Keeping On

Sometimes the hardest thing to do in life is to just keep putting one foot forward, one after the other.

It’s been awhile since I’ve written here. Oh, be assured I’m writing. A series of letters to my dying mom. Poems like pansies outside the window of my mind. Essays, turbulent pieces that are a leaky boat crossing an unending stormy, raucous sea. I’m writing. And reading. Reading is the bottom part of that iceburg. But reading, the lack of it in today’s world, is another post.

I’ve been writing. Just not in front of this mirror. But yes, I’m back.

I got courage to start writing here again, writing personally, after seeing Audrey Watters bravely enter the gladiator’s arena again. You probably know nothing about her but she’s one of the “good ones” who has been like me, dealing with loss. But she’s back and please subscribe and read her thoughts about technology - the forces working against us, our collective health and the truth of being here, human and naked and alive.

Yes, dealing with my own sense of loss on a number of levels. It’s personal but regarding this newsletter, my writing - I’m back but with a promise to myself. The promise to speak frankly, directly, without brakes, bluffs or baldashery. There is a need and hunger I believe for fresh air cutting through the slickery, the sophistry out there.

So count me in, count me back. And ultimately, I lean on Beckett’s words in the mouth of Godot …

“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

I’ve been spending time with the kittens my wife rescued. At first it was temporary and yes, she got rid of one but the two boys, not chosen, she’s fallen in love with them. So I guess we’re stuck with them. And my dog Viernes, the Guatemalan street dog with a busy passport.

Animals keep you grounded. Even after a loss. They are THERE it seems. Carrying on and just existing. I wrote this from my Nicaraguan mountain top about my daily walks with my dog Marshmallow. It is as close to a definition of “enlightenment” that I can find. Should be in the dictionary.

I’ll have to return to that book I wrote while 3 years on that mountain.

But back to that promise. Part of what I promise is to stop making sense. Take out the cork. Say what I want to say. Forget my audience. Stop referencing this writer and that piece of research. Speak and Sing. Yes, sing, that’s it. I guess this came to mind, ‘cuz I just made a video of the wonderful poem by Mary Oliver, “I Worried”. You might like it, it might speak to you.

Part of the promise is to write poetry of the moment. Don’t rewrite, cross out, make multiple drafts … Of course, poetry should be as I’ve often mentioned, from Czeslaw Milosz’s “Ars Poetica”

poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,   
under unbearable duress and only with the hpe   
that good spirits, not evil ones,
choose us for their instrument.

But I also believe poetry should be spontaneous, an eruption, natural, elemental. A voice of authenticity, unfiltered and human. It’s the least I can offer this age of canned everything and AI pilfered pap flooding our linguistic souls.

So let’s start. I will post up a gif and just riff - to show I’m back and keeping my promises. You keep your own too, whatever they are in your heart of hearts. Keep them. You are sacred. And more so, your voice and being. Don’t let anyone steal that from you. If you can’t go on … GO ON.

It’s hard to keep being a child.

Yes, there is the aging process and yellowing teeth
and growth spurts, testosterone and the steely arrow of time.

Oh, yes, there are tomorrows and the procreant urge and too,
a little wish to be in control, adult and able to help things unfold.

Yet, the hardest thing about being a child is something seldom mentioned.
Damn, it’s almost a secret, so secret, it is right there in front of our noses
and that’s why it is so hard to see - because it is so close.

What is it, you ask?
Well, I’m getting to that, my rabbit in the hat Lewis, carrolled.

Children are dying, so many of them, each day.
Yet, if they aren’t our own, we don’t care much.
Sure, we moan a little but alas, do we get off the couch and stop it?

And the worst thing in the world to my mind, heart, being, soul, energy is …
those that kill children.

Either directly by bombs and braggadaccio or indirectly with abuse, fear, beatings, coercion, brain-numbing control and ownership.

And it is this switch, inside us all, that I’m getting at …
And the reason why it is so hard to be a child.

It is because everyone is forcing you to grow up. Grow up fast.

It’s written in the code of all tech, it’s stiched into the heart of every Tiger mother
and in the strong arm of every commanding father.

GROW UP!

Yet, what are the results of this making, making it so difficult to remain a child?

Well, look around you at this so crooked, conned and fkd up world of battery, lies, false worship, denial, bombs and debauchery.

And now, besides our children, (I”m talking to you too Mr. Disney), they want our DNA.

Didn’t Marx once say, nay, insist, get them early? Well, hell ya! It’s become a common touch, we are getting them early and look at the wasteland we’ve wrought.

I’m not joking. It’s hard to keep being a child. To sing. To skip. To ask honest questions requesting a sincere answer.

It’s hard remaining a child when the whole bloody world expects you to be a grown up - one who lies, cheats, moneys up everything as we try to consume the world to death without questioning the very essence of why we are here - TO LIVE. JUST TO LIVE.

It’s hard to keep being a child. But I’m going to keep trying, keep buying my lollipops and dreaming of somewhere over the rainbow where better people might live.

RIP Marshmallow. My Toto.