Still not a f@^##$×*! prop comic, btw. All of these are our sacred ritual objex. I just need them for now, like wit’ my ski sticks here.
An’ yes, I am continuing to beat dis Dead horse about my cult – a LEAST until one of youse converts to the Corleone Comedy Cult.
Yeah, …convert , and then I can stop, and I’ll do new jokes. Because I DO got other jokes. But I got my instructions from the Comedy Pope. Just one of youse has to convert first, then we can move on. So who’s gonna take one for the team? It’s like what Jesus did, right? By his whuppin’, we are healed!
Would’ve been a “basket”, except I was aiming for her mouth with the popcorn.
Currently underway:
One Novel
Two short stories
One holiday-themed musical comedy stage show
Two short films
One podcast, possibly a second
New Poems and/or songs at least weekly, sometimes daily
Art photography
Creative social media posts
Cooking and developing recipes
Chikrainian Oatmeal, featuring sugar beet chips, brown sugar, almond whipped cream.The Santa Lucia Omelette –ham, cheese, spinach, bell pepper, Greek or Italian herbs… all arranged like a wreath crown.
After the holiday rush, we bundle up and stay home. But we still make things.One for the ladies?Some dragons spit fire… others just blow smoke. Which am I? You decide. [with #ColleenFranciscus in the Gen-Xmas well-lit #Sauganash neighborhood of #Chi… and at home.]
The First Noel the Angels did sing…Baby got back… thanks to our anise Christmas cookies.words and music, love and power, melody and sweet sweet harmony…
I got the Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Christmas Boogie Flu.
[a poem of Hamletian Herculean Hesitation, for Gregory, Lakeisha, and frightened fiancees everywhere]
12/22/23, by Mark Nielsen
I, in myself, and beyond my skin, am a thin place, a diamantic frantic liminal space.
*** I pass from this universe into the next 1000, simultaneously in any and all directions: East, West, up, plutonian, Dionysian, dark rye direction, and the rum-raisin gun-totin’ gut-wrenchin’ down the drain direction, while passing alongside the 219th Fermented Parallel heading toward the Godhead (next exit past Goshen, Exit Number x+y² = emcee).
We walk it, generally, Albert and I. Letter by letter, pill by leaf by forest by elephant queef. Our pachydermititus occasionally flares up, but we walk on, me and Albert the Indian Elephant. (Oh, …you thought that *I* get pachydermititus?! No. It’s Albert. I’m a smooth criminal.)
When we read the map– erasing it as we go– we take a finely sharpened ✏️ and wit. I punch through Egyptian papyrus, to write upon the British Parliament funkadelic parchment Big Sur Walter Raleigh map beneath, without even seeing what I’ve written on the second sheath.
(Never let the idle hand know, what the writing hand has written. Idle hands are the devil’s Phillips screwdrivers. Left Hand of God, Jr. will only come unscrewed, unglued, tell the secret too soon. Then the mobs will be hot on our trail, rollin’ and tumblin’ so that we fail to get Universe 3.14.54 Grampa Gamma, where I am to be married. Y’all are invited, if’n you can find it.)
Sometimes we– Albert and me– take the 🐈, da cool cat, Rio de Febrero, who sits atop Albert upon my lap, but she does not like the extreme heat of that jungle, and the way rea lity, ………tends to wig gle, and giggle and buc kle and ↘️↪️➡️ ↩️ then go all liquidy, as time ooooozes like a Dali clock🫠. When she passes from this universe to ♐️ the next one over, 57° eastwestward, she often coughs up a hairstar. For that is the world where she is not in the catbird seat anymore, but is the huntress falcon, unable to resist swooo oooo ooooping down with lightning speed, to break the neck of small kittens, and hungrily tear their flesh to eat.
(You can understand. We all eat our own, from time to time. But only the rare breed savors it. Yet Rio de Febrero does not have the stomach for it.)
When we arrive at Gamma Grampa or Lazy Sunrise (Playmate Galaxy of the Eon, back in 1492, before her tits started to sag), we say a prayer of gratitude for safe travels.
Albert usually deposits me at
☄️George Bailey’s comet depot, as long as we are on time to catch my next ride onward———-> (to the ghetto across the tracks, of course,
where Mary Lou is waiting in her wedding dress, womb still waiting at the altar– at the makeshift altar made of frozen imported pomegranate juice, …and melting fast).
