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May 31, 2016, 7:58 pm

Photos of my dog Snoot before and after I forget to give him the last bite from my table.

“The woman knelt before Jesus and cried out, “Lord, help me!” But Jesus asked, “Is it right to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs?” “Yes, Lord,” she said, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Mathew 15: v. 25 (Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Baba Bathra 8a.) h/t Craig Keen

Of Kissing: An Evolutionary Paleo-Ontology With a Key to the Scriptures.

My dog is 100 years old
I wonder who’s master
How many nights
Could he have killed me in my sleep
Yet chose not to

Our deal is
He gets my last bite
I get to eat without pestering
Except for his Jesus on the cross eyes

The Talmud cautions
Sin not against dog
Against our life—world
These are the only unforgivable
Second bites at the apple

Reneging on the deal
Biting the cosmos that feeds you
Forgetting which tree is which
Consolidating etymologies until
Word don’t mean shit

We watch television together
Two broken-down voyeurs
Flickering eyes track fleet wolves
Running to ground an old Caribou
The exhausted bull ran his heart out
Until his legs and lungs surrendered

Respecting the food chain
The Alpha-wolf eats first
Starting with the bleeding-heart
Then the warm liver and soft guts

The congregation circles waiting
For the *Liturgy of Addai and Mari*
Take this spleen, this tongue, this haunch
This is my body
Given up for you

The weakest member gets the last bite
This is the way of the wolf—pack
Before money markets or mercy
We licked fresh blood from each others lips
And over aeons
Found love

(From *The Book of Lost Kisses* By Daniel Imburgia).
Obliged.

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June 21, 2016, 8:59 am

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“The Triumph of the Church over Fury, Discord, and Hatred.”
(By Peter Paul Rubens. c.1625)

There are 783,137 words in the King James Bible
(And 783,138 spaces)
One day Barabbas bumped into Lazarus in Jerusalem
They drank wine and spoke of old times
Neither mentioned the elephant in the room
Bartholomew died soon after
Sadly of ‘natural causes’
James son of Zebedee finally came out of the closet
Of course the Rabboni knew even before JZ did
Mary Magdalena lives alone in a cave
Ministering to sick pilgrims who come looking
No one sees Thaddeus much anymore
He travels Italia mongering miracles from knock-off Mandylions
Judas took off with the stash but he keeps on
Financing doomed revolutions with profits from his brothels
Pontus Pilate retired to Corinth to remodel his compound
I think theres a cable show about it
Peter keeps insisting on circumcising eunuchs
And embracing socialism
One fundamentalist who got healed took up his bed to follow
But he won’t put it down again until Jesus comes back
At some point people started calling “Jews,” “THE” Jews
Saint Paul never burned his Roman passport
Simon (called “The Zealot”) decided after all to just
’Change the system from the inside’
The ‘Gadarene Swine’ became a chain of Paleo-cafes
Saint Junia was an apostle of indeterminate gender
(we don’t know where (s)he peed)
Two Popes disappeared without a trace
Christian Crucifixes are all made by tiny Chinese communists now
Simon Magus wasn’t first to capitalize on the zeitgeist
Zwingli starved the Roman Catholic Swiss cantons in retaliation
Hussites defenestrated Prague’s schismatics
From the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary of the Snows
I received holy communion there in 1992 but
The Carmelite nuns had already fled in terror
When toads in Hamburg began exploding in the summer of 1486
Fearful church elders blamed ‘The Jews,’ and burned them publicly
As is common practice in europe during any calamity*
A chariot imported from Egypt cost 600 silver shekels ($77,000)
One shekel was a weeks’s wages (1 Kings 10:29)
‘Pele-joez-el-gibbor-abi-ad-sar-shalom,’ is the longest name in the bible
It holds place for the passing shadow of the nameless un-god
The devil tested Jesus with absolute everything, but
After fasting 40 days in the desert Jesus returned with open hands
For a short time whores, lepers, poor people, strangers, queer folk
Were all loved
But that part of the story was lost and forgotten
Predictably, the ‘Seven Demons’ have returned with friends

obliged, daniel imburgia

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July 13, 2016, 6:45 pm

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on render

when asked to name

whose likeness was on her coin

the saint had only smooth stones

in her pocket

obliged

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August 21, 2016, 8:34 am

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who among us would risk proclaiming
how beautiful the stones
how marvelous the flowers
how graceful the mountain
how alive the animal
amongst so much darkness and ruin

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August 30, 2016, 8:24 pm

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the seventh kiss (zoopoetics X theopoetics rev.)

