Waldo Redux

Haze, smoke from a thousand miles away
Covering our foot hills and mountains
Still populated by charred skeletal trees
Shrubs and grasses only just returning
Fires in Washington, Oregon, California
Their ghosts long preceding their deaths
Stirring memories from 2012 not yet resting
Eyes turning to scarred mountain landscapes
Hearts turning to scarred inner landscapes
Fire, fear, friends put out and fleeing
Dark days of raining ash in the fire’s reign
The sky a black roof of smoke
The sun a swollen red eye at its heart
The nights glowing unnaturally to the west
As if dragons slept there, breathing flame
Ready to rage, and burn, and feast
Dry acidic air stinging eyes and throat
Making lungs rasp and cough
Windows and doors shut tightly to fear
As if denial would win the moment
And in its smoldering wake
Nature reminds us of flames with water
Flash floods off naked hills
A crying land, a damaged people
Improvement slow but coming, and now
Haze, smoke from a thousand miles away

What is the Opposite of Hate?

There is almost nothing that we do not learn from, even a joke. We remember stories, tales, and humor for no seeming reason until one day Deja Vu will strike and what was once just some useless bit taking up gray matter becomes prophetic.
Long ago when I was a young man, I was trailering a sailboat back home to Orangeburg. I was on the Old Columbia Road near one of the entrances to the Kodak Plant when I happened to look into my rearview mirror and saw something small bounce away from the trailer. I pulled over and inspected things, and soon found that one of the four wheels had lost three of its four lug nuts. I was just about to panic (a highly refined skill of mine) when an old joke cropped up in my mind.
A man is driving and has a flat tire right beside the fence of the State Hospital. He gets out of his car, opens the trunk, and takes out the jack, spare, and lug wrench, all the while being watched by a patient on the other side of the fence. This just made the man nervous as he sat and hurriedly removed the lug nuts, setting them in the hub cap on the curb. Then he jacked the car up without really paying attention to what he was doing. When the flat tire lifted free of the ground it fell off the axle and onto the hub cap knocking the lug nuts out and down a sewer drain. The man threw up his arms in frustration crying out, “What will I do now?” The patient looked at him, tilted his head and said, “Why don’t you just use one lug nut from each of the other wheels? That will get you to the shop.” Stupefied, the man just stared at the robed figure before being able to stutter out, “How did you think of that?” The patient just grinned and responded, “I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.”
Well, Déjà vu struck me once again the other night as I was reading some news on line. It seems apparently in Belfast, Ireland, someone had stuck the Confederate Flag on a flag pole opposite the house of a 13 year old black boy. When his football club coach saw this, he and the rest of the team immediately took the flag down. What struck me as odd was that in the articles I read, not one asked how a Confederate Flag came to be used in such a way in Ireland.
This is when the Déjà Vu moment began for me. I recalled that when I was at Clemson, a dear friend, running buddy, and mentor, Dr. Don LaTorre, told me a story. Don said early in his professorial career he taught at Winthrop College. One day, one of his colleagues killed a squirrel in the campus commons park. Don was outraged. He took his issues about animal cruelty as far up the administrative ladder as he could. After much debate and investigation, it was determined that the squirrels in the campus commons park had become too domesticated for their own safety. So the administration took the only logical course of action and had the remaining squirrels exterminated to restore balance between beasts and humans.
There is nothing wrong with passion, it has carried the human race to heights it could not have reached without it. But passion often does not come without a price. In the case of the Confederate Flag, the recent tragedy in Charleston, along with both related and unrelated racial tension issues have leveraged passion in an all-out assault on the Confederate Flag. Wanting the removal of the Confederate Flag from the South Carolina State House grounds is a good thing and should be done. That flag was specifically raised in the face of fight for civil rights back in 1962 and has no place there now.
However, in our passion for its complete destruction and removal, unintended consequences both silly and serious have begun to fall like dominoes. TV Land pulling reruns of the Dukes of Hazzard (a show picking fun at rednecks and not racist in the least) simply because those Duke boys’ car; the General Lee, had a Confederate Flag on it is misguided and silly. The Confederate Flag seen flying in Belfast raises the fallout of our passion to serious.
Where will these dominoes stop? In our righteous anger and indignation of just some of the symbolism of the Confederate Flag has given the flag bolder new hate status. It is quickly being pushed to the point that it can only be seen as a harbinger of hate, and worse than that, it appears now this sole damning view of the Confederate Flag is now becoming our hate export to the world. We are driving the Confederate Flag underground and worldwide.
Hating hate is not the opposite of hate. Love is the opposite of hate. This is the lesson from Charleston’s reaction to the horrible shooting at the Emmanuel AME Church. This is the lesson we should carry out into the world, that we are bigger than the hate, bigger than hate’s symbols, that we love our brothers and have their backs. In the face of the world’s evils we should always turn first to love, so that we may act rather than react, so that we may heal rather than perpetuate.

