.

The only true crime in life

Is refusing to take help
When it’s there —
.
Refusing growth,
Refusing splendour
When it becomes
Your identity’s neutralization,
.
The peonies by your window sill
Grown lonely
Before
Your crosseyed seance with the rain.

..

“Mother Earth

Mother Earth

Mother Earth

Take pain away”

– Jesu

…

South Bend is unique, in a way, because you go out into nature not only to escape the homogenous masses (not that South Bend really has homogenous masses), pollution and unwanted noises, but to escape aggression, too, from humanity itself. I found my mouth making a shape it hasn’t made in a while during my trip out to this pond, a shape I used to make in my youth during relaxed times.

This pond is situated right across the street from Irish Hills apartments. In general, there’s such a rustic feel about the South side. Its hills and undulations bely the character-laden care taken in the neighborhoods’ architecture. Great street names emerge on unique overlooks like “Clyde,” “Leer” and “Golfview,” and the neighborhoods often tease grid shape with curves tree-grooved inlets.
True to form, the wildlife out here seems too quick to catch on camera. In addition to a couple brilliantly colored dragonflies, right away I saw one of those fat little beasties scurrying the best it could laboriously into the underbrush, in flight of me. It must have been a beaver, or something, though I’m definitely no expert.

Caution

Is the primary
Human preservation mechanism,
.
And the primary human
Vice.

I would see all things renewed

After getting
Just that little smile,
.
I’d see the miraculous eyes of the
Blond bartender,
Feeling the horror
At the way her body had filled in,
It was those same dark eyes
Caressing moments of the esoteric
But always to deluge,
Always to cascade on to me,
Massaging my deepest qualms,
Quandaries and miseries,
And stymying them into the margins,
.
And then,
I would reflect with every memory I knew,
The night moving too fast for my taste,
The music getting too fast,
When I AM the music,
I have so much to give,
Having received.

A perfect picture
Of panorama possibility
Unfolds before us
In this life
Like roses
Buoying holiday cheer’s
Chasm between storms and
The looming rush
Of this infernal quagmire
We call hope,
So at the end of the day
It’s like Michael Jackson said:
“Don’t stop ‘til you get enough.”

The oeuvre of beauty

Glows lightly
To find fault in the darkness,
To seek out its entrails and there blaspheme pure miracle.
.
Find a way,
Then,
To respect yourself,
Because that is the only way,
Even
.
As it seems antithetical,
These little glowing pantomimes everywhere
Seeming to exude such poignance,
Bless even them
With atavistic intrepidness,
Because that is you.

When we get together,

And we’re smiling,
We’re realizing our true potential,
And it’s nothing like
The money man said,
In fact I don’t see him anywhere,
He’s up in his high rise,
The last to hear when anything’s happening.

So in interacting with the women,

We find also
That the women are in revealing clothing
In the workplaces
As if
Pulling the last card from their hand
.
And I’m not sexist,
I’m not the one to say that this was their only card
All along,
.
But maybe it’s the one we gave them still
In society’s wake
.
As we all watch the metallic rotation
In the sky
That’s jealous of our green heavens
And get a little scared.

No opinion could ever be as good as pedagogy, and at the fertile basin of pedagogy are genuine human interest, and genuine human kindness. The desire to help is the primary human quest, and should always preclude, and precede, semantics of right and wrong.

“I know you’ll be a good mom,”

I said to her.
She was just smiling and being still,
That way that girls have of doing,
Not understandable by men.
“Even if you don’t always know it,”
I then put in.
I didn’t gauge her expression after I said this,
But I got to thinking,
I got to worrying,
Maybe I’m pumping her up too much,
And she’ll turn into some authoritative, alcoholic hag.
So then,
It’s,
Do you say,
Well,
The shapeshifting miasma may turn you into an authoritative, alcoholic hag,
Of course you don’t.