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Forty Days

A Season of Grief, a Season of Rejoicing

November 9-December 20, 2014

For Barbara Beach Alter 
It is Christmas morning in Saco, Maine, where today Bett, Aaron, Emily, Thomasin and our beloved cousin Marie find ourselves gathered to celebrate our first Christmas without dadima (our name for Barbara Beach Alter).  Brother Tom writes that already in India he and Carol with Jamie, Meha and Cayden (the only of her seven greatgrandchildren Barry never held) have celebrated.  Today Marty and Lincoln join us in Maine.

This gathering of documents—notes, drafts of memorial services, poems, homilies—is my christmas present to each of you.  It is a record, certainly subjective, of grief and rejoicing.

John Copley Alter
1:14 a.m.
Saco, Maine 
November 9

Loved ones,
Barbara Beach Alter died peacefully at 2:55 Sunday morning (today).  Bett and I had the good fortune to be there for the final beating of her good strong heart.  She murmured charcoal.  The nurse who was bathing her afterwards noted how few wrinkles there were, and it is true.
For those of you nearby you may if you want visit Mom in her room at hospice this morning (until noon).  Visit? Darshan? Paying respects?
Bett and I plan to be there around 11:00.
Much love to all. A blessed occasion.
John


November 10

Matthew 5:13-19
Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

yesterday in the early hours my mother died her saltiness
restored all that had through the months of her old
age and convalescence obscured the lens of her life cleaned
away so that for us now more and more clearly
as we hear about her through the memory and love
of so many people her good works shine forth in
their glory but it is to the days of her
convalescence the days of her dementia I would turn our
minds those of us who spent time with her at
Wingate long-term care facility remember that Barbara Beach Alter became
at times fierce in her commanding us that ‘not one
letter, not one stroke of a letter’ of the commandments
should be altered do you remember that those of you
and us who were given the work and gift of
spending time with Barry in those days in that condition

remember for instance how fussy she became about the sequence
of food on her tray how impatient with us for
our trespasses and violations how adamant that we look forward
for instance and not back at her how she would
say stop holding my hand and saying you love me
you have work to do o she was almost impossible
and certainly incoherent and demented in her obsession with law
and procedure fussy impatient imperious I do not forget being
scolded reamed out put in my place for having somehow
failed to do what the ‘law and the prophets’ demand

Barbara beach alter in the days before hospice in the
nursing home and hospital and even if we are honest
in the final years of her life found herself caught
up in the rigidity of her anxious desire to be
faithful to the laws and commandments of her life and
that made her at times extremely demanding to be with

amen and the epistemological confusion of course the clash between
her reality and ours it was all an ordeal for
her and for those of us who kept her company

and yet and yet through it all and now as
that ordeal for her is no longer paramount as she
dances in heaven all the wrinkles and discomfort of her
life removed and forgiven Barbara Beach Alter kept the faith
living in the midst such that those who cared for
her most intimately the strangers all professed your mother blessed
us


Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.



So, brother and sister, here are my thoughts about the memorial service(s).
Let’s find a time when we three can be present; that’s the most important thing.  My life is currently the least constrained by agenda and schedule.  And then the grandchildren, recognizing that Jamie may not be able to come.  So, our work is to find our when our kids are able to come. Bett and I are exploring that with our three, each of whom has some constraint: Emily, the cost; Thomasin, the piebaking demands, Aaron school.  But we are flexible.

Much love.

John



Walking in my mother’s wake today some trees
a gentle breeze some dogs a little boy
the neighborhood and I took joy from interaction

we are at best a fraction in love’s
calculation after all heaven I realize is not
above or below cannot be taught comes naturally

as death does walking in my mother’s wake
I found new allies learned yet again not
to take myself too seriously to be caught

off guard as a matter of principle and
not to insist that I understand but live
in the midst of forgiveness


in my mother’s wake I am reading these books for
some way to continue to knock on her door Wendell
Berry he can tell me some things and William Blake
he can take me closer and I remember she described
me once as an unused Jewish liberal so I am
reading about protestant liberalism but ham that I am also
reading Carl Hiassen’s Bad Monkey and Quo Vadimus that my
daughter left behind and mythologically Reflections from yale divinity school
no fooling Denise Levertov David Sobel Galway Kinnell’s translation of
Rilke some wake

November 11

Matthew 25:1-13
Jesus said, "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, 'Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise replied, 'No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.' And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to us.' But he replied, 'Truly I tell you, I do not know you.' Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."

this morning in the wee hours my mother died one
of the wise bridesmaids whose lamp to the end was
full she carried always the flask of oil that is
joy that is the love of the kingdom of heaven
and of the bridegroom a flask always replenished by prayer
by devotion by a humble courageous living in the midst

she expected every day the bridegroom to come in other
words and she was also one who would never refuse
to share even the last drop with somebody in need

and at the end it is so clear the door
into the banquet hall was not closed to her as
it is not closed to any one of us foolishness
is to believe otherwise to believe that the bridegroom will
not come today in the early morning in the wee
hours that is when he comes in the midst of
other plans is when he comes even when we are
doing what we assume to be good work when we
are doing what gives us pleasure our duty joy comes
then unsummoned unpredictable random even according to all our best
laid plans my mother loved so many things her pleasure
included dancing late in her life terminally unsteady she invented
what we loved to urge her to do namely the
sitting jig and we grew up with images of her
Isadora Duncan dancing with white scarves in an enchanted forest

