The glittering dance of brilliants must be strung on that dark thread of sadness which is time. Vernon Scannell (1922-2007) These lines of verse by a British poet came to me as a precise summation of my feelings while absorbing the tune and lyric of Townshend’s anthem/prayer for solidarity, Join Together. Viewing the video,…
Falling in order to rise…… The destruction of received models and forms is necessary in order to clear a space for spontaneous thought to arise. From the cathedral of our own feelings, from the void of the blank canvas, then, comes the space for revelation. We are fragments of an unattainable whole. Meaning is…
DREAMING A WALL by Richard Blanco He hates his neighbors’ flowers, claims hisare redder, bluer, whiter than theirs, believeshis bees work harder, his soil richer, blacker.He hears birds sing sweeter in his trees, tallerand fuller, too, but not enough to screen outthe nameless faces next door that he callsliars, thieves who’d steal his juicier…
The Buddhist in me, really likes these verses. Larkin’s words capture with unemotional observational precision the transience of life. Given the amount of violence, not the TV theatrical variety, but bloody life-wrecking violence in our big cities, and in many places around our world, it is timely to take a step back. You and…
What is to be done? I cannot forget, by some means distract myself, from the darkness that invests Washington, and seems to be gathering strength. This poem by Tennyson, giving voice to aged Ulysses, captures my sense of our situation. The aspiration, given the constraints of age as well as the advantage of experience…
I couldn’t listen. Last night after our philosophy discussion ended I departed for home. Tuning to NPR on the radio a few minutes after 9PM, the voice of President Trump filled the space around me. His labored reading of lines, halting enunciation of words, caused me to cringe inwardly. Feeling my disgust I changed…
LET’S REMAKE AMERICA GREAT by Richard Blanco Yes: Let’s reshoot America as a fantasy, a 90’s TV show in clearblack and white, sponsored by Kent cigarettes, Wonder Bread,and good old-fashioned war, again. Let’s re-create the backlotsuburb with rows of five bedroom homes for every Wilsonand Johnson, walled by perfectly trimmed hedges, weedlesslawns, and at…
The beautiful monster vomits a stream of watches clocks jewels knives silver coins & copper blood The well of time & trouble whiskey bottles perfume razor blades beads liquid insects hammers & thin nails the feet of birds eagle feathers & claws machine parts chrome teeth hair shards of pottery & skulls the ruins…
How I Became a Madman (Prologue) by Kahlil Gibrand You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,—the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,—I ran maskless through…
Yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from our oldest daughter. She was driving to the Central Dupage Hospital ER to request a CAT scan in order to better diagnose a possible hernia. I have had three hernia surgeries. I’ve experienced how painful a tear in the abdominal muscle wall can be. The…
