the 734th the fargo kantrowitz’z literary campsite

This is the 734th the fargo Kantrowitz’z literary campsite. Today I would like to talk about the “outer” world. The outer world is there for you to embrace, to enjoy, to love with, to seek out its solitudes. There is no way in there to embrace the outer world. It is only too much in there. We are all psychological beings. We are all monsters and writers and potheads and drunks and lost causes and you named it from Bukowski all on the way down to Jim E. Brown. We’re all sunk costs, too lates, also rans, verklempt (I’m trying to illustrate my time to the world, how I could consider verklempt a word to use to describe it, like I was a product, also, of the 90s. We called ourselves the Grunge Generation and, since a literati (f*ck yo(methemountainrange)and in the cutoff on the Boomer Sided which makes me a wise soul even if I could be sold to. Our generations didn’t die. We just matured and we can tell the younger people what to do: don’t follow the junk that you see going on on the internet. You have to think for yourself. You can do it. You’ve got good brains. Burt it is time to know that it wasn’t your fault when you were brainwashed by the internet. There are ways to do the internet and one of them is to use it for organizing fun things to do in the world, making it so that people get to know their neighbors, especially Americans right now since they have been so brainwashed by well-monied men and women who don’t necesarrily want the world to end, but don’t know how to stop it. The corporation must grow. Really? This man made entity, the corporation must always grow? Well, I beg to differ.

So, anyway, there are a few of us left old enough to remember when we didn’tall have to be our own James Bonds or Blaze. We are all in it together. We are all members of the human race. It is okay to not be manic if you are not manic. That shouldn’t kick you out of the humans club. You should be able to put other people first even as you provide for yourself for your company. Companies can be kind too.

So, the outer world. What to do when there is no outer world. How much “outer world” do you or people in general really want? How much? Don’t we all just want to go to the inner world and that is what the computer gords are all about, replacing human thought with synthetic thought even if it confuses us. No problem. Leave their domain. Let them nave it. Invent a new internet somewhere else that they would have to act decent at and not suck every penny from the populace and give none of it back, none of it, ever, except for the former wife of Bill Gates.

It is time that billionaires build funds that help communities and make them major makers and shakers of local economy, wny? You were just the collectors! You had your money spout out there catching all of the money from the talent of those who reached for the golden stars, the golden rings, hope, the stars and landing on the moon. You are the ones that matter, people, not the ones who catch all of the falling golden matter as it sifts through their internet machines. Smart boy. Good lad. Learned to catch all the money, but, but, but, you remove all the best gold for yourself. Sounds like a good plan, but you, for instance, need a yach that they will have to disassemble a bridge to remove from it’s alcove. I forget what they had to do. Amazon’s founder, I forget his name.

That’ doesn’t make me stupid, forgetting his name, maybe I just don’t want to say it and I have that right. Garrison Keillor said to find the words, just keep going and that is what I think that I have to do. I have to start thinking for myself again so I get my personality back, mingle and who knows, maybe I could put out a book and not have to sit in the existential aisle with Camus and Sartre and Bukowski and others, no, I could live for me, not like some cartoon character like Fargo Kantrowitz, he’s at the Literary Campsite, you see, always marketing: here at the fargo kantrowitz’z literary campsite, it’s the best in the land, bak bak bak!

Anyway, I’ll interview this mess later. I am trying to loosen up again towards expression since I have been away from the actual expression dealing with the outer world, wondering if the outer world is worth it, sitting with the existentialist philosophers in the bookstore and Steinbeck is there, and Campbell.

I like thinking about the angels too. Like Gabriel. Michael, some say, was the greatest of them all. My best friend from childhood, Mike Skurow, was named Michael. I think it helped him get through his life unscathed. His archangel was Michael. A very wise mother and father there.

I had a professor at myth school who I remember as David more so than his last name. I’m so weird. Miller. Famous mythologist from the east, He said about teaching “you just have to look at it, you don’t have to marry it” about esoteric subject matter, about things that American evangelical Christians find difficult to do, to have permission to study Hinduism and Buddhism and even Judaism, the angel stories are some of the best and !Moloch! Give me a break.

But still, the outer world. It doesn’t matter in the end if the poetry was worthwhile. True things don’t need a lot of words. We all have short words, short thoughts, finished things within us and if we call it poetry maybe we can break a mould among our peoples, let them know and manifest poetic thought, not showboat although that’s true too but art, real art and poetry and plays and the like, expression, the outer world. That’s my outer world as the owner of the Katherine gianaclis park for the arts in las vegas Nevada, who wants to do something called mouseion gianaclis, an arts club. The outer world. Takes me away from the inner world. Hiding out. Wanting to be alone.

So, I went and wrote a sign on another page so I’m back. This is the 932nd the fklc as far as I know, never mind the prior number. Anyway, I wrote a sign: mouseion gianaclis, an arts club. Donate. Mouseiongianaclis.fracturedatlas.com , thekgpa.com.