Barbara Beach Alter aka Barry aka dadima bari nani aunt
and daughter wife missionary is now I know dancing a
rollicking boisterous jig on the shores of a lake that
is as her grandson once confided to her god in
liquid form spilly Beach of course also dyslexic executive function
compromised she was but one who loved to be always
in the midst surrounded by loved ones some of them
absolute strangers she shared her oil because for her it
came welling up from an inexhaustible source a deep eternal
well of such illumination and laughter such giddy divine chuckles

for her there was to be no exclusion she would
not find the awful idea of being one of the
foolish applicable to anybody but happily she welcomed into her
midst so many it is hard to imagine how many

so there she is now a bridesmaid dancing for joy
in such elegant clothing with such perpetual brightness

amen hallelujah rejoice


sometimes I think she pulled us all out of the
magic hat sometimes I think she knit us all into
one of her theologically impossible sweaters and then with a
wink she passes through the eye of the needle and
is gone and we are left to play in her
honor endless hands of solitaire sometimes I think we are
no more than the hermeneutics of her life the epistemology
artless she was not her heart like one of those
magical meals for her then a doxology praise then praise
she knows salvation

what is a life’s work it is like a landscape
dotted with oases and gardens for the thirsty and the
lost it is like scraping through dry barren ground and
finding there suddenly not only the theology of paradise but
such seeds your hands ache to begin the planting what
is a life’s work what has been shut for too
long opens what has been shut for too long opens

a life’s work renews itself then with death the kernel
of hope that dies in springtime sprouting is what a
life’s work becomes

November 12

John 21:15-17
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.

I know my mother very much enjoyed having breakfast with
god and that the meals of her nursing home drove
her nearly crazy and that when at last she found
hospice o she again could imagine the feast of heaven
at which Jesus breaks bread with us and speaks with
such clarity do you love me more than these I
know it was questions as simple and overwhelming as this
that dominated her final days do you love me love
being  one of the last five words she attempted to
speak do you love me she wrestled in her last
months with epistemology and psychology and theology and all had
to do with whether she could answer unequivocally you know
that I love you and that she could say of
her life that she had broken bread with god we
all remember in her life those moments when there was
a great gladness an innocent acceptance of what lay immediately
in her presence now those months in the nursing home
tormented her in precisely this fashion that it was hard
to accept to be in the midst of such mediocrity
and woe to be innocent and accepting but now praise
god there she is a happy guest at the great
feast and we left behind bereft can acknowledge that she
loved god in her own fashion as best she possibly
could and do you remember being with her there in
hospital or nursing home and she commanding us to move
beyond holding her hand and saying we loved her and
to feed the sheep to do that work which will
make of this earth this here and now an outstation
of heaven Barbara Beach Alter loved god in her own
fashion as best she possibly could we remember that and
that memory is today like a great network a web
of love and inspiration o we would gladly one more
time hold her hand and say I love you but
we know also clearly I think today what the work
is to love our neighbor as ourselves to work for
peace and justice I think of my sister with her
colleagues in WEIGO and how her sisters have understood her
grief  let us break our fast together then glad for
the worldwide web that in these days is reading the
gospel of the life of Barbara Beach Alter praise god


feed
tend
feed
in exchange for his three denials Peter is given three imperative verbs
feed
tend
feed
this is the commission Jesus after breakfast on the shore of the sea of Galilee gives to Peter
twice he says feed
in the commonwealth of Massachusetts 700,000 people are hungry
1 in 6 americans are hungry
living in uncertainty about their daily bread
more than 18,000,000 in Africa
842,000,000 around the world go to bed hungry


Marty and Tom
The thinking about the memorial service is taking this slow and cautious turn, namely that we have three services (at least), one in Sudbury, one in New Haven (allowing Stan and Chuck and others to come) at First Presbyterian (with Blair Moffett we hope), and of course one in India.
The date frame appears to be somewhere between December 17 and 20, unless you have other thoughts.
The actual cremation happens tomorrow.  Lincoln, Bett, Alexis and I will attend, and then of course there is In the Midst on Friday.
Love you more than tongue can tell.
John


the thing with a life well lived is that many
people have partaken the way let’s say a river moves
down through any number of different lives all the time
sedulously seeking the shortest path to the sea to steal
a line from somebody or other meandering a watershed within
which so many of us find a way to live
our own lives nourished and for each of us the
river distinct and different white water the slow fertile meander
the delta and we say to each other this is
the composite river


sometimes I feel like a sleepwalker trying to run a
marathon sometimes I feel like a speedbump in a blizzard

an arrow in a wind tunnel sometimes I feel like

a hazard sign in an old age home sometimes I
feel like a tyrannosaurus rex trying to ride a tricycle

and sometimes those are the good days when identity is
strong like an icicle in a heat wave is strong

I try to read wisdom literature at happy hour scotch
and Solomon can’t go wrong I think and sometimes I

feel like crying

November 13

four days ago we were left alone there with your
body after your breathing ceased and the proud stubborn beating
of your heart and in those four days beloved mother
so much I would love to say to you and
share the antics of the squirrel late leaves on the
neighborhood trees music Orion the network the atlas of love
your life has left behind and all the words we
are the gospel of today and I would sit with
you there then in silence as I sit now four
days later vigilant insomniac aware that the kingdom of heaven
is not more complicated than singing than love than dancing

we are all dancing the dance lord siva teaches and
the s
Tessitura, psalms, and songs of praise, they branded atheism when singing Christian psalms in the streets making ineffable groans, where the exordios looked from the back with Delphic prose, where the dart that opens the curtains of the hallelujah tormented, with darts that rubbed weathered in the tentative to rise of the stores of Sanequerib. They are relatives of Incipit Psalm 69. " Saint John said as they continued to climb the Calvary of Profitis Ilias, but this time in the company of the Help of Isaiah, with a great spirit of being from the cavern of Elías in Haifa, at a flat point at the time of the Benedictus. Already the Assyrians were returning the same way they came, as Isaiah prophesied, in the morning with ejaculations that ended with the crass rottenness that could end the day without a step other than an anti-Jesuit one. Prayers go and implore the Omnia Vanitatis, the moment when the sun honors, taking you towards the close of the day with the perpetual antiphon. The vigil was reaching the lines of Isaiah does not rest, in Trinitarian doxology. Where is the darkness, where is the glory to see you...? If the stars collide with each other in Baptismal frowning, and in the mystery of Vernarth that lies a complex, tied to becoming that never begins, and what was Christic history of a morning introit.