Mary Loom gets so testy when I am late (and I am always late, having stopped, usually, on the porch outside the depot to sing a 3-hour song with Sister Marietta Tharp and the Flanneries — her band of Expensive Communion Winos. They’re always there, always waiting for the midnight train to Georgia– which hasn’t been through that station since the Bronze Age of Earth. But still, they happily jam away and patiently wait.)
Should I get married ? should I be good ? desiring this man’s tact and that man’s scope and wood? should I have hope? that the marriage will last and I’ll this time escape the hangman’s rope?
This is what I contemplate, as I gleefully ride Sister Marietta’s thumping thumb bass, so great, into the second hour of song on the Train in Vain platform. Am I wrong… to hesitate?
Every eon, I await the veritable vertical transitory Tower of Power, of the Last Train to Clarksville, arriving every hour. I need to find a universe where the centre can still hold, and I never get old.
The door to leave is always open.
I never and always leave. I tap out the rhythm and rhyme on a few collectible Taylor Swift(™) plastic popcorn buckets, arranged
like a simple Ringo kit (no splash required for a two-step dance tune with a simple backbeat, though I do use a coffee can lid as a symbolic cymbal, plus an actual cowbell para ritmo cumbia). [Back off, vaca! Esta campana es mía, de… de… de… de mi tío Ruben La Cuchilla ! ]
Should I dance with Mary?…. Lou, … marry Lou? Make merry? Miss Mary Mack the Knife? “Hello, Mary Lou. Goodbye heart.” Merrily we roll along, grab a treble, go looking for trouble.
Should I stay or should I go? I was a free man in Paris.
“I stand at the door and knock.” I hear Their footfall behind the door, approaching. Soon I will know.
***
I know the way by heart.
by Mark Sebastian Nielsen Friday December 22, 12:39pm CST*
*in Bartlett, IL, USA, North America, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Sol, Milky Way
As with any good newspaper, the hard news is “below the fold”. I may come out of this with a black eye, but I still believe “truth will out”, as Shakespeare once wrote.
An insipid poster I defaced, in one of the many corrupt scenarios where I’ve been employed. To see the truth, read *between* the lines.
.
1]
After seeing Bradley Cooper’s brilliant “Maestro” [talk-to-text heard “my stroke”] –about the equally brilliant but complicated Lenny Bernstein– now I’m listening to a recent and damning JFK/CIA New York Magazine article… …during this listening session, while driving home, I then noticed one private therapist business (or NFP ministry) called “Care for Soul ” [Goofle misheard “Seoul” here ]. Its name is written in big, bold red letters on the front. Next door to that building, also in big, bold red letters: “Wine and Liquor”.
.
2]
When the truth is so buried, and willfully so, by our leaders (as with JFK, and not just the assassination) –or necessarily buried, by artists or journalists fearing bias and reprisal if they “tell”– it’s no wonder we drink. Or need therapy and pastoring. Or choose to see a CGI popcorn-pushing blockbuster. Or do whatever to manage the cognitive dissonance between the USA’s propaganda about Freedom, and the harsh truths about what is repressed or suppressed (whether within the heart, or in churches and other houses of worship, or within the government and infrastructure).
.
3]
I also heard two quick terrestrial radio news stories this morning that were relevant and alarming. The first was about a massive recall of over 2M Teslas, over the A.I.-managed driver “attention” (or near-self-driving) feature, that is being blamed for hundreds of auto accidents. On its heels, the second news story involved lawsuits or recalls on a popular item for young kids, pushed by Amazon, that has resulted in choking incidents and fatalities. I’d do the deep research, esp. on Musk… but it’s not my job. In theory, i’s the government’s– in BOTH cases. Besides which, I have very little power, nor platform, nor actual freedom, to publicly distribute my dissent with these large private companies or public corporations that affect our daily lives. They also have very good lawyers.
.
4]
Meanwhile, I do have a brain, a pen, a computer (to dig into genuine history, literature and science), and a camera. Plus a caring, desperate community or two… some of whom drink, as previously discussed –and IN disgust. They’re still looking for answers. Therefore, for example, I trust Stephen Colbert’s Late Show monologue writers more than any news agency– nor the government, nor any company’s hard-working, lying or deluded P.R. department. .
