patience,
to learn. Fifty year'r longer.

Everything that's old and still works is only old, not rotten.

Olde time religion, at the oldfo'k dayroom,
where the clock runs the whole show.
It's another game show. Saint Bob Barker takes a bow,
and declares the potential worth of all your eyes behold,
behind the curtain,
lies the prize.

If, if, if you are a luckywinner and
you arise when I call your name
to come on down,
fall on your knees and declare the worth...

pure gamesmanships required here, golf whispers only,
worship, 'smuch more difficult to aim for than praise.
I agree.
Praise, appraisal, worthyness, worthship, prize, what's the diff?
How comes a thing to be worthy,
in your estimation? Tell me no lie.

A feeling? What's it worth?
Depends.
Safe? Priceless! Don't shout. There's money to make.

'Got a busy-ness pre-positioned high above the rest.
A super-positioned superstion. The darkness.
See, safety is a human right.
So we sell walls, impermeable. It's always, lights on
within, then
We'll be rich and powerful wallbuilding,
citi-zen warriors fed and fattened
by those we make
feel safe, from the dark unknowns seeping in.

That's the idea. It's worked for years, at least
since
we saw the Power in Myth and
capitalized Campbell's bliss and Sagan's billions and billions of stars.

Within these walls workers will work for food and a feeling.
And Facebook.
They choose a place and stand, and do what comes to hand.
Heartily
grip what's easiest for you to hold on to,
they are told.

Attendants bring the meds, settling every disruption
of the peace the patient craves in his comfort.
The price ain't right, m'mouthmumbles...

You are absolutely co-rect-allatime, tekayepeel.

There are wishes being made,
on all manner of stars
for happy ever afters.

If wishes were askings, what if
connecting to the source of haps which,
every expert knows, haps are
all happiness can possibly
consist of.
Oh, consist.
That sticky, gluteny idea stuck in my daily bread.
It's related to resist, desist and the command to stand.
Sistere. Shield-wall and all that. Turtles all the way down.

A disruption!
Day room Now! Granpa's shouting,

This is that bomb, this is a dam buster Jesus H Christ Bomb!
I'll drop it. I swear.

Something's bound on earth to go wrong,
ever since Eve bit that apple, if she'da left that apple on the apple tree
Nah, that ain't how it went down and
songs about it don't change it none.

But, maybe this is me interrupted... in my meander.

What if, nothing is immaterial,
as an idea, it can't go wrong,
and Murphy's law, obeyed, is good, all the time.
If nothing can go wrong, it won't.
Ask the pilot flying by faith in his checklist.

What if,
asking for help helps?
Was that a message? A touch by an angel?
Spirit, the idea? An answered prayer?

Are you familiar with its role in reality?
Something makes these bubbles spin, y'know.

Ignoring is bliss, nay,
No more,
precisely, nevermore,
quoth the raven, shall the man who can read
be locked away from all the stories,
telling eventualities that
men, wombed and un,
have told and tested for ever, it seems,

Stop
striving for perfection and let patience have her way witcha,

whatcha learn can change the world.

Look back. Good news from a far country come our way.
Grandpa made some sense and we built a fort, of pillows

I hated Dawkins a little less when his words came from your mouth.

Your unabashed sincerity endeared me to you from the moment you showed me your vintage Atari. I don't recall if that was before or after you bragged about your Star Trek DVDs. Not that it matters, but I hope you've found a place to store all of those wires protruding out of your gadgets like Medusa's head of snakes.

My family liked you, especially my mother. It was probably your staunch advocacy of 4th amendment rights.

Remember those nights we sat in bed and traded secrets on small scraps of paper? We were lovers  for... five weeks by then? It struck me by the third slip that it didn't matter what it would say--I knew I'd still love you anyway. But I knew that from the moment you removed my knee-high boots and kissed my feet when I rode up on my Harley. You unstrapped my helmet and poured me wine. Though we promised to never tell anyone, I just wanted to say: I still smile when I think of your 15-year-old self trying to pick up a ******* on a desolate dusty road. Do you still have those hastily-written pieces of paper? They're yours to keep; I hope they're safe.

