Truculent voices in armor ...

“Wow! That poem has a cool shape!”

“Yeah that's all I wanted you to get out of it!”

“Wild and free
hard to see
tiny blume
sweet perfume
a life`s needs
spring from seeds
it`s own hour
tiny flower
ask not why
all must die
a changing place
a different face”

“Nice!”

“Thanks, I liked yours too!”

“There once was a man from Nantucket...”

“the law`s come to bust us
the thorny stem of injustice
beat down black and blue
for what they themselves do
for crumbs we scratch and claw
to have it snached by the long arm of the law
with guns they tell us that they care
and what we have they gladly share
looking into the hole of his gun
this is justice and how it`s done
yours is not the reason why
but fear the man till you die”

“I ain't a poet...
believe me, I know it!
So I ain't even going to try...
'cause I'd just blow it!”

“would that I could change some things
I`d plant a mountain and grow some springs
for Nature, I guess I would just install a lot more trees
and fill up the medows and hillsides with flowers and bees
I would make four seasons of the year and one of them be spring
hmmmm, now that I think on it a bit, I wouldn`t change a thing”

“Dude, you're listening to Rage Against The Machine way too much. Get over the rebel thing!”

“it matters little what you have read
there`s two kinds, the quick and the dead
full of pride and then a big piece of hot lead
a penny for your thoughts, a hole for your head
and the hungry stay hungry, there`s nothing to be fed
we just go on killing ourselves until the streets all run red”

“Sidibombay.

Pick a point on the globe
Yes the pictures the same
There's a bank a church a myth and a hearse
A mall and a loan a child dead at birth
There's a widow pig parrot
A rebel to tame
A whitehooded judge
And a syringe and a vein
And the riot be the rhyme of the unheard”

“You forgot; there's usually a Che Guevera wannabe as well.”

“I`m not going to write any more of this rot. Two more poems of this crud and I`ll be going postal on some poor unsupecting soul. I was only kidding with what I wrote, to think that way is, to sink that way. Should I decide to get down, it`ll be on a dance floor so, Party on DUDE! I`m through.”

“The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night.
Now it's ten years later but he still keeps up the fight
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley.
Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun
And bought it.

w. zevon

Big Foot, its right there (the truth?) Pretty easy to see how some folks can "let go" and accept differing, even radically disparate notions, huh?”

“True that, it`s a sick world and I didn`t mean to add to it with more sticks for the already out of control fires that burn in the brains of some.”

“voices say protest, protest, protest
it is your diamond duty
Oh but in such ugly times
the true protest is beauty.
Phil Ochs”

“So, PedXing..... I`ve heard you`re going to have some time on your hands pretty soon. Are you looking for work? It`s been said more than one time, that I`m a real piece of work,..what ever that`s supposed to mean. So, do you think you could help me, or have I done gone bad and it`s to little to late for me? There might be a book in there some where for you, I bet there is!LOL”

“LOL Big Foot! I'm packing up the rest of my life in New Hampshire and moving it south of the border to Massachusetts (given the politics in each state I could say I am moving "left").

To be semi-serious, I think you are a great piece of work. Your heart is even bigger than your feet. You've got lots of good cheer to share with others, and you have a playful rhymning way of posting.

You and I are at different stages of life, mine is completely overfilled and I'm trying to simplify it. But I know that in 6 years my kids may be gone far and I'll be looking to fill the empty spaces. I imagine those empty spaces can be awfully hard to live with.

Anyway, you ain't gone bad... if I tried to get a book out of your life it would be a novel... not anything tied to my profession.

Hats off to you!”

“LOL PedXing! Drat it, I`ve done gone and messed up my mind, I was looking forward to seeing what I could do to yours!

Thanks for the kind words!”

“Ped,

That empty void you speak of is your attachment to impermanent objects. These objects include, but are not limited to, your family, friends, material objects, and your own life.”

“Let's all commit suicide!!!!”

“LOL, Sid!

Spaces, such spaces...
empty empty empty me
clinging to mortality
destined-to-fail destiny
share with me my misery
clinging clinging clinging
on the edge of the abyss...
depth beyond comprehension

=:0

pokin' at ya, tarpy! poke poke! mooohahahaaa”

“Good one AmyG!”

“Reality seems painful until you understand it.”

“reality is dreaming
and inside my head I'm screeeeaming

>:op”

“breathe deep
the gathering gloom
watch lights fade from every room

> fraaaap! <”

“Sidi, yer attachment to your trivial impulses will continue to cuase you despair.”

“Wild Child:

Your mind is alive, you have great energy, and put passions in your words. I respect that. I trust you will see more than a simple put down in these words.

You didn't understand (but why should you) the perspective I was writing from when I wrote to big foot.

You have a very premature notion of attachment and detachment, unless you are world despising sensation rejector. And I can't believe you are.

The number of people who try to transcend human conciousness and even the number who claim to have transcended it, far exceeds the number of those who have fully attained human conciousness.

In order to give up and surrender the kinds of human attachments you speak of, its important to first become fully capable of them.

Sometimes, it is easy to confuse detachment from things with the cell bars that keep you from them. Cages can take on the appearance of freedom... or the appearance of armor.

Often in life we find ourselves struggling to rise to a level we had "transdescended."

Perhaps you could ponder: who built the cage and who set the trap.”