5]
When Reality is this absurd, and our already embattled human nature is this compromised or ill-informed, it’s always been the radically honest religionists, vulnerable workers, compassionate caregivers, and lunchbox philosophers who truly see the truth: that it’s all One Big Joke. No wonder some actual cults believe this whole shitshow is Satan’s kingdom. They’re probably right… on that, at least. But certainly not about the solution. Joker gets the last laugh. Jester only defies the king at the cost of his or her own head. And yet some subversives or creatives still do just that. “Trust Woolite“.
The Santa Chronicles : Letters and Confessions of a Shopping Mall Santa Claus
Prologue: Friday, Nov. 16, 2001 – 1:30pm.
Today I start the journey of a thousand miles, the journey to the North Pole, to the absolute height of weirdness.
This morning I was reading over my printed Mall Santa Instruction Booklet for how to be a good Santa Claus. Mostly it’s a reminder not to be a mean or sloppy Santa Claus. This might have seemed like a dream job when I agreed to it last month, but this booklet makes it seem so mundane now. There’s an essential section on how to deal with kids who are scared of Santa. These instructions suggest, among other things, “no sudden movements”. Of course, troublemaker that I am, I immediately thought how funny it would be to walk around a crowded mall in a Santa suit doing kung-fu moves and howling like Bruce Lee. “Hiiiiieeey-YAH! HoooWah! Ho Ho Ho!”.
I think I’m going to be the worst smart-aleck of a Santa in the history of malls. Maybe the worst in U.S. History.
For example, I just can’t stop thinking about all the weird, funny possibilities of this “role of a lifetime”.
Which leads to my top ten list, probably the first of many:
Top Ten Things NOT To Say When You’re Santa Claus
10) “Ooh, watch it kid. Don’t sit there. Santa’s got a rash.”
9) “No, seriously Jimmy. I was born with this white hair. At age ten, I looked ridiculous. All the other kids in Sweden laughed at me. Of course, I got the last laugh. Now I bring them coal for their Christmas stockings.”
8) “Hey, Santa’s Little Helper. See what you can do about getting me a beer from upstairs. I gotta keep sitting here, sweating in this suit for the next three hours. Oh, and get me the remote control for that TV in the store over there. I wanna see the Bears game.”
7) “Yeah, little Janie, back when I was in Joliet Penitentiary, doing two years for Breaking and Entering, I ran into a few problems with the Latin Kings. But once I got out, my homies from the Pole really showed them who was King. They’re still cleaning reindeer crap off the sidewalks, and it’s been almost two years now.”
6) “Dragonball Z? What the heck is Dragonball Z? How’s about a nice toy truck like kids used to do? And you over there, Mom. Yeah, you… when you get home, kill your television, before it kills you first.”
5) “Sorry, the elves are fresh out of Pokemons. Will a Digimon do? How ’bout a few Ninja Turtle action figures? I’ve been trying to unload backstock for five years now.”
4) “So this morning, when I was washing my hair and beard in the bathroom sink with Woolite, I had this idea… Trade in the sleigh for a hovercraft, and I’ll be done with my Christmas Eve deliveries in plenty of time for a hearty breakfast with Donald Trump in Manhattan. We’re thinking of opening a new casino together– Santa Street. It’s sort of a theme casino, plenty of gals dressed as elves, serving $8.00 drinks to out-of-towners trying to double their Christmas bonus. Poor suckers never learn, do they?”
3) “Red leather is the way to go. The Santa from Rockfield Mall says his tips from the mommies have increased by about 40% since he switched. He’s getting seriously paid, bro’.”
2) “Hey kid… pull my finger.”
…and let’s not forget the ever-unpopular:
1–“Sorry, no guns. You’ll shoot your eye out.”
Merry Merry, oh lovely friends and neighbors. Bring your kids to see me on Friday afternoons or Saturday mornings, if you dare.
I guess I’m borrowing another Scout’s work. The bunny… the bunny… so many questions… Poppies , Dorothy! Poppies!