Nothing of my new world reminds me of you. There's no Jeopardy to watch, no NPR to hear in your white Saturn, and no desert mountains to hike. Not in India. Maybe it's because nothing is similar that my memories of us stay so firmly imprinted in my mind. Similarities would only erode my recollections. Maybe that's why I almost forgot about the chai tea I'd serve you in bed, coupled with almonds and apricots on the saucer.

But you, you're a walking encyclopedia of my home town. You knew every cactus-lined freeway, the name of the state attorney general, and the best place to grab a Four Peaks beer. Because of this, I could never extricate my love of home and my love for you. To me, you'll always be home.

For better or for worse, I remember it all. Including the soft piano rift of the chess game we'd play on your XBox. I'm guessing you'd beat me, should we play again today. I still have the wooden chess set I got you for your birthday... but we both know I can't give it to you. I'm sorry.

I never believed in saving people before I met you. Before, damaged was a weakness; now I think you just needed a polish. I never told you, but I read your psych evaluation--I found it when I was cleaning your room (with your permission, I add). The therapist was right: you're not aloof, just too smart for the room. I thank God that you never bought that container of nitric oxide.

I know we said we'd marry if I ever came back home. A no-frills city hall marriage suited us just fine. I have no doubt we would have had a simple, sweet life. You would've relented to letting me get a dog to keep your arrogant cat company. Our biggest fight would be over which castle door the RPG character should open, and you would've helped me improve my golf swing on the inexpensive dilapidated course near my old junior high school.

But likewise... our biggest adventure would've been only a roadtrip to the neighboring county. And I wanted to explore. I needed to explore. You, who never wanted to stray outside of a 100-mile radius could never satiate that curiosity. But I know we could have made it work. I know we would've been happy.

Sometimes I wish we could be the best of friends. I know we can't; not when I started dating my now-husband so close after we ended things in tear-stained emails when I went overseas. He swore off her; I swore off you. That's the way things go, I guess, when you get older.

I know it might seem like I've moved on and forgotten you.

Moved on, yes. Forgotten? Never.

It probably wouldn't be the same if we met again. I have too much love for you that could never be conveyed. My love for you has changed; it's not romantic. But it's still this throbbing appreciation for everything you are. I couldn't bear guarded chit chat. Not with you.

And I hope you are happy. Have you realized your worth yet, or are you still wasting your time with broken high school grads who listen to Ke$ha? I can't tell you who to love... but I hope she's an astrophysicist, someone who loves Carl Sagan even half as much as you. I want her to read Noam Chomsky to you late at night, and wake you in the mornings with a glass of milk and cookies. She'll prefer simple mashed potatoes to dim sum, and have a weakness for microbreweries. She'd be gorgeous in that bookish sort of way. Yes. That's the girl for you.

....I'm sorry it's not me, my dear atheist.

Lecture twenty-three of first period of the last semester:
Today’s topic – “What went wrong with Wall Street”

The professor’s trying to connect with the class. He’s trying to have us look past
Sagan-like hair, black pants poorly paired with brown shoes, sleeves stained with chalk, an undeniable excitement in his voice when he says the word “canonical”.

He’s trying to get us to see a forty-four year old father who watches The Daily Show before bed, someone that’s hip with the times. He says something about Twitter and that singer in the meat dress. He references Charlie Sheen.

He draws a graph on the board with three lines
red: Normal
blue: Poisson
green: Cauchy-Lorentz

And we’re all thinking it- What the **** is that green line.

He begins.

