Tag Archives: Health

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Death Sentences

Death leaves a sacred hole
where once lived a whole relationship
with both potential future
and a now more cherished past

Still seen
and heard
and smelled,
tasted and felt, sensed
and incensed
through an echoing hole of darkly bitter loss.

I would be a hypocrite
and a liar
if I were to condemn
our sons and their cherished friends
for cowardice
or craziness
for choosing to end their lives.

When government sanctioned taking of life
goes on and on and on
we call this the cost of just wars
or a death penalty
rather than a life forfeit.
Yet it is the living
who repay this price.

It could be more honest
to call these deliberate extractions
a death investment
and perpetual re-investment
of a culture not yet sure of how radically vulnerable
compassionate life could
and should
become.

Death investment repeated as long as politically expedient,
and also personally poignant
whether self or other inflicted
or something in-between.

I do not grieve his loss of future
but my own

For to grieve my own lost future,
all we might have yet become together,
is honest,
and holy

While to grieve his lost future
is to dishonor his choice
and his compulsion
to part ways
when life felt too dishonest
to bear another traumatic day.

To be born
before or after
or beside and aside one’s right-felt time
and nurturing place
is already loss of future
sent through messages past
as love grows too thin and faded
lust for life descends too jaded,
loss of faith
for hope
arising futures now lost.

I would not dishonor,
too easily dismiss,
suicidal loss of life
as complete insanity
as if I could claim,
with full integrity,
that inhumane and too-patriarchal living losses
are not shy of full-grown sanity.

As this day closes,
this time and place
in tears of loss
without fanfare,
without deadly sentences
much less farewells,
I yet lack courage
of my own despair
about our future of continuing death investment
as measured by my own limits
for tolerating inane insanity,
vitriolic violence,
absurd abuse
of calling deliberate death investments a penalty
as if any life were something reasonably erased
through ultimatum fines
for having had an unfortunate birth day.

This death leaves a sacred hole
where once lived a whole relationship
of futures cast together
now gently placed
apart.

What did he see
that I have not yet felt
strongly enough
to choose to never see again?

This question changes those left behind
for the rest of our haunted days and nights.

Why him,
and not yet me,
not yet us?

 

In honored memory of Greg, lived Large, yet much too short, measures of suicide and other death investments.

 

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Ms. Liska

When I was a FreshPerson in a new higher school,
our English Literature class was delighted
to meet a new to our rural area Ms. Liska,
who was a beautiful teacher
both outside
and in,
and so we all loved her,
and knew she loved us as well,
although sometimes not happy with one or another
due to smart-ass behavior.

One day,
for reasons we could not imagine at the time,
nor would I remember in this rhyme
of metaphysical reasons for living
and dying,
Ms. Liska
asked if any of us had heard of Marcus Aurelius.

Whom I happened to be reading at the time.
So I was, as I recall,
surprised to see only my hand up
because I had probably just volunteered
to display my FreshPerson ignorance.

She did in fact go there
and ask just whom I thought Aurelius was,
which seemed to me
to be
a Roman Emperor
who was also a published Stoic philosopher.

And so it seemed to Ms. Liska as well
so why not dig the Stoic grinding ax some deeper?
And what is Stoicism?

Now definitions
are not my strength,
I’m more of a delineating guy.
So I thought a Roman Stoic
might be like a British Churchill,
keeping a stiff upper lip
having looked at all our deadly facts
and blundering on anyway
with this mysterious life of stoicism.

Of course Ms. Liska
would not allow stoicism to rear its obstinate head
within its own stubborn definition
so she kindly invited me to try again,
not because I was wrong,
she quickly added,
but because I could become even more right.

Marcus Aurelius reminds us
if life is indeed a bed of roses
then we should expect some deadly thorns
along life’s thunderous way.

He invites us to embrace our birthday
by remembering
this celebration is paid back
with an ultimate death day,
as what grows up must also fade down
and back.
It’s a package deal.
Accepting this package as gift
in its life and death polarities
is a stoic thing to do,
and a delusional thing
not to do,
a Greek act of hubris;
not very Roman patriotic,
not stoically realistic.

