Gargouille

Thunderbirds

Nests are showing high in the trees
bare from cold. Leaves litter the ground
knobbly under feet with heaving roots.

Sun worshippers devout in cold and dry
weather, beseech for little one
not rooted, not strong.

Under fingers long, sticks of timeless breath
whisper to my grandmothers
prayers to carry on

Winds and rains, under earth and rivers
across time and heaven
Great Spirit

Not knowing what's best for myself
asking only that you do the rest
asking only what do you suggest.

Dead Man Pants

Grey acrylic
goes up in flames
made with petroleum
gasoline -
over-priced, as always.
Five cents of parts and labour
One hundred dollars on the rack
Five hundred percent mark up
profits on a baby's back.
A little girl.
Little girls
in sweat shops,
under guns.
All the manufacturing
left town,
lift them up -
bring us all
down.
Better than slavery
better than hunger
better than
dying.


[edit on 15-12-2006 by clearwater]

There are strange creatures in the world and they dream of us, as we do of them. We look horrible and strange to them, covered in hair, bulging in odd places, emitting sour odors, faces stretched in grimaces of terror or masks of forced condescension approximating self-congratulatory affects of graciousness.

They travel on wind and winds of time, between dream and waking. Small and large, they people the forests, knots of trees, the dusty desert regions, the unmapped ocean floors and beyond the sky, beyond the atmosphere. They travel into the endless night and mystery of the star regions.

All shapes and sizes, some can change at will. Not subject to the states and councils constructed to build human meaning into human hungers, both here and in the spirit realm. No large, white-bearded man will command them into heaven or hell. They laugh or hiss human judgments back into the brimstone licking at the edges of human sounds.

Money means nothing to them, nor does youth - beauty they love. Pretension at friendship doesn't interest them. If you are serving the All That Is, you serve with them.

Feral as the tsunami or earthquake and less predictable, they don't want to be caged in. Placed behind bars or windows, into aquariums or jail cells of meanings. Animals are sad in cages, they won't join them; not in the displays made to house King Kong, not in the zoo's built for the endangered ones.

They're waiting unimpressed, not compelled to encourage the frenzied and giddy self-destruction. Sometimes they pick a favorite. A faerie child or Rumpelstiltskin compromise to dream with and carry off to another realm, never understanding the grief of those left behind in this one. Quite convinced - it's a righteous claim.

Sometimes they spare someone. Or let them keep a favorite changeling. Then they bang on walls and whip window shutters at night or howl mournful dirges through branches stripped of leaves. So distraught to leave one alone in this world, or peeved at the unwelcome state of adoption for what truly is their own home - they steal moments of reunion by midnight dreams, dawns often forgotten story.


[edit on 11-1-2007 by clearwater]

Why

A question from the man walking the wide path
under the high canopy of hardwood
trees filtering sunlight onto the worn earth -
What of this justice
what of the resource
sitting over computers.
shaping opinions
passionate feelings
hinged contingent
desperatly reeling
misplaced prides
exchange of blame.
When the bodies have died
Justice indifferent
and people wonder why
rage was so simple.
Love is the meaning.
The highest moral order -
by default of responsibility -
Helpless to join in.

Rotting Corpse on a Peg

I've planted the huluppu tree in the jungle
huluppu tree, huluppu tree, huluppu tree.
I've ran with the seed in my hand to the jungle
and planted the huluppu tree.
Huluppu cries the serpeant is welcome,
Anzu sets her young on the branches
and Lilith may come and go as she please.
Huluppu tree, huluppu tree, huluppu tree
Enki is robbed of his treasures
they've flown to the jungle with me.

Out on a limb

Lilith
owl feet.
She's a hybrid -
screech
a great grey
flying.




[edit on 18-12-2006 by clearwater]

The Great Grey Owl Irruption of 2004-05 was of Mythic and Unsurpassed Proportion

Snow was on the ground
when the gate unhinged
blew wildly in the freezing wind
Scraping rocks frozen into place -
barren pebbled dirt
heart bled dry
hungry sunken eye
against skin cracked and raw.
An irruption -
Great Greys
for the red-backed vole.


[edit on 21-12-2006 by clearwater]

Hidden

Cast the net out
for the brother.
All of Creation
sings together
defies the jailer.
They kill themselves -
hanging off trees
and bedposts like
ornaments.
A little ridicule
to remember
who's God here?
Under the cement weight
of electric lights.
Whittling like thieves
Welcome at the Well.
Hidden kingdom of
Samaritans
in Hell.

He doesn't want to be found.

[edit on 18-3-2007 by clearwater]

You have voted clearwater for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have one more vote left for this month.