7.14
According to a relatively unbiased panel on climate on CNN today:
$125T private/public expenditures will be needed to reach Holy Zero, climate-wise, in the Green Transition by 2050…
The “radio” news story I listened in on says we’re only at like $3T or something, if that (though I missed the time period they cited regarding that expenditure number). But the majority of people are already getting conscience/change fatigue…
e.g. : the past year was supposedly a banner one for venture capital investment in clean energy…
BUT … the failure of, for example, Silicon Valley Bank recently, and some cryptocurrencies, and political instability, .. y’see, such unknowns have many major financial actors on the world stage running scared…
Even a global pandemic, feauring millions of deaths, didn’t stop our consumption death spiral. We just wanted to get back to “business as usual”. And now we have.
And worse… if you ask me. (Yes… I know you didn’t.)
It’s been 30 years since the major U.N. climate decisions (which countries are by now sort of rolling back anyway). But during that period, emissions have still gone up 50%. Despite good efforts by governments, plus some publicly-owned corporations, and a large minority of regular citizens.
Meanwhile…
Population growth, especially in Asia, has also gone UP 30% in the same period.
THE MATH DOES NOT WORK — let alone the psychological, educational or spiritual methodologies they’re using to supposedly improve our lives, …poorly executed, just out of habit .
*REAL* CHANGE will only come with completely releasing the reins of control.
Meanwhile, a so-called expert on CNN’s climate panel doubled down today on A.I. simulations as the eventual source of the solution. He’s paid well to sing this song.
So why am I not convinced?
Here’s why:
Ideally, A.I. itself is science. It is ethically and morally neutral. A computer or network has no NEED or instinct for power, or self-preservation, or fear, or food. It’s mostly a myth, a boogey man. But as a tool, A.I. is wielded almost exclusively by those who are morally compromised.
That would be the already powerful people of ill-intent, or at least interested in personal aggrandizement, instead of those with some poor Mexican immigrant kid’s next unhealthy Happy Meal in mind (and its plastic-laden packaging).
Your local butcher, if she even exists, will not be needing A.I. She won’t be needing a smart-home, to make it through the next two decades toward a SAFE planet again. She won’t need a gun, either. Not against literal armies, drones, and the guy manning the off button at the nuclear power plant.
She’ll need a completely merciful dictator, under God, to change the Big Picture completely. Economically. Sacrificially.
None of that has ever existed, nor will it ever exist. We’ve probably undone our last chances for that to exist.
Note: The opposite is almost always true, as well. “Greed is good.” Isn’t that still the subtext here? The WB-Discovery Network CEO gave himself a $250M bonus last year. And then sits in on meetings with the Facebook CEO. And then squawks about unionized writers on his own payroll, those wanting basic job security for the next 50 years. Sir, how about giving $245M of your income to the creators of your products? Then I might listen to you. Your kids and grandkids won’t starve. Trust me.
Collision of values. Money wins. Power wins.
Because collusion is the NORM now. Governments. Banks. Insurance companies. Manufacturers. Healthcare institutions. Industrial farming corporations. Media conglomerates. ALL of them now are patched together from the spare parts of what used to be ethical entertainment or journalistic investigators… presenters of accurate facts and good community-minded fictional stories.
By now, the parent media companies have squashed and broken beyond repair the essential and scientific mechanisms needed for the important changes to happen. The giants, the Alligators, will never willingly self-destruct. They’ll never willingly stop the merry-go-round, or deconstruct, to build it better from scratch. Too much work. Too many unknowns. Too much risk.
Change, and learning, is not financially as profitable as expanding the status quo. Therefore, they keep giving us only what our broken monkey brains THINK we need, which we keep compulsively chasing.
Meanwhile, the law looks the other way, as the U.S. Supreme Court has almost continually proven. Anti-trust efforts are like dinosaurs. The rest of us have forgotten what the word collusion even means.
In other words, what is needed to FIX OUR HEARTS?
Capitalist solutions to problems created by uber-capitalists for the past 50-300 years are not going to work. Nobody in power, nobody with real access to mass communication, nobody from CNN parent company Warner-Discovery, or at Google, is going to even COVER the real problem journalistically… they’d be cutting their own hand off.
A U.S. President and unethical self-centered real estate developer, our Collusion Commander in Chief, admitted on camera to being a pussy-grabber. Threw 75-90% of the small-d democratic humans on the planet under the bus during the campaign. And he still won. We lost the “war” for a just, safe future on that very election day. And then he enjoyed a high platform, to continue the Borg-human assimilation and destruction project, for four years.
