Today’s cloud is a rainbow
Dark blue
Light blue
Orange
Pink
With white
Outlines

Some clouds are Pentecostal fury
Orange cotton burning
With daylight’s rage
Swirling and smoking
Working themselves
Up into a storm of retribution

The clouds descend
Bluish grey beasts
Swallowing
The skies
Consuming
All things in sight
Leaving nothing
But a lone tree
To stand against
The rain and sleet

†           †           †    

A quorum of biblical scholars
turned their doubts into thousands of dollars.
Armed with Document Q
they revealed nothing new
but the dirt neath’ the white of their collars.

A proud “health & wealth” Oklahoman
was renowned as a gospel-tent showman.
While the scriptures he twisted,
their tithing assisted
his rise from poor hick to rich Roman.

A sexually diverse professor
(assured he was not a transgressor)
spoke only of openness
glossing sin’s brokenness;
rainbows and tolerance—yes sir.

A Mormon, who lost his own ephod
Realized he was running quite slipshod
and invoked Joseph Smith.
(Yes, it may be a myth—
but it’s not like misplacing your I-pod…)

A Christian whose faith was prophetic
held to views that were truly pathetic.
This crazed Pentecostal,
not quite an apostle,
had taken an End-Times emetic.

A sober and staid Presbyterian
was distrustful of thoughts millenarian.
After smoking some bud,
he awoke with a thud;
in his sleep he’d become Rastafarian.

A preacher who fleeced his disciples
overdrew his own balance of scruples.
He was finally captured
(defrocked and un-raptured)
and rent by his destitute pupils.

A sister who waxed Pentecostal,
mistook herself for an apostle.
Speaking pure glossolalia
she sure could regale ya’
with prophecy; crazy—but docile.

My mother was
a first generation lesbian.
My father,
a first generation divorcee.
His father was the one child
of a public school teacher.
He found my grandmother at 18.
A farm child, one of seven.
A painter, a baker.
My mother's father
a single boy to three sisters.
His aggressive masculinity
kept the line clear and thick.
He found my mother's mother at 17.
A middle of seven Pentecostal children.
A beauty queen, an agoraphobic.
Each had five children.
The door-to-door salesmen/
homemaker and mother of boys duo
bet it all to open a hobby shop.
They were by far the poorest of the
watermelon farming siblings.
They were artists and explorers.
The high school graduate and ladies man,
was a logger before a father.
And the single mother of 25 he left
scarcely left her home at all.
Neither pair made it big.
But they made my father.
A lonely, post middle aged man.
The poorest of his brothers.
A used to be pilot,
and could have been teacher,
a want to be pioneer.
A nuclear family super fan
who never got his way.
And they made my mother.
A nervous, eccentric hippie
who doesn't know how to talk to her siblings.
A woman working her *** off to excel at lower middle class.
A builder, a fighter, a **** good mother.
Even if accidentally so.
She has plans to travel.
He has dreams to live by a lake.
And they made me.
A single girl among three boys.
A quirky, nervous tomboy.
A thinker, a gardener, a climber.
A loser and a dreamer by blood.

Dear God
I love you so much
that I want to
put my **** inside you.
You gave me freedom,
and a set of rules to follow.
And even if my faith is based on a personal relationship with you,
it should most certainly mend me to be a true follower of these rules.
I thank you for saving me from my own independent ways,
and for taking my fear of death away
that your followers carefully planted inside me.
Oh God!
I love the thought of someone loving me!

I

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul’s sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time’s covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

              If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world’s end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

              If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

II

Ash on and old man’s sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house—
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
       This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
       This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the ****.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
       This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning
     Near the ending of interminable night
     At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
     Had passed below the horizon of his homing
     While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
     Between three districts whence the smoke arose
     I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
     Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
     And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
     The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
     I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
     Both one and many; in the brown baked features
     The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
     So I assumed a double part, and cried
     And heard another’s voice cry: ‘What! are you here?’
Although we were not. I was still the same,
     Knowing myself yet being someone other—
     And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
     And so, compliant to the common wind,
     Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
     Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
     We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: ‘The wonder that I feel is easy,
     Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
     I may not comprehend, may not remember.’
And he: ‘I am not eager to rehearse
     My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
     These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
     By others, as I pray you to forgive
     Both bad and good. Last season’s fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
     For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
     And next year’s words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
     To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
     Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
     In streets I never thought I should revisit
     When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
     To purify the dialect of the tribe
     And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
     To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort.
     First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
     But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
     As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
     At human folly, and the laceration
     Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
     Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
     Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others’ harm
     Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
     Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
     Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
     Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.’
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
     He left me, with a kind of valediction,
     And faded on the blowing of the horn.

III

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

IV

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
     Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
     To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
     We only live, only suspire
     Consumed by either fire or fire.

