Sitting in my car like a man sitting on his horse back in the day before horseless motor carriages were a thang

Yup

Here you are

and

Here I am

Sitting in my car like a man
sitting on his horse back in the day before horseless motor carriages were a thang Continue reading

watch my wheelchair go and stop

i sit n wheelchair
strapped in tite tho i feel no pressure
i numb below neck
feel like hollowed out farm punkin
plumped up tite full wit
gritty beach sand & red raspberry jello
my head falls over sometimes
so it gets bolted in place
my tongue moves as bacon smokes hot in pan
i dream of my momma
when i was small boy
we pick berries
all kinds of berries all colors
strawberries
raspberries
blueberries
huckleberries
blackberries
marionberries
even thimbleberries
i help her cook berries down
help her put in too much sugar
help her make the berry jam
but now I dream of red raspberry jello
smooth
sweet
tart
wiggly 
slips & rolls as big wave in ocean
slop my mouth full of the sea
knock me down underwater 
grind my little boy body
upon broken seashells & gritty beach sand
my dada pulled me out of water
he laughed as if no serious matter
tho i see the love in his eyes i see his fear 
i smell the relief of my father’s release
i remember when he hold my hand 
in the muddy pumpkin field as he
smoked a cigarette with other hand
his cigarette lighting hand Continue reading

Gone Another Way

The fork in the road
loomed ahead in the storm.
Beyond, two roads vanished into pouring rain
and mud and mist with twisted trees.
Ah, life’s choices.
Sometimes one must leave roads altogether,
but not today.
Was in a hurry,
and already late,
so took the one most traveled.
The road ran fast and straight.
Charged thru the storm,
and broke out beneath starry skies.
Paused atop the hill above those city lights,
and, curious, wondered
what did I miss?

 

William Dudley Bass
Saturday 10 June 2023
Tuesday 20 June 2023
Shoreline/Seattle, WA

Notes: Arose from a dark, sleepless night as I riffed off a mix of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and some of the teachings of the Buddha from the “Dhammapada” instead of counting sheep and box breathing. 

Copyright © 2023 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

West Beyond Kitchen Windows

(Aye, another jolly ol’ bad, bad poem here for ya)

1.
Mountains layered in rows of blue, indigo, and violet
advance and rise between the Pacific Ocean and the Salish Sea
into sunshine as clear as fresh-scrubbed panes of glass.
They uplift the frontier out there,
out west beyond large, old-fashioned kitchen windows.
The day is glorious outside, the Sun shines bright, 
there’s snow up high in the Cascades to our east,
and planets and stars align in night skies bereft of moon.
All my friends are out and about doing fun things,
Playing hard up in the mountains and relaxing down in the city.

I, however, sit at home where maritime clouds of silver and gray
hang heavy inside the bones of my mind,
heavier than when those clouds sprawl across Cascadian skies.
Instead of being outside hiking, paddling, climbing, skiing, or
perusing book stores and funky shops with cups of coffee in hand,
I burrow down into the self-isolation of self-partnership gone awry to write horridly-wrought, quasi-autobiographical prose poems and binge
on Netflix videos in a bottomless hunger to
satiate my addiction to online vicariousness.

Energy spent to hold up and push away the weight of heavy clouds
leaves me exhausted, my excitement obliterated, and my wants and desires to get outside into this spectacular and beautiful day buried
under Pyramids of Forgetfulness.

Continue reading

e1x0p1e1r0i0m0e1n0t1.z.omega.alpha.a

Our love was imbalanced.
We were too early and not long enough.
One night and one morning was all we had in the bed.
After we orgasmed one behind the other,
and I found myself bodiless inside the layers of her flesh,
I had to fight and struggle to return to my own body

Love is powerful,
so powerful it perturbs the scales of life to disrupt the universe.

Vise grips the size of a coconut crab’s crush the back of my neck.
My occiput throbs and thunks till the bones scream home.
Too many timelines between space rip me open to beauty,
to beauty so deep only the stars may gaze upon it without blindness.
Sometimes in a blur I cannot distinguish truth from fact from belief
Nor lies from fiction from relief. Continue reading

Sun shines now

The Sun shines now.
She pushed her stroller uphill from the SeaTac airport train & bus station,
the same steep hill I plodded down to catch the light-rail.
Young woman with serious face.
Eyes direct, staring forward,
both hands fierce upon the pushbar, her
Supergirl lasers scorching the steepness rising before her.
She appears a plastic beauty of mixed East Asian & Eurowhite descent, but who knows from where anyone arises anymore?
Continue reading

When God sings it ain’t always pretty


Rediscovered this image of a rudimentary draft of a poem jotted down on the side of a brown paper bag in public then forgotten about. I hurriedly revised this weird dive into the messiness of life. Here it is.

When God sings
They don’t always sound sweet & pretty.
Sometimes such a song
Wakes us up
And stops our dancing.
When we stop to listen,
A lament of such deep sorrow
Rumbles up from the bowels of our planet
And vibrates loose the stars from Heaven.
Comets & moons, asteroids & planets collide,
And space dust skreeks across the void
In tangles of broken violins & cosmic rays
So violent the Kosmos wails.

We humans do not get the message.
Don’t even wanna know there is a message.
We have dropped The Key.
What we don’t understand is not all souls are
Automatically immortal.
What we don’t understand is spirituality is hard work.
What we fail to understand is God is NOT Love and never was.

We had it backwards, sort of.

Continue reading

Seattle Vignettes: A Prose Poem in Five Parts

  1. Dead Man on the Steps with One and a Half Legs
  2. Bag of Dimes
  3. Tattooed Hands
  4. Donuts, Needles, Jelly, and Blood
  5. P.S. Box of Donuts in the Rain

 *All of these vignettes are interpretations of real events I experienced in Washington State along my way to work from SeaTac to Seattle and back again during the Cascadian Winter of 2017 – 2018. ~ Author’s Forewarning

Dead Man on the Steps with One and a Half Legs
Rain poured in torrents
as dawn broke sunrise into silver and gray.
I hurried down South 176th Street in SeaTac towards the airport to catch my train to work.
Can’t be late again.
Won’t be late again.
I shall arrive early to work
to keep my job alive.
My commute is 3 hours long roundtrip.
Why do good people scatter their trash along the streets?
I passed all kinds of trash, mostly food related, as I approached the SeaTac Visitor Information Center,
also known as Seattle Southside Visitor Center.
A man lay curled upon the lower steps. Continue reading

Waiting for Bags of Bones to Sing

To whom do old bones sing?
The burlap bag found half-buried in woods
chock full of dog bones, cow bones, and, yes,
bones from pigs and humans including several women?
Do they sing to the crows and the ravens?
Do they sing to seagulls and eagles?
Do they sing to the whales from ghosts of long-ago canoes?

This bag is enormous!
Extends deep into the earth, it does.
Up come bones of fish and birds, of otter and bear,
and bones of snakes.
“There, there! Look!” I shouted after I spied
bones of orcas and dolphins in disarray
with all clatter muted by clay and charcoal
within this old burlap bag matted tight with mud and ash. Continue reading

She Cries in the Cold, Cold Rain (The Poem)

She cries in the cold, cold rain
hunched over two worn, tattered duffel bags
and a pile of dirty blankets and clothing.
Every thing she owned is soaked in pain.
Her nest is chaos.
I stand there, already late for work,
overwhelmed,
sad, angry, and ashamed.
Afraid I may be fired for being late after I miss the train.
Again.
I feel helpless.
I rage against our economic, political, and religious systems.
I feel stupid.
And I am late to catch the train to work.
Again.

The woman camps upon concrete floors at the bottom
of a partially open stairwell across from an elevator
next to a bus stop
across from the
SeaTac Airport Link Light-Rail Train Station.
One wall is solid;
the other heavy, rubberized wire mesh.
Water ripples across the floor.
Wind blows in raindrops.
Every drop explodes
as flogs once lashed the backs of wayward sailors
and slaves.
And sometimes still do.

She glances up and stares around in wild desperation,
as crazy as a fox hemmed in by hounds
gone mad with hunger lust
and fear.
And she is hungry,
this fox,
and scrawny as a walking stick
dying in the silver gloom of December in Seattle. Continue reading

Pound Cakes & Cigarettes

“You’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, haven’t you?”

She looked up at me as I bent her legs back to pound her pussy till she made me fly and fill the sky.

“Yes,” I said and grunted.

We both grunted.

“I’ve been waiting,” she murmured as we gazed into each other’s eyes.

Her eyes closed as she turned her face to one side upon the pillow.

