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POEM: Existential Realty

Posted on September 4, 2015 by

You can say “No”
You can say “Yes”
If one can say “No”
Two can say “No”
If two can say “No”
Three can say “No”
If one can say “Yes”
Two can say “Yes”
If two can say “Yes”
Three can say “Yes”
If no else say’s “No”
You can still say “No”
If no else say’s “Yes”
You can still say “Yes”
You can
Still

This straightforward poem asserts the simple existential human reality that we have choice. It implies also that there is additional ease if others align with the same choice. Still, choice is available for one’s soul discretion. We can shape the manifestation of our soul in the world by choosing that in which we say “yes” that in which we say “no.” The nature of choice affirms both possibility and value in that which we choose, over infinite other possibilities. What you choose to do (or not do) matters!

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Choices, Existential, Nature, Poems, Poetry, Political, Possibility, Reality, Soul | Leave a comment

POEM: Signs of The Tines

Posted on September 3, 2015 by

At the White House speak easy
Blah blah blah blah blah blah
The media drinks it up
At a mine-blowingly vapid clip
In the mean time
On the plantation
Grounds to a halt
Surrounded by offense
In arose guardin’
At least since 1984
Black sheep a massing
Estate clearly
As to klan destined premises
And as such a tract
An overwhelming farce
Met with all arm
As privates in public places
And wile mill or tarry
As eventuality
Weather picked up for loitering
Or trashing national security
Hour constitutional is put down
And though wee are like
A communal terrain
Pigs offer another forum of public transportation
A signing
This won in the can
Matching our zeal to the maxim
In another banner day
For homeland security
Or whatever it scald
As free speech grows smolder
And another die cast
For the prints of darkness
Wielding a pitchfork for the signs of the tines
A tail never to be told

This is a poem about police and/or military — sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference these days — putting down a protest at the White House. Typically, the corporate media give little coverage to such democracy taken into the hands of ruly citizens, and what coverage they give is often superficial and dismissive. The demonstration in this poem has overtones of a Black Lives Matter protest, making it contemporary, but it could very well be most any protest in modern times at the White House. The title of this poem, Signs of The Tines, has what may be an easily missed pun, referencing the tines of the devil’s pitchfork casting signs into a bonfire, which might very well be the preeminent renewable energy source in America. Protest politics and direct nonviolent resistance has always forced America to confront a legal and political conundrum of law enforcement routinely violating constitutional rights, often under the pretext of national security. Most any perceived threat to the state triggers an overreaction, even an existential crisis, from most any nationalist from right to left. Exposing the naked sovereignty of the state, particularly when in moral bankruptcy, is one of the most useful effects resistance offers. The veneer of civilization can be quickly peeled back to witness the assertion of brute force in the religion of nationalism and state sovereignty. And for those of you who may dare to believe that we are a nation under God, think again. I confronted this directly in my legal challenge to draft registration. As a motion to dismiss based on draft registration offering no opportunity to indicate conscientious objector status, the federal judge rejected the motion citing a Supreme Court case from the 1930’s which stated that the federal government has the absolute power to conscript anyone in the United States, regardless of conscience or anything else. Conscientious objector status is merely a historical and political concession which was literally referred to as “legislative grace.” I must admit, in this decade-long resistance to forced military participation in Team America, this was the only thing that truly surprised me. I, for one, am unwilling to concede absolute authority to any government. I actually wasn’t even very excited about this motion for dismissal, but my pro bono lawyers wanted to test this legal argument. Frankly, I wouldn’t have registered even had there been a way to meaningfully indicate conscientious objection. I think I registered my objection quite meaningfully without their approval or feigned “grace.” You might want to pay attention to the wizard behind the gracefully flowing curtain, dutifully colored, red, white, and blue…

Posted in About Top Pun, Anti-War, Peace, Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged America, Argument, Authority, Citizens, Conscience, Conscientious Objection, Constitutional Rights, Conundrum, Democracy, Demonstrators, Draft Registration, Evil, Existential, Farce, Free Speech, God, government, Grace, Law, Law Enforcement, Lawyer, Meaning, Media, Military, Modern, Moral, National, National Security, Nationalism, Nonviolent, Poems, Poetry, Police, Political, Politics, Power, Protests, Rage, Religion, Resistance, Security, State, Status, Superficial, Supreme Court, Time | Leave a comment

POEM: How Ever Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb

Posted on September 2, 2015 by

In his rock
Solid doubt
Thomas
Had herd rumors
Of unflailing love
Abuzz of hope so high
If only
To find himself
Quite
In the dark
Wear time stops
To the ever sow gentle
Beating
To a singular conundrum
As sound as it gets
In the artlessness of won’s
Perpetual searching
Where awe is aloud
And know license kneaded
Yet so long
Due
Over
Come
Warming to the extremity
In a hospitality of patients
Still
Not sure
What he thaw
He’s frozen code
Hesitatingly lust
Pulling out
Aplomb
The surest proof
Of assurance
Yet knot enough too
Drink the Kool-Aid™
Turning to whine
Taken in
Bred of skepticism
Only willing
To live on
Crumbs
That will
Surly re-seed
In annoys
Of the daze
The quest in
For gotten
How ever dumb dumb dumb dumb