A fan.

She's blushing.

Scorpion

Bow down Gilgamesh
To the ending grain harvest -
Hewing the tree of life for Goddess
To build her cage your nest.
Bow down Enki, Dumuzi,
Bow down at Girtab -
Kiss the ground
Claw the earth
To hide there.
Buried as you buried her.
Comes now your harvest
Erishikigal's venom
without rest.

Grief

No rage for the whimper
that rises up from the chest
and expels itself on a breath
without thinking.
Just a shell that holds the rest
in, a bit of muscle, sinew, skin -
a bit of thinking how it might have been better.
House lights on a final curtain
floods the room with nothing certain
only grief.




[edit on 28-12-2006 by clearwater]

They're Dropping Like Flies.


He thinks he should like to join the war
he's always been a soldier
a soldier, a marching man
a fighter, a dog-face, a man at war
a berserker, a serviceman
Wouldn't have to think too much
about the pixelated prurient touch
to the soul-suckers, the liars and gluts
the give me more, give me much
give me it all, it's within my clutch
My way or the highway
The highway up high and wide
the broad road
the high moon over the broad beaten path
barking orders like a highwayman
for the terrified march
Soldiers never fight alone
always calling for mama
or some carbuncled approximate
of that long sought after home
when the ink runs out
The pen is mightier than the sword
Now he owns them
he owns them
owns the rights to convince everyone
every word like a dripping sword
full of nonsense and all the right words
Full of authority, a General
for freelancers, entrepreneurs
fighting a finished war
Sucking out the glue
of an old tube
cause they're hungry
hungry but can't stop eating empty food
No yellow-bellied cowards
red-breasted robin hoods
Give him his war - let him be a soldier
a mercenary, a green beret, a guardsman, a gunner -
Soaking up the gas exhaust that constantly pours
through the cracks in the windows and doors
Drinking up the filthy water
that costs even more
than the exhaust pouring in free through
the fissures, the fractures, the gaping holes
burned right through the hearts and lungs of the children
who never ask to be born
Disobedient, loud and demanding is how they come -
globetrotters, mercenaries, hired guns
Dripping ammo
from the ink-faced feathered quill
of the chosen one.
Full of nothing and no one
full of grasping for something
Dropping like flies
They didn't finish him
under the murder of crows
No struggle
no ceasefire
In the war of the soul
They were tulpas
They were visions
the emissions of friction
spewed from the places between
black inked typos and blank gleam
Couldn't own them
Couldn't own what they mean.

Listen

Can you hear them?
Trying to be heard
over the din of your diction
the logic that hems it all in
so tightly, impenetrable skill
inarguable grammar
untouchable fault.
Mistakes never answered
debate all pre-canceled
but for the rancor
rotting in someone else's gut.
Never heard, not a word
never give an addition
to a perfect world.
Never learn to speak.
Simple errors are weak.
See other sides
see where it's strong
see where it's wrong
only learn how
to not add to that brow beaten path.
No touching.
Best never look
or run far away
better to die
then stay to be mangled
in the meat-grinder each day.
Throwing insults and punches
they know can't replace
a well-honed weapon.
Despair sets in
panicked chagrin.
Trying to climb ladders
that only stay in place
for the ones who have learnt
how to save face -
They're starving.

The amount of sympathy and support one gets is often dependent on other variables than need. For instance, on a board when one's writing style is primitive and full of grammatical and spelling errors, the sympathy quotient decreases. In face to face situations, more attractive people garner more sympathy than the ugly, old or deformed. A homeless, mentally ill person is in a great deal of need for sympathy, but the reaction they most often warrant is rejection. When one is new to a board, they might run into the phenomena known as seeking comfort from strangers, which is unwise. Tribal instincts often restrict altruism to those in the immediate circle. Had one posted unpopular views not in keeping with fashionable trends, sympathy would be less forthcoming. Really the amount of sympathy one garners from their fellows, in whatever situation or place is not dependent on the need and often the sympathy will decrease as the need increases.

Abstractions and principles that have guided social orders and contributed to cultural harmony are only present in so far as we recognize their absence. At this time in history, there is no need for starvation, yet starvation persists for reasons of profit. The very principles on which starvation is justified insure that more will starve. In the United States, approximately 1.8 million children die before reaching their fifth birthday, about 3/4 of those deaths attributed to malnutrition. The record profits recorded by large multi-national companies such as Dupont and Shell are as a direct result of an increased ability to operate with impunity and disregard for human rights and environmental legislation. The cult of private enterprise is so entrenched that to even question the taxation of the public in order to subsidize private profits elicits a reflexive response. The suggestion that starvation be obsolete in America elicits far less sympathy than a pat on the back for industry superficially pandering to current trends. Thinking independently is more threatened by the CNN age than it was by the inquisition. Literacy rates do not include the capacity for deductive and inductive logic - that many more learn dogma by rote is no great achievement. An electronic tether dictating conformist expectations over humanitarian obligations means only that many more admire the emperor's new clothes.

