In Forgetting To

There is meaning in
Planting the garden

There is meaning in
Harvesting the garden

There I meaning
In forgetting to plant the garden again

There is meaning
In having the child

There is meaning
In hurting the child

There is meaning
In forgetting to heal the child again

There is meaning
In being a person

There is meaning
In being defined by others

There is meaning
In forgetting to define myself again

There is meaning
In employing the person

There is meaning
In destroying the job

There is meaning
In forgetting to employ the people again

There is meaning
In building the family

There is meaning
In destroying the family

There is meaning in
Forgetting to build the family again

There is meaning
In building the building

There is meaning
In destroying the building

There is meaning
In forgetting to build the building again

There is meaning
In creating the language

There is meaning
In destroying the language

There is meaning
In forgetting to build the language again

There is meaning
In finding Paradise

There is meaning
In destroying Paradise

There is meaning
In forgetting to

You are not clay for my hands
I am not clay for yours

I can not write a constitution to make you clay for me
I can not make a law to make you clay for me
I can not incorporate to make you clay for me
I can not create a clever strategy to make you clay for me but

If you are willing
I can pretend you are clay for me long enough
To convince you long enough
To hurt you

If you are willing
I can hurt you long enough
To convince you long enough
To give up

Despots rise from us
We create them
From the power we use
To create heroes

Whatever is done and said
You are not clay
I am not clay

The Maker who made us
The Dervish galaxy spinner
The Boson magic mass maker who

Made foolish clay manipulators
Made clever clay to manipulate clay manipulators
Even made more clever clay to refuse to be clay

There will always be
Fools
Heroes
Despots
Despot financers
Fools paying attention to despots
Fools fighting despots

Lots of fighting fools

Good ideas bleeding in to clay
In India wearing homespun
In Memphis on the mountaintop
Good clay just trying to learn from the children
Good clay just trying to lead the children

Who will rise again from the clay some day
With magic boson mass some day
To become the power
We already have

No plan No vote

I am frustrated with the Republican Party. I am an independent voter, and I don’t think Republicans can win the presidency without me. I want a specific economic plan that is fair. I am tired of political posturing and stonewalling.

Our economic recovery is painfully slow, and to do nothing is irresponsible. I want both parties and all candidates to present a plan to cut the deficit while stimulating job growth. I like clear choices. President Obama has a plan that does both. I see nothing tangible coming from the Republicans.

I fear the Republicans are thinking that if they stonewall and do nothing, the slow recovery alone will sink Obama’s ship. If they do nothing, then they can count me out.

Where was the “tea party” when President Bush, through deregulation, tax cuts and unfunded wars, doubled the national debt and put us in this very deep hole?

Please, is there not a single moderate Republican who will stand up and say “We have learned from our mistakes, and I have a specific plan that will put us back on track?”

Any plan acceptable to me stops the massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to what George Bush called his political base — the rich and super-rich. Every time I hear Republicans refusing to consider reversing Bush’s tax cut to the rich, I see Speaker Boehner sticking his tongue out at me and saying, “Hal, I got your money, and I will not be giving it back.”

I am willing to forgive anyone who owns his or her mistakes. Republicans need to give me a plan and explain to me how it is better than the old status quo that dug the hole. No plan, no vote.

Hal Pullin
http://www.halpullin.com/
Mount Vernon, Washington

Published in the Skagit Valley Herald, September 29, 2011

NOTE FROM CHUCK: I was particularly impressed by this direct challenge to the Right by one of those mysterious “Independent ” voters. Hal is a good friend of mine.

Y la muerte Danza continua
(For Joe And Me)

And the death dance continues

They say that if I love you when you die
I loose you as the spirit rises up from your body
You are released into the future
I am released into the future
Birth and Life and Death play their roles in peace

They say that if I hate you when you die
I am shackled to your spirit as you attempt to rise
You will never be released from your body
I am forever imprisoned with you
Life and Death dancing endlessly hatefully forever

Endless legacy for
Endless generations

And the death dance continues

We will dance in hate forever
We can never be apart
I am shackled to you and you to me

They say my hate for you
Is a movie of my self-loathing
The boy within me
Binding you with his deepest wound

Y la muerte Danza continua

When will I gently hold
The part I loathe?

When will I lovingly hear
The voice I hate?

When will I finally accept
The truth I dismiss?

And the death dance continues

И смерть танец продолжается
Y la muerte Danza continua
而死亡之舞继续
رقصة الموت لا يزال
And the death dance continues

Until then

NOTE:
Thank you Google Translation for the audio clips and translations.

RE-CREATING THE MIDDLE
(Letter to the Skagit Valley Herald published 07-31-2011)

President Obama is trying to represent the middle in the fight over the debt ceiling. I like what he is doing and how he is doing it. Please let us all get together to support his approach. I trust his vision of finding middle ground.

