So enough of bearded ladies,
Enough of politics.
Desist with all this culture war
And poison rhetoric.
This is a day to honor those both special
And yet common
A group, a band a sisterhood
A special kind of woman.
Not all can call themselves this name
But all have benefitted from them.
I speak of course in rhyming verse,
Of one none other,
Than a mother.
All of us have got one, had one, been one
Or become one.
All of us would have to say, we love them, loved them
And respect them.
It's so much more than giving birth, to mother and to nurture,
It's way beyond some quick and easy short term little venture.
A mother, true to that dear name, gives all to those she bore,
Her busy days and caring ways are never seen as chore.
Whether babe in arms, teen up in arms, witness to their child holding their own baby in their arms, or as life fades, being held in another's arms, yet comforting those remaining,
A mother's role is unending.
This poem's however is not.
So I celebrate, appreciate and eulogize today,
the one who taught me sacrifice, and how to gently live a life that stirs a smile, and questions a style, and walks a loving side by side mile.
I honor and bless the one I love, one I helped become a mother,
How glad am I to this very day, it was me and It was no other
To my daughters this day, all grown up in their way, till the time when they are mums too,
May you cherish your mum, appreciate what she's done in the joy of her love for each of you.
Happy Mother's Day Jo.
Monday, May 19, 2014
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Kissing Cousins, or how a redcoat became a turncoat
Culture is a many splendored thing, an ever changing thing, a thing of rough serration.
Culture is accumulation or sublimation, affirmation and assimilation.
Replete with many influences, focuses and words
Our tragedies hard remembered, transforming or disfiguring by turns.
Cultures get names they are black, white or youth,
We name so we can shame, we separate and we segregate, and thus we sieve the truth
But trying by defining, or controlling by enrolling means we lose even that we thought we knew,
Cultures confound, confuse and astound and are never just ours, false, or true.
Culture is shared value, shared history, community and reality,
Some of it good some of it bad, some ugly and some pretty
Like our history the strong get to write and to say, where the line is drawn that makes us pure,
But less truth intrusion means an easier inclusion in the closed circle we call, "our" culture.
Can a leopard change spots, can a zebra turn white or a tiger be loosed from her stripes,
Are we trapped as we are, or loosed to the stars to be free of our roots and our stereotypes.
I'm a man born to be, stout, white, English and free I'm a rebel and always will be,
But in one week or so I will change in my flow, when America naturalizes me.
So much has been writ of our cousinly ties and our shared and yet broken connections
How two cultures so close, could be severed and torn and go in two different directions.
But of course I've run foul of my own simple mind when I fail to see all of the mix,
It's not two but two thousand cultures or more that make up this complex matrix.
So let me be clear what is going on here, so my readers won't howl, fuss or rasp,
I will not be Lakota, Chippewa, Cree, Dakota, just a common or garden old WASP.
Yes an oath will be sworn, and a hand will be raised, a new anthem may come from my lips,
But when all's said and done, as a new murican,' I will still love my old fish and chips!
Culture is accumulation or sublimation, affirmation and assimilation.
Replete with many influences, focuses and words
Our tragedies hard remembered, transforming or disfiguring by turns.
Cultures get names they are black, white or youth,
We name so we can shame, we separate and we segregate, and thus we sieve the truth
But trying by defining, or controlling by enrolling means we lose even that we thought we knew,
Cultures confound, confuse and astound and are never just ours, false, or true.
Culture is shared value, shared history, community and reality,
Some of it good some of it bad, some ugly and some pretty
Like our history the strong get to write and to say, where the line is drawn that makes us pure,
But less truth intrusion means an easier inclusion in the closed circle we call, "our" culture.
Can a leopard change spots, can a zebra turn white or a tiger be loosed from her stripes,
Are we trapped as we are, or loosed to the stars to be free of our roots and our stereotypes.
I'm a man born to be, stout, white, English and free I'm a rebel and always will be,
But in one week or so I will change in my flow, when America naturalizes me.