In keeping with ecclesiastes circling embrace of folly: 'Say not, "Why were the former days better than these?" Ecc 7:10 - may also mean, 'Say not, "Why are these present days better than the former." Wisdom might have it that we are always embattled for the prize of justice and goodwill. That the prize is not forthcoming in the way of self-congratulatory judgments on a myriad of variables unfathomable to the human mind, but on the smallest act of self-less graciousness that goes against the grain of social accolades and acceptance. That there, in the deepest darkness, the human soul can shine.

Gauntlet

In the hallway
Look in the hallway
Insipid accidental evils
are sometimes harder to admit,
then they grow and grow
with intention thrown
into it.




At least some people can admit it when they're a bitch.
But I know, you know, you did that on purpose,
and it took a little work.
very creative, turned my blood to ice water,
when I read it.
By the time Barnum got around to hiding the evidence
It wasn't fatal.

Bird Clan Owl

[edit on 12-3-2007 by clearwater]

The Owls

Within the shelter of black yews
The owls in ranks are ranged apart
Like foreign gods, whose eyeballs dart
Red fire. They meditate and muse.

Without a stir they will remain
Till, in its melancholy hour,
Thrusting the level sun from power,
The shade establishes its reign.

Their attitude instructs the sage,
Content with what is near at hand,
To shun all motion, strife, and rage.

Men, crazed with shadows that they chase,
Bear, as a punishment, the brand
Of having wished to change their place.

Charles Baudelaire

People aren't Stupid

Bluejay feathers say don't misuse your powers
she gets them mailed
Hand delivered
And Barnum
one would be inclined to think you were practicing your "preying"
so important to "never mention the name"
ever again.
One things for sure,
if you didn't mean it the first time
You did the second.



[edit on 12-3-2007 by clearwater]

The speech of the high one
the poetic Edda

I hung from a windswept tree.
I hung there for nine days and nights,
Gashed with a spear,
An offering to Odin,
A sacrifice to myself,
Bonded to the tree which no man knows,
Or whither its root may run.

No one gave me bread,
No one gave me drink.
I peered down into the depths and
Snatched up the runes,
And with a fearful scream
Fell into a swoon.

After I began to thrive,
My wisdom thrived too.
I was joyful and I prospered.
One word led me to another,
One deed led me to another.

[edit on 11-1-2007 by clearwater]

Barnum and the Blood

What you did
was more than a murder
more than a lie
more than a disagreement
posthumously
belatedly
in a cowards way
lie, lie, lie
edit the words
and then she's dead
Gone like Lucretia
right out of your head.


Barnum was banking on internalized shame.
A participant after the fact, just the same.


[edit on 18-3-2007 by clearwater]

There is a plaque at Bergen Belsen that lays all the blame of the holocaust at the feet of the German nazis. In light of MOTK's remark -"All are responsible", I've compiled the following note.

The psychological consequence of living under pathocratic rule for centuries on end, rule that is justified by violence with fleeting regard to social justice, is a cyclical flowering of brutal social eruption. An eruption of violence so pathological that it's history needs to be examined to be understood.

Jews are well aware of the centuries old practice of progroms enacting by every European monarch and authority looking for a scapegoat on which to vent the rage of the populus. As a result of their religious dictates to use only fresh running streams, black plague was attributed to their of poisoning the wells. Whenever authority was helpless to address a wrong or responsible for it, the Jews made a good scapegoat for the frustration and rage of the citzenry. The Jewish diaspora lived under constant persecution in the West and the holocaust was an extension of that tradition.

Every Machiavellian politico knows that a good scapegoat is key to achieving support from a citizen base, especially when they are concerned with diverting issues. Napoleon chose the aristocracy. Hitler knew a good scapegoat when he saw one. He gave the people what they wanted. That's not to say that everyone supported Hitler's actions, but the response of Western governments to the refugees pouring out of Germany at the time seems to suggest they did. Not one would open their borders; they sent them all back to be killed. Shanghai was one of the only ports open to Jewish refugees at the time. Hitler himself was shocked and pleasantly surprised with the lazy acquiescence with which the Western nations condoned his progrom.