“when Jesus rose early on the first day
he appeared first to Mary Magdalena
out of whom he had cast seven devils.” mark 16-9

i wept
at all three tombs for mary magdalena
jerusalem
constantinople
aix-le-provence
wept like a lost child
tradition records that
magdalena
with martha and lazarus
were set adrift by other-believers
in a small boat
without oars or sails
so their heads pop up everywhere
but they may still be out there
tracing the scent of spikenard
waiting for us to abandon our life-boats
listen
spirit murmurs among vernacular winds
babies babble angel-speak and
the fresh songs of the dying
are sung into other worlds

of the bodies membrum
martha tidies the boat
lazarus pumps the bilge
Magdalena stands night-watch on the bow
remembering
she faces the waves
tempted to close her eyes and
journey home on foot

when swells break over the bow
her tears greet their briny fingers
warm seas embrace her body
cosset her breasts
wind presses hard between
her shearing thighs

magdalena
recalls every kiss written in the gospel
five were kisses of betrayal
one kiss was pure devotion
but of the seventh kiss
nothing was written
(for every mary
who made love with god
and lived,
and for Uzzah
who was killed for much less).

obliged, daniel imburgia

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October 17, 2016, 5:26 pm

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Zoopoetics X Theopoetics #5

What If Derrida Was Right?

‘—I must make it clear from the start that
the dog I am talking about is a real dog
believe me, It isn’t merely the figure of a dog’
“The Animal That Therefore I am.”

What if Derrida was right
About all of it
What then

Jesus taught:
If any will follow
Let them deconstruct
Take up their cross
And follow, but

Its assumed “cross” is a synecdoche
Or metaphor whatever
Like when I say how much I *heart* my dog
“One of my family,” I claim
Thing is
If the house were on fire
And I could only rescue the child or the dog
I’d save the child

I discussed this with my dog
Dog said I was full of shit
My theology was anthropocentric
That I didn’t know what love was
—’Is all life sacred in god?’ Dog asked.

— ‘GOD!’
I challenged (playing devil’s advocate)
— ‘Which god is dog god?’
Dog (the animal that therefore he is) replied:
— ’is god all as one?’
I started to reach for my bible to proof-text
Hierarchies of creation and Patriarchal orders of obeisance
But just then my wife yelled down:
— ’You say something hon…?’
— ’No dear…its just the dog…’
— ‘Is he ok,’ she asked, ‘he sounds funny?’
I glare over at my smug Theravādanic mutt
— ‘I think somethings wrong with him,’ I yell back
— ‘He may be going senile, he thinks he’s god’
— ‘Whaaat? Who thinks he’s god?’
— ‘The DOG dammit he says he’s GOD!’
Dog said: — “I, god?”

Please love your dog with all your heart and soul
(but don’t let them get too fat)
Apologize to them every day
Because of their great compassion
They bear this immense burden for us
Our last connexion to the non-machine world
We’ve made enemies of all others
Dog carries this cross for us, and
They’re not the first creatures
Nor this the last cross
The whole world may be crucified

There are true believers
Who burn others
For speaking a participle of dogma otherwise
I don’t know how they would punish my Jesuit pooch
But my dog
Would run into a burning building to save my life
And so did god

(Daniel Imburgia is an un-aspiring poet living on Whidbey Island. A writing teacher once called him a ‘sloppy angst riddled sentimentally Roman Catholic overly didactic existentialist,’ causing Daniel to cry, take up smoking french cigarettes, and begin wearing a beret to hide his baldness. like that little Jewish boy who grew up in Algeria de-ciphering the Talmud, Daniel learned young that words burn—words are power). Shalom.

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November 5, 2016, 5:54 pm

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No Country For This Old Man.

Facebook reminded me of this post from the election 4 years ago. This scene at the end of the movie/novel NCFOM provoked me and many to question again human freedom/agency and where god can be found in this broken death-dealing world. Earlier in the novel McCarthy writes: “…Anything can be an instrument, small things. Things you wouldn't even notice. They pass from hand to hand. People don't pay attention. And then one day there's an accounting. An after that nothing is the same. Well, you say. Its just a coin. For instance. Nothing special there. What could that be an instrument of? You see the problem. To separate the act from the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangeable with the parts of some other moment. How could that be? Well, its just a coin. Yes. That's true. Is it?” (No Country p. 57).

But even though our coins have two sides and we label those sides various things like kick-off and receive, good and evil, life and death, it so often feels like I'm still just choosing between 2 different appearances of evil? When Jesus asked Jewish collaborators with the Roman empire to show him their coins, Caesar’s likeness may have only been on one side, but perhaps one of Jesus’ message was that the empire/death owned the whole coin no matter which side of it I choose? Bless you Carla Jean for your courage and wisdom.

(p.s. Death and coins ‘get here’ the same way as Caesar but there are other forms of Trinitarian life one may seek. Blessings.

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November 14, 2016, 9:24 am

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Dear Overlords. Merry Christmas! Once again all things have proceeded precisely as you have foreseen. In recognition of your recent victories and in a spirit of bi-partisan compromise I am offering your Trumpocalypse a fair chance of implementation to further facilitate the darkening of the world. In the first of many concessions I am offering to surrender my objections and authorize *God* to be allowed back into all public schools! However, as per God’s usual practice God will remain quiet and invisible at God’s choosing. Students of course will now be allowed to pray ceaselessly as Jesus says, but also silently as he commands. God’s presence, though, will remain exempt from attendance at any private religious schools or christian-churches as is God’s custom.

