Category Archives: words

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Enemy

A friend and I are talking this morning and he is talking about praying daily. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. That turns into a discussion of enemies and ourselves. It’s easier to have an external enemy identified than to deal with ourselves, isn’t it? Here is today’s poem.

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Enemy

Do you have an enemy?

Do I have an enemy?

maybe I have no enemy
I have people I have forgiven
I have people who I have asked to forgive me
I have people I have forgiven
but keep distanced
no reconciliation
possible if they continue abuse
blind and deaf
saying “We are righteous!”
over and over to each other

A book teaches me
asks what are you most proud of
in yourself?
Three things:
strong, smart, tough.
The mirror is what you fear the most
weak, foolish, vulnerable
I shy back, hate the author
and he is correct
at least for me

Like the sutra
sometimes I am weak
sometimes I am foolish
sometimes I am vulnerable

When there is a person
or people
I want to hate
What aspect of myself
of my past
of my psyche
are they bringing up?
Are they stronger, smarter, tougher?
Are they weaker, foolish, more vulnerable?
Why do I want to hate them?

It’s easier, I see
to hate another person
and cast them out like a demon
then to look in the mirror
and see the aspect of myself
that I long so much
to hate

That demon
once cast out
will return with seven more

Mirror mirror
on the wall
tell my why
the angels fall

if an angel gets it’s wings
every time a bell rings
each time we hate another, as well
an angel falls heaven to hell

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Barbie present

Sol Duc is choosing a present for bushboy from the Barbie tent.

I don’t know if the cats know about the Barbie movie, but right now they just love the tent. It has a center pole. As soon as I set the pole up, a cat will go in head first and knock it down. The camping gear inside includes a back pack and camping stove and sleeping bag which belong to a Get Real Girl rather than Barbie. There are also some Barbie diving gear, fins and so forth.

Happy Birthday, bushboy! Don’t know what Sol Duc will choose for you!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: presents.

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Wet

I am Elwha.

I am small and my sister and I chase each other in and out of the house. In to all the rooms! One day I jump in the big white smooth receptacle and it is full of water! Warm! and I can’t touch bottom! I can’t get out! I HOWL!

Mother comes, fishes me out and puts me down. I run out of that room. She drops a big cloth over me and rubs me a little. I am drenched and I smell like flowers! It takes hours to clean up. My sister sniffs me and laughs.

I never jump in there without looking again.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: drenched.

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BIRGing in Memories

Let’s see, I am thinking of famous people, not just that I’ve seen (from a distance) but that I know or knew:

Frankie Manning, one of Whitey’s Lindyhoppers who danced lindyhop at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. He came to teach at the Savoy Swings Again dance weekends in West Virginia in the 1980s. He came to Port Townsend, too, for the dance camps here. I got to dance with him years ago and took classes and watched demonstrations. Hooray for him!

Bernice Reagon Johnson PhD, both for being an historian at the Smithsonian and for being the leader of Sweet Honey in the Rock for 40 years, and it’s still going! Ok, I don’t know her, but she is from my Washington, DC stomping grounds and I love that group.

Darryl Davis, for being an African American man who made appointments with KKK Grand Dragons to talk to them to try to understand. And some have quit! And he’s a fabulous Baltimore blues man and he and his band played at our wedding in 1989. He ran the Centrum Blues Fest for years too.

Ted talk here and music website here: https://www.daryldavis.com/.

Musicians and activists and dancers, that seems to be who I want to BIRG about!

And the photograph is from our wedding.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: BIRGing.

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Unvitiated

Wondering why vitiate
ads from drinking carbonate
seems a loaded silly freight
puzzle future centuries late
time foils stupid race hate
future can’t tell the state
from all attempts to carbon date

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: vitiate.

I look for songs with the word vitiate: pretty much heavy metal. Let’s go with this song instead:

We sang the lullaby in our last concert. It is gorgeous. Unvitiated.

I took the photograph this month at Kai Tai Lagoon.