A couple of years ago, I hung a bird feeder over the deck and attracted the neighborhood sparrows. I loved wathching them in the morning. One bird would come check things out, fly away, and a flock would return to feed. They threw bird seed all over the deck and into the planter under the feeder. Then the pidgeons took over. The sparrows fought valiantly and lost. The pidgeons took over the deck, flew into my apartment to be chased out and finally brought baggage and tried to move in. One walked through the open door and tried to face down the cat. I took down the feeder, and I still miss the birds. But last spring all sorts of foreign, anonymous stuff sprang up in my planter, some of it lovely in wildfower way. I got some spontaneous sunflowers, too. The plants died and dried up and left some lovely seed pods. I took pictures. I brought some in and put them in vases along with things left over from the occasional husband bouquet. They are mostly gone now, and I have lettuce and succulents.

Algebra and the Fourth Grader

Schools across the country are introducing material earlier and earlier in some sort of race for test scores. The brain is a developing organ, and teaching Algebra in fourth grade is probably premature. Ten year old brains are not able to grasp concepts that abstract. They can memorize a+b=c, but they simply cannot understand it, much less corollaries like a-c=b. They need concrete numbers with the concepts implied. I studied algebra in high school, and it was a revelation for me. I fell in love with math. I am not a mathematician, but my understanding of abstract math concepts made my thinking richer. It might be better for young minds to study a second language.
Learning language is a skill small children are very well eqipped for. Babies unconciously learn grammar and apply it consistenly. Language expresses culture, and every culture has its own approach to the world. Children who grow up speaking two or more languages have a more complex approach to the world, and their brains approach thinking with more flexibility and complexity. There are millions of bilingual children and adults in the world, and for the most part, they are unaware of their own sopisticated views because language is an unconcious skill.
Translation is the art of making new literature out of the original. No translation is a perfect expression of the original. This fact frustrates me no end. I really would like to read Hesse's Magic Mountain in the original. The English translation is breathtaking, but I do not know what Hesse really did, and without pretty advanced German, I cannot find out.
Try this. Go to the library and take down the King James Bible and Robert Alter's translation of the Psalms from the original ancient Hebrew. Pick your second favorite Psalm and and read it in King James. Then read Alter's translation. The men who wrote the King James Bible were wonderful poets, but they did not translate from the original Hebrew. They read Hebrew, and used it for inspiration. The two pieces of literature have nearly no relationship. A child of three can unconciously know this, and his thinking is richer, but his brain is concrete, and abstract math concepts are beyond him. They are beyond the average fourth grader, too. I'm afraid we are creating a generion people seriously blocked against math. Where will we get our scientits and mathemeticians? The average fourth grader is not deeply invested in academic achievement to begin with. To teach and test her on concepts she cannot grasp creats failure and frustrated, angry teachers. The kids hate school, and the teachers don't want to teach failure.

