media prostitution

i can't stomach prime-time canned humor

nor the hourly rehash of yesterday's news

the confessions of talk-show dummies chattering away our lives

the insults of judges mocking the sanity of the courts

it's a seduction of the senses where sensibilities ought reign

the control of our appetites with the abundance of choice

we're fucked up and over by the frightened and greedy

envious partakers of media prostitution

thank God for Hip-Hop and its no-shit allegiance

being the paranoia we swim in, sucking off our scars 

-There are parts of my psyche that are still at the stage of pre-puberty and adolescents.  That may always be the case.  In light of that, I must recall that I am "me" this day, this moment and what I decide or not decide is from this "now" and it is in "this moment" that I am responsible, that I love, I sin, I grow, I regress.  The challenge is to live "now", forgive "now", be "now", love "now".

*Thoughts of N.T. Wright:

-...it is part of living an authentically Christian life that you learn to forgive yourself as well.

-...because it's forgiveness we're talking about, not tolerance or indifference, this will once more mean exclusion as well embrace.  It will mean saying No to whatever it was in order to say Yes to God and God's forgiveness.  This will almost certainly take prayer and worship and perhaps the assistance of a wise counselor, but it's the way we are called to go, the way to spiritual health.  Those who insist on clinging to a sense of guilt all too easily become, alas, those who then pass on that sense of guilt to others as the burden becomes too great to bear.  Part of the answer to the prayer "Deliver is from evil" is that we learn to forgive ourselves, both for our own sake and for the sake of those around us.

of

tabula rasa's and rows of welts

of high blood pressure and bleeding nose

of tumbling down stairs and bloody beatings

of sparse mem'ries and an exceptional aunt

of constant corrections and brewing anger

of burning toys and touching butts

of too many niggers and segregated lives

of poison run wild and venomous hearts

of dreams un-grabable and untamed minds

of hatreds embedded and childhood abuses

of minding children and being too young

of depressing language and inflamed murders

of so many "shoulds" that feed depression

tying one down to the bottom of hell

a dot on a page in the hist'ry of race

destructive exclusion discrimination swelled

...and the toxins swelled, poisoning the heart

crushing the soul before life began

*Reflections of N.T. Wright:

-...in order to love our neighbor as ourselves we need to love ourselves first, so we know what the standard should be!  This point is well known and well taken.  But the same applies, more subtly perhaps, to the question of forgiveness.  Those with any pastoral experience will have met the person who says, "Well, I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself."  We can understand what they mean.  But it is precisely here, I suggest, that the prayer, "Deliver us from evil" comes right home into the human heart, imagination and emotions - or, if you like, the soul, which as I have said elsewhere is really a way of speaking about "who I am in the presence of God."

It takes spiritual discipline to forgive others; it takes a different though related, spiritual discipline to forgive myself, to echo within in my own heart the glad and generous offer of forgiveness which God holds out to me as well.  Here, too, my sense of self-worth comes not from examining myself and discovering that I'm not so bad after all but from gazing at God's love and discovering that nothing can stand between it and me.  (What we are doing is drawing down from God's future, in which I will know myself to be completely loved and accepted because of the work of Jesus and the Spirit.)  This astonished and grateful acceptance of the free grace and love of God is what some traditions  have meant when they have echoed Paul's language about "justification by faith."

The virtue lies in the struggle, not in the prize.
                                  -Chinese fortune cookie

beyond beyond

the search is about love

the looking about, the catching

at a glance, the chance

the sought, the never caught

the up and down the web-ways

the in and out of site after site

with bodies, the same bodies

on a different face, without breath

flat, unfelt, hoping

to touch some spot

to see, to find a piece

of my self, missing, long gone

long departed, long never there.

tis a strange journey through

 the surf-tide, through the

valleys of despair, the mounts 

the expectant, the plateaus

the plateaus, always the plateaus

the salt flats of the desert, my

desert, the flatland of my wants

my wish to find someday

the ever absent something

called love.

yet I continue on

let go, release the want

the beast, the albatross

swinging 'round my neck

to let it fly, let it flee

find new shores o'er which to sail

new waters to fish, new lands

to rest its wings, build a nest

lay down and die because here

I cannot rest free to be, to discover self

but somewhere beyond, beyond.