Give Me Understanding

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.
St. Francis
Recently a very good friend posted on Facebook the picture below. It compares the relationship of slaves to the Confederate War Flag to the relationship Jews in Nazi concentration camps had with the flag of the Third Reich.

It is effective in communicating the “true” sinister nature of the Confederate War Flag. However for most of the period of slavery in the United States, slaves first lived under the British flag, then the flag of the United States. The Confederate War Flag did not come into existence until the War Between the States. In fact the South had several flags during that time, and what has become known as the Confederate Flag was really not adopted as any kind of symbol until after the Civil War – at which time slavery was at an end.  I have no love for the Confederate Flag, but I don’t understand the posted image.
Another one of my good friends posted the following picture on Facebook even more recently. It points out that almost 3000 box cutter deaths have occurred since September 11, 2001, and that not one Democratic Politician has called for controlling this dangerous weapon.

I will accept at face value that both the number of deaths and the lack of legislation are true, but I still do not know what this has to do with gun laws. Even a casual review of statistics show that there are 2000+ violent deaths in America from handguns each year. This number is more than 10 times the annual number of deaths attributed to box cutters (and keep in mind the illustration does not say if it is total box cutter related deaths, or murders, or suicides, or accidents).  Also, there are likely many more box cutters out there than handguns.
What do these two pictures have in common?  They raise tempers rather than understanding. They are part of a disturbing trend to make points on passionate issues through fear mongering, misleading information, and misdirection. Facebook is not the only source of these tactics. They are played out on a grand scale on most political stages, and from a shock and awe starved national media. In my opinion it is the most disturbing remnant of September 11^th - the amount of power that fear holds over a population compared to reason.
What has happened to true debate? Why has the issuance of facts been replaced by rabblerousing? When did it become fashionable to get a rise out of someone instead of leaving them better informed? Even having to ask these questions leave me feeling diminished, and it leaves me distracted from the understanding of race issues, violence, hatred, and war. Not that I alone could ever understand such things, but the reduction of issues to sound bites is not aiding in the attempt.
It would be easy at this point to let myself slip into rant invoking mass killings here, racist symbols there, and suppression of rights (religious, personal, 2^nd Amendment, you name it). But this is not an attempt to grab some unclaimed piece of moral high ground as yet untouched on whatever the issues of the moment are.
The point is simply this: Morality and doing what is right are unfortunately not easy to define or enact. Trying to is only made harder; or indeed impossible, by raising tempers rather than awareness. I don’t have answers, but I want to help look for them. I don’t nearly know everything, but I would like to learn and grow as much as possible. I am not immune from hate but I do prefer love. Why can’t we get back to raising the level of debate in American, instead of simply raising the level of rhetoric?