*Note. This compromise does not entitle Trumpublicans to enlist their God in the following activities:

1. Any and all wars/police-actions/vigilantiism especially engaged in for the purposes of colonizing petroleum reserves and pipelines—foreign and domestic.

2. The Deportation/persecution of undocumented children and persecuted refugees back to whatever dangerous hell-hole usamerican policies/actions probably created for them in their homelands they are fleeing from (see 1. above ^^^).

3. Denying/cutting health care services for the oldest, poorest, sickest, weakest, people among us (no need to stipulate God’s presence among these folks though, God is always among the least of these). So if you want to cut Jesus’s medicare Trumpublicans don’t expect God to whisper lottery numbers in your ears or smite the Pandoran Na’vi or their socialist puppet-masters for you.

4. No grafting of a human penis back onto God. We got this < > close to theologically excising that pesky thing once and for all, and no president, no matter how flacid, aught to attempt a re-erection.

5. God will not empower/sanction any domination, exploitation, persecution by *WHITE* over any and all of the following:

a. BlackBrownoranyPeopleofanyColor.

b. AllOtheredQueerandTrans-persons.

c. Women.

d. Forests-OceansAllWildplacesunderoronthePlanetorintheSky.

e. Earth.

f. + Mars. (‘an ounce of prevention…. ‘ Let’s not let *WHITE* get a toehold anywhere else in the galaxy).

*Note: by ‘WHITE’ I am not referring to color but rather to the modern ontological manifestation of *WHITE* understood as that signified entity which functions as the dominant death-dealing viral agency which seeks to control or destroy all flourishings of Being and wholeness throughout the cosmos—no offense to anybody).

**Note to Overlords compiling warrants for removal of potential troublemakers to alt-Reich Evangelical re-educaton/extermination camps: the “Daniel Imburgia” tagged here is not ‘THE’ Daniel Imburgia you are looking for (although they are both *WHITE* so both are probably going to be ok as long as they keep their mouths shut). Really this Daniel was only in El Salvador in the 1980’s for the surfing and chicharrones, not to stir up revolution among the peasants against their usamerican backed death-squads. Nor am I responsible for how others interpret any of the crazy things I may have said after too many shots of tequilas. In any event anything I ever wrote to anyone anywhere at any time has always been taken out of context or misinterpreted. And further, contrary to any (scant) evidence, I have lived most of my life in acceptable compliance and within the logics of exploitative commodity capitalism :(

Dear Overlords, do we have a deal?

Thank you for your consideration, your humbled and all too obedient servant, Daniel :(

P.s. Are we really going to squeeze more blood from the poor in order to build yet a fourth *Death-Star?* Sure it creates jobs and stimulates the 1% economy but we gave the last three contracts to that “builder” from Queens and every one of the damn things had some fatal flaw and got itself blown up! How about an intergalactic hospital and recovery Star full of doctors, food, and puppies that travels about the cosmos healing and feeding people and patching up old planets that need repair after evicted tenants left the place trashed. Or maybe we could spend more money on…just a minute someone’s at the door……….

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December 15, 2016, 12:31 pm

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I have been posting through Brother Christophe’s surviving journal from Tibhirine in one of my old Facebook posts and todays entry has has dwelled in my mind since first reading it months ago.

10/23/1993. The 23rd. from Brother Christophe.

I warn you: I am
going through you I go before you and
I breathe into you the Way
and oblige you in truth.
I baptize you with myself on the cross
go
take my I love you
be me

Many of my recent media feeds attend to the terrible death and destruction in Aleppo Syria. I remember when Algerians were suffering in a similar way in the 90’s. Around the time of the massacre of the Monks of Tibihirine we were visiting France and there was great consternation in Paris about how to deal with this new phenomenon of 'islamic terrorism’ and the murder of innocents in France’s former colonies. Many called for renewed military involvement and air strikes. Anti-Muslim persecution and demonstrations were becoming more common. I sense now that even among my Christian friends there is frustration and despair and perhaps an acceptance or desire for some overwhelming violent force to stop these calamities in Aleppo and elsewhere. I suppose we might want to believe that this imaginary force could be both perfectly just, totally compassionate, and absolutely discriminate, and that only evildoers will be killed and all innocents will be spared. That is a false hope.

I warn you: I am
going through you I go before you and
I breathe into you the Way
and oblige you in truth.
I baptize you with myself on the cross
go
take my I love you
be me

Its important to remember that its possible that the 7 Tibihrine monks were actually killed by Algerian soldiers fighting the monks captors. There is evidence that Christophe was killed during an Algerian Govt. helicopter strike on the rebel’s camp and that the survivors beheaded the monks afterward for propaganda purposes. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what the suffering people of Aleppo should do. I don’t trust the Russians, Syrians, the rebels, Turkey, Israel, or my own government. I say desperate prayers and Catholic relief services and others are doing good work among the refugees and need financial support, but its easy to fall victim to frustration and despair even/especially in the midst of our own relative security and well being. Today’s entry by Christophe is one of my favorites although I don’t understand it in any deep way. But those words “I breathe into you the Way,” have stuck with me the last few months and have been helpful during my own struggles so I made of them a short prayer for Aleppo as well as for my friends in need.

