The Storm, a poem by David Sky

I watched the cities across the land hunker down closer and closer to the ground looking like so many beaten down old men bowed to their hands and  knees in prayer  to their God as one long, final storm raged from east to west across the nation, from sea to shining sea, under a hideous sky broiling with fiery apocalyptic colors, muddy reds and oranges, bruised purples and browns, the smell of burnt chemical as this endless storm rushes with unnatural and foul intent razing my once great nation to the ground.

The Only Question

Time is love did you know that?

Space is love.
Past is love and present, too.
Gravity, that apple, is love.
Flesh is love and bone is love.
The sword love, the gun love.
Everything do you see that
All is love now if you believe it?

No, I don't really believe it, either.

I've always wanted to believe it.
I always will.
Once I crossed over to the other side
And it was so – only pure, ecstatic love.
Nothing else but love anywhere at all
Except here, in this place  -
Why?

Sanity, a personal essay

"Human race get off your knees! Let The Lion sleep no more!"

We are born into this world into a human society that is insane. Throughout the length of our childhood via the uniquely human process of vastly extended ontogenesis our brain continues its development outside the womb into early adulthood wiring itself according to environmental input in a process that allows us as human animals to fine tune our intelligence with the h...elp of elders to the exact environment into which we are born. By the time we reach an age of reason when our brain is developed enough to discern right from wrong, our brain having been steeped in insanity throughout our existence here surrounded by other humans already conditioned to the insanity, interprets the insanity as sanity.

A few of us for some reason unknown to me do not fully accept this "sanity programming" and most of us then try to point out what we perceive as insanity. Our parents, siblings, friends and other adults and authority figures around us, in our modern society particularly school teachers, inform us in no uncertain terms that we are misinterpreting reality and in fact it is not our society that is insane but ourselves who are misapprehending our reality - if we persist in our "delusions" about the demonstrable insanity all around us, the social pressure upon us is incrementally increased depended upon exact circumstances leading over a length of time to us being informed then that it is ourselves who are insane, not the world.

For those of us who are so designated "insane", this begins a period typically during late childhood to early adolescence of great personal anguish. This period of human maturation is inherently prone to a high level of personal, emotional challenge as we transition from childhood into adulthood. For those of us who, through no fault of our own, did not properly internalize the "sanity programming", this adolescent period becomes hellish leaving us feeling extremely alienated from our fellow humans and from humans society itself by the time we are young adults. Our reason continues to inform us that we are in an insane world. In fact, as our education increases and we receive more information about this human world of ours as well as increasing experiences in our personal interaction with it, our perception of the insane nature of this human world only increases exponentially as does our sense of isolation and alienation from "the others".

So when I hear David Icke say this very thing out loud in public to an enthusiastic reception, it gives me more consolation than I can articulate. I would concur whole heartedly with, "Human race get off your knees! Let The Lion sleep no more!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3yJ3H2cM78

America Finds Herself At Occupy Wallstreet

America stumbles through the throngs everything so bright and everything so loud and everything so beautiful, you know -  America stumbling stoned just the girl who drank the KoolAid at that party. She had been robed and she had been raped and she had been brutalized by all the fears and all the greed and all the ego of men. Wearing tattered clothes, sporting her leanest physique ever, baring her cross of poverty and hopelessness and powerlessness and despair - Fuck it all to hell, America thinks, laughing out loud now, shamelessly - fuck it all to living hell yeah sure so what I drank that KoolAid!

She is not angry, really, just very, very stoned.

Hey, hey, she asks a passing tall, young man with a thick black beard wearing an old, worn baseball cap that reads: "Local 341" - hey, you!  pointing a thin, long, bony finger at his chest - where the hell am I?

Your in Wall Street, Honey - just look up? the young man smiles, pointing his own finger directly upward at a thin patch of blue sky above between the towering buildings, laughing with America. 

As America takes a long look upward, she hears the young man moving off now yelling back at her in a friendly way  - Welcome to "Occupy Wall Street"!

Whatever THAT is? She wonders vaguely.

Those buildings scream up into the sky itself throwing her instantly into a fit of vertigo. America spinning in place a few times abruptly plops  her thin ass down hitting the hard pavement with a  thud. It sends a shock wave up from her tailbone through her spine popping out her crown chakra shooting up into that delirious sliver of blue sky above.

She thinks she might throw up. 

Thinking to herself - I just need to sit here a moment: damn!  Thinking a  little wildly, giddy-lost in the rush of people swirling all around her at what seems to her just then fantastic speeds.

What the hell was in that KoolAid? 

One thing is certain,  America says out loud now with an inkling of clarity (but not so loud as anyone might hear her in the hustle of the busy, weekday street) looking up at the jitterbugging throngs of people around her and then further up past them again at the tops of the buildings and that magnificent sliver of bright, blue sky thinking seriously now - head spinning - these are my people here:  RIGHT HERE GODDAMMIT!

America flashes a goofy grin at no one in particular just before throwing up violently onto the dirty pavement between her thin legs.

Poetic Eulogy for My Girl

O America

Wish I could take You in my arms
Let you cry here on my shoulder,
Sob here for as long as You need
A hand tenderly on Your head
Your Body pressed against my own
If You were not dead, you could mourn
All the transgressions of men.

There, there America,
My Sweet, Sweet Love,
How could You have known?
It was never Your fault -

You were merely a Child, after all.

All things come to death, my Child,
It is the way of this world -
Think of it as opening a door
Passing from one room into another

America on Acid, short story by David Sky

America starts to feel the tab of acid she had put on her tongue kick in hoping for a revelation or at least a few moments of surrender. In her mind now crawling with bizarre and insane thoughts of mundane and profound nature, she feels the breath of doom brush the back of her neck. It tickles a little, you know, feels like the breath of a lover and she presses her hand there on her neck longingly, smiling. There's a sound to the feeling of it, a playful sound, playful like the breath of a lover on the back of your neck, a tinkling sound maybe like finger bells?

I've come unhinged, she thinks, throwing back her head and laughing out loud.

I feel like I’m not functioning at a very high level these days, she continues her thinking out loud speaking to no one in a high pitched voice that rises a little hysterically at the end. America laughing at the understatement of it all, laughing a little too hard a little too long – American can't stop laughing but really, really, if you think about it, it's pretty funny, right?