V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

By This Sword 911 Is Avenged
This was written right after 911 now I’m rewriting it from the time that has passed a cooling a distancing has occurred in us not in our
Enemies I will write the first paragraph basically as it was written then go from there. They have cells; we have wells and mines, Wells
Of emotion for God, flag and country the mines are far flung and close at hand. From these mines, the blacksmith is hammering out a New sword of liberty the material comes from all of our battle fields in our national history. These make up the strong wide back
part Of the sword the sharp keen edge that is terrifying to behold this material from the Pentagon, Trade Towers, and from our four
American commercial airliners filled with Americans. The dross of the terrorists have been skimmed off and purified by our national prayers
And solemn vows for justice now stands one giant the sum of us all. The sword has just been placed in his hand. Let’s talk about the
Sword it cuts both ways-coming and going. The giant holds it flat, moves it back and forth in front of him underneath the land is
Pictured perfectly back up on the blade it hums like a dynamo let’s start it from the place the atrocity and carnage occurred I wrote
More about Miss Liberty in Imposter you ought to read it one of our greatest minds for freedom and liberty Lincoln said these should
Be taught to every child and from every pulpit and school house and every public arena should resound with the truth about this
Great enterprise and experiment in human government. I also wrote Freedoms Citadel and Fertile ground about Jefferson and the
Constitution the reading of them was tepid they mean little in today’s conscious mind but in these very matters freedom live or dies
The blade appears out of the black smoke that stunted and muted Miss Liberty and her awesome record and history here is where
Hell left its signature. I will after all add a part of what I wrote in Imposter America proud land of liberty; too long it’s been just a
Veneer, freedom you espouse, to have this you must clean prejudice from your house. True greatness finally you will know, when it
Shines through all colors, to do this you must rediscover the bedrock of your heritage. Truly believe the words that say "We the
People words that shook the elements, only being surpassed at creations stage. To long our apathy has been collaborating with our
Enemy’s no more, this challenge is given to restore. Opportunity’s open door let us our energy out pour. That freedoms passion soars,
As in the past ******* it tore. Land of light continue, Miss Liberty your lamp burning bright. Oh great nation receive your benediction
And knighthood from her continuous burning flame now advance our freedom and liberty through the bright rays of truth that founded
This nation the blade shines and burns away all deceit it tells truth and shows our mistakes and so when it passes the white house one
Who comes from the fount and central place where Lincoln’s Shadow is so pronounced if Lincoln could rise he would make short order
Of the junior senator from Illinois he would Exposé his political views as not true American but a hybrid who speaks a world view not
A Central American one his history makes him Espouse thoughts and ideas that are not held by most Americans they are contraire to
What the founders envisioned but with Personality and ability to speak well he has made inroads especially in a liberal setting the voters
Will realign this error the blade passes on inland it moves across the coal mines of Pennsylvania it stops and hums with a drowning
Sound at the site where brave Americans Fought in the sky and died saving many others here is a great place to show the difference in
The two different swords battling for Rule in our world today yes they have a sword it is one that beheads their own people or at
Times the lives of the innocents must perish to it savagery forged in hell it gleams but with every conceivable power of evil the more
They use it the more they destroy they burry themselves in the tangled web that no man can escape from a recent telling of Liberia’s
Civil war will cast true light on the sword they wield with such relish one of the Generals in this conflict and let me add here the same is
Going to happen in to the drug lords in Mexico in one form or another salvation or destruction from Him who is really in charge so this
So called General in Liberia was doing what he did best slaughtering the innocent and helpless two of the nuns ***** and killed with
Their three companions had just attended our worship service two days before their deaths. But into this evil spectacle He who is all
power and holy spoke general you are nothing more than someone who is being used by the devil and the devil had one other to ****
Three hundred people a day add that up to three hundred and sixty five days he did it to keep empowered by the devil but our general
Couldn’t get away from those simple but true words he came to the united Pentecostal mission church went to the altar first he lay
Down the defiled sword went to a church that preached baptism in the titles instead of Jesus name the bible says if you desire truth on
The inward parts you will be led to all truth he argued for six months saying he saw no difference but he called from Nigeria all excited
There was a difference God gave him the revelation the bible says Christ is the beginner and finisher of our faith he starts and finishes
What he starts this former butcher went to the altar in the mission mentioned repented was rebaptized in Jesus name filled with the
Holy Ghost spoke in tongues as the bible said this is the only way to remove the sword from a deceived and dying race born to blood
And cruelty because the master liar entered the world as a false religion in the desert an unexplained terrifying light is gleaming
As a mirror but this one is shaped as an eagle with its talons inches from the back of a unholy fiend his life is an insult to all eastern people
That love their country as we love ours pray that we honor our dead by not making widows and orphans of the innocent. Bin Laden
Stand if you can we did not desire blood but you cut open our veins made us replace our loved ones with marble stone we hear a new
Sound in the desert, groans of death, and your fixed lot by our God who is true and holy.

The lion mentioned is not the man but the
hate and the source of all hate is Satan “Bread corn is bruised” Isa 28:28 Ignatius
Martyred in Rome after being taken from Antioch, who is better to speak to our recently martyred people He said God has made me
Bread for his elect, and if it be needful that the bread must be ground in the teeth of the lion to feed his children, blessed is the name
of The lord a new Christian foundation is being laid and within the walls of this our national home. There is a sacred field with deep
Furrows the victims and future military dead the precious seed. Our tears and their sacrifice will water this future harvest, from this
Rich grain the baskets of spiritual bread will overflow, we presume not to feed ourselves but our enemies also the Arab world cries
from Hunger and evil agents of Satan feed them poison. However we know the great physician who will heal us from this blight.
The blade has passed to the end of our land and back prayer alone can keep it pure and sharp and it will devour the enemy of us all the sword
Satan wields an ineffective beaten sword if we but pray for truth and light for all.

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?