Still doin’ it, in fact, even with one foot in a jail cell.
As for CNN:
They’d rather run the safe, cute stories about the History of Barbie(™), upon the release of the new feature film. Meanwhile, the actors in that very film have just gone out on strike. They do this in support of the film’s writers, of themselves, and of ME– a human who likes movies and tv, but does not want blood on his hands. Nor do I want the passive murder of my planet on my conscience, with MMA Barbie leading her sharp-dressed Army of Darkness into this charge. It’s a charge which can only end in the mutually-assured slaughter of all but the top 5% of citizens worldwide. Someday.
And where are the *actual* plastic Barbies built? In uber-polluting, union-busting China, most likely. So unless Mattel starts making ALL Barbies out of fully-recycled USA-sourced aluminum, we won’t solve the climate crisis.
The lesson:
Development itself, at least the typical way that WE do it, kills our Mother. But it’s a backstab, by partly-masked heads of companies with excellent P.R. departments. Companies co-owned by millions of upper-middle class investors, or the upper 5% income level people in the West, plus the highest echelons of the Third World, where ordinary citizens with money to invest in anything besides a small piece of land exist as probably 0.007% of the population.
In almost all developed or developing countries, these wealth-aggregators are countering the evolution of my species. For profit. The Aggregating Alligators take it all for themselves, again and again– all while pretending to invite me into their exclusive club. This will continue …until its too late. “Oops. Sorry, grandkids.”
This is including (but not only), Aya- toldyas, I mams and ssshhh eeee I ks –who put out hits on the likes of Indian-British author Salman Rushdie, …all for telling their secrets. For exercising free speech. I’ll die on that hill. Salman will, too. But who else will?
But these “developers”, businesspersons, and collusive despots within the Second World are merely a symptom of the bigger problem worldwide. They simply were born on third base, and therefore qualify or dismiss their own religious and ethical obligations. Meanwhile they ignore the actual limits that the planet, our Mother, is trying to put in place for our own good. As capital-collectors (not redistributors), they simply play the game better than me. They were born to it. They have more resources to do it.
My best option is refusing to play.
They deal poker with MY fate …and from the bottom of the deck, anyway. So civil disobedience is typucally my only option to try making real change. Good enough for Ghandi, King, Solidarnosc, and Mandela… good enough for me.
By the way, they make good deals for themselves, the power-brokers. Deals with demons, jailers, racists, other planet-pirates and tribe-killers.
Desperate warmongers like Putin, as well. Double-deals, behind closed doors. Through subsidiaries, usually.
I or family members have personally worked in several industries who do this routine on the reg, without even thinking twice:
The Bad Food Industry. Grocers and big-box stores. The Transportation industry. Land-grabbers and sellers (who LOVE inflation). Energy conglomerates. Military contractors. Big Pharma. For-profit healthcare. Insurance companies. International or governmental Banks. Telecommunications companies. Entertainment. Media conglomerates like Google, Amazon, Facebook, …even Sony, Disney, Microsoft, Apple or Warner …
The Usual Suspects.
They certainly won’t take themselves down a peg for my sake. Nor let the Earth breathe.
One more example, then i will take a break on politix awhile, and stop boring you:
Two leading but philosophically and logically CONFLICTING USA stories about Las Vegas are getting “hot” this week:
1) The Oakland Athletics baseball team (a oncegreat franchise, in a legit poor and very *black* city) is moving to Vegas. This is thanks to the city, county and NV rolling out the red carpet and paying for a stadium [big govt $ , for a private company = collusion]
…meanwhile,
2) Vegas has had record high temps for most of the past month. Consistently… and it will not get better once we are all driving Chevy Volts and Teslas. Water goes away in a desert. It does NOT come back.
How could I not bear witness?
To quote Nobel-winner Bob Dylan, “We live in a political world.” Don’t kid yourself. You’re in the $#!+ right here with me. So do something.
In 9 of 10 countries, cultures and religious traditions worldwide [full disclosure, I AM a liberal cuck, and a reform-minded but embarrassed American Christian], powerful people ignore women’s needs, and children’s needs, and workers’ needs, and gender-warriors’ rights … all while stepping on the fingers of the poor foreigners cleaning their pools, the struggling workers scrambling for safety. That’s workers watching or teaching their employers’ very own perfectly comfy babies. The working poor only want to be safe, too. And feed their own babies. This is why wealth accumulation itself is anti-evolutionary.