*May the god of love and peace breathe into us the Way*

I sometimes can imagine god responding to my call using parts of Christophe’s prayer:

I am
I breathe into you the Way
I oblige you in truth
I love you
be me
go

Shalom.

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January 17, 2017, 7:17 pm

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I'm trying out a new writing style: Action Sci-Fi & Fantasy in Space.

“Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world,
This is as marvelous as being there in the beginning.” Jean Baudrillard.

*Deep Space 9 1/2 weeks.*

Scene: Chief of Security charges into the command bridge shouting excitedly:

“Captain somehow a chimpanzee has escaped the science lab.”
“Look out!” shouts the First Officer, “he’s gotten ahold of a loaded pistol!”
“Who brings a gun into space,” asks the Weapons Officer alarmed,
“One shot would pierce the hull and doom us all to a hideous death.”

Right then the chimp took off his space-diaper and started peeing all over the captain’s chair.

“Ha ha, at least nobody’s bored anymore.” Joked the Second Officer
“Especially after so much hyper-sleep,” added the Ensign.

“Can’t we all just agree to get along?” The Star-Navigator pleaded.
“Living in a space ship is really dull and this chimp is entertaining.”
“Even funny sometimes.” Crew person #2
“When he’s not masturbating.” Crew person #3
“Or pointing his gun at us.” Crew person #2

“Who knows,” The ships chaplain prayerfully offered
“Maybe its God’s will that the chimp got this gun?”

“Yes.” Nodded the first-mate, “and we’d all be safer if everyone on board had guns too.”

“Maybe we should just make the chimp captain,” added the second-mate laughing.
“That would teach those snobby suits back at corporate a lesson.”

Many of the crew nodded their heads in agreement and smiled at the chimp with approval;

“Thats madness,” the Science Officer argued through clenched teeth.

“Let’s take a vote,” suggested the Second-Officer.

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February 18, 2017, 12:26 am

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Already

Already

By age 2 we were artists;

Poets by 3

At 4 we discovered un-seen worlds

Turning 5 we could fly

But 6 meant school, rulers, visibility, work, mirror-gaze;

Leaving our wings behind us

Late afternoon

Soon children will be home from class

Each day small parts of them disappear

Multiply and divide into others

Even as they grow into bigness

We shall not come to know love by the pound

But by the mile

Love from grandpapa kids

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April 22, 2017, 5:43 pm

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Langley harbor, Whidbey Island. 2016

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May 28, 2017, 8:58 am

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“If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.” Mitya to Aloysha. Book XI.

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June 28, 2017, 8:06 am

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Judith Beheads Holofernes. Artemisia Gentileschi. c,1638.

*Biblical story—Possible Trigger Warnings.

“Judith Beheads Holofernes.”
From the Book of Judith: Ch.16, Vs. 2-11.

The proud king bragged
Borders would be set on fire
All disloyalty would be punished
He would make prey of infants
Take virgins captive

But YHWH struck him down
Not by the strength of men
Nor by the proud sons of Titan
Nor by tall giants
But by courage and beauty

Judith’s vanquishing face
Anointed with sweet oils
Locks adorned as a crown
Sandals dazzling like precious gems
Robes of golden deception
Her beauty took his heart captive

And with a sword she cut off his head.

*(Artists have made many depictions of this biblical scene but I admire this 1638 version by Artemisia Gentileschi most. That’s her holding the sword. Understandably many have been quick to read into this shocking picture a visual response to her oppression by her father, her rape by her art teacher, and her subsequent torture by authorities during her rape trial).

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December 10, 2017, 5:38 pm

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"He's a bandit and a heartbreaker.
Oh, but Jesus was a cross maker"

From a poet/songwriter I admire greatly and a dear sister who died young. I use to play a couple of her songs. Once a young armed robber and sex-worker she learned music and Jesus in jail. She asked some difficult questions and she suffered greatly, eventually dying of a heroin overdose. Thank you for your words and music. May you always be in blessing.