I studied her freckles and the undulations of her breath and belly. Continue reading

We buried Grandpa up in a Tree

Night falls with rain
Darkness and pain
Heart opens into oblivion
Without even one hemisphere of brain
Wholeness is Whole
Our planet’s heavy with Child
After we buried Grandpa up in a tree
For buzzards and insects to spread him
Upon the wind for God to inhale
Yet God dances Wild
In the mists of creation
Flinging limbs in our direction
As every bloody stump stamps
Stars and flowers across tapestries of dirt
In the distance screams echo among howls
Love isn’t lost
Continue reading

Goddess Dead

In the end
The woman was a stranger to me.
She laid curled shuddering in blood and tears
At the bottom of her privacy so long
Hot water ran cold as if from faraway graves.
I chose her anyway.
All of her.
Every damn bit of her
I chose.
She couldn’t believe it.
Didn’t really want to, even.
Tho she said she was glad
Turns out she’d merely gone mad.

Continue reading

Dead Love Alive

One light shines thru the window next door
All is shadows and spiders twitching
October rains darkness in all directions
Cold seeps from tomorrow’s bones
Flows home to all the stars of yesterday
I turn toward the woods
Rest my hands in my pockets
Feel heartbeats in each hand
Nothing feels real but the pavement under my feet
Nothing feels real but the pain, the forever pain
Oh, I open to the Love
I feel it surge hot as plasma
Searing open the Kosmos with a rip in the sky
The divine laughs like that sometimes,
Like an owl dancing in love with mice
The divine laughs like that sometimes,
As fierce as a nail bent naked
After I am gone forever
She comes to the window next door
And stands watching spiders bob flies in the light
She comes gone

 

William Dudley Bass
17 October 2014
&
now today,
21 March 2016
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

Copyright © 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

Desert Duolaire

Cold desert sunset
Smokes burnt orange
Over frozen undulations
Of sand, rock, mountains,
And canyons.
Broken asphalt stretches
Before me into
Glowering darkness
My right foot kicks aside
Broken bottles and rusty cans
My left foot crushes
Old cardboard wheezing Made in Milwaukee
Three cars and a pickup truck sit wrecked in the ditch
They rust amid broken coils of
Barbed wired and skeletons of cows and deer
I weave north towards Polaris and not Sirius
I walk thru tumbleweeds
I dread the dawn
Darkness abides its demise
Birth is inevitable
Sigh
If only Ed Abbey was a woman

 

William Dudley Bass
Friday 18 March 2016
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

Copyright © 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Human beings establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

 

Blue Light White

So tired of Facebook love
So tired of falling in love with beautiful women so far away
Brilliant women, too
Remarkable women
Deep soulful women
Most seem too young
Oh, there’re a few close to me in age
Some even older
Every one a Goddess Incarnate within the human animal
But all too far away

I throw my smartfone into the darkness
It glows back at me as blue as a UFO
Keeps me up at night
Keeps me awake all night
Until I go crazy with loneliness
Or am I crazy from too much light?

The digital bonds stretch into emptiness
More yawning than the desert twilight
Roads disappear into
Before time snaps me awake

I want a hotel
A place to sleep
Can we fuck now?
Hell no
No connection
All is unplugged
Too virtual
And dead
Minds zoned gray as grey
Hearts still as stones before the tide
But no water comes
Only sand.

Quickly I retrieve my fone amidst inky stillness
I text too much still
Without ever coming close to filling the Void
Facebook feeds us all into like blue and white Soylent Light

Out among destroyed celestial spheres and broken stars
Shiva battles pseudo-Shivas as real as every machine
To save darkness from white light blue.

 

William Dudley Bass
Sunday 13 March
&
Monday 21 March 2016
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

Copyright © 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

 

 

Too Far for Tears

She calls soon after dinner
Right in the middle of the presidential primary debate
I do not answer
I do not want to answer
Later I listen to her voice mail
She is distraught
Crying
Sobbing
One of her animals died in her arms
I can’t make out which one or what kind
Only this animal is dead
And it died in her arms
And she loved this animal
Now my friend felt buried alive
In her solitude
She needed someone to talk to
Someone to listen to her
I can’t deal with it just now
I’m listening at Bernie & Hillary
Getting into it over Trump
Three hours go by
And I call her back
I listen to her with my heart wide open
After we are complete
I put down my fone
And weep

 

 

William Dudley Bass
Wednesday 9 March,
Sunday 13 March, &
Monday 21 March 2016
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

 

Copyright © 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

 

“If not drunk in love, then why be in love?”

“If not drunk in love, then why be in love?”

You asked.

I shall whisper an answer into thy eyes here.

Love is the most powerful energy in the universe.
I dance intoxicated with glass after glass of such red, red love.
How miraculous is this power of the heart!

Only presence of mind is as powerful.
Silent, awake, aware, intentional, and conscious.
Such stillness of mind directs the flow and dance of love.

Indeed, such presence of mind sustains the heart’s love
long after the energy ebbs and flows.

Love is a choice.
As energy one can choose to turn it on.
Or off.
Choose love.
As you first chose your self.

Continue reading

BANALITY, or: Abandoned by Angels

I lay my head down
in the boneyard of relatives
to feed Aunt Bea’s chickens.
Over in the corner
in the shade of Grandpa’s old pear tree
my mother lays among buzzing yellow jackets
feasting upon apples scattered in decay.

Momma pushes away all of her children,
those of us still alive;
screams for us to grow up;
demands we stop listening to the news;
shouts we better hunt us up
some animals for breakfast.

Desperately she lifts tattered, dirty burlap,
shoves small bones ragged with chunks of meat
into her vagina as she mourns and grieves
the deaths of three babies
from dirty, unwashed hands.

I glance up and see Aunt Bea peeking down
thru broken shutter slats guarding old attic windows.
She won’t come down;
expects us to visit her instead.
We do not dare, of course.

Aunt Bea is hungry beyond pain,
yet she avoids the bone yard where
her sister screeches
in the shade of serpent grief.

She pushes notes at us
from under her door,
notes so raw her letters leave us
wet with terror.

Aunt Bea’s eye sees me as it always does,
quivers with relief as it watches my head twitch.
Her one enormous eye, wild, heavy, swivels “Yes!”
I stand up headless and walk away
as chickens cluck and peck at my face.

My old twin head Wilson, severed across the throat,
rolls in staggered jerks beneath
swarming hens, roosters, and slaps of Momma’s shoe.
I’d once saved Wilson’s life from drowning.
My twin washed up on Absinthe Beach north of Yurka
five years after vanishing off Nikumaroro.

I return to the shed to cook down
p-ephedrine with hydroiodic acid,
red phosphorous, iodine, and lye.
Daddy slouches naked in the shadows
among broken antique furniture once
slathered in now faded yellow, green,
red, purple Dutch Boy lead paint.

Continue reading

Death Ain’t Grim

Death is my Lover
Without gender or genitals
Neither soft nor hard
Death just cums
Into my Soul

 

 

Copyright © 2013, 2015, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you. Even if there are more words in this than in the poem up there. 🙂

 

Valentine’s Lupercalia and the Death of Love at the End of the World

LOVE

LOVE IS.

LOVE IS LIFE.

LOVE IS POWER.

LOVE IS DIVINE.

is god love ? is love god ? and goddess ?

or is love merely a human attribute projected upon an imagined image of deity ?

 If indeed God is Love and Love is God, can Love love?

We humans make messes of Love.

Such as celebrating our lust as things fall apart.

Ancient Pagan Festival of Lupercalia

Saint Valentine’s Day

Blood and Life

Birth and Death

One Love

Many People

Valentine’s Day

Armageddon of the Heart

Bereft of a Lover, she reads alone in the chill of February. It is the only way she knows to escape from her pain without dulling her soul.

Bereft of a Lover, she reads alone in the chill of February. It is the only way she knows to escape from her pain without dulling her soul.

Ruins of Ancient, Postmodern Lupercalian Sex Machines too broken down to fuck this lovely Valentine's Day Night.

Ruins of Ancient, Postmodern Lupercalian Sex Machines too broken down to fuck this lovely Valentine’s Day Night.