That was it. The outer world over which I sit and sit and wait and wait and ponder and give up for weeks and months, sometimes years. I’ve had mouseion gianaclis in the old pouch for a eight years now. I have it down as a concept and now, suddenly, it is a part of the real world? Suppose so: mouseion gianaclis, an arts club. There you have it. The real world. Donate. Doesn’t get any realer than that. Welcome me back to the where, the somewhere, that going back inward is. Who knows? Maybe the real world is everything. Ah, people start to think that hedonism and pleasure at the greatest end all and be alls and they lose respect for themselves and make us all pay as they forget to cry on National Cry Day January 4th every year. They all just need a good cry day because they bought into the notion that getting ahead in life is a game and anything goes, including make it so that other people feel pain and pressure on a daily level. They don’t care, they got theirs. Get yours, was the NBC motto during the Trump years historically and miraculously.

I think that the world needs to be good right now, it is simple, like Chief Joseph said, the truth is simple, doesn’t need a lot of words, but just think, what if you got so simple that you started again around the hemisphere, in another sort of cylindrical and spherical rotation. What world would you know again if you became a part of yourself, became a think for yourself person again, if steeped in American evangelical culture, then step off of the game show ride, it may feel like you’re going too fast, but sometimes you go too fast, there you go, one foot two foot three and stop, the ride is over. Burp, you saved the day. It is okay to stop doing something that may be harmful to others in its tracks. If your people are behaving badly, you don’t have to stand by idly. You can speak up, but even better, act up. Cultivate all of your talents and muster up a good smile and a hearty laugh and hint, mind you, hint if you must, that love is better than any of this old sort of being mean to our brothers and sisters thing no matter what the color of your skin, your sexual orientation or whether you like to wear a shoe on head, who cares! We all deserve to be dummies. Maybe then life will once again become a little more fun, like back in the day, back in the good old days. That all comes on insisting that your brothers and sisters are being nice to the “least of us.” At least that. At least that.

Published in: on November 24, 2025 at 12:39 am  Leave a Comment  
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Red Pumps

      She moaned that the coffee had stained, as she put it, the “shit” out of her blouse, then without saying another word except for a sort of pigletty grunt, went to the window, opened it, and simply tossed the shirt out and walked away.  I couldn’t believe it.

      “Jen!”  I screamed while bolting to the window.

      There was this pink blouse floating like Forrest Gump’s feather to the pavement below.  I watched and wondered in amazement at the miracle of timing when it hit.  Plop!  Right on top of this old guy riding a funky bike with flowers on the handlebars.

      “It landed on somebody!”  I screamed at Jen.

      He stopped his bike, but to my surprise, he didn’t take the shirt off his head.  Instead, he honked his horn like a flipped out circus seal until people started to gather around him to find out what the commotion was about.  Then Jennifer went back to the window, clearly freaking at what she had done, groaning “Oh my god!”  I couldn’t believe it much either.  This guy just stood there and honked his horn with Jen’s shirt on his head.  A few seconds later people started pointing up to us.  They’d figured it out somehow.  My being shy, I instinctually stepped away from the window not wanting to be associated with the crime.  It was a mob pinpointing us as the culprits of this sin.  But it was in standing back that I noticed that my wife’s bare breasts were pressed up against the window.  The sin!

      “Honey, they’re not angry with you.  They’re turned on for Christ’s sake!”

      “Oh my God!” she shrieked.

      She quickly stepped out of view to the whoops, hollers and whistles of the stimulated members of the crowd below who wanted more.

      “Geez!” she said and sat down on a chair.

      Ah, memories of yesterday morning.  I breathe out a sigh that that day is over.  I’ll tell this story the rest of my life and maybe even laugh about it someday, but for now it’s too serious as all comedies are to those who play in them.  They say all the world’s a stage, and it’s true.  Other players include Tina and Tanner.  We had had them over for dinner the night before.  We had coffee, some of which was on a man’s head three stories below, and strawberry shortcake for dessert.

      I have to tell you about our friends because somehow they matter in this thing, whatever this thing really is that happened.  Tina and Tanner are the kind of couple who found each other at difficult periods in their lives and made the mistake of thinking it real and marrying.  But everything has changed since strawberry shortcake night.  Everything.  Even for Tina and Tanner somehow.  It’s different because they have always been the couple who you knew wouldn’t make it.  They seem to want to be alone while together, and of course, that never works.  It seems they were always continuing their quest for the freedom in their single years, the bliss of former solitude, therefore they only got in each other’s way.  Because they’re married, it sometimes makes people wonder about the institution of marriage itself.  Tina’s dreams, if realized, would place her at Lincoln Center as an opera singer.  She is actually a programs analyst for a computer software firm.  Tanner never made it out of his first occupation: waiting tables.

      I’m not sure why I go into their lives when I’ve got so much legal shit to think about right now.  It’s beyond me.  I chalk it up as part of some absurd story that God wrote us into as characters on a boring Tuesday afternoon in heaven.  Why would He give me friends like Tina and Tanner when I could use better friends, rich friends, intelligent friends, friends like Jen’s friends who are artsy and fun, back in, ironically enough, Illinois.  The friends we hung out with briefly before moving to New York.  Jesus winked as well as wept, I guess.  I don’t blame Tina or Tanner.  It’s just that their shitty marriage has always been there somehow to remind us of the places in our own marriage that aren’t so great.  I always said to myself to forget about them, but somehow we couldn’t, Jen and I.  That is until yesterday.