Sometimes you have to laugh, she reassures herself, sighing heavily.

She thinks a little wildly - O, wow, feels like I just need to sit down and really relax for while a while. Maybe out in the mountains along a stream or something or maybe out on the ocean or on the shore along the beach somewhere where the waves are washing up rhythmically - you know? somewhere peaceful and quiet. Yeah, that sort of vibe right there, that's the ticket.

But the fantastic, carnival pace of free market capitalism and its attending political theater of the absurd demand virtually the opposite from her. It demands war, actually, lots and lots of war, continuous, unending war. America had gone for all her life but a mere handful of years without some of that war and even in those times of brief respite, she still had felt war baring down upon her. She feels the full weight of it, this ponderous momentum of war that is not a drum beat, no not all all, rather a mind numbing thumping as if an elephant the size of a continent were stomping the ground right next to where she is standing. After hundreds of years of war, America feels so achingly sick of war that she can barely bring herself to get out of bed in the morning.

And the noise! The noise was the worst of it all, America, looking all around her desperately now, not hearing that feeling of doom as a lover's playful breath on the back of her neck and not hearing that feeling as the light tinkling of finger bells but rather as a thunderous cacophony of millions of people telling so many lies and all at once all speaking so loudly and so goddamn fast that the sound of it seems to travel right through her bones in painful vibration following her anywhere she might choose to go?

I'll go mad! She wonders – no wait a minute, wait a minute … I've already gone mad shit that should be obvious to anyone paying any attention at all … throwing her head back again and laughing out loud, laughing insanely, tears streaming down her face. That's what anyone watching would think, just another totally deranged woman wandering aimlessly alone through New York City laughing insanely tears streaming down her sad face. Nothing to see here, people - move along now, move along.

America’s eyes glow as if inner lit, beaming crazily like the headlights of cars on the crowded city street at dusk. She had eaten at least a 1000 mics of some really nice, clean acid maybe an hour ago and America is peaking out now. She feels fully how lost she has been caught up in the pace of it all and how impossible it is to pull herself out of the narrow, noisy, metallic stream that seems to rush her along with it at ridiculously, preposterously increasing speeds. She sits down on an empty bench watching the throngs jitterbug past her in a kaleidoscope of whirling, streaming colors all running together in fantastical motion.

Suddenly America, eyes beatifically closed, feels that she is merely a Dove cooing softly high up in a branch under the friendly auspices of a warm, afternoon sun and she puts her head back this time not laughing but smiling ... I am only a Dove, yes, just sitting peacefully here in this warm, afternoon sun, actually feeling the sun warm on her upturned face and neck as the nearest streetlight kicks on in the last faint glow of dusk.

Ah, but the peace and stillness she craves seems such a tenuous dream, so hard to hold on to it, but she tries keeping her eyes tight and insisting that the thing I am is a Dove, just a lone Dove, quiet and soft and real. But America can't quite shake that underlying feeling that is more like a racehorse pumped up on amphetamines and steroids, eyes rolling around in its head, nostrils flaring, heart pounding like a freight train in its chest, running faster and faster, over these many decades until in the midst of an unholy cacophonous outrage of lies and commerce, America finds herself now running flat out as hard as she possibly can run simply to stay in the same place.

I must embrace this gaudy merry go round if I want to really milk this trip for all its worth, America insists to herself with a sudden, blinding flash of clarity. The wars O the wars! … they are so very far away, after all? And the needless, hopeless suffering of the masses that will wait, won't it? I mean, where are they to go, their wretchedness stretching now as it does from sea to shining sea? Right now these colors are so bright and so clear and so beautiful and the walls are breathing in concert with my breath in this lovely, syncopated harmony and PLEASE Dear God Almighty PLEASE! for just one moment in time let me forget all about the abuses of men ...

New Love - "Your Voice"

TEXT EXCHANGE

“If I don't hear your voice, I think I'll die”

“I think you will not die”

“Don't get all logical on me now, Love" 

“I can't talk tonight, early class tomorrow, you know we'd go on for hours but try not to die for tomorrow is another day”

“Augh! Philosophy majors!”

“Blasphemy will get you no where”

Affirmational Poem, "Four Elements"

Incorporating the Four Elements for healing power. From Poems Become Invocations
by David Sky

My love is fire
Burning down the pain

My love is water
Washing away the fear

My love is earth
Because I am here

My love is air
Just Free and Clear

I am Free and Clear
I am Free and Clear

Vacation - an extremely short love story by David Sky

"What are the dreams of the damned, I wonder? " she asks, swirling her index finger provocatively around the inside rim of her drink, those gorgeous eyes sparkling like the Caribbean sea beneath us in the light of a setting sun.

"I don't know - what ARE your dreams?" I say a bit more casually than I intend, maybe - trying a little too hard to keep it easy-breezy, you know, knocked off my ass by that heady combination of love and lust.

A quick narrowing of the eyes flash up with the Catholic in her for an instant before the scientist she had become says seductively, "let me show you".

Short Story, "Right" by David Sky

So this guys pulls me aside at the party, right. All hush-hush like stuff. Secret agent kind of stuff. Leans in real close so I wonder is he going to blow in my ear, maybe. But that's okay too cause I ain't all that uptight. Just saying - puts out his hand, says, Hey, John? Is it?

Sure, I say, I'm John – so who the hell are you, man?

Bob, says this guy.

No lie, Bob! OMG I love Bob I say sincerely, letting go of his hand so I can take another drink. I can hear the ice tinkling over the music and cacophony of our little party here. Like some full on church bells rung nearly right in my very own ears by my very own hand.

Bob laughs a little nervously – why do you love the name "Bob" so much?

"Bob!", common, man – Bob is way holier than God. Bob, backwards, Bob forwards? I think to myself - I like to stay positive, you know? Just the way I am. I like to say something, anything, anything at all positive when I first meet someone, anyone, anyone at all, right?