The air changes all who breathe. Breathing changes love. It all changes you. Air is life. Air is death. Breathing fuels every cell to live. Gaia yearns for Cernunnos to merge and spawn. Goddess gives birth to more Gods who work with Prometheus to mold our flesh deep in the ovens of the Holy Sun. Soul cleaves with Spirit to penetrate matter. Life blossoms from energy and emerges across the Universe. Enchanted with life, Sophia birthed forth Demiurge. Ignorant, isolated, and bereft of LOVE, he grew increasingly malevolent. Demiurge thundered forth to create his universe of worlds and battled the Higher God of Love and Creation for domination of the Earth. Humans were terrified, confused, and forced into believing Demiurge was the only God to worship. Sophia was forgotten along with Gaia and every other Goddess. The entire Universe screamed in protest, a scream we still hear as we listen to the electromagnetic shrieking of Matter across time and space. A most wicked and capricious Demiurge tormented all his creations as he raged and cried out for and against a Mother he hasn't known since birth. Demiurge set himself up on a giant throne to toy with and destroy bit by bit his own creations and smeared all others Divine as of the Devil. As the true Shaitan, Demiurge hid the truth from men and from women of his hideous yet powerful Imposition. Only Love will transform this Devil God, and it must be Love wrapped in kindness and compassion backed by the strength of billions of strong, resilient spines.

The air changes all who breathe. Breathing changes love. It all changes you. Air is life. Air is death. Breathing fuels every cell to live. Gaia yearns for Cernunnos to merge and spawn. Goddess gives birth to more Gods who work with Prometheus to mold our flesh deep in the ovens of the Holy Sun. Soul cleaves with Spirit to penetrate matter. Life blossoms from energy and emerges across the Universe. Enchanted with life, Sophia birthed forth Demiurge. Ignorant, isolated, and bereft of LOVE, he grew increasingly malevolent. Demiurge thundered forth to create his universe of worlds and battled the Higher God of Love and Creation for domination of the Earth. Humans were terrified, confused, and forced into believing Demiurge was the only God to worship. Sophia was forgotten along with Gaia and every other Goddess. The entire Universe screamed in protest, a scream we still hear as we listen to the electromagnetic shrieking of Matter across time and space. A most wicked and capricious Demiurge tormented all his creations as he raged and cried out for and against a Mother he hasn’t known since birth. Demiurge set himself up on a giant throne to toy with and destroy bit by bit his own creations and smeared all others Divine as of the Devil. As the true Shaitan, Demiurge hid the truth from men and from women of his hideous yet powerful Imposition. Only Love will transform this Devil God, and it must be Love wrapped in kindness and compassion backed by the strength of billions of strong, resilient spines.

Continue reading

A Man Left All Alone in Love

Grief swells fierce
From deep inside
Chambers of my Heart,
Chambers pulsing with magma.
No, I realize, feeling it now,
Feeling hot sad heat rise
From deep down inside my guts.

Alone at work,
Sitting at my desk and staring at reflections,
I see only memories
Of Love forever gone.

Storms pour in from the ocean.
As I look outside the window,
A wall of tall cedars and firs
Braces against the wind,
Then surrenders in a wild sea of heaving green.

And the rain pours.
The rain pours.
And the rain pours.
And what was once deep, shared love
Rushes into the sewers of the city to
Live forever lost at sea.

 

William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 20 & 28 November 2012
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington

 

Copyright © 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

BizDeb Haiku Pun Fun Snowfodils

Biznik Haiku for
Tuesdays with Deborah D
Snow dusts daffodils

Tuesdays with Deb’rah
Friends, Philosophy, and Tea
One drops his coffee

Winter died last night
amid thunder snow and
sparks flowers froze crystal

Meh brains devoured
amid this Vernal Din by
yonder Flying Spaghetti Monster…but the rest of me’ll show up.

Monday 19 March 2012 as part of a light-hearted exchange between fellow bloggers being seriously silly online as spring snow fell outside. Biznik is a widespread network of entrepreneurs and businesspeople with local ones in the Greater Seattle-Bellevue area. Tuesdays with Deborah is a circle of bloggers, writers, and marketers who gather around to move each other forward and is facilitated by Deborah Drake. See more TWD @ http://www.authenticwritingprovokes.com/inspiredwriting/. Thank you.

 

William Dudley Bass
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

 

Copyright © 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

 

Tears for Me

Tears welled up from my eyes – for my self – for the first time in many moons – and I felt them wet upon my face. Ever since my heart got turned to stone 27 years ago, even after that story was dissolved & discarded 3 years ago as all made up in my mind, I find it hard to cry for myself, easy to cry for others. A moving incident from a book, movie, or article – both fiction & nonfiction – can move me to generate a flood of tears. But, oh no, only a drought to dry up my soul. I felt the depth of my own sorrow at the pain I’ve caused those I adore so deeply. Sorrow that turned to grief and eventually via the alchemical transmutation of forgiveness & compassion up into joy.

 

(First shared on Facebook in Prezz Pressley’s group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.”)

William Dudley Bass
On Facebook on 27 June 2011,
Here on 8 July 2011
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This prose poem originally appeared on FB then on my older blog on Friday 8 July 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/tears-for-me-tears-welled-up-from-my.html. Eventually I revised and reposted it here this March 2012 on my new website. Thank you.

 

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

Aye, Dirt is Divine!

Aye, I like that dirty ruttin’! where all things Primal are revealed to be Divine, where all things wet & messy are but the rapture of a mango opening into your mouth, where intimacy is the portal for spirit to merge with soul, for flesh with flesh, for star dust with stardust, the many becoming one.

 

(Inspired posting to Prezz Pressley’s Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY“.)

William Dudley Bass
Posted to FB on 26 May 2011,
Here on 8 July 2011
March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This prose poem first appeared as one of my posts to Facebook on 26 May 2011, and then onto my earlier blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on 8 July 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/aye-dirt-is-divine-aye-i-like-that.html. Eventually I revised it and re-published it here on my new website this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

Gabriel Requests Your Surrender to The One

Magnificent Gabriel came down upon the earth, folded back his wings, & clambered up into the cave above Mecca to recite the words of Allah to an illiterate merchant. Muhammad, PBUH, chose to listen in spite of his fear…to listen as if he had elephant ears…cuz he knew to be The Last Prophet of the Axial Age he had to do more than just hear so never mind the wind and rain the heat and cold the searing pain…till finally Gabriel relaxed his grasp and Muhammad, PBUP, as the great angel exhaled he the prophet inhaled, inhaled the sacred exhale of Gabriel, inhaled the Recitation, breathed to life the Qur’an, and then out across the deserts he walked and he rode, laying the foundations of the worldwide Umma, and history was never the same again. Surrender to God as freedom, not enslavement, was the greatest gift of submission. Oft misunderstood as enslavement, and still misunderstood as submitting to something way out there, while within, The Lord of all the Worlds, The ONE beyond all Gender even beyond all Attributes awaits thy ultimate surrender, inshallah. Amen.

 

(Prose Poem inspired by “Gabriel Secret,” prose poetry by Prezz Pressley posted on 6 July 2011 in the Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY,” and inspired by my own studies of Islam and a late-night-just-before-dawn mystical experience of Allah.)

William Dudley Bass
7 July 2011
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This prose poem originally appeared on my earliest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on Friday 8 July 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/gabriel-requests-your-surrender-to-one.html, then revised and reposted here on my new website this late March of 2012. Thank you.

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

The Eye of Everything

As the we ride the Earth thru endless cycles of rotations upon its revolutions around Sol, cycles that may someday stop perhaps even before Sol drags all its planets around the center of the Milky Way, light shifts, darkness expands, love heals, and across a Kosmos jammin’ with spinning masses a voice shouts suddenly from the shadows before a fire blazing in the hearthmaw…jerks us awake as copies of The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart slips from our grips…and with scolding index finger jammed up the Sacred Ass of God with 3 more dirty fingers pointing back down into Blessed Inferno…the reincarnation of Krishna Allah shakes His many eyes open & peers around the circle at us & shouts again, “Each one of us has a point of view. Each culture and religion has a nest of views like a den of snakes. Above, however, above Us only God has View.” Another shout breaks open the smoke…”Assalamu alaikum…for the 10th Avatar is here in our midst as the mystic Christ revealed not as another Prophet, but as…us! You! Me! Yes, us, all of humanity.” And the Kundalini rises blind up the spine singing “Everything is Sacred even if you hate it.” Cerridwen Shiva Mary Vesta Isis Gaia boils hot love deep inside every nuclei of every cell as She weaves One Giant Eye in Divine Dance to crown Her spiraled, flaming root.

 

(Inspired by Prezz Pressley’s poem “EYE” of 6/20/2011 warning one to consider the angle of one’s sight amid the Sun and the Night when one is Wrong and one is Right.)

William Dudley Bass
22 June 2011
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening Period.