      Anyway, this guy has this blouse on his head and I suddenly remember that I paid $48 to Macy’s for it for Jen’s 24th birthday.  I remember she put it on the evening I gave it to her.  She had a little smudge of cherry frosting on her upper lip which she had eaten just before opening the  compact, hard little box with its red bow and pink hearts which I felt proud for picking out myself.  When she kissed me, I tasted the frosting and it tasted good; I don’t even like frosting.  Now that same blouse was on some guy’s head and I wanted it back.  Looking down from our third floor loft, I for the life of me couldn’t figure out what he was doing.  It seemed he was having trouble getting it off his head.  When he finally did, he didn’t hesitate to stuff it into his basket with the plastic flowers connected with twisty wire to the handlebars.

      “He’s taking it!”  I yelled.

      “What?”

      “What did you think would happen if you threw it out the window?”

      “Bobby!”

      I bolted out our door, down the stairs and into the street.  I caught up to him, slowing him by grabbing the bar between his legs.  He stopped.  Of course he thought I was mugging him.  What else would you think in New York if someone touches you?  He was an ugly son of a bitch,  clearly an eater of only mush for the number of teeth he had left, and Italian or Hispanic, maybe Greek.  He had this quirky stare that I couldn’t figure out.  It made me feel weird because it didn’t seem penetrable.  What I mean is that it seemed like he couldn’t see me even though he was looking right at me.  Politely, I explained to him that the blouse belonged to my wife.  He moved away, trying to get on his bike and pedal, but I wouldn’t let him.  I was getting angry.

      “I said that this shirt belongs to my wife!”

      “You want the shirt?”

      “I would like that, yes!”

      “Twenty bucks.”

      “What!  I already paid $50!”

      “Twenty-five bucks.”

      That’s when I knew what hate is.  It’s different than you would expect it to be.  It’s sort of meek and sickly and you feel it in the pit of your stomach, but your face gets hot and you can feel your heart beat.  It’s really quite an odd feeling and even odder to recognize it for what it is while it is actually going on.  I felt it for a moment just staring at the man who went silently back into his gaze of nothingness again.  He couldn’t see me.  I was this whacked out something that oozed upwards out of the city bowels that he had been avoiding his entire old life.  He had defended himself in the only way that he knew how: to drive a hard bargain.  I guess I could respect at least that about the old man and found the strength to begin my next action without smacking him, but with civility.

      “Sir, this is my shirt.  My wife dropped it accidentally out of our window which is just above you.  You may have seen her.  She was the one there just a minute ago with no shirt on.  That’s because her shirt was on your head.” She hadn’t actually been wearing it, but I said it anyway.

      “Your wife shouldn’t be parading around in the nude.”

      Somehow I didn’t punch him.  Instead, I grabbed the shirt from out of his basket of ugly, dusty, torn and dirty flowers and walkingly made my way back to my apartment.  That’s when he blew his whistle.  I felt my forehead collapse onto the tops of my jaws.  My eyeballs free-floated in their gooey pools not seeing much of anything.

      “Thief!  Thief!”

      I kept walking, felt my legs weaken, found them again and continued on.  I’d just about reached the door when my legs went out on me for a different reason.  I had to put my hand up to protect my head from hitting the corner of the building.  Some guy had tackled me from behind.  The whistle was still blowing so I knew it wasn’t the old man.  Suddenly I’m a human smudge on the sidewalk of life…literally!  I should be having breakfast with my wife, eggs and sausages, but instead I’m staring at the feet of a nameless horde of curious onlookers to my existentialist, highly individualized woe.  I’m staring at countless pairs of shoes, red ones, black ones, brown ones and thongs.  I saw no faces, only shoes and toes.  Shoes and toes of bankers, bakers, artists, muggers, hippies and computer analysts like Tina.  In the early morning summer heat, all the open-toed shoes revealed to me that toes are nothing more really than miniature Ballpark franks.  I wondered if, perhaps, left to their own they would grill then plump upon the pavement as my cheek seemed as though it was beginning to do.

      Just to keep you updated about the shirt.  The moment I hit the ground, a little kid ripped it out of my hand and ran away.  I saw his little butt almost get run over by a car as he ran across the street, and I asked God why he hadn’t given me at least that.  I realized I should have paid the kid ten dollars to steal it back for me in the first place.  It would like a fine on Jen’s part for her nuttiness in throwing it out the window because of a coffee stain.  I could feel my partner’s hand heavy on my ear.  I couldn’t figure out why he kept pressing my head into the sidewalk.  Wasn’t the knee in my back a sufficient point to be made considering the really non-severe nature of my crime which was, in actuality, no crime at all?  I guessed not.  He was screaming, “Get the cops!  Get the cops!”  I couldn’t tell whether I wanted the cops or not.  Who would they choose more fitting to beat?  Surely me.  I wondered where Jen was.  Would she plead my case before the officers?  I certainly hoped she would.  I didn’t want to spend any time in jail.  My thoughts were getting slower and slower as my breath began failing.  The man’s thumb was on my right eyeball so when I tried to blink, we joined together in keeping my right eye dry.

      “You son of a bitch!”  It was Jen.

      She was screaming that this man was a son of a bitch over and over.  Each time she said it, she swung the heel of a red ladies shoe right upside the guy’s head.  I think the first one really dazed him because he didn’t move after he got that one.  She hit him a good seven or eight times before he turned and I saw these big, hairy arms reaching for my wife.

