The rich
will make temples for Siva.
What shall I,
a poor man,
do?

My legs are pillars,
the body the shrine,
the head a cupola
of gold.

Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers,
things standing shall fall,
but the moving ever shall stay.

Basva

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.
William Gibson

Brenna Ehrlich About 10 hours ago Brenna Ehrlich 15 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Captured by NASA Satellite [PICS]

Nasa pics.

I hope to define my life, whatever is left,
by migrations, south and north with the birds
and far from the metallic fever of clocks,
the self staring at the clock saying, "I must do this."
I can't tell the time on the tongue of the river
in the cool morning air, the smell of the ferment
of greenery, the dust off the canyon's rock walls,
the swallows swooping above the scent of raw water.

Jim Harrison

33 US Military Generals, Admirals: "Climate Change is Threatening America's Security"

Photo via Nature

The Pentagon has already made it well known that it considers climate change a grave national security threat, and recently the US military already pointed out that the world may face severe oil shortages as soon as 2015. But now, in what's being hailed as an "unprecedented" show of support for climate action, 33 retired US military generals and admirals have united to alert the public and our legislators that "climate change is making the world a more dangerous place." They should know -- they've seen its effects firsthand. Here's their full announcement:

Via Climate Progress:

Dear Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,

Climate change is threatening America's security. The Pentagon and security leaders of both parties consider climate disruption to be a "threat multiplier" - it exacerbates existing problems by decreasing stability, increasing conflict, and incubating the socioeconomic conditions that foster terrorist recruitment. The State Department, the National Intelligence Council and the CIA all agree, and all are planning for future climate-based threats.

America's billion-dollar-a-day dependence on oil makes us vulnerable to unstable and unfriendly regimes. A substantial amount of that oil money ends up in the hands of terrorists. Consequently, our military is forced to operate in hostile territory, and our troops are attacked by terrorists funded by U. S. oil dollars, while rogue regimes profit off of our dependence. As long as the American public is beholden to global energy prices, we will be at the mercy of these rogue regimes. Taking control of our energy future means preventing future conflicts around the world and protecting Americas here at home.

It is time to secure America with clean energy. We can create millions of jobs in a clean energy economy while mitigating the effects of climate change across the globe. We call on Congress and the administration to enact strong, comprehensive climate and energy legislation to reduce carbon pollution and lead the world in clean energy technology.

Part of me wishes I could write "If you don't believe that climate change is a threat, you're un-American" with a straight face. But that's just the part of me that's so sick of hearing the mis- and disinformation so prevalent in the climate policy debate. So I'll stick to saying that from a national security perspective, these US military men are absolutely correct -- continued dependence on foreign oil is unstable, and we certainly can kick-start a clean energy revolution. The first US offshore wind farm to be approved yesterday is proof.

We just need good energy policy -- one that puts a price on carbon -- to get us moving in high gear. Kudos to these generals for taking a bold stand furthering that aim. I wonder if even Inhofe can call all 33 of them desperate attention seekers this time. I think not.

Here's the full release in its original form (pdf)

Treehugger

Debo

That moon which the sky never saw
even in dreams
has risen again

bringing a fire
that no water can drown

See here where the body
has its house
and see here my soul

the cup of love has made the one
drunk
and the other a ruin

When the tavern keeper
became my heart's companion

love turned my blood
to wine
and my heart burned on a spit

When the eye is full of him
a voice resounds

Oh cup
be praised
oh wine be proud

Suddenly when my heart saw
the ocean of love

it leapt away from me calling
Look for me

The face of Shams-ud Din
the glory of Tabriz

is the sun that hearts follow
like clouds

Rumi

The
Earth
Lifts its glass to the sun
And light -- light
Is poured.

A bird
Comes and sits on a crystal rim
And from my forest cave I
Hear singing.

So I run to the edge of existence
And join my soul in love.

I lift my heart to God
And grace is poured.

An emerald bird rises from inside me
And now sits
Upon the Beloved's
Glass.

I have left that dark cave forever.
My body has blended with His.

I lay my wing
As a bridge to you

So that you can join us
Singing.

