This is an amazing poem from a book called "Polishing the Petoskey Stone" by Luci Shaw

The Foolishness of God

Perform impossibilities
or perish. Thrust out now
the unseasonal ripe figs
among your leaves. Expect
the mountain to be moved.
Hate parents, friends, and all
materiality. Love every enemy.
Forgive more times than seventy-
seven. Camel-like, squeeze by
into the kingdom through
the needle's eye. All fear quell.
Hack off your hand, or else,
unbloodied, go to hell.

Thus the divine unreason.
Despairing you may cry,
with earthly logic--How?
And I, your God, reply:
Leap from your weedy shallows.
Dive into the moving water.
Eye-less, learn to see
truly. Find in my folly your
true sanity. Then, Spirit-driven,
run on my narrow way, sure
as a child. Probe, hold
my unhealed hand, and
bloody, enter heaven."


Wow. The divine unreason overwhelms me. I am brought to tears at the images of this poem. I can't stand the life of reason that surrounds me and pins me to the dollars and cents. The facts of life that stand between me and the moving water. I don't want to live in the weedy shallows anymore. Depth of heart. Depth of love. I want to love so deeply that I overwhelm my beloved. Oh Divine Folly cure my sanity. I want so bad to reawaken my heart. But instead I do my best to take back the commitments of my youth. I put in my glass eyes. I stretch band-aids on my pouring wounds and stumble my way backwards into a heaven I'm running away from.

Callipygian

A perfect circle.
Of two palms up
Sweet curvature.
Vavoom
Goes the Dump Truck
With Mud flaps
And Junk in the Trunk.
A tear sheds
For the Beauty
Of that booty.
Bla-Dow
The hourglass
Passes
Timeless
I'll have seconds.
Let me see that
Tootsie Roll
Dip
Zoom Zoom
Boom Boom
I cannot lie
Sprung

callipygian: Having beautifully proportioned buttocks.

Po box 8077
London KY 40742

To Whom it May Concern,

Or Should I say Faceless Corporation. This is not an angry letter. This is the happy letter of a disappointed man. My name is William Joseph Brame and I am a new Sprint PCS costumer. My Sprint PCS number is _________. Up until about an hour ago I was completely satisfied with my new phone, and all the services offered especially the PCS vision. On top of my satisfaction with my camera and web ready phone, you could add my relief that I would never have to deal with my old phone company ever again. I was overjoyed because I thought Sprint was different. I thought for sure that Sprint could not have the mediocre customer service and billing errors that I had become accustomed too. I use the past tense because on the evening of Tuesday Dec 16 my Sprint PCS service was interrupted, less than a week after signing a two year contract. Woe is me. I received this information via text message on my beautiful phone that had up until that moment only brought me joy, a polite message saying that I was over my credit limit and my pleasure giving phone would be temporarily turned off. Well you can just imagine what the look on my face was. . That’s right sad face. Here we go again, another phone company, another run around. So I proceed to dial the old *2 and wait. And wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. The dot dot dot’s are for dramatic effect. So as I am wasting away my evening using my fun phone for oh so unfunny activities I play a little Pac-Man. That’s not so bad now is it. I was also learning a little about the cult I had just joined. “Did you know that Sprint has the nation’s only all digital wireless network. . . “and so on and so forth ad infinitum. Well than after 15 minutes or so I finally speak to a person her name is Jen, or for your records Jen V06JSS2964. A wonderful costumer service rep and she should get a raise but that is beside the point and will never happen because you are a faceless corporation who doesn’t care about little people like me and Jen. So you guys win on the customer service but the billing is another story. Apparently the phone was not set up correctly. Ha ha ha. I can laugh now because I have been refunded and because it really is laughable. But apparently I had been paying for every call that I made. I had accrued some 180 dollars in usage charges within 5 days of having my phone. Ha ha ha. Again you must remember that this was a sad a pitiful laugh and not just a jolly good time laugh. But it is all fixed now. All that is lost is my 45 minutes that I could have spent doing countless other things. Other things like reading a book or talking to my fiancé, or as my roommate requested, doing the dishes. But than again that is life. So in closing my purpose in this letter is both to entertain, if someone actually ever reads it, and to help you understand that it sucks to deal with bureaucracy. It just plain does. I don’t really want anything free although if it makes you guys feel better it might go a long way to restoring my hope for humanity, I just wanted to speak my mind. In truth I like my plan. I like that I can send pictures of my butt to my roommate. I just hate that corporations, specifically in this case Sprint PCS, run a completely inefficient world where my valuable time is wasted listening to computerized propaganda and mildly amusing hold music. Do with this what you may. These are just the ramblings of one happy yet disappointed man.