Clubberin’ Time in Heaven

I have never been shy about letting anyone who asked (and not a few who didn’t) know, that I am a long time professional wrestling fan. My brother Chris and I cut our teeth on it when there were no mega organizations, only collections of affiliated regionals. We would live for Saturday airings of Mid-Atlantic and Georgia Championship Wrestling brought to us with the commentary of Bob Cawdell, Jimmy Crocket, and the legendary Gordon Soley. From very early on, one of our favorite wrestlers was “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes. He died today, and I would like to remember him.
Even during the ‘70’s when chiseled bodies were the exception rather than the rule, Dusty stood out for a form that if taken at face value was not athletic in the least. He often made comment that he was not the ideal of an athlete in appearance. He knew what he looked like and was not ashamed, and through prowess, hard work, and unequalled mic skills no one ever judged him on form, but only on accomplishments.
Physically he could go toe-to-toe with anyone. Unlike today when a match is five-to-fifteen minutes long and an “Iron Man Match” goes an hour, he would routinely give all of himself for 60 minutes a night, multiple nights a week. His feuds were physical, sometimes bloody, and always legendary. I recall great bouts against Ernie “the Cat” Ladd, Abdullah the Butcher, the Anderson Brothers, Blackjack Mulligan, the Iron Sheik, Ivan Koloff, Harley Race and so many others. And nobody that has followed the sport as long as I have could forget the storied number of years that he and Ric Flair went at each other.
What made Dusty so great, so memorable? His charisma. It is as simple as that. His eyes were always shining, he could go from a smile that enveloped the world, to a scowl that would send lesser men to cower in the shadows, and he had a sing-song way of talking (with body language to match) that would draw you in, lift you up, and send you crashing to mat as if you were the victim of his famous bionic elbow. The English language had nothing on Dusty, and could do nothing to contain him. Whether he was talking about kickin’ someone’s “booty,” talking about giving a good “clubberin” to a foe, or setting the stage for the “slobber knocker” to come, with a sly wink he had us from hello.
Dusty started his career as one of the most hated villains alongside long time tag team partner Dirty Dick Murdoch, and sored to become one of the sport’s greatest heroes. In later years, he was touted as the son of a plumber, champion of the common man, but Dusty spoke for and wrestled for everyone. He was old school from start to finish brandishing a forehead deeply scarred from years of “blading,” and a body that still remembered how to boogie in the ring until the day he passed. Dusty, you never backed down from a challenge, or showed an ounce of fear, and until the end you entertained us as only you could. Farewell.
This was simply Dusty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GuPfpgr0c0

SOONER Rather than Later

Very recently a video surfaced that purported to show University of Oklahoma student members of the SAE fraternity chanting that there will never be n****rs in SAE. The video is ugly, the sentiments worse. University President David Boren was so sickened by the video, that it was reported he could not eat or sleep. In his virtuous anger he nobly arose pallid and weak from his sick bed to take swift action – he severed all ties between the SAE and the University!  While this was being done, the national SAE organization disbanded the OU charter house. Problem solved, because getting rid of an organization and driving racism underground has always worked in the past.
SAE took a black eye for this because its name was used in the video; OU took a black eye for this because it is was supposedly their chapter of SAE that was shown in the video. Both organizations took the path of least resistance and paperwork in the name of showing a proactive face. Meanwhile, no proof has been given that SAE had anything to do with this, and no proof has been given that it was OU students on the video. I am no fan of fraternities. I find them segregationist by their selective exclusivity. However, here I see them as an easy target, the broad side of a barn that cannot be missed while the vermin scatter.
Many are proclaiming that President Boren is a hero, yet all he did was banish an entity without proof – a prejudicial act if ever there was one. It is people that hate, not buildings, not names on buildings, not organizations affiliated with buildings – IT IS PEOPLE WHO HATE. And the people who vocally espoused evil racial slurs in this instance still roam free.
I am not asking for some rush to judgment. I am asking for the University to move deliberately ahead with its investigation of who was involved, and what if any connection they had to the local and national chapters of SAE. The University of Oklahoma and President Boren had the opportunity to become standard bearers of how hate speech and crimes should be handled. They should have spoken out in righteous indignation against the video, outlined the University’s policies and punishments regarding acts of racism, detailed the swift and methodical steps to be taken to bring about justice, and at worst suspended SAE until the facts could be learned. Instead of being a leader and showing strength and intelligence, President Boren simply gave into his own weakness by lashing out. Reaction is the first response of the fearful, the brave consider and act to do what is right, not what is expedient.