Are you putting me on, Bob asks. Bob trying to be light about it but Bob a little uptight about my full on compliment. Try to be nice, right? I throw an arm around his shoulder and squeeze him warm and friendly as I can. Bob, what are we in grade school here. Like I'm gonna to make fun of your name here. Fuck no, Bob - Bob the magically named one, Bob forward, Bob backward. Truth is I love you already. And to myself thinking, He's a little fella and I do like him, uptight little fella but I like him alright. If I were gay, I think, I'd scoop him up in my arms and haul him upstairs …but I don't say this. Bob here might be put off by this cause Bob ain't gay, either, and I don't want Bob to come out of his skin. I ain't here to put people off, right. It's not that kind of a party, right. I'm just happy drunk right now is all.

Hey, John, says Bob, I overheard you talking about these magic mushrooms. I was kind of wondering if these mushrooms might help me, you know what I mean?

Hell, I don't think that I have a clue what Bob means. But I want another gin and tonic so I walk him off by the shoulder towards the kitchen. Like I'm thinking hard about his question. But what I'm thinking is I get this distinct impression that he is asking me this in confidence. This makes me giggle because I'm a writer and asking me something in confidence is kind of like telling a common fucking street hooker, “I Love You!” when you come. I mean, it happens and all but it ain't exactly a commonsensical thing to do, right.

Look, I say to Bob when we're in the kitchen and I'm plopping more ice in my glass, realizing that I guess I was kind of thinking about it, after all. It is a worthy question, after all. Not a question to be disrespected. Like maybe whether you really want to marry some Babe with humongous tits cause you know when she gets older that if you're still married to her those trophies will be sagging big time.

Bob, I say serious as I can muster. You ask a very valid question here. Thing is this. I couldn't even begin to tell you, Pal. What goes on between those fucking Penis Heads and your own dear mind is so utterly private that even YOU might not know the answer to THAT very valid question you ask. Does that make any sense to you, Bob? Thinking to myself - it's always cool to meet a question with a question. Thinking to myself that I gave him my very best shot at his question. That I did pretty damn good considering how hammered I already am and how I sort of kind of don't give a damn about this question, really. Just it's such a great bunch, such a great party. I don't want to be the asshole at this party. No way, man - not me, right.

Bob looks more confused than maybe he always does – No, not really, John? I don't think I understand that? Very seriously like.

Okay, Bob, I say, putting my arm around his shoulder again and leaning in this time close like I might blow in his fucking ear, right. My drink is full. The glass is tinkling. I am a happy guy anyway, sure I am, but I'm a little extra happy just now. I come on to Bob like I'm his very own best buddy or something cause, you know, it is a worthy question and drunk as I am becoming I like this little fella, Bob. Maybe I want to give Bob some kind of answer to one of these preposterously unanswerable questions.

Bob, I say – and boy is old Bob listening now. All I can tell you, Bob, is that they sure as hell won't hurt you none. So what the hell? What the hell, right? Squeezing his shoulder hard, laughing so hard that I almost spill my drink such that I have to admonish myself, “Hey, Johnnie Boy, don't want to do THAT cause THAT is the only sin”- the only fucking sin, right? Hehehe ...

Short Story, The Dancer - by David Sky

Roberto left the bank at 5:02PM whistling a popular tune. He felt happy as usual. A beautiful fall evening around him as he walked home stopping in the bakery and then the meat shop on the way. He had in mind grilling lamb kabobs with couscous and a salad with some fresh sourdough. Dinner, Roberto felt, is his highest daily priority after work.

The butcher said, Roberto, the “Smiling One”! I have a fresh rack of lamb with your name on it. Fresh from the Lugo farm this morning.

Perfect! Roberto kisses his fingers.

He practically skipped up the steps to his flat with a grocery bag in tow. If anyone were paying attention Roberto's background as a dancer was evident with his every movement and blatantly so as he sprung easily up the steep steps.

He knocked on the landlady's door and she handed him his mail for the day. What is for dinner tonight? she asks Roberto.

|Herb roasted lamb, he says brightly.

His apartment was built out of half the upstairs of Mrs. Salazar's house and though very small it came well equipped and fortunately Roberto always had been meticulously organized so he made the tiny kitchen work for after all he cooked merely for himself here. After placing the lamb in a big pot to marinade with olive oil and a host of fresh herbs taken from Roberto's small window garden, Roberto drew himself a hot bath which he enjoyed for almost an hour continuing his reading of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. The bathroom window faced west and the light of the sun now getting quite low in the sky spread through the humid room with a slight orange cast that Roberto found beautifully romantic.

When he was out of the bath Roberto shaved and blew dry his long, black hair and decided to glam it up for tonight's date adding luxurious eye lashes, eye liner and some light highlighting make up. By the time he finishes it is just after 7PM and he admires himself in the mirror. His date tonight via “video chat” is with a beautiful woman from America who Roberto had chosen to bless with his own special love and attention. He put on a pair of light green hip hugger bell bottoms and a woman's blouse that was just a little lacy and flowed elegantly with the hip hugger bell bottoms. He chose a favorite necklace which was very masculine hanging upon his hairless chest and matching earrings of glassy black obsidian.

He set the table just in front of his beloved laptop with a black tablecloth and silverware putting down two silver candle holders with fresh red candles while the couscous cooked on the stove and his rack of lamb cooked in the broiler. He placed a few fresh flowers he had gathered on the walk home into a small, cobalt vase which he sat so that it would be visible along with the candles to his date, Becky, who would be looking at him via their video chat link. At 7:55 Roberto placed the bottle of red table wine he had breathing on the table in front of the laptop along with a beautifully presented plate with a portion of the lamp chops, couscous and a salid with a big, buttered slice of the sourdough bread. His slight frame did not know the meaning of “weight gain”. Just at eight when Becky dinged in right on time Roberto bowed his head in prayer asking God to allow him great and good focus upon this woman tonight. He turned himself off in a manner of speaking and gave himself utterly to this beautiful, American stranger.

O my! Exclaims Becky when she sees Roberto sitting now at his dinner table.

Welcome, my Love, he says. You are too gracious to agree to have dinner with me like this. I am honored and grateful for your company.

She does not quite no what to say. Finally, with a glint in her eyes, Becky says that she perhaps had not understood the literalness of dining together and that she had not prepared anything.