Saint John the Apostle and Vernarth express in the Trinitarian doxology: “Through Christ, with him and in him, to you Almighty God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and all glory, forever and ever. Amen"

The triangular taxias of the Hetairoi made faunas that came cutting themselves with the wind of the "incipit" of Psalm 69: "My God, come to my aid;" Lord, hurry to help me ", by the Keras or wings of the site of Arbella; or Gaugamela rather said…, sonnetized by some Pazhetairoi, made up of 32 Syntagmas, as units of sixteen revived Falangists from Court V of the Helleniká Necropolis, bilocated on Patmos, a few feet from the Mandragoron project. Thus the triangular spellings of war were formed again, to the astonishment of all those present. Alexander the Great, already graceful, was over-trained in irrigation and supplications, he was consisting of 128 Syntagmas, with 62 Falangists covered by the Cinnabar that subdivided them into bones by sixteen of the Lochoi or guides. The Syntagma bipartite was enlarged by two Syntagamatarchos captaining two units, all with their semi-open belly, re-liquidating their viscera by the Ghosts of Shiraz, the Saltimbanqui Hydro comes from Roknabad (also known as Aub-e Rokní), from an underground channel which carried spring water to the city from a mountain located ten kilometers northeast of Shiraz. Here he has to mend the propellers and water ropes to do his acrobatics on the water, with greater songs in the poems of the Poet Hafiz. When he bites his tongue, they repair it with the verses of Hafiz's Koran, there are three hundred creeds, three hundred hectares to irrigate with his wheel the sadness of those who cannot have the gift of the rivalry of Montenegro and Monte Blanco, to overestimate the liveliness of the caravan that trembles with uncertain doubts here on Patmos "

Saltimbanqui of Bascule says: “We are Epi ghosts, green in reverie with tutelary ropes, to jump through the trapeze of the photometric units of the heavy Almeria of the highest Mirror of the Sea. Will take you back to Limassol. Curiously to the same ship as the Eurydice that sleeps in the swings of the sea, and in the arms of the petulance of Dionysus in a new awakening of lethargy of theorization of the superstrings of Anaximander, here is the intrinsic speculation of science, already that this is not just purely empirical research. "

In between them, they form even and odd rows. The horizontals were tinged with the Red Blood cells that became volatile and surrounded the Xyston lances, for thirty soldiers of the Diloquia, with their dismembered arms that began to take them back with their hands tightly girded by the song of the Theological Shemesh of San Juan, which subsequently rescinded last in the sum of two taxiarchies, constituting a Syntagma. The units rose with the sickle that cuts definitive death, to reconstitute it in five thousand that should tread through the hierarchies of formations, amid the frolics of the Phalanx, where Vernarth protested to all “Khaire, Kalos irthate apo tin kentriki, Welcome from Hell !"

Thus the Phalanx was constituted among the Syntagmas in metaphors of the Falangists. In this way this antiphon was revealed martial, denoting synergies of the Sybilla Herofila that conferred to the world of Trinitarian Doxology, among ashes that remained by a solid cobblestone witness of the reluctant troops that testified to the sense of interpreting the law of bringing to the world what to their lives it owes them. The prophecy shone from an intangible Isaiah before all in this concomitant episode, and to the degree of the reign of Judah, here together with the prophet Elijah, they faced the hardened fragrances of blessing as oracular teachers of so many goods, and of the benefactor that protects by inspirational mandate, making laws for the end times before closing his own eyes without having prophesied them.

The rows in “V" contrasted with the corridor friezes in the crowned troops of the Hetairoi, and in the syntagmas that became appressed from the triangle that opened the three-quarter proportions of Athenea's physiognomy in Pergamum, subjugating Alcineo, so that finally it was forged in constellations of equanimity in the fifth courtyard or "V" of the Necropolis of Helleniká in the allegory of Vernarth, stopping the plausible dogma of the initial that glosses the Law in Vernarth's "V". This in turn in double syntagm of the Syntagamatarchos guide, in the high sky of Patmos, and in the medrones growing on the antlers of the proclamation of Wonthelimar, which made them a twin "W" in the star that shines in the medrones of the Ibix, in the Cornacabra and in the Cornucopia, with certain docile movement, adhering to acrostic and prehensile preliminaries of the Isaiah saying.

