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Writer's pictureGodsil

Poetry and Prose 2006

By Godsil


Sweet Ones of the Great Lakes


What gifts you bring!


How did you happen!


Why me?


Warmth, good… hot, but not too hot,

Warding off the coming cold.


Light, subtle, easy,

Relieving eerie darkness.


Enchanting vindications,

Ample evidence, ardent anticipations.


A feast!

A dance!

A dream!

An awakening!


Viva, truth bearers!


Olde

December 16,2006

 

You’re Golden


Black and white is an attitude,

And not enough to really get started.


Too much baggage.


It’s about what’s inside.

And you, my sweet one,


Are golden!


Olde

 

Good Food and Beauty


The people will come

For good food and beauty.


Good food and beauty

Arouse the best passions.


Good food and sweet aroma.

Tasteful decor and eye sweets.


We easily surrender

Clenched egos to


Good food and

Beauty.

 

Poison Arrows


Who dares

Send poison arrows

Your way?


Let me know

Their names.


So Truth may

Meet with them.


Olde

Summer/Fall 2006

 

Identity Adventures


Don’t be afraid. You can do it.

You are not alone.


Bound across the field,

Wade across the river,

Go into that forest,

Climb past those hills.


See what’s on the other side.


See what’s on all sides.


Inside.


Outside.


Beyond.


Imminent.


Go on.


You can do it.


Here.


Let’s do it together.


Olde

December, 2006

Milwaukee, the Holy City of The Sweet Water Seas

 

The Fertility of Your Mind


It’s the fertility of your mind

That makes for the glory of your heart!


Diversity is strength!

Elaborating the soil of your mind.


The “meek” shall inherit the earth

If inspired by life to expand repertoires.


If today’s workers become city farmers too

They will blaze trails for life in a higher realm.


Worker farmers will become a new gentry

Of the mind and heart.


Daily life experiences that harmonize

Inner and outer realities.


The power of the mix of

Mental and manual labor.


Chop wood, carry water,

Meditate, transcend.


Mind, heart,

lifeIn a higher realm.


Olde

December, 2006

Milwaukee, the Holy City Of the Sweet Water Seas

 

Out of the Closet


Squat in a clammy closet,

Stacking eggshells upon eggshells,

Humming versus of the Ave Maria,


So the bald old man prowling the halls

In tennis shoes and a black robe

Knows I’m doing my duty.


Exultant in an open field,

Sky blue, bursting billowing clouds,

Brilliant sun, throwing a thick stick

For my prize puppy.


Farther and farther I throw it,

Faster and faster she takes it,

We are both heated and sweating.

My Mother calls.


“What are you doing outside?

Why are you not stacking?

How will you win your prize

So indulged?”


Back to the closet,

But only for a time.

A new day was brewing.

I heard a different song.


The escape was not easy.

“You wished it stranger”

You left the path on your own,“

You are lost if you believe in danger.”


Forty years later,


Not in closets, nor even lush fields,

But in ineffably resonant worlds

Of sweet ones, where utopian visions

Are pursued amidst gales of laughter.


OldeFirst

Big Snow

Milwaukee the Mecca of the Sweet Water Seas

 

My Milwaukee


My Milwaukee is

Brooklyn,

Berkeley and

The Holy City

Of the Sweet Water Seas.


Olde

 

This Is How It Looks!


When I look upon my children,

And my grandchildren,

I am tempted to wonder

If I might be

The world’s wealthiest man.


When I look upon my children’s friends

The temptation to so think

Is almost irresistible.


When I look upon my daughter’s Love,

I know my bounty is as great

As is allowed a mortal man.


Olde

For reading at the Chicago Celebration

 

How Did We Get Here?


How did we get here?

To what great ancestral deeds

Do we owe this joy?


Where is this great love story

Taking us?


How did these two great

And modest beings happen?


A mystery so grand

I fear I might burst!


May I find the courage

To accept this blessing!


Olde

Hyde Park

The Morning After the Engagement Feast

 

As If a Dream


Reading Sufi poetry at Magic’s Starbucks

On 71st and Stoney Island Ave. in Chicago’s “South Side(!)”