Sweet silver angels over the sea
Please come down flyin' low for me
One time I trusted a stranger
Cuz' I heard his sweet song
And it was gently enticin' me
Tho there was somethin' wrong
But when I turned he was gone

Blindin' me, his song remains remindin' me
He's a bandit and a heart breaker
Oh, but Jesus was a cross maker

Sweet silver angels over the sea
Please come down flyin' low for me

He wages war with the devil
A pistol by his side
And tho he chases him out windows
And won't give him a place to hide
He keeps his door open wide

Fightin' him he lights a lamp invitin' him
He's a bandit and a heart breaker
Oh, but Jesus was a cross maker

Sweet silver angels over the sea
Please come down flyin' low for me

I heard the thunder come rumblin'
the light never looked so dim
I see the junction git nearer'
and danger is in the wind
And either road's lookin' grim

Hidin' me, I flee, desire dividin' me
He's a bandit and a heart breaker
Oh, but Jesus was a cross maker
Yes, Jesus was a cross maker
Yes, Jesus was a cross maker
Sweet silver angels over the sea
Please come down flyin' low for me
One time I trusted a stranger
Cuz I heard his sweet song
And it was gently enticin' me
Tho there was somethin' wrong
But when I turned he was gone
Blindin' me, his song remains remindin' me
He's a bandit and a heartbreaker.
Oh, but Jesus was a cross maker

Sweet silver angels over the sea
Please come down flyin' low for me

Blessings and obliged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judee_Sill

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March 28, 2018, 10:28 pm

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Christian church calendars name today, ‘Silent Wednesday’

or ‘Wednesday of Shadows.’

Also occurring on this day in history:

Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus with expensive oil >> Lady GaGa was born in 1986 >> In 1854 Britain, France, and Russia, began the Crimean war >> Liturgy committees everywhere begin preparations for Jesus ‘last supper’ >> Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself today in 1941 >> Judas conspired with the Sanhedrin to betray Jesus (that is why today is also known as “Spy Wednesday”) >> The Premier performance of PT Barnum’s “Greatest show On Earth” occurred today >> Paris was sacked by Ragnar Lodbrok and his Viking horde in the year 854 >> The donkey who carried Jesus into Jerusalem went back to hauling water and wood for Roman occupiers >> Today in 1933 the Reichstag conferred dictatorial powers on Adolf Hitler >> The Supreme’s song, “Stop! In the Name of Love!” topped the 1966 pop charts >> The Gospels record that today Jesus taught parables about: *Vineyards, *Taxes, *Wedding banquets, *the Destruction of Jerusalem >> In 1655 Puritans defeated Catholic forces in Maryland and outlawed Roman Catholicism in the colony >> Raphael completed his remarkable painting ‘The Madonna of the Chairs’ >> Today was the day that High priest Caiphas first plotted with Quisling collaborators to murder Jesus >> The Largest dinosaur footprint ever was found in Kimberley Australia >> Jesus’ Disciples complained about Mary wasting expensive oil on Jesus >> In 1917 Jews are expelled from Tel Aviv and Jaffa by Turkish soldiers >> According to legend Barabbas was arrested on this day for opposing Roman occupation >> In Poland on ‘Spy Wednesdays’ Roman catholics throw an effigy of Judas from the top of a church steeple. Then he is dragged through villages as the devout hurl sticks and stones at him. What remains of the effigy is drowned in a nearby stream or pond >> Astrophysicists just announced the discovery of a “ghost galaxy” that contains no ‘dark matter’ >> Today a cock in old J-town crowed twice.

Pax.

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August 5, 2018, 10:11 am

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"Structures of Visual Perception." 9 feet by 3 feet, acrylic on board)

For Marilyn Monroe (Born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 Died on this day, August 5, 1962).

Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe): "Horse killers! Killers! Murderers! You're liars! All of you, liars! You're only happy when you can see something die! Why don't you kill yourself to be happy? You and your God's country! Freedom! I pity you! You're three dear, sweet, dead men!"

In "The Misfits," (Marilyn's and Clark Gable's last movies) three broken-back old cowboys hunt wild mustang horses for scratch and dog food while believing that their lust for Roslyn (MM) will save them from death. But in this scene Marilyn is outraged by their violence and barbarity and she attempts to stop the slaughter. The screenplay was written by playwright Arthur Miller, Marilyn's husband, and its based, I think, on an earlier actual experience. I am reading Miller's autobiography and he recounts that when he and Marilyn were living at Amagansett long island she encountered the surf-net fishers early one morning. The fishers drug their nets onto the beach then marketed the "money fish" but left all the writhing "trash fish" to slowly suffocate and die on the beach. Marilyn was horrified and began to get up early and follow behind these fishers and gather up all the dying fish and return them to the water. She became obsessed with stopping this daily slaughter that was ignored by everyone else and began saving the condemned fish every morning. Marilyn (like Pope Francis it seems?) rejected the economic ideology that classifies life as either 'trash' or 'marketable, but her life-saving work took a painful, physical and spiritual toll on her. A soaked-through Marilyn could often be witnessed shivering, stumbling, along the beach weeping and trying to get the dying fish back into the ocean, until one day she completely collapsed. Marilyn never fully recovered from that "break-down," and subsequent suicide attempt even though she was hospitalized for "treatment." She eventually recovered just enough to finish "The Misfits," but perhaps at the cost of her life. Other than academic/σαρκικός I have never really had much of an interest in Marilyn, but it was this story and movie that have caused me to engage her again with more seriousness, sorrow, and maybe even reverence. I agree with what Clifford Odets said: “If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.”