NOTE: This was first published on my earliest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on Friday 8 July 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/eye-of-everything.html, then revised and reposted here on my new website this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

On the Altar

Toppled from the throne of a once-vast and mighty empire whose fearsome name no one remembers except broken stones, King Ozymandias bled his tears into the sand, sand that sucked him deeper as a mad old lover whose yoni won’t let ’em go. The more he cried the deeper he sunk & drenched the sand with three million tears, fifteen hundred thousand tears from each eye, the tears of all he killed raped maimed and tortured upwelling thru his body like water pushing up thru a tree to breathe & become one with air. Tears dried & sand turned hard as cement became rock as Ozy all petrified his core solid rock choking his soul so tight his head splintered off his neck into scattered shards of light……with a whistling sigh only the wind heard the lost souls of thousands soared high & free riding upon the wings of they own sorrow grieving nothing save the ecstasy of union with Earth. Eons later as humans walk the Earth in blind oblivion of their own impending tipping point so many so many can’t even see the very Altar they stride upon everywhere they turn, an Altar hungrily awaiting for its sacrifice, waiting for its flood of tears. Yea, O Hungry Ground.

 

(Inspired response to Prezz Pressley’s poem “The Altar” in June 2011 in the Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.”)

William Dudley Bass
23 June 2011
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This prose poem found was first published on my earliest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on 23 June 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/06/on-altar.html, then revised, edited, and re-published here this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

A Window Only You Can Shut

Oh a window opens in the sky
And I see myself
Far away among stars
Looking back
I behold the most precious Earth,
Love Itself
On fire
Beating back the darkness of death
Civilizations upended
Men and women and children running about
Screaming and shouting
In the center of it all
God dances with no arms

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 21 January 2010 – after a week of pondering
Edmonds, Washington
March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This was first published on 21 January 2010, on my first blog, Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/window-only-you-can-shut.html, then revised and reposted here on my new website this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

What happens when a Man stands Tall

When a Man stands tall
And his head is on top,
People forget how holy
Everything else is.
People tend to forget
All that is below.
Everything as an expression of the Divine
Can be viewed as sacred, right?
But how many people know that?

So when that mountain loomed high above
And I felt scared and alone
I prayed,
Prayed hard.
I stood up,
Stood up tall,
Then fell prostrate upon stones and dirt.

God heard me.
He lifted up my balls,
Put his finger up my ass,
And reminded me of his Holiness
Thus I climbed the highest mountain,
Quickly.

Are you ready for God’s finger?

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 21 January 2010 – after a week of pondering & a little work in the Men’s Group
Edmonds, Washington
March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE:  This was first published on January 21, 2010 in one of my earlier blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-happens-when-man-stands-tall.html, then revised and reposted here this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

Wandering Star

Without knowing why or understanding any reason
Once a sun came alive.
A star awoke into consciousness,
Self-awareness blessed with intelligence.

Restless, the star sought to break free of its orbit
Around the galaxy
And wander throughout the vastness of space.
After much deliberation,
This star determined it could channel its fiery energies
Into massive jets of blazing plasma and scorching radiation
And compel its body to travel across the Cosmos.

God appeared, amused, compassionate, firm,
And said,
“Sun, you are now alive.
Thus you now have a choice.
You can choose to spend your life going around the galaxy
With planets and their moons going around you,
Blessing many with your wondrous light,
And live for a very long time
Allowing living beings to flourish in your light.”

“Or,” God continued,
“You embark upon a journey to discover all that you can
Knowing you will never see everything or go everywhere,
Expending all your energy on moving yourself, a star,
Across space, constantly breaking free of gravity,
Experiencing all the wonders that you can,
And die after a short life.
And your life will be short.
And you will destroy much along your way.
Imagine a solar system teeming with life
All its worlds in harmony with one another,
And a new sun comes wandering in all curious?”

God paused and waited.
The star churned as it deliberated.
“Freedom,” replied the star, finally.

“So be it,” God responded and vanished
Leaving this Sun alone with its freedom.

Many ages went by as this star roamed the Universe
Destroying all in its approach as well as in its wake.
It was more alone than ever
As it attempted to explore star system after star system
Teeming with life and even civilizations.
Some of these even tried to attack the star
But to no avail.
Others prayed for the star to go away,
Again to no avail.

And the wandering star grew lonelier still,
Becoming envious of solar systems
Where celestial harmony reigned,
Where suns were even worshipped,
Where life grew verdant,
And in some rare cases entire solar systems
Reached a level of self-aware interdependence.
And the wandering star felt even more alone.

A moment arrived when the star’s energy waned.
This sun churned as if turning inside out, then
Blossomed into an almost-empty red giant
Of a monster, a planet-devouring colossus.
Feeble attempts to move spun into nothingness.
The star felt itself losing consciousness.
Whirled apart in last burst of struggle
The star blew apart in one final explosion of light
Seen many billions of light years away.
Lifeless the remnants collapsed
Deep into the center of the void,
A black hole sucking in all existence,
Crushing everything into nothingness,
The mystery of obliteration
All that remains.

Light arose from the depths of Darkness
And eventually
Light falls back into Darkness.
Both are richer than before.
As it is with life and death
If only all could see.

Without knowing why or understanding any reason
God chuckles.

 

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 21 January 2010 after a week of pondering
Edmonds, Washington
Edited and reposted
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This was first published in late January 2010 on one of my older blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/wandering-star.html. Then revised and reposted here toward the end of March 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

Oh, the Freedom!

Oh, the Freedom
Of being down on my knees
In the gutter
Reeking of waste.

Dripping with Earth
I feel the stillness of God expanding
Embraced by Goddess enveloping.
Oh, I swim amid their pressed loins
As a dolphin leaps into air
From warm waters dripping silk.

It doesn’t matter where I am
Or what filth covers me
For I am in Love
And
All is sacred
All is divine
All is holy
Even excrement.

Adult admonishing reviles juvenile curiosity
Forgetting to hear among the scattering of scat
Giggles of the Divine.

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 21 January 2010 after a week of pondering.
Edmonds, Washington
29 March 2012
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This was first published in early 2010 on my earlier blog, Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/oh-freedom.html, then revised and reposted here this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

Holy Sea of Mind

As refreshing as a cup of cool water
Pulled up deep from the well
In the afternoon of a hot, sleepy day
God lives inside my Mind
Or so my Mind likes to think.
In truth
God lives deep inside my Heart
And sails the mind everywhere
As a ship sails the ocean
For Mind is everywhere an ocean unto itself.
With Mind anything is possible
If so believed.
The Body may turn Mind aside
Even as Body stays rooted in
The Earth of a Planet turning around the Sun.
When my ego turns inward
And I lift my eyes to
See the sun rise upon the cusp of dawn
I look inward across the infinite seas of Mind
And feel God pounding in my heart
Pounding as the greatest most fierce
Most kind lover
I have ever known.

 

William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 22 December 2009
&
Wednesday 13 January 2010
Edmonds, Washington
29 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This poem was first published in one of my earlier blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, on Thursday 21 January 2010, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/holy-sea-of-mind.html. Eventually I revised this poem and reposted it here on my new website this late March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2009, 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

Scream

Silence I hear nothing
I grip the bars of my playpen
Wooden slats to my mother
But to me I’m in jail
No such words arose in me
All I knew the one I loved
Put me inside this prison
From which I could not escape
I cried
I sobbed
I wailed
I screamed
My mother bustles in the kitchen
Surprise turned to hurt
Hurt turned to anger
Anger turned to rage
I shake the bars and howl
If she said anything to soothe or calm me
I could not hear
I was deaf
And she didn’t even know
I was deaf
And she wouldn’t know for a few more years
And while still in diapers still
I didn’t even know there were any Higher Powers to call upon
I didn’t even know about God yet
For all the good such superstition ever proved to be
I wanna break outa my cage
I wanna tear everything up
Destroy, kill, maim, burn
I’m always in trouble
And not even aware of it until angry hands descend from above
To snatch me up
And put me in Hell
No prayers saved me
No God or Goddess or Great Spirit existed to hear in the first place
Now many years later
I react react react react react
Fight or flight or freeze
Fight or flight or freeze
Fight or flight or freeze
Exhausted I collapse
In my own waste
And as I lift up my head
I see I can walk away
From my own prison
The one I began building decades ago
While deaf in diapers
As an elephant tethered to a string that used to be a rope
Stands still inside a burning barn
And burns to death instead of running free
I too stand burning inside my own barn
And now I walk out breathing
And I walk on breathing
I walk on
The flames vanish
I am free
Free from all the stories in my mind
Free from rage
Free from regression
Free to rediscover The One God Beyond All Others
With freedom comes responsibility
I must remember all those left behind
Still trapped in prisons of the mind
I open wide my angel wings
Black as mountain shadows
Light burns white from my heart
Scorching all our truths with the one truth there is,
Love.