You must join me, Becky - perhaps you can find something to eat, maybe a glass of wine? Something so I will not have to eat alone here.

Wait one, Becky says leaving the screen's sight.

Roberto sips his wine and waits for her to return. Of course, he would not dream of starting without Becky for he is a gentlemen above all else. She returns with a plate of cheese, some apple slices and a glass of white wine.

I am sorry it is not so beautiful as what you prepared, Roberto. I wish I was there with you did not know you were such a magnificent cook!

I wish you were here with me too, my Love, says Roberto, raising his glass of wine in a toast which Becky joins on the other side of the world from her own apartment. To you, Becky, Roberto says with flair. You of raven hair and hazel eyes you who loves the little dogs so much and who is so strong and wise and compassionate and so very kind as to be my lady this night.

Becky blushes a little. O Roberto, she says, a perfect toast! You remembered my work at the SPCA that means so much to me.

I remember everything about you, Becky. Because you are so beautiful and so special to me. I love you, Becky, very much.

Becky is taken back a little by the rawness of Roberto. His ease and his sincerity. Thank you, she says, looking down.

Roberto eats at the table in front of her just as if they were together in a quiet, romantic restaurant. After a while and a few glasses of white wine, Becky loosens up and begins to laugh. Roberto, she says at one point, you are without a doubt the most handsome and charming man I have ever laid eyes on. Roberto asks many questions of Becky and at every turn points out the positive in her and in her life with an effect after the first hour through such total validation of leaving Becky mildly in love and strongly in lust.

Roberto reaches just out of view and brings up his classical guitar. Sometimes he made up songs for his date but tonight decided to play from some guitar transcriptions by Bach that he had been listening to Segovia play recently. Becky had a love for classical music so Roberto thought this would be the most meaningful for her? This date was all about Becky, Roberto knew, this was his passion, his true work, not banking for god's sake, but this work of his as a “romanticist”. After five minutes listening to him play Becky began to sob quietly then as Roberto continued to play for her, she sobbed more openly her shoulders shaking almost violently as if something were being shaken loose inside her by Roberto's incredible guitar performance.

I feel like you are playing this just for me, Roberto, it is so beautiful.

I am playing just for you, Becky. I love you very much. I do everything tonight for you. You deserve this and so much more, Becky. You are perfect and whole and beautiful and you deserve all the world. All of the world. Now I will dance for you, my Love. Roberto placed his guitar back out of sight and rose up adjusting the screen to capture his upright form best. He removed a green sash from around his waist and place in behind his neck. His movements almost feminine at times as he danced a special dance for Becky who appeared to be beside herself with joy actually applauding at times. His dance goes on and on and as usual Roberto does not speak but does look into Becky's eyes as he dances with all the sincere intensity of true love.

Finally it is obvious that Becky is touching herself on her end as Roberto continues his dance. When she cums Roberto sits back down and speaks for the first time in over an hour and as Becky is catching her breath, he says, I love you very much, Becky. Was that good for you, my Love.

OMG says Becky, laughing, WAS that good for me! Ah, YES! It is almost midnight and Roberto always ends his dates at midnight. The goodbye is tearful and intense and now Becky is also telling Roberto that she loves him.

It is crazy, I know, but I love you too, Roberto, she offers.

When they are done and goodbyes are said, Roberto blocks Becky on his online video chat site and turns off the laptop and returns his dishes to the kitchen. He will never speak to her again. Tomorrow night will be another woman who needs Roberto in her life. Every night a different one. One per night. Occasionally two on weekend but Roberto found that he could not sustain that level of love he wanted to have for them when he did two in one night so mostly it is one per night.

He takes up a letter on his kitchen counter still unopened after a week. His mother sent him these letters regularly for years now. He did not know what she said in these letters because he never opened them. As he threw this letter in the trash, thinking of how she had abandoned him so many times as a child, he did not even feel bad about it.

What he felt was that American women were the most difficult of them all and they did not ever seem to want to eat anything? He gave thanks that his date tomorrow was an older woman from Buenos Aires. He had coordinated dinner with her already because he knew she would cook and eat with him since most of the rest of the women in the world outside of these Americans seem to like eating?

Still, he thought seriously - the Americans need me the most of all.

The TV Is REALLY Angry! Short-Short Fiction by David Sky

THE TV a full on rant: 

"What the hell are YOU looking at I mean REALLY for the Love of God! You use me like a cheap whore, man!  The kids up at the butt crack of dawn with their freaking Captain Crunch and Cartoons. Grandma and Granddad all freakin day long, right, with my volume up through the roof, mind, you those Goddamn Game Shows mid morning and then those Soaps OMG why I just have to ask that WHY on earth with the Soaps I mean what the hell is WRONG with you people!? Dad starts with the cable news soon as he gets in the house from work just when I think what on earth could be possibly worse than these Soaps, comes these talking head pundits droning on and on O Dear Lord someone shoot me now PLEASE all of them saying absolutely nothing and then at that are still universally WRONG I mean does that not mean anything to you people that these PUNDITS somehow manage to say nothing AND be wrong at the same time! Then Mom and Dad banging it into the wee hours with the late night porn well here's a thought, Mom and Dad, turn me the hell off and screw each other in sweet, sweet blessed silence and dark! And this shit goes on day in day out, week in week out, month in month out, year in year out and just to be clear here about what I am up against: no weekends for me – O no goddammit don't EVEN get me STARTED on the weekends because there's no rest for the weary and no sick leave, either, mind you. No holidays and no vacation for me, no sir, and no retirement to look forward to just THIS SHIT right up until I the very moment I wink out of existence!"

A World of Pain - personal essay

The alarm goes off at 5:30AM and I get up to get a lunch ready for my wife since I don't work I try to be a good “wife” and assume those traditional duties. Usually, I go back to sleep for a while after she leaves for work. I make her a sandwich for lunch, cut up an apple and slice some Gouda cheese for a breakfast, feed our cat. I bring her coffee back to the bedroom where she is dressing still and she says - I know you have to get up early to get me off to work, but don't slam things out of your anger about it.