As if a dream, with youthful visions materializing

Far more luxuriant and evocative

Than my best imagining 40 years back.


As if in some kind of grand epic.

Megan, elegant and thoughtful,

Ok, handsome and loving.


Yin, yang, black, white, he, she,

We!


Why are we here?

How did we arrive?


Utopian imagination

And grit.


Olde

The Morning AfterMegan & Ok’s Engagement Party

 

Movement Peddler


I’m a reporter.

On the ground.

In the trenches.


A movement peddler,

An impresario.


A child of the

Great Lakes culture.


An awakening one.


Liberation Rituals


I think it all started with fairy tales, tap dance, and piano lessons,

Which astonished “the boys” who thought such sissy,

But loved and respected me enough to veil their reaction.


And then less haircuts and combing, to me a waste of time,

Or learning how to dance and doing such at “teen town,”

Rather than hang in the circle of “the boys.”


Soon sweatshirts rather than ironed shirts at college class,

Radical books, young “beatniks,” blacks, Jews, gays, and leftists,

In place of fraternity booze fests and sorority balls.


Law school was out because ties were required,

The mere thought of a “professional career’s” clothing and comportment demands

Filled me with terror.


At graduate school seminars was always 5 minute late,

But ferociously prepared and ready to mind grapple

With professors secretly thrilled to find opposition that stirred their blood.


A pariah trade like roofing homes can be ennobled

With liberation rituals that erode hierarchy and inspire visions of freedom

Like “the boss” cleaning scrap so “the boys” more quickly learn the trade.


Or 30 years of morning greetings—”Are you into it today?”

Because work with one not into it is toxic,

And the best workers quickly imagine themselves as co-owners or partners.


Many child rearing rituals combined the old with the new,

Like Sunday drives through “third world neighborhoods,” or vacation stops

To shrines honoring liberation movements, or freedom songs at bedtime.


An old dog can learn new tricks

By ritualizing everyday routines

For beauty and reflection’s sake.


No drives on freeways but rather old city streets,

Filled with signs of vitalityAnd new purpose—a feast!


No food from commercialized vendors

But co-ops where people are

Creating a new world.


No work with only money and output in mind,

But work chosen and performed

As if a calling of the divine, inside and outside,


An expanding

Astonished to be aliveSpirit.


Olde

 

Let Us Gentrify Milwaukee


Let us no longer tolerate success

In the corridors of mere commerce,

Power, or status.


Why not aspire to cultivate

New gentry classes.

Revolutionary, radical, progressive.


Classes where beauty and history

Trump power and money.


Where status mongering

Is in bad taste.


Let us help transform

our commercial classes

into our gentry classes.


Let us help transformour working classes

into worker gentry classes.


Revolutionary gentry.R

adical gentry.

Progressive gentry.

Worker gentry.


Let us gentrify our neighborhoods!

our enterprises!


Let us bury mere commercialism

in the dustbin of history.


We can no longer afford

Merely pedestrian glories.


Our very planet,

Our very species

Is being ravaged

By the merely commercial classes.


Let us usher them out.

Let us gentrify humanity,

With grace, beauty, truth, and justice,

Leading the parades.


Olde

 

Let’s Fix Our Eyes


Let’s fix our eyes

On the prize

Of a new civilization

Because it’s time.


Olde Godshill

 

Revolutionary Gentry


I have finally discovered a concept

to capture the identity of my favorite friends—

the revolutionary gentry.


They are revolutionary because their lives

Have been dedicated to a vision of some kind of

Fundamental, structural transformation

Of consciousness and society—A new civilization!


They have kept their eyes on this prize—


An awakening in response to

The horrors that have beset humanity

Rooted in excess hiearchy and rote patriarchy.


A deep understanding regarding

The ecological challenge wrought byThe “industrial revolution.”


They are gentry because their lives

Have manifest a ceaseless quest for

And acquisition of wealth—mostly cultural, social, and spiritual riches,

But sometimes money too!