      “Jen!”  I screamed.

      I desperately wanted her to stop.  He was lunging for her now, pushing up off of me to get to her.  He wore no shirt.  He had enough hair on his back to keep Sy Sperling’s wig production division happily in business for months.  Then, between the moment of his reaching for Jen and the moment I knew he would never reach her, I had a moment of calm unlike I’d ever known before.  The look in Jen’s eyes told me that she was out for blood.  She was tasting it, letting it wash down her chin.  I felt real bliss.  It overcame me.  It placed me in a room of pink clouds.  I was totally in love with her.  All my insecurities over the years about her and my own desirability failed suddenly and I had no more doubt.  No more petty jealousy.  All the stupidity that gets shoved into the cracks of a relationship was washed through.  It was stupid.  It dawned on me that Jen married me because she thought it was stupid too.

      Trog lifted up off of me.  I knew I had only a moment to stop him.  Jen kept wailing on his head.  Blood was everywhere.  As we did our dance, the three of us, I noticed the sounds of the man’s beating.  Jen swung her shoe like Aaron Judge.  The sound was like the plucking of a dampened piano wire from the inside of the box.  Puhhh.  Puhhh.  Puhhh.  She got him a few more times, and I could see he was swaying.  As his body rose off of me, I lost my breath for a second, but it didn’t stop me from getting him.  I got to this guy’s legs so fast he didn’t know what hit him.  It was his turn to taste the pavement.  Those hairy, local, New York City limbs were being held so tight they had as much chance of getting away as a strung duck in Chinatown.  In the meantime, Jen kept swinging on the guy, screaming these filthy words that I didn’t know she knew, and I don’t need to repeat.

      “Jen!  Jen!  Stop!”

      But I couldn’t get her to stop.  The guy was clearly dazed at this point, and I knew that we were in control, but Jen didn’t seem to think so.  She kept hitting and hitting him until I thought she would kill him.  I had to stop her so I began literally climbing the guy while keeping my weight on him in case he responded to the change of positioning.  I climbed all the way up the guy until I could put my hand up to block Jen’s blows.  She hit me two times before she realized what she was doing, and then someone grabbed her.  I watched her watch me as they pulled her away.  It was like she was disappearing into a void and I would never see her again.  My heart ached for her, was lonely for her.  Then I was pulled away by two uniformed officers who saw fit to place a baton so tightly against my throat that I thought surely I was going to die.  They put both me and Jen into handcuffs, and the old man who I hated so much that I no longer hated him, stood there alternating his gaze from us to the bike for some goddamned reason.  I think it was in explanation to the cop who had probably gotten the story right five minutes before.

      “It’s his fault,” I said, but it only produced a tightening on the baton.

      The old man raised his hand in exasperation and told the officer one more time about my stealing of the shirt he believed he had found fair and square.  Then to make his point, he squeezed his horn once really loud and burst out, “Crazy!  He’s crazy!”  And that’s how I felt as they placed me in a squad car separate from that of my wife.  Crazy as hell.

      We went to jail, an altogether new experience for both of us.  I called Tanner since my mom and dad live in Hawaii, and Jen called Tina since her parents live in Evanston, Illinois.  They both came and talked to the police for us and posted our bail, which was $1,000 apiece.  We went home in Tina’s car.  It was a good car, a Genesis with fine leather seats, dual airbags, highly computerized.  Tina drove and was very quiet, I imagined out of respect and maybe a little embarrassment for having to be put in such a situation.  Tanner sat in the passenger seat and asked me if my face was alright over and over again.  I had a purple scrape on my cheek, but it didn’t hurt.  Jen told me that the shoe belonged to Mrs. Fulbright of the first-floor Fulbrights.  She couldn’t find anything to beat the man with in our apartment so she just ran downstairs unarmed.  Mrs. Fulbright had stepped out to see what the ruckus was when Jen ran into her apartment and grabbed one of her shoes laying about, because that was the only weapon, my wife said, that would work.  For some it’s a stiletto, for others a 9 mm handgun, for Jen a size 8 red pump bought on sale at Saks Fifth Avenue.

      More than anything, I just wanted to get back home.  We were going to have to hire a lawyer.  Forget about our savings account.  Cabo San Lucas was immediately nixed in favor of more time out of prison.  We would plead self-defense, and I thought we would have a good chance, except that the hairy, ape-like man who tackled me in the name of protecting an elder of the community, had sustained far greater injuries by the use of one red shoe that it seems the self-defense plea may allow.  To the crowd and therefore the courts, my and Jen’s struggle together had all the romance of watching a thug kick an old lady in the teeth.  If Jen had stopped when I had wanted her to, things might be looking better for us now, but she didn’t, and I didn’t have the heart to be mad at such a woman as Jen was as she swung that shoe.

      “You, you guys,” Tanner stammered slowly, as we drove home in the Tesla.  As though his stutter foreshadowed vision, this was Tanner and no wisdom was expected.  Any fool could see that Jen and I were stewing.  “You were charged with some pretty violent charges … and you stole that man’s shirt?”

      “Christ,” I said.

      “Tanner, he stole Jen’s shirt,” Tina whined in, “Bobby was only trying to get it back.”