 

William Dudley Bass
13 October 2009
28 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This Prose Poem Rap from one of my earliest childhood memories was inspired by Mythopoetic Men’s Work with Michael Scott Brooks. It was first published on my earlier blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on Monday 9 November 2009, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2009/11/scream.html. Later it was revised and re-published here this March 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2009, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

 

Poem to My Lover upon Her 41st Birthday

Deep into Abyss
We plunge
Beneath shadows of angel wings
Dark as midnight mountains.

In the Darkness
I feel you,
I feel the hot white light
Of your Heart.

 

William Dudley Bass
8 November 2009
17 March 2012
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

From my Mythic Awakening period

NOTE: This poem to Kristina, my fiancé at the time, was inspired by my work with Michael Meade, mythologist and poet. I originally posted it on her birthday in 2009 on my older blog, Cultivate and Harvest, at: http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2009/11/poem-to-my-lover-upon-her-41st-birthday.html, then I edited and reposted here this March of 2012. Thank you.

Copyright © 2009, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

 

On Living, Dying, Death, Loss, Grief, Ghosts, and Moving On

The events of my father’s death followed by my mother’s and all that arose afterwards were pivotal events in my life. They are, I would imagine, for the majority of human beings around the world. My writings on these topics took place over time and have evolved into the narrative contained within the following series of essays, ruminations, photographs, and poems.

Death is an everyday aspect of life, and yet in our culture perhaps the least visited, the least discussed, the most disturbing, the most feared, and the most liberating. Bereft of a cultural web of community grief and loss, we nowadays hurry the dying out of view and the dead into the ground or into an urn or whatever just so we can get back to what we really have reduced our lives to: being too busy. In the process of freeing ourselves up to be so busy we have unwittingly robbed ourselves of something intimate, indeed of something which can be a rich affirmation of life and purpose.

Loosely I lump the following as my “Death of my Parents” canon, and it’s much more than the deaths of Mom and Dad. Each is fully self-contained, although they do flow one to the other. Some are long, while others are short. Most have photographs, some don’t, and a few have lots and lots of pictures. I list them below in the chronology of which I published them on my website, William Dudley Bass on Earth at the Brink, although as with blogs they show up in reverse order with the last one posted at the top.

I invite you to dive on in and join me on a certain timed yet timeless odyssey.

1. “Death with Father,” https://williamdudleybass.com/death-father.

2. “My Mom & Death,” https://williamdudleybass.com/mom-death.

3. “During My Mother’s Dying,” https://williamdudleybass.com/mothers-dying.

4. “Mom Passes On: Ruminations,” https://williamdudleybass.com/mom-passes-on-ruminations.

5. “The Morning After We Buried Mom,” https://williamdudleybass.com/morning-buried-mom.

6. “Daddy’s Ghost,” https://williamdudleybass.com/daddys-ghost.

7. “Barreling Across America with my Daughter Morgan,” https://williamdudleybass.com/barreling-america.

8. “Dad’s Old Chair,” https://williamdudleybass.com/dads-old-chair.

Thank you, dear Readers.

 

William Dudley Bass
5 March 2012
Seattle, Washington
https://williamdudleybass.com

 

Copyright © 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

Snow Haiku Flurries

Snow Haiku Flurries,
Sort of,
By the Wenatchee River
Near Plain, Washington
Winter of 2007-2008

I shovel snow beneath cold stars
Moon shadows fall between tall trees
I dig my path to the tallest tree

I woke to white sunshine
And zero degrees outside
The river slowed with ice

I stood at river’s edge
Watching ice float downstream
Silver in white sunshine

Snow spins from frozen branches
Glitters as fractured glass
Ice sparkles in sunshine

Snow spins frozen
Glitters like glass
Sparkles in sunshine

Children laugh in snow
Cold crackles white
Bright is my deafness

Breath hangs frozen in air
Amid clusters of evergreen branches
Where I walk past cold trees

Western red squirrel poises
Halfway up a ponderosa pine
And barks as I carry firewood

Yesterday two pickup trucks filled with snow
Race ahead thru lowland rain
Bemused I watch them go

Sun burns cold across winter skies
Settles down behind yonder ridge
As I gather up another armload of firewood

Deep in dark woods
Next to one silent cabin
A giant crucifix twinkles red with Holiday lights

Gorgeous woman one year away from forty
Sinks silently into our hot tub
Naked her eyes behold me

Clouds blow in across the Moon
Snow falls from darkness
Trees whisper in the wind

She emerges from the hot tub
Slips on her bathrobe backwards as snowflakes fall
Tiptoes to the railing, bends over and wiggles

Together we join with the darkness
The lights within become one
We slip in the snow and laugh

Our bed is warm before the fire
We slide under heavy covers
And snuggle with pillows

Sleep is most divine
Though often dismissed
I close my eyes as breaths flow free

 

William Dudley Bass
January 2008
March 2012
Plain/Leavenworth, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

NOTE: First crafted between late November 2007 and early March 2008, they were originally published on my earlier website, Cultivate and Harvest, on November 19, 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/snow-haiku-flurries.html. Then I revised and republished them here this March 2012.

Copyright © 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

When Kurt says, “May you be fully disillusioned…”

Rain drops
crater
my mind.
Free of clay
and gravity
I see the Moon
from Space
and realize
I am already
dead.
On the mirror side of Life
my memories
live
until forgotten.
Surrender to the flow of all that is
tender…and sweet.

Time for a drink
With my friend Kurt
Who once enlightened
Said, “May you be fully disillusioned.”
OK, I said
Make mine whiskey.

 

William Dudley Bass
2008, 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Also inspired by my experiences in Robert Masters’ Psycho-Spiritual Training Practicum and inquiries with my buddy Kurt Treftz, this was first published on my earliest website, Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday 19 November 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/when-kurt-says-may-you-be-fully.html, then revised and republished here this 4 March 2012 with my permission as the Author. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

Deatharoni & Cheese

Five seconds before my conception
Death rides me
With a wild laugh.
I awake raw and open
From cannibal dreams.
I feel my heart beat…
…still inside my chest.
My heart opens behind closed ribs
A searing bright chakra sun
Opens as a giant hand
And grabs me from the inside out.
Shakes me apart,
My beating blood hot heart.
I want more
I want me, all of me.
I am I
My self.
Self.
Ego dies in life
Self dissolves with Death
Nothing left
Not even deatharoni and cheese.

 

William Dudley Bass
2007 in British Columbia
2008
2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: I composed and shared this wicked little poem in my Psycho-Spiritual Training Practicum on in 2007 up in Surry/White Rock, BC. It was first published on my earliest website, the one created for homework for that Practicum, my blog Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday, November 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/deatharoni-cheese.html. Eventually I chose to revise and republish it here on my new website this January of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

 

Titanomachius

Blindfolded,
Justice springs unbalanced
From swinging scales
Of Judgment.

Revealed,
Our Totem Animals
Emerge from Id
As jackals and hyenas
Eating puppies.

Twelve Titans all,
We devour ourselves
In cannibalistic incest.

Amok beyond Tartarus,
Sired by excess of heart
Our skeletal hands
Rise with Chthonic howls
To clasp your lips
And with Cultish frenzy
Pull YOU back
Into Abyss.

 

William Dudley Bass
2007, 2008, 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: This was originally handwritten for the Counseling Practicum as we wrestled with the moral dilemma of how to respond to someone who refused to participate in violation of his or her commitment to participate. It was first published on my earlier website created as homework for that same Practicum, my blog Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday, November 19, 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/titanomachius.html. Eventually I revised and reposted it here on my new website/blog this January 2012 as the Author. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

 

Crazy Making: A Bad, Bad RapSongPoem with a Nod to the Beatles

Hey Gwen,
Hey Hey, Crazy Gweeyin,
In the news today,
O boy,
I heard Big Government say,
Ahoy,
All the airlines have to play
The way we say
And all passenger information
On all international flights
Has to be reported directly
To Homeland Security…
Sex…cure…me…pleeeeeze…

Security Security Security
For:
Terror
Drugs
Guns
International Pornography…

O boy,
Oh no,
Uh oh,
So I ran a comb thru the air
And disappeared into thin hair
Locked in a black jail
By the CIA
And the NSA
With only a pail
And a bed of hay
Where you can’t call Triple A.

We’re worse off
Than in George Orwell’s 1984
Where peace is war
And Security is now our Haven
Where for “Safety Reasons”
We’ve become craven
Slaves driven Insane
By Psychotic Corporations
Living in Freedom
By Purchased Declarations
Spawned in greed
Among bloody, dark Corruptions.

Oh yeah,
O Boy,
Now what the …   FUCK!!!!!!!!!
George W. Bush,
American President by a Bloodless Coup,
Says our “Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper.”