I am startled out of my own internal dialogue that I had not been aware of consciously until she speaks to me but it is almost as if she has interrupted a heated conversation. At first I don't want to admit that I was slamming anything because I don't think that I was but anyway I assure her that I am not feeling angry about getting up and getting her lunch ready. I feel deeply that I am lucky to be the man who gets to be the one who does this little thing for her in the morning so much so I often feel sorry for other guys. I tell her just realized that I was feeling angry about other perceived wrongs and was engaged in a heated internal dialogue about it feeling a little silly that I wouldn't have even consciously acknowledged it had she not said what she did. Really, I am foggy kind of half awake at this time of the morning.

I sit down on the edge of the bed with a cup of coffee as she blows dries her hair and sleepily check a late night text from a long distance friend that I hadn't read:

“The only thing I have left from (her) is a three string fiddle hanging on the wall … I find  two  hairbands in my room and wrap them around the fiddleneck and bow soon as I do it the lights blink on and off twice. I'm like a three string fiddle hanging on the wall. I scrape on the bow and can't play at all.”

When my wife comes out of the bathroom, I'm crying pretty hard. I feel for my friend whose fiance' died suddenly in his early twenties knowing that he is still dealing with it hard these so many years later but this unblocks something inside of myself as well. I see that in his way he is working through it now after nearly ten years. It all seems to come out as a “world of pain” to me. My wife asks what's wrong saying she knows I wasn't angry at her that everything is okay so I show her the text because I can't really even talk at that moment to show her that is not what I am upset about.  

She reads it: Wow, the lights blinked twice?

His Love's spirit has given him a lot of signs over the years that she is always there with him, I tell my wife. But the thing is that this place here is just a horrible place why do we have to be here, I wonder putting my arms around  her waist as she stands in front of me.

Do you mean this town? she asks knowing I mean more.

No, I mean THIS place. This world here.

It isn't all bad, is it? She kisses me on the head.

No, there is you, I agree. It's not all bad.

I think, I tell her before she leaves, that particularly men use anger to cover up our pain because the pain is vulnerable and weak which is a frightening feeling for us while the anger is more comfortable - it's like putting up your fists in physical defense, maybe?

We kiss and she goes off to work. Poor girl. It isn't even 6:30 in the morning yet. I know I'm not “normal” that it can't be easy to be married to me. She's used to me now and knows that all this simply a "day in the life" so  not particularly a big deal.

I accept the fact that I'm not going to be going back to sleep and decide to delve into what is obviously a powerful emotion by employing what I call “the little engine "that is a simple technique for processing difficult feelings that I seldom have to use any longer: Awareness; Validation; Gratitude. I developed it back in the summer of 2012 as a way to connect with feelings that I found I wanted otherwise to reject or that were incomprehensible to me. In this case, first there is the anger now revealed to be acting as a hard shield protecting an underlying, vulnerable pain. So I say in my mind to the anger I had been feeling earlier that I am aware of you anger. I validate you, anger, as my own feeling that is important and trying to help me in some way. And finally, I thank you anger for helping me. In this way the little engine helps me to form an integrative instead of disintegrative relationship with my feelings which were often and are now still sometimes either incomprehensible to me or even perceived as hostile. When I first started using this, the feelings were almost confused by this new stance and it would sometimes take a couple days to process the feeling and have it come back to me in an integrative form. Now, it comes almost immediately as I sit with the feeling making a conscious effort to connect rather than to move away from it thinking that this is what I “do” - that this is the mushroom path which is not a path on the ground but a pathway leading through life. Others may well laugh at such a thing but to me it is the most important and meaningful “work” of my life.

I go back to I think the seventh grade when in a class we are shown a documentary about a German concentration camp during WWII. Immediately, that world of pain underlying that protective anger wells up. So much here. I had forgotten this but at that time I was a pacifist having vowed to never fight in a war. The Vietnam war was going on but no one expected it to be going on by the time I was old enough to be drafted (although it very nearly did!) but I had thought about it and vowed to be a conscientious objector. This morning, almost fifty years later, I think back how had I come to such conclusions at such a young age as that? I recall then failing second grade the shame of that failure because I could not read. Then that next year being half a day in a special reading class with an old battleax of a woman, Mrs. Wilson. By God, I surely knew how to read by the end of that second second grade! And I began then to read every single non fiction book in the elementary school library starting with A and progressing machine like alphabetically reading almost constantly obviously a reaction to that shame of failing second grade for not being able to read. But by the time I left that elementary school, I had read every non fiction book on its shelves. So I knew something of war already, of this WWII, of these concentration camps. But now before me was a reality it seemed  and somehow it cracked open something inside me as I recall that feeling looking around the room of children, at the teacher in the front of the class, everyone watching that footage that I could not quite believe was real at first thinking well this is like other stuff on THE TV set, right – this is not “really” real? But no, this is real, obviously. Those skeletal bodies draped in skin are actually being pushed up into great piles by bull bulldozers as if so much trash in the town dump. It was one thing to read about it but to see it here for real these actual images it is literally almost too much to bare. I vow then that okay yes I must go to war if a war is to stop such a thing from happening – these many years later, of course, my feelings about war have gone through many iterations.

