This is one of the poems that got me fired from my job at the Greater Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce, the main one, or the last poetic straw, however you want to look at it, but I wasn’t aware people here were going to my personal blog and getting offended until after posting this one. The president, who fired me, told Douglas, who also works there, that board members and others were sending her excerpts of things I’d “penned”, claiming I was making fun of them.
If you are reading this poem on a phone, note that the integrity of the lines, a major feature of poetry, is not displayed properly. Many if not most get cut short because of the small screen.
The captive adult, I’m not that bad. Dated immigrant, 21 years in India, and I didn’t have a form to fill out, and they called me illegal. Are you kiddin’ me? Human beings are wrong, nasty, and evil, if they’ve overstayed their visa. Everybody says so. Look at Trump.
I’ve got a million dollars. I’ve got hair in my ICE, and my hair in on fire lookin’ at the human being. I judge is my luxury. I’m not as tall as I am, and I get downright small on the issues group think.
Now murder me some, the I now the poet, who can say I to anyone. Okay we’ve called down Congress, hopin to find some expediency to keep tyranny from happenin’. I mean we’ve wrote a poem, maybe several, that ask government to be government and not make us bow down to nationalism and be a dictator over our lives.
No British government can force the crown on us. We are all we are in the halls of independence, and everybody who signed the paper put their lives on the line. Protest is useless. Give a government what it wants, total dominion, you stupid s.o.b. Let it take over Auroville and rule with an iron fist and remove the international scene if the people resist.
To point this out to people, to use poetry to stop it. Now let’s get on with it, movin’ Heaven and Earth to get our dogs. No, no, no, you can’t do that, ask the community for help, the man at large, the woman with the telephone. Get second jobs you fools and pay for your dogs yourself.
You selfish points of contact with the society in the bag. You are supposed to work, work, work and create no art, write no poetry, or go on your little round abouts and discover the community. You are of no value to us as a society, and you cannot ask for a thing. Asking the community for help with your dogs, you’re throwin’ pies in our face. Get your act together and stop asking people for help. So many millionaires on this island, and please don’t bother them. They’re makin’ money.
I think we’d need to ask the millionaire. We find some kind, nice, and warm, open to humanity, especially dog lovers, and we’ve gotten a lot of help. Thank you. But the thing most profound in all this mess, in all this criticism, concerns our way of life. We are digging a well into the meaning of life, and every decision is based on that. We live our lives to a spiritual plan and put that first. It’s not lip service. It’s the reality of our lives.
Even our dreams we hone in on God and seek to find the higher consciousness. We do not base our lives on survival, making money, or anything of the sort. We are not here to have a good time. The consequences of that are huge. We get attacked constantly. Jesus died on the cross, and you think it was for sin? Poor bugger got caught openin’ up God inside himself.
What’s this I say? Jesus was on a tree, castigated and torn, murdered, because he showed men how to change their lives in spiritual substance. He gave men and women a way to be free by breaking the bonds of consciousness and being born again into the higher type, and you think it’s a wish-wash hangin’ on a prayer, and you’re clean and good, religious for the rest of your life? A radical transformation of our whole life Jesus envisioned. Now shoot me for saying that he did not die for our sins.
So anybody we’re up against, as we try to change, base our life on this mountain, is either put off or keeps us at a distance. Few come inside our home or invite us to socialize. We are too weird for TV. I think you’d find us warm and very human to be with. We know you’re God starin’ back at us, a startling revelation we challenge ourselves with every day.
Now kick us and be mean to us because we are different from you, and you need validation that only your life is true. Have I said enough? I’m on time I think to be Who I am, a man in search of himself that his divinity timeshare wears, a man tryin’ to change in his higher type, and I’m doin’ that in normal life. I got kicked out of India.
Now say I keep my nose to the grindstone, work a 40 hour week, pay my bills, keep my mind to myself, unless someone asks— I’m talkin’ about at work. Can I be in America and do that, or is conformity the rule of the day now, and if I don’t conform I’m fired, lose my home? Will I be chased off this island for poetry like I was India?
Do you understand what’s your doin’? There’s a radical change of consciousness ahead, how we evolve out of this mess. There’s a new society of ourselves waitin’ to be born. There’s human survival in the balance. Let’s huff and puff and blow it down because we cannot tolerate change out of our satisfied little lives, and these two beggars, Don and Doug, we need them to straighten up and be just like us.