      “Oh.”  Tanner searched for something else he wanted to say but didn’t find it.  “Oh,” he said again as if he had, but he was so utterly discovered by us all in his slow wittedness that Jen and I looked at each other briefly in pity for Tina.

      “We’re okay, Tanner.  If that’s what you’re wondering, ” Jen said.

      “No, that’s not it.  I mean, you beat that guy on the head like crazy, I heard.  He ended up in the hospital, and it just seems … it just seems kind of, I don’t know if this is right to say or not, well, kind of cool.  Sorry, I didn’t mean cool, but like good in a way.”

      Jen and I looked at each other then, and for the first time relayed to each other that which we already knew, how utterly right Tanner was.  I realized that looking helplessly on at my Jen fight like a lioness for me was one of the greatest feelings I have ever known, if not the greatest.

      “Tanner, you’re insane,” Tina said sourly, dispensing these words in his direction with an ugly, I thought totally unfair, eye.  I wanted her to shut up.  Tanner was somehow initiating that change I referred to earlier.

      Jen then leaned forward and looked at me.  She was seeing something but it wasn’t me exactly.  Then she turned to Tanner, and he turned to her, and it was as if they were alone in the car.

      “Tanner, you’re right somehow.  When I was on top of that guy, I was crazy with rage, and I just hit and hit and hit, and I was trying to kill him.  I know that sounds bad, but as I hit him it wasn’t bad.  And you know why?  Because I had to look through this guy, past him, ya know, to see Bobby.  This guy was blocking Bobby from my view, hurting him, killing him for all I knew.  I think it made me stronger knowing that I have a say in whether Bobby stays with me.  I will fight those who try to take what is mine.”

      “You Tarzan, me Jane,” I say and laugh a little bit.

      “No, Honey, not like that.”

      And I know it’s not like that.  I reach for her hand and she touches me back.  We are quiet as she falls into my arms, and while there, I smell her hair and skin, and I kiss her lightly on the forehead.  Then I look up and see, for the very first time, Tanner’s arm resting on the seatback of his own wife, his hand caressing her hair, her neck and her head falling softly into his touch like a hot air balloon that had been up in the air and around the world for eighty days, but probably longer.

Published in: on December 26, 2024 at 4:43 pm  Leave a Comment  
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What’s Happening?

There is a lot of stuff going on these days. Stuff. Can something actually happen? What does it mean to happen? If something happens what does it become, the thing that happened? An ongoing happening? A million consecutive and fluid happens? Anyway, I guess we’ll never really know whether or not something can happen. Anyway.

 

Okay, so people say “this is happening” as a joke. This is happening, Stephen… I get it now. Something that happens can take time. It must be some sort of strange sort of thing where time is mixed in with space and within that funnel is a happen, but it can be long, years maybe. Maybe there is a larger bit of space rather than just the moment that something happens. Maybe a happening can last thousands or even millions of years. It’s good to think of time like that…long. It releases you. The Hindus have calendars in the millions of years. Time. This too shall pass, they say, this too shall pass.

 

Mostly it’s darkness. Clouds whispering in winds cooly wrapping round vents in the waterless sea and falling. You see. You don’t see. You keep going. All that you can do is just survive. All that you can do to help yourself is stay alive. Rush.

 

But I know there is more than that. I know this. This world is not meant to be wasted and family should not fight and that goes for extended family which means everybody in America and the wider world. Everybody. Everybody love.

 

 

Published in: on June 20, 2020 at 9:05 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Make America Love Again – Joey Kantor

 

 

 

My mother was born again in 1973, the same year she opened a Bible store in Las Vegas where I grew up.  When Jesus’ love walloped my mother, boy, did it hit hard. I grew up with a mother who praised Jesus all day long and quite openly.

 

Hence, being eight years old at the time, I was introduced to the Christian religion. I was immediately saved, of course, and Jesus took the place of my “word” which was a part of the practice of transcendental meditation that my mother had been involved with just the year before.

 

It became Jesus Jesus Jesus. Jesus loved everybody. I mean everybody. He loved His enemies even. When people got mad at him for telling the truth they actually put Him on a cross, hung Him there to die, and He still asked God to forgive them. He had a lot of patience, this Jesus. So I followed Him too.

 

When I became a teenager in the early 1980s I occasionally attended a non-denominational church, Calvary Chapel, at Rancho and the freeway. I remember one day an associate pastor telling us something that just didn’t jibe with what I thought I knew about Jesus. He said that unless you became a born-again Christian, you were going to go to hell.

 

Think about it. You’re going along -love love love- when suddenly, boom, hate. Jesus would throw you into an oven! Okay. Now, did Jesus condemn other religions of other cultures? If so I must have missed it what with all of the talk about love. What about the good Samaritan? It just didn’t make sense. I later took a two-year Masters degree in mythology, other people’s religions really, to find an answer.

 

What I discovered was interesting. Time after time the religions that I studied said the same things that Jesus said but in different ways. I saw the game clearly. The loving God I had known wouldn’t be so stupid as to condemn everyone other than Christians just because they spoke a different language, had a different mythic vocabulary if you will. The heart was what mattered.