The Phalanx Alexandrina Heterochromatic of Alexander the Great volatilized between the villi of his Falangists, climbs the Holm of Zeus and causes a "Gore" or horrifying reflection, allowing the rhizomes to become a hundredfold, which will make the nominal order of five thousand, for each member of the Syntagma, in an astonishing quantum that reproduced itself to materialize before Him. Then he tied each one of them as Prometheus chained to each of the oaks, from an Akane grocer, incontinenti withdraws a sharp dagger and opens each one's veins to free them from the isolation of so many years settled in their last heterochromia of the War Iridium that he conferred on them, to endure the visit of the spirited Grim Reaper. This causes liberation, in this way they re-install themselves in their bodies, with Iridium or iris that made them see before their optics in two biases of Hoplite alter egos, impacting half of their body. Alexander the Great, being the philanthropic heir and of Platonic legacy, made them superfluous in the melanin that fell from the Epíchisis or libation vessel, to taste the effluvia of Dionysus with the maenads, with wide ambivalence filling them with viticulture, so that they would flow through the veins of his soldiers, and to revive them with the Dionysian must of melanin to the left eye of the Hegemon King Alexander the Great, with Jasper in the left, and the right with ultramarine from the bottom of the Ionian, on the banks of the washed banks of Patmos, in high swells of Greek alcohol that was distilled from the Mosacism of the stones when unraveling the peripheral forces from the prefectures of the great native of Pelas. They ordered areas of all Greece under their heterochromia flow that gave life to the Perifereoaki, or periphery for Central and Western Macedonia that came with great vigor, with Epirius central, western Greece, Peloponnese, and Crete. East Macedonia and Thrace, Ionian Islands, North Aegean, and Thessaly, later they would go for the Aldehyde alcohol that summarized and epitomized Dionysus taking him with four eagles that distilled the unprisoned Syntagmas of the lines of 16, 32, 64, etc...., for purposes never to start on an omega all the way to the Ionian Islands from Corfu.

Alexander the Great, went near the pre-urbanization of the Mandragoron towards Vernarth, somewhat dizzy, and before attending to him he presented himself first to the Zefian; who looked at his iris like a foreman who re-divided his visuals, by prevailing in eagerness to restore his soldiers, to help in the construction of adventures of life, and to assist in building the Megaron, which still rested in the myopia of mythological vision of the Gods tied in animosity with the Titans. Overwhelmingly, he highlighted the clouding or turbidity that was seen beyond the radius or visual field of two realities, found in visual refraction and interference with refractive statisms of the periphery that led him to the other world in Babylon when death imprisoned him...? Here the root revived, it became parallel in a unique world with divergent lights, which entered his Akera or right-wing of his soldiers, bringing visual acuity that brought the perchlorate volatilizations that hovered in the boots of his soldiers, when they marched in awareness of the retina and of the mean light, that for the first time was clarified in true holistic and political from a Parthenon with the musk of mortals and immortals of neo Hegemonic ophthalmology, which he was already re-leading by his command, where he was going to invest his greatest and most spiritual elemental Commander Vernarth, with his Himation.

The rays of his eyes seemed distant, but they were diffuse and alternate, they wandered through the lens of his clouding, which blinds a partial of the left Akera, or flank of the Hypaspists that dazzled Parmenion. Here the optics of Alexander the Great, remained in the diatribe of the small eye next to another that was enlarged, being hyperopic of a mysterious confine in the severity of Dionisio when confronted with him, in light effects of the high liquid vineyard, refracting meridians in his troops next to the Hexagonal Primogeniture who observed them behind the magenta image, which was the one that flashed from the Clouded holm oak and eclipsed by calm heat movements, and rising air masses that were in the opportune station of good sense. When being aided by the Maenads and the Herophile, they were teaching from a parent, who now sponsored the entire political and spiritual will of the Hoplite side, made up of the King of the World Vernarth, together with Alexander the Great, after receiving the photocoagulated lightning bolts. of the officers, under redeeming and reduced of the metabolic, and of the oxygenated preeminences of new lungs for each devout consecrated body, towards Saint John, the Apostle, pigmented and mechanized with aggravating heterochromia, and extensive in the bodies raised in new parallels that have to confront an anonymous or semi-god by turning for his own.
Antiphon Benedictus III Isaiah / Syntagma
Duke Thompson Sep 2014
A dog tied to a concrete pole
In vacant parking lot
Mall adjacent
Man's doxology
This is life
Are we living
CLOUDNINE'S TWENTY SEVEN PSALM OF DOXOLOGY TO ADORE THY LORD GAD!


#C9fm ~~
1 Make holy his glorious name and adore His powerful word.

2 Sing praises unto thee. And let every breathing creatures tremble at His footstool.

3 The Earth and everythang found therein. Lift on high His glorification and sing adoration unto the supreme Spirit of thy Lord.

4 Hallelujah! Thy Lord reingth  till eternal.

5 From all entities through entities.

6 For He has magnified Himself and manifested Himself through every wondrous works of His hands.

7 Ruler of the universe, His glorious crafts exists even beyond the miltiverse.

8 Underneath Earth and above the skies may thy Almighty God be adored.

∆¶∆9 His right hand through seas His breathe roared the waters.

10 His voice quake the Earth and the foundation of the universe wary.

11
He looked and lightening from His eyes revealed the secret place of the wicked.

12 Let thy Lord be praised. He has smitten the jaws of His enemies.

13 Even Lucifer and his angels.

14 Thy Lord  reignth till eternal.

15 Blessed be thy Lord our Gad; with psalms and doxologies thy Lord be worshipped. Selah!
When I think of all His awesome doings all  around, my heart does praise . And may it be count worthy before the Almighty
Let God be
praised and let
Himself praise Himself.
Let His people
joyfully praise Him,
and let the whole
world and its hosts
and the firmament
and its bodies
laud Him praises,
He who was
and who is to come
He who reinth for
evermore, word
without end. And from
the east pole
of the earth, to the
north of the
south reaching the
west, laud His praises.
In the deepest
part of the sea
sing Joyfully
doxologies of
glorification and
adoration to
worship 🛐 Him
beneath the earth
and underneath His
throne were twenty
and four holy spirits proclaiming His
praises for He his
worthy to be magnified.
Praised be thy
Lord our
God till eternal.
Amen !
#C9fm

000026
CLOUDNINE'S TWENTY SIXTH SONG OF DOXOLOGY TO PRAISE THY LORD.
I need to know something. I don’t know if you want to tell me or not, but I really don’t care. You’re gonna tell me or you’re gonna find yourself in a world of trouble. I’m already ****** and it won’t take much to push me over the edge into dangerously angry territory.

