|
Tuesday, July 6, 2004 |
|
I'm flying to San Francisco, Somewhere above Kentucky The sun has set slowly behind a mountain range of clouds Anvil Thunderheads tower and flash The sunset glows through gaps like the embers of a campfire Cirrus, a passing fog of ice is the ceiling, and cumulus the floor The clouds form snowy praries, glaciers and caves and rivers of light They thrust up like cotton fists Float past like man-o-wars, their tentacles of rain washing the hidden ground The bright, thin sky reflected in their wisps. 6:21:49 PM 
|
|
|
Friday, April 23, 2004 |
|
betrayal of trust It cannot be swept Like crushed glass it cuts 9:46:41 AM
|
|
|
Monday, April 12, 2004 |
|
This morning's news featured a discussion of the "Kerry Communion Scandal" -- John Kerry, who is divorced, apparently took communion at the Catholic Easter mass he attended this weekend, sending the Opus Dei set into a tizzy. The only difference in this regard between me and John Kerry is that my first marriage was annulled by the Catholic church (because it was officiated by a Methodist Navy chaplain, and not a priest) and my ex never got around to the details required to get our marriage blessed before she fell in love with the assoicate pastor and... well, there's a novel in that story. So, even though I have two children from that marriage, I get a Catholic "do-over." Kerry apparently doesn't rate one, and in the eyes of some he therefore is not in a State of Grace--and should therefore be refused communion, or have the common sense to stay seated while the queue forms. Others tut-tut, but say that it's up to the individual to determine whether he or she is in a "state of grace." Forget if a politician could *ever* be in a state of grace, by definition. What ever happened to, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?" Oh, I forgot, this is the juncture of politics and religion, where the first stone is cast in order to appear to be without sin. And you'd better be casting a stone if it's a Sunday, because the Pope just told Australian bishops that all secular activities should be avoided on the sabbath--so throwing a baseball on the sabbath is a sure path to Purgatory. Get your indulgence payments ready. I spent Easter morning in church with my wife, children, and (erk) ex. She came in cursing her father and sister over how he had given her the furniture out of his condo that he had just sold, fuming over how he had never asked HER if she wanted any of it, and how her sister had slighted her in so many ways over the weekend. She then took communion. Was she in a state of grace when she did so, still muttering words of hate under her breath?
When so-called Christians shower hate upon people who are different from them, are they in a state of grace? When we sit by as a country and let our leaders send our brothers, sisters, and children off to kill on a whim, can any of us be in a state of grace? |
|
|
Wednesday, March 10, 2004 |
|
grackles and cowbirds The displaced pigeons daffodils ignore 10:07:52 AM
|
|
|
Saturday, March 6, 2004 |
|
John Glenn blasts Bush Mars plan for cutting space station funds "breaks our promises" 1:15:13 AM
|
|
Mars Rover finds proof that Mars was once "soaking wet" but found a towel 12:59:29 AM
|
|
Not from hot dogs does Libya have mustard gas twenty tons o' fun 12:55:51 AM
|
|
Smoke gets in your eyes In more ways than you think; you can smoke yourself blind 12:36:54 AM
|
|
|
Friday, December 5, 2003 |
|
the first winter sleet coats the earth in white and grey no cycling today 3:56:11 PM
|
|
|
Friday, November 7, 2003 |
|
Front porch swing, November night. inky blue sky, twinkling stars A Chevy van idles, its pistons cry for an oil change a leaf drops across the street, swoops and glides my daughter curls against my chest for warmth I want a few quiet minutes but tractor trailers and buses won't yield their time A white Monte Carlo rolls by, music blasting low-rider pickups and teenage foot-draggers Back stoop, daughter's in bed the full moon shines like a police chopper spotlight neighbor's windows flicker with TV light like bug-zappers something rustles in the leaves Back in my daughter's room banishing monsters with my guitar the quiet is within the chords the strings create solitude Front porch, November night my Washburn blocks the woman cursing at her dog the chuckleheads wandering the streets Chords as a prayer, a rosary for stillness 11:17:19 PM
|
|
|
Wednesday, October 29, 2003 |
|
It's dark at five o'clock the rain is washing away the leaves another season flushed into oblivion leaving piles of flotsam and regret
The sky is grey at eight a.m.