Now all you good people, can you get your head around that? Can you please? “Douglas at the Watering Hole”, another joy for understanding. It’s so true yes. All the whiles are looking at me. You raise your hands among yourselves. Why should I be any different? Another two weeks before bylaws are stated. A bunch of people, a bunch of people on this island support, are lookin’ at this way: I approach the bench, and there are good vibes there.
You’re on dissidence you’re on daily bread, you just take a deep breath and keep on goin’, confirmation code casting problems away from your human beings and comin’ to yourself for the love of man. Are there any other spring rolls? An island bright in sunshine, and all those puppy dogs— the love of animals too. Well they’re on our diet. Would if they’re off in time for us to renew the Earth? Yeah I know. I got a ways to go, but our dogs are our children, and I don’t eat those.
For the love of dog, they’re honored guests on our island too, and who are we but guests on bright and shiny seashores the power of Nature rules? What causes earthquakes? Well, we might have something to do with them greed takes the shore, if we honor our pocketbooks more. Help was health insurance, but would the Calusa listen? There are no more creeds for the Calusa to close. It was 30 miles an hour, their hunting season, who put other peoples out. I pointed it out. Pointed it out wind, we do it, no socioeconomic class below the poverty level.
It’s easy for me to say. I just got here. And they’re real deep in there so be good to them Harbor Island. Ed the reason an algebra drive, if you wanna get past your schoolbooks. We are representative creatures ourselves hook, line, and sinker. An actor plays a part, you and me, and you don’t save your soul. Your soul you find it and rise above yourself to Who you represent in time. Find Yourself to believe in. That’s good news and that One is all of us, islands and dogs included.
Now believe in hell as a preferable option for most people, and you really need to examine yourself, don’t you think? I’m just talkin’ islands. Now you hear them speak. Rise power to Nature, or we’re not gonna make it. Will you listen?
Well legalized in a fiery seal, we’ve moved mountains on Fort Myers Beach to get in there. Would you welcome please Doug and Donny and let them have their dogs and spiritual life? I need to put poems on it, this startup page. Rock me gently, rock me slowly (sing to Rock Me Gently by Andy Kim) for the love of the island. It touches yah you know and helps people along like us. Thank you island.
Come on Jim, we’re just here for a little while. We’re off to the mountains in springtime. Not now. When we put our time in on the island. Meaning we are open to the island. Can you gauge that? Just let it be.
There’s somethin’ Earth husband, but can we be accepted not being gay doing it? We don’t have to be gay, do we, to be two husbands and a wife? We’re celibate you know, but we don’t live inside an egg. I don’t like it. You guys are doin’ great. Good riddens. Well we’ve heard from the crowd. It’s nice to be accepted, ain’t it? We’re just a laboratory. I’m doin’ the laboratory. Could you stop threatenin’ to kick me out? I wuv you.
I suppose you can read the writings after the fall, but I was really hopin’ humanity wouldn’t fall. Is there anybody out there? We don’t have to fall. Now I’ve taken on the voice of the world, but who believes you can get that done? Now you know the spirit of Old St. Nick, and it shows by a red light. Build for sunlit paths the stadium of our Earth. Is that today’s date? I have found good shit to faith, but we’re at a watering hole, and we have no sense of each other. Love others as yourself, that’s precious to us now.
Sure, are you singing the song, or does your music just get drunk island hopper? Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues. (sing to Honky Tonk Woman) Let the big sheet guests know that the grassroots can do it themselves, move Earth towards our up stand. Now gotta get to work. You have a great day.
I have to get that picture. I have to get that picture from the Mount of Olives. They have refined the books. That’s it, pretty intelligent about it. We didn’t kill ourselves.
I visited the Old City of Jerusalem and did a hunger strike outside its gates, three weeks, ended Easter and Passover 1995. Then I taped poems of mine all over Jerusalem in the holy quarters, dangerously daring in the dead of night. You wanna see it?
In Jerusalem is here, and in Pondicherry I will do a hunger strike for my boy, to protect him from abuse and get him back home. You don’t believe me read the story. I will do anything for love. Get ready folks. I’m about to step in God’s hands and see what they’re made of. Care to join me come at the lake. Day one begins shortly, for the love of Nithish.