Hafiz

TROMBONE SHORTY BACKATOWN

timezeroart

New Orleans 'Supafunkrock' Phenom Trombone Shorty
Bursts Onto National Scene With 'Backatown'
(April 20/Verve Forecast)

Produced By Galactic's Ben Ellman, Featuring Guest Appearances By Lenny Kravitz, Allen Toussaint And Marc Broussard, Album Caps Deluge Of Honors, TV And Festival Appearances + More For Trombone Shorty

In 2010 alone, 24-year-old New Orleans singer / songwriter / multi-instrumentalist and all-around musical powerhouse Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews has signed with Verve Forecast Records and performed on Good Morning America and ESPN's SportsCenter in the run-up to the Super Bowl. He has seen recordings he contributed to earn a Grammy® award (Buckwheat Zydeco's "Lay Your Burden Down") and an Oscar® nomination (Dr. John's "Down In New Orleans" from the hit Disney film 'The Princess and the Frog'). He has taped two appearances - as himself - for the upcoming HBO series 'Treme' from ‘The Wire' creator David Simon, and played with his band Orleans Avenue as honored guests on Saints owner Tom Benson's float in a victorious post-Super Bowl Mardi Gras parade.

He's just getting started.

On April 20, Verve Forecast will release Trombone Shorty's new album 'Backatown,' an explosive, homegrown combination of funk, rock, R&B and hip-hop he calls "Supafunkrock." The album was produced by fellow New Orleanian Ben Ellman of Galactic and features fourteen songs, all but one of them written or co-written by Andrews. Guests on the album include Lenny Kravitz, Marc Broussard and Allen Toussaint, who contributes piano to a take on his own composition "On Your Way Down," the album's lone cover.

'Backatown' is a local term for an area of New Orleans that includes the historic Treme neighborhood - or 6th Ward - from which Trombone Shorty hails. Home to Congo Square, birthplace of Louis Armstrong, it has been called "the most musical neighborhood in America's most musical city." A virtuoso prodigy trombonist, brilliant trumpet player, and soulful, charismatic singer, Shorty has been performing with some members of Orleans Avenue - which includes Dwayne "Big D" Williams (percussion), Mike Ballard (bass), Joey Peebles (drums), Pete Murano (guitar) and Dan Oestreicher (baritone sax) - since childhood. The group taps into these roots to create a streetwise, gritty sound all its own on 'Backatown.'

Shorty, who possesses "the presence of a rock star" (NY Times) and has built his reputation on "blistering, bold, exuberant and cutting edge" (USA Today) live performances, is currently on tour with Orleans Avenue, and has already confirmed several major 2010 festival appearances, including one of the prestigious closing sets at Jazzfest, a triumphant return to Bonnaroo, a debut performance at the Hollywood Bowl for the Playboy Jazz Festival, and more.

Though 2010 promises to be Trombone Shorty's breakout year, he's no stranger to the spotlight. In 2005, at age 19, he toured the world as a member of Lenny Kravitz's band ("Shorty's a genius," says Kravitz, "he plays his ass off and he's a beautiful human being"). In 2006, he joined U2 and Green Day for a rousing performance to reopen the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina ("We were just mesmerized by him," U2's The Edge said after an earlier encounter with Andrews' live show). And in 2008, he performed at the NBA All-Star Game with Harry Connick Jr., Kermit Ruffins and Branford Marsalis.

Trombone Shorty

Official web site. Listen to all songs today only.

Mati Klarwein

Over the housetops,
Above the rotating chimney-pots,
I have seen a shiver of amethyst,
And blue and cinnamon have flickered
A moment,
At the far end of a dusty street.
Through sheeted rain
Has come a lustre of crimson,
And I have watched moonbeams
Hushed by a film of palest green.
It was her wings,
Goddess!
Who stepped over the clouds,
And laid her rainbow feathers
Aslant on the currents of the air.
I followed her for long,
With gazing eyes and stumbling feet.
I cared not where she led me,
My eyes were full of colours:
Saffrons, rubies, the yellows of beryls,
And the indigo-blue of quartz;
Flights of rose, layers of chrysoprase,
Points of orange, spirals of vermilion,
The spotted gold of tiger-lily petals,
The loud pink of bursting hydrangeas.
I followed,
And watched for the flashing of her wings.
In the city I found her,
The narrow-streeted city.
In the market-place I came upon her,
Bound and trembling.
Her fluted wings were fastened to her sides with cords,
She was naked and cold,
For that day the wind blew
Without sunshine.
Men chaffered for her,
They bargained in silver and gold,
In copper, in wheat,
And called their bids across the market-place.
The Goddess wept.
Hiding my face I fled,
And the grey wind hissed behind me,
Along the narrow streets.

