I got a letter from the government
A week back, Tuesday morning
It came in a grey envelope
It was stamped with a red warning

The envelope was tattered
And the words were inked in red
To be opened by recipient
That was all it said

I checked the name typed on there
It was mine, so I could see
John Augustus Reed
Beale Street, Unit 43

I opened it and sat right down
I had been drafted so it said
I had to report on Thursday
I heard a ringing in my head

I didn't understand it all
To me it made no sense
This plain grey mottled envelope
Sent from my government

I followed the instructions
And showed up promptly at the place
Something was asunder
I could tell from the man's face

I showed him my draft letter
Explained, I didn't understand
He looked at it and laughed a bit
This wasn't what I'd planned

He said son, is this you
Are you John Augustus Reed
I told him I'm John Junior
He said that's all the news I need

This letter is a glitch, boy
It wasn't meant for you
It was sent out to your father
Back in nineteen seventy two

Somehow it was mangled
Got lost along the way
Until somebody found it
And you got it on that day

I'm glad you chose to come here
Showed up exactly when it said
But, I think you now can go on home
I think it's best, instead

It's amazing how one letter
And you can take this to the bank
Can fill a man with honor
For that I must give thanks.

---

what is it makes a person
great in this sad world?
where there's such mediocrety
it is a precious pearl

is it that they have money?
that they have accrued
a trillion dollar bank account?
does this make a person good?

perhaps they have a famous face
or well regarded name
maybe they play basketball
and have a winning team

is it artistic talent?
was Vincent van Gogh lauded?
in his painful lifetime
was this man applauded?

perhaps they are as Edison
and have a brilliant mind
but Edison used Tessla
to him he was unkind

this is what I think
makes a man or woman great
that they give life their ALL
that they do not faint

if you sweep the street
and make it clean and bright
If you are an educator
and bring poor children light
if you are a poet
on a humble poetry site
it is forgiving others
not having to be right!
if you are a boxer
and don't give up the fight

this is what is greatness
it's not playing a part
it is truly living

with your entire HEART.


soulsurvivor
(C) 8/31/2015

I was not aware of what "is in store,"
When is an art not unlike a tool?
If it can be used for nothing what then?
Is it a toy for plain simple fools?

"This is my logic, hear me now!"
I yell at empty skies so pale,
Let there be an answer for once,
This rhetorical question growing stale,
I ask "Why am I here? To make an impact?"
What then is this to ask when no one
Answers back? My plan for the next day:
To eat peanut butter sandwiches like new,
To hear the sound of my own mind from the blue,

Own mind: OF COURSE!!!

Forget it, I've thrown my hand...it's clear now you all
Think I'm the devil, till the end my reputation marred,
This will be the way of it, to be left looking so hysterical,
All I'm asking for the last time is this simple question:

**Where did I go so wrong trying to do the right thing...?
Is loneliness the end result of not wanting to fit in by
Drinking, smoking and/or popular religious cults etc. etc.?

I'm at my best
When i'm surrounded with people who love and respect me
When i never asked for such an honor
But i thank God every day for this to be granted to me
It's like i'm being knighted by the Queen of England daily
And i hold that same sheepish smile inside every time
But it's a signature of who i am
I'm so proud of the things I've done right
Because those words that tell me the opposite like to swim around my ears like a fairy who turned to the dark side
And has been engulfed with hate and bitterness
I'm putting an end to the lack of oxygen
And allowing the world to breath again.
Because some people are losing oxygen and things they think they deserve.

To presume to write to someone about courage
and not complaining, don't importune or make dying people cry.
I've always said Leave me alone with autumn.
Don't stand around my bed, I won't be in it.

Over 7 years after he died, I finally looked
through my father's papers. Couple of unclaimed insurance policies,
savings bonds, our genealogy and on graph paper in an engineer's
block lettering quotations from The Seat of the Soul.

Reincarnation and karma are the chicken soup of the soul,
the after life is the reward for our colossal imperfections.
Along with banking instructions, he'd underlined
this: Your soul is immortal. It exists

outside of time. It has no beginning and no end.
Every time you ask for guidance you receive it.
If we are not at home in the world, contributing purpose,
we lose our desire to stay here -- and we die.

The physical world is an unaccountable given in which we
      unaccountably
find ourselves and which we strive to dominate to survive
or it is a learning environment created jointly by the souls that share it
and everything that occurs within it serves our learning.

Sin is activity directed toward self rather than toward service
to others. Sickness is sin. Almost any condition can be corrected.
You are part of God, therefore, think in a godly manner.
If you cannot accept this, forget it all. Do not even begin.

The first act of free will: How do I wish to learn?
If we participate in the cause, it is impossible not to participate in the
      effect.
We shall come to honor all of life sooner or later.
Until you become aware of the effects of your anger, you will
      continue to be an angry person.

Walking is the most commonly suggested exercise. Also, breathing.
"Thy will be done." Concentrate on that!
These expressions of certainty, conjectures and guesses
were inscribed by him in block letters on graph paper.

I have the shape of the institution.
Each email address is a human.

They are known by their words and actions.
The whole wide world is just a fraction

of all I do not know. Expansion
and contraction, breathe in, out, meditation

on existence, non-existence, creation
and duration. I have no explanation

for fusion, fission, taxonomic relations
or artificial classification.

More I do not know: locomotion
by combustion, electron separation

and transportation via superconduction
which supports the idea of the unified nation.