No, **** it. Never mind. I’m ALREADY in “dangerously angry territory”. No, it wasn’t your fault. I was already close enough I could see the other side of reason before you came along.

But it would still be nice to know, if you’re willing to tell me. I mean, I’m not going to force it from you. That was the plan just a moment ago, but I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided that my bitterness is not your fault. I won’t make you pay for it.

Yet I do feel as if it would do me a world of good to know.

Where were you when I was falling in love?

Were you sitting in a back seat of a crowded subway train with a cup of Starbucks coffee in one hand and a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” in the other, holding it in front of your face as if it’s pages were a fascinating mirror? Was there an old man sitting near who turned to look at you every so often to the point where it creeped you out? Maybe you eventually said something to him, like “Excuse me, but is there something you wanted to say to me?"

“Why would you get that idea?” he would ask, as if he were totally oblivious to his invasive nature.

“I don’t know…you just keep looking at me and I wondered if there were a reason for it.”

“Nope. Not that I can think of.”

Did you smack him real good right then? Did you draw blood? I hope you did. I hope the driver had to stop the train to come back and drag you off of him. It would have been a real drag if the police had to be summoned, but on the other hand, wow, how ****** the thought of you resisting arrest.

Or did you cower into your corner, turn a page in your book and let the lecherous ******* carry on? I don’t think so. I really don’t think so. I don’t think that’s the kind of girl you are. I think you’re a firecracker.

And I think that wherever you were when I was falling in love is not where I wanted you to be. Not where you should have been.

Because I fell in love with a robot. Who knows why I fell in love with an ottoman? I didn’t know she was one at the time. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to fall in love with a machine? No, she was flesh and bones when I met her. She seemed normal, like all the other women I’ve ever seen or known.

But then she started smoking cigarettes. She carried them around in a little soft leather pouch that could be mistaken for nothing else but a case for holding the little *******.

God I hate cigarettes. I hate the smell of them, whether they’re lit or not. I hate the dark tan color of their filters with the little white dots speckled randomly. I hate the cotton that stuffs their filters. I hate the white paper with the almost imperceptible stripes banding around their length. I hate how the brand is stamped close to the base of the filter. I hate the packages that they come in and the cellophane that wraps them. I hate how stray flecks of tobacco gather in the bottom of the boxes and the wrappers, too. I hate how they make a person’s breath stink. I hate how they make a person’s clothes reek. I hate the way they look in a shirt pocket. I hate the way they look between people’s fingers and in their mouths. I hate the way they burn down to the nub and the ash that they leave behind. I hate pitch black nicotine stains on ******* smokers’ hands. I hate the way some people put one between their ear and noggin and actually think it makes them look cool. I hate how smokers seem to have some code of sharing, how it’s always “Hey, can I *** a smoke from you?” and 99 times out of 100 the answer is “sure”. It’s never, “Okay, but you gotta pay me back.” Oh no, Smoker’s Karma is at work here. I hate the way too many people call ‘em “smokes”. “I’m off to get a pack of smokes.” Good God, I think that’s lame. “Smokes”. Ha. I hate the way smokers ***** about laws that prohibit them from smoking in public and how so many of them have absolutely no regard for non-smokers who not only can’t stand the smell of the ******* but would just as soon not chance even the most remote possibility of getting lung cancer caused by second hand smoke. I hate how smokers would tell that person, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. The chances of that happening are one in a million.” So what? *******. ******* with your nasty cancer sticks and **** your tar-lined wheezing lungs, too. **** the death bed you will lie on when emphysema steals your last breath. **** the oxygen tanks that cost almost as much as all the cartons of cigarettes you have wasted your money on during the last who-knows-how-many years of your life. **** all your attempts to quit. **** the feeling of disappointment that overwhelms when you fail once again, as Mighty God Tobacco hugs you, strokes your wet hair, wipes the sweat from your forehead and the tears from your eyes. Sweet summer sweat. The tears of a clown.

You know what? She never smoked before. I never would have thought she would pick up that disgusting habit, but she sure as hell did. Picked it up like it was a twenty dollar bill someone lost that she found on the side of the road as she walked to the smoke shop to buy another pack of Marlboro Lights.

There’s another thing I hate about cigarettes. “Smoke Shops”. Where the value-minded smokers purchase their wares. Not “Cigarette Store”. Not “Tobacco Warehouse"…oh, no. It’s a SMOKE SHOP. You’re going to buy some smoke, brother Jim. You’re gonna spend too much money at the 7-11 and it’s all gonna go up in smoke, but by the grace of God you are gonna save a couple of bucks by purchasing them at the “Smoke Shop” instead of the convenience store. You complain until you’re blue in the face about how ridiculously high the ciggy prices are at normal retail outlets, but when you run out of ‘em and the God-blessed “Smoke Shop” is closed ‘cuz it’s Sunday you’ll drive like a madman to Love’s and blow ten bucks because there’s a “Buy Two Get One Free” special going on. What a ******* good deal that is, eh, mister?

Furthermore…CIGGYS??? I hate how people call ‘em “ciggys”. But not nearly as much as I hate the word “cigarette”. I cannot stand to speak the word. I hate the way it rolls of my tongue. I hate the way the word sounds like it means “little cigars”.