Amy lowell

The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn't die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there's no chain.

Jim Harrison

O' wanderer

When did you
let sleep rest so heavily on your lids
that you closed your eyes against the day,
to open them again as the moon
through clouded memories,
to the dusk of your watchfulness,
returning to me each night
as a lover to my window.
To dream to birds song and the golden
light of morning , filtered red
through closed lids.
Warm in your nest of bloody veins
and nerves resting as feathers,
like the hair that rests upon your face.
Do not be disturbed, by these
endless sun drenched days of madness
and light ,or carried away to some
distant horizon as one
of a cloud of migrating birds.
Rest in the shade of sweetness
under tender new spring buds.

A Poem for the Wind

Guess who it is.
Created before the Flood.
A creature strong,
without flesh, without bone,
without veins, without blood,
without head and without feet.
It will not be older, it will not be younger,
than it was in the beginning.
There will not come from his design
fear or death.
He has no wants
from creatures.
Great God! the sea whitens
when it comes from the beginning.
Great his beauties,
the one that made him.
He in the field, he in the wood,
without hand and without foot.
Without old age, without age.
Without the most jealous destiny
and he is coeval
with the five periods of the five ages.
And also is older,
though there be five hundred thousand years.
And he is as wide
as the face of the earth,
and he was not born,
and he has not been seen.
He on sea, he on land,
he sees not, he is not seen.
He is not sincere,
he will not come when it is wished.
He on land, he on sea,
he is indispensable,
he is unconfined,
he is unequal.
He from four regions,
he will not be according to counsel.
He commences his journey
from above the stone of marble.
He is loud-voiced, he is mute.
He is uncourteous.
He is vehement, he is bold,
when he glances over the land.
He is mute, he is loud-voiced.
He is blustering.
Greatest his banner
on the face of the earth.
He is good, he is bad,
he is not bright,
he is not manifest,
for the sight does not see him.
He is bad, he is good.
He is yonder, he is here,
he will disorder.
He will not repair what he does
and be sinless.
He is wet, he is dry,
he comes frequently
from the heat of the sun and the coldness of the moon.

Taliesin

poverty

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) for the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is designed to provide an unprecedented view of the solar corona, taking images that span at least 1.3 solar diameters in multiple wavelengths nearly simultaneously, at a resolution of about 1 arcsec and at a cadence of 10 seconds or better. The primary goal of the AIA Science Investigation is to use these data, together with data from other SDO instruments and from other observatories, to significantly improve our understanding of the physics behind the activity displayed by the Sun's atmosphere, which drives space weather in the heliosphere and in planetary environments. The AIA will produce data required for quantitative studies of the evolving coronal magnetic field, and the plasma that it holds, both in quiescent phases and during flares and eruptions; the AIA science investigation aims to utilize these data in a comprehensive research program to provide new understanding of the observed processes and, ultimately, to guide development of advanced forecasting tools needed by the user community of the Living With a Star (LWS) program.

SDO successfully launched on February 11, 2010. The Observatory is now in its final geo-synchronous orbit and commissioning activities continue to show all systems to be nominal. The commissioning activities of both spacecraft and instrument complement will continue through the middle of April; early images and movie clips are available at NASA and here following the SDO press event on April 21, 2010.

Thanks to the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" people!

Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth,
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.

And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.

When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And hold our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.

Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed's self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.

The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.

That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.

John O'Donohue

There's something a bit ironic about the fact that the most fundamental common ground between every human being on the planet is, well, the planet we share--yet nearly every language has its own name for it and a reason why it's such. In English, of course, our planet is Earth--but it's terra in Portuguese, dünya in Turkish, aarde in Dutch. Just imagine the cosmic comedy that would ensue if some interstellar traveler ever stopped on our planet to get directions. But as diverse as these names are, they all reflect an older worldview--a time before anyone knew our planet was just a fertile sphere floating in the vast darkness of space.

To better understand how our planet was regarded historically, it's important to remember that the world was generally regarded as merely the 'setting' of existence and not so much a specific place. In fact, the word 'world' itself didn't originally connote the planet at all, but rather the 'state of human existence'. Germanic in origin, 'world' is a fusion of two now obsolete words translating literally to "age of man."