Cauchy-Lorentz:
fully defined by two parameters;
x-nought and
gamma
mean;
undefined
variance;
undefined
meaning
­graphs drawn in green have fat tails
meaning
a summation of green graphs with fat tails- a summation of par bonds will default with some non-zero probability
meaning
Lehman Brothers should have taken statistical physics

That is his joke for the day. Only students paying attention and students who bother with current events and students with a sense of humor laugh. It’s a small subset.

The kids in the sixth row aren’t listening, the ones in the Greek lettered shirts with their pledge names on the back and their laptops open. Sixth row is just close enough to look like they give a **** but far enough in the back so the TA’s can’t tell they’re checking their fantasy football teams. The TA’s sit in rows one through four.

The joke is for the kids in the sixth row. Anyone in the first through fourth, the ones considering graduate school in higher dimensional theory or quantum chromodynamics, doesn’t know what Lehman Brothers is, least of all a par bond. A joke about spherical cows? Laughter from rows one through four would interfere constructively off the chalkboards, but that is not who Sagan-wannabe is talking to, and the kids in row six aren’t listening.

They are watching Sunday night highlights, ignoring green lines and fat tails because, let’s be honest, they’re only here to get the answer to the question on the homework that they couldn’t find online.

The sixth row has taken what they learned in the lectures before this, the semesters before this one, the first days of classical mechanics, where they learned the universe is governed by predictable and definable laws, and given a set of initial conditions one can determine an outcome.

Salary|physics degree:
fully defined by one parameter;
sophomore-year internship
time;
ten years
mean;
one million

The sixth row Facebook’ed their way through the undeterminableness of quantum, the green lines on the board now. Their laptop screens hide the fat tails describing the bundles of par bonds they will be selling upon the completion of this semester.

On a mote of dust,
suspended in a sunbeam.

I put my hand in the hand of the man from galilee

Or I thought I did, I imagined he would walk with me
and talk with me

and help me fill the darkness behind my eyes,
which i think may have been blind, at one time,

I have memories like that guy, Gold-something
color maybe, Goldfarv? Bloom. Right, my augmentatious savant
looked it up and I sorted what I recalled

Google The Global Brain, where he named a kind of
category of knowability. Memes, he called them.

And I thought, memes mean something more,
not Dawkins's, nor Bloom's, but
these, heteromemes bubbling out my belly button,
look real close.

Fractally featureless by the time a clock could have been imagined,

the point of the story was made, and there is no end in sight.

Pop. Another apocalypse bubble eclipsed by mortality. Whaddyaknow?

What remains when a bubble pops at a positron level,
after the charge is touched and
the tensionpowerloss collapses the bubble?

You should think you know atoms work, like
not a cloud of super positioning, elect-
tric-magi-tech, touch screen at the quantum accounting point,
not that, but
a bubble, powered, one way or another, with a single charge,
Go, that's it.
What an electron does. It goes,
as soon as any sense can be made of it,
oughtaouta hear
ping. No charge, no bubble, but next sure as...

Hell,
somethi' from nuthin must ahapt one time,
but ya'll take no heed, m'fallin angel droppin' in olfren, tricky hybridbast...

Noah was a tellin' Ham the truth found in wines that moved themselves
aright, slurry tongued, but pisstoff

The idea of somethin' goin' south in a family,
that started up again when
ever Noah started drinkin' old wine, sayin' sbetter'n...

Who told you I was naked?

-- aye, ye know, Noah was drunk,
No excuse, but you know.

Things were said, that maybe were forgotten, after a while,

But those father wounds a man imagines worst
are the one's his son's forgot.

The story being told is complicated. See,
the Bible is a lens,
not a map.

It got me much farther than this, should you ever
visit me.
No,
that's not in the stack,
that card's about as relevant as McLuhan's hair of the dog.

Somethin', ain't it?  All them three meter dishes shrunk down
to the size of a spoon, a teeny weeny spoon, a coke spoon,
like on Miami Vice, back when.

Satellite TV changed the desert, fer sher, but 4g, brohan,

that was the trick.
Future, on demand, where outhouses are still de rigueur.