“The most successful dictatorship is one that presents itself as a democracy and enrolls the majority of the public into that belief.” Yep.

And on top of that I-5 & I-90 from central Seattle to SeaTac to Bellevue will be shut down to 1 lane of traffic each way for 19 days of mass construction beginning tonight…yes, beginning tonight.

BOOM!!!

I shave my head in shame
And remove my Name.

I stand in line
To pull myself
Out of Time.

BOOM!!! FUCKA FUCKA FUCKA BOOM FUCK!

“WTF?” ain’t no Government Agency.
WTF!
WTF?

It’s the Question all the Talking Heads in the Mainstream Mass Media Need to start asking LIVE on prime time yea peel the duct tape off your mouths cuz its time its time and its long over due this time to say it shout it whisper it slam it down all along the grapevine lines and all across the dinner table to make the microwave oven jump and make folks turn their round WALL-E faces away from screentime mating:

WTF!?!?

In the news today, THIS really happened, folks!
Ain’t no lie
Ain’t no air left for hair
Ain’t no comb big enough to shove down
Into the deep, deep Big Government Pies
And rake out Big Bankster
Corporate Nits and Lice and Happy Lies
As THEY plug your brains into the nice, warm Matrix
As Orange as Clockwork on Mars
And Green as Soy on Lent,
Only two questions left to ask
All you happy little Bell Jars:

WTF?!!!?
&
Who’s driving those UFOs?

 

William Dudley Bass
10 August 2007
Edited and reposted February-March 2012.
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: This was first published on my earlier website, Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday 19 November 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/crazy-making-bad-poem-with-nod-to.html, then revised and republished here this 4 March 2012 with my permission as the Author. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2007, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

Jihad & Crusade

Jihad & Crusade:

A rough, found poem, sort of…

Holy war holy war

War most unholy

So much superstition

Too much bloodshed

You gotta go

You gotta go

You gotta go away from me

So get away from me

Self-Righteous Followers

Of

Moses and Jesus,

Buddha and Mohammed,

Even you Confucius

And Zoroaster, too,

And all you Pagan Deities

Glorifying human sacrifice

And to tell the Truth

It’s really all you Believers and Gospel interpreters

Who blame all the rest of us for your own blasphemies,

Not our avatars and sages.

The rest of y’all back away from us.

Y’all gotta go

Gotta go

Go go go

And leave my kids alone,

Leave my kids alone!

So begone

Begone

Not to the stars beyond

But back to the past.

Forever.

The Fundamentalists of every religion are the most Satanic.

So drenched in their own Hate they’re convinced

The Devils they see among all the rest of us are Real.

They fail to see their projections as their own reflections.

Peace and Blessings upon all Holy and Sacred.

No more war

No more violence

No more dogma

Peace, Mercy, Love, Forgiveness, Compassion, Firmness, Kindness, Liberty, Discipline, Purpose, Integration, Unity, Co-Creation, Cooperation, Power,

And more Love

Is what we need now.

William Dudley Bass

2007, 2008, 2012

Seattle, Washington

NOTE: This was first published in my earlier blog Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday 18 November 2008 at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/jihad-crusade.html, then reprinted here this 4 March 2012, with my permission as the author. Thank you.

Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

Trench Warfare Today and Now

A poem found amid ruins of faces which once knew love

Over hot coffee
I study faces
From almost a hundred years ago
Torn apart in the First World War
Which was neither the first nor the last
But one of the most horrific.

Mud without romance
Trench warfare
Massive artillery bombardments
Machine guns pouring lines of fire
Flame throwers
Poison gas
Rotten corpses unburied by shells
Poison air
Tanks
Barbed wire
Mud
Splintered forests
Rats
Lice
Typhoid
Dysentery
Men lived in trenches
You stand up
Bullets punch your skull
Shell fragments rip your face
Mud sweat blood & rat feces
Bacteria
Viruses
Fungi
Protozoans

Mud
Unseen things breeding
Everywhere on everything
Septic
Eating
You alive
While
Naked
Inside filthy, uniformed
Ragged Love
Zero privacy
Ahhh…my gut screams!
Red mud pours out my ass
And cements me to Earth.

Oh, my Mother would’ve loved it,
Not the killing or the pain or the horror,
But the truth of horror
Uncovered
Right here on my kitchen table
As I drink hot, black coffee
And turned the page.

Extreme high number of injuries above the chest in the trenches marked the
Great War of 1914-1918.
Art blossomed by men deranged
And rearranged
Driven
Striven to
Paint and write madness to liberate them selves from horror.
Masks by a corps of artists covered mangled faces
Rescued from battlefield carnage.
My mind makes a collage of masks and faceless faces
From this Smithsonian magazine article.
My Mother would have loved it,
So curious was she for all things true and weird.
Over an image of my own face
Black coffee splashes
The color of war.

Source of Inspiration:
Alexander, Caroline. “Faces of War: Amid the horrors of World War I, a corps of artists brought hope to soldiers disfigured in the trenches.” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2007. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/mask.html.

 

William Dudley Bass
February 2007 &
18 November 2008
4 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Written in 2007, edited and first published in my earlier blog Cultivate and Harvest on 18 November 2008 at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/trench-warfare-today-and-now.html. Then edited and re-published here this 4 March 2012. Thank you.

Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

Dad’s Old Chair

Poetic Ruminations from sitting in my dead Daddy’s favorite chair:

One morning in March
I go and find my father’s
Old green recliner and sit in it.
My dog sits at my feet
As my beloved sleeps
down the hall in the bed.
The old chair is cozy and warm.
No wonder my dad used to sleep in it.

I sit and stare out the window
At spring snow melting away,
At ponderosa pines, white birches,
Cottonwoods and old stumps.
Blue emptiness fills mountain skies
Out here in the Washington Cascades.

It would be an alien landscape to my father,
Who died three years and over three months ago.
My brother was spooked by the chair;
Thought it haunted, kind of, and asked me to take it.
Said it smelled too much of Dad.
That chair traveled over three thousand miles
From an old farmhouse in Virginia
To a new western lodge in Washington,
From the Sandy River to the Wenatchee.

Once or twice I thought I sensed my dad back in his chair,
Just left-over energy, an echo of a cherished memory.
Mom’s nurses swore they saw his ghost at least twice;
I wanted to see his ghost, too,
But never did.
My father moved on after Mom joined him beyond Death.

As I sit in my Dad’s old chair
With a dog insisting on being petted,
Pushing its head and lifted paw into my lap,
I surrender to God.
My ego battles with the Divine
Not owning its divinity.
I pray, meditate, contemplate the future.
And as I gaze out the window
I miss my Dad.

 

William Dudley Bass
March 2008
March 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Originally published on my old website Cultivate and Harvest, on Thursday 13 November 2008 at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/dads-old-chair.html, then re-published here this 4 March 2012 with my permission as the Author. Thank you.

Copyright © 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

The Morning After We Buried Mom

Breathing in Ghosts

Breathing in Ghosts

Sunday 19 November 2006

The morning after we buried my Mother
Dawn opened up the day with mist and gray
I stood on the porch of my sister’s new house
Cold upon the lake
Remembering the chill of touching
Momma’s lifeless hands and face
As a wall of fog gray as corpses
Shields trees and water from view
Birdcalls sparkle in the void
Bordered by clay red and torn
Edged with grass brown and wet
Fog glued together heaven and earth,
Sky and lake, and turned bone-white
And as the sun rose above skeletal trees
The fog began to move and churn
Across waters stilled before the sun’s return
Unstaked wild life’s hunger for warm bright light
November brings paleness to shortened days
And time ebbs and flows
The moment recedes into the past
Memories become as fog
And all things die
As it’s just another day
As it’s just another day
And it’s just another day
Just
Another
Day
Before darkness returns to take us Home.

 

A Prose Poem

William Dudley Bass
19 November 2006
16 January 2007
Revised 29 February 2012
Rice, Virginia &
Seattle, Washington

Two Comments from the Original Posting from the older website:

True North said…Ahhh William, thank you…I have just come home from working downtown today, hung up my suit, brewed a coffee and opened your blog…my heart shrugs off the dense energy of cement and iron, unmanacles and expands into the depth and vision of your words…ahh, now I will read on…Cindy

A Flower For All Seasons said…So wonderful to hear your poet’s voice William. To touch the timeless through your eyes and breath. And a lovely feeling of anticipation as I choose to read only one entry on any given day, knowing that each time I visit here your voice will awaken something in me that will take me who knows where… Wendy

NOTE: This was originally published in my oldest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on Tuesday 16 January 2007, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2007/01/morning-after-we-buried-mom.html, and reprinted here this January 2012 with my permission as the Author. I also copied comments from two of my colleagues from the Robert Augustus Masters’ Psycho-Spiritual Counseling Practicum we were in at the time. Thank you.

Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

Birth at the End of the World

Click on any photo to birth it BIG

Birth at the End of the World

Birth at the End of the World

She was my Lover;
Only last week we rode each other hard like wolves.
Now we hide then run,
And stumble pass corpses roasted
Still holding guns.
She pushed apart thorns
As I battle briars;
We bend between old, rusty, barbed wire
Into a forest clearing edged with boxwoods
Overgrown, shabby, and still magnificent.

To our surprise tombstones totter among moss and ivy
With names and dates worn down from the 1850s:
Shelley Marie Gilead, Beloved of Samuel Ross Gilead,
b. April 13, 1835, d. February 15, 1857 of Childbirth Fever.”
Carved across a grayish-green short stone was levered
A broken name lost to time and the dates, “February 14 – 18, 1857.”

Suns flash in the nearby distance,
Heat and flames pulse over us and roll the dead
Into the waters of a beaver pond swamp
Edged by drowned forest, lifeless birds, and waters rising
With dead, blistered fish.
Inside me I question Divine Love, Divine Mercy, Divine Compassion…
Where on Earth are they?
Or are we already in Hell?

3x.Birth at the End of the World

Genesis Extinguished beneath Saturn's Return

Genesis Extinguished beneath Saturn’s Return

"Saturno devorando a su hijo/Saturn devours His Son," Francisco de Goya (1819-1823)

“Saturno devorando a su hijo/Saturn devours His Son,” Francisco de Goya (1819-1823)

“Saturno devorando a su hijo/Saturn devours His Son”

5x.Birth at the End of the World

Apocalypse in February on the Edge of Swamps

Genesis plays out over and over again
As Earth reforms every few millennia or so.
From PreAncient Antarctica to Atlantis to Noah and Gilgamesh,
From Gobekli Tepe to Catal Hoyuk to Harrapa and Uruk…
Long Time marches forward,
Clocked against the sky and
Measured in Long Counts by the Mayans
Beneath the long gaze of the Annunaki,
We destroy ourselves in the childbirth of civilizations
Long before any Prehistoric Gods return to eat us.

But not fast enough to learn We are the Ones
Who must first master the Power of loving and forgiving Ourselves
And share compassion and wise stewardship of Home.
We stagger to water’s edge where trees crumble and rot
As boils rise from our flesh amid a rain of blood.
The Sun burns away Sol
And Darkness reigns beyond Night.
Thirsty, we stoop to drink.

Sun burns away Sol

Sun burns away Sol

Saturn returns with famished Hunger
Amid the Chaos of Titans and Annunaki
Between Terra and Caelus.
We lift up our arms
And before they fall off
We shout a final cry toward Wormwood skies,
“MOMMA!”

2x.DSC_0053

 

Momma Pregnant at the End of the World becomes The Ark.

 

A Photo-Poem
by
William Dudley Bass
February 1982? 1983? 1984?
6 January 2007
20 February 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: The image of the painting is from one of The Black Paintings by the Old Master Francisco de Goya y Luceintes of Spain between 1819 -1823. It is now Public Domain. All of the other pictures are photographs by me and as such remain Copyrighted by me as the Author. The first three are versions from a dayhike into the beaver pond swamps of Sandy River, Virginia in the early 1980s. The latter two are from around Seattle, Washington in early 2012.

“Birth at the End of the World” was originally published as a photo essay of sorts on 6 January 2007 in my older blog Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2007/01/birth-at-end-of-world.html. Then it was edited, expanded into a photo-poem, and re-published here. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2007, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

 

All Eyes Are

When I am certain
No one is watching,
Not a single soul,
When I am certain
No one can see me,
I stop.

I sit
and meditate.
I sit on a cushion and feel
my own breath alive in me
and outside of me.

Complete but never done,
I rise to sing,
and dance,
and rock my pelvis
at nothing in particular,
just to loosen up my hips.

Naked I stand.
Naked I twirl.
Feeling foolish,
Feeling good,
A hirsute man in my early 50s.
Why, I am not even old yet.
I could live another 50 years,
or drop dead before I finish this sentence.

As I sit so alone and so naked
and half-aroused,
dreaming of mounting vibrant, exciting women
who dare look me deep in the eyes
to see if they trust my soul,
I realize
God is watching me.
That He watches from above and from within
as Goddess watches from below and all around.
She slithers up inside to me to embrace God.
I feel a quiet explosion of Love and Power
expanding from that unity of Spirit and communion of all Souls.

All eyes are upon me naked,
even if many are closed.
Everyone sees me,
and in looking out together
I see myself.
Everyone sees me
as we see you.

 

William Dudley Bass
2 December 2011
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Originally published on one of my earlier blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at <http://www.cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/04/all-eyes-are-when-i-am-certain-no-one.html>. Revised and republished here on my new blog On Earth at the Brink on December 2, 2011 at <https://williamdudleybass.com>. Thank you.

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

I ain’t no man

I ain’t no man. That’s just a word. Somebody else’s word.
I’m not my name. I’m not my history. I’m not my past.
I ain’t the future; ain’t happened yet.
I’m not my stories – they all made up.
I ain’t dead – but will be eventually.

I’m not my personality or my character. I’m not my identity.
I’m made up in my own mind, and I’m not my self as there is no self.
I ain’t no ego or no id. I’m not my consciousness or my subconsciousness.
I’m not my shadow or my inner child or adolescent or whatever.
I ain’t no woman tho I came outa one and like all humans who ain’t cloned or genetically engineered with sheep & cows & chimpanzees cuz
I’m a mix of Y & X but ain’t no frakkin’ mutant Z, Z & Z.

I have all those things, but I’m not those things. I’m not my body.
Yeah, I have one. I have a body. My frakkin’ body. Love it, too. But I’m not it.
I ain’t nothin’. Rip off all my clothes.
Ain’t got no shame. Ain’t got no pride. Ain’t got nothin’.
Feelings & emotions rise up roiling hot scorching magma…
but I let them go & cool off. I ain’t nothing.
There’s no AM in my I.

Standing in wet emptiness a hot flash of darkness renders naked all creation. Moving into light I start up again cuz I’m the DNA engine…move people move!
Move into possibility…move into my power…into love…cuz I’m done Seeking.
Tears find me. Carve gullies down my chest and belly.
Tears burn open holes in my flesh and fill my heart as wine.
The more I cry the clearer I see.
I cry so hard my head breaks open round my tears.
Salty wine pours down my insides and out.
My legs rust apart like iron and break upon my feet like clay.
All dissolve into the sea.

I topple into sand beyond the furthest stranglehold of my own hands.Ozymandias dead and unremembered even after the winds long blow away the sands. There is nothing but this present moment, nothing beyond death but words. Nothing explodes into everything becoming anything.
Power flows and love churns reborn.
Flowers crack open concrete as massive stars destroy whole galaxies.

In the Bang of Big of Everything
every tiny quantum particle wave bursts into a genesis of evolution
from which arises after 14 Billion years the capacity to forgive and feel compassion, to feel empathy and love, to embrace paradox with and not or,
to transcend the horror we visit upon one another, to open up and cry, and to love, and to love with power, and be love in the power.

Love…it is our gift to gift as a species, our art we put out into the multiverse of billion billions of planets with billions likely teeming with life…when we finally face the mysterious beings afar will be our greatest challenge to love…and sometimes in 14 Billion years things move fast and “they” may not wait for us Humans to get our act together & stop slaughtering each other & wake up into our own power to understand to wake up to get LOVE powers the Universe.

 

William Dudley Bass
Spring & Summer 2011
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

NOTES:

  1. Inspired post to Prezz Pressley’s Facebook Group, “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY” on May 25, 2011 and later revised on May 27, 2011 as A Prose Poem Written With Pounding Heart.
  2. Reposted to one of my earlier blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, on July 8, 2011, at <http://www.cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/i-aint-no-man-i-aint-no-man.html>.
  3. Revised, restructured, rewritten, and republished here on my blog On Earth at the Brink at <https://williamdudleybass.com>.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

I am not my Name

My name is William,
William Dudley Bass,
And I am not my name.
I am my Word.
Nurture, nurture myself:
I love, honor, and respect myself.
I love, honor, and respect myself.
I love, honor, and respect myself.
AHO!
I am alive.
I am here, right here now.
I have a history.
I am not my history.
Nor my stories or identities.
I am not my legacy, or my reputation, or anyone’s opinion.
I am not my own beliefs, views, or interpretations.
I have my beliefs, views, or interpretations I give meaning to,
Of course,
But I am not any of those…things.
I am here, right here now,
And I am alive.
What happened is what happened, just what happened.
Truth.
Meanings, interpretations, perceptions, views, myths, filters, beliefs
Are all made up,
All stories,
And stories are lies.
Unless it is, of course, called “a true story.”
Would that be a false lie?
We all have views,
And only God has View.
If such exists, either View…or God.
Views are not truths,
just events filtered, deleted, and interpreted by mind.
I am not my body or my feelings and emotions or even my thoughts.
I do have a body, and with feelings, emotions, and thoughts, of course,
But am not any of those…things.
Even a construct of mind is made up by the mind to be a construct of mind.
In the beginning and yet again there was nothing leaving nothing but The Word.
I am my Word.