Swords into Ploughshares

From my home on the plains that abut the Colorado Rockies where I have been since graduating Clemson University in 1985, my thoughts have often turned to the South in pride, longing, and sometimes despair and confusion. I have been following at a distance the controversy surrounding Tillman Hall. For the uninformed, Tillman Hall is the clock tower building which has been an enduring symbol of the campus since its construction in 1893. Back then (back in the day as it were), it was called Main Building or Old Building. In 1946 it was renamed Tillman Hall in honor of former South Carolina Governor and US Senator Benjamin Tillman. So far, so good – except not so much. Tillman was a racist of the first order and a man who would not only use politics against southern blacks, but quite often participated in violence and murder as well.
Politically, Tillman was notably responsible for implementing what essentially amounted to a literacy test on black voters. Socially, Tillman was frighteningly “hands-on.” He led lynch mobs and execution squads, taking pride in his deeds believing them righteous actions that “…involved everything we hold dear, Anglo-Saxon civilization included.”
It is clear that the Board of Regents for the University at the time did not do their due diligence in reviewing Tillman’s legacy as worthy of honor, or perhaps they engaged in willful and naked disregard of that legacy. The record does not show, and so either way Tillman Hall has existed on campus for 68 years.
I could have expounded in much greater detail Tillman’s offenses in the name of supremely flawed ideals and hatred, but they are easy enough to find online or in history books now, and my point regarding his name on a treasured landmark has been made. Knowing all this now, I am in favor of renaming Tillman Hall. I would be happy for the sake of historical continuity if it went back to being Main Hall. But this whole furor troubles me on another level that places me among those that could live with Tillman Hall remaining Tillman Hall.
I worked hard for four and half years to earn my four year Mechanical Engineering degree from Clemson University. For all of that time and all the time in the almost 30 years since my graduation (until the current controversy arose) I did not even once stop to consider who Tillman was. Tillman to me was a beautiful building of red brick, classic architecture, and a big clock, not a former Governor and Senator. I am sure I am not in the minority in this. Just as I am sure innumerable other institutions and municipalities across this nation have buildings bearing the names of people with skeletons in their closets (or openly sitting on their sofas) without most people even realizing it. In that sense, the names of segregationists, white supremacists, philanderers, wife beaters, cheaters, and all manner of shady human beings have been stripped of their original meaning and association, and been repurposed as names of steel and stone structures that benefit people, that mean something positive to people. Those bloody swords have already been beaten to ploughshares.
The greater lessons of the past are with us, the greater sins of the past are still borne by us. Is it truly beneficial to investigate the trees when we know the forest so well? Right now racial tension in the US is higher than I have ever seen it in my adult life. In the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent gender discrimination is measured by the ever rising number of mutilated and murdered women and girls. Around the globe sweat shops enslave children and adults alike to service the insatiable appetite of the economic/industrial beast. Reviving old grudges serves no purpose other than making old wounds raw, and does not directly address the tensions and inequalities that still threaten to drown society today. Change the name of Tillman Hall now that particular Pandora’s Box has been opened. Move on to something greater. Nobody is counting brownie points earned from unearthing the dead who long ago lost their fight.