Ms. Liska found this better
than my stoic thorns
along life’s bed of dying roses way.
But,
then we skipped along to something else
and I never did have my time
to ask her what she thought
about similarities and differences
between who has authority to induce life
and whom might, then,
find responsibility for deducting my life,
any life,
humanely compassionate
or more stoically otherwise,
like a hungry Roman Emperor
or voracious bear.

For it seemed to me
quite transparently true
that in accepting my right to live
and do the best I could
to stoically tolerate
everybody else’s own acceptance of their right to live
and do the stoic best we can
with life’s inevitable ups and downs,
then we must agree with our inherited justice system,
and to live within a just war view of stoic death
is also an unjustified view of my authority to live responsibly.

I was no more authoritative
and remain no less responsible
for causing my own stoic life to begin
than to end my own life,
much less anyone else’s,
or to delegate authority
to some tired State
to do this for me.

I think Marcus Aurelius
was more stoically comfortable
with society’s right
to invite
each person who has taken a life
to become responsible enough
to consider choosing their own death
within a wider ecological context
of restorative justice.

But, just, fair, equitable restoration of a life
irresponsibly taken
does not in any way,
not even a stoic way,
suggest society’s collective right
to irresponsibly take yet another life
now lived across a threshold
of authority
beyond which we cannot responsibly live
cooperatively together.

In choosing to kill,
in choosing to sanction acts of deadly violence,
in choosing to maim and harm,
in choosing deadly and imprisoning revenge,
we stoically choose our own death day
with no more or less authority and responsibility
than for our own birthday,
and each day that follows
between life’s roses
and deadly shaming blaming thorns,
between integrity
and separations
devoid of restorative justice opportunity,
further WinWins
for each and all EarthTribe.

It is difficult to teach how to stoically fall on one’s own responsible sword
when raised in a military-industriously violent society
determined to competitively invest millions of dollars
in deadening revenge
rather than enlivening sacred invitations
to more stoic restorative justice,
celebrating life feeds life birthdays
and eulogizing death breeds death days
lost in mythic pasts
when we first sacrificed virgin children
to a drought-inducing
Vengeance is Mine
SunGod,
even before Holy Roman Empires.

Justice as revenge
assumes our competitive choices
are between brands of death,
while restorative justice,
more stoically balanced,
presumes if we did not first, more primally,
have cooperative choices between brands of life,
then branding and marketing justified death
would remain an ecological and historical moot point
of LoseLose vengeful nihilism.

And so I continued in my smart-ass ways,
wondering what Ms. Liska would think
about balancing our right to life
with fight against condoning death
except where stoically chosen.

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Historical Matters

It matters,
not just politically and economically,
but also psychologically
and scientifically
and culturally
and ecologically
and educationally,
whether your history of American development
only seldom begins before Columbus Day,
and inevitably ends with flag waving on Independence Day,
or if American loyalty to and for healthy development
began way back in pre-history,
when Father SunYang
gave birth to YinMother Earth.

Who lies within
and who and what and when and where and why remain without
your sense of Earth-patriotic identity
depends on when and where and why
you start your own evolving history,
and where you are OK about our creation story ending.

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Growing Organic Happiness

Mature and robust and resonant happiness,
like true wealth,
is made,
seldom simply found.

Happiness, spiritual gratitude,
unlike material wealth,
cannot be inherited by legal right.

Happiness,
like mental health,
and unlike cognitive-affective dissonance,
cannot be owned,
yet works best when shared,
cooperatively governed,
and can be as positively illusory and fleeting
as chronic stress can be negatively delusional,
like Robert Pirsig’s “gumption trap.”

Happiness is the currency of love,
as blossoms are to healthy
and trusting
and cooperative root systems.

Why is this as difficult to grasp
and hold onto,
this ultimate ecopolitical and psychological power
of healthy love,
spirit of cooperative gratitude
for Earth’s richly paid-forward Grace,
as it is easy to dwell on the fear and angry hated distrustful roots
of dissonance
and decay
and decadence
and decomposition?

Why would WinWin ecopolitics of happiness
grow any less dominant
than WinLose suboptimization
of integrity’s great and small transitional promise?

Why either LeftBrain successful outcomes
or RightBrain lovely happiness incomes?