*Reflections of Jean Sulivan:

  -When Christian liberty becomes the heart of people's existence, they lift up their heads and raise their voices.  Like animals who panic and turn tail, who can smell danger faster than the wind can carry it to them, the scribes and pharisees showed an obstinate and endless patience as they strove to immunize and neutralize society against the threat of liberty.  For joy, which is born of freedom and only from freedom, is a deadly peril.  It shakes walls, enlarges the soul, strips off old skins, and tells the stranger, the black, the Chinese, "You are my brother, my sister."  To the atheists it says, "We share the same unbelief"; to the prostitute, "You are no worst than many others; in fact, you're more honest." With its sense of humor, joy sees Christian liberty as rooted in faith; in its winnowing-basket it sorts out what is alive and what is only of archaeological interest.  Leaving the past behind, joy strains toward the future, treating what was been already been achieved as of little value.

  -A person is alive only to the extent that she achieves spiritual freedom, radiating the spirit of alleluia, no longer responding to external commands, having become one with God - who never gives an order because God is love. Civilization, culture, the Vatican, the pope, and the church exist only in order to permit each of us to become alive and free.

in the likeness of their god

the cruel gift, the dark grace

the neo-conic birthmark 

heil hitler, heil hitler

we're hitler-hailing

calling forth his ghosts 

for new hosts

for new examinations

and new exterminations

for new-jews re-imagines

by the sure purification 

of the ole human race

to form a new people

in the likeness of their god

*Thoughts of Jean Sulivan:

-The true birth of a person takes place when the spirit takes over - not thoughts, not ideas, but spirit - when prejudices fall like dry fruit under the wind of liberty, because mental attachments are more fatal that those of the flesh.

-Death does not always come just at the end of life.  There are a great many living dead among us, people who exist only as part of the crowd, content with merely being on stage in the theater of the world.  Whose who have not awakened, who have become rigid in their values and principles, vice and virtues, who are intent on making themselves believed, have betrayed their baptismal names, even though they pose as venerable defenders of the good, the honored, and the blessed.  They have not yet been born.

-People are born only at the moment they come to terms with  spiritual liberty.  But who practices spiritual liberty, who really tests it?  The Christian world seems to have patiently accomplished the feat of transforming the most scathing part of the message,  Paul's song of liberation, into an object of sickly hymns and mental illusions, a refuge for misfits, leaving atheism to rediscover the explosion of liberty at the heart of life.  It may be a  wounded liberty, rootless and absurd, but it is still exciting enough to take the place of faith for entire generations, with great leaders, with both prophets and false prophets.

sign of peace

peace sign

cold sign

un-feeling shove-away

sharp stabs

soft hugs

get-going push aways

death proclaimed 

chains embraced

i would flee

it's killing me

from this i plead

it's slaying dead

the Desired, not given

poison in the head

where's Jesus?

where's the Lord?

where human touch?

where natural warmth?

who bears the gift

in frame and name?

when oh when is peace?

who says you belong?

*Reflections of Mircea Eliade [with some grammatical changes]:

-...like the city  or sanctuary, the house is sanctified, in whole or part, by a cosmological symbolism or ritual.  This is why settling somewhere - building a village or merely a house - represents a serious decision, for the very existence of persons is involved; we must, in short, create our own world and assume responsibility of maintaining and renewing it.  Habitations are not lightly changed, for it is not a "machine to live in"; it is the universe that humans construct for themselves by imitating the paradigmatic creation of the gods, the cosmogony.  Every construction and every inauguration of a new dwelling are in some measure equivalent to a new beginning, a new life.  And every beginning repeats the primordial beginning, when the universe first saw the light of day.  Even in modern societies, with their high degree of desacralization, the festivity and rejoicing that accompany settling in a new house still preserve the memory of the festival exuberance that, long ago, marked the incipit vita nova.