Unless we move first, harder, and faster, the Alligators will not budge. Unless we STOP BUYING THEIR BULLSHIT LIES, AND THEIR UNNECESSARY MASS-PRODUCED PRODUCTS THAT TEAR APART THE PLANET, then we’re all up a creek. A DRY CREEK. Unless you’re in Houston, Miami, or coastal Bangladesh –in which case, you’ll be literally underwater, and dead-in-the-water, too.
Divest. It’s hard. But it’s the only way this is going to work. It’s the one way my potential grandkids will get out of this idiotic swamp alive.
Don’t worry, it’s make-up. From my Holy Fool Costume Bag.
Coming off of a pretty heavy Holy Week, I submit two poems: a dark one, then the dawning one… a shitty yin, then the yang that I sang just today, …finally.
They’re both long, as usual, especially the first Dark (K)night of the soul grief poem, the yinny one. My mother passed on Feb. 1, and on Good Friday, another friend was lost in a tragic incident. But new hopes, in other parts of my life, are still sustaining me, . . .as seen in the second poem, sort of an interfaith love song.
Make of them what you will. They don’t belong to me anymore. I’m giving them away.
A potential graphic novel thing, rough draft, the cover art… working title: Jeremiad Jitterbug
DARK…
—###— The Breaking Wave —###—
I want to destroy my garments. I want Them, in me, to massage our minds. To comfort, comfort, my people… but where are They? And where are they?
I do not know where to start. Plain expressions of grief? Sheer terror, spat out upon the ground with the blood from this blow. Spit-out, lest it fester inside and infect us all. Cringing. Crying (as usual). A simple childlike “ouch”?… of course, not strong enough. Nothing said, or done, will be enough. Not yet.
A scream into a merciful but utterly strange universe: abyss on one side, glory on the other, …with gravity pushing and pulling us, pushing and pulling.
Brother and sister, I see you. I feel US, tossed about like that ancient apostle boat. And even Peter himself is sinking… Only the Christ can save us from gravity. He will ground us, heal us. Open our eyes with a mud pie, Jesus. Redeem the time. It will never return to us. So save us instead from the Great Horrible Whatchamacallit, even while we row here in the fog…
Sackcloth and ashes . We all fall down. I shave my head. I cut off a finger… or at least consider it. Ramah weeps still. I weep. We are privileged but obligated to weep, for our beloved children especially. Lost and found. Here and gone.
Waves beat against us. Batten down the hatches. Take down the sail. It seems Her wind has stopped for an hour.
Three days we will drift here. Her delicate Mothergod hands have a strong grip on our very thin rope. I want off this boat, but I will stay. For you, all of you, who are here for all of me. I persist, lamenting as I row, even as the fog of grief surrounds us. We have no destination in sight yet. No sun to guide us and chart the new course.
Where are those ashes? Where do I put my love now? Love which was supposed to be given to him (to them all, and back to me), for another 30 years or more? What else can possibly contain this gooey-sweet, strange, heavy ten-ton love that our beloved son was supposed to contain and carry?
Comfort, my people.
Yes, sometimes rocks do cry out.
When they are broken, they cry jaggéd tears. When the tears dry, still they scratch our skin. Our eyelids: stuck closed. Fear tries to make a permanent home in us. But a three-day tent will suffice for it. After that, it must move on. No room in this inn for that fearful hobgoblin.
This victory feels like defeat. We, the mourning, cannot be proud or joyful upon Their most blesséd day, our blessed day. Only resolute… We know that God saves. We just don’t know how yet.
Nevertheless we rejoice, having to construct, for today (like T.S. Eliot’s stair-stumbler) that ridiculous but solid thing about which to rejoice, but which matches this ridiculous planet.
We hold hands in the boat when lost. I row with my left hand. I hold your right hand in my own, brother. I weep. I pull the oar. I laugh. Pull again. Sigh, and pull again. I look across the water. Where will our help come from? I squeeze your hand and look into your beloved wife’s mourning eyes. We row on. We don’t know yet what beach we will land upon in three more days. We do know, nevertheless, that It is out there.