Happy Trails

The trail with Roy is a long and winding one for the family I was in we were the ones who chased the
Television viewing from friends and family’s house one night Lucy who made your jaw hurt from
Laughing so hard then Saturday night lineup at grandma Denton’s but it was best on Saturday afternoon
When we went to Tower Hill on the egg run the last house in the neighborhood on the south side they
Had the corner house and out the back door you would go right into the field. The way the magic started
Run in set down in the floor the old gentlemen would put it on the right channel and
Then there he would be shooting riding the golden palomino as he rode it was a high point every time I used
to Fantasize That he and Dale would come through Pana in their big blue Cadillac especially after it raced through the Prayer room at our United Pentecostal church that Roy and Dale received the Holy Ghost later is was a
Thrill when Colonel Harland Sanders followed in Roy and Dales steps for Roy it was all of his sheet music
Showed up at our church for the Colonel it was Kentucky Fried chicken buckets at general conference for
Offering collection plates. He wouldn’t come to me so I went to him Tower Hill to Apple Valley took
some years I was on my way to Palm Springs that lies about a hundred and some miles further out in the
Desert first I was doing what I have always loved and it was more thrilling to be going to his house I was
Cutting across the high desert in a brand new car I was breaking it in I ran in excess of a hundred miles
An hour for over an hour just me the desert and the Joshua trees they held their arms skyward as their
Name sake held his arms skyward to Jehovah in bible times while I smoked a streak across that beautiful
Stark landscape I stayed first at Victorville about four miles from Apple Valley where back then Roy had
His museum his house on Tomahawk Lane and the museum were both built by his son Dusty’s
Construction Company the house is round and the stone fence contained wagon wheels with RR as a
Brand inlaid in metal it was kind of funny at the motel I watched Gene and Pat Butrum movies while
They introduced them form a studio made at his museum in LA as the desert wind howled throughout the night I never caught Roy
At the museum on his frequent visits but I did meet Dale at her house and talked to her briefly half a
Dream fulfilled I got a special answer to the other after returning home I sent my writing to Roy it was
The early stuff not the fifty pieces I’ve written here but it included lost friend Disgrace Imposter life force
And about thirty total he and Dale and the Sons of the pioneers were making an appearance at
Marriott’s Great America I stood back off at the side but Dale spoke to Roy he focused on me and held
My gaze for a long time he showed me to him I had value my writing has effected others they stare long
And hard trying to get it and understand some say it’s too deep and hard to understand not if you
Approach it thoughtfully if you want shallow meaningless quick reading you will have to look else where
Trails end we were at the Hilton Suites at Disneyland it was our anniversary I opened the door to get the
Complimentary paper there was Roy rearing on trigger he traded the golden palomino for streets of gold as Iva and Others I’m looking forward to that great waking up morning.

He called his older and baby sister home

Leukemia fought back and forth now it came to claim the soul those I cherish most on this earth were to
Be consumed at the deepest depths of the caldron but friend you see I know someone he faced death
Most cruelest blows and was victories so being human and facing pain and sorrow at such heights I ran
To the only place I knew back to the motel in California where he flooded our room with such peace we
Only stopped for the night to break up the drive from LA back to San Francisco the bay area it was
Christmas but we never made it home who can leave when the very air you breathe is saturated with
Love and a peace you have never known before at the time I didn’t know my only sister had died but He
Knew so I prayed that for this situation but they always say God is not limited so he did move in their
Pain my wife the older sister with his next to older sister and her daughter were in the bedroom by his
Side when he peacefully passed the doctor warned that in some cases this disease at death will cause
The person to bleed out every ounce of blood God spared us from that horror he only dropped his
Shoulder and with a couple of puffs of air he was gone and God helped my wife in this way one of the
Books I read to her to get her to sleep is Oma she is a united Pentecostal preacher her story is one of
Terrible hardship after being filled with the Holy Ghost speaking in tongues that is biblical way of
Salvation her husband an unbeliever tried to **** her three times and seemingly even more cruel he and
His mother conspired together and took her five children and one was a nursing baby but she stayed
True to God and her ministry grew and flourished the bible says God is a ever present help in the time of
Trouble and her prayer and mine was help us Lord for we are troubled he sustained Oma and new babies
Born into God’s kingdom through her ministry became her children so God dropped this thought in my
Wife’s heart she said she felt like Oma when her brother died it was right it was strong it held while the
Storm of death was trying to flatten her the next to the oldest sister the one with her daughters and
Husband bore the brunt of this two year battle pressed crushed grinded by what was happening to her
Brother my heart bled most for her God poured in the love from the unseen and laughter is like a
Medicine he supplied that in quaintest portions God uses clowns to bring relief to pain first you have to
Go down in that valley be torn apart then you are given still that which you lack to enter such sacred
Ground and add the antidote that will guard and protect those that God cares to comfort it was great to
Learn although Joe wasn’t a priest in the spiritual sense he was an uncommon one in the human sense
The words of his friends that streamed in told that story and his best friend the next to the oldest
Daughter’s husband capped it when he spoke for the family someone special lived among us and now
Was gone but he will live in each new day bring those same gifts he shared he didn’t have a lot but it
Was All yours if you needed it thats quiet a life in any body’s book I said it before and I will say it again
Farewell Prince a kingdom you now have found

"No man loves God who hates his kind;
Who tramples on his Brother's heart and soul.
Who seeks to shackle, cloud or fog the mind
By fears of Hell has not perceived our goal.

God-sent are all religions blest;
And Christ; the Way, the Truth and Life
To give the heavy-laden rest
And peace from Sorrow, Sin and Strife.

At His request the Universal Spirit came
To all the churches; not to one alone;
On Pentecostal morn a tongue of flame
Round each apostle as a halo shone.

Since then, as vultures ravenous with greed, We oft have battled for an empty name
And sought by dogma, edict, creed,
To send each other to the flame.

Is Christ then divided? Was Cephas or Paul
Nailed to the Cross to die ?
If not: Then why these divisions at all?
Christ's love doth enfold you and I.

His pure sweet love is not confined
By creeds which segregate and raise a wall.
His love enfolds, embraces Humankind;
No matter what ourselves or him we
call.

Then why not take Him at His word?
Why hold to creeds which tear apart ?
But one thing matters be it heard,
That brother-love fill every heart.

There is but one thing that the world has need to know;
There is but one balm for all our human woe;
There is but one way that leads to heaven above;
That way is human sympathy and love."

MAX HEINDAL

•||~•¥•~^\:://^~•¥•~||•

Venom be spat from the tongue that blinds.
Twixt the lovers.
Whose hearts, no longer entwined.
Words tied and tangled.
Twisted and lost.
Love becomes mangled.
Crumbled to dust.

No words dare be spoken.
The lovers that were.
Invoked the monster of Lady Medusa.
Screeching siren.
Lady's on fire.
Don't dare put her out.

Her eyes surely saved for you.
Muted sounds.
Exploding fear.
Hearing her dear.
Utters last squeak.
Unable to speak.
Bit his own tongue.
As she turns him to stone.
With eyes that don't see.
(c)LIVVI








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I rarely use Costa, I will be working back at Winchester hospital shortly.
I will use their canteen, the food is generally very nice x














Revealed: The squalor inside Costa coffee shops

A total of 23 Costas got two or less stars in their most recent inspections, including a hospital branch which had paninis at risk of contamination with bacteria which can cause paralysis and death.



dailymail.co.uk



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Olivia Kent







Olivia Kent Ward , starting Monday x

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Philip McCarthy







Philip McCarthy Good luck with the job Olivia, But Im a bit of a coffee freak but will never use Costa it alwaysgives me bad guts ache afterwards.