-...it is by virtue of the temple that the world is resanctified in every part.  However impure it may have become, the world is continually purified by the sanctity of sanctuaries.

-...the sanctity of the temple is proof against all earthly corruption, by virtue of the fact that the architectural plan of the temple is the work of the gods and hence exists in heaven, near to the gods.

ichthus

i long for you Christ

fish-food for the human soul

meal of healing

morsel for the poor

savior from hunger

my primal need

Reflections of Mircea Eliade [with grammatical alterations]:

-Something of the religious conception of the world still persists in the behavior of profane people although we are not always conscious of the unmemorable heritage. 

-It does not lie within our province to write  the history of the gradual desacralization of the human dwelling.  The process is an integral part of the gigantic  transformation of the world undertaken by the industrial societies, a transformation made possible by the desacralization of the cosmos accompanied by scientific thought and above all by the sensational discoveries of physics and chemistry.  We shall later have occasion to inquire whether the desacralization of nature is really final, if no possibility remains for nonreligious persons to rediscover the sacred dimension of existence in the world.

-...in all traditional cultures, the habitation possess a sacred aspect by the simple face that it reflects the world.

*Innocent child!  There is no such creature.  Ask those who have to love and play with them.  They may be ignorant but not innocent.

*For some, the God they love is the God they hate.

*I am so accustomed to saying "No!" to myself, I don't know how to say, "Yes!"

*Wherever we are, whoever we are, the responsibility for the integrity and beauty of our personalities cannot be shirked.  I must get up each morning, take life into my own hands and put my distinct, unique and unrepeatable stamp on it.  I must freely decide to create the mood of the day rather than let the circumstances and conditions of the day rule my life.  With my spirit, the breath of God in me, I will transform the raw matter of my life and make it beautiful.  That is my human vocation and my moral duty.

 -William McNamara, OCD

climb outside your cave

play

eat grass

hum sounds

that hedges sing

in the meadow of life

each stone is a beauty

each flow'r a universe

each creature a gift

*Reflections of Mircea Eliade:

-Life is not possible without an opening toward the transcendent; in other words, humans beings cannot live in chaos.

-To settle in a territory is, in the last analysis, equivalent to consecrating it.

-The creation of the world becomes the archetype of every creative human gesture, whatever its plane of  reference may be.

awakenings

pleas and entreaties

obliterations and destruction

have turned light into darkness.

vengeful monsters

torch our waters.

why our national posturing?

why our twisted and disputed truths?

why these pages out of time?

does blindness squelch insight

when our eyes are packed

with wax and lies?

our distorted and deviant life

 growls like a bully-child

threatening strife.

stop now and smell the roses

lest our make-believe becomes real

and we lay weeping in our tombs

our fears glowing warm

our bones bleaching on slabs

our friends passing by

without prayer or trust

with smirks and disgust

we stinking from our lusts. 

look! see the signals of hope

awakening the crippled.

hear the dead captives tinkering

in the dungeons of the damned.

*Reflections of Mircea Eliade [gender modified]:

  -...since religious persons cannot live except in an atmosphere impregnated with the sacred, we must expect to find a large number of techniques for consecrating space.

  -Religious persons' desire to live in the sacred is in fact equivalent to our desire to take up our abode in objective reality,  not to let ourselves be paralyzed by the never-ceasing relativity of purely subjective experiences, to live in a real and effective world, not in an illusion.

  -The world (that is, our world) is a universe in which, consequently, the break-through from plane to plane has become possible and repeatable.  It is not difficult to see why the religious moment implies the cosmogonic moment.  The sacred reveals absolute reality and at the same time makes orientation possible; hence it founds the world in the sense that it fixes the limits and establishes the order of the world. 