This is another poem on a familiar theme of skepticism of skepticism. In this poem, skepticism is juxtaposed with a simple and profound reality at the center of each human life: your heartbeat. In fast-paced, postmodern society, we live in a precarious and constricted mental and spiritual territory. We are, well, maladapted to ask “What have you done for me lately” a-long-side routine strings of epic fails to live in the moment. In a triumph of evolution, we walk a mathematically constructed line that every mathematician knows doesn’t exist except as a mental construct. And then we complain about God’s ethereal nature — with a periodicity much less regular than a heartbeat, in between ignoring God’s good creation. I can’t help but note that the bulk head of such complaining seems more fitting on bar stools than in poem or song. Of course, I don’t recommend sobriety when it comes to being drunk on poetry. In the book, The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, the main character tells two stories: one hauntingly mesmerizing and another as a police report. When asking another character which story they prefer, not surprisingly, they choose the captivating story; to which the main character replies, “and so it is with God.” I, for one, would much rather be captivated by a good story than limit my reading — and living — to police reports (though many good stories include police reports). I strongly suspect that God wants us to make epic stories of our lives, for our hearts to beat captivating rhythms, to grow bigger and fuller today than we were yesterday. For this to happen, at some point, we have to make stuff up as we go along. This process can be analogous to scientific discovery, proposing stuff that we are not quite sure are true and then testing them out with out lives. Not surprisingly, scientific-minded folks are greatly disturbed when religion hypothesizes great truths and then fails to adequately test them in the here and now. Not all shit is worth making up. Fortunately, most any shit can be used as fertilizer. Even cautionary tales are indispensable. Nonetheless, as Native Americans traditionally began their storytelling, “This may not have happened, but it is true.” Or, as I might put it: God is the coolest being I ever metaphor.

But back to the even more palpable. Your heartbeat serves as a metaphor, gentle reminder, and literal lifeline to, well, life. The heartbeat is both a shared human reality and intensely intimate and personal tether to life. In astounding irony, the common ground of a heartbeat at the center of each human life seems to be easily taken for granite, that is, common ground. There may be a fine lying between common ground and complicated dirt, but I suspect that the road less travailed makes awe the difference. Akin to breathing, our heartbeat is a great center for meditation, that is, simply centering our life (see my poems, Breathing and The World’s Shortest Meditation). I find the persistence, reliability, unobtrusiveness, and effectiveness of both breathing and our heartbeat as a wellspring of metaphors and insights into the deepest nature of life. Still, may your life take definition by those moments which take your breath away and that which makes your heart to skip a beat.

Posted in About Top Pun, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Art, Awe, Cautionary Tale, Character, Conundrum, Creation, Evolution, God, Heart, Hope, Hospitality, Irony, Life, Love, Meditation, Metaphors, Mind, Modern, Nature, Pi, Poems, Poet, Poetry, Police, Reality, Religion, Skepticism, Society, Spiritual, Time, Truth | Leave a comment

POEM: The Short End of The Shtick

Posted on September 1, 2015 by

The earth quaked
Beneath the CEO
As he re-torted
It’s no bodies fault
In a sense
Coming upon
The prophets of owed
Raking over
That thin lyin’
Between purveyor and consumer
I’m just
Doing my job
And it’s knot
My job
You are
Welcome
To the short end
Of that shtick

This poem was inspired by a specific instance of the ever-present marginal customer service amidst corporate America. There is an entire universe of bad customer service that lies between “It’s not my job” and “I’m just doing my job.” There is an entire universe of bad customer service that lies between callous executives’ inhumane policies of profit over people and wage slaves who have made learned helplessness an uninspiring art form. Our humanity can only slip away if we abdicate responsibility and response-ability. As much as the status quo sucks at any given moment, this is an invitation for humanity to step into such a vacuum. Even as the invitation is addressed as “Dear Occupant,” merely serving as a notice that your short end of the stick is being pared back or that the light at the end of the tunnel is being turned off, this would better serve as a pretext for revolution than learned helplessness. Part of humans’ Jōb description is a test of faith regarding devilish abets inhumanity. There in lies an affirmative response-ability to fix ballsy dehumanization that metes life on our knees. Countability de-mans it. In choiring mines want to no, excuses for whining a bout their purported eunuch situations, as if hitting the Hi C in loo of Kool-Aid™ was somehow passable. If this peers as sum bizarro universe, wrest assured that the job you may have may have nothing too due with this. Other wise, just, do your job.

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged America, Art, Faith, Helplessness, Humanity, Job, Life, Poems, Poetry, Present, Responsibility, Revolution, Status, Status Quo, Universe | Leave a comment

POEM: Opportunity Accost

Posted on August 31, 2015 by

Having arrived
Delivered by a private message
The bad knews
Out of the weigh
Surrounded
Only
Good news ahead
Able to attack
On any affront

This poem is based on an old joke, that goes something like this: The courier arrives with news from the battlefield, telling the general that he has good news and bad news, and asks which he would like first. The general asks for the bad news first. The courier indicates that they are surrounded by the enemy. The general then asks for the good news. The courier replies, “The good news is that we can attack on any front.”