I hate the way some smokers empty out their car ashtrays in the parking lot. I hate the way all the butts look lying there in a heap, a pile of paper soaked with the spittle of a hundred different mouths. And yet the nicotine python grips some desperate smokers so tightly that they will pick them up and try to smoke the last tiny flecks of tobacco from their crushed and blackened ends. I’ve even seen people extract the remaining **** from several discarded butts, roll it all up in a Zig Zag paper and smoke it. Don’t these people even know what Zig Zag papers are for? They sure ain't for tobacco, Charter.

“Butts”. There’s another word in the smokers lexicon that just sounds silly. “Smoke ‘er down to the ****, Jack, we’ve got more!” “I don’t have an ash tray, Terry, so just put your BUTTS in that half empty soda can over there on the table”…never thinking that there might be someone else at the party who could very likely mistake that particular pop can for his own and take a mighty swig from it. Oh my God, the thought, it gags me. How nauseating it would be to feel one of those wretched things fall against your lips and…Egad…the flavor…and yet the cruel smoker will laugh at such misfortune.

****.

God help me.

She was not a robot when I met her. Oh, no, she was a beautiful, exciting, passionate loving woman with a heart of gold and a desire that was practically insatiable. Here…take a look, I have a photograph in my wallet. See what I mean? That’s right, daddy-O, she was a real dreamboat. I used to carry this picture with me wherever I went…I guess I still do, huh? But I don’t know why. I don’t know why I torture myself looking at it, remembering what was, all we had, our bright and glorious future wrecked and deserted by her newfound proclivity for smoking cigarettes. Yeah, my friend, she was a real keeper. But you know what? **** her now, y’know? Just turn her over and **** her.

But hey…perhaps I’ve been too harsh on the smoker in general (if not to her…no, not to her). Perhaps I have exaggerated a bit. After all, some of my best friends smoke. It’s their business, not mine. Never has been mine. I know that. If they knew how I felt about the whole thing, whose to say they wouldn’t tell me to ****** off and never come back? Then again, if they are so shallow as to take any of this as a personal insult, then maybe, just maybe they aren’t my friends after all. I doubt the robot would want anything more to do with me if she knew what a stalwart anti-smoker I am. But I thought she felt the same. She DID feel the same. She told me as much. Before she lost her soul. Before she started smoking cigarettes. Before she started bumming ciggys.

I got no time for changes in her life so now I ask you again…where were you when I was falling in love?

Were you sitting in a Pentecostal Holiness church on a hard pew early Sunday morning before the service began, thumbing through the hymnal, looking for one that best expressed your feelings of devotion at that point in your spiritual journey? And what would that hymn have been? “Onward Christian Soldiers”? “Peace in the Valley”? “In the Garden”? “Smoke on the Water”? “Hotel California”? Maybe some obscure Black Sabbath song tucked in at the end of the book, next to the Doxology?

Did your hair shimmer, reflected in the light that poured through the stained glass window directly behind you? Did you feel it’s heat on your neck? Did it draw out beads of perspiration there, glistening? Would you have let me lick them and taste their saltiness even in the sanctuary of the church building? Probably not. But I don’t think the idea would repulse you like it would some other bonnet headed midi-skirt wearing holy rollin’ *****.

Maybe I would have asked you outside so that you might feel a little more comfortable with what I’d had in mind.

And maybe you would have told me “no”. I couldn’t blame you for that. No, I wouldn’t. It’s only natural for a real woman to guard her integrity in situations such as this one. I could not hold that against you.

Is that where you were? I need to know. Where the hell were you when I was falling in love?
Tomo Jul 2015
(Main chorus)

No matter how deep
no matter how dark
the places I run to are
Your Spirit is there, Your Spirit is there

(Verse A)

I've shut off the light
I've shut tight the door
Surrounded by voices that I can't ignore
The shadows closing in
Tell me I can't win
And I try so hard not to forget

(Sing chorus twice)

I've given up the fight
so many times before
A thousand scars bleed with the sins I abhor
And yet where sin abounds
Your grace abounds more
So now my soul will sing

(sing chorus, slowly building up for bridge)

(Bridge) (repeat once, then repeat last line)

Even darkness is
as the light to You
Even down in my depths
You still pursue
I can't get away
no matter where I go
So let your Spirit shine bright
and set fire to my soul

set fire to my soul

(repeat chorus twice)
Be encouraged by this--no matter where we go, the Lord will find us and be our rescue. His grace is irresistible.
PSALM TWENTY AND ONE
OF PRAISE TO MAGNIFY
THY LORD GOD,
JEHOVAH ORI.



1)I'll adore thy
Lord with my
whole heart ♥
and I will sing
His praise  in
His sanctuary.