Marilyn's last words on screen were, "Which way is home…How do you find your way home in the dark." But I don't think that Arthur Miller's answer is true, he wrote, "To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was. She was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes." But Miller was also one of those desperate clawing men pulling at her clothes. What Marilyn needed was not more cynicism or fantasy but the kind of love that finding her broken and suffocating would return her to life-giving water.

Marilyn Found Poems:

To the Weeping Willow

'I stood beneath your limbs
and you flowered and finally clung to me
and when the wind struck with earth
and sand--you clung to me.

Don't cry my doll
Don't cry
I hold you and rock you to sleep
Hush hush
I'm pretending now
I'm not your mother who died.

They taught my body
to squeeze grapes.
Warm wine poured out.
And once or twice,
a slick skin.

O, Time
Be Kind
Help this weary being
To forget what is sad to remember
Loose my loneliness,
Ease my mind,
While you eat my flesh.

Life
I am of both of your directions
strong as a cobweb in the
wind — I exist more with the cold glistening frost.
But my beaded rays have the colors I’ve
seen in a paintings — ah life they
have cheated you

When the hourglass
takes off its dress,
the sand loosens and spreads.
You cannot find a footing
in me. They always said
I was terrible in bed.

I have always been
deeply terrified to
really be someone’s wife
since I know from life
one cannot love another,
ever, really
We're all dying aren't we
we're not teaching each other
what we really know,
are we'

Obliged.

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November 12, 2018, 12:13 pm

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“Disclosing his wounds to the listener was the same as bathing it in the river, until it became cool and one with the river.” Hermann Hesse.

“Thou keepest track of all my sorrows; thou hast collected
my tears in your bottle.” Psalm 56: 8.

Siddhartha’s Kaddish:

As the monk burned
the serene unknowing of his golden robe
plunged
into raging mindfulness
the now
would like to rest in peace
instead of chasing naked sighs
through saudade moors of eire

Celts its believed
lived circular lives
unbesmirched by dualistic papists or
ghosted by mortal green subtexts
blistering saint patrick
for all those hallowed nuns
who rescued foundering babies
from potato slurries of famished grace

And where was our lord then—?
under lock and key
as the cosmos kept expanding
exploding our reliquaries
yet we still don’t know for sure
how our postmodern ideas of “truth”
got kick-started
anyway these are now questions for wall street
not science
or the old testament

Limbo though
devas and asuras know
got born in mother’s heart
on a ganges river shore
watching her lost children drift away
on swirling currents and
insufferable winds

Fluttering above the funeral pyre
butterflies see
seven more colors than we
tongues of ultra-violet flame
shimmer over mourning cocoons
glazed
with splendored pigments unknown to human eyes
schooled to the black and white
of gød’s printable word

Oh I don’t doubt for a minute
lazarus came forth from his tomb
jetztzeit
stink and all—mad as hell
but who hasn’t been pissed at christ
for arriving after the fact

What if
truth be told
jacob had beaten that angel
locked it in a cage and took it to market
hoping to barter angel-tears
for babylonian currency
maybe a small dacha on the sea of tiberius
just compensation for his limp

Not everyone could agree on the cage
but nobody except jacob could see the angel
other than orthodox butterflies
so when his captive refused to cry
jacob hid behind the vale
filling bottles with his own tears
so great was his sorrow
for breaking gød

Jacob’s angel chooses the cage
a monk’s heart chooses the fire
to burn and not to burn
like little gidding’s shirt of flame
like the tears of esau
like the grief of any virgin mother
cradling a dying gød in her arms
when every other gate is shut
the gate of tears remains open
this is the new and everlasting covenant
jerusalem falling falling
into the red bliss of the roiling sun
the fire and the rose
not yet
one

(For Thích Quảng Đức, killed in Vietnam, June 11,1963. at my age of 66. Acrylic on canvas. 30 X 40 in.)
Obliged.

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May 13, 2019, 5:27 pm

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Tabula Rasa
Björk
We are all swollen
From hiding his affairs
Let's put it all on the table
Let it all out
It is time
He mustn't steal our light
Clean plate
Tabula rasa for my children
Clean plate
Not repeating the fuckups of the fathers
My deepest wish
Is that you're immersed in grace and dignity
But you will have to deal with shit soon enough
I hoped to give you the least amount of luggage
Got the right to make your own fresh mistakes
And not repeat others' failures
Clean plate
Tabula rasa for my children
Let's clean up
Break the chain of the fuckups of the fathers
It is time
For us…

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December 12, 2019, 8:15 pm

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El iluminado (The Enlightened One) by Kati Horna, La Castañeda Asylum, Mexico City, 1944.

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April 21, 2020, 11:39 pm

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96"X38" Acrylic on panel.
The work hopes for more than *remembrance* but seeing true and acting in compassion.