Cain and Abel

Adam and Eve were, according to "Genesis" the first people. Eve ate from the tree of "Knowledge of good and evil." They were immortal and perfectly good and happy. However, the only choice they actually had was to eat from this tree. Everything else was permitted. They had no other opportunities to offend God. Eve, with feminine curiousit,did eat of the tree. The serpent told Eve that she would be equal to God if she ate that fruit. When she ate it, she became equal to God in that she now had knowledge of evil. She had one single opportunity to know sin, one single choice, one act of free will available to her, and she took it. She then introduced Adam to this fruit, and he exercised free choice, ate of the fruit, and knew evil. All moral choice involves the potential for evil, and God tried to spare us this knowledge and leave us immortal and happy in His favor, but the first people exercised the only choice they had and knew defiance of God and evil. God gave humans free choice and curiousity. We can exercise our free choice to fulfill God's will for us, or we can choose to defy God and exercise our human desire to know. Thus evil entered the world. The Greek gods tied the god who gave man fire to a rock to have his liver eternally eaten by birds, and grown back. Taming fire was probably man's first great scientific achievement, and it infuriated the gods because God desires perfect happiness, and humans cannot just leave it alone. We have to see how it works, why it's forbidden, how we can use it. As a result of this sin, Eve was condemned to bear children in pain. Adam is condemned to earn his food by "the sweat of his brow."
The story of Cain and Abel has always puzzled me. Cain is the older brother and a shepherd. Able, the younger, a farmer. Each sacrifices his first fruit to God. God rejects Cain's offering and accepts Able's. Cain then kills Able with a rock, and God expels him to wander the earth with a mark on his forehead to protect him from attack from the people he wanders among. In the first place, if Cain and Able are the sons of the first people, where did the people Cain wandered among come from? Why did God reject Cain's offering of desirable meat and accept Able's offering of less desirable crops? If Adam and Eve are the first humans, and one son killed the other and is exiled and the other son is dead, who are our ancestors? Clearly Eve bore other children in suffering.
Some cultures refer to themselves as "the people" and all other people have some other name or names. I suspect that Adam and Eve were the ancestors of the Jewish people who created the story. This is clearly a creation myth. There are other people, but we don't mix with them. Cain was forced to find a home and a spouse outside the community. But why would God reject the more desirable offering of the older son? There is no suggestion that Cain was evil or not performing the sacrifice correctly. I think this story may be as old as agriculture. Animals were domesticated long before we thought of clearing land and planting land. However, when a culture that relies on herding begins agriculture there is usually a land war. The shepherds need the land for grazing, and the farmers need it to grow things. The two occupations are incompatible. The herders are usually forced to take land farther from the settlement. Also, animals can move with the tribe, but farmers are land bound. When a culture starts farming, they settle down, and the grazers lose the opportunity for new grazing areas as the tribe moves. They are forced to move with their herds away from the village and live alone with their animals. I think this story is as old a human agriculture and is about the beginnings of agriculture. The Jews sacrificed animals to God for another 5,000 years, but they also sacrificed bread. Able had the less desirable occupation of farmer, and Cain, being the older brother was the herdsman. God threw his favor to agriculture in a conflict that may have torn the culture apart.
Human beings invented agriculture about 12,000 years ago. Prior to the domestication of plants, women hunted and gathered plant food from the areas surrounding temporary settlements. The people moved with the animal migrations, plant seasons, and the weather. Men hunted. Some women noticed that some plants returned the same time every year in particular places and circumstances and experimented with planting and harvesting them themselves. Women farmed for prehistory and still do in some cultures today, and men hunted meat and cared for domesticated animals like sheep and pigs. Meat could not be stored, so when an animal was killed, offerings were made to the gods, and the meat was shared among members of the tribe. It was a fairly rare treat. Animals were sacrificed for important occasions, offered to God and shared among the people. Vegetables and plants were the daily staples of cultures. When plants became domesticated, humans formed settlements and moved the animals away from the village. I think this story is as old a civilization and is about human conflict. God decided that humans would have settled villages, crops, and animals. It seems from the story of Cain and Able that this was a serious and life threatening conflict that God himself settled in the minds of the people.