What girls are like behind their eyes. *******
a useful restraint on overpopulation.

The story of a life, my life, any life, cohesion
must be rationed, conjured, a fiction

about a vexed, tenacious town, its rail station
truck stop, high school, night spots, recreations

the temporary citizens enact visions
dream-like orations, ballets, conflagrations

to in the end receive in annals honorable mention
from family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, institutions.

Policy or personal
questions? In the poem Two White Wines
a child adopted from Cambodia
is a thing of beauty, and so she is
as she showed herself to be yesterday. Lovely. However
the poet implies market, i.e. economic, forces brought her
      to America
when, as her parents know, it was war,
the sad Vietnam War or the War with America
as I think the Vietnamese remember it.

Honor and bravery
equal courage. Reed Whittemore's poem about
a photo of Viet Cong prisoners, stoic, defiant
under an American officer's boot
expresses admiration for the enemy. Then and now
a dangerous sentiment. Your fellow citizens, denizens
of convenience stores, even your family,
may come to see you as the enemy. Once ostracized,
      the other,
not belonging to the loved ones, you're not long for
this world of dew.

**** and ***
Ken says, describes America's culture, not its poets
or jazz. What's worth fighting for?
Your land, your right to be stupid on your land.
Now there is one large land, one people
and many. The vote is a crude, monosyllabic grunt,
no way to express the subtle degrees of experience
our long lives represent. Thus,
it is good, when the family gathers, to talk,
each person speak
of what has been forgotten, forgiven and forgone.

Trading or taking
every family must be tithed or taxed.
Every man who finds his meaning in war
will be pained into wisdom and gentleness.
Who comes home
comes home to a future that bypassed the fighting, or did it?
The oil must be sold,
even Saddam or Osama cannot withhold it.
You can drink your quota of water
and still your heart can ache.

Empire or democracy
of nations? We can choose to be the reigning kings
between the last empire and the next
or we can implement a vision
of collective deliberation.
America the seeing-eye dog,
not America the junkyard dog.
Going question by question
toward predictable, transparent governance.
Example: How can a people become a nation
without resorting to violence or incurring violent reaction?

1

At peace perhaps too much
a fine Spring rain
we seek news from the desert or capitol
of those who have dedicated their lives to losing their lives
      for us
adventurers, ancient honor, land runners
this campaign a must to advance one's career
a war president needs war

2

All you need to know is the names of things
chambers of commerce and large corporations
elements, products, decay fungi, egg masses
cultivars and their relation to wild grasses and the edge
uses of herbs, languages of mammals,
purposes of insects, placement of rocks
the names of everything by which we know our way

3

I've read about those remarkable souls who maintain
      self-control
among murderers and the unentertained multitude
who may have even spoken persuasively
at the right moment for speaking
and thus attracted a now unwanted immortality
there are only two ways you can tell
a bird of prey from a vision - humor and ritual

4

the Fedex gal
would be unlike taking off Emily Dickinson's clothes
over the counter perfume and spray paint hair
postman's shorts, black socks
a woman's legs are much like a man's
yet she too is beautiful, too beautiful, weekends
boating with her man

5

Suburbs, lawns, blankets
in a long, long nursery of babies
napping, old, blameworthy
and, I say this respectfully, blind
certain and uninterested
in motives more subtle than their immediate comfort
Who am I to complain?

6

Plants, poems: riches
our financial advisor doesn't count. Good and simple
a man as he is. Comes tousled
from early morning golf and puffy
from a late night fight or lovefest with his wife.
Inchworm
letting out its rope down an oak.

7

Late afternoon meeting
like the dry samara, achene or capsule surrounding a seed
how often have I tried to escape
my need, community, chamber of commerce
you cannot drive
the roads are theirs and the signs, perhaps
you can walk if you can name the plants and rocks and are
      willing to die

8

O happy family
there's some contentment in letting community and family
      decide
your place in it. Gatekeepers -
unconscious god, invisible hand, natural selection -
kind when refraining from violence
when not responding with force to the universe's effort
to extinguish us.

1

The personal is boring
as are my ruminations on the war.
What I need to do I can't try:
wander without shelter in the backcountry.
Or go deeper into the polity,
join a committee or a party.

Minute by minute and season to season
I like my life but what does it add up to, what reason
to go on? No better than a squirrel
or a spider. Spreadsheets, fake books, girls
I want too mildly, modestly or morally to have.
Can the economy and community be called love?

You can be killed and buried in gravel
Your children can be failed at school and marched to war
You can be taxed and sent to gaol for the honor of it
And there's nothing you can do about it.
Will we find the universe not large enough to hold us?
Will planet after planet be too old for us?

If you were president, what would your program be?
What one question is the key
to another's truth. How do you spend your money?
Do you believe in a god who can see
all and understand? Or is he
unable to care, a different species.

2

We take the long view
that as individuals drop
from sight, new enthusiasts
will associate. Legs
give out, lungs collapse,
but we do not let the circle lapse.

For every Aristotle
there are a million toddlers
who will advance no memorable
theories. But the mist
on trees and mountains,
sunrise over desert, are for

every merchant, traveler.
My sons will take on cares,
which toys are theirs,
as their parents grow
older. Slowness brings us
to our goal: do one thing well.

By that what is meant?
Don't be a dilettante.
Not having found the greatness
of a single, clear description,
definition, the greatness comes in
doing everyday what's known.