50 years ago today, Paul Celan, a Jewish holocaust survivor and poet that I greatly admire killed himself in Paris. On his desk he left Wilhelm Michael’s biography of Hölderlin, “Das Leben Friedrich Hölderlins,” lying open to page 464. He had underlined this sentence from a letter by Clemens Brentano: “Sometimes this genius goes dark and drowns in the bitter well of his heart.”

TENEBRAE. By Paul Celan

We are near, Lord,
near and graspable.
Grasped already, Lord,
clawed into each other, as if
each of our bodies was
your body, Lord.
Pray, Lord,
pray to us,
we are near.
Windbent we went there,
we went there to bend down
over crater and maar.
To the trough we went, Lord.
It was blood, it was
what you spilled, Lord.
It shone.
It cast your image into our eyes, Lord.
Eyes and mouths gape, so open and empty, Lord.
We have drunk, Lord.
The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord.
Pray, Lord.
We are near.

Shalom. _/\_.

h/t to Pierre Joris. Celan Translator/poet.

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June 11, 2020, 11:14 pm

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Black Lives Matter

“The cross can heal and hurt; it can be empowering and liberating but also enslaving and oppressive. There is no one way in which the cross can be interpreted. I offer my reflections because I believe that the cross placed alongside the lynching tree can help us to see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.” James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree.

_/\_.

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October 28, 2020, 1:52 pm

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All Hallows Eve Death Mask. 96” X 24"

On the after-life of social mediation: A review of, “Fear the Walking Dead.”

(My All Hallows Eve Death Mask. 96” X 24”)

“Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.”Thich Nhat Hanh.

“The coming being is whatever being.” Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community.

“Let the dead bury their own dead.” Jesus the Christ, Luke 9:60.

Zombie movies haven’t interested me much. But the new series, “Fear the Walking Dead” got my attention with some new creative spiritual/cultural insights. For example In this series some post-apocalyptic survivors claim that Zombies should not be killed but cloistered away and cared for by humans. Other survivors have learned to walk among the migrating hordes of Dead, speak with them in whispers and grunts, and share in their collective ‘mind.’ Some other communities put the Walking Dead to work, enslave, mutilate, and use them as mindless labor. One powerful cult of survivors led by a despotic dictator named “Alpha,” have even learned how to control massive throngs of Zombies, weaponizing them against other survivor communities in order to gain resources/power/territory.

I’v struggled to place the cultural fetishization of Zombies into some original political/theological matrix of interpretive myth-making. But informed by these series I’v come to the simple thesis that Zombies just represent *death.* Of course death is not one thing, or even a thing in itself. And death has always been part of life and humans have always made their way, thriving/perishing, with death as necessary companion. But as the series matured I realized that Zombies were not the most significant threat to human life; what threatened human existence was not chomping obsessed monsters but how humans responded to each other when threatened by social/political collapse—that is, it was the destructive collective human response to the revelation of *walking death* abiding in humanity’s own being that causes ultimate human destruction.

New to the Zombie genre I mistakenly believed that it was the Zombie bite that killed and transformed humans into the Undead; but the Zombie bite merely kills its victims. According to this genre, only later, after people ‘die’(?) an already existing virus/mutation dormant inside every human activates and emerges, resurrecting the afflicted into a new form of what might be called (pacing Agamben?) “Bare life.” That is, an existential reclaiming of *being* from the problematics of the universal and particular into a form of unitive sacramental existence.

Zombies only eat living tissue, so Zombie-being initially reduces the afflicted into one dimensional consumers—their single fetishized commodity is life. But although hordes of quasi-dead trudge over the face of an already brutalized planet consuming/transforming life into the otherness of undecidable non-life, Zombie-being is not rewarded in this fatal exchange. The life-force Zombies consume offers no physical/spiritual nutrition adding nothing to Zombie existence. Should Zombies be considered *evil* then? At least in the sense used by Aquinas/Dalai Lama/DBH? That is, evil identified as a void of good lacking wholeness abrogating our life-force rather than ontic agency functioning through malevolent subjectivity?

Regardless, perhaps it is the undecidability of ‘living death’ that presently so vexes and entertains? ‘Moderns’ construct world/language via antagonistic binaries: left/right, republican/democrat, black/white, male/female, enemy/friend, living/dead. But Zombies transcend our dualisms/binaries. They are dead enough to be killed with impunity yet living enough to resist non-existence; perhaps functioning as the universal underclass of *Homo Sacer* ("sacred man/cursed man”). However, unlike subjects under the ancient Roman law of ‘homo sacer,’ Agamben quotes these manifestations of living-death may be readily killed and sacrificed to the consuming gØds humans have already constructed for themselves, even as they vanquish earth into the lifeless wasteland of a spent commodity.

New season starting soon!

Keep your eyes open.

Be well. _/\_

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December 24, 2020, 6:43 pm

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October 21, 2022, 2:09 pm

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The Passion of the Bees: Queens Colonies Death & Bitcoin; Deconstructing Paradise on Columbus Day. (Photo: Machine for knowing if Bees feel pain.)