2)I'll worship 🛐
thy Lord God,
for his mercy
endureth forever. 3)
He Who has
spread the heavens
like curtain on the
wings of wind,
earth upon ocean. 4)
For his mercy
endureth till
eternally.
5)
Praise
He our God for
He's mighty
arts are greatly
and worthy to
be praised. 6)Let
the whole world
glee in the Lord
their God and the
fullness therein. 7)
And the heaven
and it's hosts bless
thy Lord our God.
8)
Our hearts shall
rejoice in thy
Lord and the
fullness in us. 9) All
my bones shall
says blessed be
thy Lord.
10)
Let thy
Lord be magnified!
Praise God in all
tongues and let
His people praise
Him.
11)The earth
and every beasts
that crawled
the earth. 12)
Every
small and
gigantic adore
thy Lord their God.
13)
And let
Cloudnine and
His family Glorify
God for His
marvelous thangs
He has done
amongst His
people.
14)He
manifest Himself
and
sent them meal.
15)
Even in the
wilderness He
brought forte
waters
within the rock. 16)
His voice is
heard in all the
nations, praise
God. 17)
Zillion
tongues aren't
enough praise
God. 18)
For
the works of
His hands is
mighty.
19)
The
sun see and
jumped, the
rivers ran
backwards,
20)
The mountains
smokes and the
hills are covered
with flames
🔥🔥 the
Holighost fire of
thy Lord. 21)
Holy and glory
honor,
adoration,
glorification, and
songs of
doxology
unto God. 22)
For
His endless
gracious favor
and mercy
endureth forever.
23)
From eternal
till eternal,
praise God
from ever
lasting to
everlasting. 24)
Let
my heart ♥
praise God. 25)
C9fm shall adore
thy God blessed
be thy Lord
our God. 26)
Worthy
and honorable is
thy Lord God of
black tribe
of Israel. 27)
God
of the whole
earth and flesh.
May thy
only Holy names
forever be
pavilion for the
just. 28)
Those who
hopes in thy
Lord shall never
be ashamed. 29)
For thy
mercy is endless,
reaching unto
the clouds all
through the
heaven's
beginning to it's
end. 30)
Praise
God from the
beneath of the
earth. He Who
made the heaven
and earth. 31)
Unto you, all
the riches, wealths,
wisdom,
knowledge and
understanding are
been rendered . 32)
Unto thee oh
Lord our God.
Let the heart
of the just
praise and
dependent.
33)
Rejoice
in Him and
cast your worries
upon the Lord
and He shall
ease your
burdens. 34)
Glorious and
marvelous His
thy word oh
Lord.
35)
Thy word
is seen through
thy
magnanimous
arts.
36)
The skies
manifests and the
heavens roared
thunderously.
37)
The earth
heard and
trembled mighty
mountains became
ground before
thy Lord.
38)
The
angels bow 🙇
worshipping 🛐
underneath His
throne.
39)
Saying,
Thou art worthy,
holy and glory
art thou oh Lord. 40)
Who Was and to
come and is
and forever more.
41)
Let thy Lord be
magnified! Selah.
#c9_fm
Hail CWC and all the OC's, too!
Hail Sonichu and Rosechu!
We curse-ye-ha-me-ha the trolls;
this **** rivals the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Alumnus of PVCC
afflicted by virginity,
so he devised a master plan
to finally become a man.

But Mary Lee would not abide;
our autist hero she did chide
and ripped up his attraction sign.
He soon thereafter went online.

Some 4chan trolls would come along.
(Hail them, they're why we sing this song.)
They started up an ED page,
inciting Chris into a rage.

Yet CWC could not contain the need:
his massive ego had to feed.
For the attention trolls did yield,
no secret thing did Chris conceal.

As time wore on, his fame would grow.
He even got on Tosh point 0
posing in women's underwear
thus with the world Chris-Chan was shared.

One day a group of teenage boys
who, growing tired of games and toys,
conspired to blackmail now-Christine
just to go down in "Christory."

From Twitter, it was plain to see
Chris breaking from reality:
obsessed with multiverse theory,
proclaiming herself deity.

Some sophomore down in Texas, y'all,
precipitated Christine's fall,
incepted into her weak mind
a crime of the most heinous kind.

From jail, Christine now writes to us
insisting that she is Jesus.
Is Christine crazy or afraid,
and is she finally getting laid?

Amen.
sung to the tune of "Old 100."

This is a retrospective on the online presence and work of troubled outsider artist Christine Weston Chandler and her problematic online following.
Eleete j Muir Jun 2017
God made the country,
Unbeknowst to hope are we all as
Great oaks from little acorns grow;
So many countries gilt,
So many cultures, alack
unblemished feathers of eternal service
Scabbard in sheaths quilling Gods glossary
And man made the town, pilgrimiges and suffrages;
A foredoomed geniture of the Evil Ones chaology
Hewn to bell the cat.
The worst of Heavens vengeful justice is not
Always rightous as in faithfullnesses eschewal.
The Heirophants pen a tolling knell
Without any hope; least said
Heaven twice, soon mended-
As words in mode of passion are
Material manifestations and
Manners make the man whilst the
Hand that rocks the cradle cannot
Put brains into statues; but,
Yet, rule the bilge when the
Angels doxology enunciates war on
The world as the Devil espies all
And God ensconces but the few!



ELEETE J MUIR
PSALM TWENTY OF PRAISE TO MAGNIFY THY LORD GOD, JEHOVAH MAGEN.

1)
Bring unto
thy Lord
songs of
doxology.
2)
Let His
people
praise Him.
3)
And along
with the
counsel of
heaven.
4)
Let
thy angel
praise
Thee oh
Lord let
the hosts
of
heaven
adore
Thee.
5)
Oh Lord
God of
heaven
and earth
Ye are so
great and
excellent.
6)
Ye are
the only
possibility
in every
impossible
cases.
7)
Let the
heart of
Cloudnine
praise Ye.
8)
Let the
souls of
the living
and invisible
creatures
praise thee.
9)
Blessed
be thy
Lord
our God.
10)
Be
magnified
oh Lord
Amen.
Selah!
©️C9fm™️
It was a vow for me from heaven to shall be a vessel of His praise.. An expression of His glory. So I'm always inspired and and motivated.
Ken Pepiton Jun 2022
lighter, on balance or noise? I imagine
minds must be spirit first. I maximise… diffusion

or do I surmise? I promise, a maxim,
I do not know, but may
I say to my self who has the keys,
and find
qwerty guy, let us pull the thread, I said
- inner self ware SDK-ith {Writ in LISP}
- Soft-ware Deployment Kick-in-the-head
Okeh, says my eye listening to BBC 4,
from everhowlong ago,
Auden and Turing, lauded by geeks
and the per-ifery of no-repro-models, idividuating.