Sodom, Gomorrah and the rain of fire

Some 5,000 years ago, God's wrath at the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah was such that it could only be appeased by destruction of the towns and all the residents, except one just man, Lot. God calls Lot and tells him to take his family and flee to the hills to avoid certain destruction. Lot pleads with God that there must be 50 good men living in the two towns. God replies that if Lot can find 50 good men, He will spare the towns. Lot argues God down to 10 men, and sets out to find 10 just residents in the towns. While Lot is still seeking, God sends an angel to Lot"s town in the form of a young stranger. Jewish courtesy required that the stranger be treated better than one's own family, so Lot invites the stranger to stay in his home.
That evening, the men of the towns come to Lot's door to demand that he present the stranger so that they may know him. Lot responds from his doorway that he cannot do that, but the men may have his virgin daughters to know in his place. The men demand the stranger and not the girls. I don't remember how the story ends, but the stranger and Lot's daughters are spared. Lot finally accepts that this situaltion cannot be allowed to go on. He has searched diligently and found not one other just man in the two towns. He takes his family and flees to the hills as fire rains down and Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed. The story is strange and very disturbing. It is hard to imagine a place so vicious that the entire male population would band together to violate a visitor in the home of a resident merely because he was there.
Archeologists have recently discovered two towns in close proximity that seem to be of the right age and in the right place . The site is very ancient, and the towns were destroyed by fire from the sky. They were buried in a volcanic eruption.
I have been reading the ancient Hebrew stories in literary translation by Robert Alter because I am interested in very ancient civilizations and cultures. I came to the brillian insight that the Jewish Bible is full of ancient stories that can legitimately read as stories of a culture that claims to go back 5,000 years. And the stories are right there in the Bible on one's shelf. The one with the family tree. No one knows how old these stories are because they were transmitted orally in prehistory. I need to say here that History is commonly definend as written history. Homer's stories, Gilgamesh and stories from all over the world have been told to and memorized by one generation of people after another before they are written down. Details of the stories change over generations, and morals have been added. Stories have passed from one culture to another so that stories that have been taken as literal truth or morality tales turn out to have almost exact paralells in say Assyrian or Babylonian culture. Many people, including me, think that these stories contain factual truth disguised and buried under primitive science and cultural influence.
I am going to add a note here about science. The human brain has not changed much in millions of years. The same mind that figured out black holes and string theory was applied to volacnic eruptions in prehistory. Those minds had a real interest in knowing why fire rained from the sky ,and mountains exploded with rock, ash, and fire. They actually had a real interest in why rain rained from the sky. However, they did not have much information and a man might very well live his entire life within five miles of the place in which he was born. Some of those people were authors and made stories to explain why home was now a pile of rubble, and these stories were passed down by old men to young men in school and over the fire at night. Eventually, Homer told his stories to a scribe and we have The Odyssey. We also have this very strange story about towns so evil that the men of the town demand the body of a stranger because he is a stranger.
In the first place, it really was Jewish custom to treat the stranger with extreme courtesy, so these men were violating and important cultural law. In the second place, a town where the male population was preoccupied with the rape of male visitors would probably not have lasted very long. Life was hard, and people for the most part were preoccupied with keeping God happy to avoid certain destruction and providing for the needs of themselves and their families. I was lying on the couch staring at the ceiling wondering about this story for some reason when a solution came to me. The towns absolutely existed and were fairly prosperous. Fire did rain from the sky obliterating the towns and the people. This horror was so terrible that it could only have been caused by a very angry God. If God is that angry, then the people deserved to die in this horrific way. What could they possibly have done to deserve such a fate? So the story. Ancient Hebrew literature is full of stories of people who find out they have grievously offended God when he smites them, and they are always very sorry. The ancient Hebrew God is loving, angry, unpredictable, and unfair. He exists complete in himself, and man exists to please him. The story is part of an ancient cultural tradition that makes it clear that God does not tolerate inhumane treatment of the stranger. Now I'm waiting for Dr. Alter to translate Job.

Lately, I've been hearing that I'm not a very good fiction writer because my stories don't seem to have any points. They don't. They are not fiction but stories from my childhood and other periods. When something interests me, I just write it. Please enjoy.

 

Can't We All Just Get Along?