Every person that works on bettering the human condition knows that there is an abundance of needs, bordering on the overwhelming. This very reality is perhaps the leading cause of burnout among do-gooders. I like this old joke because it highlights the overwhelming opportunity present in life. While we may spend huge amounts of resources in needs assessments, and countless hours in planning meetings, to get just the right mix of strategies and interventions, you don’t have to look very far or even very closely to find human need. If a human need touches your heart, lend a hand, even your whole life if need be. As a former professional planner, now trying to recover from such a chronic predicament, I am reminded again of the quote from United Methodist theologian and activist Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” I suspect that whatever purported efficiency gained by most needs assessments and most time spent in planning meetings would be better invested in doing whatever makes us come alive amidst the dizzying array of human needs ripe for the plucking. For some rare individuals that may even be conducting needs assessments or planning meetings. For most, the time would be more enlivening spent in the fields of humanity where “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” (Luke 10:2, Matthew 9:37)

Posted in News, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Abundance, Efficiency, Heart, Humanity, Joke, Life, Poems, Poetry, Present, Reality, Time, Work | 1 Comment

POEM: Inspiring Life Itself

Posted on August 30, 2015 by

Hear
I am
My life
Unmeasured
By awe but
Smiles
And ours alone
A forum of love
Only known by agape
Sometimes taken as dope
And every sow often
Be held as a parent
Breathlessness
Be gotten heir
Inspiring life itself

Where does life come from? Some claim, in a type of miraculous skepticism, that life emerges out of nothingness. Others figure there is something more seamless in the creation of life, like coming from like. Regardless of where one’s perspective begins concerning the ultimate origins of life, most can agree that, in the here and now, life produces more life. Life in its fullness is contagious. Also, the highest human experiences seam to be inescapably linked to awe. Awe strikes me as being sublimely taken in by the sheer breathtaking and breath-giving nature of life. Awe seems close kin to gratitude, particularly of receiving something that transcends our own doing or merit. For me, such experiences inspire me to live in a way that will breath life into stale social contracts, however well contrived, and knock the wind out of social relationships where another’s humanity is bargained away for supposed profit. A life well-lived should be more full of celebration than calculation, carousing than conniving. We will gain much more from dancing than delineating which dances are viewed most positively by each market segment, so we can maximally profit off others’ dancing. Life, in its fullness, will dance around such cramped connivings. Of coarse, such lessens will be self-taut, whereas life involves a boundless teeming beyond grasping.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Awe, Creation, Dancing, Experience, Gratitude, Humanity, Life, Love, Market, Nature, Perspective, Poems, Poetry, Relationships, Skepticism | Leave a comment

POEM: Constipated Destiny

Posted on August 24, 2015 by

He knew knot
Exactly where
He was going
As fate would have it
Seized by easy convictions
Big house
Auto, pilot
And every won else’s
Re-guard
Of one self full
Filled
Buy in
And sell out
In humanity
A sure thing
The gold
In rule
A void
Apprehensions
Of vassal late
Making one’s self
The whore of certain knowledge
The john of dreams undared
Unfailing in his coarse
Fining himself
Scared to dearth
Of his constipated destiny meting

This poem deals with the vanity and danger of pursuing material success and cashing in on conventional wisdom. The good life is all too often pawned off as having fine possessions or relishing in status or celebrity. Possessions have a way of possessing us. In a world where so many have so little, fine possessions can be devilish. Status or celebrity has a way of simply highlighting our own emptiness or hypocrisy in a pressurized or scrutinized existence. Fine possessions and status are typically acquired through the successful use (and misuse) of conventional wisdom, or simply through unmerited privilege. Albeit, celebrity sometimes comes through more notorious means. Still, we all know where this leads: the well-worn hierarchies of winners and losers. In a constipated destiny, everyone knows their place. Predictability (sometimes better known as ‘security’) and fatalism serve as poor substitutes for true daring and bold hope. Well-worn rules (and rulers) of the game leave little but cheap thrills and expensive highs to assuage our stultified lives. The bulk of our lives are leased for weekends. Passionate vocations are bartered for passing vacations. Awe sold for certainty. Dreams pimped for fear of being a sucker, or worse. May you live a life where you are not scared to dearth, settling for mere material finery or tranquilizing status, a constipated destiny, or hellish blandness. May you follow your dreams in a way that literally scares the hell out of others!

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Awe, Celebrity, Conventional Wisdom, Dream, Dreams, Evil, Fear, Hell, Hope, Humanity, Hypocrisy, Life, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Poor, Possessions, Privilege, Rules, Security, Status, Success, Vanity, Vocation, Wisdom | Leave a comment

POEM: Fully Human When Wholly Divine

Posted on August 23, 2015 by

From wear
You ask
Came quiet
A storm
At the end
Of won’s rope
The blest piece
Ever no’ing still
Falling in too
A death too small to handle
A life too big to grasp
Laughing at what was wince
A mirror
A side
Having passed
The looking class
And seeing
One’s love
The phase of God
Fully human
When wholly divine

This poem is about glimpsing beyond the veil and rooting one’s life in the mysteries experienced from the other side, from passing through the looking glass. Of course, if unaware or too deeply skeptical to lend any credence to such experiences, then you can also reliably fall back on love manifest directly into this realm, as Victor Hugo, in his classic, Les Miserables, says, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” God is love and we only need to see love to see God. May you see love wherever you are looking, even if you don’t happen to be looking for love.