Nobody catches blood on the first day of the field. It showed that I had been to visa. We must add those grapes too, so to be believed. I got it issued 1977 press, and that’s it. My hunger days as a Jesus freak add to the story. I converted people at school lunch, and we’d get on our knees right there in front of everybody. I’d have them accept Christ. I read my Bible every day, studied scripture, and I attended church every night, all the denominations.
I didn’t find Christ, just his name. The clothes I wore prevented me. Those clothes were Christianity, so I took them off, put my Bible down and started backpacking and camping on the weekends, looking for the natural God. Green Beret came easy after that.
So I went to Jerusalem with a heartache. Jesus was real I knew it, but would I find him in all that stone, all those old places? I found adventure, but I did not find Christ. He was too buried over by religion. Do I find him today? A present God in my life yes, who’s special function is compassion and redemption, the God of love.
He has appeared to me in vision so to help with Nithish, getting that boy back to me and getting him healed. So when you talk of the Old City, this is religion wore off. It won’t help you none. I think there’s still hope for Pondicherry to become a spiritual city of wide dimensions, for inner watch, not outer show, for freedom in the spirit, not to bow down to a religion.
A free, open, and easy God that can accept even the atheist at His dinner table, and change us all into better men and women, The New Jerusalem, we’ve found it here in Pondicherry. It is here the Supermind came down, and it’s here we’ll learn to be a proper city, considering human beings before even the law, learnin’ how to make it right with our children, learnin’ the true intent and purpose of school, and how to treat people who work for you and pay them well. No slaves please, no schedule that excludes your life. We’re on our way Pondicherry, we’re on our way.
I wanna be the first one to raise a child knowin’ Pondicherry is a cradle of civilization. is where we do it, the supramental manifestation on Earth. Did you even look at it? There’s a book here in Pondy with that title. Take it out for a spin. It’ll bring you on the road to destiny Earth and open up your life to what we’re actually doing here.
Say hi Billy, how are you? Don’t pull that out and show it to me. Let’s get down to business what you really want. You want God in your life don’t you. How do you become you are He? Pull your pants up I’ll show yah. My job pretty good, kids know I like them yes. I let ‘em play with their little small cars. Well why not? I don’t bother them there. I know how to take that energy and open their consciousness with it, and turn that curiosity to God, never once tellin’ ‘em playin’ with themselves is wrong. You just wouldn’t put it in videos and pass it out in the street. You protect that child’s privacy and leave them alone there. The power we give them when we do it right. God rest His case.
You have to find out tomorrow, at some point, your child got raped with that guidance that shows them everything is to make money, buy nice things, and walk on people you don’t like or you disagree with. Open heart surgery, open house surgery, it’s how we find each other again, so complete and wonderful.
I have the stairs. Will you walk up them? Pondicherry it’s time you become yourself, where peace descends on your city mood. Buckle up, I think you’re fine. Help me find my boy will yah? He was halfway in to the new humanity when he was taken, and you countin’ on me to get it right. We have pushed suffering out of his life.
Unfortunately this is a brand new way of doing things. I’ll see you scoff at it at first. Then I’ll see you think about it. Then I’ll see you accept it. We have to go.
You know I hear about Nithish. And what did you do with that? Normal, he’s perfectly normal. I just spoke to someone who he cried to. The boy wants his daddy, tired of being beaten and threatened. I guess we need insurance. Yes daddy, I know daddy. I’m almost done here.
You were so concerned with your mall and media. Heartbeats don’t measure pain. They just squeeze it, but this boy’s still feeling pain, and he hides it from you because he must. You beat him, threaten him, if he even talks to me. Imagine what you do with him when he asks you to let him see me. You’re leavin’ out the full story Sandiya. You’re not tellin’ the truth. That is a must Pondicherry, give this boy back his place with me, with you, and with God.
Splittin’ with an open guitar, I will make people to understand what I’m asking of them. Hey Sleeping, can I ride your tricycle awhile? My boy’s being abused, and it won’t let up. I need this written in the paper. I need this on the news. I need to protect my boy. Will you help me?
