Friday, December 23, 2016

A Christmas Message


Merry Christmas, Mr. Darwin. 

Let’s just admit it.  Darwin was wrong and someone needs to wake him up and tell him his theory was an epic fail.  On a large scale.  Outside of larger brain caps and hairless knuckles (for some) the evolution of the human race has proven to be a myth.  Or if not a myth, it’s a flat-landed joke which ended several millennia ago.  Because we are not evolving – in no way do I see the humanity around me moving upwards into a ‘higher’ state.  Nope.  When I look into this train wreck of stupidity and cowardice all I see is a fast track spiral headed down with glaring heaps of collateral damage piling up along the tracks.  (But as long as it doesn’t screw with our bank balance what does it matter, right?)

On the whole we are not good at evolution.  In fact, on a daily basis I see how badly we suck at it.  Oh, we got the physical side of it right.  But only because it served our purpose (and we could out-screw the mortality rate.  Kinda like rats.)  I mean, who wants to waddle around open fields full of furry predators and wind up as lunch for something with fangs?  But the rest of it?  The expanded awareness?  The higher intelligence?  The ability to think, reason and apply forethought and logic to further the progress of our species?  We not only missed the mark, apparently most of us have never even made it out of the quiver.

Of course, there are a few exceptions.  Rare individuals who have the capacity to feel something other than hate, fear and prejudice.  Strange human anomalies infected with insight, compassion and altruism.  Weird folks who are not ruled by their lizard brains.  They’re pretty easy to spot because they don’t fit into this world we have created.  You can see them if you take a moment to pull your attention out of your bank book and actually look another person in the face.  They’re the ones that are bleeding to death invisibly right in front of you. They have the bruised, hollow eyes of a  casualty of war.  But no worries.  They don’t stick around for long given we have a tendency to kill them off because they make us uncomfortably aware of how glaringly we have failed to continue the upward motion of progress.

What we are good at is de-evolution.  Put anything into the scope of our awareness and we can erode it down to the lowest, meanest particle, twist it into an invalidated, unrecognizable 'truth' or obliterate it completely.  We literally drag down or destroy everything we touch.  Give us children and we’ll twist them with the shade and shadow of our stupidity, feeding them hate and fear like Halloween candy.  Put us in view of new and amazing ways to grow and learn and we’ll demonize them and run screaming the other way.  (Or force them to conform to our own version of reality – even if it destroys them.)  Give us amazing forests and we will raze them to the ground to make particle board furniture that will only last three years.  Vibrant, vital oceans?  No problem.  We’ve turned them into huge, seething toilets.  Give us hundreds of thousands of years of history and we will bomb it off the planet without a single thought (at least the parts we don’t cart off to sell).  I mean, we've even turned Charles Darwin into a God-hating atheist when, in fact, the man was a more devote Christian than the apostles who ran and hid when Christ was arrested!

And what about that?  Nothing is safe from us.  Not even God.  Let's take Christ for example.  We started out with the story of a compassionate, forgiving, altruistic soul – A radical, intelligent, compassionate teacher and leader who looked into the status quo of His time and started a revolution.  This man gave love, aid and forgiveness to anyone no matter who they were, where they came from and what they had done.  He fought the established system of prejudice and elitism and struggled to bring about the idea that everyone was equal under the eyes of God.  He ate with the poor, fought with the church, shredded the dogma that divided people and opened the possibility of faith for everyone.  The man believed so deeply in His cause He voluntarily allowed Himself to be arrested, tortured and murdered because He thought it would aid the upward growth of humanity.  And over the two-thousand years since His crucifixion we have turned Him in to a Capitalist, separatist warlord who hates the poor, the whore, and anyone who isn’t some shade of lighter skin.

Untold masses have been tortured, burned, beheaded, strangled, sacrificed, bombed, shot, and killed in His name.  One half of the entire population (women) has been regulated to the status of subjugated property to be raped, claimed, traded, bartered and bred in His name.  Vast segments of the human family whose skin wasn’t quite the right shade or who weren’t born in quite the right places or who didn’t act quite the right way have been denied their humanity and placed in the category of animals. In His name.  Cultures, creeds and communities have been eradicated off the face of the world in His name.  Treasure and resources have been seized (stolen) and money has been made (horded) in His name.  In fact, more atrocities committed, condoned and commanded in the name of Christ mar the collective consciousness of human kind than any other in our long, sad history. 