In the last ten years I've spent a a good chunk of my intellectual resources trying to figure out what the hell was going on between men and women.I'd like to present some results of this meditation here. It is abundantly clear that people abuse each other when they think they can get away with it. We can consider the Crusades, Auschwitz, ethnic cleasning, and the Inquisition. However, when I discovered that Marilyn French had published several volumes documenting vicious treatment of women by men throughout history, my reaction was a kind of irritated ennui. Certainly, it is easy to see that women have had a hard time at the hands of men, witness the burka. However, I would like to point out that if we women had not been able to come to some kind of favorable terms with men, we would not be here at all.
The first and most obvious point is that we have two genders rather than none or three for the purpose of reproduction. We could reproduce through mitosis, like unicellular organisms or carry both genders in each individual, like some animals. We could make reproduction unnecessary by living forever. However, since humans still die, we have a drive to produce children, and evolution has determined that a combination of two gene pools is the most effective method of producing healthy human beings.
It is a truism that our brains have made us the most successful species on earth other than insects. We are so successful that we are ravaging our environment like some malign virus. Our large brains make a long period of development outside the womb necessary. In other words, babies are nearly absolutely helpless, and any women who has ever given birth will testify how hard it is to get up from labor and care for a being who wakes screaming every couple of hours. It takes roughly 25 years for a human being to mature. The brain does a good deal of its development outside the womb, so people need years of care to be able to live independently. A deer can stand and walk minutes after birth. A baby does not even stand unsteadily for most of its first year. Hence we have mothers.
A normal pregnancy lasts nine months, and the mother usually spends that time physically bonding with the being she is caryying. Her body manufactures homones like oxytocin to help her commit totally to the welfare of the baby, and she spends much of the next years caring for a being who slowlly develops independence. Without a lot of help, she is not free to do much but care for her children. Men, on the other hand, develop connections with their children after birth, if at all. An uncountable number of children grow up without their biological fathers or with fathers only peripherally involved in their affairs. That is not to say that many fathers are not committed to their offspring, but they are not as biologicallly driven to care for them. The idea that men "spread their seed" is common and probably has some validity. Men can create hundreds of children while a woman bears one or two children in nine months. A woman who devotes herself to nothing but having children will still never come near the capacity of a man and will most likely destroy her health.. Thus, a woman has a biological incentive to keep the father of her children at home providing necessities, while men have an incentive to roam. It is also true that many women have more than one partner, and many men devote their lives to their families, but that fact does not obviate the rule.
Men tend to be taller and more muscular than women, while women tend to have greater endurance. This leads to the male's ability to do heavier physical labor than women, such as providing meat and physical dwellings. Women can and always have gotten up every two hours to feed babies from their own bodies, maintain homes, and tolerate hardship in the name of protecting children. However, people do abuse power, and it is true that men have physically and emotionally abused women throughout our history, and women have been forced to tolerate abuse. This does not mean that men are biologically driven to abuse women or that women have a greater ability to put up with abuse. Men are physically more powerful, and women need to protect their offspring, and so humans do have a long, documentable history of male abuse of women. However, we also have a long documentable history of cooperation and mutual affection. I think maybe it is time to recognize that fact.
In the earliest societiess that we know of, men have hunted and provied shelter and meat. Women have done the daily, routine work of gathering necessities like roots, fruit, and nuts. Meat is wonderful, but seeds, fruit, honey, and roots are daily staples. For centuries after humans became farmers, women did the farming: sowing, caring for, and gathering crops while men hunted. Throughout human history, men have done the heavier labor and provided physical security for their families. Women have done the heavy, demanding, and valued work of providing a clean, warm home and regular, nourishing meals.
In the last fifty or so years, the business of keeping a home clean and comfortable has been heavily mechanized, and women for the first time in history have received the same kinds of education as men. At the same time, urban living emphasizes the value of work outside the home. Families no longer work as units to provide the needs of the family. Men and women have somewhat different orientations to sexual activity and its consequences, but both genders have a vested interest in finding a way to produce and provide for the next generation, and for the greatest part, they manage to live together in peace all over the world.

wet california fall

two days ago sky
bright hot blue grey eucalyptus
now October rain

kitchen

tiny and narrow
like on a boat
peanut butter sandwich
vegetable chopping
excuse me

some man designed the room
efficient
microwave on the counter
can opener
recessed fridge
the bread board sits over the silver drawer
oil based paint in mint green


percolator sits on the old stove
sauce pan
frying pans
hang from the ceiling
anonymous linoleum


the pantry is small
food stacked
on the refrigerator
the bread box
unreachable shelves

on chilly nights
light pours yellow
from the doorway
scent of frying onions and bacon fat
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kitchen

tiny and narrow
like on a boat
peanut butter sandwich
vegetable chopping
excuse me

some man designed the room
efficient
microwave on the counter
can opener
recessed fridge
the bread board sits over the silver drawer
oil based paint in mint green