I’m not robbin’ cradles. I’m not doin’ anything bad to him. I’m bringing him to the fullness of his potential, and I can show you miracles that’s being done. Read awhile his poetry, and then tell me his parents are right in keeping him away from that, in keeping him away from me, and do you know how they do that? They beat him they slap him. They threaten to put him in a boy’s hostel. They guard him day and night to keep him from contact me.
Why is this you ask? The boy prefers me as a parent, and they can’t stand that, but do you know what he did? He told me his father was masturbating his little brothers, and he gave me a video his mother made of his little brother masturbating. That’s why they took him from me. He told me these things. Do you know how much he’s been punished for that? Do you know WHERE he’s been punished for that?
It’s happened that way, and you’re gonna tell me I’m lying, but no one will question that boy about the abuse he’s received from his parents away from those parents, not a single Child Help worker in this city. Why is that? You tell me.
August 2023 Military Memories Competition (on the internet site Together We Served)
Which song do you connect most to your time in military service? What specific memories does this song bring back for you?:
Aug 17, 2023, 3:43 AM
The Eye of the Tiger
It was a hot June afternoon at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, and we shuffled off the buses amid the yelling of NCO instructors shouting for us to line up shoulder to shoulder, our bags at our feet. It was a scurry; it was a hustle; we were hassled. There were over two hundred of us, not enough room for the place inside the gate we were, and so the line was a long L shape. I could feel my heart in my throat. This was it, what I’d been waiting for since I was seven and saw John Wayne in The Green Berets at a local drive-in. The Duke looked like a giant on that big screen, his green beret the headgear of a hero. At that moment, 1968, the Vietnam War was a nightly feature on the six o’clock News, small clips of U. S. soldiers at rest and in misery a staple of my childhood. At the movies it was just my dad and I, as this was a man-thing between us, and you must pardon me for such a masculine pronoun. He had wanted to join SF when it was being formed, or somewhere around that time, but he had decided not to reenlist.
The aspiration came to me. Sitting there absorbing every minute of that movie, it hit me like a self-realization: this was what I wanted to be. I don’t think he realized the weight of that in my consciousness because, when I told him, he looked down at me—we were in the front seat of a 1965 Mustang—and he smiled that patronizing smile adults give little kids when they are so earnest at being ridiculous. I was pigeon-toed and had asthma, a very small, little thing of a boy. “You know son, they select only the best for that.” He tried not to let on that he thought I was a weakling, but it came through in his incredulous smile. It didn’t matter. I knew I would be selected because I was the best. Of course I was. After all, I was the center of the world. At least that’s what my eyes and ears told me, seating my vision and hearing in the dead center of everything; smell, touch and taste put me there too, not to mention my thoughts, as you only hear your own. Those cheats—it’s a big and very disappointing fact of childhood that you discover your senses have been cheating you; you are not the center of the world, or, to put it more how it is: everybody else thinks they’re the center too.
One SF instructor was coming down one side of the L, and another was coming down another. They would stand in front of the SF candidate (we have to get one thing straight: the term Green Beret is for Hollywood; it’s called Special Forces, SF for short, and no, Rangers are not Special Forces). He would look you up and down and move on. The one that stood in front of me began to laugh. I became indignant, but of course I couldn’t show that. He said something like, “You, you want to be SF?!” I heard some splashes of laugher down the ranks. I burned inside. I think I said, “Yes sergeant!” but I don’t remember. It happened that I no longer had asthma, but I was super skinny and was still pigeon-toed, which really showed when I ran, and we’d had to run to get in line. I wasn’t the smallest in the class, but almost. The smallest guy had made the mistake of getting the SF patch tattooed on his arm before starting the Q course, and folks, you just don’t do something like that. He was hounded by the instructors until he quit, which did take awhile. I think he got to Phase II, as I remember him being hounded on a ruck march on Smoke Bomb Hill back at Bragg. At any rate, I don’t remember anyone standing in front of him and laughing on that fateful day (they hadn’t seen his tattoo, I gather), a day I’d be grateful for. It gave me the gumption to keep going. I had something to prove.