So much has been writ of our cousinly ties and our shared and yet broken connections
How two cultures so close, could be severed and torn and go in two different directions.
But of course I've run foul of my own simple mind when I fail to see all of the mix,
It's not two but two thousand cultures or more that make up this complex matrix.
So let me be clear what is going on here, so my readers won't howl, fuss or rasp,
I will not be Lakota, Chippewa, Cree, Dakota, just a common or garden old WASP.
Yes an oath will be sworn, and a hand will be raised, a new anthem may come from my lips,
But when all's said and done, as a new murican,' I will still love my old fish and chips!
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Clearing Out the Basement
It is a mildly bemusing thing for me to think that I have grown up to own a basement. My first home away from the family home was a shared room with a neurotic violinist and his candle and record collection. From there I progressed to a small room that had space for a bed, a heater and a small wardrobe. That pretty much summed up my abodes till the time I got married. I did have one notable straying from that pattern for a brief time in Hong Kong when I shared a room with four guys in an old refugee camp that was about the size of a pool table. Storage was neither an issue, or a discussion then.
Time passed marriage and children came and homes grew in size to accommodate the family. Two bedrooms, then three and finally four, plus of course the aforementioned basement. Of all the 35 homes my wife and I have shared over the years, I have never had a basement let alone one that is the size of a small apartment, that is until now. I happily confess that it happens to be one of my favorite rooms. Water heaters, furnaces, water softeners and lots of pipes and wires I do not understand. Basements are great repositories of memories and at times, if it be not too delicate a rhyme to note, suppositories of memory too. Could not resist that...
We have lived a few months shy of two years in this home, but till now have not managed to clear out and tidy what was beginning to look like a landfill site, a place of dross collection,where all the things we could not get round to placing or throwing away from years gone by ended up. Some were in piles of articles with no real theme or connection and others there were to be found in an all too clearly connected pile of things. The common bond of all however was that they had long since passed from the light of utility, into the shadowy vale of uselessness, but had never quite had anyone brave enough to give them their shipping orders.
It was all getting a little too much to bear so with the massive help of my firstborn, the basement was invaded, order was brought from chaos, the great desolation became inhabitable. Shelves were assembled, desks and workspaces were erected and a measure of calm was restored. Now the question was, what to do with the pile of things that emerged out of this civilizing process. The problem was that I found it hard to take things that worked and might be useful sometime, some place, even in unlikely if ever to be replicated circumstances and just get rid of them. I had kept them so long and shared so many fun times with them over the years it seemed strangely disloyal and bordering on mildly treacherous.
Though these old things were of little fiduciary value, they were containers of memories, and memories are particularly precious as one grows older. As age count rises you wonder if you yourself will be merely someone's fond memory all too soon. These old and not so old things spoke to me of many things learned and experienced and in some ways I felt spoke to me even as we passed them on to others.
The accrued debris of my life, the flotsam and jetsam of possessions floating in the basement as if from a ship long passed, were being dredged up, dried out, hauled up onto the shore to be handed on to others.
Old records, cassettes, CDs and videos, amplifiers, speakers and radios spoke of the message to be lived in our lives in the way we walk and communicate that which we know, value, feel and hold precious. Music, voice, images and instruments magically take what is waves and vibrations and make beauty, stir emotion and fire our hearts. Words spoken can draw us to the truth, make us smile and make us cry. The voice seeks an ear, an audience, a reply or a reception. Communication begins when a voice is received not just broadcast. When it is there is always the promise of revelation through relationship, a community from communication.
An old car DVD player reminded me of family trips, and journeys that were shared adventures of discovery and what it was to breathe a new type of air together. I recalled history re-visited, places of beauty admired and enjoyed as a family. Things only observed on small screens or on paper were walked on, viewed and touched by those who looked in to that little dvd screen as it travelled along the roads and highways.