  -...in the view of archaic societies everything that is not "our world" is not yet a world.  A territory can be ours only by creating it anew, that is, by consecrating it.

prison of the mind

the prison in our mind     it's that that pulls us round from cemetery to cemetery     from tomb to tomb where our stinking pasts are laid

we long to douse the smoke clouds hovering above the smoldering our deeds    the garbage pit that yawns as we watch    here we stood attempting to burn the rubbish that taints us    the refuse of sins thought long discarded     in the dump we called "home"

we're like fools in dunce caps facing the wall of rejection    twiddling our thumbs waiting for some trapdoor to spring    hurling our vision into bas-relief on the wall of lost grace

like dour virgins posing for a date    we sit staring into cameras that hold our image without a soul   seated and staring into the coated glass    hoping our Mate will ring and lead us to Spring

but will we remain stuck on the hinges of old queries    trapped in the questions that philosophy can't resolve    as we travel the road hungering for Light

*Reflections of Mircea Eliade:

  -When the sacred manifests itself in nay hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space, there is also revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding space.

  -Every sacred space implies a hierophany, an irruption of the sacred that results in detaching a territory from the surrounding cosmic milieu and making it qualitatively different.

  -...the theophany that occurs in a place consecrates it by the very fact that it makes it open above - that is, in communion with heaven, the paradoxical point of passage from one mode of being to another. 

*God is a God of the present.  God takes and receives you as God finds you - not what you have been, but what you are now.

  -Meister Eckhart

*Sometimes you gotta get mad to do somethin'!

  -street  prophet, San Francisco

a person in five phrases

i.

held in the vise of despair with out visions of hope

nails sharpen into swords and the stomach sours

becoming a volcano of spite. yet i walk about normally

with the abnormality of insanity crying for dead dolls

washing their dirty face to see mine in a clearer light.

but can Pepto-Bismo coat the sorrows

that already make me blush, that flush wholeness

into the life i bear, to muster whatever laughter i can bundle

like a hyena after a kill?

ii.

i reach through the fog that sits at the center of my mind

and touch whatever of limbs limp toward the earth

stretching to touch a caring one somewhere in this universe

a prisoner shackled and manacled upon the torture floor

waiting for the CIA to enter and smash the dead soul of me

into some meaningful life so that questions arise.

they see not blood nor hear the stream of screams.

they bruise not humans with a name

but immune, beat those with answers that kill

some self more notable than i

some other more barbaric than they

they say.

iii.

the one-color world bothers me.

i look into the eyes of grey and see darkness.

all about are smiling faces with glued expressions

and i am frightened by the sincerity the bring.

the tenor of their conversations is noise

unhealthy at the end of all.

iv.

a humming in the atmosphere reminds me of a lost butterfly

somewhere between a need for freedom and healing

the spir'tual and the mental fall apart.

it needs to return to the flow of life

unable to maintain position o'er the mythical sea.

attacked like children chasing a fleeing ball

it's a slab of flesh destined for abuse

to be chewed upon, then vomited into a trough.

it's how i feel, atrophied: gnawed and discarded.

what is this death in me? regurgitation?

an attempt to reclaim a life

before the surgeon arrives to apply the knife?

v.

i'd like to film the world with water and light

with clapping and exuberant laughs

but my limbs fall limp and my spirit faints

feeling lost among the lonely

fumbling in search of meaningful land.

We speak as if we're innocent, but it hurts.
                                                -ken stewart

that gnawing worm

who knows the worm gnawing within

intimate like a sexual being with a face

someone we sup with or greet;

a worm like Adam and Eve's

strolling with us in the night-light

in the garbage that tickles our nose

and draws up the vomit;

the worm that's that close

that we befriend it

and train it to live in ourselves

and appear right with others;

the worm that circles our garden 

the one that haunted Cain?

*Reflections of Sidney Poitier:

-My fear is this: I fear that as we cover more of our planet with concrete and steel, as we wire our homes with more and more fiber-optic cables that take the place of more intimate interactions, as we give our children more and more stuff and less and less time, as we go further and further away from the kind of simplicity I knew as a child of Cat Island, our Earth - Gaia or not - will become for us the Wire Mother, and our souls will wither and die as a result.