But there's nothing as beautiful
And there's nothing quite as sweet |
|
|
Friday, October 17, 2003 |
|
Asterisk Boy sits alone in his lair/ he don't give a damn about what's hangin' in the air/ His ears are closed to the voice of outsiders/ He only hears the yes-men and crooked advisers/ Asterisk Boy's got an itchy trigger finger/ He's a fat-cats-first-kill-the-rest right winger/ God made him king so he knows he's right/ He never lets his people stay away from a fight/ He tells a lie until he thinks it's true/ Asterisk Boy knows what to do/ he'll lock up anyone who gets in his way/ The voice in his ears tells him what to say/ Four more years of a nasty habit/ He's not going to let anybody else have it/ The money pours in from the corporate coffers/ Blood and profits is what he offers/
I've got the asterisk blues/
I can't win I can only lose/
It's treason they say/
to protest in this way/
I've got the asterisk blues... |
|
|
Friday, October 10, 2003 |
|
Silver rails glisten like snail tracks on cinders Metroliner dawn Mist clings to the ground a comforter for the earth against morning's cold Amber morning light shattered factory windows gleam like chapel stained glass Onion domed churches and sardine-stacked rowhouse streets slide by silently "Express" commuter rail mysteries lurk in the fog we creep around turns Bursts of blue skies lined with gods-whisker golden clouds cirrus morning shadow Dense scrub forests islands in suburban sprawl pass, invisible Morning light turns hard watercolor mists retreat unforgiving day Jersey office parks Metropark megaliths among plastic trees Rahway's flat rooftops mirror the slate shine from the refinery clouds Newark Airport spews another pumpkinseed plane into dawn's visage Burning rubber smell acrid as a tire dump fire Welcome to Newark It's a winter sun on an early fall morning urban grit sky Bricks, steel and shambles line the New Jersey railroad vacant lots steaming Newsprint-colored sky brown, black, traffic-cone orange graffiti relief Post industrial landscape reflects in the Kill ducks, egrets, phone poles Cargo cranes, gantries gather in Meadowlands mist conspiring, waiting Then down below ground below the Hudson, into Manhattan's bowels Up from the darkness disgorged into the station the rush for fresh air Oh, screw the cab line I'll walk across Manhattan I'm travelling light. 9:48:32 PM
|
|
|
Thursday, October 2, 2003 |
|
My brain wants to leave my head It wants to crawl back into bed I 'd let it, but then I'd be dead So I'll just suck caffeine instead.
[headline haiku / dot-communist] |
|
|
Friday, September 19, 2003 |
|
Sure, to swim is fun but not in brackish water in your living room 2:33:12 PM
|
|
|
Thursday, September 18, 2003 |
|
Falling branches bounce on the roof of my front porch Isabel knocking 5:13:30 PM
|
|
|
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 |
|
Looks like my kids may be home from school Thursday and Friday, thanks to that hurricane headed our way. 4:04:50 PM
|
|
|
Friday, September 12, 2003 |
|
The fleeting nature of happiness seems to be getting proved over and over all around us these days. Friends, couples we have known only as couples, are coming apart at the seams; hidden things are being spilled into public view for all to see. A pair of longtime friends, J. and R., had dropped off our radar screen for a few months; we knew they were having problems with their teenage daughter, so we left occasional messages offering our support. Then, during the summer, we heard from J, -- she and R. were breaking up because R. had been involved in an affair--a homosexual affair. Yesterday, another one of our friends confided that she was asking her significant other to leave because of his drinking problem. The problem was obvious; we had recently had dinner with them, and he was drunk when we arrived. It was also long-lived; he had a history, but on the surface it had seemed he was making good on promises. Then he quit his job, and all pretense of control was gone. And then, another couple we know that is in the middle of relocating seemed to come a bit unglued. She left town suddenly, to go to their new house, already bought, leaving him with the kids ; he had to drop them with a neighbor because of work. Meanwhile, a couple we know from church and our kids' school has been seperated for months; we only found out this week when the rigors of the new school year and soccer practice tore away the illusion of normalcy they had been painting for all but those closely involved. I am no stranger to this. I've been in an untenable relationship, that I stayed in because I felt obliged to by honor and faith and only left when it was clear that it was necessary to preserve the health of my sons and myself. I count myself more fortunate every day that I did, and that I found a relationship and a marriage that work in the wake of that disaster. But there are always strains placed on relationships from the outside that challenge. If you're lucky, and patient, and prepared, you can get through many of them. But for some, as Yeats said, "Things fall apart; the center will not hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." The artifices that people build to deal with daily life, to plaster over differences rather than communicate about them, inevitably collapse under their own weight.