Laughing I hear it said, College Students
believe every thing they read, is known
you belive, for a second
all of this is true, or may, could, be maybe
to all who read things they read right.
- or do they believe the things they read? Critical point.
---------------------------
True story, on the trail to Admah, from Zeboiim,

-later, maybe

Change from good enough,
to best imaginable, actual
heaven ahead of schedule.

Let us literally agree, literally means:
since the 1530s,
"in a literal sense,
according to the exact meaning
of the word or words used,"

From <https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=literally>

According to knowledge,
as my granddaughter, Delaney, has noticed.
Knowledge, itself, per se,
is the ultimate authority. She was seven.

To go into the garden, we must love each other or die.
The Daisy ad, played to boomer voters, reared
in public schools
with current events mandated
tested ala spelling bees, current events champs,
all aspiring Jeopardy champs, after retiring from…

That was the grey flannel mind, reset-
Total War, the 1965 one-off comic,
Musgrove ran away and joined the army.
- scattered brains far better than none
- -----------
I was away in 1968.

And when I returned,
I hid in here,
undermining reality, souldout.
- as conjecture has it I was expected
- to go into the ministry.
- It seems a deal was made,
- for my sister Peggy's unbaptized soul.
- I was sould to the Child Buyer… 1951
------ jump cut-
I escaped the historical 1970's

but for the mind virus common to cults.
--- my world furled tritest tricolor flat real.
TV Ad… in passing 1972… ALERT… no
repair called for, idle threat redeemed
in time, though, you know,
- hell, what if, Jesus is a Sadist?
idle threat, you
better believe, I am
gonna vote for good.
JBS library, and the KJV
Meldau's The Messiah,
in Both Testaments.

Phreak me out. This is that Neal Young trip.
Journey Through the Past,
Handel's Messiah, live from the Alamo Cult.
- we elected our own Mayor.
- So, sit on your bayonet
- Mr. Cahill from Rolling Stone…

and what else might I be
gonna vote for?
You can do anything with bayonets,
it is said, Napoleon said.
better believer, raises the ***,
_ there are two kinds of knowledge
------------ jump cut from the cover
of Rolling Stone. Bet me…
Genesis. Call, I raise you M-DNA.
good and evil, who told you she was naked?
-- is this poker or Go?
I thought it was truth or consequences,
from yes,
-oh, yeh, same…
They let anybody in this spirit realm.
------------- garden of LBJ's inaugural vision
Only evil knowing, no evil doing.
You never forget that.
--- the wedom I was
Divvied up to be.
Eretz
Persona. We ache
at evil's constant threat, gonna
gitchagitchagitcha
rub you raw
itchy ear, you hear,
have you never read,
-- SYTFiction formally,
some things one learns,
there comes a state… as
minds conform to standards.
-Same Yesterday Today Forever,
wake up.
face the music, pass water and cess.
Get the act together,
put the show on the air.
-Radioman remincing
-how he helped Sisyphus try once
more,  to activate the effectual
fervent mode
on purpose, roll on,
a job, from Truth, per said.
-----------
All the gangs I ever was near,
as an eligibility tech,
in the war
on poverty,
during the crack baby scare-
scare that was viral at the time.
-- those grew from wild boys,
corralled in the system,
susceptible to spiritual advisory
boredom
resulting in, yep,
the legendary wasted mind,
-time in mind, time may be deemed.
Used, not wasted…
made idle instead of being made
an idle mind's workshop,
fabricating confabulated reasons
for war, on call, pull the trigger,
ryhmes in y'mind, you know
- whatcheworth, y'little devil?

workshop… an idled mind, kick starts.
-New reality, a first whatifier glimpse.
May, I nod, may is your word in my wedom.

Look around, all these stupid
crack babies we was warning
don't you dare be born,
boy… you'd be better off dead.

-- what are we up to, wh'sgwanon?

We were born with a sense of common,
we know, without the filters emotions use,
we see through the glass at UHD and beyond

on wifi-only cellphones unupgraded years ago,
we are the world-
on the internet from McDonald's,
Persona Eretz,
we who read this line, we are attached
in context at the time, we are aware we are
in formed
ware, words in congress with progress,
pining to say, I think, Jerry Pournelle said:

Pens with motors are more powerful
than swords with motors.

Ai say, Intelligence twisted to defend oaths,
is powerless when opposing basic ethical I
Ai Go, win, causing no shame,
win by least possible point, of course,
through human events,
living history doxology. Sign off,

Three key salute.
Gemini pen Jun 2020
Open strings

A Dirge Poem
---------------------------------------

The sky trembled,  opening its door
A fallen angel's ascension
While the soul flew through the void
Afterlife,  tottering and hurtling
deity of a man is gone

Fire is succeeded by ash
A man's life is continue by his pride
Dwelling and wallowing in despair
With his heart giving doxology to Death,  
That sat on his half closed eye lid

Though his mind felt obnoxious
What can it do against the mighty hand of death,
That snake its arm over the man's spine
How will man live for eternity
When the soul is promised death

The man is gone,  the flame is off
Death,  the savior from pain
Using its pestle to poke the ear
Dominating the weakened spirit
With promising tale of ecstasy  

©Pen Of A True Gemini™
Art and Lit.

— The End —