“I don`t think he understood, it was me with all the free time and needing to fill it. I guess that happens if you read to fast! I don`t have that problem!LOL”

“Tarpie...
When you going to get tired of this crap, and just go back to saying:
FU(K?”

“I'M FREE-I'm free,
And freedom tastes of reality,
I'm free-I'm free,
And I'm waiting for you to follow me.

If I told you what it takes
to reach the highest high,
You'd laugh and say 'nothing's that simple'
But you've been told many times before
Messiahs pointed to the door
And no one had the guts to leave the temple!

I'm free-I'm free
And freedom tastes of reality
I'm free-I'm free
And I'm waiting for you to follow me.

Hi mel!”

“Very good one there Kleetn!

I like that one!”

“Shades of Blue at the Art Loeb Trailhead

You could be here on a Saturday afternoon.
Just here to stretch. The last deep breath
you stole was last month. You see at the trailhead the paths
trampled by the lazy, spotted deer
transient in life, resilient Black Bear, padded fingers
of striped-tail raccoon going to wash in the creek.
Only the Tulip Poplar stand watch. The trail-side latrine
is 5 years old now. The one ranger
checks it frequently, usually has to clean it out.

The most prevalent game-tracks now
are boot prints. Treads of the various people
the city sends, some driving here in rusted pickups,
Cadillacs, the young yuppie bankers
whose boots step out of Forest Green Explorers. One lonesome
valley left and foot paths can?t contain ?adventurers.?
Only the Tulip Poplar have stood watch
in the Carolina sky blue, their flat-tipped leaves yellow
and ridge-high above the valley poplars,
a dozen turkey vultures smell
the rotting, padded fingers of raccoon. Her carcass
will be food for what seems a month.

Isn?t this your home? That good breath
still pouring into your chest? Isn?t this invasion
so complete, the cicada in the poplar seems
a love song unanswered: buzz and no reply?
Don?t expectant doorbells buzz? Do footprints
and photographs do justice to an old game trail,
not just the Art Loeb, but trails
of Douglas Fir, elk and grizzly
your lungs will never taste
until your city?s air spills out?

Keep your boots in the car. The one ranger, naïve
when the latrine was dug and erected, still hears the cicada
although he smells sht. Someday soon
he says, that damn thing?ll burn to the ground.
You tell him no. You?re talking to yourself.
Your tire tracks are still fresh.
The premade walking stick you have in the trunk,
the one you bought in the city, is poplar
and the hiker at the trailhead
is old and her padded bare feet trample the grass.”

“Ped,
I have to disagree with you on that one. I believe it's that very attachment to my "trivial impulses" that keeps me sane and helps me sniff out bullsh!t artists who post depressing pseudo-existential crap on websites in a desperate attempt to make faceless strangers think their intellectuals. The heavy hearted SOB's will always sink into the muck; the light hearted clowns seek the surface, and the sun.”

“Geez, I can't believe I wrote that. I must be in a bad mood or something.”

“Maybe you just need some sleep!LOL”

“kleet..
Since you're a cartographer, it shouldn't be to difficult for me to follow you.
Highlight the trail in red.
Or have your squirrel leave little nuggets behind him.”

“#1: My trivial impulses remark was a respponse to your "lets all commit suicide" So, in a sense I was making fun of the same things you were.

#2: Good superficial impulses are one's you don' t get too attached to and don't exhault.”

“Sidi, your line about which clowns sink and which ones rise was funny and apt.
You've been in great form throughout most of this thread.”

“I do not strive to transcend human consciousness. I strive to understand it.

I think you might be mistaking your roller coaster of emotions for occasional happiness, thinking one day you will go up but not come down. The only true happiness comes from never going up, and so never coming down.”

“It's The Great Space Coaster
Get on board
On The Great Space Coaster
We'll explore a comet ride to fantasy to a place where dreams fly fast and free
With new friends and new things to see we'll spin you through the galaxy
On The Great Space Coaster Off we go
Get on board step inside soaring for a magic ride

>;oP”

“whoops..missed the last line, can't fergit the rainbow part. It's like psycho-delic, man.

Going to the other side where only rainbows hide
On The Great Space Coaster Off we go”

“How the hell do you remember those lyrics?”

“"The only true happiness comes from never going up, and so never coming down.

Wild Child"

1) You seem to be promoting sexual abstenance. Or perhpas given the context a a more profound and pervasive kind of abstinence.

2) Given much of what you write and express, this may explain your misery: the contradiction and lack of self awareness implied by may of your posts - flying into various emotional states and then claiming to have found that the pathway to real happiness can be folowed by abstaining from them.

Many people get lost in the abyss between the real and the ideal.

Me, I'm hugely imperfect... capable of becoming quite confused and losing my bearings in the face of some dilemmas. And yes, my emotions can go up and down... but in many other directions as well.”

“Another response is on the "song about disembodied mind and spirit." thread.

(I mispelled about though, and eeek! and I mispelled "abstinence" above!)”

“Ped,

Imperfection is a vehicle to perfection, you can't have one without the other, but without knowing where you eventually want to be in life and after, you will dwell in your imperfection never seeing that it's only a vehicle.

You build a raft to cross a river, you cross, and you still carry the raft with you. It's a burden. The raft is an example of attachment.”