 

Along came 9-11 and then Iraq. It was a mad rush to war, and who was cheering it on the most? The right wing evangelical Christians. The swiftness with which they abandoned the command not to kill, but love only, was breathtaking and very sad.

 

Now, of course, we have Donald Trump. Eighty-one percent of evangelicals voted for him even though his actions, even before the election, were blatantly vile. The evangelical Christians wanted to acquire the worldly power that Jesus Christ himself would have vehemently disagreed was worth having. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s…

 

Evangelicals have drunk the Trump Kool-Aid because it has been in Trump’s best interests to say and do whatever this sub-culture wants even if he has to lie.

 

I’ll stick with the loving God instead of this politically motivated facsimile of Christianity that feeds off of the notion of tough love. Love isn’t tough. Love is love.

 

Perhaps someday right wing evangelical Christians will once again embrace the idea that their worldly beings are nothing, that there is no greater thing to do than to give your very life for your brother, that you should give your enemy the shirt off of your back, that a real Christian cares for the “least of these,” that kindness is actually not weakness, as some would have you believe, that must be destroyed.

 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just make America love again?

 

Published in: on August 31, 2019 at 12:48 am  Leave a Comment  
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Luminos – Joey Kantor

Walk down here
forget about steps
a float down onto a cloud
you down here now
no there, no forward
come down here
and I will show you
where you are

All that no more
of course no more
how could it be
when your love is gone
and you, you, you
just you and you are
not enough

So where, what, how?
Now that love is gone?
Here, follow me
and I will show you
yes, that’s it, down now
float down, forget about
the step, no more steps

What space, huh?
What glorious white space
of the world of nothing
no wonder you can’t do
now you can only be
the ghost of the girl
somewhere out there
up there, but gone
definitely gone and so
you ask about what’s next

Next? What time now
that she’s gone and you
you you do not truly
believe in a next
but here now you are
alive, still you
look around and maybe
you’ll see something

Let’s do.
Let’s see. Look! Over there!
A cloud. A white cloud.
Let’s leap to it like it is love
come on, do do do
ah, feel that, down now
down we go on to this
cloud where we are
but there is no is

She entered the machine
and disappeared
she did not want your cloud
and your mind and your
thought and your you and
your you and your you

Ah mountains distant
perhaps there is ground there
let us go to them and see
ah, fly yes fly but where joy here
not here, at all, no joy in flight
until there, until on ground firm
ah here we are down down down
ah, a mirage, not a mountain
down down down on to another cloud

you thought you saw her there
but she was not there and you
you you must get used to her her her
not knowing you, seeing you, loving you
because otherwise you will disappear
move move move move move move

she holds all mystery
she talks into the ear of God
God loves her and you God
through her
all untrue, but true, no denying
the truth of untruth
when you believe it

let’s journey to the sea
ah krita, the rocky beach, the wind
her spirit flying amongst the other spirits
so full her heart, the sea and her home
no no no no no no no no
don’t fall away for fear
of your loss of God
she no more owns God than you

ah, but i see you don’t believe that
i can see. there! let’s go there.
another mountain. Athos!
there is the mystery.
There she runs like a wolf
free, untamable and you you you
no, let’s not go there
for you lose her there don’t you
or you think you do
but you don’t, well, only
if you think you do

Where else? Back up?
To the world again?
What are you there?
Are you not just a pair of eyes
and a flabby brain
with no understanding?
No not there.
There is no there for you
there anymore

We are together
seeking a happy ending
or just floating
yes, floating, wishing
never to come down
or go up again
wishing because even
our belief is waning

But there is her smile
And her limited promises
that she will see you again
but your heart is dead
because doubtful
because you think her heart
is dead, doubtful

Worship her then
Let her be what she is
Like a goddess
live with that until
she gives to you the right
to see her as she is
until then
take her as you see her
for she can be nothing else
and maybe God will whisper
into her ear.

Mortal mortal mortal you you you
The immortal whispers to her:
Do not turn away from him
Although blind and stupid
Do not turn away from him
For there is more to him than
you realize
The mortal carries a secret store
of mystery and knowledge
And he has seen you
Why not believe until you know?

There there there.
See? Her head turns slow.
An invisible power released
from between her honeyed lips
and she does not look away from
you you you
See? Is that what you came to see?
I think so.
We will take you back now.
Now, you must wait.

Published in: on October 22, 2016 at 3:19 pm  Leave a Comment  
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From 101 of the least asked questions of all times

Why do intellectuals often think they’re smarter than circus clowns?

 

While circus clowns do not necessarily pride themselves on their intellectual prowess, they cannot be said to know less than intellectuals, whose assumption of superiority in itself would be an intellectual mistake.  This makes the score from the beginning of the debate 1-0: circus clowns.

 

Whereas a circus clown may not have read The Nichomachean Ethics, the intellectual has most likely never reduced a sad child to happy tears through the flapping of their size 26 boot. In each case a catharsis may be the possible result, yet whereas the circus clown does not judge results or knowledge according to intellect, but rather, to emotion, he can be said to know more depending upon his dedication to his craft, natural abilities and even age.

 

 

Why are NRA guys so into law and order yet cops hate their guts?