Why Economic rationality
or EcoLogical sacred sanity?

Oh right,
I recall
here at last,
Mature and robust and resonant happiness,
like true wealth,
is cooperatively made,
seldom simply found.

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The Song and Dance Application

I’d like to apply for a permit
for a protest march
on the Washington Mall.

Lovely idea.
But, we’re only issuing Mall permits
for Song and Dance Events.

I think this might be a violation of my Rights
to Free Speech.

I see it more as a patriotic protection of your health care rights
for Free Song and Dance Improvement
instead.

So we can sing ballads
to Adolf Hitler
and Royal Elitist Head MucketyMucks
of the Only White Lives MightMatter Makes RightWing KKK,
we just can’t say them.

That’s right.
And you get extra points for at least four-part harmony
and full orchestration,
and professional choreography,
and community participation
regardless of age, gender, race, religion, etc.

Well, that feels a little prejudiced
and elitist.

How so?

What if you can’t afford a choreographer,
much less an entire orchestra.

Then your budget narrative will note
your capacity to sing and dance is contingent
on receiving sufficient community volunteers
for your harmonic protest Event.

This Event
begins to resound
with echoes of a Happening.

Only if you are a TransMillennial.

No, I’m a RightWing reaction against anything Trans,
or Poly
or Multi.

Sorry, sir.
TransMillennials are those born prior to 2000
and who remain planning to die
in this current PostMillennial Event.
I’m merely saying
you appear to be older than 17,
which you would need to be
to apply to sponsor a Mall Song and Dance Event.

Well, is there an application fee?

No.
There is, however, a sliding-fee-scale permit fee,
should your application ever have a chance of being successful.
But I have to tell you,
these Washington Mall slots are very competitive,
especially if you want something more than an hour,
and not in the middle of the night.
Then your only real competition
are the other vampire and costume clubs
and the witches covens,
depending on the lunar cycle.
I mean,
you can forget about any FullMoon
or NewMoon
or Equinox
within the next decade.

Wow!
I was just trying to put together
a nice old fashioned good ol’ boys
AltRight
armed to the teeth
militia march
while chanting a few really offensive fascist slogans.

Well, funny thing,
it was just that kind of protest march
that led all these churches
and synagogues
and Eastern temples
and even the StoryTellers group from the mosques
sponsoring these FlashMob Events.

When I was checking out the Mall
to see where to put the stage,
suddenly all these people I thought were tourists
and just pedestrians
and all the people in the cars and buses going by,
and the frisbee players,
and even some of the dogs,
all froze in place for a moment,
then began dancing,
then singing that annoying We Shall Overcome gospel anthem,
like I had just walked onto a movie set.
Although no lights and big cameras.

Yes.
Today’s Event received extra points
for community participation.
The District of Columbia FlashMob Combined Gospel Choir
joined up with the local street dancers and choreographers,
and the drummers,
of various cultural backgrounds,
and usually books the Mall on weekends for full two day events.
Most of the time
they practice harmonies and choreography,
and encourage people gathering to watch
to join in,
whether they can stay until the final run through of the day,
or not,
when cameras are digitally ubiquitous.
In fact,
often cell phones are part of the dance,
for lights and multiple viewing perspectives on social media sites.

Then they do a final run through about four or five PM,
then everybody goes home
or maybe they’ll have a picnic
if the band or orchestra or drummers
can stay into the evening.
They might even have an open stage night
for singers and dancers
and those Creation StoryTellers
from the mosques.

I’m having trouble seeing our RightWing message
in this Song and Dance frame.

There are less competitive venues
but most state capitols
are seeing this same cooperative community response
to these all day multicultural NonFlash Mobbing Events.
It’s sort of like America’s Got Talent
went RealTime coast to coast
in a capitol, or even a County Seat, near you.

Well, I need a permit for a counter-protest.

You will need to include your song and dance plan
and budget with your application,
and your plan has to be coordinated with any group already issued a permit
for the Mall
on the day
and time
you propose to counter.

Would that look like some kind of large-set talent contest?