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Olivia Kent







Olivia Kent Thank you Philip **

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Philip McCarthy







Philip McCarthy Hey I'm at the Cafe Reflections for the first time. It's good here x Photos to follow

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"Super cool."

"My boy"

Jade Xuereb's photo.


"A big shout out to everyone at the Amy Winehouse Foundation gig last night! Did two sets, first just me and the second backing."

Gray Ian's photo.

Waritsara Karlberg's photo.


"Storm Journey * unbreaking stone the key that unlocks the sky, and something races lionlike from beyond he thunderclap and the forest thrashes and waves like the choir in a Pentecostal church "yes, Jesus! Thankya, Lawwwd!" yes, there will be water if God wills it, so 'tis said. i read something in the living strokes of skyfire, the dance of something both benevolent and dangerous, and i can taste it like wine on the breath of the onrushing storm. it tastes like life, pouring into my lungs so fiercely i feel like i might be consumed by an overabundance of vitality. i can see that vitality all around me, the fecundity of Summer, relentless in its upward-thrusting, blossoming, breaking from the loam, bursting from the chrysalis, defying the arid winterlock that held the ground mere months ago. i walk from miracle into miracle, from myth into myth, the Universe enlarging with each step, until i'm carried like an infant in the arms of a loving storm."

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Karen Wilmott

I.

All I can say is that it is a hum
Reverberant, droning, consistent
Quiet thrumming along the surface
Stirs me awake and then it fills me with
Ichor and I sip, sip, and sip (until I'm drunk).

All I can say is that it is a hum,
Quiet droning, a hushed whisper,
Loud screaming inside the head,
A piercing headache, sometimes a discordant wail.

II.

You sit on the porcelain lip of the tub
Hooded eyes lowered, your fingertips
Pressed together like the steeple of a church

I think: Yes, this is what Renaissance painters modeled angels after. Your skin is like a rose-tinged alabaster, your cheeks Suffused with blood. The painter took a measured time with you.

"Do you honestly think you'll be okay on your own?" You ask.

Silence, she greets you.

III.

Hasn't my mother violently
Ejected me from the nest
I'm only a few months old, a nestling
Wings awkward and clumsy
Beak agape for masticated food
(I'm not ******* ready yet)
Ejects me
Her beak threatens to pierce my shell

This is dejà vu.
I've conversed before
Different room, different domain,
Different speaker, a sicker listener
I'm as sick, sick as **** now

Mind, she hums, crescendo
Crescendo high like a choral piece
Orchestral, and this is resplendent
Everything is gleaming
Your face encased in a soft glow
Halo of light
Your face, cherubic,
His face, Romanesque, was sculpted like a Bronze Age statue.

"Your mother didn't give you the right set of tools. My mother at least gave me–" he falters.

IV.

I remember calling the ex 28 times in the span of 2 hours.
The policeman, he counted.
Thrashing on the floor, weeping like Persephone must've in Hades, like a fallen Mortal reborn as a minor goddess
Stripped me, he did though, of my wings
Avian feathers streaked with years-old blood

My tears, why yes, they're bleeding rivulets.
My ****-brown eyes alight on the bleach
Yes, sweet death

"Stop calling me. I'm ******* another ***** right now," the ex says.

V.

Memory is so faded,
Plays like a scratched and worn cassette tape

Mind is a-humming, humming, my mind is
Orchestral choir, church choir, Pentecostal
Now, I eat ichor, ravenous, now I am Closer to God and she is a woman,  
Draped in funeral attire
She weeps, soundless, a Seer

"I don't know," I say.

"The med isn't working," you reply
Cherubic face shifts and morphs
Melts into soft glow light,
One with the halo, is the halo

Nothing makes sense, everything else does too. My mind races, cassette tapes
Whirs, skips, images flash, I weep
Weep like Sisyphus
Eyes spilling rivers of penny-tinged
Crimson, sanguine ichor

One day he'll taste it and hate me,
Loathe me, the jade-eyed serpent
Poison-fanged
I'll clutch his scales until my fingers are Cut, welts, mottled bruises, fading scars
I will be punished, am punished
The illness, the eternal Boulder on the eternal hill, it rolls and rolls, my mouth agape

I await my cyclic fate ordained by the Higher God

VI.

How many men have I lured into the chamber?
Drunk on sweet wine or mead?
Petrified into osseous
Their gazes failing to avert from my Penetrative stare?

He was an errant General, beautiful but stupid, his mind a one way road, his temper unpredictable and flighty
Oh, how I loved the duality of him
We philosophized
Theorized on the Gods
Laughed at their follies
Wondered at the mysteries of the universe, Her deep annals

Oh, how I loved the physicality of him
Tight, corded muscle, his back like a Wound spring, Bronze hand
Grasping a silver sword

Hark! His rounded shield is lifted, my hideous reflection stares back at me
My eyes, widened, the cup of manna Clatters, soundly in the chamber
Reverberates
Bounces off my throne of skulls

How many men have I–?

VII.

"Can you honestly say that you can take care of yourself?" You ask from the place atop the lip of the porcelain tub. Your hands, a steeple, a church spire
Perhaps, you are a lesser God, perhaps we are all falling Lucifers, wingless, blinded by vengefulness and betrayal
Perhaps, he too is–?

"Am I an infant to you?" I ask.
The headache splits
The pain demands, claws at the side of my skull, dances across my nerves, liquid iron on my tongue

Because when did I?

Oh, Sisyphus you weep! You, who slaughtered so many!