 

While it is true that the right to bear arms is in our constitution, it is also true that the founding fathers had not considered the fact that thirteen-year-old psychopaths in the future could find myriad ways to exercise their right at twenty to one hundred bullets per minute. Cops are well aware of this fact and therefore believe there should be limits on the types of guns to be sold and also stricter regulations concerning the sale. The NRA guys are also aware of this situation, an awareness which, for them, points right back to the constitution in the form of desire for self-protection and law and order. Unfortunately, the NRA guys cannot see banning any weapons at all for fear of blighting the holy words “right to bear arms.” Cops say that because of this cops die. Unfortunately, criminals also readily admit their love of this constitutional right as well. However, criminals will most likely never attack the NRA guy, (who is ready for him, but unfortunately lives far from the criminal, on his ranch in Texas) but will instead kill small children playing on their front porches from L.A. to New York City. Ultimately, the entire debate comes down to one other question: Do children really matter?

 

 

Why does the media believe that it is important for me to know that the President enjoyed a golf game yesterday?

 

 

The media will usually use the President’s golf game as a lead-in to what it wants to say about current events. However, this does not sufficiently explain why the camera or the writer’s pen or the photographer’s lens naturally finds the president swinging a four foot pole at a two inch ball relevant and a good place to start.

 

Two concepts may help to explain this. The “reeling-in”  and the “give the public a break” Ideas.

 

The former uses the golf game as backdrop because it does not expect the general public to pay attention to the intricate details of the story without first having a mental pacifier handed to them.

 

This “reeling in” leads the viewer by the hand to la la land where the under-lying message is coyly announced, for example, that the president is calm, cool, and collected, so “don’t worry when I tell you that he is on his way to prison for fraud, etc…”

 

This “give the public a break” technique is a sort of buffer between the story and what it really means, a public service to us from the media.

 

Combined, these two tricks of the trade lead to an intriguing story whereas there was previously only the possibility of a slightly different take on the never changing and endless stream of beaureaucratic red tape run amok that the journalist must call news or else lose his job.

Published in: on September 28, 2016 at 12:26 am  Leave a Comment  
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Let the Angels Reign

 

A deep deep sound gravity awakens night tickles day lays upon her night and leaves. Corrosion explosion notions of nought cannot doom reality or her graces final musings.

 

A ticket to space is not the same as being there. When we wake we realize our dream has left us, but we do not wonder where it has gone. Why?

 

If our motions considered us we would never be able to move. If our sounds sought us after we made them we would be harried and run from city to city like some Cain unable to forget Abel.

 

I would make my world a centerpiece rather then give to it a stone that may or may not bring it luck. Give it a reason to make glitter from the passing moon and the stationary stars.

 

If love could visit me tonight I would sit down first for tea with it. If it could not make itself known to me completely I would go to sleep with the one that I love and dream it to me and it would lie upon my breath afloat for hours.

 

The star’s son has been commmitted to knowing less tonight. The boys and girls who dreamed they would someday know how to dream have fallen asleep again, put off play for something higher again only to wake up wondering again.

 

If music were my master I would bow down forever upon an altar of moon. I would not consider myself less if a smile were given to me by a friend. I would die if it were taken away, but usually I need not fear either and that is a sadness that I bear.

 

If women could only understand men they would know that our hearts too have pulse. I’m tired of being called unknowing by those who think that they know. I would choose no battles there however for no curve of cheek or hue of skin can predict from where love can arise. Not even mine.

 

I love to love and fear losing the love I have known. What valleys have been riveted into my being by my experiences with love. What sounds have coursed through my skull because I have wondered at the loss of love. To have loved even for a moment is enough to make you restless for a lifetime until you know such a moment again.

 

I give nothing to you tonight. I take all for me. The world is mine if I am to understand the concept of the scope of reality. I cannot think less than within that sphere whose boundaries I defy anybody to make in front of me. I confuse light with dark and sound with silence only because I refuse not to be open to the experiences of all or none.

 

Fourteen years have passed since I last looked into the circle. Two thousand years went by before I realized that nobody cared anymore. Who am I to say what is being done is not proper? Nobody. I say it anyway. What is not proper. I do not know. That is the mystery of my pursued quandary.

 

I will sell the dust on my shoes for a million. Take a beanie baby and hang it by a tree and snare a citizen as they come and steal in the night that which cannot be taken except under the eye of God. Adam and Eve. Well, it’s not as though they’re dead, you know.

 

I take my liberty now, but accept the price tomorrow. I, by knowing I do not know and yet exclaiming anyway, will pay the price in looks of knowing that I do not know that you will all give. For if I know, how then can you know if what you know is different from what I do. I laugh and then hide, knowing the argument silly.

 

John Emmons was shot in the shoulder because he thought a conversation silly. Was it an angel that made him jump away at the last moment that extra inch further that mattered? An angel is song, known in body and soul, and therefore let the angels reign…

 

Published in: on May 27, 2016 at 6:57 am  Leave a Comment  
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new

hello,
this is the world of the new. there is old and there is new and new is you and you are you and

welcome,
there isn’t much point in being here today,
but you are
and I am
and we
together,
although we don’t see
each other
we do exist you know
do we?
oh yeah
we do.
you?
me?
yes,
we do.
all in all and all in all
the world is alright today
so you say
and we all must learn
to love it.