In this worldview, the elements that made up existence were categorized quite broadly as the Classical elements of Water, Air, Fire, and Earth. Our term 'Earth', consequently, is derived from a much older word which meant simply 'the ground', or 'the opposite of the sea'--much the way the word 'earth' can be used today. These early words for earth, in turn, are references to the Norse goddess Jörð, mother to Thor.

Of course, throughout history, great thinkers in cultures and civilizations throughout the world theorized as to what form was made up of all this earth, with theories of a flat earth reigning supreme up until relatively recently. Early astronomers noted the presence of other planetary bodies and named them after their deities, though our planet kept its connection to the 'soil'--or in Latin terra.

In the fifteenth century, as intellectuals began to reconsider our planet's shape and position in the Universe, the word 'Earth' first came to be used in reference to the planetary body we know it as today and the term considered comparable to Mars, Venus, Saturn, and the other spheres of space.

But despite these early astronomers and mathematicians deducing that Earth was just a planet and not the whole of existence, the notion didn't truly hit home until some time later. Photographic evidence of our round, blue planet Earth didn't appear until the 1950s. Later photos, like "Earthrise" would confirm to the world what we all know now--that Earth is a fragile ecosystem in the cold, vastness of space.

And despite all the different names it's known by, it's home to us all

Treehugger

Lost in myself
I reappeared
I know not where
a drop that rose
from the sea and fell
and dissolved again;
a shadow
that stretched itself out
at dawn,
when the sun
reached noon
I disappeared.
I have no news
of my coming
or passing away--
the whole thing
happened quicker
than a breath;
ask no questions
of the moth.
In the candle flame
of his face
I have forgotten
all the answers.
In the way of love
there must be knowledge
and ignorance
so I have become
both a dullard
and a sage;
one must be
an eye and yet
not see
so I am blind
and yet I still
perceive,
Dust
be on my head
if I can say
where I
in bewilderment
have wandered:
Attar
watched his heart
transcend both worlds
and under its shadow
now is gone mad
with love

Farid ud-Din Attar

The Rav
of Northern White Russia declined,
in his youth, to learn the
language of birds, because
the extraneous did not interest him; nevertheless
when he grew old it was found
he understood them anyway, having
listened well, and as it is said, 'prayed
with the bench and the floor.' He used
what was at hand -- as did
Angel Jones of Mold, whose meditations
were sewn into coats and britches.
Well, I would like to make,
thinking some line still taut between me and them,
poems direct as what the birds said,
hard as a floor, sound as a bench,
mysterious as the silence when the tailor
would pause with his needle in the air.

Denise Levertov

You are the forest

you are all the great trees
in the forest

you are bird and beast
playing in and out
of all the trees

O lord white as jasmine
filling and filled by all

why don't you
show me your face?

Akka Mahadevi

BizarroBlog

Motives and thoughts

Rotating bodies, confusion of sound
Negative imagery, holding us down
Social delusion, clearly constructed
Human condition, morals corrupted
Trapped in reaction, lawlessness war
Dissatisfaction from bowels to core
Devil’s technology, strategy for
Human mythologies, urban folklore
Sick of psychology, counterfeit cure
Wicked theology, robbing the poor
Scheme demonology mislead the pure
Strictly strategically studying war
Light shown in darkness, image exposed
Few can see through the new emperor’s clothes
Lustful this hustle turn humans to hoes
When the blind lead the blind

It’s the mind that they chose
Its designed to stay closed
and of jokers, court just a logic
Sick looking cosmics, from schoolyards to college

Primitive man with civilize knowledge
he still won’t acknowledge

God is the savior, studies behavior
Trying to fix the mix mind that he gave ya
Stiff-necked scholars on prescription meds
Wishing their problems were all in their heads
Morale dilemma, pride is the root
Misguided from youth, heart divided from truth
Egyptians Grecians, spiritually dead
Imperially led, by the gods in their heads

Motives and thoughts

Industrial wealth
Global economy, in it for self
Heart full of madness, covered with kind
Pleasure designed to take over your mind
Furnished in godliness, painted in good
This tainted priesthood got real saints misunderstood
While classes in government, set up the veil
cultivate minds for more mythical tales
Typical Hollywood follies good girl
While vice and corruption take over the world

Motives and thoughts

Blind with the wickedness, deep in your heart
Modern day wickedness is all you’ve been taught
Lied to your neighbors, so you get ahead
Modern day trickery is all you’ve been fed

Motives and thoughts
check your motives and thoughts.