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Death, Experience, God, Life, Love, Poems, Poetry, Religious, Spiritual | Leave a comment

POEM: Awe The Deference In The Whirled

Posted on August 22, 2015 by

He said
She said
You seem full of yourself
Or full of something
As I would
Decidedly be
Rather mistaken
As too much for sum
Than sow scarcely perceived
In convenient lacking
A peace meal
Leaving hungry
Or crocodile tears
Without hankering
Putting oneself out
With friendly fire
And faux alike
Sew much
Wee must take in
The unconsuming whole
Hemmed in
The bind leading the bind
For if we were to a peer
As God sees us
As children sew sew proud
We’d break out
In stitches
Rather than
Go bust
At the seems
Making awe
The deference
In the whirled

This poem is about living largely into the grandiosity and wonder in which our souls are made. I have been accused on occasion of being full of myself. I just see this as being me — albeit really me! I see one of the major forms of social control in modern, so-call civilization as keeping people small. This oftentimes passes for humility. I suspect that as many times as not, the offense people commit against God and their nature is living much smaller than for which they were designed. I suspect that as many times as not, when someone expects someone else to stay “in their place,” it is less out of a desire for high morality than maintaining a predictable and unintimidating (also read uninspiring) environment that conveniently benefits their own status quo. Fully alive human beings are going to have an overflowing and even overwhelming quality that can be intimidating to those trying to hang onto a tightly ordered, small piece of real estate. Well, the real state of being fully human involves a perpetual freshness and a range of freedom that should be challenging and hopefully inspiring to others. Such newness incarnated in the world reveals the irrepressibly of hope, curiosity, playfulness, and creativity. Such free range humans inescapably reflect a certain lightheartedness in the face of seemingly serious social boundaries, recognizing the often arbitrary and inhumane nature of substituting abstract rules for face-to-face human relationship. Any dimension of newness present in humans can serve as a reminder and invitation for a fresh look into the soul of another. Such fresh looking can help us step out of the constricting algorithms of triangulating rules and compounding conventional wisdom into a jazzy rhythm that can only be experienced by playing with a band of eccentric souls. Such playing can cure the oh so lame and the hardening of the attitudes. When the overwhelming awesomeness of life bumps into the brick walls and lines in the sand of any given culture, that culture better get ready to change as purveyors of life dance over purported lines and occasionally take time out to break down a brick wall. Giving deference to awe invites a certain boldness in this whirled of ours. And if you should find hurt in this world, may you also find a way to break out of your stitches.

Posted in About Top Pun, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Attitude, Awe, Change, Children, Control, Conventional Wisdom, Creativity, Culture, Curiosity, Environment, Experience, Freedom, God, Heart, Hope, Humility, Life, Mind, Modern, Moral, Morality, Nature, Play, Playfulness, Poems, Poetry, Present, Rules, Soul, State, Status, Status Quo, Time, Wisdom | Leave a comment

POEM: More of the Sane

Posted on August 21, 2015 by

Going through life
Various docks said
You are just
Going through a phrase
And heeling
Wood be
Yores soon
Enough
Finally cured
Of awe
That is
Green
With envy
Of what might
Passably be
More of the sane

This poem is about the insanity of sanity. This has less to do with the faults of the status quo — though they are myriad — than it does coming alive, infectiously alive, in a living world. Security, in conventional wisdom, is sought through well-worn, predictable means. Such security is based on a knowledge of order present in the world. This is simply the triangulation of scientific facts, providing a coherent framework from which to navigate our lives. Yeah, go science! Well, order is knot the whole of life. Disorder is necessary for possibility, any veering from a determined course. Order as the hole of life negates freedom, creation, and certainly most of the fun. Of course, the point is not to create disorder, an abundance of that already exists, the point is to bring to life — that is, create — new order, more conducive and congruent with the higher and deeper orders present in creation. This perpetual creation and recycling is sharing in the experience of what it’s like to be God, perhaps God’s greatest gift. We are meant to play with creation, as God’s children, not be some play set for God or other humans to manipulate to their own — and our — constipated end. Our creation is not a disorder that needs to be cured, it need only respect life by infectiously creating more life. Such disorder is not a threat to the well-ordered physical world. However, such disorder is a metaphysical dis-ease with existence being reduced and lived (sic) out in simply a mechanical weigh. In truth, such disorder is a higher order that cannot be reduced to mere mechanics, lifting up the hood and fixing it. Such disorder is the infectious need to sail life’s oceans. Of course, this is vastly aided by abundant knowledge of shipbuilding, navigation, etc. Even greater though, it requires a love of discovery, a love of the feel of the ocean’s wind and spray in your face, and the courage to risk the vagaries of the wild, the powerful, and the unknown. While boldly and infectiously sailing life’s oceans may strike many as much less secure than, say, building ships for others, I strongly suspect that one of God’s deepest desires for us is to freely be the captains of our own lives. However exquisitely we may craft tools for others, God does not desire that we simply be tools for others — that would deny God’s exquisite craftsmanship. God is a crafty one, peering behind the veil of indeterminacy, which many consider a disorder itself. This thorniness behind creation results in much anguish and pain, the inescapable fareness of a free life. The thorny crown atop God’s craftiness is unparalleled, except perhaps among humans, made in God’s image, where an irrepressible willingness to pain the prize is billed in. May your inborn desire to create be guided by an abiding respect for life and it’s infectious nature seeking know cure.