Enter “The Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor. It was 1982, and that song was at the top of the charts. Cliché today, back then that song was real. Incidentally, that was also the year the movie First Blood came out, and I saw it in a theater full of SFers, SF candidates and paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne. When the line in the film was spoken, “Those Green Berets, they’re real bad asses,” the theater erupted in the spurious noise of young men trying to sound like beasts. You know, that never sounds right. Anyway, right there in that line of men, just inside the gates of the greatest challenge in my young life so far, to win the green beret, I started singing that song in my mind. It was the part, “rising up to the challenge of our rival,” that really got me motivated. I have to explain here a little of the layered workings of our minds, specifically that mechanical part that just starts repeating things in the background of our conscious mind, especially songs, in odd moments. If you take the time to consider the moment, chances are it’ll be one that relates to that song, not in every instance, but in many I’ve found. Anyway, [1] it set a president. Anytime I got into trouble or wanted to quit, which was damn near every day, I either played that song in my heart and mind, or it just rose up in my mechanical mind playing on queue. I let it move me. It gave me strength; it gave me hope. I rose to that challenge with the help of that popular tune. I became a Green Beret, and you’ll have to pardon me for sounding Hollywood. It sounds so much better now than SFer in the early evening of my life.
It did fail me once though. I was in Robin Sage, Phase III. The G chief had given me the task of doing a recon before a body snatch mission, and that means kidnapping someone. I was a Sergeant E-5, an 11B2P, airborne infantry, and I was supposed to have a lot of experience in the field in my m.o.s. I had very little. I’d spent a year in the Horse Cavalry Platoon at Ft. Hood (now called the Horse Detachment), and other than being on a runaway wagon an hour before the Inaugural Parade for Ronald Regan, in Washington, D.C. in 1980, I hadn’t really gotten my juices going, and after that I spent about a year in a Pathfinder section doing mostly static line parachute demonstrations for Ft. Hood, never going to Pathfinder school, with very little actual field duty. As an SF candidate on a mock A team, composed of 12 people, I was in charge of half of the team. I was to lead my half on the body snatch mission, and so I had to go and get eyes on the target, alone and in the dark. That usually wasn’t a problem for me, like it was for many of the candidates. We as a species are so herd sour it’s not even funny. My dad had made me walk alone in the woods at night, or ride a horse alone for miles in the darkness, and if I didn’t do it, he’d threaten to whip me with the belt he had in his hand, not the best way to overcome fear, but I did get used to being alone in the woods at night. It’s off target, but he also made a slide for life over the pond we swam in (I was 10), so to get me to overcome my fear of heights. He was a serious man-maker, and I don’t cuss him for it, but, like I said, it wasn’t the best way to overcome fear, using the fear of a whipping to get me to face my fears. When he whipped me, he left welts on my legs and butt, and a bucking horse, the dark, or a high place were preferable to that.
So normally I would’ve been fine, but this time it was different. There was a Christian militia out there beating up SF candidates and taking their weapons. That news had sent a shiver of fear through our Robin Sage. I dreaded going out there on that recon, some several klicks from the G base. It was a mostly follow the railroad tracks sort of journey, and I arrived quite easily at the road the jeep was to be going down carrying the person we had to snatch, which was to be at 9 o’clock the next night. I hid in the bushes and mixed coco beverage powder, milk powder, and a couple of sugar packets together, making a Ranger pudding. It was my favorite thing to make out of a C ration, a comfort food that didn’t give me the comfort I wanted in that instance. I tried to shake off my fear, but then I heard men running on the tracks, and I looked, and sure enough, there were two men hightailing it down the tracks from the direction I’d come. It was the Christian militia looking for me. They must’ve seen me somehow. “The Eye of the Tiger” played in my mind, and whether I actually played it or it just played in my mechanical mind I don’t remember, but whatever the case it didn’t work, and I ditched the song in my thoughts, replacing it with, “Oh my God they’re after me!” And I got the fluff out of there, after a little wait to make sure they were far enough away. I think it was about 8:30, just a half hour before the scheduled jeep. I arrived at camp sometime later, relieved I’d made it, and I went to report to the G chief the militia were in the area. He wasn’t there, but one of his assistants was. “You idiot! That was the G chief going to town.” He had gone on a pogey bait run with an assistant. “You mean it wasn’t the Christian militia?”