A computer monitor spoke to me of connection and creating. What was typed, was processed and then seen on a screen like the one I am viewing now and the one being given away. Seeing is believing but it is also encapsulating and imagining both what is, and what can be, created with words, pictures and shapes on a screen. Monitors can be mirrors of our mind's inner creation, they are mirrors with x ray vision reflecting what is inside our heads as we see it written down.
Our minds and lives can become like cluttered, disorganized basements finding place for too long to the things we should have discarded. Not all memories are good ones, and reminding ourselves of them too often by the things we keep in view can be the last thing we need for us to grow and change. Not all things remain useful over time and though they may still function, their function has ceased to be relevant to us. They have become lost out of context and they fill what should be space, or where we should have fruitful things that will bring life and new direction to our ongoing life purposes. Clearing some shelf space in our lives for nothing but space where there can be reflection, renewal and rejuvenation is perhaps not a bad thing for any of us.
So happy new year to you all, happy cleared out basements, and happy fruitful lives for the coming year. If you need to clear out the basement, or the attic or the garage of your life there is probably no better time. I encourage you to say goodbye graciously and appreciatively to the things to be removed, but do say goodbye if you need to, and let the sweetness of the memory of past things, be just that.
Sweet and memories.
Time passed marriage and children came and homes grew in size to accommodate the family. Two bedrooms, then three and finally four, plus of course the aforementioned basement. Of all the 35 homes my wife and I have shared over the years, I have never had a basement let alone one that is the size of a small apartment, that is until now. I happily confess that it happens to be one of my favorite rooms. Water heaters, furnaces, water softeners and lots of pipes and wires I do not understand. Basements are great repositories of memories and at times, if it be not too delicate a rhyme to note, suppositories of memory too. Could not resist that...
We have lived a few months shy of two years in this home, but till now have not managed to clear out and tidy what was beginning to look like a landfill site, a place of dross collection,where all the things we could not get round to placing or throwing away from years gone by ended up. Some were in piles of articles with no real theme or connection and others there were to be found in an all too clearly connected pile of things. The common bond of all however was that they had long since passed from the light of utility, into the shadowy vale of uselessness, but had never quite had anyone brave enough to give them their shipping orders.
It was all getting a little too much to bear so with the massive help of my firstborn, the basement was invaded, order was brought from chaos, the great desolation became inhabitable. Shelves were assembled, desks and workspaces were erected and a measure of calm was restored. Now the question was, what to do with the pile of things that emerged out of this civilizing process. The problem was that I found it hard to take things that worked and might be useful sometime, some place, even in unlikely if ever to be replicated circumstances and just get rid of them. I had kept them so long and shared so many fun times with them over the years it seemed strangely disloyal and bordering on mildly treacherous.
Though these old things were of little fiduciary value, they were containers of memories, and memories are particularly precious as one grows older. As age count rises you wonder if you yourself will be merely someone's fond memory all too soon. These old and not so old things spoke to me of many things learned and experienced and in some ways I felt spoke to me even as we passed them on to others.
The accrued debris of my life, the flotsam and jetsam of possessions floating in the basement as if from a ship long passed, were being dredged up, dried out, hauled up onto the shore to be handed on to others.
Old records, cassettes, CDs and videos, amplifiers, speakers and radios spoke of the message to be lived in our lives in the way we walk and communicate that which we know, value, feel and hold precious. Music, voice, images and instruments magically take what is waves and vibrations and make beauty, stir emotion and fire our hearts. Words spoken can draw us to the truth, make us smile and make us cry. The voice seeks an ear, an audience, a reply or a reception. Communication begins when a voice is received not just broadcast. When it is there is always the promise of revelation through relationship, a community from communication.
An old car DVD player reminded me of family trips, and journeys that were shared adventures of discovery and what it was to breathe a new type of air together. I recalled history re-visited, places of beauty admired and enjoyed as a family. Things only observed on small screens or on paper were walked on, viewed and touched by those who looked in to that little dvd screen as it travelled along the roads and highways.