Oh, Medusa, you wept, you beautiful serpentine harlot, you *****, you–
The choir is a strong crescendo, Ascending, ascending, ascending
Lowers like a thrumting and heavy bellow
Deep, rich, and full, timbre

"Everyone, all your life has said you were crazy, but I don't think you are, I–"

VIII.

The tapes skip, voices garbled, muffled, Indiscernible and distorted
Mind shrieks, lower now, quieter now, Barely audible, a fading whisper, your halo Recedes, soft glow dims

Your hands separate, the steeple, no, the Spire collapses.
Held breath hitches,
Serpentine tendrils become wisps of hair, Cloudlike

We are lesser gods, not quite mortal, not quite divine

The itch demands to be felt, protests
And I, I scream endless into a dark chasm
My voice, it does not call back to me
It does not–

"I don't know."

Now that people are becoming more aware of my poetic efforts, interests are being expressed regarding the background of my poetry - in addition, to my spiritual muse. In this installment, I speak to a poem that ends in a direction, not initially considered...

I've attended Church services for more than 3.5 decades; as a youth, I was raised in a Baptist Church (in southern Maine). For those unfamiliar with this division of Christianity, there's nothing more important than studying "The Word of God". And hear me - there is nothing inherently wrong with studying the Bible; it's one of those necessities as a Christian. And for me personally, it just wasn't enough. As much as I love The Word, having a real and personal relationship with Jehovah became more obvious and critical for my spiritual growth. Eventually, I found my way into the Pentecostal Church, got filled with the Holy Spirit and learned to speak in tongues. Accepting this gift (of tongues) raised my ability to build my relationship with Christ. In effect, it significantly improved the way I'm able to give praises to God and to talk with Him. I share this background information to give a flavor of my thought process (that influences my spiritual writings) - and not as a criticism for those who have not accepted this gift from God. (People who have read my poetry should readily agree that it's fairly evident that my writing is based on the Scriptures and does not contradict the basic tenets of the Christian faith.)

In order to remain within my profession of I.T. (Information Technology), I've had to relocate to different U.S. states on the east coast. So I found myself living in southern Connecticut for about a decade. For more than three years, I attended this popular Church in Milford. Despite my own "baggage", I was a productive Christian, giving my time, talent, tithe and offerings to the Church freely and whole-heartedly. As a result, I started to dream of how I could give more of myself to Him - to be able to give my entire life for God's purposes (as He intends for everyone). My poetry manuscript was completed and blindly rejected by the Church - the clergy was not interested or curious about the "Christian poetry" I had written. Undeterred, I had already started working on additional poetry manuscripts. Wanting more of Christ in my life, fascination with Enoch began to grow at this time; very little about him is shared in the Bible and I never thought to research him on the Internet. The pages of my Bible are written upon with notes, concepts and ideas as I studied The Word and listened to sermons throughout the years. And yet, I noticed how little commentary about Enoch was known to me in my notes. What did Enoch know that the rest of us fail to understand? At the beginning of the Wednesday evening service, parishoners are allowed to submit questions - to be addressed directly by the bishop, prior to the evening service. I had begun assembling my poem fragments and phrases, but had not started the construction of the poem itself. So one night I submitted a simple question: "Why don't we know more about Enoch's life?"

I've come to learn that preachers are fickle creatures; they claim to be "dead men" - people who are unoffendable when interacting with less knowledgeable individuals in spiritual matters. And yet, with my analytical brain and decades of Church experience, I naturally rub minsters against their grain. After all, "iron sharpens iron" and my words catch on their spiritual burrs - which is something that ministers typically don't fully appreciate when dealing with me. My innocent submission uncovered an overly sensitive nerve, quickly made apparent by the bishop's unrighteous reaction to my inquiry. Instead of answering my question in a positive and forthright manner, he exploded into a contrite diatribe "of how I suffered from an escapist's mentality". Naturally I was unimpressed with his carnal response and came to the immediate conclusion that he didn't have a viable response. I'm fairly sure that this event wasn't lost on the congregation either; for when someone avoids answering a direct question, people can easily draw their own conclusions. When the time came for me to compose this poem, the minister's words were still grinding on my spirit - thus setting the tone of this work. Although different from my other poems, I can't say that I'm disappointed with the ending of my poem, given the actions of Christ's dealings with the Pharisees and Saducees. If anything, I've followed His earthly example. This poem is my reaction to the bishop's inability to provide me with a solution that I had sought.　



P.S. Although there are other people who never experienced death, such as Elijah, who was taken to heaven in a fiery chariot, Enoch was essentially snatched away by the "Hand of God", so that "he was no more". No other documentation exists, that details those who prevented their physical death in this particular way.