Sincere as you can possibly be when writing to no one,
William Joesph Brame

I can feel it in the air. My smile touches my ear lobes and my knees won't stop bouncing. She's coming. The giddy silly energy of expectation becomes elation momentarily. The seconds tick by. The kiss grows nearer. My dream will soon touch my skin again. But I'll be awake this time. Awake and completely caught in the present moment. Only moments away.

The tired man can look in the mirror with his bloodshot eyes just as the drunk can drink trough a straw as much as a bottle. The baby is growing inside the unwed mother earth and the family planning is about to be the hero. Window jumping is a sport the soul can play with its out of body experiences when the moon gets boring. The height is running away from the falling projection of the self I created today for the onlookers below who will pretend nothing happened. Conflict is the taxi of time. Torture is the medal of honor. But honor hasn't existed since the Nixon administration.

In the middle of my country, resting in between excursions, I ponder the probably and wonder what the maybes hold. I know that the future watching is a horrible game for the human mind. I swallow hard every time I make plans. I can't have the assurance, or insurance, or sure of anything-ness anymore. Not that I ever had it, maybe that I thought I did. Each sharp turn each dollar of someone else's money spent a claim on tomorrow that might not be coming the way I like it. It might be waiting to come, it might be coming tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Hope or Die I hear the bartender say. Die of hope says the salesman. I can't put my finger on the lie but than again I haven't had feeling in my hand for a month. The truth can hurt you when you want the lie. Lonely, in a crowd of friends, I cry the hidden tears of an icon.

"Ambition is not inherently wrong. It only becomes wrong when it is focused completely on the self to the exclusion of others."
Tim Keel
Jacobs Well 11-09-03

I stuck my arm up to reach for the stars and got ran over from behind by a garbage truck. I just want that taste in my mouth again. To pretend for hours on end and become what you aren't. To drive to be the one that makes the belly ache. The one that brings the house down to the place it wants to be. Whoever gets there first can help me to become better than they are but I will in the meanwhile slap at their ankles just to watch myself win. What if things changed.

Piles of nonsense sink the boat of my make-shift life. She is withered. She is broken down. If only the day of the champange bottle would return. When I broke that bubbly over her bough and the wind whipped her sails for the first white time. This make-shift break neck speed of life would return to the moment just before she sailed. The waves could be forgotten. The punishing storm would be lost in that stillness.

Run to the victory lane with your head between your knees each night before sleep hits you in the face with a sledge. I poke the pole and sit to listen to the ting. I wonder what things used to be like before I decided to forget it all. Would you please pinch me. Wipe that grin from your check with a used napkin. I like the ideas you think when you're alone. I list the properties of matter next to my groceries and wind string around my finger to remind me to hate. To hate the distance. To trash a gated community with a blade of grass.

Who's that sitting there looking all unimportant. I hate to distract one away from the things they have to do . . . but excuse me . . . excuse me please . . . just for a second while I shoot this flare in the trash can. Take the planet for instance. Well done my good and faithful mistake. Oh wait did that come out wrong excuse me. I divide the flesh and spirit because Descartes defines his universe by thinking. I know that there has to be more. Replace my innocence with a factory of images that are destroying my heart systematically. Rebirth. Go back to what you used. Go back to what used to. In the past tense tension reigned and I closed my eyes hoping that it would all relieve itself. Won't you just leave me alone. Alone without a clock. Alone without a future. I'm sorry for interrupting this disappointment. Paraphrase the captions and stutter like a deaf man afraid of public speaking. The means of communication are limited because I don't even know what I'm saying. The means. The means. Always the means. Minutes ago we were only concerned with outcomes. Without coming to anywhere. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel to believe in the nothing that is around me. All around. Excuse me did you get that. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .