Tag Archives: life

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Compromising Lives

“Living here can be compromising”
says Dad to Danny
in a John Irving novel.

Isn’t that our universal truth?

Living here is a compromising series of on-purpose accidents.
Living is compromising
with mortality heavily favored to win out,
maybe short-term,
maybe later.

But these odds
between two categories
switch places
between eight looking toward sixty-four,
and sixty-four looking longingly back toward eight,
measuring all small and large compromises
erupting through serenity
in-between.

Wonder
is just taking a time out
to notice the last clematis blossom
is exactly the same color
as the purple mums
hiding behind her.

Wonder
is taking a moment
as no more or less perfect
just as it is,
a snapshot
between where we have come
since Earth was growing glaciers
to when Earth may, eventually, pass on.

A moment
perfectly balanced
in full-color octaves
of sight
and sound
and smell
and savory taste
of spectral Wonder.

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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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Old Forest Tribes

“Alone is a word without meaning in the forest.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Braiding Sweetgrass”

Old rotting trees,
corrupt degenerating logs,
give birth to more forms of diverse life
than they did in their most transcendent living moments
brought to them by Elder networking root systems,
and Father Sun’s most radiant embrace,
and Mistress Earth’s most abundant flow of moisture;
short of catastrophic floods.
Just right flowing strength of healthing wealth.

And each of us humane egos
hopes for the same;
That our regenerative legacy of mind and spirit
will long outlast our bodies
corrupting toward alone
within this shrill cacophony of growing tribal fears,
angers about injustices of Earth’s redistributing,
scandalously democratic,
grace.

Artifacts of tribal violence
predict legacies more like old native forest fires
than slower degenerative effects of wind and rain
and hungry insect tribes of Earth.
Cremation of regenerative destiny
rather than burial,
yet even here
humane ashes
enrich sacred fertility.

Earth’s minerals feed matriarchal fungi
as Sun’s light fuels patriarchal algae.

In this lichen forest of our anthrocentric
and animal
and tree
and plantation lives and deaths,
alone speaks lonely fear of violent burned-out death,
a revolutionary moment
within Earth’s redolent forest
of potential timeless relationship.

Absolute,
like autonomy,
are words not spoken
in old growth forest
life within death.

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Earth’s Eulogy

Mothers have come
from throughout Earth
to bury our post-Trumpian dead.
Bringing both gifts and lamentations
as each finds appropriate
for healing
what cannot be stanched
and scabbed.

As gathering
we choose who will speak among us,
for this Earth eulogy.

At last our voices conjoin as bilateral one,
speaking back through history
and forth toward fading lack of future.

We have come from left to right,
north and south,
west through east,
patriarchal states
and matriarchal families
to bury our dead children
sacrificed for bipolarizing divisions
unwilling to wait
for this our dipolar co-arising
of healing cooperative polities
bilaterally harmonic co-investments
in Earth’s Original CoIntelligence.

We have come to bury and burn depleting polarities
but also to praise cooperative dipolarities
transforming this global revolution
away from climates of pathology,
here buried
burning climates of health regenerativity
here praised,
celebrating conflagration,
honored with both sacred and secular blood
of Earth-natured dispiriting loss.

We bury patriarchal losses to envy
and nationalism’s violent criminalizing greed
for lethal commodities,
once our productive sons and daughters
born through matriarchal love reborn.

We burn
in celebrated loss,
cut off from our resonant futures
through this inferno stink
of human flesh in cedar casket trees
no longer standing solidarity
of embryonic birth.

Our wombs like seeds
extend back
toward Earth’s first emerging dawn
now expiring
in this last flame of funereal dusk.

We disperse with silence
into this night,
each alone together
celebrating future songs
of praise for incentivizing peace
ever more resonantly co-resolving,
redeeming cooperative economies
of life for living love
not death for dissonant despair.

We witness this long new moon night
and following dawn
breaks to summarizing bottom-line headlines
for Mother Earth evolving stories,
turning creolization right side up
with multicultural agreements,
ecopolitical consensus.

No more
begin with war
to then follow by dividing up
the Father’s devolving spoils
for future competitions
in aggressive capital
self-inflation.

For ever more
default with WinWin peaceful resolutions
following resonant reweaving
of matriarchal regenerational co-investment,
multiplying healthy nutritional wealth,
polypathic dipolar,
co-arising polyphonic bounty
back to time’s embryo,
this dynamic universe’s original
enculturing intent.

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EarthDay by Day

Day by day
within each passing shadow,
surging strength
to grow from fear through time.

Night by night
without full hope of living,
doubt pervades
my troubling mind’s worst fears.

Night by day
and day by night
within each dwelling passion,
faith I find
to live despite dark nights.

Day by night
and night by day
we dream co-dwelling passions,
loves as lives
to die apart in light,
to fly as part of bright.

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Integrity’s Boundaries

What if we were song,
sacred litany?

What if,
What if we were dance,
gracefilled choreography?

What if we were energy,
therapeutic information?
Naked trees
joining navels
from native mother to nurture mother
down through speciating generations
up for regeneration.

What if?
What if we became tireless time,
reorganizing space?
Irreplaceable climates
within humid organic history.

I am not your place
and sadly not mine
with authority to displace
or responsibility to replace.
I am not my face.

We are designed to fall apart,
even with unlikely careful wear.
So what?
No excuse to surrender
to daily worn out deaths.
Well excused to rise this day
ready for each dusk
without anticipation
for love or lust
rain or dust
win or bust.
It’s just us
wearing down the best we can.

What if,
What if we were each a song
resonating one per measure,
beating Earth’s shortest line dance?

What if we were timeless energy,
resonating freestyle consciousness?

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Higher and Deeper Powers

I was noticing that those in the Unitarian Universalist Association,
with which I am more or less anonymously affiliated
in some far too abstract way for personal comfort,
believe in three prime sources for their (our) truth search,
rather like a revised holonic trinity,
equally at home for Buddhist monk
or Islamic or Christian not-quite-so-fundamentalistically BothAnd alive.

The first of these is a Higher Power.
Now this must have been written by the Yang Universalists
within the Universal-Unitarian assembly,
because every wholesome Yin Unitarian knows
that what is a Higher Power for Universalist Yangers
is also a Deeper Power for Unitarian Yinners
bilateral BothAnd winners;
so, a HigherYang/DeeperYin Power.

Then we come to the second source,
YangLife and YinDeath.
Now any fully bicameral balanced Unitarian-Universalist,
just as any Taoist,
knows there is always something of Yin within Yang
and vice versa.
Just as there is something of our daytime lives
in our nighttime dreams,
and sometimes our inductive dream work
presents bilaterally incisive insights
into next morning’s Tipping Point meditation
on and for and of the breathless balance
of ego- and eco-consciousness,
empathically trusting in healthy YangLife
and safety of exhaling final YinDeath,
leaving further climatic paradoxes
and coaxial dialectic nondualities
for future regenerations to sift through,
notice,
comprehend and decompose,
and then reweave again,
as full-octave light emerges from dark
so life emerges from embryonic death
the absence of discontinuous life at egocentric levels
posing both risk and opportunity
in wider and deeper nutritional Earth-centric becomings.

Finally, we have sacred texts,
the YangLogos and YinMythos of experience
reflected in the memory language of Wise Elders,
presumably filled with both Higher and Deeper Powers.

So, that’s it.
We have the Higher PatriarchalUniversalist Power
with the Deeper BiCameral Learning MatriarchalUnitarian Power
living and dying to WinWin nature-spirit nonduality together,
as written in the fusing-fractal DNA and RNA
of each sacred ecological phylogenically regenerative
and co-operative
reproductive rights and wrongs re-creation story.

Now the 3-Source trinitarian story takes us to the 7 Principles,
which some permaculturists would expand out to 12,
while spiraling octavists, and maybe sufis and artists, stop at 8,
but nature reweaves as a regenerative bilateral-fractal 4
seasons of health and safety regenerativity,
or cooperative ownership and self/other governance,
if you are a Yin-Unitarian NonZero-Sum economist
or a Yang-OneEarthClimate politician
or possibly even nondual BothAnd alive and growing
out your extending UU-Taoist family,
tribe,
species,
planet,
the wu wei in-between horizontal and vertical spacetimes
where Earth and Sun/Moon radiant Sky
nondually co-arise seeds,
trees,
and other bilateral root and branching health and safety systems
seeking both Higher and Deeper Powers
of reproductive
reweaving continuous life and discontinuous death,
sacred regenerative texts;
not to become confused with degenerative twitters.

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GrandMother Tree

Miracles of GrandMother WinWin Tree
begin with her purgative peaceful birth.
For at this time,
so long before her cycling rings of time began,
we see her original seed
and this seed’s less original composting environment,
and within this brief timeless moment,
before her WinWin becoming,
these each appear to decompose LoseLose into each other,
yet fertilely so,
beginning GrandMother Tree’s long waging of peace-filling rings,
recycling time’s historic four fractal-dialectic seasons
of regenerativity.

Once begun LoseLose zero-sum balancing,
GrandMother revolves through days and nights
emerging relentless WinWin creolizing root systems
of zero-sum regenerativity.
For each new ring another year of cooperative becoming.
Mostly cooperative,
and only minorly competitive,
or becoming decays to no longer being,
yet even this continuous transition
is not equivalent to springing back to prior springs.
She cannot go home again
because she carries her original home
within her still small skeletal seed regenerating within,
speaking of past purgations and migrations
yet all while extending further rooting down
ever richer deeper cooperative
health-seeking WinWin system sensors.

And so, at last,
GrandMother Tree begins to fade from Yangish life
toward Yin-emptying death.
Whether fast, through uprooting hurricane,
or slow, through slowing drying aging defense/offense loss of balance,
her woody organs disintegrate
creating creole compost perfect for her seeds
and, even more richly,
for seeds of her adult children,
now become intrinsic to
her densely rich WinWin forested environment.

Her forest floor
each spring
producing LoseLose metamorphic creolizations
of seeds and composts
remembering each WinWin peace-filling other
GrandMother Tree winds and voices reweaving nutrients of time
as regenerative ecopolitical space
still system rooting for waging peace,
ever more cooperative.

Waging LoseLose war
prefers competitive discontinous imbalance,
as waging WinWin peace requires root systems
of cooperative continuous balance.

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