Love at a Reasonable Price

oh but man was he ever a questionable character
people questioned his character
and like well-fed house-dogs bayed and wiggled in proud disdain
some even went so far as to brag to their friends that they didn’t care they would go right up to his face and tell him
no one ever actually got as far as his face though
it was enough to know
enough to roll around in his questionableness like well-fed house-dogs wiggle-triumphing on their backs through the reassuring stench of something some days dead somehow spread across the lawn
that was all good and just
him being such a questionable character and all
they said yeah he walks with a limp — but just to lull unsuspecting victims a little nearer to his badger claws and wolf teeth
they said yeah he eats cabbage stew for breakfast lunch and dinner — and that’s to hide in farts like a tigress hunts downwind to mask her cruel powers her sultry feline glands
they said yeah he thumb-pops dandelion heads — like how psychopaths start out by torturing cats, not that cats are all that great or anything, but it’s like a warmup evil and a sign
they said yeah he talks to himself while wandering these wide woods — someday some shooter’s gonna mistake him for a talking deer and we’ll all be better off
and then they laugh being heroes by doing nothing all day every day over and over again in the shade of a regulated market economy with safety nets and backed by an active central bank
they said yeah he’s a questionable character and I got these sneakers on sale what do you think?

[What is this? This is not a new literary dispensation!
We want a new art!
This feels like a grumpy old art.
Just reading it makes me sleepy and look I’m putting on an old flannel bathrobe and trusted old soft-bellied rough-leather slippers, and here I slip into the paper the coffee the cigarette the glaring yellow linoleum tiles, wallpaper, hard tabletop plush chair back — everything yellow linoleum with hints of silver, swirls of white, shades of faded hope and ashtrayed-dreams; and here my long square fingers — knotted red now at the joints — pat my wife’s round-grown rump in her yellow towel-material bathrobe, and yes we are falling asleep in the kitchen with the stove on and while cigarettes — at $0.60 a pack who can say no to another? — dangle from our lips; and we have mixed vodka into our coffee; and we are tired ]

A new idea
A new authorship
Like a beetle with his black shiny three-piece shells and his sturdy black snap-together legs
His head down he charges forward through the short grasses he thinks are tall
Yes! Like a beetle!
Because they live but a season
And so are always new
Always come out cluelessly self-assured raring to go
A new idea, a new authorship, a new literary dispensation
charging with newborn
with a newborn’s pep vigor innocence and drive
another beetle hatched with rounded shells, churning legs, and ping-ping billiard-table brains
this new
exciting
classy super classy
art

God annihilate me
God obliterate me
God remove everything except the Love that serves everyone

Now we drift as dust leaves or cigarette ash
down to the street where between the tall red rows of homes
Now we return to the inside out
where we sat in the sharp fall air
watching mini tornados of red and brown leaves
spin up off the asphalt
Now we prepare to die
or to live without the edges
whatever God would do
if God would please
bother with us
enough
to change us
from husks
into the space between

Now we slide into the waves cold and slippery
Our mother said don’t put your face in the water
Now we scamper with our thin chests recoiling from the slip slapping cold
Now we know we are not eternal
except where we are the delight in Love
except where we are the Joy that Is

Now we try again
to believe and to live as if we believed
in a Love that chooses everyone
that binds us all together
that demands kindness
that will never bless cruelty, lying, cheating
that will only bless those aspects of each conscious moment
that live in and through and for
the Love that serves everyone
the Love that tells the truth
the Love that shelters those who need help
the Love that is Right and True and that will never pretend
that
might makes right
or
that
truth is whatever the big man says it has to be
or
that
winning matters more than standing up for
aware clear honest accurate competent compassionate loving-kind joyfully-sharing

democracy is fun
it is a blast
It is good wholesome fun
criminal governments that rule by fear are not fun, they are cruel and boring
That’s the difference
That is this election

It’s all done
It’s all over
The evil loses
The good wins
There’s nothing to be done

So why are we born?
Why do we walk the earth?
Why do we appear to feel, think, and act?
Why do we seem to make decisions?

It is all over
The evil loses
The Good wins

What is the poem through which everyone sees this moment as it really is, from the soul out into the salient details?

What is the essay that makes us all together be honest and kind with this moment?

God is a firecracker
We are a glass jar
And the shattered glass
flies everywhere
The jar is no more
God is a scrub sponge
We are a glass jar
And all the spots disappear
We see through ourselves

Help us God to see things as they really are together
That we might together move and think and act wisely
Here and now

A song of joy
Divine Love fits into politics how?
What is the proper role of God’s Love in human organizations, in nation states even?