percolator sits on the old stove
sauce pan
frying pans
hang from the ceiling
anonymous linoleum


the pantry is small
food stacked
on the refrigerator
the bread box
unreachable shelves

on chilly nights
light pours yellow
from the doorway
scent of frying onions and bacon fat
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Indian Summer, California

basil shoots purple
brown grass hills threaten
ashy skies. pray fresh rain soon

swings

 

push the swing a bit
child screams, arms flail. fear
then quiet face. free

Meditation on Good Friday

Meditation on Good Friday


I keep thinking of the man in the garden
I remember it was a garden
Gethsemane
probably fresh with spring
the man bled with fear
he was grown, though
and knew we all have bad days

terrified
he begged his dad for mercy
maybe you’ve seen the picture
hands clenched in petition
folded
he cast his plea to the empty garden

his father may have said something flat
you can’t have that of me
maybe his dad was on spring vacation
I’ve been there
even a god can find refreshment

the story is old
that of a god
come to save us from our natures
he faced his duty alone and took the cup

I don’t know about that
but the story had this
the man lived twisted agony alone
his soul screamed
and was really scared
the isolation is human
the pain human
the god divne

dream

mom, quiet name call
nursing, she twisted from the fire
witch mouth spouted flame

surf

have dreamed in glowing color
of absolutely silent
brutal
violation
eyes pleading in wordless agony
for help I could not give
and I was frozen

I have dreamed
of anger acidly burning
my human soul
scarring it beyon any hope whatever
of barren sterility too dry for tears

I woke sensitive
to ominous ticking and drippings
screaming animals
and strange, hateful mutterings

finally
I dreamed of the sea
desolation of the shore in march
pipers skittering from
swishing wavelets
windamp, salt scented cold

farther out
sea force shattered itself
on huge, gull covered rocks
sending up the birds
in a mass of screeching grey
slid to shore, quiet
but for the clok of pebbles
and the swish of white froth

today rains
quiet but for the occasional
plop of a puddle
and a small wind in the eucalyptus
now and then, a bird screechees
jay or mockingbird
not a gull
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Mollie and January