It bears mentioning that, under interrogation by the local Sheriff, the SF candidate that had started the whole Christian militia thing had confessed he’d made it up to cover up having his weapon stolen from a wall locker in the 82nd Airborne barracks. He’d left Robin Sage and gone to meet some friends in the 82nd, to have a night on the town, stowing his M-16 in his friend’s wall locker. Big mistake. Someone stole it. After an initial, “What the hell do I do” moment, he concocted the plan, or that was how it was told to me. It’s amazing how such fine details go through the ranks. He had his friends rough him up some so to look like he’d been beaten up, and he went back to Robin Sage and told the G chief and his team leader, a captain, the big lie. Officers had recently started going though the Q Course with the enlisted, to make it harder for officers, who had up to that time gone through what was termed ‘The Gentlemen’s Course’. All this happened because a female captain had passed the course, and in those days, that was not to be, and they ended up failing her on a technicality after the fact. (For the record, I think she earned the beret.) I never learned what happened to that poor fool who just had to go party with the paratroopers. (82nd infantrymen were our OpFor during Robin Sage.) He did not become an SFer I’m pretty sure. What a gust of fear he stirred up, as I wasn’t the only SF candidate to swallow it, but I might admit I swallowed hard. Yeah, fake news is dangerous.
Hands down, the most poignant and pressing moment when “The Eye of the Tiger” saved my ass was back at Camp Mackall, at the end of the course, negotiating the infamous SF obstacle course. I swear to God, I heard a man break his thigh on the Dirty Name two events from there. The snap sound was sickening. My biggest moment of truth of the whole six months of SF training was a piece of cake to many if not most other candidates. You had to crawl 10 or 20 meters (it was miles to my mind) through a culvert that was about a meter underground, and it was full of SF candidates moving very slowly. I was so claustrophobic I could hardly ride an elevator without panic rising. I had a terror of tight places. There was an instructor at the top of the pit that led down to the entrance to the tunnel, and there wasn’t one at most of the other events. It seems I wasn’t the only claustrophobic candidate. I went down and looked into the tunnel and saw the men on their hands and knees moving slowly in it, just enough to make me hop back out of the pit and beg the instructor to let me skip it. He told me if I didn’t go in I didn’t pass, and here we were at the end of the course, and did I want to fail now? He wasn’t a jerk. Well, the only thing to do was play the song, this being the rival of rivals, and I made a conscious decision to play it in my mind; it didn’t just suddenly start playing in the mechanical mind. After a moment or so of letting that song motivate me, I jumped down there and went into the tunnel. About halfway I panicked, just went berserk, the men behind me groaning and complaining, as I’d come to a complete halt, but in my thrashing around, not going forward at all, I hit my head on the concrete above, and that snapped me out of it, and I made it through that tunnel. Everyone behind me was relieved. The feel of the open air after that battle, it did not smell like horse dung or the fear of night, let me tell you.
Our class was 6-82, the numbers designating the date, month and year, of that class of the Special Forces Qualification Course. When we came to attention as a class, we yelled, “6-82 WETSU!” the acronym meaning we eat this shit up, and I really did eat that shit up. When we first started the course, we were taken to an auditorium at the JFK Special Warfare Center. Some field grade officer stood at the mic on stage and told us to look at the man to our right and left. He said at the end of the course they wouldn’t be there. Sure enough, when we graduated, they marched us back into that auditorium, and two thirds of us were missing. I got a big surprise and made the Commandant’s List; the top 15% of the class. It happened too that I was called upon the stage to receive an ARCOM for becoming the Soldier of the Year of III Corps and Ft. Hood. I was so embarrassed, and the surprise on my fellow classmates’ faces, well, it didn’t say I was the best among them. The center of the world thing, it had vanished a long time ago. Every single day through that course I was sure I’d fail. I just racked up a lot of points. When others were kicked back in their tent during land navigation, let’s say, where we lost most of the class, I was out there doing it, every practice run. Pardon me if tears are welling up writing this. I am very proud to have won the green beret.