Before I start I’m going to stand before you bare and open like in front of a looking glass that’s what
Their called in James town up in gold country they have the old hotels that were there a
Hundred Years ago they just have seven to eight rooms no phones or televisions rustic and
Original that will play into this write but for me personally I come to my computer with burning
Tears flowing down my face with my heart broken this also will bleed into this write I’m
Celebrating people that we have lost and a country teetering on disaster in the case of the
People I can’t let go and as my country dies I die with it and lately I feel the sooner the better
This feeling is a new ripple in my life maybe it prophetic I had a dream that the first girl I loved
And lost died it troubled me a great deal in the dream there was a coffin and I saw her standing
There what was the worst I lost contact over the thirty years in California I found out where she
Was when later I checked her home town obituaries it wasn’t her the dream was about it was
Her mother she died of cancer on my birthday I sent Linda a book without saying who it was
From the book’s title is Oma it is about the life of a one God Pentecostal pioneer preacher from
Our faith it spells out the true salvation message and the hardships she endured to give it to the
Needy of her day I can do no more I gave her the greatest gift I could ever give this is my
Conviction and it stands true for me buffeted by doubts of others because if you truly say you
Love them it stands true for all time or you were insincere in the first place that can be a pitfall
Of youth I told about how I fell in love at six with Eileen you wouldn’t understand the depth of
Pain and the tears that came from my convulsing tiny body when through her window I heard
She was getting married years have come and gone in sizable number I still love her I wasn’t
Just saying something the small scars on my heart are practically invisible because my heart has
Gotten bigger and adult scars hide the smaller ones Linda, Judy from ***** wine country I left
Town with a dead soul and much pain I held up in a hotel in Monterey twenty five hundred
Miles from home let’s just say Napa wine means a lot more to me than most people it has a
Beautiful girl attached with it and lost because at that time I wouldn’t promise to stay in
California I have just got out of the service the timber land of home was calling and I had to
Answer she turned out to be the luckiest of all God gave me a promise the night after I slept in  
A Cow pasture with my duffel bag as a pillow and a number of cows at a short distance the next
Day at the camp meeting the main speaker told these words someone here has a drunkard for a
Father and a harlot for a mother but God is going to use you in a great way this was spoken
Again a month later at a youth camp I stood outside on the edge of the crowd the preacher
Said the same thing not about the parents but What God was going to do but he added this
Killer stipulation he said you can change the hands on the clock but you can’t change the time I
Entered into marriage with a southern girl from outside of Nashville I’m still waiting many
Snows of winter has come and gone they are less numerous than my wife’s tears but factor in
The pain and its even you see to reach others you must feel the blast of many contrary winds
Live a life where you can’t be and give what you promised I guess this belongs in a private
Journal not openly public but I want you to know what and how I write is genuine and the day is
Still coming that from great suffering I will be able to bless and give not hot air but real and true
Help that will heal your spirit

But
Love hung on a tree
Bruised body
blood flowed
Love died for my shame

Love didn't look at skin or color
Love didn't look at nationality,
legality
Love look at souls
and said we're brothers
Blood flowed
for every nation,
tribe and
tongue

But we've forgotten.

And now
the prophets of the streets
crying like Pentecostal priests
Beating chests and
stomping feet
Begging
those choosing blindness
to see

See our pain
Feel our fury
Our righteous anger
rages
against injustices you pretend can
remain unseen

You were born with this freedom
to close your eyes
We were born into a world
stabbing us from behind

So don't
bring your Bibles,
shove your tracts
drag us down aisles
You weren't here from the beginning
Fighting to break chains and
set captives free

"We have nothing to lose but our chains"

Our battle cry is freedom
justice,
equality for all
Jew and Gentile
Slave and free
Now the verses can read
Black and white
Upper class and lower
College educated, GED

You know, He's crying with us
shouting, marching
Beating chest and
stomping feet

Don't think you're bringing Jesus to us
He's already here,
on the streets
Prophecy of protests
Righteous rage against
iniquity
Jesus, the revolutionary

God with us
On the ground with us

Love doesn't look at
skin or color
And love hung from
a tree

It is our duty to fight for our freedom
Love has already won the day

And we have nothing to lose but our chains
We will fight to lose our chains

Judy Judy Kansas cutie / it starts in the heartland / Tornado = social change through manipulated crisis / Toto the only free agent / Dorothy struck on her head by the closing window of virtual possibility / She realizes that hope'n'change have reached the prairie / Alice in Wonderland Hollywood / Kansas as futurist narrative / Star Wars pre-dated / It's a Wonderful Mythic Life / Miss Gulch as Henry Potter / Witchery in bitchery: Hillary 2016 / Scarecrow as Celtic bog-sacrifice victim / Tinman as ****** therapy client / Did that hurt? No - it felt wonderful ! / Bible-belt Pentecostal subtexts: "the anointing" / obsolete leonine monarchies / Louis Quatorze the Sun King /  enlightenment through concussion / the tyrant must be resisted from the heartland / populist progressives plot stealthily to justify their rule through the wizardry of science / the tyrant utilizes tech to manipulate the credulous / green state fascism / journey out of ontic inevitability into the futurist nightmare / eco-mammon bailouts / infantile mental midgets ruled by witch-tyrants = One World Munchkinland / Dorothy as redeemer-Messiah / Dorothy as Mary Poppins / America exports populist prophecy to the greater world / Glinda the Matriarch-Goddess / Glinda as transcendent Wisdom / the Anti-witch antidote / Patriarchy creates "special effects" subterfuge / flying monkeys: shock-troops of the witch / simian social justice warriors / Obama as Witch of West AND Wizard simultaneously / flying monkeys: brown-shirt armies of new multi-culti order / George W. Bush was the the witch the house ("Hope & Change') fell on / Over the Rainbow: somewhere beyond ****** identity grievance-mongering / There's no place like the Restoration of All Things

The setting was between Oconee and Ramsey my uncle Oroville Denton is an ordained minister
With the United Pentecostal Church he was putting on a brush arbor reenactment our church
Has what is called a testimony service where anyone can stand a tell of anything special that
God has done for you they have someone to lead the service and this was what I was doing but
The PA system was acting up while I was talking my voice was being bounced back where I
Could hear it that was where I was wonder struck I was talking normal but that wasn’t what I
Was Hearing there was spirit covering my words they make a lot of the Holy Grail as they
Should As a Relic of antiquity and it connection with Christ but it is still just a lifeless object but
Hear the Living God was speaking I felt this utter sensation of vibrant electrifying tenderness
Bathed in Unfathomable love a richness of texture that was profound the very distillation of the
Sublime mixed with human thought and expression it was warm endearing and it entered the
Soul as food ultimately different than what I experienced before except when I listened to the
Pastor in Monterey California he spoke and this sensation occurred within the spirit the same as
When you consume natural food this in the simple act of talking about the goodness of God the
World was set at a variance what was simple was astonishing the world of the unseen was
Becoming visible at least in speech anyway it was charged with supernatural renowned
Offerings that took you to levels not otherwise found inexplicable taste unbound knowing was
Fixed you were truly speaking God speak a well filled with knowing fulfillment thrilling
Spell bounding gifts sought and found by the ancients provided to common man illustrious
Clean and gleaming secrets the foretelling of dreams that begin in Heaven and then stream into
Human life truly before banners unfurled Holy and grand fortune awaits he who listens bends
His will to the flourishing uncommon vistas the predates earth and all that it is or ever will be
You are tied to immortal strands the quests of earths wisest who fail because they depend on
Only self as the one who holds the only possible answers when towers of attributable power
Stand without perplexity to the lowest searcher all is revealed it is all at the desecration of the
Giver not by might or power but by humility of need this world is bridged to the next we are
Endowed with all that is needed to secure Heaven for those that will obey truth and it just
Cause in the earth

Scooped some loops of troops with their heads offed, scoffed, at the loss with the cost from my own losses, in lawless, flawlessness accosted by pentecostal brothels hugging it out with the clout of the lord.