Mollie stood in the doorway until Mrs. Dalton saw her and called the Tigers to line up.. Six second graders quietly rowdy followed her out in line to play Addition Bingo and Math Jeopardy. They clustered around the table on the wet grass chattering about Wii for Christmas and ninja stars. The early winter California morning was misty and cold. Cappy said with the pleasure of possession, "It's really cold, but I have my furry jacket." She stuck out her arm to show her pink quilted sleeve with white fake fur at the wrist. Jackson replied, "Maybe it's gonna rain. Then we eat inside and play floor games . Miss Mollie has to play with us." Mollie thought the kids were wonderful, and she was lucky to have such a good job. Her hands were blue despite her Irish sweater. Miss Mollie worked six hours a day as a teacher's assistant at Fredrick Douglas elementary. In the morning, she played games and reviewed spelling with Mrs. Dalton's kids, and in the afternoon, she did whatever scut work they had in the office. She loved her job and had never taken a day off in six years.
That day, she left early for the first time, saying she didn't feel well and would be back in the morning. Dr. Morrisey told her to take care of herself. She woke up very early, had her coffee, and suddenly realized she could not go to work that day. She waited until 7:00, called the secretary and said she would be out again. The next day, she forced herself to get dressed and go to work. By 10:00, she was looking for excuses to leave. She did not feel sick, but she suddenly needed to go home and lie down. The next day, she called in sick. The day after that, she simply could not force herself to get dressed. It seemed she could hardly leave home, and she called in sick again. Finally, Mrs. Dalton complained to Dr. Morrisey that Mollie was not reliable, and she needed an aide who came to work. Mrs. Morrisey mentioned to Mollie that Mrs. Dalton was unhappy. Two weeks later, Mollie gave notice. They gave her a good bye party in the teachers' lounge after school. She said she was going to tutor or something. Maybe go back to school herself. Then she went home and lay down. She did not really get up again for two years. Her husband was pissed about the job.
Mollie's family did not know what was wrong. She had come out into the middle of the living room where her family was watching "Star Trek" and told her husband she could not stop crying. He said nothing very much. The children ignored her. She went back to bed. She woke up in the middle of the night, took out the pictures of her children as babies and cried. She cleaned up the kitchen at 2:00 in the morning. Allen woke up and asked her what she was doing, annoyed. She told him she couldn't sleep. Allen often had to make or provide dinner because she could not cook dinner at 2:00 in the morning, and she could not get out of bed at dinner time to cook. The kids rented movies and played them over and over again. Mollie could not ask them from the couch to please change the movie or someting. She came to hate Tom Cruise. She went and saw her doctor who told her she was depressed and would feel better in about two years. Mollie had never heard of antidepressants, strangely enough. She read Proust and Dickens and did not watch TV. Her doctor thought she should work through her problems, whatever they were, evidently on her own. Mollie thought of death. She considered suicide a valid life choice and thought it hardly mattered except it would give the children a bad example. Mollie thought about her new DH Lawrence book, but could barely walk across the room to pick it up, and she couldn't seem to read anything. "Harper's" and "The Atlantic" piled up. She saved them for when she could read again.
Mollie lost twenty pounds. She had a pain in her solar plexus that was both dull and almost unbearable at the same time, and although she was hungry, food made her nauseous. Suddenly, she didn't have any clothes. She was obsessed with her crammed, messy closets. Every day, she thought, "Tomorrow, I'll do that one." She did nearly nothing, but lie on the couch and smoke. Her husband went out with the kids, and they hardly bothered to say good bye. She was invisible and absolutely alone. The only relief she had was sleep. When she first woke up, she was fine for a second. Then the pain came and the realization. All she wanted to do was sleep. Finally, for no reason, lying on her couch smoking, she felt a little lift and thought, "Maybe I'll get better." A couple of days later, she cooked dinner. Within a month, she was sleeping through the night, and the pain came a little later after she woke and it was better. She read her Lawrence book. Two years. She got out of bed, did her housework. One day she decided to call around about a job.

This is a very brief description of one type of untreated clinical depression. It can be treated effectively with antidepressant medication. There are other types, but this is roughly what I have done more than once. People often have no idea what to do and are terrified to see someone they love deteriorate to this extent. Depression is the loneliest thing in the world, but I want to say that this is an illness. People can recover, and they can be helped. If your doctor doesn't help, find one who will.

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Blindness and the Brain

On Fridays, I used to walk my preschoolers to the park three blocks away. Preparing for these trips was quite a chore. We packed a red wagon with Gold Fish, juice boxes, bread for the birds, and water. We had to strap John into a wheelchair. He had very severe autism and started violently tantrumming the moment he saw the wagon. If we did not put him into the chair, he would sit down, screaming and thrashing and refuse to move. He fought the chair through the whole trip, but he loved the swings, goldfish and juice. We also used the wagon to transport Cecily when she got tired of using her walker and Anna when she begged to be carried, but all of the children had to walk at least part way. We stopped to smell red, yellow, and white roses and touch green leaves from the trees. I told the children the roses were red, yellow, and white and that the leaves were green. All of my three year olds were born without sight. They knew they had blindness, but they did not know what that meant since none of them had ever seen more than a little light. Once Ramon, walking happily ahead holding hands with Jacob suddenly stopped and asked, "What's that?" A red motorcycle was passing noisily. I told him it was a red motorcycle. We had toy motorcycles for the children to play with at school. Roman most likely will never see color, but red, yellow, white roses, green leaves, and noisy red motorcycles told the childrn something about the color the rest of the world lives with. We were a real sight crossing the intersections with our long canes, trailing three year olds, and red wagon, but the cars waited patiently, and the children heard the motors and knew they were there. My children lived happily in the world for the most part.
Most of human learning is visual. About 65% if the brain is devoted to processing visual input. What happens when a brain never receives visual input? How did my little ones learn about the world? The brain is breathtakingly flexible. My children did not have better hearing, touch, or taste, but their brains converted their visual processing center to processing the other senses. My children learned by touch to read, smell to know flowers and food they liked or disliked, and music. They could name the characters to "Peter and the Wolf" from the music. Humans also have something called "echolocation." We locate things from the sounds bouncing off surrounding hard surfaces. I have seen preschoolers in little cars and tricycles careen around the playground without crashing. They located each other and obstacles through echolocation. People who survive strokes often learn with therapy and practice to walk, talk, and live vitally. The human brain can learn to block out noise if it is too bothersome. Our brains our out greatest asset, and they were not able to recover from disability, we most likely would not be here at all.