It probably contributed a great deal to his madness and nazi 'animal kingdom' certitudes that heaped so much contempt on humanity. Hitler the vegetarian liked to disparage Goering's appetite for hunting and meat - "Pigs eat pigs", he once said, so convinced of his own discerning social refinements. The nazi's loved justifying their actions with Darwin's theory of evolution. Today we often see natural selection cited as the reason for 1 billion people using 86% of all the goods on the market, leaving 14% for the remaining 5 billion. Hitler was shot up in the morning by his doctor to wake up, shot up all day to keep going and shot up at night to go to sleep. The man was obviously pathological. The world is content to lay full responsibility for these atrocities at his feet. Yet the world sat idly by and encouraged the massacre by doing nothing. What drugs or madness gripped the German people and the Western nations that condoned his pathology. The racist, fascist doctrines of nazi Germany have not been eradicated, they have evolved.

Today we see a great deal of current nefarious social behaviour still pinned on the nazis. Without regard to the place in which it fits into social and economic expectations, it's fruitless to lay blame without taking any responsibility for the contribution they have made in maintaining the disparity in the distribution of goods. They've done the job the people expected of them, then and now. The pursuit of power, in the name of perpetuating a military and economic advantage. Our history has never surpassed that of warring tribes fighting over resources and now the game is global. The very mention of socialism elicits a knee-jerk sneer from many a 'good' North American who will then go on to crow about the generosity of their charity. While the foreign aid our governments send overseas is more often than not directed toward bolstering social systems and military dictatorships that insure poverty will worsen for the many and wealth will increase for the few. Norway is consistently voted best for human quality of living and they are a socialist government with a free market. Yet, socialism is still regarded by many in North America as a form of communism. The nazis have fostered North America's rise of corporate fascism in the name of freedom. Sharing is a dirty word.

The night of Kristallnacht, was not enacted or condoned only by brownshirts, it was made possible by historical anti-semitic precedents. Just as the 'God's cleaned up the slums' response to the dead and dying of New Orleans has it's social history in the scapegoating of the poor. Many German's didn't see the camps, they could pretend it wasn't real. The response to Katrina revealed many people take a homicidal pleasure in watching the eradication of the poor; muted and cowed outrage from the rest. There has been no accountability for the crimes of negligence and outright malfeasance committed there. Reminiscent of the scapegoating policies of earlier campaigns, the conservatives won a provincial election by blaming the poor for government debt. Social programs were eradicated, single mothers were told to go 'work the strip with the other pigs'. (75% of divorced men don't pay child support and only 5% ever miss a car payment.) All managed by a spin doctor who also supported Ollie North's bid for government office. But the plight of women so entrenched in secondary status among all the cultures is easily scapegoated with dismissive contempt.

The province was further in debt when they left. Many citizens of wealthy nations never see the devastation wreaked as a result of disparity in the distribution of goods, they pretend it's not happening or that it's natural selection. Every Westerner has 5 slaves, they will never meet and do not feel responsible for. Every man, woman and child for themselves. New Orleans was our Kristallnacht.

Greater balance in the economic arena would not result in equal misery for all unless one measures happiness by the acquisition of material wealth. If we are really interested in spiritual ascension and the pursuit of mind over matter then the first place to start is with the pleasure of altruism. Not charity as it is characterized by cruelty and frailty, but a true vision of the nurturing of man's soul. So far the only thing in human history to give in abundance to both rich and poor is the earth.

There is a picture at Bergen Belsen of smiling SS officers, those same smiling faces are on all the citizens of the wealthy nations who support or remain willfully unaware of the economic platforms that starve and degrade entire continents into extinction. Water is now more expensive than gas, but because people here are not yet thirsty, they continue to buy it up supporting an industry that literally forces people to die of thirst. Plastic bottles choke landfills and leech into groundwater. Creating a vicious tightening circle of greed for the trillion dollar a year industry. Under Nafta and Gatt, water is a human need, not a right - if there's no money for it, a person will die for want of it. Even if it falls from the sky. Smiling people drinking fashionable water.

The camps should remain as reminders not only of how evil some SS men were, but of the evil of which all of humanity is capable. Victor Frankel in his book, "Man's Search for Meaning" about his experience as a prisoner in Auschwitz, points out that the brutal conditions of the camp turned both inmates and guards into monsters and much more rarely - both inmates and guards into people willing to risk their own lives to go against the rules and be kind under the most barbarous and dehumanizing conditions. Germany ended in devastation. Was it the result of thought creating matter for them. They imagined they were creating a superior society but in fact produced genocide and terror.

So who is responsible? All are responsible.