A computer monitor spoke to me of connection and creating. What was typed, was processed and then seen on a screen like the one I am viewing now and the one being given away. Seeing is believing but it is also encapsulating and imagining both what is, and what can be, created with words, pictures and shapes on a screen. Monitors can be mirrors of our mind's inner creation, they are mirrors with x ray vision reflecting what is inside our heads as we see it written down.
Our minds and lives can become like cluttered, disorganized basements finding place for too long to the things we should have discarded. Not all memories are good ones, and reminding ourselves of them too often by the things we keep in view can be the last thing we need for us to grow and change. Not all things remain useful over time and though they may still function, their function has ceased to be relevant to us. They have become lost out of context and they fill what should be space, or where we should have fruitful things that will bring life and new direction to our ongoing life purposes. Clearing some shelf space in our lives for nothing but space where there can be reflection, renewal and rejuvenation is perhaps not a bad thing for any of us.
So happy new year to you all, happy cleared out basements, and happy fruitful lives for the coming year. If you need to clear out the basement, or the attic or the garage of your life there is probably no better time. I encourage you to say goodbye graciously and appreciatively to the things to be removed, but do say goodbye if you need to, and let the sweetness of the memory of past things, be just that.
Sweet and memories.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
My Name Is Lulay
I was born on a farm but raised in a park
I am lovely and furry and so rarely bark.
I like eating the leaves when I'm out in the yard
And I find climbing stairs so terribly hard.
I am really a mutt, not a pure pedigree
Though some now say hybrid, it's more nice and PC,
I'm both Shi tzu and Bichon they call me teddy.
But give me some time and I maybe will be.
I like playing and jumping and chewing my rope,
I hate tiles and corridors, steel bowls and soap.
I'm a very good girl when it comes to the loo
And I rarely if ever make my folks say eeuuuwww.
My name is exotic it comes out of Asia
Though I've others like Lules, kebab kid and poopinator
You see Lulay's a name that's a really big deal,
If you eat out in Asia and order a meal.
You see daddy thought it was funny
To name me, his cute little honey
Even though she's a teddy not Lab
The name of his favorite kebab.
I suppose there are worse things to be
Than a kebab so nice and tasty
It's not fido or Rex so it does not me vex
I am Lulay the cute and tasty.
Well I've just had some lovely meat dinner,
So I have to go out on my spinner,
I can go just so far, but can't chase any car,
And my mom and dad think thats a winner.
Though I'm only six months old
I'm already used to the cold
Because here we have snow, gales and so
Coz it's Minnesota don'tcha know.
So if you like a tail that wags
And you like things pulled out of your bags
Just pay me a visit and I'll get right on it
Tearing your handkerchief to rags.
I am lovely and furry and so rarely bark.
I like eating the leaves when I'm out in the yard
And I find climbing stairs so terribly hard.
I am really a mutt, not a pure pedigree
Though some now say hybrid, it's more nice and PC,
I'm both Shi tzu and Bichon they call me teddy.
But give me some time and I maybe will be.
I like playing and jumping and chewing my rope,
I hate tiles and corridors, steel bowls and soap.
I'm a very good girl when it comes to the loo
And I rarely if ever make my folks say eeuuuwww.
My name is exotic it comes out of Asia
Though I've others like Lules, kebab kid and poopinator
You see Lulay's a name that's a really big deal,
If you eat out in Asia and order a meal.
You see daddy thought it was funny
To name me, his cute little honey
Even though she's a teddy not Lab
The name of his favorite kebab.
I suppose there are worse things to be
Than a kebab so nice and tasty
It's not fido or Rex so it does not me vex
I am Lulay the cute and tasty.
Well I've just had some lovely meat dinner,
So I have to go out on my spinner,
I can go just so far, but can't chase any car,
And my mom and dad think thats a winner.
Though I'm only six months old
I'm already used to the cold
Because here we have snow, gales and so
Coz it's Minnesota don'tcha know.