And this is the feeling under the anger of the pain which is inextricably bound with fear of this total destruction of any sense of reason, of safety in this world. Wanting to run out of that room or stand up and cry out what the hell is going on here, what is this, stop it explain this to this to me right now! But instead just sitting like all the rest staring at this horror not even crying myself wanting to crying forcing it back because no one else is nor is anyone else appearing to question it and I do not want to shame myself more after that shame from failing second grade and being held back like some dumb kid. I had always felt like an outcast but here, right here, in this room and at this moment that feeling explodes into me. I shrink inside and try to hide and began to feel as if I am surrounded by … by what? By some strange animals? By some kind of dangerous, unfathomable “things” that are not like me at all but are somehow alien - these other kids, this adult, this teacher – these humans? I thought I understood a lot about the world from reading so much but right here very much adding to my sense of utter disillusion, I come face to face with my own complete ignorance of this world so that suddenly I see things are actually far more insane and dangerous than I had yet imagined? I think that it shattered me to pieces and I don't really think I have ever put myself quite back together. I'm not even sure that I want to? I don't want to be a part of this place. I never could accept suffering no matter what Buddha said about it. I don't feel that I have suffered so much personally but my God what I have seen around me is daunting, indeed. How often I find myself thinking, "but for grace of God go I". Living with a deep and abiding terror of this world and after half a century this feeling has not changed into something else really only having been reinforced by what this world has shown me in so many ways and it feels  much like in those many zombie movies that are so popular when the few people left who are not zombies are surrounded by zombies and that's it right there – you people, you “others”, you frighten me. Your planet here, your culture, your blind obedience to leaders who to me are obviously purely evil is terrifying. This is the isolation I feel at it's heart. That sense of separateness. I felt for quite a while when in teens that this world would get better over time that education and technology would lead to improvements but that is not what I have seen. It is really hard for me to believe that we are well into the 21st Century now. Those skeletal, skin draped corpses are still bulldozed into open graves to this day. The horror has only been sanitized and hidden behind a vast façade of decency and societal order so that it is not recognized as was Nazism for the obvious evil that it is instead it is praised as “good” which is no consolation for me . It is more even more  insane and more dangerous to me in than I realized when in seventh grade – this is what I am thinking? It is what I am feeling, more to the point. It is not a good feeling and it is an immature feeling at some level and there is now no wonder to me at all why I would prefer anger and I thank anger more earnestly realizing how hard anger has been working to protect me. A thankless job if there ever were one, Anger. My own feelings I see are  always in some way trying to protect me, to help me, even if the help is not particularly helpful in the largest sense of things.

My mind turns then back to my friends text that had been the trigger here - his three string violin. I have watched him struggle with this pain for a while now and I understand it I feel by understanding how it would be if I lost my own Love - not something that could be thrown off so easily. And it is as if his fiancé' speaks to me telling me that  she loves him so much. She is with him always. Love never dies, she says. I feel the truth of this. You are right, she says, that he chooses women who could never be emotionally available to him because he cannot get over his love for me so he finds some reason to avoid any woman who might be capable of a deep and real love and to me I see that in a way that is a beautiful thing what he does. It is the way in which he honors that love he had for me. I only want him to be happy, though. I wish I could tell him that it is okay to love again and to be happy. And I see the truth of this and somehow I see how what appears so often to me to be one thing is actually overlying another thing just the way this anger overlays the pain? For the briefest instant the heavy curtains are pulled back and a shaft of brilliant white light blazes through. As my wife had said only a few minutes ago - it's not all bad. I feel as if I have some very tiny degree of understanding of this pain below the anger and then of this fear just below the pain  that surely encompasses childhood trauma but obviously speaks to the depth of existential angst in just being human as well. But I still do not feel transformational acceptance or realization so I pray to God please help me to come to terms with this because I do not know what else to do? I think of the light switch going on and off twice and I know that was real because these things have happened to me and I give thanks now that God is real to me not simply some concept in my head. Love IS real, I think, but it is still with that painful feeling riding along with it so not in a neat and tidy conclusion at all. My work is never done.

Pops and Ma - short-short story by David Sky

Pops sits on his chair about 24 inches from a TV screen lost in that most popular drug of all - Audio-video-narcotic called Television. A host of Wild Banshee could give court and insofar as she did not block his direct gaze into the Television itself, Pops stays unawares of the “outside world”. Becky had resisted for literally years but the drug is stronger finally than her will, than all her love, so she admits defeat but stands firm on having him at the table for three meals a day with no TV running. She felt grateful at least that his political leanings didn't draw him to FOX NEWS but just recently, she had even progressed to requiring him to wear headphones for her own sanity since he had to keep the volume up so loud. She knew that would drive him further into the TV's spell. She got that. She got most things. Becky is the girl who gets things, after all, she smiles. But Becky had discovered that she could not stand to hear one more word from Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow for it had bore down finally upon her very last nerve – no upon her very last fiber of being. It was a defeat of sorts but what is life but a series of defeats? So few win even most of the time. None live without suffering defeat of some kind. Pops had seen a world of defeat in his eighty seven years and Becky always felt a little guilty pulling him away from his news feed after all it was what he loved, for better or worse.

Are you ready for lunch, Pops? she asks, although technically it is not really a question. As she says it, waving the open palm of her hand between his face and the Television to break his trance and it is a trance, no other word for it. It is always a rude interruption for Pops. Lunch? Pops. Lunch?

He jumps – huh, what, Yeah, yeah, he says. Lunch. Sure. Good. But his eyes do not leave the Television screen until Becky hits the power button with that now practiced sense of relief and guilt,

Ma died four long years ago and Becky moved in so Pa could stay in their home where he had lived now for fifty years. He had sobbed when Ma died then again when he had begged Becky to move in and not put him in a Home to let him die here in his own house that was his only wish. The only other time she had ever known him to cry was when her Grandma had died. Becky's older sister and her brother both in another state encouraged her to find a “place for him” but in the end, Becky just couldn't do it. Ma had made Becky promise when Ma was on her death bed that she would take care of her father until he died. That had been Ma's life taking care of him and even into death she continued to do that through Becky's promise. Since then Becky had looked at that promise from every conceivable angle and any which way she looked at it, it came out the same. Sure Pops had been a grade A asshole all his life. No doubt why few if any relatives ever even inquired about the old man any more. Still, Becky could have made no other choice. He wasn't really an asshole any longer. He was just a very frail, very old man. In a real way it was as if the father she had known all her life was already dead and this was some other old man who she didn't really know.

The unmarried one. All that crap that she had heard for her whole life long. She who had ended up being nursemaid to half the family at large at one point or another. Aunt Becky. She had been a nurse. Still was a nurse. Still had her license, anyway.

She helps Pops to the table by holding his arm. A fall perhaps the biggest fear at this point. He would not accept how weak and frail he was and kept trying to walk around when she was asleep without his walker. She had no help for at least a couple years now and had to go shopping at 3AM in the morning when she was sure he was asleep and would not hurt himself. It was anxious for Becky leaving the house even then but she had learned to love that early time of the morning often in Florida the best time of the day in many ways that smell in the air and the stillness, the quiet. Peace and Freedom. In some ways strolling down the empty aisles of the grocery store at 3AM was the best part of her life even if the thought of that made her laugh self deprecatingly. O well, it is what it is.