Before you know it, country kids,
too poor for any but outlaw dreams,
can audit courses at MIT,
if somebody
shows him, it can be done, prove t' him
it works, faith can make things happen,
but
happening is sorta hard to nail down to one thing,
until the very last
Planc-sec.  Astrophysics is part of the metagame, fer sher.
But
there's some stuff that takes some patience,

everything that's old is only old, not rotten.

Olde time religion, at the oldfo'k dayroom,
where the clock runs the whole show.
It's another game show. Saint Bob Barker takes a bow,
and declares the worth of all your eyes behold,

If, if, if you are alucky winner and you arise when I call your name
to come on down
fall on your knees and declare the worth...

pure gamesmanships required here, golf whispers only,
worship, smuch more difficult to aim for than praise.
I agree.
Praise, appraisal, worthyness, worthship, prize,
how do you declare such a thing worthy,

A feeling? What's it worth? Depends. Safe? Priceless. Don't shout.

So we sell walls. We'll be rich and powerful wallbuilding,
citi-zen warriors fed and fattened by those we make
feel safe.

That's the idea. It's worked for years, at least
since
we
capitalized Campbell's bliss and Sagan's billions and billions of stars.

Workers will work for food and a feeling. And Facebook.
They choose, believe what's easiest, they are told,
you are absolutely co-rectallatime, tekayepeel.

There are such wishes being made, on all manner of stars
for happy ever afters. If wishes were asked for, whatif
connecting to the source of haps that are
all happiness can possibly
consist of...
Oh, consist is a sticky, gluten idea stuck in my daily bread.
It's related to resist, desist and the command to stand. Sistere.

This is that bomb, this is a dam buster Jesus H Christ Bomb!

Something's bound on earth to go wrong,
ever since Eve bit that apple, if she'da left that apple on the apple tree
Nah, that ain't how it went down and
songs about it don't change it none.

But, maybe this is me interrupted..
Whatif, nothing is immaterial, as an idea, it can't go wrong,
and Murphy's law, obeyed, is good, all the time.
Ask the pilot. What if,
asking for help helps? Was that a message? A touch by an angel?
Spirit, the idea?
Are you familiar with its role in reality?
Something makes these bubbles spin, y'know.

Ignoring is bliss, nay,
No more,
precisely, nevermore, quotheraven, shall the man who can read
be locked away from all the stories of all the things that
men, wombed and un,
have told and tested for ever, it seems,
when ya stop
striving for perfection and let patience have her way witcha,

whatcha learn can change the world.

Look back. Good news from a far country come our way.

Sweet Earth, each molecule of me has come from you.  
Sesame seed, broken into amino acids and calcium,
became my tiny bones; bananas, potassium,
the cells of my brain.

If we could trace each atom back, we'd find
Kansas, Iowa, Ecuador, Spain.

And further still, through unimaginable millennia,
these same atoms --the very same-- were flung from a supernova,
only to recombine, here, on Earth.

"Of star-stuff, are we made." Carl Sagan said.

And then (when I'm dead)
the same in reverse:
the atoms' slow dispersal:
pulled in by roots, washed by rivers, melted in magma,
blown, finally, to smithereens by the exploding sun....

Star-stuff, once again, become.

The sun sank in the tendrils of the winter winds

Light quickly faded

The long night begins

What is our hope for the spring to come beyond this winter?

The old rulers are dying, their grasp weakened

Their desperate ****** clawing for power falters

What will the youth of the world build?

Overthrowing the gray tired old men with no vision

Will there be a new light glowing in an abandoned barn?

An opening of joy to a time of new growth?

It is now dark in the cavern

The animals have bowed their heads

Fearing the burning world that surrounds

Glaciers melting, deserts blowing

Is there a song that will lead us to

A new morning, Sagan's galaxy rise?

With a billion suns shining?