There was a girl who touched my heart
but lived very far away
it wasn’t that she lived for me
she hardly knew my way
but she lived for something
a little something
something far and wee and her
nothing more than what she was
and that was enough for me

Published in: on January 20, 2014 at 9:42 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Love

I’ve sat on this for a long time, the lost days, the moments of wanting what I had and no longer being able to feel the entering place. It really is like wandering dark hallways. All memory is lost because it cannot be seen. It can only be felt. There is nothing not askew. If color could be placed upon my mind, enough to outline those forms still brewing in my soul I would be a happy man, but it is only the acts of others that seem to be able to place me there. Those acts seem to be unimportant anymore. I could trace anything in my day. I don’t mean draw, but trace the outlines of feelings enough to be able to look back at it and proclaim its verity.
And I was proud. That was a good feeling. Although when you are at any particular place in your life you doubt that it is real and verifiable.
There was a time when final results occurred, final notions, things that made you breathe out and walk on sturdy in your step like a man who knows where he is going and determined to get there. Too many people have placed me aside or, to be more truthful, I have set myself aside for other people to shine. I have always been one who steps aside for the new and whole in others. I surround myself with those who do not consider these questions, those with minds that put forth what they know as if it were true and all that there is to know. This has caused me some despair over the years because my altruism overrides my selfishness and it is only in selfishness that you can assert yourself as those who are also asserting themselves mindlessly do.
I am working on this. It is my weakness, this capitulation to all who appear and assert themselves. If you listen enough to others you will forget that your truth must be gathered for yourself. What is this truth? It is a million footed thing. A monster or a saint that asks for less discussion, asks for an end to discussion so that it may be felt deeply. Study, something formerly sought after in my youth, in its disappearance leaves me hollow for then there is no more pondering. There is only scattershot thought, winged solutions, uncolored wandering darkened rooms. At least I lost my ego. But that was not what I truly wanted. There is the selfishness. This selfishness, this healthy selfishness, asks for more color, more light, assertion and proclamation all the while knowing that it may be shot down by another’s proclamation and yet, if so, this should be considered a good thing, for the lion, at least, has been let out of its cage. No place for a lion to be.
I believe that the mind, in forsaking knowing, retracts, becomes emaciated and if left too long in an unattended state, dies. I have attempted this soulical suicide. It has been what I have wanted, to find truth in an unadorned state. But truth unadorned is not truth for it cannot be seen. Vision is desired because it streaks across the mind in a flash, with flash, and does so because life is proud and viable and seeks beauty in every step of it’s formation. We cannot be a dunce, asking for nothing for hatred of human pride which we may believe lurks around the next corner ready to devour us. We are meant to shine. Our proclamations are meant to be daring and our lives so fulfilled proclaim back to ourselves our goodness. We become beacons of light that move us forward because it has taken away our choice. When you see an open path you must take it. When you do you bump once again against darkness, but beside you are visions of truth that edify. It is this picking of the fruit right where we are that allows us to grow. Growth is our ability to feel secure in our knowledge. Knowledge allows us to feel secure in our steps. Darkness is only darkness and can be penetrated by simple light until we finally reach the reality that we seek be it what we expected or not. We seek knowledge of ourselves. If we become too wrapped up in mind games of others concerning us we will become stilted, but once we awaken again we are more than able to continue the fight, to pick up the sword and cut once again at those black chimera’s just ahead. We kill fear.

To have true victory over fear we must have true acceptance of love. Love is the result of our having tried. Our having tried reminds us that we are worthy. Success is that which allows us room to stand back and smell the flower, to love the flower and all those around us. It is and is not the opposite of hate. Hate makes us want to hurt. Love, it’s opposite, makes us want to continue the path in which we are on. It is our payment for we do nothing for free. We all must be paid and when we play in the garden of such thought it is nothing but this love that reminds us that we are good and right and worthy.        Love goes hand in hand also with change. If we are to love we must embrace the entry into the realm of love. Without this entering into the darkness with bright flame we are nothing. Fear, the first thing we encounter on our journey, is only fear. We must not back from it. We must edify ourselves with that which will remind us of this. Some would call this positive thinking, but I hate such terms. It is more poetic than that. This beauty, this senseful beauty which occurs when we dare to love, is all and all ultimately, for if we are to give our lives over to the process, a process which may at times decapacitate us, we must reach for the lifeline and love is the lifeline. In it is beauty and joy and delicate artistry. This goes for thought and spreads into things that thought produces: art, literature and such. We are meant to explore the good and great things in our lives and in other people’s lives. It is not our responsibility to hold it down as the greatest of thoughts, for all things die as well as the opportune moment for the release of a beautiful thought, but while we are with it we should be with it completely. In this way the love spreads through you and you are able to share the thought poetically, shiningly, daringly and lovingly and the end result is that whatever kernel of existence was hiding inside of you is now released into the wider world, injected into other souls who can use it for their own sustenance. If it falls flat then we must remember that the process is true, but not always true for others. Opportunity knocks to those who can hear it. For those who can’t it doesn’t mean it won’t. It may just mean that it is not time.
I have gathered a hatred of poetry over the last few years because of hatred for myself. This must change or else I will die. Literally die. The body cannot live in a world where love is kept out voluntarily because you feel unworthy. I am worthy.

Published in: on June 2, 2010 at 10:35 pm  Leave a Comment  
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