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Abundance, Awe, Children, Conventional Wisdom, Courage, Creation, Envy, Experience, Facts, Freedom, Gift, God, Image, Insanity, Life, Love, Nature, Play, Poems, Poetry, Possibility, Power, Present, Rage, Recycling, Respect, Risk, Science, Security, Status, Status Quo, Truth, Willingness, Wisdom, Work | Leave a comment

POEM: Attorney General Edwin Meese III

Posted on August 20, 2015 by

I know of a man I never met
A foe of mine, I can only bet
A very close impersonal friend
To my unknown needs he’s supposed to tend
To rehabilitate me from what to what
Maybe he’s a pure-bred and I’m only a mutt
We make quite a pair
‘cept it’s me in the pound
Yet he’s always around
A thousand miles away
Yet I can hear his voice
“If charged you are guilty”
“If hungry it’s your choice”

I wrote this poem in 1987 while imprisoned for my epic failure to register for the military draft. Below is a copy of the actual handwritten poem. I had the original taped on my office wall near my desk for years.

Draft registration was reinstated by President Jimmy Carter as a response to the Russians invading Afghanistan. Seems to me that invading Afghanistan would have been punishment enough. We had the opportunity to learn such as lesson later — or not. President Ronald Reagan, after breaking a campaign promise to abolish draft registration, continued it. I was in the first batch of young men subject to this new law in 1980. I spent the entire decade sparring with the world’s greatest military superpower, with a couple of years of probation and community service ending in 1989 — like I need the federal government to sentence me to community service! Out of the millions of young men in violation of this Military Selective Service Act, less than a dozen were convicted of such flagrancy; all were public in their opposition. Seems pretty pathetic for a so-called superpower. I didn’t learn my lessen.

I feel no need for vindication, but I do feel like I have now lived through a full cycle of history, and history is on my side, if you believe in sides, that is. While assuring my incarceration to make sure that I wasn’t around to not defend our homeland, the U.S. was training and equipping their version of freedom fighters, the likes of Osama bin Laden and the lesser known Frank N. Stein.

This poem is about President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General, Edwin Meese III. Though there was a lot of competition, Ed Meese was only clearly beat out as the most pathetic administration crony by James Watt, Secretary of the Department of Interior, which Mr. Watt, in his signature suicidal hatred of government, wanted to abolish; though it’s still not entirely clear whether it was the department or the environment he wanted to destroy. Ed Meese was infamous for the two sayings recounted in the last two lines of my poem. In an astounding disavowal of the U.S. Constitution, Mr. Meese, claimed that most suspects can be rightly assumed to be guilty. Well, it’s not like he was the overseer of federal and constitutional law — sheesh! The other statement, out of the jurisdiction of even his ignorance, was that if people are hungry in America, it’s their choice. When I heard this, I could have swore that his little round belly shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly. Well, OK, it wasn’t his belly full of jelly.

I’ve made my choice, and 28 years later I’m still hungry for justice…

Posted in About Top Pun, Anti-War, Peace, Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged America, Community, Competition, Constitution, Draft Registration, Environment, Failure, Freedom, government, History, Impersonal, Justice, Law, Military, Poems, President, Protest Poetry, Punishment | Leave a comment

POEM: Megabus Late

Posted on August 18, 2015 by

The loco bus
Was barely running
Trafficking in creep after creep
At Lake & Michigan
It was sink or swim
Facing too soon departed
To be won or lost
By foot
Right, left, right, left, right, left, right
Miraculously walking on Water St.
Run
Run forced
Run
Will it be
Decided by a minute minute
No bus in site
Faded to stay
In Chicago another day
Only then realizing
The line I had crossed
As pre-sumptuously late
Other poor soles
As per usual waiting
Fore the Toledo Megabus
Mega-late

This poem emanates from my trip earlier this summer out to Iowa. This poem is from the last of four legs of a Megabus trip. As it turns out, two of the four buses broke down and had to replaced with regular tour buses. This poem is about the serendipity of things not always working out as planned. Oddly, it never occurred to me that the bus I was racing to on foot would be late. While the bus ended up being two hours late, this was much better than missing the bus by mere minutes! What a beautiful thing that a bus being two hours late is a cause for celebration! I am a big fan of serendipity. As a recovering professional planner, I have spent much of my life planning to “make things happen.” Fortunately, I have witnessed so many times in my life that my plans not turning out as I liked turned out even better. As I have been known to say: God never gives me what I want; God gives me something much better! My daughter now parrots back to me the saying: If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans. More recently, you might find me repeating the Niels Bohr quip: “Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.” Though perhaps John Lennon said it best: “Life is what happens while you are making other plans.” May your life be overflowing with wonderful surprises.