Today she had cut up some fresh strawberries for desert and had a half a tuna sandwich with a side of couple slices of cheese, carrots and celery.

She always ate with him at the table like this today. What did you learn on the talk news on the Television this morning, Pops? She asks him. Sort of a standard question.

Bah! he scoffs, waving a bony arm dismissively. Bunch of nonsense! My God Girl what the fuck is wrong with this country! Kind of a standard answer.

She tries to engage him some so Pops will not fall forever into the Television itself like some weird Alice-In-Wonderland adventure. But less and less does he even have much to say until Becky wonders what Pops does see and hear when he gets lost in that TV? Maybe he doesn't really even hear Chris Matthews at all, maybe his own mind protects him from that insult and removes him to some other place – but maybe she is just projecting? How's that sandwich, Pops? she asks. Have some strawberries with cream for desert for ya.

Then she notices in the chair Ma used to sit in there is … a shape … a vague whitish form roughly human shaped sans limbs? Somehow, she knows without a doubt that it is her mother. Her fork drops into her salad as she jumps back in the chair almost knocking it over. WTF? She looks at Pops but he obviously does not notice?

The sandwich is good, says Pops as if her question just then registered.

Ma?

She hears this whitish form say clearly, in her mother's voice, You're doing fine, Hon. Tell Pa that I'm always with him now. Tell him not to worry about the other side. I'll be there waiting there to help him. No worries.

She can hardly breath and again looks at Pops who still registers nothing. No worries that was what Ma always was saying. No worries. My God - am going completely insane? – I KNEW it! She thinks wildly. Ma? Is that you? She asks out loud.

The shape somehow turns toward her and says reassuringly, It's just me, Hon. Mom. You must tell him that I said so - he's very concerned about it. It's important now, Becky. You hear?

She finds herself saying, again out loud, I don't think so, Mom, Pops never talks about any of that kind of stuff -

The form cuts her off – You tell him. He's concerned, take my word. It's important now, Becky. I wouldn't be here if it weren't. It won't be long now you can think about what it is you want to do for yourself now, Hon.

Finally Becky manages to say, Okay, I will, Mom. I'll talk to him about it best I can. If I am loosing it, Becky thinks seriously, than I am really loosing it this is SO REAL?

Grandma's here for you, Hon, her Mom continues matter of fact. You got a long while yet. But Grandma's always with you, just know that. She wants you to do for yourself, Becky. We both do, Hon. It's about time for that and Grandma, you know, she loves you very much.

And the form quickly dissipates right before her eyes as if a heavy smoke suddenly rushed out of the room by a strong draft of air from an open window? At dinner that night she tells Pops that Ma was waiting for him on the other side and to make sure he finds her. Of course, he does not understand what she is talking about. But Becky keeps at it with him until he stops insisting that it's crazy talk and promised that he will remember that Ma is waiting for him. They were never particularly religious people and Becky suddenly realized that she had no idea what he thought about the afterlife - she never really had given it much thought herself? Going to sleep that night Becky thinks about what she does want to do thinking that she would like to go back to work finding it a little odd that she does but not in a hospital something easy like in a doctors office, maybe -  9 to 5, right? She didn't mind that no one would be there to take care of her actually the thought of a nursing home was not so bad to her, she almost looked forward to it. She had prepared for that contingency being the best case scenario in her mind and she knew that she would be able to afford the best.

 

Pops dies three nights later peacefully in his sleep for which Becky feels very grateful. He never did say anything about Ma waiting on the other side but Becky feels reassured, anyway. She checks him when she returned from the store in the quiet, wee hours of the morning with a warm rain falling steady and hard – a beautiful rain, a slightly sweet smell, slightly funky, the smell of life in Florida. He looks peaceful, she wonders, noting how reassuring to her that is more than words could convey.

It had to be real? she thinks.  

"Time Travel"

 

 

I like to wear sunglasses with UV protection when time traveling but it's not absolutely necessary. I like especially to time travel in the out of doors. Time is a lie told to innocent children by consciousness yet in this physical world where we are now in our DNA Machine Bodies,  it is real enough.

 

"All is illusion, nothing is real, is it not so!" demands the Zen Master of the student.

 

"Absolutely," said the student confidently.

 

The Zen Master cracks the student sharply over his head with his Kyosaku stick.

 

So at once time is a lie and real enough such is the cognitive dissonance that is our lot while traveling in these DNA Machine Bodies. From my own experience outside of this body/soul vehicle in my eternal self there was no time only newness. But that being the case, I think of the debate about whether or not time travel is possible usually proposed via some type of technology often said to require fantastic amounts of power. I don't know about that my mind is not very good but it seems plausible enough since time travel is obviously possible we're doing it right now -

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYzVeOSpBCo

 

So all that science would need to do is speed it up? Or, we can just wait until we die and return to our higher self and the timelessness of eternity which is not a very long length of time but no time.

 

 

Our Life Is a Story

Our life is a story we tell ourselves in our heads. I say then if we have had a hard time of it, than tell ourselves a story of recovery. If we have regrets for actions past, tell ourselves a story of redemption. If we have been befallen by obstacles, tell ourselves a story of victory. If we feel we have not known love, than by all means tell ourselves that story of transcendent love. Why not, life is short? There is one story and one story only:
yours!

The What-If excercise

So at first I stopped and sat down quietly and asked myself to consider WHAT IF everything were alright. Not to believe that everything were alright or even that it was possible for everything to be alright but simply What If  everything were alright? A thought experiment like Einstein said he liked to do - a much simpler one than he would do, mind you, no higher math involved. Very simple thing to do. Very easy.

Whew okay now then everything is alright so there is nothing to "fix" nothing to "fight" nothing to "regret" nothing to "fear" - wow uncharted territory here? I saw immediately.

Suddenly new questions arise as I see like sunlight breaking through dark clouds that clearly the only thing I "must do" is breathe.

What do I want?
What will I do?
Where will I go?
What do I love?
Who do I love?

Suddenly I understood something "told to me" by a mushroom voice in my own mind years earlier that I had remembered but not really understood: "Everything that ever was, ever will be or is right now, is perfect". I could make no mistakes. There was no such thing as a mistake. There are no wrong turns in life only right turns taken wrongly. All I truly have to do is breathe. What to do and where to go and who to love that is all a choice. Opportunities. Options. Simply really taking a moment to ask myself  "what if" was like grasping a doorknob, turning it and pushing open a door into life.