The Puritan Box

We dwell in the Puritan Box

sex and dollars its decorative theme

Windows absent like schools built to block

the remnant of stale cologne floating ev'rywhere

This is Pilgrim's progress 

beauty eluding needs of soul

The realm of myst'ries falling deeper and drear

fathoms below our Imaged goals

Here scientists wince to stand in awe

for silence is the word not spoke

their cheap trash cov'ring ev'rything

like wallpaper cov'ring a shameful plot

It's a vulgar poverty

a homelessness without God

no touch of human affection

no dance as the piano's played

only stiffness that death understands

such that a morgue creates

with freezing clime of a guarded home

a society drowned in its lusts for funds

Who would brave to open the door

expel the zombies polluting the air?

The entry could be a birthplace for life

swinging wide that the filth might pass

a trembling gate awaiting rain

a touch of affection that God could journey in

*Reflections of Sidney Poitier:

-Brent Staples did a piece in the New York Times not long ago saying that when white kids run amok, it's time for soul-searching in America, a time to figure out our ills.  But the problems of black kids always remain "other" and somehow apart. 

-The laws off economics don't promote idealism or higher consciousness.  The logic of profit and loss in a market-driven culture reduces the grandeur of the human species down to our role, that of "consumers".  And all along, the pleasure principles is saying, I have products I can sell you to take care of all that.  You can get it online.  Come, come.  I have even more thrills to show you.

We're not nearly as strong as our mothers and fathers were.   

Reflection and revelation

I.

I gaze upon you on the sand

a whisper of fresh breath of the morn

The ocean bathes your feet

soft, blemished, product of earth

smoothing the tan lines with grains

a pliable patch of grains

into which our hard heels press

washed o'er in a splash

II.

Yet who knows who we are

resting 'neath the coconut palm

Myst'ries lay at our feet

our hands touching the surest of them

Here the milk of the husked nut refreshes

where getting drunk leaves us dry

and even the smell of fecal sweetness

is more real than perfume sprayed on thighs

We are palettes of pigments

a canvas of gods, sketched by God

a mark like lips parting

murmuring theophanies in the universe

oblivious to our power at hand

hiding behind masks of gauze

III.

Myst'ry

we  are plump myst'ry

and if we'd touch just a hand

it is this we'd touch

this painting of God

with God in ev'ry tint 

*Reflections of Sidney Poitier:

-I called David Suskind, and I told him what the situation was, and he said, "Let me have a go at this."

I said, "Fine."   But I went on to explain that I simply couldn't do this.  I knew all about the rightwing,  leftwing tug-of-war stuff.  I was perfectly capable of interpreting it on the basis of how it affected me as a black man in America.  My political awareness had matured by then.  Yes, I was definitely, by then, inclined toward the left of center. Yes, there I found more people like Phil Rose and David Suskind, people demonstrating a genuine willingness to receive me as an equal.  This was reason enough, I suppose, for the FBI to keep an eye on me, given the fear and panic of those terrible cold war days of madness.  A time in which a young, African-American male was at  odds with his times and in constant search for answers to the core conflicts in his life.  Conflicts that had little or nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the cultural forces rooted inside him and the multitude of daily surrenders demanded of him by their social surroundings.  Balance is what he was looking for, but he hadn't yet learned its name.  In time he will come to know it as a state of being.  It can only be found at a place that is widely believed not to exist.  Truth is that there is a place of space that does exist between two opposites everywhere, and somewhere therein dwells a point at  which balance can be found. 

we'd collapse enthralled

if we but speak

one to the other

op'ning like a flower

facing the sun

loos'ning its grip

'bout the treasure within

for in the unspoken 

treasures lay

waiting for ears

hearing more than words

and eyes grasping

more than skin

but a flame bracing

awaiting release

o'er the horizons of doubt

or differences smaller 

than a mustard seed

we'd spot humming birds

nesting in truth

pecking to be born

before suspicion was our face

and bias pressed us down

sounds stirred whisps'rings

let's speak

break the chains

offer hope a bit

*You have to forgive yourself first for being human, because to be human is to have lots of faults; so you have to forgive, and then the love flows in.

  -Marion Woodman

*Addictions can be transcended - not eliminated.