Posted in About Top Pun, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Beautiful, Future, God, John Lennon, Life, Poor, Serendipity, Surprises, Toledo | Leave a comment

POEM: God’s Perish

Posted on August 17, 2015 by

I under stood
God’s might
And might not
And in awe probability
New
That I
Will only
Fooly see
Phase to phase
Until awe of creation
Come prized my parish

This poem is about dying to see the face of God. This takes two forms: dying when unable to see the face of God and dying if a mere mortal human were to see the face of God. The first form is the traditional form preached about and at others to point out their deficiencies and need for God. I find this form fraught with peril as pedantic and fixated on the lack of God’s presence, the very thing it seeks to dispel! As if God could successfully hide; fortunately, on this account, God is a total loser. God bursts forth from creation, if not well reflected in humans, then from nature. Still, God is a total loser because God cannot reveal God’s full face to humans without literally blowing out our mind and being as humans. There is a protective veil necessary to preserve and maintain human existence. I am far more intrigued with this second form of dying to see the face of God, the Oneness of awe, worthy of my worship. My deep faith is roughly matched with deep skepticism for authority. I want peace and reconciliation in this matter — perhaps even to the point of my matter exploding.

The Judaeo-Christian tradition of dying if one were to see the face of God originates in Exodus 12-23, when Moses is on Mount Sinai receiving the ten commandments from “I am,” the name God chose to reveal to Moses. This is how the conversation is retold (NIV translation):

Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”

The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”

And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”

In a conversation with one of my former pastors related to seeing the backside of God, I noted that this made perfect sense, that is, a carpenter son would have a plumber for a father. His irrepressible grin and laugh reflected the joy that is the infallible presence of God.

For as much as God does, God may seem to do little to nail down God’s intentions at the crossroads of our lives — humans seem much more intent on that! In surpassing logic, God proffers a taught a logical lessen: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” Grate! So God expects me to lead my life based on mercy and compassion coming out literally from God knows where?! Of course, there is also that whole ten commandments thing, written in stone no less! In the coarse of life, the Jews expanded this to 613 laws, establishing a firm foundation for eternal arguments. My whole point is this: it is never enough. As my one-line poem matriculates: I often find myself stuck in that awkward time between birth and death. This built in yearning to understand God and God’s creation drives both spiritual enterprises and scientific endeavors. Learning to live into this fundamental yearning, whether experienced as the mystical union with God or a unified scientific understanding, comprises much of wisdom: Until awe of creation / Come prized my parish.

Awe of this wrests in the shadow of an unwholly dissatisfaction. I am deeply intrigued by the profound dissatisfaction with spiritual enterprises, most commonly cited as religion, that live in this shadow. Ironically, in such a critique of religion, this perfectionism and idealism to which religion falls woefully short is precisely that which under-girds religion: the quest for a coherent whole which can bring with it the peace of heart and mind. This common quest is shattered by fundamentalism, weather buy religious legalists or militant atheists. I view such fundamentalism as the grate divide in life, not simply the speak easy surrounding theism.

I am fascinated by the contention often put forward by atheists, that God is a projection of human minds. There is much truth in this. Psychologically speaking, projection is superimposing the ego’s shadow, or incomplete understanding, onto that outside the ego, thereby purporting or inferring a distorted truth. More simply put: “We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.” Of course, this is neither proof nor reproof in the master debate over theism. This is true whether God’s perish or God’s parish. Nonetheless, projection is a powerful force and critical diagnosis each of us should make to move toward a more robust and healthy relationship with reality. The diagnosis of projection is a necessary but not sufficient condition, the hallmark of never-ending scientific discovery.

The deeper quest in is how do we best move through inevitable projection and, even more boldly, firmly center our self (ego) in a ground of being that will most reliably guide us to an expanding humanity and more accurate under standing of the deepest realities. I contend that the spiritual master Jesus best articulated this in the spiritual practice and commandment (a should) by instructing us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. I am unaware of any more powerful and reliable guide to an expanding humanity and more accurate under standing of the deepest realities, whether from a religious or an atheistic perspective. I cite my own experience and the experience of millions of others in testing out this hypothesis with scientific rigor and skin in the game much greater than most of the most articulate purveyors of scientific discovery. Most simply put, if you want to put the God hypothesis to the test and dare experience a glimpse of the awe mighty, this may very well be the closest we can get: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” This existential treat ease rests on authority emanating from scientific rigor applied to our whole life and God deeply roots for us to experience this phase to phase in hour life. In the face of a whirled of hurt, may your life reflect the mercy and compassion that comes from God knows wear.

Posted in About Top Pun, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings, Uncategorized | Tagged Argument, Atheist, Authority, Awe, Christian, Compassion, Creation, Death, Enemies, Existential, Experience, Faith, Fundamentalism, God, Heart, Humanity, Idealism, Ironic, Jesus, Joy, Law, Learning, Life, Logic, Love, Mercy, Militant, Mind, Mystic, Mystical, Nature, Passion, Pastor, Perfectionism, Perspective, Poems, Poetry, Power, Probability, Projection, Reality, Reconciliation, Religion, Religious, Skepticism, skin in the game, Spiritual, Success, Time, Truth, Wisdom, Worship | Leave a comment

POEM: Reining In Global Warning

Posted on August 15, 2015 by

The economy was
Humming
Having change
Their tune
Given
The overabundance
Of hot water
And cell a-steam
Showering down
Hour earthly reign
In the scheme of things
In a call amity
Of biblical portions
They had everything
Save the earth
And after
Having one
Wore on the environment
Mother earth’s
Pursed lips
At the outpouring cache
A river bed
Tried to the bone
Of no use
Pointing fingers
As more than
Putting up
With money where mouth is
Re: tardily sane
As never too be
Ever food agin
Mouthing a mint
In perpetual bad taste
Sow un-full
Filling a void
That wee only have
Won planet
Wont of reign

Yet another poem mourning the way we treat our beloved Mother Earth. As global warning wrings out more lost species, extinct forever in the wake of our mindless consumption and heartless capitalism, I am reminded wince again of the Cree Indian prophecy: “Only when the last tree has been felled, the last river poisoned and the last fish caught, man will know, that he cannot eat money.” Can you help but ask weather when we put our money where our mouth is if it will be too late. If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy. If mankind can’t let go of the crappy job he’s doing, mama will get unrule he Let us not temp our mother.