Long lives.


Make history and the money

Will take care of itself!


When the revolutionary gentry

Become more self-conscious

Of their growing power,

Augmented by the bourgeois revolution

Of the past few hundred years,

The long awaited second American revolution,

That faces up to the unfinished business of the first one,

May be around the corner,

Only a generation or two distant.


Viva, the revolutionary gentry!

 

Revolutionary Gentry Distinguished from Radical Gentry


The revolutionary gentry are to be distinguished from their worthy partners,

The radical gentry.


They are radical rather than revolutionary,

By virtue of the kind of spirit they bring the drama.

The radicals are not quite as exuberant as the revolutionaries.

They tend to exercise more prudence.


The radicals do not take as long a view.

They are closer to the facts.

God dwells in the details, along with the radicals.

Revolutionaries have visions.

Radicals projects.


The exultant pageant of evolution

On our lovely planet

In our daunting cosmos,

Has glorious parades of revolutionaries.

Spectacular orchestras of radicals.


Revolutionary gentry.

Radical gentry.


Viva!

 

Introducing the Progressive Gentry


They are progressive because their lives

Have greatly contributed to the evolution of humanity,

Especially in their daily rounds, marked by

Professional competence and life-long learning.


The progressive gentry distrust grand visions,

They tend to be leaders “inside” the dominant order,

Working from within for necessary change,

Open to new initiatives from the

Revolutionary and radical gentry,

Carefully, incrementally.


The progressive gentry are a large power bloc

Critical to protecting humanity from its worst elements,

The barbarians within and without the civitas and countryside.

Not as long-viewed as the revolutionaries,

Nor as intense and impatient as the radicals,

The progressive gentry occupy the middle way.

 

Burning Bushes


Papa Whitman told me it was ok to be astounded

By the multiplicities sometimes bickering

Sometimes co-mingling in my vast interiors.


He said I could contradict myself

Even slay some selvesAnd still be pure.


Papa Jung said I could enjoy

The powerful women inside me,

And even the lovely ladies.


He said their voices

Must be allowed

For life’s flow.


Father Chardin and Rumi opened my eyes

To the burning bush inside, the fount

Of cosmic energies, the beloved tavern keeper.


Queen Bonobo has inspired the notion

That love is the sap and the soul

E pluribus unum.


Olde

July 7, 2006

 

Response to Violence in Bay View


Is it not there in the history of humanity,

For all to see, who care to see.


When rural or small town populations

Are uprooted from their local communities,


And become resident of big city neighborhoods


Yet lacking the institutions to address the dislocations—

social, cultural, and economic—during the transition…


When the old clans and communities are

Not yet reconstituted in the new big cities…


Alienation, anomie, and violence.


Just focusing on the USA of the past 150 years,

The teeming Irish and Italian neighborhoods of

New York, Chicago, and Milwaukee,

Shocked the wealthier communities of English,Scotch, and German,

With their levels of violence, usually internal,

But sometimes spilling over.


I see most of us doing our best to fight the good fight

And help create community institutions and

Economic opportunities to

Advance the cause of our displaced fellow Milwaukeeans,

And our own selves, families, and friends.


Are we not all in the same boat?


Might not some on-line conversations about

Community building and job creating mechanisms

Be of some value?


Growing Power, for example, has four market city farm methodologies

That could help families supplement their income as well as

Build community around projects for healthy food and extra income.


If we can continue dodging bullets, from our fellows or nature’s way,

In a few generations we might reduce our level of violence

By a considerable amount.


In my lifetime I have witnessed a very considerable erosion of racism

In many Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Louis Euro American groups.


Perhaps over the next couple of lifetimes we will witness

An equal amount of success around the issue of violence.


I know of scores of Milwaukeeans who have been doing great work

Aimed at healing people’s minds and hearts

For the past 30 years.


And I am confident that this yahoo group will advance the cause

Of community building and an evolution of the spirit

For many years to come.


Life is tragic.

Life is grand.

Life is interesting.

We’ve made progress.

We’ve a long way to go.