  -Richard S. Sandor

Following night's yonder star

Through the woods You lead me

along the one path to Dawn

to one Tree uplifting

to say, "Into Your hands"

along that road to Daybreak

through the dark wood beck'ning

with tears in the trekking

and vision in the hark'ning

to stare straight through the Night

'long the challenging direction

to entrust self to Your Spirit

the Compass for my wand'ring

Thus I stumble into Dawn

with farewell to my crutches

to the landmarks I had chosen

walking where You'd lead me

to be what You'd make me

following night's yonder star

*Reflections of Sidney Poitier:

-...nowhere along the roads I traveled can I recall ever hearing the words "outsider" applied to me.  I had for years considered myself an old hand at the game of staying alive.  But with failure  walking in my shadow every minute, waiting for the misstep that could derail my whole existence, "survivor" seemed to me a more appropriate label under which my life should be filed.

Over time, however, I began to notice the frequency with which "outsider" was applied to others. The term began to resonate with me, causing me to wonder who I was really, at the center of myself. Eventually, I came to see myself in the outsider, and the outsider in me.  I knew that outsider and survivor often work as partners, but they're not twins.

What was it about outsiders, I wondered, that attracted the curiosity of others?  What made such personalities tick?  What were the forces driving them - forces that kept them intact and in motion, moving to the beat of their own drum, no matter what?  Was theirs a way of life rooted in sacrifice and challenge in defense of nobler purposes and higher values?  Or was it a lifestyle of out-of-control appetites in a materialistic environment?  Were outsiders simply trespassers, obliged by the nature of their lives to be constantly on the alert, known as "one of those" but never as "one of us"?

For me as a young man, the most relevant question was, How might such an outsider expect his life to unfold?  What were the penalties? What beauties occurred and what scars resulted from all those times when a life-altering situation suddenly jumped in his face, blocked his path, issued a threat, or laid down a challenge?  Daring him to pass through if he were foolish enough to think he had the stuff to do so.  "You gotta get by me, if survival is what you're after.  So suit up, Mr. Outsider.  To get where you think you want to go, you have five minutes to become a flesh-and-blood person walking in shoes you've never even tried on.  But first you've got to out maneuver me."

Only in my sixties did I fully absorb my outsider status and begin to settle into some kind of comfort with it.  I'd been on the fringes for fifty-odd years whether I knew it or not, so at last I accepted the likelihood that I would always be an outsider. 

Some tenets belong to night

Can't we hear ourselves?

Is there no echo, no caution pounding at our heart

barreling down the Halls of Time?

Have we inherited the mantle of immortality in vain?

Why feign deafness when hist'ry screams

and the ghosts of death wail from their graves?

Have we forgot as niggras lynched forgot

as so many peons crushed beneath notice forgot?

Have we forgot lies passed one generation to the next

like forgers repeating crimes the murderers forgot?

It's grace to go deaf, to fake blindness in the sun

to be on TV laughing when they hang the scum

then view their bodies urinating upon themselves.

What we bear is ign'rance passing each other in fear

the unmarked enemy snoring in our beds.

Our curtains hide, our shades reveal tales.

Our rural routes are hostels along which intellectuals flee.

Does it matter, then, the naming of our god

when the religion of the nation is the godness of the people?

Can't god be substance and yet bottom of the pit?

Some tenets belong to night alone

like sensible wars and spare revolutions.

*Reflections of Sydney Poitier:

  -A survival tactic that worked well for me was one I had gotten from my mother: "Charm them, son," she said, "into neutral."  Being charming bought me tine by allowing me to at least temporarily deflect the jabs of a threatening society.

You can see, within the context of how I lived and how I was beginning to work out a relationship between myself and the complex place,  that I wasn't free to indulge totally in delights.  There were delights; there were indulgences.  But I never lost sight of the fact that I had to cover my back, that I was always onstage.

Society had created laws to keep me at a distance, or out of sight altogether.  Learning to survive in that often-hostile world was trail-and-error, step-by-step; and just as when I was learning to pick fruit from the sapodilla trees, I often got stung.

"Oh, so that's how that works," I would realize.  So my closet is full of encounters and mistakes and tools and lessons learned truly the hard way.