 

(Influenced by works as diverse as Landmark Education, Peak Potentials Trainings, Scott Brooks’ mythopoetic men’s work, Vipassana Buddhist Meditation with Seattle Insight Meditation Society, and Jeff Shushan’s psychotherapy and counseling.)

 

William Dudley Bass
20 April 2011
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Originally published on another one of my blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, at <http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html>, then republished here on December 2, 2011. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

The Three F’s

My wife
She & I fight
I hate it
She does, too
I saw a pattern
Called it “F & F”
For “Fight or Fuck, Fuck or Fight”
Ken Wilber once wrote the
primal male drive toward everything
Is to “Fuck it or kill it.”
My wife liked to quote Ken Wilber a lot
when I was horny and she didn’t care
if she made love for over a month or two
or even a year or ever again
I, however, was horny a lot
K added the third F
“F, F, & F”
Shit, I hate all this F & F & F
Keeps us apart
Tears open our hearts
As mad dogs rip up a coon
Caught alongside the river
Deep down below a full moon
My point of view was
“Fuck or Fight & Fail”
Her point of view was
“Fight or Fuck & Fail”
Still the same 3 F’s
Shit, I hate all these here F’s
A long time ago
In a circle of men gathered around a big drum
On a sawdusty stone floor before a fire
A shaven-headed skinny dude with a beard
Pointed his long index finger to the North Star
“We all have a fuckin’ point of view,” he said.
“That’s why we have so many wars.”
He jabbed the shadow air again with bony finger.
“Remember this, I say it now, remember what I say, OK.
You and me, we all have a different point of view,
Yes, we do,
But only God has View.”
Around and round the wife & I rumble
Struggling to beat together as One Heart One
In sweat-drenched sheets shoved aside
I surrendered to her
And she was all mine
As we ground out electric Tantra sparks
Amid blazing pillows and melted wax
God saw through our eyes all at once
Our points of view became only View
I was in her and she in me
I was Goddess and she God
With a cry of submission
To the Divine Within
The One God Beyond All saw everything
And so could we
For a time, for a time.

 

William Dudley Bass
From a desperate & broken prose poem from 30 May 2009
Turned into another bad poem on 20 September 2011
Published here at On Earth at the Brink at just after midnight on Friday 2December 2011
Seattle, Washington

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

Sleep Crash Chainsaw Legs

OWWW here it comes . . .
Restless Legs jerk as bad poetry
My flesh hums and crawls
As soon as I lay down
As soon as I lay down!
Restless Legssa misnomer
Cuz it moves everywhere
Like a bad Johnny Cash song
Ragged with non-stop hurtin’
As train whistles blow holes out my skin
Covering me as I slide naked beneath angels.

Spider fish swim up my insides.
Vibrating tendrils of smoke
Wrap around my blood
Squeezing tightening up tight
Reminds me of
School back in Second Grade
When all excited we kids spoke in whispers
Only to get taped silent by our Teacher
Yes, her with her grim grin and perfectly bloated hair
Who glared as she marched at our faces with a roll of tape
Wide yellow white masking tape
So as my legs twitch I remember
Masking tape tugging across chapped lips
Back when Missus Wells did it
Day after day week after week
While the principle laughed
With his red tie knotted tight
Against his wide collar white
Till enough parents banded up to shout “Stop! Hey!”
Damn that Teacher.
Good thing there wasn’t any duct tape back in 1968.
And Americans wonder what rilly led to Abu Ghraib.

Please please please let me sleep
Let me sleep
I’ll give ‘em to you
My legs, yes, my legs
They’re yours, all yours!
Stihl chainsaw oil & lubed
Each fanged link of metal
Sharp to rip out all flesh
Slice to the bone
Grip-ripped through the bone
Nothing stops ‘em, tho.
Spiders
Worms
Snakes
Beetles
Ants
I feel ‘em
Wiggling
Crawling
Even bouncing on tightrope wires sawin’ violins
Up inside my legs…

I don’t sleep. Much. Miss it, tho. Up all night sometimes. Only time I can get stuff done. Then I wake from my desk. Meditate. Go to the Gym. Sweat. Dripping wet. Soaked. But at least I don’t roar and grunt and slam dumbbells the size of Texas slapdown in front of spidercrack mirrors. Still no sleep. How’s my broken down body’s gonna heal? Aye ya…!

Sleep.

Got too much to do. When I lay down the tremors start. In my lower legs. My posterior lower legs and ankle region, to be exact. Both of them at once. Bilaterally. The vibrations began to flutter and dance and jerk in my flexor halluces longus, my flexor digitorom longus, in the tibialis posterior, and move around laterally to the peroneus brevis and longus. Then the creepy crawlies surface into my soleus and gastrocnemius muscles. The vibrations move around to the Tibialis anterior and other muscles, travel up the hamstrings. Damn.

I feel my glutes jerk next and my piriformis ripple, too.
Lats flutter
Trains of ants spasm up my spine
Ain’t no kundalini this time
Twitch beetles flutter in my triceps
My suboccipitals and sternocleidomastoid
Jerk my skull into an almost-Tourette’s
My pelvis jerks
Shoulders dance
My tongue refuses to heed
But I don’t cuss
Maybe it is Tourette’s
But as I’m already duct taped up with so many labels
I don’t wanna know

Deep down inside my legs I feel my muscles drum against my bones
Wild, spasm, taunt-fiber vibrations
I timed them a few times
I count over one hundred vibrations per minute
A thousand in less than ten
And it’s all night long…. sometimes.
Wears me out.

Too much exercise makes it worse
Too little makes it worse
Too much sitting or not enough
I used to climb mountains
And backpack for months at a time
And dance for hours holding my woman
Up in the air as she shouts and laughs
As we rain sweat upon wood, earth, and stone

Angel spreads his enormous wings
Then with stern visage
Wraps them gently around Grim Reaper
Who cries oily tears into white feathers
Outside the entrance to a merchant’s cave

Together with love we tack across the Straight Path
No arrow am I
For I dance all crooked with joy
As I climb beyond my rabbit hole
Upon ladders twisting to the stars
Atop between the legs of Giants
Great Gates swing open in mute invitation

I see everything I see
And more than most would even dare believe
With a nod of incineration
I let go of all belief
And surrender to submit
Into Divine jubilation

Ten thousand Gods
Twenty thousand Goddesses
And One Beyond All and Everything
The One Beyond Gender
The One Beyond the Sum of Many
The Namefree One for whom any name is limitation

I awake and launch upright
And by Dawn
In Mirror bright
I see myself
As clear as Light
With legs filled with snakes and worms and buzzing flies
For Ancient Gods who died inside
I wonder
If so blessed
How do I make
Those mountains yawn?

 

William Dudley Bass
19 November 2011
Seattle, Washington

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

Skin

Former slave Gordon after he escaped a Mississippi plantation to join Federal troops, March 1863. Unknown photographer, U.S. Civil War.

 

Skin
tells a story.
Only problem is
God Knows the Truth.
Come back, o scattered bones,
come back to me, I cry.
But only dust…and ash…
return.

 

William Dudley Bass
Sunday 11 September 2011
Seattle, Washington

 

NOTE: First published on 9/11/2011 on Facebook in Prezz Pressley’s Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.” Then published again later the same day on my blog “Cultivate and Harvest” as a “Poem from Spirit” at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/09/skin.html and is reprinted by me here. Thank  you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

 

November Heart

November crawls out of my skin
Leaving my insides naked
And cold
At the bottom of old trees
Whose rough roots toil to keep warm
My soul as it burrows into mud.
Huddled on mountainsides
Bent crooked in wind
Under the first blast of snow
These trees, oh, these trees,
Oh, I hear them laugh and sing
As they shed orange-red leaves before blue-white snow.
Those old trees, they call my name
“Hey!” they shout
“Why are you so dark?
Open your heart!
We trees don’t have one.
How lucky you are.”
Ameen.

 

William Dudley Bass
9 November 2011
Seattle, Washington

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*