I Remember (A Love Story)

    I remember the cafe where we met – with used coffee mugs drifting across the crowded tables, a Moroccan wool rug spread out on the old timber floor and walls crammed with books, occulted, occluded, random, and sheaves and sheaves of paperwork, photographs spilling out of cardboard boxes. I wore a red velvet jacket. You wore red lipstick.

    I remember you said, “People like us have to keep a divided existence. Always. Like a map turned over. We are living out.”

    “I don’t understand.”

    “We were never what we were. That was never us.” You said, as if it were sensible. True.

    Meanwhile the days died outside. Nighttime illuminated by flashlights in the distance. The fragility of dawn’s magic flickering, flicking off. Darkness. People came out burred – like those French paintings. Crashing worlds blurring and the lights no longer felt quite so safe.

    The words landed. Believed. Disbelieved. But spoken finality.

    “You don’t really believe all that, do you?” I asked.

    “It doesn’t matter.”

    Then there was some business out on the street – unpleasant noise and displeasure. You jumped and turned away from the door then away to one side. Heart beating. Then, in a rush, move about, and kiss goodbye. You were gone.

Light Rises in Darkness

    How can anyone prove/disprove the cold increasing threats without dismantling the government? Nuclear code phrase arms race. The volatility of secret tests and difficult decisions. The moral restraint of even moderate elements is disregarded. We need a new anthropology – one guided by smokeless gunpowder and heavy water. We need more guns for the flowering American manhood. A new crusader ethos. Do not tamper or destroy. Do not screw with us.

    The descendants, the generation of the upright will be blessed. Light rises in darkness when justice rules our lives.

    Couriers of peace are still agonizing – as they should be. Let them suffer. Let them bleed in this new, never-ending war. Let peace, we say, flow like blood from their veins. We will take action ourselves. God knows the weaponry available to us to drain away the spirit.

    But the righteous shall never be moved. They will be remembered forever. Light rises, justice rules.

    Kill someone! Someone who matters. Someone who presents a real threat. A credible threat. Today. Right now. Our allies? Greedy children with grasping, grabbing hands. Hollow out their abdomens and refill them with incendiary devices. Fire drills and evacuations. Some of them will believe eventually. What other choice is left to them? Can this wait till tomorrow? The audience laughs and applauds. Shall they blaspheme forever? Who’s to stop them?

    The righteous, their hearts are steady. They will not be afraid. Light rises… Light rises!

    We are prone to wander. Prone to fever. A wash of vertigo. Driving by memory and guesswork. Warnings ignored. Abrupt summons and secret enrichments. Alarming midnight rhetoric. Death and destruction far surpassing previous success. Explicit surveillance videocassettes. Can love be purchased outside the blast zone? Any survivors? Do we care? The profit or loss depends upon the audience. All is justified in the economic reports. We can leave your body in a valley of dry bones…

    Gnash their teeth and melt away! Can these bones be remembered? The desires of the wicked come to nothing. But light… Light rises! Light rises in darkness when justice rules.

A Meditation A Few Days After Easter

    My song is love unknown, my savior’s love for me…

    The sun is up, the day is bright, crossing lawns of green and blue and purple, and I am whistling hymns into the wind. Thrust forward by the gust. Launched into my daily lurching.

    Oh who am I…?

    This marathon, this long hike, with shoulders back and head upraised. Eyes up into the sky. The wind will not relent. Twenty, thirty, forty-five mile per hour gusts. Tree limbs down and unsecured porch chairs sent flying. Holy Saturday’s sussuras in the pines have become jubilant sibilants and jangling wind chimes. Clanging gongs and cracking branches.

    Resounding all the day Hosannas to their king…

    There are women shouting, swearing from their door and dogs snarling on the steps. There are white nationalists flags ripping away from their swaying staffs. What makes this rage and spite? “You know what you’re saying, boy? You know what you’re saying?”

    Crucify is all their breath...

    And what has changed? The weather (if not the wind)… The world is still at war. The fires still flame. Love to the loveless shown. And am I so fickle, so changeable?

    But oh my friend, my friend in deed... 

    Who at my need his life would spend?



- My Song Is Love Unknown - Samuel Crossman 1629-1683

Neither Way. No Hand

    “Oh, of science we have many and varied kinds, observational science is but one. We have Revelation and Inspiration too, as well as Illumination and Interpretation. We are not unlettered and unlearned here. We have no need for your million pictures faked with photoshop and generative AI. Your sophisticated sophistry.”

    I am beat up and run down before I ever got going. No life. No zip. All ache.

    “There is a spirit that guides them, of course, that’s what makes the conspiracies make sense. They share the same breath.”

    They cannot read out of doors, neither will they hear inside. Screw the inscrutable and doubt the redoubtable. Dig into hell or climb into heaven. Neither way. No hand. Where are the violent upheavals of earth to swallow them up? Where are the she bears from the mountain? No. No. I’m sorry. I don’t mean that. Not really. 

    “We need new underground bases. Deep Underground Military Bases, right in the heart of the nation. We have seen the lighted triangles on the lunar surface. Dark lights coming to the Earth in the near future. These spirits have habitations beyond the Earth.”

    I saw the news as well: two found dead near Lake Silverado, their bodies within their submerged vehicle. Lovely and Loving but no longer Living.

Ha ha! And Oh Lord!

    “There were an estimated eight to nine million at the No Kings rally …”

    “Ha ha! You’re so dumb. We don’t have kings. We took care of that in 1776. We’re democracy, dumbass.”

    “Right. You understand, of course, that what we’re doing is trying to protect that democracy from authoritarians who would subvert our rule of law…”

    “Ha ha! You’re so dumb We’re not a democracy. We’re a constitutional republic.”

    “Yes, but a republic is a form of democra…”

    “Try reading Alexis de Tocqueville, moron!”

    Test the professions to reveal the confessions – or the lack thereof – in our global warming, resource plundering disaster. It’s a moment of crisis for anyone with half an eye or even a detuned ear. But seeing they might see and hearing they might hear. And no one wants that sense. Bandaged and broken. Limping along with sick vandalism.

    “O Lord! There’s never been such a violent, lawless, decadent generation,” says the pearl clutching Evangelical who’s never looked at history. “I’ve seen things I never dreamed possible. World wide corruption. Debauchery in the western world…”

    “Our God is a God of war. A God of battle. And our Christ is the Christ of Conquest. Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up?”

    “It’s the same maniacal purpose. The same evil system collapsing. You’ve seen the suicide attempts and people indicted. The law is finally being enforced. At home and abroad. On a global scale. Now why not make it personal?”

    You cannot reason with them. Logic and reason are destroyed. The science fiction writers and prophets were right: the authorities have become as psychotic as the people they hunted. The authorities are filled with hate.

    “Do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up or not, goddamn it:?!”