Oh lord! what am i talking about, as I am doubting the amount i can pile on my brow, and not break a sweat, playing my stakes to their best, and jettin, while i'm still a veteran in the scrambled lettering of my iris, spreading viruses, inside us, uniting us, to Set...

The scores straight with annihilation on my mind, and an island for them to find, my station at the shrine, to launch codes in kind, to your denied existence of the lines in time, cruxing the fluxing path of inevitability, crossing out the math of probability, clearly seeing everything that once be, bettered. Be. Been, about to be, grinning again.

Because it tickles when i'm stoopid, but im snoopin steadily through your blueprints, moving amongst your movements, and proving that you will lose this, in clueless, fluid, drizzling down the drain with your social stains, still straining the veins to my brain, trying to maintain one sane morsel of a reason not to **** you, i love you, but booooom.

Making room for my assumed solitude, in astute rudeness to the rudimentary business of idiots, stand back i got this, and when im into it, there are no limits to what my digits do, in true blinding hoops of halos bent, in unrelenting wrenching of a stint, of greed, but having everything needed, and settling for sanity.

If humanity had a hand, it may demand a stance in return for a burn that's graphed away, in firm concerns made in forgotten stays of my patience, ghost writing in payments, to my slavers, giving blood to my saviors, saving us from the lesson.

I merely choose to burn in the learning curve, that curbs my satisfaction with distractions, with past tense presentations, intending to mend in venting of the clues to the other news askew ..

In smoking away the blues to hues of happy, haphazardly, chappy in the final hour of sappy nights, of goodnightless fights in righteous might, of my mandatory story telling, of the felling of the fireworks in finale fires that burned, until the uncle died, and smirked from the casket of a bizerk card shark, barking from the starkly stripped semblance of a resistance to tyranny

Its tearing me up to think, that i care, laying bare, to the bruises, these intrusive abusers use to move this rock from its plot, and stop, a catastrophe..

But i'm mastering.

Disguise.

I was one drink in on Friday night
I heard the church bells 'cross the square
When the barkeep signalled next one's free
And to me, this was quite rare

There was Billy, me, two drunks and Sue
and a waitress name of Shirley
She said "that bell just rang on sixteen times"
I said "that means it's early"

the bell rang on four days one time
found a cat locked in the tower
sister mary nice as pie
thought our bell had found the power

she ran through town spouting off
how Christ has come again
when it was a 42 pound tabby cat
making out like old big ben

the pastor ran to city hall
you see he'd lost his keys
someone had to stop that noise
made by a fat cat full of fleas

fourteen rings meant two o'clock
fifteen meant half eight
eleven meant eleven and
twenty one meant you were late

it hadn't rung for fifteen years
then the new pastor came to town
I never really trusted him
he wore a smile, not a frown

i'm here to bring the church to you
i'm a pastor of the people
I laughed when I heard him say this
I wasn't going near his steeple

the church had been built catholic
turned Lutheran for a bit
United, Pentecostal too
And then the Baptist group bought it

they had a real fine choir
did great shows, and fixed the bell
it hasn't rung right since that day
Now the Baptists left as well

They run a new age service now
you know, electric candles and fake wine
confession is a long dead ghost
and you get penance points on line

they don't hold service Sunday's
the pastor, he sleeps in
they pray together through the week
and to me that is a sin

the bells go off eight times a day
sometimes nine, or even more
they keep the pigeons from the square
and shake the paint right off the door

I sit and worship faithfully
at the bar, with my drunk friends
with some cotton ***** for our poor ears
to use until the **** bell ends

i'm one drink past the last one
we've bet on how many times the bell
will ring in the next hour
you can never really tell

For now, i'll stay here drinking
with the gang here and the cat
he's deaf as any post you'll see
but he's still near twice as fat

he can't hear the bell's loud ringing
oh.....twenty three...this one's on me
maybe next time will ring sixteen more
and i'll get another beer for free.

I went to church Sunday like I always do
My Pentecostal Pastor could see right through me
He looked into my eyes and asked me
"Are you living for God Tana?"
I looked straight back at him and said
"Yes sir."

My Kingdom has a place for you.
If you followed all the requests, I asked of you?
But I'm Catholic.
My Kingdom has a place for you.

Well, I'm Protestant.
My Kingdom has a place for you.
Well, I'm Methodist.
My Kingdom is reserved for you.
If you abide by my commandments.

They were spoken and written to guide you.

But I'm Muslim.
My Kingdom is reserved for you.
I'm Pentecostal.
Still, my Kingdom is yours too.

Whatever religion you belongs too?
I don't discriminate like people amongst you do?
I notice.
I acknowledge it.
And decides, who comes into my place.
For, I Am God.

Even if you are spiritual only.
My words affected you.
And have found a connection too.
For , I Am God.
Plus, I Am Love.

Hmm, Christmas season has gone, good:
Presents shoved in drawers, some used, some abused,
Some never to see the light of day, until thrown away,
Others worn with delight, played with, till dawn’s first light,
We never even saw church, or thought of god, any god.
Why should we? Religious? Nah, not us, Darwin rules,
We had science in schools, we mocked the fools,
Who even imagined an all seeing deity, with awe,
Punishing and rewarding, everything he saw,
But we ate our fill, partied with skill, just avoided,
The need to ****, especially to ****, so messy,
Never allowing our own family blood to spill,
The clean up is swallowing, such a bitter pill.

