the excerpt of a letter

the excerpt of a letter

what is it to "make" something? do "they" know? can they tell me the limits of a man's creation? what if i were a singer and i built a chair? would that make me a carpenter? not necessarily but maybe i'm a carpenter who sings. maybe i am neither and they are confused by the smell of oil and spirits and tobacco. how well do they know? what is an artist?

they've been saying recently, "he's moved into the production end of music." did i? and God in all his wisdom has moved into hurricanes and earthquakes?

do they know the chair i build is only a piece of the catalogue; the song i sing only a piece of the same; the record i produce for another is framed in gold leaf and the painting i pour life into will only feed another epic poem? are they limiting me; limiting divinity; limiting the story?

do they know that what i do i do only unto God, and what i'm given to do only pieces along that path? surely. but surely if they loved me... should they partake in all of it? hmm. its funny, they. 5 records now. they act as if they own them all, and yet the faucet drips.

what if my head is simply down like some mad van gogh? and when the muse is dead, perhaps there will be 2700 pieces of catalogued work. perhaps they will sell me and at pauper auctions. perhaps they'll burn the dog-eared corners. they do already. perhaps then, not. regardless, the paint runs thick.

do they know i am only given one turn at living?
jP 22.11.o12



(photo perry hagopian o4)

brother

i love him brother, boy i loved him. he was mine and like a twin, and we held hands in sunlight. birds knew us alone and skates flung away the sight of us. we were terror and fright and eventide and joy! boys! we were boys! what a man would forget? what a man for the love of a sorrow? what a man for the foundation of blood? my twin! my darling, my kin lies with her now, and i sleep like rain grows lively for the coming storms. jP N.14o12

sabbath

so, sabbath rest. yes, that was yesterday. then what is today for? today is for gathering. gathering of family and hearts and like minds and starting the first day of the week off with a bang; getting ramped up and remembering who your God is and who is at the center of everything you put your hand to.

me, come 2 sunday, i love siesta. then after its show time. my domestic work day starts at three and i kick ass until around 7. laundry and cleaning, laying out and organizing and getting ready for Monday; what the rest of the world calls day one. check this out. I kid you not, i haven't had a manic monday in years because i don't wake up monday morning behind. my week started sunday. but come friday, first star, start again, and be done. the discipline to leave it until sunday is the offering.

take sabbath seriously. its for you. then watch sunday turn into something hopeful and productive. when monday rolls around, you will not miss a beat. promise. and all you evangelicals out there, get below Gregory. dude's whacked!

jP oc7o12b

(photo jP sept o12)

i had a secret once. one of those secrets that's no ones business but the person you are loyal to. it was ours that secret, and only ours, and to her, to that faithful person, all of my secrets, were not secrets.

i learned that in hands of the guilty, secrets are only lies. i learned too, that the innocent come in pairs, and unto each other in celebration and in birthright, they refuse to keep them.

jP 8.12.o12

dear people,
often, very very often, me and some writer or musician or artist are working late at my house and we're having so much fun that they just crash here and we start again in the a.m.. why is it that the following morning they say its the best night of sleep they've had in years?

can i say something without sounding like a weirdo? i've been without wifi for a many many moons. i had a theory about that stuff and it came on me like a breath and a revelation. i looked into it technically, confirmed my thinking and simply threw it out.

TODAY: i needed a converter so i tore an old router apart to see if i could disable the wifi and use it as an ethernet switch (by the way whomever came up with the word ethernet should win an award. that and the word verizon.. nice.). so i'm standing next to a plain old linksys router. i turn it on and i immediately, very immediately get a headache and get nausea. i was NOT looking for this to happen. i went into the other room pretty sure of what was going on but making real sure it wasn't something else. my chest got real tight but when i came back in and turned off the router its like someone stuck a pin on the pressure in my head and chest and stomach and slowly let out all the bad air. i think i really believe that common users are like frogs in cold water, and before they know it they are inoculated to this stuff because they are exposed to so much of it? its everywhere you know.

but there's another part of this and its that little gadget you carry around in your pocket called a wireless phone. its the same radiation. soft tissue doesn't heal from electromagnetic radiation. its hardens and then gets cancer like microwaved meat. and then they lop off some meaningful part of you in the name of modern medicine and "for the cure" gets another meaningless shot in the arm..

its like your buddy is standing on the tracks with a fast train bearing down on him.. he's listening to his wireless device and some doctor droning him with this "is the only cure" but you know better and from where you are standing, you are too late. you just can't get there in time, and thru tears you know it! you know he's cooked! fyi he's eating a big mac.

if you are having a hard time with this, i get it. i do. but think about it like this. someone just said to you, "this will kill you." and so you are certainly willing look into whatever that is, right?

i sigh. my cell phone has been on the back porch for three months as well. i got a land line. its tough and its unbelievably inconvenient. so is ethernet. but, but, but (exhale) i feel and have felt, and still feel every single day i feel it: some sort of great wash of peace in my life, like that kind of old farm peace when we had party lines and only about one thing really to do of a day, and we had chickens and gathered eggs and planted vegetables and we had a balanced community that was a neighbor or a cousin and not just a computer screen.