Feet of Clay

I explore my childhood from a distance.  Observing it from Colorado, from Greenville, from Charleston - anywhere but Orangeburg, cradle of my cradle. I am not sure why. There are no great traumas that I am hiding from. I am not claiming a perfect childhood, or some idyllic movie-like home town.  But growing up the pains were large enough to teach without deep scarring, and the smiles were not so bright as to blind.
Still as I sit at my mom’s home in Greenville, I reflect on my walk this morning and the shimmering echoes of the past that it brought to mind. I marveled at the woods, so unlike the woods of Colorado. In Colorado, the land has seemingly swelled to create the space that is there. Its forest are populated without density, the gaps in even the thickest areas may be safely penetrated by the casual hiker or by snow skiers going thirty miles per hours. To get through the woods here you have to want to. The trees gather and cluster and crowd, deadfalls are fences and briars are barbed wire. They are challenges no child can resist and no skier would dare.
Thinking of the woods, I cannot leave a reverie of them without nodding to the trees. Here there are pines, and oaks, and maples, and others that tower straight and strong, racing each other for the clouds. They push against roads, to hem them in by day, and to add reflecting power to the headlights on them at night. They keep watch over you at the same time they keep you from seeing too far, bringing you the horizon and  making it attainable. By contrast, I now live where trees feel like dwarves and protect you from nothing. They are unable to grow in sky-reaching enclaves and most of those that aspire to are gnarled in the effort. The exception is the Aspen with its white bark like some pure knight’s armor. They grow straight and true and tall after a fashion, but pretenders to the faith like cotton woods and elms have simply earned the reputation of trash trees. They grow fast, spread thin, and give into age with twisted forms that huddle bare in the winter reminding me of some desperate, Shakespearian hags.
Also as I walked, I could see the red clay of South Carolina wherever the grass thinned or some earth mover had just begun its work.  I could remember when I used to play with it, imagining that I could form it with my hands, becoming a potter. I would make bowls and rustic mugs and thick red plates, but I knew nothing of the firing process required to harden these creations into the real thing much less what a glaze was. These childhood makings would melt as the fantasies they were with the first addition of creek water. I didn’t spend much time doing this, but enough time to know the clay, to recognize it as something more than Playdough or Silly Putty. Carolina clay has heft, a plastic density, a gravitas that no man made substance could come close to. I could look at this clay showing through the land at every opportunity and remember the feel of it between my toes during a warm summer rain. In some primal part of my mind, I believe that the clay that covered my feet was a binding agent for my soul, that I could leave the land but the land would never leave me.
These vision and others tumbled to me as I walked among my kin on familiar ground so similar to the pathways and hideouts I had as a boy. All around me tendrils of fog-like memory lead back to the swamp at the end of my street, the playgrounds where we played tag football, the streets and trails I would run, the faces that crowded my youth. I feel their pull, but I also feel safety from them at this distance of miles and years.
I can rationalize this vantage point on my life by saying to myself that I wouldn’t know ten people still in Orangeburg. That the circle of friends that surrounded me as a boy have themselves spread to points well beyond the banks of the Edisto River. But I know if I were to go back, and walk her streets, somewhere I would run across someone who would say, “Aren’t you a Handal?” In my heart, I know that I will never be completely removed from my home town, and I can’t explain why I keep my distance and have never waded into the complete nostalgia of her. Maybe I am afraid Orangeburg has changed too much. Maybe I am worried that my woods are now all housing developments, and the pine straw trails I used to run are now sidewalks or paved streets. I think if I am honestly admitting, the thought of Orangeburg scares me now, because it can’t be what it was. And that’s alright, there are some things that can be best viewed without perspective or without the confusing context of the present. Childhood is one of those things.

One Foot after the Other

Lao Tzu was a pain in the butt.  He was a key philosopher for Taoism.  He said (among countless other things), “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”  He knew what he was really saying with this one seemingly innocuous statement.  Lao was taking our focus from the daunting distant dream and placing that focus at our feet and the path.  He was reducing the great effort to a single step.  Loa wasn’t challenging us to our dreams, but mocking us for not already moving toward them.  It is perhaps the biggest Double Dog Dare in history.
My pen is heavy and my spirit weak, but when I hang my head in shame of this, I see my feet and am compelled to take a step, and then the inevitable next. One foot in front of the other, pacing my way to a blog, an essay, a story?, a collection? – who knows? This collection of small efforts leading to larger ones simply because a Chinese philosopher with a wry smile and evil wit called out mankind twenty-six hundred years ago, six hundred years before Christ showed the full meaning courage of beginning with a single step.
I just finished a book recommended by Jan Henry, Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. Dr. Frankl was a brilliant psychiatrist, closet philosopher, and survivor of WWII Death Camps. He writes of what it took to survive the camps and what it takes to not survive life, but to thrive in life. He writes that joy in living is not in pleasure but in meaning. That is to find meaning in life’s moments and ultimately meaning in one’s life fully. One little moment of meaning to the next, the sum of which total to a meaningful life. Viktor Frankl, did you read Lao Tzu, or did you simply and naturally yield to the pull of that particular gravity of truth to share it with the world through your life and your meaning?
This the day after Thanksgiving, and I carry not just the warmth of food in my belly, but all I have to be thankful for. Then I look down and seem my feet. I look down and take my next step. I look down and I smile, not for all that I am thankful for, but for whatever I will be thankful for from this moment to the next. So now it’s my turn to be a pain, what will you be thankful for tomorrow?