O Solid Ground come! Come quicker! We are out of strength, and the Master has not yet arrived to navigate and steer. It will take Him another day to find us, two more to save us, though He knows exactly where we are and how far. And why. He knows all the whys.
The captain of the fishers of friends, the Brothergod, hears our bell and our cries. He is coming.
We are not lost. We are only not yet found.
But it is His sea. He knows where we are… knows all the whys. He is risen–a water-walker, first, last and only. But He is drenched in sweat and tears and salty seawater. Resting now perhaps, exhausted from the hardest-won victory, the only one for the record books.
They will write histories about our griefs. A “Martyr’s Mirror” for the barely saintly, for bereaved parents, beautiful boys, powerful young men, even passersby who know the pain distantly. Over a man whose power, whose humble life, was transformed today by the fire of Your flood, Yahweh.
Like Eliot’s and Ezekiel’s bones, we are no good to each other anymore. Not yet, anyway. We will dance again, dance next, only when the Son beats the Drum.
All griefs are solitary, but all are shared–whether or not the thread that connects us, the ties that bind our wounds, are taken hold of, or even seen.
You wept blood for me. Not for Yourself, frightened though You were. For not all can be known while we occupy this frail flesh. Here in Eliot’s star-crossed but foggy lovehate garden, where 3 dreams cross. Not even You knew. It is a ridiculous planet, a frail body, a broken brain.
There will be scars a mile wide until we see the young man again. Even then, God will touch but not erase them. I will put my fingers into Their side scar. They will take my other hand and weep with me.
I will dream of you tonite, our beautiful man-child. Your light has moved, and I cannot yet follow your star.
But we are none of us alone. Only broken. For now. In too many ways, broken forever. Perfectly imperfect. Awaiting the next strong wind of grace.
By the shores of Lake Michigan, Evanston IL, Easter 2023
DAWN…
. . .
“Nobody To Tell“
I don’t need
nobody to tell me how to load a dishwasher how to use a garbage disposal how to paint a room or fix a fence or drive a car or eat.
How to love.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t want somebody to tell me they love me. Right now. Today. Tell me.
I love you. And I love everyone else, too… with a different kind of love. (There are, after all, 4000+ kinds of love– as many kinds as there are …la-la-lang -languages in heaven and on earth, and on the shores and seas of our distant sister planets.)
But there’s nobody here now, with me, to tell all of this to.
I don’t need nobody
to tell me haha h- h-how to dress when to shave what books to read what music to make or to listen to. I play the Delta blues. The rhythm of Mali. I hear all Her children. I hear El Shaddai in Elvis. I hear Jah in the raga.
The Message is in Melle Mel, the spittin’ of Yeezy, the soulful Chance and chants of Lecrae, the funkin’ of Brown’s Stubblefield,
of Wonder, Munyungo, Starr and Sheila E.
I hear The Clash in Beethoven’s Deaf Hallelujah. (It’s a real banger.) I hear the swan’s squonky song. I root for the underdog, every time.
Like Thoreau I hear the different drummer. Unlike Thoreau, I also can dance… contrary to all those hateful stereotypes about white boys.
It’s all there. It’s in The Song. The Melody itself. The Word, the words, sweet as honey from God’s own hive. I hear them. Her. Him. Them. And in all the singers whom God’s own Spirit ever sang through: Billie Holliday, Bill W, Wordsworth, William Wallace, and Bill Wilberforce.
The same Spirit waits to sing in you as It did in Mohandas and Nelson, Desmond, Brian Wilson, Billie Jean and her racket, Fellini, Mohammed, Dr. King and Tao Te Ching. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to hear again their own human voices too, or hear yours– right here beside me in this bed, or at that kitchen table, or out by the pond.
We need both: melody and harmony.
Add in the rhythm,
now it is Three.
Sing. Dance. As upon the birth of our yowling, beautiful child, or on the first blush of success for your business… (“Cash that check quick, before they change their mind!”). Or even when the house burns down, and only The Song remains.
I don’t need nobody to tell me who to love how to love when to love where to love (weirdly above) why to love. I already know. Like they always say, “If you know then you know”.
So…….. are you ready to sing? Do you want to know my secret chords, and the long-lost chorus?
Dis blog is solely da opinions of Mark S. Nielsen an' in no way represents any organization wit which I am affiliated, or about which I speak herein. (Is dat legal enough for ya?)
Marking Time 