So if you like a tail that wags
And you like things pulled out of your bags
Just pay me a visit and I'll get right on it
Tearing your handkerchief to rags.
Real Time
This will be a poem in real time.
I mean now, right now.
Contemporaneous, simultaneous.
In older days it was current or present,
In days gone by it was recently or just now,
But now it's real time because anything else would be..
Well now that you ask, what would it be?
If it's not real time, is it false?
Is this false time though as soon as I say it..... because that was then?
It seems to me that once again we have found a way
To take a word and obfuscate
A way to blur and complicate
Real life, in real time sounds much more cool to me
Than living now authentically,
Not falsely then, quite recently.
We are keeping it real,
See it and hear it before you feel it
False time is so three nano seconds ago,
We often reject the past as false
Because only time right now is real
Because truth lapses. Apparently.
But does real time make sense when alone
What if real time only makes any sense
When it's together with its friends, past and future.
Time whether false or real is a line not a block
It came from somewhere and continued on
It's not just real because we believe it, notice it, or regard it.
Time will outlive us, precede us and humble us,
It's not real because we say so,
We are real because time made time for us.
Really....
I mean now, right now.
Contemporaneous, simultaneous.
In older days it was current or present,
In days gone by it was recently or just now,
But now it's real time because anything else would be..
Well now that you ask, what would it be?
If it's not real time, is it false?
Is this false time though as soon as I say it..... because that was then?
It seems to me that once again we have found a way
To take a word and obfuscate
A way to blur and complicate
Real life, in real time sounds much more cool to me
Than living now authentically,
Not falsely then, quite recently.
We are keeping it real,
See it and hear it before you feel it
False time is so three nano seconds ago,
We often reject the past as false
Because only time right now is real
Because truth lapses. Apparently.
But does real time make sense when alone
What if real time only makes any sense
When it's together with its friends, past and future.
Time whether false or real is a line not a block
It came from somewhere and continued on
It's not just real because we believe it, notice it, or regard it.
Time will outlive us, precede us and humble us,
It's not real because we say so,
We are real because time made time for us.
Really....
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Late fall in Minnesota
Snow, blowing across the swirling misty ground
Smooth curved and contoured like waves are the drifts
White tops are raised to a peak and then blown like dust or sea foam
This sea is powdery and the wind over the face of the Earth is dusted by it.
Blustery, biting and sharp is the wind that lifts
the last remnants of the crispy brown skeletal leaves.
I shield all the more intently my face from the wind
I am blinded by gusts of ice laden air.
The sounds of movement change in such days,
The crunching and squelching of this time is a distraction
I plod like a man through quicksand lifting and pulling my feet
Retrieving them from the all too welcoming snow, my face glowing
My legs and my arms, my face and my hands start to ache as the temperature drops
The cold freezing in my nose and the burning of my lungs
Take some fun out of this white wintery wonderland
Then I think of the months of this cold yet remaining and realize
Its not winter yet.
Smooth curved and contoured like waves are the drifts
White tops are raised to a peak and then blown like dust or sea foam
This sea is powdery and the wind over the face of the Earth is dusted by it.
Blustery, biting and sharp is the wind that lifts
the last remnants of the crispy brown skeletal leaves.
I shield all the more intently my face from the wind
I am blinded by gusts of ice laden air.
The sounds of movement change in such days,
The crunching and squelching of this time is a distraction
I plod like a man through quicksand lifting and pulling my feet
Retrieving them from the all too welcoming snow, my face glowing
My legs and my arms, my face and my hands start to ache as the temperature drops
The cold freezing in my nose and the burning of my lungs
Take some fun out of this white wintery wonderland
Then I think of the months of this cold yet remaining and realize
Its not winter yet.
A Christmas Thought
This is the time of year when by tradition we remember the incarnation. So many things have attached to the time we call Christmas with nothing to do with the meaning of the event so remembered world wide. At times it is easy to forget that this is about something as simple and commonplace as a birth. An event that will be replicated many thousands of times in the time it takes me to write this thought for you. For some this is a cause for celebration, for others a time of heart searching, but for all those giving and awaiting a birth it is a time that will not come without notice and every birth is in some ways an incarnation of that which was not at one time on Earth.