Or will we crouch in the corners again

Fighting for any lethal advantage

Sacrificing the world?

We should pray

on the way
to return sociology
to the library
i couldn't read the parking signs
so ended blocks away
at a salvation army

the kind with no books for sale
but an elevator shaft
running up, down
behind a drum-set altar
and a stage i didn't buy.

half-expecting 'the war room' ads
posted here as well
i let a stranger lead me to my muse
saying none would mind

Chuck asked me if i 'needed to pray this morning'
before unlocking -
i said, 'every day'  but thought
  not in his way
- i'm just begging him to play.

i read a psalm and kneel to test hypocrisy.
lotus palms connote release from suffering
wellness for all beings

and then  
i am here now
at the keyboard again
playing music i will never forget
even when my chainsaw body stiffens  creaks
the keys a saving home still  though shy
they hammer heart strings
broken, born -again again again.

praeludium, goldberg, well-tempered
minuets conjure Bach
in his stone church
and i cry for lost souls
my own lostness found
though convinced there is no static single 'self'
no 'soul'-rewarded other-life to justify our own
no 'god'- or science-demolished mystery
no metaphysic causa sui to separate
contempus mundi from the mundi...
no tidy verbal 'beyond beyond'
but that of Thales  Sappho  Gautama  
Laotse  Yeshua
Nagarjuna  Shankara
Duns Scotus  Hume  
Blake  Whitman  Darwin
Nietzsche  Du Bois
Tolkien  Stein  Merleau-Ponty  Sagan  Jong

but i will say we've sung the music of the spheres
in host-guest handshakes
stranger  xenophilic tunes
my earthling family hums my heart anew
as i begin  again
to sing my being into fingertips

skyward breath to lid-closed harmonies of hell redeemed
in Peter's vacuuming
request for 'Dixieland'
and Stacy's parting thanks
for 'we three kings'
Ruth's morning-making compliments and invitation back
my wish to share with them the love i feel
- from them, Gaskell's book
from deep within where no words win
authentic ownmost ocean depth of
less contingent love
historically embracing love
of errancy and freedom in our different loves
an atheist in love with vacuums
saucha and the music of human kindness
receiving gifts in giving thanks








.

nobody gives a ****
about poetry
or books
charles bukowski
or siddhartha
nobody gives a ****
about the universe
or extra terrestrials
carl sagan
or that we are stardust
nobody gives a ****
about Led Zeppelin
or Pink Floyd
Joni Mitchell
or Nirvana
nobody gives a ****
except for me

In Memory of Carl Sagan

his pale blue
sense of wonder
suspended
in a sunbeam

taught beauty in
the faint sensation
of our atoms
put together.

a legacy of
dust and stars
billions upon billions
of stars

I saw the sky and
endless possibility
stretch over me like
broken shackles
form the past

and we remain the
momentary masters
of a fraction
of a dot.

© Ben Ditmars 2014

If Stephen King was black
Obama would not be president
Segregation would exist all over again
OJ would have gotten guilty without a trial
Except the black part would be technologically advanced
cars that navigate themselves
Sonic energy distribution
portable wings
the Rockateer would also therefore be black
Disney Land would be scary and real
Darwin would have been black
Go go Gadget’s engineer would be black
Malcolm X would have been mixed race
Carl Sagan ran the blackest gang in Oakland
If Stephen King was black
Therefore
Stephen Hawkings is black too
Einstein invented Compton in ten minutes
On a coffee break
The bees Einstein was referring to are the African Killa bees
And Einstein was the father of Wu tang
Stephen Hawkings hangs out with Mike Tyson and Alicia Keys
The Black Panthers like every other morning in the blackest house Washington DC
Made me eggs benedict with fresh eggs and ham
Dr Seuss is therefore black by association
Aunt Jemima would run the FDA and tap maples trees in the Berkshires
But she is white now
America would turn a blind eye and play more volley ball
and in us
God would trust