It could.
But, when the District Multicultural Choir
and Drummers
and Street Performers
and Orchestra
respond to your challenge,
just know they usually turn out
somewhere up toward two million singers and dancers,
and it would be more
if we had the space and toilets.

Last year they accepted a challenge
from a national supremacist group ironically named
the RightWing Goliaths.
That was a big national media Song and Dance Event
in which the Goliaths moved and sounded…
well…
not very cooperative
seemed to be the national patriotic consensus,
while the District MultiCultural Singers and Dancers
were totally awesome!
In fact,
by the end of the Goliath’s first song,
the MultiCulturals were adding in their four-part LaLaLa’s
and OoohOoohOooh’s,
then the African Drummers joined in
so the RightWing message was out-scaled
into an awkward hiccuping sound
very much in the background,
and I’m being generous.

Anyway, application forms are on-line.
You’ll find our cooperative community inclusion guidelines,
budget requirements,
and forms you can use to invite community volunteers to join in.
Family friendly plans also receive extra points
so you might want to leave your firearms
and reckless drivers at home.

This still feels like a violation of my Right
to be a White Supremacist
or even just a somewhat paranoid Hater
and shout about my embarrassingly personal issues in public.

As long as you can sing and dance your message
you are welcome to apply for a Permit.
I’m merely letting you know
we have far more applications
than space and time already.
So this revision in our postmillennial permitting process
protects my right not to hear your monocultural pedestrian chanting
and strutting of RightWing racist
and sexist bullshit,
because all I can ever hear
is that District MultiCultural Choir
and their Dancing and Drumming Allies
singing more ProAmerica
and ProEarth
GoodNews gospel Events.

It’s a tough job,
but somebody has to be the permit-issuer,
and decide which messages deserve extra points
for harmony
and choreography
and family friendly love
through each and every venue
of NonFlash Mobbing
with positive WinWin cooperative
song and dance intent.

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First Uniting Nations

Honey, why doesn’t the United Nations include the First Nations?

Are you asking about Babylon
or Native Americans?
Who were, at the time,
thought to be more like wild Indians
by the movers and shakers of rapid industrializing history.

What about a Security Council
made up of the Maple Tree Nation
and the RainForest Nation
and the WaterDweller Nation
and the WingedFlight Nation?

I suspect that would be a transportation
and a communication nightmare.
Your First Nations
are too wild
and voiceless
for nurturing mutual health and wealth translations.
What language could they understand
and speak together?

Is that why the Security Council
is composed of its current constituencies,
because they share a common health as wealth language
everybody understands
and speaks cooperatively together?

Probably not.

I wonder if they might like to adopt some First Nation Golden Rules
for planting and harvesting.
(adapted from Robin Wall Kimmerer,
Braiding Sweetgrass,
p. 183)

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you,
so you may have the first clue how to take care of yourself,
by taking care of them too.

That would seem to preclude rabid overpopulating infestation
of any one overbearing Species,
or Nation,
or monoculture.

It does shed a variegated light
on UncleSam’s ways of taking and giving care
to existing United Nations
and First Nations
and even His own health and climate care giving
and receiving.

So what’s the next First Nation Planting and Harvesting Protocol?

Introduce yourself,
by re-introducing your active gratitude.
Become, and sustain, accountable integrity
as one who approaches each living system
asking to share cooperative life.

More of a WinWin mutual namaste,
and less of a who grabs whose hand first
and shakes the last life out of it
the hardest and fattest and longest.

Yes.
I see it more like multiculturing root systems in a forest
waking up to a new spring day
totally in love with each other,
each in a uniquely knowing way.

That does sound like reasonable understory protocol
for a Security Council
surrounded above by a forest of United First Nations.
What’s next, if I may ask?

Ask permission before taking
no more than half.
Accept feedback.
No means not yet,
and sometimes never.
Yes may also include but not yet,
and sometimes always and forever,
more timelessly.
Never take the first
because everlasting keeps the last.

I guess what is first and last
is like figuring out similarities and differences
between First Nations and last natives.

And the first clue and last premonition.
Anyway, take only what you need
and no more than half what appears freely available.
Share cooperatively,
which is more positively, and democratically, sustainable
than competing side by side.
Re-invest respectfully,
with full ecological authority.
Never waste what First Nations have invested in you.
Remain as grateful as possible.
Become a national treasure,
in reciprocity for what you have received.
Succeed with the ones who succeeded toward you
and Earth will revolve Eden forests and habitats
fit for First and Last Nations forever.

Sounds like Yin planting
nurtures health care giving.

And swells like Yang harvesting
health care re-investments
of and for First United Nation ecopolitical grace.

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Dear NPR Trump Supporter

Dear Lady,

I heard you say that you still trust President Trump
to do almost as good a job as he says he is doing,
despite all the lies,
because “they all do that”,
just say whatever the audience of the moment
would most like to hear.

Really?

I believe Abraham Lincoln,
our first Republican President,
would be surprised to hear his Gettysburg Address
was “telling them what they want to hear”
in his best cheerleader,
go, fight, win voice.

And it seems to me that Thomas Jefferson,
one of the PreRepublican forefather type Presidents,
would object to hear his rather specific name-calling
Declaration of Independence from plutocratic,
and perhaps greedy, and maybe slightly cynical, Elitists,
was just telling the good King what he really wanted to hear.

But regardless of whether our quality standards for Presidential integrity
should reasonably be expected to go up,
now that we’re into our 40th-something incarnation of this Office,
or reasonably be expected to go down
after the first two or three, or sixteen,
or whatever
back in ancient integrity times,
when the premillennial pubic person was worth his/her word
in trust repaid.

How can you trust a President
who is significantly less sure of your right to health and climate care giving
and receiving
for yourself
and for our multiculturing grandkids,
than was the former President?
How is that going in a direction that you
and your healthy extended pro-life family,
your tribe,
neighborhood militia,
or paranoid klan,
or whatever
you continue to trust
as some direction that could be good enough
for those you love the most?

Health,
like racism
and sexism,
do not optimally arrive in individual-portioned packages;
they only sustain resilient climaxes
on interdependent through empty social scales
of qualities for cooperative wealth v WinLose competing pathologies.

Still Listening

Your Democratic HealthAsWealth-Integrity Advocate

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My WhiteHouse Interview

I was nervous about my newest client.
Not every Permaculture Designer gets a contract
with the WhiteHouse.
But, when the President called,
or twittered,
for an intake interview,
I guess it felt like an obligation
to at least show up,
although perhaps about fifteen minutes late,
just to confirm any stereotypes he may have
about gay designers.

Then, too, what to wear?
An organic hemp dress would be confrontational,
which would be interesting for me,
but probably make it even more challenging for Trump
to take me seriously,
and who knows what possible acts of patriarchal aggression
and innuendo
a gay male designer in a dress might stir up?

I wondered if he would be interested in some natural dye wigs
as a great way to improve his Zero-Zone,
both decorative and shade functional
to keep the sun off his bald white capital investments.

I did show up fashionably late
and yet maintaining a good faith effort
to take this WhiteHouse gig seriously.
When Trump finally stopped talking
about what a great job he was doing,
I began our long list of Client Interview questions,
the ones I took from my Certification Notebook.

Me: Generally speaking,
Mr. President (I added that part myself–a little ad liberalism),
What are your desired uses of this property?

POTUS: Well, you know I was in the Lincoln Room the other night,
never mind what the hell I was doing in there,
but I was remembering my Republican Mentor’s challenge
about becoming someone who can fool all the people
all the time,
and I think that’s my main goal for this WhiteHouse.

Me: Anything else?
Perhaps a vegetable garden,
or some solar panels,
shade trees,
organic compost for all these flowers?
Rain barrels to catch the roof water
for nourishing your played-out chemically-treated garden?

POTUS: No, that’s all private contracted to Blackwater.
I did mention that I want to drain the swamp
and clean out this dump
in the LeftWing of the former WhiteHouse
promoting health and climate care,
didn’t I?

Me: I seem to recall reading that
you are against health care for almost everyone
poor enough to be at risk of democratically shared death.
But, no,
you didn’t mention your swamp
and LeftWing infestation problems
just now.
You only mentioned the goal of successfully lieing
to everybody about everything all the time,
from everywhere you happen to be,
including this property.
Which, by the way,
is a profoundly alarming misread
of what Abraham Lincoln actually said,
or intended,
speaking descriptively of politics as usual.

Most of us hear
You can fool some people all the time
and you can fool all people sometimes
without also hearing
But you can’t fool all the people all the time
as a prescriptive challenge for better politics as unusual
for future Presidents,
Republican or nihilistic otherwise.
But, let’s get back to draining your swamp
and your problem about the LeftWing.
What is your daily routine?

POTUS: I usually start each morning meditating
and twittering on the shitter
about how well we’re all doing today.
Then, when I’m feeling better,
I need and take a shower
and get dressed
and then I order anything I want for breakfast
for me
and for whoever else might have slept over
and bothered to wake up to eat with me,
which tends to be no one.

Then I go over to the RightWing
and lie to all the poorest ones
and compete with all the richest ones
about who can tell the most patriotically expressive
patriarchal lies.

Then we have lunch.
Again, whoever happens to be at my messy trough
back next to the old swamp,
and then sometimes I play golf
and sometimes I seed more lies
at these really great patriotic pep rallies
where I carefully wrap myself in the one true sacred flag,
and a preferably red Trump-cap,
to go with my all white skin
and blue death lips,
talking about what a mess our LeftWing is,
although,
come to think of it,
the RightWing is getting a bit bloody and scabby
these days too.

Me: You got as far as vampire dinner time
and after-dinner entertainments.

POTUS: Yes,
and those are going very well.
We’re doing the best dinner and entertainment reality show ever
in the entire history of this WhiteHouse.

Me: So it sounds like you are clear about your fake administration goals
and you assess your own swamp draining
and LeftWing demolition processes
as well under way.

It’s your dime.
We can continue this interview,
but given the nature of your goals
for what is really OUR property,
and not quite so much your own personal corporate fascist personhood
mandated to own and exploit this WhiteHouse
and our District Swamp
and our Left and Right Wings,
did you ask for this Design Interview
because you just don’t know what a Permaculture Designer is,
because you only know about Monocultural Elitism,
and you were curious about the little people?
Or is this actually part of your fake news,
that your ecopolitical agenda
is in process of receiving Permaculture Design Certification?

POTUS: We are doing an amazing job
of fooling all the multiculturing people
all the climate changing time…

Me: Mr. President,
with all due respect for your authority,
and your sacred fascist mandate,
you are a fine teacher and preacher and mentor
of and for Mendacious Monocultural Designs
for Mutual Obsolescence Certification.
But, that is your RightWing mess,
which apparently you feel you don’t need any help with.
And,
I think you are absolutely and alternatively right about that,
and perhaps only that.
So I think we are done here.

POTUS: How long before we receive our Certificate?

Me: You didn’t hear a thing I said, did you?

POTUS: No, listening isn’t my thing.
But, occasionally I worry,
maybe fooling all the people all the time
must most of all include myself,
all the time,
everywhere I happen to be,
including this swampy property.

 

 

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NightFlights

From onset of puberty
on through my early twenties
I had frequent flyer dreams.

Like learning to ride a bike,
I was nocturnally certain
just the right balance of body focus and mind flexibility
would lead to inevitable lift-off.

Perhaps it was not a coincidence
that the more daylight time riding my first and last red three-speed bike,
the more likely I was to invest my nightflights
in flying forward and yet flexibly floating free
to soar with stars
float and spin with the moon
looking down and back and out at EarthTribe’s AquaMarine Home,
laced with also flying cumulus fluffs of vaporous white,
as ephemeral as identity myself.

Adolescent hubris,
I know,
to imagine floating flexibly
with just sufficient internal focus, balance, centering
as if a Bodhisattva Flyer
of space as time traveling
forward future
and backward pasts,
outer becomings swelling
with inner flying beings co-gravitating
contracting concentric balance,
dreams of humane-growing flight as inhalation,
internal as external exhalation
mindbody co-operation,
co-optation,
co-present floating flights
of dreamscaped transparent night.

In my dream
we remain free to fly,
free from mind v body polarities,
spirit-nature remains inspiring bodies,
spiral flying full-flight dreams
of economic
and political
and psychological
EarthTribe Revolutions.