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Abundance, Capitalism, Change, Consumption, Economy, Environment, Extinction, Food, Job, Love, Money, Mother Earth, Mourning, Poems, Poetry | Leave a comment

POEM: A Thoreau Reading — Owed To Awe That Sucks

Posted on August 13, 2015 by

Some say
That he sucked
The marrow from life
And resin ate
Down to my bones
Blood brothers
In what is
Not a race
To judge knot
In won slice of life
Or as-certain fine truth
From lowly metaphor
And in due coarse
Don’t wait
For meaning found
In dried bones

This poem is a tip of the hat to Henry David Thoreau and the value of raw experience and overflowing passions over disembodied philosophizing and moral asceticism. Thoreau’s famous mission statement for his life in the woods is recorded in his book, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods, as follows:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

Life is to be delved into, dived into, not dispassionately observed from the sidelines. The passions embodied in following our bliss are great teachers of both the extravagantly abundant and radically simple facets of life. The greater sin in life is to be bound to material and moral finery at the expense of an uncertain coarseness and careening zest for life. Mistakes will be made, but few greater than resignation or trepidation yielding that which is narrow rather than marrow. May you suck at life and on the marrow find life sturdier.

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Awe, Experience, Facts, Life, Meaning, Moral, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Radical, Thoreau, Truth | Leave a comment

POEM: Corn Porn

Posted on August 10, 2015 by

Awe shucks
Are you ripe for the picking
Or just glad to see me
She cried out
All ready
Enough!
To make the maters blush

OK, here’s an overwhelmingly fresh, corny, summer poem, in honor of my recent trip to relatives in the great state of Iowa. Pretty much speaks for itself. You are welcome to take it any way you like it…

Posted in About Top Pun, Poems | Tagged Awe, Funny, Poems, Poetry, Short Poems, State | Leave a comment

POEM: Putting The Monet In Monetize

Posted on August 9, 2015 by

The starving artist
Whose art couldn’t be made
Fast enough
Fore his dealer
Rejecting means
Except as accede
In awe but name groan
Poising as a plant
To the extant one can make cents
Putting the Monet in monetize

This poem goes out for awe of the artists successfully resist compromising their heart in order to achieve commercial success. Compromising our humanity to monetize our lives seems to be at the core of our capitalist culture. The stark choices between money and people often appear surreal due to the sheer omnipresence of selling out. When sickness becomes the norm, a healthy path seems insane. As Krishnamurti so aptly stated, “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Art serves a purpose far deeper than “making a living, ” by connecting and re-connecting us to our most primal and highest feelings and aspirations. Art can serve as an antidote to the societal sickness built on wanton conformity and shallow efficiency. Perhaps fortunately, art is often so undervalued that it serves as a ready vehicle for giving freely, de-linked from monetary ventures. Perhaps giving freely seems like an un-fiord-able luxury (perhaps privilege is a more apt word), but carving out spaces and places for that which cannot be bought is at the core of a healthy humanity, and hopefully not merely an afterthought. In perhaps the ultimate irony of artists and their art in a capitalistic culture, the most reliable way to increase the commercial value of your art is to die. Rather than the death by a thousand compromises suited to most modern jobs, artists may literally need to die to boost the commercial value of their work. The gods of supply and demand favor dead artists. Hopefully, artists will be better valued by their enlivening passion instilled in their art rather than the mortifyingly clammy calculus of the marketplace. Starve the beast, make art; and may you find it full, filling.

Posted in Health, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Art, Awe, Choices, Commercial, Compromise, Conformity, Culture, Death, Efficiency, God, Heart, Hope, Humanity, Irony, Job, Jobs, Market, Modern, Monetize, Money, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Privilege, Quotes, Society, Success, Surreal, Work | Leave a comment

POEM: Gimps of Heaven

Posted on August 8, 2015 by

To the skies lifted
The lairs of heaven unfold
In speechless beauty
That would deify description
My eyes and hands
Razed freely
Embracing awe
That heaven was packing
In mirror seconds
To be
Thanking
That God
Of the quick
And the dead
Thou sparest cell
And crampiest image
As vision screened
Buy a second hand whirled
Apple in hand
Head hung
Feat dangling
Amid heir
Too emotion picture
Only taken
Still
Buy ahead in the cloud
Captured in eternity
Likely never experienced
As real eyes
That in which a head
Re-mining me
That eye
Made only slightly
Less than angels
Of what missing
Ahhhh
Gimps of heaven