We are not afraid.

We shall overcome.


Olde

 

Some Rumi Prayers for Shedd

(Translation by Coleman Barks, Castle Books, 1997)


I have given each being

a separate and unique way

Of seeing and knowing and saying

That knowledge.


He dado cada es

una manera separada y extraordinaria

De ver e instruido y diciendo

Ese conocimiento.


Earth Day, 2006

 

The Sweet Politics of Savannah Baboons and Forest Bonobos


If you are a Savannah Baboon who likes power,

Please know that winning power may take strength,

But keeping power involves other resources.


Social intelligence, which includes empathy, ranks high.

You must divine daily even hourly shifts in alliances.

The politics of coalition formation and dissolution,

Must come second nature to you.


Tolerance for the inescapable imbecility of your allies

Is critical, Baboon allies make mistakes.

Don’t cop attitudes.


And detachment from the irritation of regular provocations

From your partners who enjoy a dance with Alpha Baboon,

Taking you right to the edge of anger, seemingly

For the fun of it.


Physical power means even less to the divine bonobos,

A matriarchal species where the females prevail

By virtue of their “sisterhood.”


Males derive their status from their mother’s rank.

The alpha bonobo, Queen Bonoba, never needed be the strongest,

But rather the kindest and the wisest.


She is alpha because she has groomed the best and the most.

She can best mediate “contradictions” among the monkeys.

She carries herself with a confidence and poise that wins respect.

A nod from her can spring a group of sisters into action,

In the face of an obnoxious bonobo, fancy on the outside,

But lacking interior grace.


Brief, solution focused cognitive therapy suggests the value of

Self-framing as an Alpha Bonobo or Savannah Baboon

To advance one’s hero quest and possibilities for bliss.


Olde

 

Unfinished Business


A cultural revolution,

A revolution of mind and sensibility

Is required for the “unfinished business”

of the First American Revolution.


Without attending to this business,

Freedom, justice, beauty, community,

We condemn ourselves to generations

Of terror and the terror of wars on terror.


Please consider a role as Paul Revere,

Go out to the people

And give the cry.


Ask your internet broadcaster friends

To sign on for a New American Movement.

A cultural revolution, of sensibility and mind.


Might you know five

Who you could trust

Would let the people know

About May Day at Soldiers Home?


Might you offer me on line introductions

To your most trustworthy five?


The barbarians are at the gate.

We must rally the people.

Sound the alarm.


Godsil

Soldiers Home of North America

 

Bin Laden’s Pimp


Bin Laden’s Great Resources

Are the ignorance, decadence, and hubris

Of the worst elements of “The West.”


Our greatest defense

Against Bin Ladenism

is our quest for truth, beauty, and justice.


Who would trample upon

Truth in our land

Is a friend of Bin Laden.


Who would defile the

Beauty in our midst,

Is Bin Laden’s brother.


Who ignores the call of justice,

Is Bin Laden’s pimp.


Godsil

from Bay View/Riverwest/Harambee

Timbuktu/Bucketworks/NAACP

Bridge Works/Soldiers Home/Community

Rebirth of Freedom/Great Lakes

USA/North America

 

Cultural Deprivation


Dear Andy,


If you have never been to the Soldiers Home

You have a right to sue

The thoughtless old white men

Who gave you not this due.


Your birthright has been trampled on

By a concatenation of “wariables”

That find you in your office on Sunday, May 1,

And not at the Soldiers Home.


Its haunting beauty

Would qualitatively improve

Your capacity to heal.


You’ll someday see

If you’ve never seen,

The Soldiers Home.


Godsil

fromThe Soldiers Home


YeatsEasterSunday1916


Monday, March 28, 2005


“Bin Laden’s Pimp” and the “Worst of the West”


Hey David,


I would like to try to get “Bin Laden’s Pimp” published where it would be of use for the New American Cultural Revolution brewing in response to the planet as village for world culture intellectuals like yourself.


The actions of the worst of the west

Are making true patriots like yourself

Tempted with shame?