You know how it is as you get old. You look back on your life a lot. If I could pick a time to return to in my life, it would be to be back in the Q Course. That was the time of my life, and I only knew at the time it was tough, and I couldn’t wait for it to end. Isn’t that just so human? I’m listening to “The Eye of the Tiger” now, my headphones on as I write this. I’m in that tiger’s eye once again at 62. I’ve just published three books on most of the major e-book sites on the net, and I’ve stood up and spoken my own personal truth, with courage and sincerity, without hatred and anger, but I have little doubt most of you will not think me the best among us, but it’s in self-sacrifice that we are at our best. I’ve been seeking spiritual enlightenment for these past 30 years, and that’s not something you get to by rules and regulations, or even the one, two, and three of steps. You wing it in such a way you win it. Life is so short to live in line. You must understand that Green Berets aren’t soldiers who always go by the book. We are unconventional, and that means thinking and living outside of the box. SF, please don’t ever forget that. In any event, you can read my military memoir here, which is patterned after the service reflections of Together We Served, called An American Story: https://harms-end.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/an-amercan-story-3.pdf
[1] I’ve edited the story since the competition, from “I have to explain here…” to the word “Anyway,” and in the three other places the mechanical mind is mentioned in the story, the first later in the same paragraph and in the 6th and 8th paragraphs.
Names,
is that the name of God?
Would you call him Jesus?
I don’t understand God’s son.
Would a man give birth to a dog?
The son is the substance of his father
and his mother,
and where is she in this picture
when we talk about the Trinity?
No God wore.
You’ve made up a family
to give God sustenance in your lives.
You don’t understand God.
Who can?
Come on let’s see God.
I don’t know where He comes from.
Could we call Jesus a bastard child?
Honestly, do you think his society did not?
Where do we go here?
I think Mary escapes to Ein Karem
to avoid being stoned.
Oh hi Elizabeth you’re pregnant too
out of wedlock.
Now can we capture sexual sin?
No he’s king of the world.
It was all a plan:
die on the cross for our sins.
And we’ve made up another story
to grapple with God in man.
Who was Jesus?
A little child born out of wedlock,
and everybody taunted him for it,
and he really suffered.
Is this in the Gospels?
No, it’s logic and common sense.
The people of his day hated adulterers
and bastard children.
Can the pedophile say that today?
Oh my goodness I’ve crossed lines
imaging sexual sin,
and how we use that to hate people.
Can you imagine a God of hate?
I think some people do.
Is that you?
Take Jesus by the hand,
and he will show you love for your neighbor,
even if your neighbor sins.
Compassionate Christ,
how that contradicts your world order.
I can’t imagine Jesus stoning people.
Go to hell you sinner!
You didn’t vote for me!
And that’s the Christ?
How conveniently laid out in your plans
to force the world on your belief.
Thank God there’s God,
the truth of things, you know?
no matter what you believe.
Jesus Christ,
I’ve not counted him exactly.
He gives us roads,
all the way to enlightenment/paradise. [worlds spoken simultaneously]
Our meeting him determines the course.
He’s not a throw away deity.
He gauges sin,
and helps us cross it.
We are loved there.
We bring him deity to us,
can find that Christ in ourselves,
the divine element,
and transfigure this in man.
These are later stages the Gospels know not of.
I think you’re seein’ Jesus,
the Christ in our lives,
spilt by Christianity.
The religion does not capture the man.
It’s legal framework
whereby to tax sin,
a framework of belief
to tail the universe on,
a holier-than-thou
that puts everyone else in hell.
This is the religion for the ages.
This is God’s total store
for man in planetary being alive.
Immensity knows no other look
than this.
What medieval planet have you been hanging out on?
I don’t think Jesus would recognize himself here.
Would you crucify him,
goes the refrain, [above and below lines lyrics from “Would You Crucify Him?”]
if he walked right here among you once again?
Now that’s John Michael Talbot.
He put down his sword
and became a religious man.
What do we do with him today?
Oh John,
you are so faithful to the Lord.
Is that a TV program?
Where is that window you opened
on the truth of Christ?
It’s right here
in the lyrics of this poem.
There’s positive paintings of the way of Christ.
You take the ball and run with it.
The ways of divinity ride here.
What happens if you destroy it,
the value of Christ?
You’re witnessin’ a new reality
if you don’t.
We’re all here in airplanes
evolving Christ.
We’re lookin’ at time.
We need a revolution here on earth.
There’s no way to avoid it
if we want to actually survive.
The unity consciousness,
a consciousness of Christ, hello?
He’s good for heroes.
Yes, he is good for heroes,
and the Gospels leave that out.
This poem was came about as a result of a conversation with a curator of the blog Some View of the World. The link will take you the post of theirs where the conversation took place, quite short on their end, and this is the second poem resulting from that. The other one you can read there.
Harm's End 