It is written: Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.

so try it. really. don't be afraid. give it an honest try. and if you are still not convinced, that's ok. you can always just come sleep at my house. i'll be glad to have you.

love
jP

and btw, when you come, please check your cell phone at the door. :)

wuh, woman
wuh - uh - uh - uh - uh - uh man
she was a thief
you gotta belief
she stole my heart and my cat

betty
judy
josie and those hot pussycats
they make me horny
saturday morny
goils of cartoon (tuin)
will be my ruin
i want to be betty's bar-ney

jean
get me off this crazy thing
called love

m. myers '93

what should one stop at nothing?
putting on a shirt? buttoning it halfway? i thought better.

people in my house
they don't mind crazy.

underthings, yes, pants too?
ok.

i'm wearing yesterdays crinkled up khaki's.
now.

i'd like to go sit around in one of those tribes
and look at all of the bare chested women who never new lines.

from sun
they are clay in a slow kiln;

silk in the morning-time and they smell of earth and the river.
and when they sweat its honey and insects and vegetable oils.

the sheen of that brown ought never be covered.
in residence i am pink-milk and white.

jP jun 2o12

the writers almanac

i heard this today and i wanted it in my life. like poems that reach you and never forget you, i wanted it like that. maybe you too.
jP jun 7 12



"The Old Gentleman" by Alden Nowlan

If you want to ask a question, the chairman said, begin by giving us your name and address.

So the old gentleman seated near the back of the auditorium, when it came his turn, said he was Louis St. Laurent and came from Quebec;

and we all of us laughed: because that's who he was and it was the kind of little joke one expected of an elderly former prime minister;

but the next time he said the same thing

and the time after that, said it quite simply

and it became obvious it wasn't meant to be funny,

wasn't meant to be anything other than courteous,

like his holding open the door for whoever happened to reach it at the same time he did

and never lighting a cigarette without offering the pack to the person in front and the person behind and the persons seated on either side of him.

"The Old Gentleman" by Alden Nowlan, from Selected Poems. © House of Anansi Press, 1996. Reprinted with permission.

sometimes we are forced into wrong situations. sometimes we can do nothing about it. and at the end of ourselves, when we've given every hope and spoken out earnestly for truth and right and the opposite plays itself out, we can only turn and walk away. love is not a spectator sport.

when one has found true love and chosen untruth instead, they grieve the child-like spirit inside themselves, leaving it by the roadside, turning a deaf ear as it weeps and gently begs for them to check back in with what is really the only real part of themselves. it is unpardonable only because a person without this spirit, is turned over to the desires of flesh, and only on a death bed will they be met by the truth of themselves again: the child they abandoned on the side of the road. this child is life and life more abundant, but the glittered world says no. still, only a child-like spirit can grow. but the stagnant flesh becomes an old adage or laurel, and so begins the long slow justified demise fueled by the eye, and eternally grieved by the heart.

jP 5.15.2o12 iwalu

lament

i'm sweating from the heat that started long before march
what miracle of earth
is this the new beginning of our end

when it rains the soaking plants steep and only smolder
the yellowing grass in dottie's yard is cut short
drought and dust bring ants like hot july

in pep boys we belly-ached and shook heads about the sun
80. muggy-ending summer-dreading winter
i hollered, "forget summer! wonder what spring will feel like."

my girl lost her father on the way to see him die
the road her only shoulder
doesn't tenderness transgress when grief is sudden

a careful friend on the east side texted asking me about her
even my response was a wound
"in a holding pattern. and the pauses in her steps
and the phrases of her sorrow are just begun."


jP 2o12 march 29
(photo jP march o12)

exploding rounds win over the right to bear a laptop

Dad blows up his kids computer!! well ok, he shoots it with a pistol! Pretty tight pattern too from 4 feet away: You all heard about this.. A 15-year-old girl puts up a Facebook post railing on her parents for making her work "too hard." Thinks blocking parents will keep them from seeing it. SO, dad reacts by posting a video response to her grievances on her Facebook page (OUCH), and then proceeds to shoot her computer, nine times: in the head. Friends, teenage boys mostly, grieve the loss.

I read a few of the commets from the facebook forum and really I have nothing to add except.. Maybe he should have shot his daughter with an exploding round and kept the laptop. that people actually are upset over the loss of a laptop is sadder than a frail attempt at discipline. but parents beware. a last attempt at discipline is most always just that: the last attempt. if one messes up with a dog, one can always get rid of said dog. if one messes up with a child, well.. this father is angry at two people and the first one is himself. the child is secondary. "making her world harder" may be in order. at least he has consigned to "keep" his daughter. tough love is as tough as it must be but it is never received in anger. humility will win the day someday. proverbs does not say when the child is young they will not depart from the training, it says, "when the child is old."
jP 2o12