So what of this birth? Not a normal birth, a virgin birth. Not just a child, but a child of promise, a child prophesied and a child with a destiny of both joy, wonder and sadness. This was a life that would begin with cuddles, hope, straw and swaddling cloth, but would end in despair, rejection, thorns and nakedness. This incarnation was like no other though, for the one coming in flesh had been alive even before the world began, and His incarnation was merely a clothing of what had always been, in sinew, muscle, bone and skin. He laid aside incorruptible glory and took on corruptible flesh.
Angels would celebrate and proclaim this birth, the great and the small would take note of His arrival and come to kiss, or come to kill, but all would be mindful of this child. As a refugee or migrant He first grew in Egypt, escaping cruel persecution and genocide as the murderous spirit of Pharoah rose up again , and was played out in the actions of a Jewish king. Like Pharoah he murdered hebrew sons in the hope of keeping down the deliverer. He failed, and only served to prove that nobility is not always found in kings and that Rachel weeping for the loss of her children is a fearful painful thing.
So this Christmas remember this remarkable birth, who would grow up to be Savior and Lord. From His incarnation to His thorned coronation his power was not diminished at all. An obscure working class man from a small Roman province, who died young, with no money or power to his name in Earthly terms, no worldwide marketing machine, no internet viral presence. This man will be celebrated by billions of people in a few short days. For Christ the Second Adam, the Lord, the King, the Savior of the World still longs for those that still do not know His name or know the Gospel to come to Him, so that He can come once again.
For God so loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. The life that would not stay in the tomb so cruelly sealed, the life that would not leave the people of the World helpless, the life that would make a way for us to be reconciled to God who were enemies and estranged, the life that is abundant and gives life to all who come to Him.
This is the best gift of all, the Christmas gift God gave to us all. Take it or leave it. Reject or believe it, but let every heart hear the truth of it this Christmas, and always.
So what of this birth? Not a normal birth, a virgin birth. Not just a child, but a child of promise, a child prophesied and a child with a destiny of both joy, wonder and sadness. This was a life that would begin with cuddles, hope, straw and swaddling cloth, but would end in despair, rejection, thorns and nakedness. This incarnation was like no other though, for the one coming in flesh had been alive even before the world began, and His incarnation was merely a clothing of what had always been, in sinew, muscle, bone and skin. He laid aside incorruptible glory and took on corruptible flesh.
Angels would celebrate and proclaim this birth, the great and the small would take note of His arrival and come to kiss, or come to kill, but all would be mindful of this child. As a refugee or migrant He first grew in Egypt, escaping cruel persecution and genocide as the murderous spirit of Pharoah rose up again , and was played out in the actions of a Jewish king. Like Pharoah he murdered hebrew sons in the hope of keeping down the deliverer. He failed, and only served to prove that nobility is not always found in kings and that Rachel weeping for the loss of her children is a fearful painful thing.
So this Christmas remember this remarkable birth, who would grow up to be Savior and Lord. From His incarnation to His thorned coronation his power was not diminished at all. An obscure working class man from a small Roman province, who died young, with no money or power to his name in Earthly terms, no worldwide marketing machine, no internet viral presence. This man will be celebrated by billions of people in a few short days. For Christ the Second Adam, the Lord, the King, the Savior of the World still longs for those that still do not know His name or know the Gospel to come to Him, so that He can come once again.
For God so loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. The life that would not stay in the tomb so cruelly sealed, the life that would not leave the people of the World helpless, the life that would make a way for us to be reconciled to God who were enemies and estranged, the life that is abundant and gives life to all who come to Him.
This is the best gift of all, the Christmas gift God gave to us all. Take it or leave it. Reject or believe it, but let every heart hear the truth of it this Christmas, and always.
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