 

 

 

 

Last year, I had a bird feeder, and the birds tossed seed everywhere. I had to take it down because the pidgeons were moving into my apartment with bags packed. This year, these wonderful things came up.

harbor

hard arms wrap woman
tenderness turns green to sun
black knife pain leaves scar

dawn

light sifts through open
window,bright hope, half closed eyes
find coffee,mug, cream

Highway 1

sun baked hard red earth
road twists around sharp cliff face
gray winter sea mist

dancers

dancers

man lifts woman
dancers leap, lift, spin
josie's eyes are bright

silk

roasted corn from field
tastes sweet bitten with salsa
tomato from farm

Boot Camp

I thought about you
my boy who insisted on NIKES and feathers
running through his days
with a stubble of red hair
in combat boots

when we got home
I found we had left the door open
the chicks were huddled in the corner
of the brooder for warmth
I turned up the heat
got a call from some ham operator
with your address

Robert got a buzz
he sticks it up in the morning
with gel
smoothing down the sides
John stll had his tail
Carlo wears baggys
and Reeboks
this morning your dad
watching the chickes under the lamp
wanted to know
when they would be done
I don't mind the Marine sticker
on the VW much
I wish someone would clean it out though

Teacher by Pets

 

My daughter teaches seventh grade math in a middle school close to downtown L A. Her students in their extensive free time draw portraits of her. She thought this was hilarious and brought it home for me to see.

 

My daughter's seventh grade math class' view of their favorite teacher. She found this posted on her door and considered using it as room ID.

Aphorism

Things do not turn out all right in the end.

haiku

recess


blind

ernesto looks up
eyes blank hands reach mouth laughing
escalera, ladder climb slide


march

california deck
wild hill mutters remember
nasturtiums spill bright



silence in the park

laughing girl signs
push me, swing me higher, faster
hands open forwad, push

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Sea Rock and the Maiden

Saturday morning early.The rock black, hulking, utterly quiet.. Spray surges dissolving granite white salt sifts. The woman suddenly screams ecstasy, and the man shoots salty cum to form blood mix with archaic sea brine. Gulls circle and circle.The virgins sit at the bottom of the cliff, shivering, excited watching the sea surge granite and eating stolen peanut butter and white bread.

Sea Rock and the Maiden

slick, shiny lips parted
eyes wide
what do you want?
what do you want?
what do you say I want?

sea swell bashes the rock
spray shoots salt
the crag stands solid
in the perfect solvent

sea swells
beating
beating
what do you want from the rock
eating your sandwich on the sand?
the rock says nothing

granite white flecked- solitary
seared at the magma core
Love me?
Love me?
Love me


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Sunset and Spring

 

The tortilla factory, La Fortaleza, Manuel's dad owned and where Manuel, himself, was born is just outside this picture. Click to enlarge.

 

You can't hurt a turkey. Ann Benson
Hemingway once said something like. "Life breaks us all, but some of us heal stronger in the broken places." I have a hard time with Hemingway, but that thought is wonderful....more later. ladymabelgrex

George W Bush and Terror

 

Using nothing more threatening than a couple of box cutters, the 9/11 hijackers turned the United States into a proto fascist state. To my knowledge, that has not happened in any of the European countries or Israel, who are under constant terrorist threat. Without firing a shot, those few men forced us to deny and invalidate our own civil rights. In my view that is quite an accomplishment. Comments? I put this together some time ago and forgot about it. It’s a little strange, but if anyone has anything to say, feel free. Ladymabelgrex