Hmm, Easter approaches, we do it all again,
Stretching our family, what an awful strain,
Pretending we like, adore, the snidely sneers,
We just ignore, avoiding the drunk, such a bore,
While those of us, who are close, watch the chaos,
Feel the undertows of love streaming among us,
Binding the salient parts, making a family work,
For the kids, you see, a duty we, must never shirk,
Our only legacy, from the lives we have built,
Making us continue, regardless of the guilt,
Emotional alloys in alcohol flux, so easily spilt,
Another religious festival, who gives a toss?
A land of empty churches, not such a loss.

Hmm, Whitsun lies beyond Easter: what?
What is, Pentecostal; exactly? More rot?
Fifty days, oh yeah, makes sense, sure,
Makes nonsense, have faith, no defence,
We don’t care: get it! Got it? Well good!
No nailed-god; for heathens like us; we hijack,
As Christianity hijacked our paganism, yes!
Copied and pasted their festivals over others,
Took our sacred places, chanted in dulcet tones,
Where we gathered, running naked around stones,
Leaping cleansing fires, bumping ugly bones,
How’d you like that, preacher folk; in shock?
Burn in your created Hell; let heathen Earth rock.

© Paul M Chafer 2014

I’ve learned to love a blade’s edge…
I am nobody and somebody
with nowhere to go: the border between
Manhattan’s East and West Streets
ground and stone
reason and faith
mother and father,
the Father and the Son.

I’m the Holy Spirit, the shadow always
mediating between phrases “Serve me” and “Agape”…
I am this sentence. I want you, for this moment; this sliver
between life and death, this Mississippi cutting through
a continent. I was in Adam, after his expulsion:

Let the green apple be lodged in my throat
while washed in the image of Eden
before I leave, so in cursing my fate
and love what is…

Sharp and dangerous, always ready to use conscience
and **** according to judgment,
the thrill, the second where happiness
and sadness is satisfaction, I am there.

Nothing ever gets done without me.
I am a peninsula, imparting
land to waters and seas
divinity to mortality:
Pentecostal.

The blade’s edge ready to cut and be cut.
In the name of the Father and the Son
and me
Amen…
Go to heaven
if you cannot accept hell.
Go to hell if you cannot accept heaven.
As any mediator, I am a nation
unto myself, my fate, my exile.

Be you Baptist.
Be you Jewish.
Be you Cathloic.
Be you Pentecostal.
Be you Muslim.
Sunday message should be God wishes you the best.

We see conflicts.
When we should seek resolution through our prayer.
Only the highest power of the universe.
Knows, how to solve them.

Any differences has ways of reaching an agreement.
It's been done down through the centuries.
Even amongst those that chose to keep us problems.

Hate comes and go.
Love stays around forever more.

Be you Mormon.
Be you Progressive.
Be you of any faith.
Sunday's message should be accepted with truth.
That the Almight wants the best for you.

He don't sanction wars.
It's the people.
He does sign off on love.
Cause, it's of him.

There's no one better.
There's no one greater.
There's no one that remain quiet and listen.
But will advise you without speaking.

Sunday's message carries a lot of weight.
Absolve it.
Adapt to it.
And you'll survive your worse conflict.
Cause God won't desert you.

It stood on a mound, prepossessing in its own right,
But the height of the grim, unadorned steeple
And the tableau it cast when storms would roll in
From the cold gray waters of Lake Erie
Was somewhat intimidating to small children
And others predisposed to being dominated,
Though what awaited one within
Could be equally intimidating, if no more so;
Oh, there was the nod to brotherly love
And coming to God with a joyful noise,
But the occupants of the pulpit
(Invariably square-jawed, gray-maned older men
Whose visages were brewing maelstroms,
Incipient cloudbursts on the very precipice
Of drenching the insufficiently pious)
Left no doubt as to the serious of their mission,
And were equally up front as to the cataclysm
Which would rain down on the congregation,
The mills, the town and all those
Who proved insufficient in their piety,
And while there were questions
Concerning prescience and cause-and-effect,
Most of what they threatened came to be
(The Montmorenci Company shuttered and silent,
A sad procession of U-Hauls, all on one-way rentals
Tottering out of town after the muted goodbyes)
Though, as an unintended and unforeseen consequence,
Taking the church as well, its grounds now only visited
By mothers and small children
Clambering upon the playground equipment
The church begrudgingly installed
Shortly before it closed its doors for good,
And when the gunboat-gray clouds
Rolled on down from up near Buffalo,
They would hurry on home
As the droplets, relative leviathans
Slapping on the pavement as they scurried home,
Came at increasingly frequent intervals,
And though they could hear the rumbles of thunder
Grumbling with a certain portent as the storm moved closer,
Their procession, though quite brisk,
Was more unless unworried,
The adults knowing full well the downpours
Were merely succor upon the carrots and gardenias.

Reserved;

"o' be careful little eyes what you see...
o' be careful little ears what you hear...



  
                                          
       ­     






                                       **For the Father..."

           -old Pentecostal hymn

the pentecostal
white feathers of
the graceful swan
drifting upon
a mirror lake
while the
gospel blue eyes of
a saint
protect our world
if we watch the
morning break

My dear Theophilus, I want to stress
that this gospel story is ever-present, continuous
and it’s by no means strenuous
to draw a straight true line
from the angelic choir’s ‘unto us’
through to the empty cross,

and yes, past the fall of Judas
to the day the lot fell to Matthias
and whilst Matt may have on occasion
felt a little out of place
and like us, have sometimes undergone
the syndrome that’s imposter-ous,
nevertheless, with the disciples he received Christ’s promise
of a collective Pentecostal renaissance

And so,
no, it’s not presumptuous for you, for us
to stand with Matthias and the rest
of the disciples of Christ Jesus,
to receive this same promise
and for Christ to continue
the same reconciling mission through us,
because my dear Theophilus,
we are, you are the one and present-continuous,
Spirit-filled church