Lauryn Hill

In Midnight Sleep

1
IN midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded—of that indescribable look;
Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

2
Of scenes of nature, fields and mountains;
Of skies, so beauteous after a storm—and at night the moon so unearthly bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

3
Long, long have they pass’d—faces and trenches and fields;
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure—or away from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time—But now of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

Walt Whitman

Dreaming of Li Po

After the separation of death one can eventually swallow back one's grief, but
the separation of the living is an endless, unappeasable anxiety. From
pestilent Chiang-nan no news arrives of the poor exile. That my old friend
should come into my dream shows how constantly he is in my thoughts. I fear
that this is not the soul of a living man: the journey is so immeasurably far.
When your soul left, the maple woods were green: on its return the passes were
black with night. Lying now enmeshed in the net of the law, how did you find
wings with which to fly here? The light of the sinking moon illumines every
beam and rafter of my chamber, and I half expect it to light up your face. The
water is deep, the waves are wide: don't let the water-dragons get you.

All day long the floating clouds drift by, and still the wanderer has not
arrived! For three nights running I have repeatedly dreamed of you. Such
affectionate concern on your part shows your feelings for me! Each time you
said goodbye you seemed so uneasy. `It isn't easy to come', you would say
bitterly; `The waters are so rough. I am afriad the boat will capsize!' Going
out of my door you scratched your white head as if your whole life's ambition
had been frustrated.
The Capital is full of new officials, yet a man like this is so wretched!
Who is going to tell me that the `net is wide' when this ageing man
remains in difficulties? Imperishable renown is cold comfort when you can only
enjoy it in the tomb!

Tu Fu

Visit bizarro blog here

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone

Maya Angelou

Down with Buddha!
Down with handsome, well-fed Buddha!
What's he doing up there with that oh so casually
elegant wispy beard?
Next, break down that painted whore of a crossbeam!
A dragon's head? What use is that, a dragon's head?
Tear down that temple, drive out the monks,
turn it all into dust and maggots!
Phaw!

Buddha with nothing, that's real Buddha!
Our foul-mouthed Seoul street-market mother,
she's real Buddha!
We're all of us Buddhabuddhabuddha real!
Living Buddha? One single cigarette, now
there's real cool Holy buddha!

No, not that either.
For even supposing this world were a piece of cake,
with everyone living it up and living well,
in gorgeous high-class gear, with lots of goods produced
thanks to Korean-American technological collaboration,
each one able to live freely, with no robbing of rights,
Paradise, even!
Paradise, even!
utter Eden unequalled, plastered with jewels, still even then,
day after day people would have to change the world.
Why, of course, in any case,
day after day this world must all be overturned
and renewed to become a newly blooming lotus flower.
And that is Buddha.

Down for sure with those fifteen hundred years
rolling on foolish, rumbling along:
time fast asleep like stagnant water that stinks and stinks.

Ko Un

"gateway drug"

One of the major risks of marijuana is that it can function as a "gateway drug". Frequent and even casual users may become fascinated with gates, and as their dependency deepens, they may move on to more elaborate kinds of entries, including arches, turnstiles, and even portcullises. For this reason, it is prudent to remove the gate from your garden. Otherwise, you may find yourself suddenly beset upon by a reeking mob of spaced-out hippies, who will proceed to trample your flowers and engage in long, philosophical conversations with your garden gnomes.

An unrelated side effect of marijuana is that after being introduced to marijuana, the user may graduate on to 'harder' drugs and high-risk behaviors. Casually smoking a joint almost inevitably leads to addiction. But soon the marijuana user needs something more to get high, leading them to engage in cocaine snorting, heroin injection, or street mime. From there, it is only a matter of time before the addict seizes upon kitten huffing as a means of satisfying their cravings. Unfortunately, once someone has spiraled downward into the depths of feline dependency, there is almost no way back.

Marijuana

Thou art? -- I am? -- Why argue? -- Being is.
Keep still and be. Death will not still the mind.
Nor argument, nor hopes of after-death.
This world the battle-ground, yourself the foe
Yourself must master. Eager the mind to seek.
Yet oft astray, causing its own distress
Then crying for relief, as though some God
Barred from it jealously the Bliss it sought
But would not face.