Sometimes, the collapse is a good thing-it forces change that is necessary, and clears the air for things to be rebuilt more strongly. But often, the crisis that brings on the collapse is too much to get beyond to make repairs; the resolve to make things right is washed away in the emotion of the moment, and all that remains is the jagged hole. |
|
|
Thursday, September 11, 2003 |
|
It is a beautiful September day here in Baltimore; the sky is cloudless and robin's egg blue. Yet it is a day cluttered with the remnants of another day two years ago. And somehow, taking joy in the gift of this day seems like snatching candy from the bowl while your parents' backs are turned. But why? The sorrow is there, clearly, but can we not feel joy and sorrow at the same time? Can we not learn new lessons from this day rather than rehash that which has past? Today is a day that should remind us to live our lives, rather than relive them. In looking backward, we should look forward. How can we change the world for the better from this moment forward? How can we accept what we cannot change and make the best of it? We mark a loss today, a punctuation mark in our personal histories. But it is a comma, not a period. We remake the world every day; let's remember how those we've lost would want the world to be as we move to remake it better. 10:31:05 AM
|
|
|
Wednesday, August 27, 2003 |
|
Reality calls: Indian call centers see bigtime turnover Frequent rejections and handling the unhappy-- "more pay would be nice" Perhaps there's a job soliciting support for Republican pols 3:34:56 PM
|
|
NASA says, "Our bad" A broken safety culture O'Keefe: "We get it." 3:18:59 PM
|
|
Once again I blog despite the incompetence of those who hosted Host or parasite? Fifty dollars a month for dialup and heartache 2:58:51 PM
|
|
|
Monday, August 25, 2003 |
|
Over the weekend, my disk quota on my hosting and mail account with Toadnet mysteriously exceeded its ceiling. And rather than just shutting down uploads to the site, the host overwrote any files that were already on the site that had been changed with blank pages. In other words, my weblogs on that host were essentially wiped from existence. For this, and dial-up access from the road, I've been paying $50 a month.
So, the time has come to completely pull the plug. I just redirected my domains to a new domain name server at my bargain-basement hosting service, where my disk quota is larger by more than a factor of 10 and my hosting bill is $8 a month. I will no longer suffer in the name of supporting locals. As soon as the DNS refreshes, my move of all my weblogs (except for the one hosted by Userland) will be complete. |
|
|
Friday, August 22, 2003 |
|
test 10:13:49 PM
|
|
|
Wednesday, July 23, 2003 |
|
Odai and Qusai "holed up" in a Mosul house in more ways than one.
Celebratory |
|
|
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 |
|
Two wet rats hopping In my shiny steel trashcan I love city life! 12:34:54 PM
|
|
|
Tuesday, July 15, 2003 |
|
Who cares if Bush lied? The ends justifies the means and death's a mean end.
Iraqis don't care
Like where to find food |
|
|
Friday, April 11, 2003 |
|
Come visit Hong Kong! It will take your breath away! If not, then SARS will. 11:26:56 AM
|
|
the pen mightier than the sword. perhaps, but not precision ordnance 11:18:08 AM
|
|
|
Monday, March 31, 2003 |
|
Spring snow A bitter reminder of nature's fickleness and comfort's transience A slap to the face back to reality winter's not dead yet and never quite gone spring snow tops off the resevoir melts into topsoil softens the earth cold mother of summer's abundance harsh midwife of creation's rebirth spring snow sharpens the senses teaches us patience tempers our hope 5:28:52 PM
|
|
Not the common cold a new disease spreads unease corona virus Hong Kong apartment under 10-day quarantine but SARS goes global 4:26:13 PM
|
|
The baseball season America's rites of spring statistician's joy 3:55:53 PM
|
|
Congressman Issa a true patriot is he when money's at stake 1:57:56 PM
|
|
|
Monday, March 24, 2003 |
|
war's not poetry but ugly, unedited prose chimps with typewriters
all punctuation
elegies follow |
|
In Maryland, slots poised to raise revenue from math illiterates 11:58:20 AM
|
|
|
Saturday, March 22, 2003 |
|
A funeral for the death of democracy at UK airfield. 5:51:57 PM
|
|
Some Iraqis fight while others quit, frustrated wishing to go home 5:46:34 PM
|
|
Kim Il Sung watches "shock and awe" dropped on Saddam prepares his bunker 5:35:31 PM
|
|
|
Thursday, March 20, 2003 |
|
protests overseas naked agression begets anger everywhere
Meanwhile, more insult |
|
Saddam tells the world "Little Bush is a killer" Takes one to know one 10:13:34 AM
|
|
For Saddam Hussein bunker-buster wakeup call Tomahawk breakfast 9:59:57 AM
|
|
|
Wednesday, March 19, 2003 |
|
Twenty-four more hours and the US starts its war TV war rerun. 2:51:04 PM
|
|
|
Monday, October 7, 2002 |
|
The president seems bored to tears by his own war Iraq's so last week. Maybe a little attack on North Korea will cure his ennui. 11:43:42 PM
|
|
No haiku lately I've been busy with my life and other pursuits But certainly, words are massing on the border prepared for attack Sometimes life alone is cause for celebration when death lurks nearby Who values life more: a rush-hour sniper or the righteous war wager? Death at discount It's cheaper by the millions than one at a time Blood spilled far away makes for better tv than death on your doorstep Who can be "pro-life" that prepares to cause the death of scores of children? 2:09:14 PM
|
|
|
Tuesday, September 10, 2002 |
|
Alert Level Orange Tom Ridge tells parents to give their kids nighmares.
Ridge... encouraged parents to talk to their children about September 11 and "the possibility that those who would do us harm may choose that date ... to do us harm again." |
Last update: 7/7/04; 10:45:24 AM .