“It does not seem to me that the Gospel is speaking of the firmament of heaven as some remote habitation of ̶G̶o̶d̶ ̶ because the divine is equally present in all things, and, in like manner, it pervades all creation and it does not exist separated from being, but the divine nature touches each element of being with equal honor, encompassing all things within itself.” St Gregory of Nyssa,

*(Re-)Telling the Bees.* A few years ago I posted about how some Bee-keeping cultures developed practices called, “telling the bees.” Bees were reckoned so important for human life-ways that significant events in a family/community were shared with their Bee colonies; for example the Royal Bee-keeper informed the royal Bee colonies of Queen Elizabeths II death. I’v seen no official response from the royal Bees but there are rumors/reports that some among the Queen’s hives have swarmed and absconded, especially among the newer species of “Africanized Bees” who have resisted royal domestication. Perhaps these anarchistic Bees were seeking more life affirming practices of solidarity than serving their colonizers interests and hope to live beyond binaries of colonizer/subject and as equitable members of an interdependent community of bee-ing? Colonizing/speculating/exploiting are practices that estrange us from an on-going work of Creation occurring around and within us, cauterizing our consciousness, numbing our senses, causing the kind of larval blindness that might come to ask terribly revealing questions about ourselves: “do Bees feel pain?”

“The word animal is a derivative of the Greek word anima, which also means soul.” Wikipedia.

Now all Bee-life is threatened as the death-dealing global financial system and its neo-fascist discples metastasize and unseeing masters ignorantly pursue power/wealth stumbling and thrashing about the manifest world doing tremendous damage carelessly exploiting crushing any manner of Life beyond their understanding or compulsions—for the neo-liberal logic of markets/investors our living ecosphere is as lifeless as an abstracted bitcoin mined from the ether-world of captured soulless capital. ‘And so, with a boundless heart one should cherish and never harm any living beings for they are your brothers and sisters.’ Gautama Buddha. Among our machined-world and dematerializing ecologies of consuming liturgies only human agency as mediated through commodifying power structures enjoys any value beyond ‘use-value.’ Pain/joy/despair/fear/hope/desire/love are denied to beings other than human subjects/consumers. In the virtualized world of deified market-forces animals plants rivers oceans stars have no more personhood/agency than a lump of coal, a ‘Big Mac,’ or a melting glacier. As Rene’ Descartes explained (who according to wikipedia was, “Widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science”) the crying out of an injured suffering animal is of no more moral/spiritual consequence than a clanging bell or a squeaking door; for Descartes and much of contemporary economism only human feeling enjoys intrinsic (exploitable) value. David Abrams speaks about these death-dealing structures in his beautiful challenging work, “Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology.”

“Many long-standing and lousy habits have enabled our callous treatment of surrounding nature, empowering us to clear-cut, dam up, mine, develop, poison, or simply destroy so much of what quietly sustains us. Yet few are as deep-rooted and damaging as the habitual tendency to view the sensuous earth as a subordinate space—whether as a sinful plane, riddled with temptation, needing to be transcended and left behind; or a menacing region needing to be beaten and bent to our will; or simply a vaguely disturbing dimension to be avoided, superseded, and explained away.”

Understanding how societies are cultured into the contexts Abrams describes helps explain the afflicted reasoning that creates apocalyptic machines for knowing if other Being among the non-human world also feel pain joy fear consciousness love. There is abundant evidence that it is not Bees Flowers Trees Orcas Elephants or the whole of living Cosmos but our own souls that have become wounded numb and so deeply immersed in the trauma and empires of enthralling simulacrum that we humans are the beings most in need of questioning grace that may heal our souls. Obliged. _/\_

*Post Script: For many years I engaged in works of ‘resource extraction:’ commercial fishing, logging, ‘land developing.’ Then it was common practice for Halibut long-liners to unthread the large hooks from Halibut mouths one by one, a slow hard process especially for the many swallowed hooks lodged deep inside an animal’s body. Eventually a technological solution was invested in—but not to determine if Halibut felt any pain. Merciless machines were fabricated that could quickly pull long lines of captured fish through an efficient contraption where each fish was firmly stayed then the large steel hooks along with any cheeks lips gills guts were quickly and efficiently ripped out through a fish’s mouth. I’v installed and operated several of these machines on commercial fishing boats, they’re called “crucifiers.”

**Post Post Script: Good news! Although threatened by destruction in many countries Bees are flourishing in Slovenia! Including a genus of tiny Bees identified as ‘Lasioglossum’ (sometimes affectionately called, ’Cabele Veronike,’ by religious Slovenes). Lasioglossum are among a family of Bees who can live on human tears.

***PPPost Script: Veronike (Veronika) was the daring woman who wiped the tears from condemned political prisoner Jesus’ face as he carried the cross of imperial empire on Jerusalem’s, ‘Via Dolorosa,’ the way of suffering.

***PPPPost Script. Years ago I was privileged to have enjoyed many lunches and conversations with David Abrams when he was working/teaching here on Whidbey Island. Many blessings in your work. _/\_

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