Sunday Poetry Slam

 

Wow. You no sooner throw down a Haiku Challenge than the commentariat replies with verve and talent. Check this out, sheer awesomeness from Wild:

I eat the donuts

Glazed and chocolate ones too

Sometimes blueberry

Welfare music plays

Taxpayers buy them for me

Meanwhile, I snarf more

Help me Joe Biden

My welfare is running out

Feed me more donuts

Whoa, well done Wild, that's a veritable ode. Then there's Red, going free-form and evocative. Here:

Fireflies in the maple

Deep dark woods

Hot tea on the porch

Not to be outdone, Anon Mike_C offers us this gem:

Front windows rolled down.

Why, when fifty-two degrees?

Nigerian Uber

Not shabby, eh? And Paul gets down to it, in homage to Red's inimitable verse:

Chaos sown every day

Are you not entertained

Have a donut

What can I say.  Sorry, Kerouac, we got you beat. But who am I to judge, this one's for LL and perhaps it'll resonate with you too:

 

A sharp bayonet

Dark prints in the forest snow

Moonlight gleams on ice

Keep 'em coming.

Your Old Friend,

LSP

On The Road

 

On the road to Dallas, and that's not a bad thing except they drive like maniacs on I35 and, right at the run-in to 'sprawl central there was a cataclysmic deluge of rain. Adventure, and surely a harbinger of apocalypse to come.

That in mind, a couple of people came up after Mass yesterday and said, "LSP, we went to get money out of the ATM in Whitney and not a single one was working, not one, and we tried all the banks." Huh, imagine that, you go to your bank to withdraw some cash and sorry buddy, you can't. What then.

you shoot an exotic goat with a 30-06

Nothing good and it reminds me of a prepper who said, wisely, "When you see lines around the block for the ATM it's time to get out." Good call and you don't have to be a druidic seer to picture the impossibility of getting out of our doomed cities when the SHTF. Kyrie, they're bad enough as is.

In related news, two violent extremist white supremacists, who identify as Mexican, killed some people in Allen and Brownsville, as all the world knows. But question, what's the issue? Were they Mexican Nazis, Cartel gang people, rando crazies or all of the above.

if you're not scared you should be

Terrifying any witch way, eh?

#2A,

LSP

On The Road

 

On The Road. Did you know that infamous Beat author Jack Kerouac was a Catholic Christian? So was Andy Warhol too, but that's a different story. Studio 54 aside, I climbed in the rig, got on the road and headed West to say Mass.

The church was quiet and beautiful in the evening light while Christ came down to earth to lift us up to heaven, O Salutaris, and time stood strangely still as it always does when we worship God, not least in the Sacrament of the Altar. Then all too soon, "The Mass has ended, go in peace to love and serve the Lord." Ite Missa Est. 

Back in the car park the sun was setting over Texas, no small thing, and I sent the record of it to an old friend who finds himself in LA doing something with pop music. "Look!" I whatsapped, "Sunset. Hope your musicians are behaving themselves." 

Apparently they were, "Big empty production stage. Phase 1 rehearsals. Secret location. All chilled here. Easy. STAY FROSTY." Always. Then back on the road to the Compound with the sun filling the rear-view with its golden radiance. I never tire of the vision and thank God for it, seriously, and therein lies a word to the wise.

Try and make a habit, a discipline of thanking God for the beyond reckoning good that he's given us. Perhaps it's easier to see in the countryside, where creation's comparatively less marred by wickedness than in, say, the DFW metrosprawl. But wherever you are the rule applies, and when followed covers a multitude of sins.

Here Endeth The Lesson,

LSP

On The Road

Whoever said life'd be easy? No one, and with that in mind I left the sylvan groves of old Texas for the concrete metrosprawl of the DFW megacity, not once but twice. Why? Because I had meetings in the 'sprawl and duty called.

The first part of the drive on I35W isn't bad, a fairly empty 4 lane highway through rolling farmland, passing by Itasca and Grandview. Then you get to Alvaredo and the pace picks up as you drop into the Fort Worth lowlands.

Metroplex at Night. Yellow Line = Connecticut

There you are in the Metroplex, on a multilane racetrack dreamed up in bowels of Hell. It goes on for miles, 9,286 square miles to be precise, about two thirds the size of Holland and larger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. It's growing, too, like a monster.

Well you can't blame people for moving here from socialist hellhole states, but I'd argue you can blame the so-called urban planners who decided that city and 20 lane highway were synonyms. You'd think, after several thousand years of Western civic culture, that we could come up with something better than the 'sprawl. Thank God I live in a road, said no one ever.

It Was Going to be This

Great, readers, will be the fall of it. I know, that'll never happen because the way we live now will go on forever and ever, per saecula saeculorum, but imagine the grid went down, which of course it never will because the grid's immortal, but say for example it did. And you're living in the 'spawl with no water, electricity and before long, food. How would you get out?

But Ended up This

Dirt bikes, on foot? Apocalypse aside, the meetings were good, though it seemed strange to be in the city. Back in the country, Mexican music's in the air and with it the delicious aroma of slow cooked carnitas. 

This makes fasting difficult and speaking of roads, Jack Kerouac was a catholic.

Drive safe,

LSP

If You Meet The Buddha On The Road Shoot It

Taking a leaf out of Mr. Kerouac's book, I got on the road with a view to visiting the sick in Fort Worth and escaping the anguished howls of whining fauxtrage emanating from Hollywood celebs and Lena Dunham over Trump's armed forces trans ban. 

Jack Kerouac

I took the Cadet, by way of company, and explained the situation. "You see, old chap, this woman's on a ventilator and might not get better, so I've got to go. Conscience demands it, to say nothing of the Gospel," all very to the point and thank you very much. "But what if we meet the Buddha on the road?" asked the young 'un, suddenly turning all Cassady. "Oh, that's easy. Shoot it, right through the ****ing swede."

Shoot it

We arrived in Fort Worth without incident, thank God, and I left my interlocutor in the hospital cafe while I went upstairs and administered Last Rites. I pray my friend recovers full health. And here's the thing, Pastors.

You've Got A Lot To Answer For, You Two.

If you feel a pang of conscience, an instinct or intuition that you should visit someone in trouble, act on it, don't delay. Notwithstanding the Buddha, of course, which you're at liberty to shoot on the road. And while we're at it, Jack Kerouac was a Mass going Catholic. So was the freakish Andy Warhol.

Not a lot of people know that.

God bless,

LSP

On the Road

LSP drives into Town

It seems to me that Dallas was faced with a decision, probably after World War II. "How and where do we want to live?" the City Fathers asked themselves, "In a city, or on a road?" City, Road? That was the question and the answer came back emphatically. "Road!" they chanted and roads they got.

It came as a culture shock after England, where people still, I think, walk about their towns and cities. But regardless of the ways of what used to be Great Britain, I find myself spending an awful lot of time on the road. 

Speaking of which, Jack Kerouac was a Mass-going catholic, as was Andy Warhol. Apparently Warhol was a daily communicant, amongst other less pleasant things. I'd never have guessed.

Drive safe,

LSP