I think the Republicans are ready to send the whole country down the river. I will stick with the President no matter what the Republicans do.

If the President needs me to sacrifice in order to reconstruct the middle ground I support him. If he needs to draw a line in the sand with the Republicans I will stick with him. I trust his instincts.

I am a pretty far left guy but I believe that in the end the middle class and the USA will die unless there is a political middle.

Ben Franklin imagined the middle class. I try to keep the middle class in my imagination. I think the Middle Class is necessary if America is to continue to mean actual opportunity for all. Many of our countrymen are frightened by the rising power of people of color in the world and in the USA. I am not afraid of that. (That is just the USA doing what God made the USA to do… prove that true equality of opportunity can create prosperity for all.) I am afraid that unless the left helps re-create the middle… the middle will end up being fascism.

Poison

The poisons come
Through my skin
Through my mouth
Through my eyes
Through my ears
Up my butt and
Through my spirit

The poisons come anyway so
Bring them on
Fill er up and down the hatch
I drink food love hate sadness rage fear manipulation tactics medicine religion science politics economics history literature love romance tabloid popular anything tv iPod wireless phone cell phone movies and magazines

I digest toxins that kill strong men and stronger oxen
I bathe in acids and bases undiluted and blistering and cook the skin off my old bones
Until it is time to eat some poison food

The poisons come
From inside of me
I age
I assume
I impulse
I predict
I self loathe
Then I blame you
Then I hate you
Then I consider you a foreigner
Alien to everything that is right and true
Certainly character assassination is justified
Race baiting can be effective
But then genocide is a much more sensible solution

I keep using plans that have never worked
I terrify my son and shame him until he hates me and follows in my footsteps
Then I start on my grandson

I choose poisons like a connoisseur
The right cigar
The right food
The right preacher
The right mentor
The right water
The right politician
The right neighbor
The right show
The right friend
The right artist
The right this or the right that

The poisons come
I anticipate them
I look at them
I look at them come into me
I romance them
I tell stories and build legends around them
I recite the deterioration of my flesh
I look at them come and do not stop them
I wonder about the poison
I wonder at the virulence
I wonder about my chances
I wonder about how long I will last
Will it get me this time?
Something will get me

Anything will do
As long as it is
More mellow-dramatic than my self-destructive mother and more terrifying than my attention-hogging father.

But in the mean time I will be your poison
Your base your acid
Cooking hell into your bones

Sabbath Dawn

I remember
There was a short sermon
On a small hill
In a little country

I believe the fishes were quite real
The soup was not thin
And the bread went a long way

I believe the skeptical women made the fine soup
After the wisest old woman gave a memorable blessing

And the men showed reluctant appreciation
Watching over the children
With few complaints
After the wisest old man
Reminded them of their own boyhood
And their love for mother who they couldn’t confuse
Their respect for father who they couldn’t trick

We listened to her without fear
She was one of us
We spoke to him without shaking
He did not judge us
We found words for our confusion
She did not shame us
We knew the value of our simple lives
Sitting with the elders

We sat then
With our own children
Quietly eating fish and broth and bread
Feeling equal to the hope of the children
We remembered how we had netted a few fish in the morning
We remembered pounding out a few flat loaves

We sat there
Husbands and wives
As the drummers matched heartbeats
As the smallest feet began slapping the powdery dust
As the elders
Got to their feet and in one long movement
Danced

To the fish and the soup and the bread and the goats and the wheat and the wine
All round and around the well until
They had given thanks to the sunset the sunrise the constant star and the southern stars
And then when all of this was accomplished
The elders were tired
We guided them home at Sabbath dawn

One Percent
(For John & Jane Doe)

The bloody brown
Tide of fascism
Will forever flow in
Now to ebb no more
With swastika for sun
Corporation for moon
And church for comfort

Tugging at Earth, Sea
Man and Woman
Using every public dollar
Every civil inch
Every pension fund
Every medical need
Every appetite
Every retirement anxiety
For the gain of the few

Corporate fiduciary child of Supreme Chicanery
Sucking at the public tit
Now legally and more efficiently
Than human child, elder or needy ever could

Working men and women in the middle
Vote away their vote
Nervous of another blow
Not knowing the final blow
Is already struck
We are comforted and distracted by clergy to forget…

Everything created
Belongs to One Percent
Every idea
Belongs to One Percent
Everything yearning
Belongs to One Percent

Until there is
No more public
No more civic
No more commons

Every hour of labor
We will ever do
Belongs to One Percent

With swastika for sun
With corporation for moon
The tide around the world
Now in perpetual flow
A relentless brown surge into every low land and high

We have all been sold the secret
Now kept only from our selves
By our selves
But how can self deception ever make us more than
Slaves?