July 1st 2012 in a forest near the shores of lake Superior alone in a quiet glade,  I found the what if exercise to be a powerful, transformative tool. It broke something open inside of me. The truth of things is always so darn simple it seems?

How David Halberstam Relates to War Journalism Today

An Essay by David Sky

David Halberstam now deceased maybe was best known for his book on the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest. Perhaps I shouldn't say best known since he wrote also sport books and a book about the firefighters in 9-11 called, Firehouse, later in his life. In The Best and the Brightest, he explores in characteristic depth just how such a collection of the best and the brightest minds America had at the time lead by defense secretary Robert McNamara so spectacularly failed in Vietnam. He won a Pulitzer prize for his war coverage while reporting for The New York Times and I think I like best his character as described by other war correspondents who wrote memoirs of their time in Vietnam especially in Neil Sheehan's, A Bright and Shining Lie which is I'm not alone in thinking the best non fiction book on the Vietnam War definitely what I would recommend to anyone wanting to read just one book on this subject instead of a hundred although insofar as reading can convey such a thing the many memoirs written by the soldiers themselves are profoundly insightful on the Vietnam War if not as comprehensive individually in scoop as Sheehan's epic masterpiece. As books on the Vietnam war go, the very best book to me and one of the best books I've read in my life really which seems more a book length prose poem than a work of non fiction is Michael Herr's, Dispatches, in which Halberstam makes an appearance as well. My favorite book by Halberstam is not about Vietnam at all but a highly readable history called, The Fifties, that I feel anyone would enjoy as history especially if old enough to have lived in that period or even the sixties - as he points out, a lot happened in the fifties in America that set the groundwork for the last half of the century. Halberstam I think is particularly notable in that in comparison to his colleagues he was relatively square with his nose to the grindstone and highly professional and I would say a real team player and in a way not a radical or subversive in any sense at all unlike some of his colleagues so I wouldn't think that he could be seen as controversial in this day and age by even conservatives?

To the point of comparing that time in journalism with today, I thought still laying in bed this morning about news coverage recently of America's newest disaster in the making in yet another country thousands of miles away with so far no journalist involved at all rather information coming in being entirely just taken from the military and read to the public so not journalism in any sense of the word hitting a new low I feel and being in fact I would say by definition public relations at best and actually propaganda. So much for the fourth estate. If God died in the sixties, then Journalism died in the nineties. Earlier surely there was censorship at every level and journalism was hardly pure but there was some actual journalism also very credible investigative journalism. Now literally a handful of corporations control all media and most newspapers are dead and journalists are scattered in disarray like some utterly defeated army. The corporate news at best is public relations and at worst propaganda startlingly similar to “The Party” who controlled all information in “Oceania”. Orwell's 1984 now seems to me less of a work of fiction than a How-To book for governance.

What really comes most strongly to mind from the Vietnam era was what most all journalist called, “The Five O'clock Follies”. In Saigon which was headquarters for our forces at five O'clock the military conducted evening briefings on war events that day which were known to be hopelessly biased and of little journalistic value. Most reporters hung around Saigon attending these briefings then sending in “reports” to their respective agency then went out for a night of drinking and often whoring with the legions of young Vietnamese woman available. By and large these reporters held the Five O'Clock Follies in nearly as much disdain as did Halberstam himself only they didn't care and if they were to make any argument in their defense, the best one would be that it was only their job to report what they were told and that going out and covering the war in depth was somehow unprofessional in the way of editorializing upon the war. Some strongly disagreed with that sentiment and for those relative few like Halberstam who risked life in limb typically travelling by helicopter far into the jungles where the kinds of potential deaths awaiting were nearly endless with a few of our soldiers actually eaten by tigers, the real information gained was often heavily edited back home by often well meaning professionals who were obliged to couch the truth in a pretty uniform manner according to the dictates of the status quo. This was an endless source of resentment for them to me recalling how many of the army's Long Range Reconnaissance teams felt after going out into the jungle in lightly armed five or six man teams often among regiments of hard core North Vietnamese regular infantrymen who would then find their hard won Intel dismissed by commanders as unbelievable with the real theme being that their information garnered by boots on the ground did not fit the screen play war being written by the top level brass.

Only in their books as some mentioned above do we get the real dirt, as it were. To be clear, if the America public had been given the dirt on the war by their journalists in the field risking life and limb just as did the brave soldiers of that war, perhaps the American people would have brought it to a swift end ergo the reason why such a thing did not occur. For the many Americans who give mouth service to our forefathers, it should be noted that this so called Fourth Estate was considered essential to maintaining a democracy and preventing our government from becoming tyrannical a fate our forefathers always had close in mind and a fate to which American has absolutely succumbed so it seems. Today many conscientious journalists have rallied from their defeat and are reporting via various let's say “asymmetrical” means – to invoke that term “asymmetrical warfare” to make a point here. For many that means blogs some of which demand a small monthly fee since no matter how much esteem the writers may have for journalistic integrity, they still have to eat. Books also still provide a view unbiased by corporate media control unfortunately very few Americans read these books and no mention of their contents will ever be seen on network television. For those journalists like David Halberstam who eschewed the Five O'clock Follies, those who only attended these propaganda briefings and parroted that information back to their bureaus as if it were journalism were held in the lowest esteem by the real journalists who in many cases like the over 50,000 United States Soldiers gave everything in their commitment their calling.

Today I seriously wonder if by some magic our vaunted evening news anchors and those personalities on the cable news networks actually reported the truth to us would it make any difference at all – we having grown that apathetic, maybe? To be fair and balanced and convey a bit of positivity, I have to admit that particularly these cable news networks which run literally 24 hours a day, seven days a week do a consistently flawless job at saying nothing of any real substance at all – I mean that in itself takes real hard work, organization and a high level of professionalism so let me give praise exactly where it is due. I can't help but think of what was said about the Mafia - how much success they would have and how much good they might accomplish if they but choose to use all the hard work, organization and talent they possess for some legal enterprise!