Till in the end,
All battles fought, all earthly loves abjured,
Dawn in the East, there is no other way
But to be still. In stillness then to find
The giants all were windmills, all the strife
Self-made, unreal; even he that strove
A fancied being, as when that good knight
Woke from delirium and with a loud cry
Rendered his soul to God.

Mind, then, or soul?
Break free from subtle words. Only be still,
Lay down the mind, submit, and Being then
Is Bliss, Bliss Consciousness: and That you are.

Arthur Osborne

Hard times

I actually painted this. I jessoed the crow shape where I was going to paint the

	cloudy sky. But I left it like a negative black.
	The other boot doesn't drop from heaven. I've made this path and nobody else leading crookedly up through the pasture where I'll never reach the top of Antelope Butte. It is where my mind begins to learn my heart's language on this endless wobbly path, veering south and north informed by my all-too-vivid dreams which are a compass without a needle. Today the gods speak in drunk talk pulling at a heart too old for this walk, a cold windy day kneeling at the mouth of the snake den where they killed 800 rattlers. Moving higher my thumping chest recites the names of a dozen friends who have died in recent years, names now incomprehensible as the mountains across the river far behind me. I'll always be walking up toward Antelope Butte. Perhaps when we die our names are taken from us by a divine magnet and are free to flutter here and there within the bodies of birds. I'll be a simple crow who can reach the top of Antelope Butte. Jim Harrison (click to hear the poem)

Just because they really are out to get you doesn't mean you aren't paranoid.

No end, no end to the journey
no end, no end never
how can the heart in love
ever stop opening
if you love me,
you won't just die once
in every moment
you will die into me
to be reborn

Into this new love, die
your way begins
on the other side
become the sky
take an axe to the prison wall,
escape
walk out like someone
suddenly born into color
do it now

Rumi

Scraps of moon
bobbing discarded on broken water
but sky-moon
complete, transcending
all violation
Here she seems to be talking to herself about
the shape of a life:
Only Once

All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every invitation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
did not happen in our lives, our stories
are not drab with its absence: but don't
expect to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body-halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.

Denise Levertov

"In the Light of the Morning by Steve Hanks"

Where have you taken your sweet song?
Come back and play me a tune.

I never really cared for the things of this world.
It was the glow of your presence
that filled it with beauty.

Hafiz

Back in the blue chair in front of the green studio
another year has passed, or so they say, but calendars lie.
They're a kind of cosmic business machine like
their cousin clocks but break down at inopportune times.
Fifty years ago I learned to jump off the calendar
but I kept getting drawn back on for reasons
of greed and my imperishable stupidity.
Of late I've escaped those fatal squares
with their razor-sharp numbers for longer and longer.
I had to become the moving water I already am,
falling back into the human shape in order
not to frighten my children, grandchildren, dogs and friends.
Out old cat doesn't care. He laps the water where my face used to be.

Jim Harrison

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee

Fluffy the vampire bunny

When Fluffy the vampire bunny comes to town
Easter will never be the same.

You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom,
The water flows.

Li Po

One of the most under appreciated love songs.
and one of my favorites.

A Story

Texans for peace

Sad is the man who is asked for a story
and can't come up with one.

His five-year-old son waits in his lap.
Not the same story, Baba. A new one.
The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.

In a room full of books in a world
of stories, he can recall
not one, and soon, he thinks, the boy
will give up on his father.

Already the man lives far ahead, he sees
the day this boy will go. Don't go!
Hear the alligator story! The angel story once more!
You love the spider story. You laugh at the spider.
Let me tell it!

But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,
the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint?

But the boy is here. Please, Baba, a story?
It is an emotional rather than logical equation,
an earthly rather than heavenly one,
which posits that a boy's supplications
and a father's love add up to silence.

Li-Young Lee

Art by Alina Maksimenko

When the apple tree blooms,
the moon comes often like a blossom,
paler than any of them,
shining over the tree.

It is the ghost of the summer,
the white sister of the blossoms who returns
to drop in on us,
and radiate peace with her hands
so that you shouldn't feel too bad when the hard times come.
For the Earth itself is a blossom, she says,
on the star tree,
pale with luminous
ocean leaves.

Rolf Jacobson