Wake up and smell the coffee
Smells like somebody burnt the coffee
And then put the grounds in a blender
with some shit and some vomit and some piss
And used the “pulse” button
to get all creamy homogenous
And then poured it on everybody’s breakfast cereal

But the kicker is the logic:
“We ran out of milk.
I didn’t have time to go to the store.
I blame you, since it’s just us here, and I’m not perfect but I get up every day and do my level best.”

Wake up and smell the coffee
Smells like somebody forgot to add the water
And so the pot burned
Smells like an explosion of glass
tearing apart the family
leaving blood and guts all over the linoleum floor
And then forgetting about it for a few days
as the bodies decompose in the mild fall weather
and the flies can’t contain their jumping joy
and the cats overcome their five minutes of squeamishness
And everyone digs in for days on end
And the cats are now eating rotten flesh
And their little pukes add a note of acridity to the general putridness

But the kicker is the logic:
“We ran out of milk.
So I didn’t want to use any liquids.
I blame you, since it’s just us here, and I’m not perfect, but I get up every day and I do my level best.”

Pacing cobbles ‘fore a wooden gate
Facing left then right; pacing late
’til he spies a churning cloud of noisy dust
Filling road and meadow like a swarm of crazed locusts

A moonlit night, his lantern bright: An easy catch!
A danger espied in time’s no threat, he must merely fetch
his fellows, rouse the town to lower their defenses
and
hole up a careful minute ’til this violent madness passes

He runs he shouts he points he says look how ominous
Shutters clatter open. “Oh, yeah! Wow! That is obvious!
If we let that in, we may never again choose who comes and goes
Certainty’s a thing for memoirs, but we’ve got enough to know
what must be worked and won
before the rise of the sun.”

And so they spilled out onto the street but someone said
Now, wait, that watchman’s from the other side. Let’s go back to bed!
The throng jostled forward and back until the people got sleepy
and some made learned speeches about how the watchman’s real creepy
They set the meeting time for sun-up and promised an honest debate
Morning came and the orators were ready guide the many, to shift their weight
“I tell you what! They say that a cloud of crime is coming near.
But we all know that that’s not something that can happen here.
I mean, the colors of that beautiful swirling orb are ours —
of course that watchman’s faction would invent this spurious charge!”

They debated as the cloud grew darker larger louder more lethal
But soon Faction A declared Faction B to be the only real evil
And those with no time for politics shrugged their shoulders and said
“Well, he said, she said, in the end, everyone puts truth on its head.
So who can say? Anyway, they’re right about one thing: this doesn’t happen here.”
Faction B trembled. They panicked. They grew desperate to share the fear
that they were certain was sensible to feel.
But there weren’t enough of them to turn the wheels
that release the latch to drop the gate
before the storm enters and it’s anyway too late.

Whose fault?
The ones who lied?
The ones who preferred elaborate lies to the plain truth?
The ones who panicked and couldn’t make their case clear enough?
The ones who “knew” that everyone was lying anyway?
I don’t know.
Maybe they’ll get lucky.
Maybe the storm will die down.
Maybe it’s a mirage.
Maybe it can’t do too much damage anyway.
Maybe.
But
The citizens had one duty
To pay a little attention
To be a little honest with themselves and others
To close the gate when an obvious danger threatened all of them
But I think Faction A is trying to close the gate mostly
on the days when people from Faction B might want to come home
And otherwise, any talk of shutting the gate is clearly just
people from Faction B trying to cheat

Author: BW/AW
Editor: AW/BW
Copyright: AMW

No great country
God chooses no people no nation no country
God chooses every person always every time
The rest is a lie, is boring propaganda, is cruel

Interesting
Now some have sworn under oath before this court that
God has chosen them
God has favored them
They have a special relationship with God
Are you calling their testimony false?
Are you calling these people liars?

I am saying that it is not accurate to say that God chooses anyone or any group more than else
I am saying that there is no particular chosen anyone, that everyone is 100% chosen, and so there can be no extra chosen-ness

Okay, Okay, so that’s what you’re saying
But before this court and before this world please tell us
Who are you
that we should listen
to what you say?

I am you
I am everyone
I am telling you what you already KNOW

A symphony
that would help
that would help us all to together see things as they really are
both in the deep heart
and here in the scudding surface where we
touch one another
and the deep heart

How God?
How humanity?
How to forward in this moment?
When the world feels foolish, reckless, angry, desperate, flailing
How to write the songs that help here and now?

How to the tell the truth in a way that segues well with the Truth and with how we here and now all together think and feel?

A symphony for the people
A symphony for the stars in the heavens
A symphony for the God in and through it all
A symphony for the people who shine like stars
each a sun lit by the God that lights all with eternal Love

How?
in time?
For time races fore
while we slip our bones and cut down into our own flesh
while we skip our tracks and crash forward into and break with terrible shrieking metal our own selves
How?
How do we together compose
the symphony that weaves us together into the wiser way?