Flying in my Car

I think most of us have a dream of flying, not just in first class from New York to Paris, but to be in the cockpit at the stick. I still occasionally have dreams of stepping into a small jet and taking off from a grass field, fear rising in my belly as the plane yearns for the sky. I wage an internal struggle between the dueling ideas of “I don’t know how to do this!!” and “I got this, no problem.” Once airborne, my spirit soars with the plane and I am tuned into the sky forgetting the hard reality of landscape below. Intuitively I sense not only where I am going but how to get there. The fear doesn’t re-enter my belly until the inevitable thoughts arise - “I may know how to fly, but I don’t know how to land!!” and “Landing’s the easy part.” Sometimes these returns to earth in my dreams have been accomplished Fred Flintstone-like with my feet as landing gear, most times the landings are much more conventional – and I always make it. These dreams color my perception as an adult in the only place they can, behind the steering wheel of my car. Each time I put on my seatbelt, a small part of me is strapping in for instrument check and take off.
This reminiscence came about today as I was driving and I pulled into a merge lane. I looked in my rear view mirror and an SUV suddenly slipped in close behind me, a bit too close. The driver appeared to have taut Aryan features, short blond (almost white) hair, and he wore reflective sunglasses. He seemed ageless. The name Richtofen sprang to mind as I kept a wary eye to my rear while looking for space to maneuver. It was a tight chase for half a mile before I shook him by slipping into the lane to my left. I toyed with the idea of sliding in behind him as he flew past, but I had proven my mettle and the game was over.
I stay observant as I drive, and the pilot mindset helps to always keep my mind fresh and my eye sharp. It is not always dog fights and evasion out on the road. Quite often it is keeping a watchful eye out for amateurs and show offs who compromise traffic patterns when their egos are writing checks their bodies can’t cash. This evening my wife and I were making our way to American Furniture Warehouse on a cargo run. We were hoping that the third time would be the charm for the new armchair we were to exchange. When I got the chair home on Monday and unboxed it, I found there were no legs. On Wednesday when I was able to pick up the legs, we found out that the legrest when at full extension was prone to a sizeable roll (invigorating in a positive “g” banked curve, but very disorienting for stationary activities). About halfway there, we were in a holding pattern at a stop light. The two lanes to our left were designated for turning onto the highway, and the car in front of us decided to make our lane into a turn lane as well. The car roared to life into an aggressive maneuver from its standstill and abruptly shot around a truck and made a perilous dash for the ramp. Even though the maneuver was successful, I think I have shown it as something not to do.

Keeping a weather eye out and not simply relying on instrumentation, helps keeps me safe, but has on occasion provided me a good laugh. Several years ago, I was driving our van back from a wedding delivery. It had been a long day, and I was anxious to make it back to the deck and catch some rack time before I had to return later that evening to pick up the rentals. However, traffic was tight, and it was not time to be a slacker. Suddenly, there in front of me were two small sedans filled with even smaller elderly people. They were slow and overly cautious, with one following the other. What tipped me off to potential danger (besides their slight swaying motion in the lane) was that the lead car had on a right turn signal, and the trail car had on his left turn signal. I tapped my brake, giving myself room for the unexpected – anything could happen. Hesitantly the trail car drifted right and pulled beside his wingman. His wingman then made a sudden and stuttering left hand turn! I stared in amazement, foot poised to pound the brake if necessary, and hands tight on the wheel as from the right hand lane the other driver jolted left to follow his wingman. These events executing in the slow motion only very old or very young drivers can accomplish. Meanwhile, in the back seat of the car turning left from the right hand lane, I could make out a little old man with his hands hard on the roof, his eyes wide as saucers, his neck craning around crazily to see if anyone was about to ram them. He looked to me for all the world like Slider (Iceman’s rear) trying to follow and find the two Migs that just executed a supersonic flyby. I couldn’t help but smile at the image even as I cringed and hoped that God really did watch over fools, drunkards, and Americans.

Robin Williams (or Another Richard Cory)

What was it like to be you, Robin Williams?
Were the unrelenting crashes of ideas,
Like the rising surf to a man tied to the beach,
And being drowned by the voices that eventually consume him?

Were you wracked by the ceaseless pains of labor,
The thoughts full in your distended belly,
Each pressing to be first, each fighting to be first to the light,
Each demanding to be first down the birthing canal of your mind’s eye, born fully formed?

Did your body and spirit cave to the pressures
Of being not a person, not an identity, but a conduit
Of pure expression, pure thought, pure word, pure chaos?
Were you eaten whole by them, your soul the last gift you could offer the ravening horde?

Was it lonely never being alone from your thoughts,
Never being separated from your gift, your curse,
Never having respite from the demons of creativity,
Never being able to fully love, because your love was shredded and fed in bits to those demons?

Do you find heaven a more peaceful place,
Lying in repose, tanning in the unbearable light of God’s being,
Touched with the blessed gift of one thought at a time?
I hope so.