Godsil


Hey Jack,


I very much enjoyed meeting you at the Human Rights Day and Blewett Public School Rally at Timbuktu last Monday.


You are a man of mind, heart, and courage.


God bless,

Godsil


Avoid Freeway Driving in Milwaukee’s Historic Neighborhoods

Like You Would A Weapon of Mass Destruction


Dear All,


We are 70% water I’m told.

Water is sensitive to vibrations.


Water exposed to soothing music

And kindly human words

When frozen and photographed

At the microscopic level


Is beauty, symmetry, dazzling grace.


As lovely as snowflakes magnified

A thousand fold.


When the water is placed between

Two speakers blaring heavy metal trash,

Or forced to hear harsh human sounds,

When frozen and photgraphed,

At the microscopic level,


It’s ugly, asymmetrical, piteous blah.


While driving on city freeways

We are exposed to the ugly and the plain,

The boring and the dangerous,

Like water between blaring disharmonies.


Today’s drive through the main streets

Of our historic neighborhoods,

Down KK, Lincoln, Mitchell, National,

Vliet, North Ave., Center, Locust, Burleigh,

Lisbon Tuetonia and Forest Home,


Will expose us to much new life and beauty,

Good vibrations from the people’s strength,

Making our liquid aspect a pleasure to be.


Freeways were part of the industrial society

Of infernal factorieswhere democracy

stopped at the gates.


Freeways were to move heavy goods cheaply,

The people in the neighborhoods be dammed.

Freeways could be rammed down “the lower orders’” throats,

With enough politicians and construction big shots on board.


No more.

Never again.

No more ugly freeways

Through urban village beauty.


No more raping our neighborhoods and homes,

For the sake of an atavistic residue

From a previous epoch

Of pyramidal power structures

And command posts of old white men.


This era is over.

White men are being replaced

With all of God’s children

At round tables of

Increasing creativity and grace.


Highways have no place in this world.


No more torture chambers.

No more public floggings.

No more child and wife abuse.

No more hate crimes.


No more highways through the

Beautiful neighborhoods

Of the American people,


Godsil

Sufi Poetry Night at Timbuktu

Last Tuesday of Each Month

 

Lovely Social Minds On Line at the Soldiers Home


The “thinking envelope”


of the Planet Earth,


Is changing the way


We do things.


With google


We can go to Harvards


Of the mind.


We can have rich conversations


With the finest minds,


The warmest hearts,


And most exuberant spirits,


Across Mother Earth,


the Beautiful.


Godsil

 

The Soldiers Home

Milwaukee

Where the Waters Meet

And All of God’s Children Greet

 

Notes at Bay View Library February 2006


The guiding insight of deconstruction is that every structure—be it literary, psychological, social, economic, political or religious—that organizes our experience is constituted and maintained through acts of exclusion. In the process of creating something, something else inevitably gets left out…These exclusive structures can become repressive—and that repression comes with consequences…


Mr. Derrida understood all too well the danger of beliefs and ideologies that divide the world into diametrical opposites: right or left, red or blue, good or evil, for us or against us… By insisting that truth and absolute value cannot be known with certainty, his detractors argue, he undercut the very possibility of moral judgment.


To follow Mr. Derrida, they maintain, is to start down the slippery slope of skepticism and relativism that inevitably leaves us powerless to act responsibly…Like Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Mr. Derrida does argue that transparent truth and absolute values elude our grasp… it is necessary to recognize the unavoidable limitations and inherent contradictions in the ideas and norms that guide our actions, and do so in a way that keeps them open to constant questioning and continual revision. There can be no ethical action without critical reflection…


He understood that religion is impossible without uncertainty. Whether conceived of as Yahweh, as the father of Jesus Christ, or as Allah, God can never be fully known or adequately represented by imperfect human beings…Belief not tempered by doubt poses a mortal danger…


Fortunately, he also taught us that the alternative to blind belief is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief—one that embraces uncertainty and enables us to respect others whom we do not understand. In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don’t know so that we can keep the future open…


What Derrida Really Meant

Mark C. Taylor


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