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Dorm Love

Ours was daily mysterious,
sometimes near mystical,
rapture;
a sensual yet platonic
dorm-mate love affair,
within the only male grad student corridor
at SFSU.

He was the presumably straight Vietnam veteran
southern white good ol’ boy,
athletically studying Japanese,
with a gentle passion for young Japanese women.

Did his all things Japanese culture love
precede his Vietnam War experience,
or was this a response to West-East violence,
inviting vulnerability and compassion?
Embracing romantic remorse
and male responsibility for technology’s aggressive habits,
but,
regardless,
knowing constant passion for peace.
I don’t recall ever asking which came first.

I do recall his first words.

“Hi. Delighted to meet you,”
in a Louisiana-slash-MilitaryOfficerSchool
creolic mashed-up engaging smile
up across and through his raised blond eyebrows,
guileless,
or ruthlessly contrived,
“Ensign Jake Ruford,
Eastern Language student.”

Hi.
just Jerry,
gay epistemology student,
wondering why we are roommates
when I specifically said
“Anyone not homophobic.”
You would think Student Residential Services
at San Francisco State
would know what the word means.
Including probably not a straight Louisiana
military officer
even if he is Navy.

As he turned back toward his desk,
where he had been reading something that looked like a textbook
in an encyclopedic hard-bound scale
of inscrutability,
“Do you agree human nature
must have evolved from a bottom moral line
of eat or become stew?”

It seems we have this old reptilian thing
about eating our young and vulnerable under duress,
overpopulation or starvation
of a struggling to hunt and gather species,
especially before we figured out the matriarchal gathering part.

“I want to come back to those matriarchal parts later.
But why, do you think,
do we continue to see Golden Rule cooperativity,
WinWin strategies,
as contrasted favorably to WinLose
sacred MightMakesRight Traditions
of
Always eat others before they eat you?”

I don’t think WinLose,
much less LoseLose,
Eat first and fast,
because we all fall prey to death
in our not quite foreseeable future,
is authoritatively sacred,
or exegetically scriptural,
or fundamentalistically spiritual,
nor even evangelically Christian,
which was supposed to be about Good News
of a God defined most ecologically,
and satisfyingly,
as love and beauty
and polycultural Eden’s Original Creator.

“So you would give divine grace credit
for why we beg for multicultural Golden Rule self-governance
through WinWin inter-relationships,
rather than continue eating our young?”

No,
I think premeditated organized violence
through conscripting young adults
is how we continue eating our young.
I give God credit for non-patriarchal Golden Rules,
which do not include mutual assured violence,
nor Better Ballistics Bureaus.

But, I give the Sacred Gaia Hypothesis
and matriarchal creation stories and parables and paradigms
credit for existing
and any future
and most, if not all, past WinWin abundant inter-relationships,
rather than Mother Earth
eating Her DNA regenerative
Left and Right BiLaterally Balanced CoIntelligence,
synonymous with EcoLogical,
and oxymoronic as Military WinWin Intelligence.

“Left and Right,
like Yang and Yin.
Which is kind of the opposite
of LeftBrain dominant ideas like
Maybe it’s OK for hungry single Moms
to sell their children into slavery
to invest in better dying
through chemistry.”

Yes, and other xenophobic behaviors,
paranoias like homophobia
and patriarchal “just war” theories.

“How do you feel about Japanese ladies?”

Hopefully about the same way you feel about radically dipolar gay gentlemen
at the beginning of an AIDS epidemic.

“That’s an interesting, but dark, analogy.
Are you coffee or tea?”

I don’t think I intended an analogy.
Perhaps more of a eulogy
for continuing relationship
with much of anyone ever in risky futures.

Coffee.
If I have any idea where this inquisition came from
or might be heading.

“Oh, that’s good.
See, we already have something in common.”

Something.
Yes.

And so we went on from that first moment,
as if resuming where we had just left off,
or last eaten,
with an Ensign I had never hoped to meet,
much less eat,
and would never wish to know a last farewell.

Two travelers
along love’s mysterious,
sometimes mystically ambiguous
journey,
soldiering on.

Better thriving together,
than surviving inscrutable textbooks
apart.

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