Tag Archives: poetry

Love & Life, Then & Now

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Love & Life, Then & Now

When I was young,
life was fast
and love was slow.

Now I’m old,
life is slow
and love is fast.

In the 1960s
girls wore miniskirts
and I wanted to see more.

Fifty years later
they wear leggings
and I want to see less,
much less.

Her:
“Oh!, So it’s my fault, huh?”
Him:
“You are the fault of my life,
and sometimes it has an earthquake.”

Gerrymandered expression is mandatory
to be loved by all, then and now.
But
I’m old, bold, cold, told and unsold,
so who cares?

11 March 2018

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Mister Rogers

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Mister Rogers

Imagine,
a man who does not have to protect his cool —
that is power!
He could look a child straight in the eye
and speak slowly, gently,
with utter respect,
acknowledging the God within,
the intelligence before him.
He stood tall —
without apology, without embarrassment, without fear —
for compassion,
indiscriminate compassion.
What man alive dares be so reckless?

The second coming —
all look for a Jesus to come back and save them,
something more than just the three days of Easter,
and yet, that second coming is here now,
every time a person becomes infused with the spirit of Jesus —
awakens, becomes a bodhisattva —
and walks among us
manifesting the eternally animating principles
that walked in the footsteps of Buddha,
that walked in the footsteps of Jesus,
that walked in the footsteps of Dorothy Day,
that walked in the footsteps of countless others –
known and unknown –
that walked in the footsteps of Mister Rogers,
that could walk in your footsteps,
and mine,
but for a dose of courage,
a courage that seems to come easily
once belief permeates into experience.
Love and compassion and power and peace
must be breathed into life.
“It’s such a good feeling to know you’re alive.”

2 March 2003

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In 1969, President Nixon wanted to cut Public Television funding in half.
Fred Rogers had 6 minutes to try to convince the Senate otherwise.

May 1, 1969: Fred Rogers testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications
https://youtu.be/fKy7ljRr0AA

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Fred Rogers (20 March 1928 – 27 February 2003)

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Superheroes Require Mega-Victims

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Superheroes Require Mega-Victims

During the Roman Empire
crowds flocked to the Colosseum to see
their favorite gladiators kill many disposable victims,
so these fervent fans could experience
an ecstasy of entertainment
and fantasize about being would-be heroes
of glorious combat followed by popular acclaim.

In the American Empire
crowds flock to the big-screen Colosseums to see
their comic-book superheroes kill mega-evil super-villains
who kill many disposable victims,
so these fervent fans can experience
an ecstasy of entertainment
and fantasize about being would-be heroes
of glorious combat followed by popular acclaim.

Our bipolar dualities of superheroes and super-villains
require the mega-deaths of innocent mega-victims
– both real and imagined –
so our patriotic gunmen,
whether in police, the NRA, militias, or just lone sociopaths
– all in their closeted secret fears –
can fantasize about being would-be heroes
who will one day kill a bad guy and blaze to glory
to the ecstatic popular acclaim
of the telescreen-mesmerized masses
jammed into our handheld and big-screen Colosseums.

The reason we have so many guns in America
is because we have so many frustrated ignorant people.

21 February 2018

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When Life Is A Crime

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The excrement of legalized racketeering by the vampire parasites on the nation’s life-blood cultures the growth of murderous sociopaths who massacre the bright hopes
of our emerging and redeeming innocents, and our collective soul.

The raw cry of justice screams up from the blood-soaked streets and floors of our schools,
for retribution’s purge to sweep through the corridors of power, the temples of mammon, and the sanctuaries of privileged bigotry and greed.

The peace of the nation is being blood-sacrificed in a raging war for power over life,
by our materialistic egotists of soulless privilege.

The warmth of kind hearts is freezing into the hardened prayer
for a just God to loose It’s avenging angels.

17 February 2018

Message #1 to a Young Artist

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I want to commend you (give you praise) for your resolve to study deeply, even if that means taking “hard classes” with “lots of work.” Any creative person who produces worthwhile work is a person who has studied deeply, whether formally at a school or independently and intuitively by conscientious practice (or both). Good and great work comes out of a prior build-up of deep study. On a simple and practical level it is best to get as much “learning” as you can out of a school you are paying to attend. But beyond that, it is artistically and intellectually most beneficial to gain as much information, insight and understanding as possible about your chosen craft, and about the history of the culture you come from and the society you are living in, so your knowledge has depth, which will be the well from which you will draw the elements of your future creative works. When you remain committed to this “career” of study, and focussed on your personal artistic (and intellectual) vision, you will be able to move through your schooling (and life) with greater ease even as friends and acquaintances drop in and drop out of your social circle: you will be able to navigate beyond others’ dramas with less distraction and damage to yourself, and you will find that there will always be new and delightful people who can come into your life without being clingy drags. Over time, the experiences (both good and bad) you gain from your self-motivated course of study and practice build up as a growing fund of wisdom, which improves your ability to continue navigating your voyage through life, and improves your ability to create finer art. I am writing you this because I do not want you to get discouraged by the loss of friends, and the fleeting nature of many seemingly close friendships. There is no blame, just the unknowable chaos of the flow of life. Be happy in being immersed in your learning and in doing well in your creating. Love.