I wrote this poem riding the Megabus to Chicago. I was staring into the heavens, struck by the majesty of the clouds and the ethereal feel that they emanated. Likely nobody else on the bus was available for such an experience, because most were busy on their assorted and sundry electronic devices, interfacing with a different sort of cloud. I pondered the notion that the heavens could open up and a tsunami of angelic forces could grace us with their presents and nobody else would notice, not at least until possibly published online with a few seconds delay and displayed on a less-than-majestically-sized screen. I view our obsession with electronic paraphernalia as disabling our souls, a sort of anti-prosthesis that instead of making us more whole robs us of ever-present presents. Being a “gimp” of heaven is not some defect wrought upon us by some cruel and enigmatic God. There is a better life beyond our reliance on coping with life through electronic prostheses. Even with all the pain and befuddlement in life, I strongly suspect that simply experiencing such realities directly is better than obsessively tuning into some post-game show after the fact for some crowd-sourced analysis. On that bus, my lonely gratitude pined for a world where there was more face-to-face presence in the now — which, of course is present now, and quiet certainly lacking luster in beeping re-runs. So, may you stand up and walk without your prostheses, and if you find this awkward or even painful, it’s OK people to walk with glimpse.

Posted in About Top Pun, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged Awe, Beauty, Experience, God, Grace, Gratitude, Heaven, Image, Life, Poems, Poetry, Present, Soul | Leave a comment

POEM: Curt-sy

Posted on August 6, 2015 by

He was packing
Enough courtesy
In a singular hi
More sow
Than a jillion marketers
Shooting their wad of scripts

Most people seem to be in a hurry most of the time. This poem is about courtesy and curtness. This short poem was inspired by a telephone call from the American Red Cross asking me to donate platelets since I was eligible three days after my recent whole blood donation. The telemarketer, blood donor recruitment associate, or whatever he might have been called, called nicely enough. After thanking me for my 48 blood donations, I indicated to him that I intended to stick with my long-successful strategy of donating a few times a year. His script was replete with ingratiations alternating with asks. I’ve asked a number of times before for the Red Cross to stop calling me 58 days after each donation. They managed to call me after 38 days. This being the third poem I wrote today, I had a couple of minutes to spare, so I listened to the short end of his shtick. What caught my attention was the well-designed courtesy sounding a byte like a 33-record played at 45 (a reference for you old folks). I suspect his worth is valued more by the number of calls rather than their quality. As a patient in his hospitality, I wish him productive heeling. Needle-less to say, I felt a bit like I was in a lineup for someone trying to break a whirled record for the most thank yous in a day. Such experiences capture my issue with our fixation on quantity over quality — probably because it’s easier to be measured. Personally, I practice hearty greetings, even to replete strangers.

Posted in About Top Pun, Poems | Tagged American Red Cross, Hospitality, Poems, Poetry, Rat Race, Short Poems, Time | Leave a comment

POEM: Wee Lives

Posted on August 5, 2015 by

Wee live
In a whirled
Determined
To be
Or not to be
Making head weigh
At an impassable gait
In effable hustle
A jeer of our peers
That hurry can knock us down
Or give momentary flights
Holding out that portentous raze
And awe that can be done
As one
Sounds off
Within
The I of the storm
Effacing hail from above
Heavin’ from bellow
It’s awe too big
Wee
Can’t hold it
In feudal urgency
To pee or not to pee
Is not the quest in
Prefiguring some wiz in the sky
Or spitting into the tempest of all
Expect or rating too much
As how many angles can you fit in a pinhead
And still idol minds alike
Sow ponderous
As wee plot a long
Master-full ark
Buoying our grave undertakings
Measured in feat (customarily half-dozin’)
Oar how many pee-wee leagues under the see
As wee under go
The vicious cycle a loan
And presumed raging above
Wile all else
Holy beneath me
Hour lonely consolation prize
An unending stream
Of I cons and effigies
From mobile chimeras
Re-cording virtually everything
Still life un-more
As colored in millions of weighs
Marooned, blue, and doggedly yellow
Leaking buckets of stout meanings
Full only of those flipping angry birds
As we pass on
And piss off
As a gust in this fare whirled
In league with one an other
In choir
How won might
Myth the point
A mist being
Sprayed and neutered
Engendering duplicity
And obscure human rites
From witch
Sow many
Must ultimately depart
A reluctant re-treat
In urgently having to go
And having flailed
In countering a wind wind situation
Must still
Go
Won on won
With our spitting image
Convinced that in what is wasted
Is a 95% solution
Worthy of imbibing
And mirrorly a tad yellow
Satisfied in its reigning from above

This poem juxtaposes many common yet seemingly incongruous themes. This poem may be prototypical in melding daily life with divine ponderings and cheap jokes related to urination. I delight in the interplay between such themes, ultimately pointing to the paradoxical reverence of irreverence. I have little interest in a God distant from everyday life. I have more interest in the plight of creatures vainly trying to escape their wee lot in life. I root for creatures to find their truest roots. For me, I find this as a decidedly spiritual project tempered by kicking the buckets of piss and vinegar I find so abundantly. Go deep or go home…but I repeat myself.

Posted in About Top Pun, Poems | Tagged Awe, God, Holy, Image, Irreverence, Joke, Life, Meaning, Play, Poems, Poetry, Reverence, Spiritual | Leave a comment

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