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For Message #0 to a Young Artist, see:

Art versus Stomach
https://manuelgarciajr.com/2018/01/29/art-versus-stomach/

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Art versus Stomach

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Art versus Stomach

Whether an artist will have enough means to buy the next meal, and subsequent meals, depends on how much editing and limitation of his artistry he is willing to accept. If your aim is to produce the greatest and most refined art you are capable of, then you cannot expect to capture a sufficient audience to meet your ego’s hopes for approval and enriching rewards, nor your metabolism’s need for its necessary nourishment. This is the eternal conflict between art and commerce, between fulfillment and popularity. Committed genius is more likely to die of an empty stomach, than a reliable hack is to want for a full belly. A happy artistic life is one that strikes a balance between the extremes of: an isolating commitment to the compulsion for creating excellence, versus the popular mediocrity of a comfortable prosperity.

28 January 2018

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Repression Envies Freedom

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Repression Envies Freedom

Happiness in life comes
when you stop seeking approval
and calmly accept being a transparent failure,
while continuing with your art.

For a poet,
art comes before love,
and love comes before food.
For a mother,
food comes before love,
and loves comes before art.

Repressed people resent
those who live freely.
Happy people are untouched
by those who resent freedom.

A happy life is a free one.

17 January 2018

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When Purgatory Fails

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When Purgatory Fails

It is so sad to see karma’s futile attempts to purge some lives of their stubborn insistent ignorance, and to have your sympathetic efforts to help resented as annoying interference and hurtful contradiction, thus reducing your possibilities for compassionate action to silent compliance while absorbing repetitive litanies of self-pitying complaints. And, how enervating to remain tethered to another’s self-wounding, because of your guilt against abandoning a human bond you want to value. Many kind hearts harden over time simply from a need for self-preservation, and much love erodes over time by straining to withstand ceaseless withering rains of impervious self-defeating inertia.

17 January 2018

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Old Songs of Youth’s Promise

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Anthony Tarrant reminded me of Wooden Ships by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, from long ago, and it got me thinking of the past. I shared Anthony’s post (on Facebook) because it moved me, and commented on it. So, further below are two responses in kind: music of unadorned art and sincere feeling far, far beyond the simplistic garish bombast of corporate “music” today.

Wooden Ships – Crosby Stills Nash and Young
https://youtu.be/3Q3j-i7GLr0

Takes me back to a lost world, lost dreams, and a different kind of people, both men and women. There was still the same kind of superficiality, the same kind of selfishness and venality as today, but I remember a much greater sense of optimism and even brotherhood (prompted mainly by anti-war sentiment) than I see today. Back then, it seemed evident that society would continue to improve, perhaps too slowly but inexorably. For me, that dream died on election day, 1980 (and then December 8 of that year). That’s why I had such resurrected hope in 2016 with Bernie Sanders, and was so angered by the petty and ignorant criticisms of him by idiot right-wingers and effete self-important and disconnected boutique leftists. This, and songs like this were like the aroma and pleasurable smoke on the breezes wafting a lovely girl’s hair as we looked with dancing eyes and knowing smiles out a big open window onto the springtime of our Sentimental Education (Flaubert) not knowing of dark chapters and separating currents to come far later. And here I am, marooned on a island of memories none now knows the language for understanding.

Don McLean – Vincent ( Starry, Starry Night) With Lyrics
https://youtu.be/oxHnRfhDmrk

Soldier, We Love You (Rita Martinson)
https://youtu.be/7iMusPYq83g

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Anthony Tarrant
https://anthonytarrant.wordpress.com/

Anthony also maintains a presence on Facebook.

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ADDENDUM, 15 January 2018

I just took a trip back to 1969, here it is:

Crosby, Stills, & Nash, CSN (1969 Complete 1st L.P./Classic Vinyl)
https://youtu.be/fM8hpsrmUe0

I heard this album about 10,000 times back when. The first two songs in particular are icons, hits, and paint a sound picture of some of the living in those times. Actually all of the songs on this album blend into one complete work, like the movements of a symphony. Back then you could walk past a college dorm and hear this album pouring out of one open window after another. Quite a reality.

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Trump Is America’s Child

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Donald Trump is America’s child. He was nurtured insulated from the world’s potential reactions to naïve ignorance, and stupid and irresponsible behavior. In this, Trump is the icon of the kind of child so many American parents have striven and sacrificed to raise: an envelope of their combined genes isolated in a protective bubble from the realities and wide spectrum of ideas at loose in the world. Wealth is ignorance-, stupidity-, and irresponsibility insurance; the everlasting cocoon of American dreams.

Many millions will pity Trump for the cascade of ridicule falling upon him now, and love him the more for this suffering because in him they see themselves: with the same afflictions but without the same protections. They are all overaged children lost in a hostile sneering world, a world they do not understand and hatefully resent because it withholds its unquestioning approval and effusive indiscriminate love.

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