And now, here we are, on the eve of His holiday preparing to celebrate the event of His birth.  And how are we doing this?  On the personal scale we’re rushing around tired, harried and irritable.  We are bitching and moaning about enforced time with the family (who we can’t stand because we can’t forgive them for the petty slights born from being human) and we’re spending money we don’t want to spend in the hopes that our gift will be the best one given (which is more about showing off than showing love, btw).  On a global stage – Americans are about to launch into a four-year reign of justified greed, misogyny and racism with a seated president (elected mainly by Christians) who is only one-inch right-side of a low-browed, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, and I say that because I assume the man understands the basic operation of a zipper.  (He is a self-avowed sexual predator, after all.)  And somewhere in all this wonderful Jesus-season celebration, we’ll rush out to a church and warm a pew so that everyone will see us sitting pretty in our Sunday best.  And (maybe) for a few minutes we'll think about that third-world, non-white infant who was born in a barn to working class parents and died penniless, beaten and broken for humanity.  (Seriously, does anyone else get the irony of what we've turned this man into!?)

And how did we get here?  Simple.  De-evolution.  So, yes, I silently agree with the Christians I encounter when they inform me (bristling like tomcats in a piss-stained, blind alley when I wish them a “Happy Holiday” instead of a “Merry Christmas”) Jesus is their reason for the season.  The greedy, rude, superior, selfish, hate-filled, debt-riddled, compassionless, capitalist season.  Just like Jesus was their reason for the Holy Inquisition.  And the Witch Hunts. And the justification for slavery.  And the Dark Ages.  And the decimation of aboriginal peoples the world over.  And whatever new offenses and horrors await the world (committed in the name of Christ and Country) at the dawn of 2017.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go over here in this ever-shrinking corner and hang out with a few radical, long-haired, hippy liberals who think that food, water and even-ground opportunity should be basic human rights.  I might help feed the poor.  I may spend my time comforting the widowed and the orphaned.  I may bake a cake for a gay man or a transvestite.  I may hug a Muslim or a Buddhist.  I may even (gasp) give my coat to a homeless person without telling him to ‘get a job’. Or, (God forbid) find another revolutionary who is capable of crawling up out of the muck and mire of my animal-brained brothers and sisters who would be willing to launch yet another attempt to to bring down the status quo. After all, it's the season of hope... and maybe - just maybe - we could make our tendency toward de-evolution work in a good way for a change.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Crickets and Tumbleweeds



It’s been awhile since I’ve spent any real time here.  I know.  I’ve tossed up a couple of poems just for the right to lie to myself and say I’ve done something with it.  But I haven’t.  On your side of my computer it’s been little more than crickets and tumbleweeds and from over there it probably seems as if all has been quiet in my little corner of the world.  I can assure you, that assumption is flat out wrong.  

About five months ago LIFE staggered up my front steps (kinda like some punch-drunk boxer who mistook hallucinogens for steroids), rang the bell and began swinging at about 90 miles an hour from 12 different directions as soon as I opened the door. From then on it’s been a whole-lotta “NOT FUN”.

If I wanted to be perceived as sensitive human being and not taint anyone's bubble with my “not very positive” experiences of the past few months (which tend to rub up against their delusion that LIFE is WONDERFUL) I’m supposed to say LIFE has been more good then bad of late.  (Don’t believe it.  What it’s been is varying degrees of “are you freaking kidding me!? Is it ever going to stop!?”.)

Some hits landed what I will call ‘easy’ because, all in all, life happens.  Cars broke down ($4000.00 way down), cats got sick (way sick - nothing like cat yak at 3am, right?  Try it nearly every day for a month - we’re talking around a $800.00 worth of vet bills), appliances went into the Great Beyond forcing us to pay for their more expensive, less reliable replacements (because in this country we build things with an eye towards forced financial returns instead of quality), this year's allotment of Christmas love set us back another $1500.00 dollars (trust me, we have A LOT of grandchildren), emotional storms of self-doubt, depression, and worry have either been circumnavigated with something other than grace and nobility or have managed to send everything into a nosedive for days at a time.  Disappointments have flared, died and flared again. Like I said - the easy punches...

Other strikes were more than a tad beyond hard.  The lingering embers of family friction started several, nasty little fires (and one whopping, big one that had everyone in tears.)  Ghosts stirred in the shadows, refusing to go lay down and allow themselves to be buried in the cemetery of distant memories.  Friendships died (this went VERY NOT-WELL).  Various tribal members ran into their own nasty versions of LIFE-ness and called seeking support, love, or just a place to cry.  Death even breezed through (the Bastard), stopping long enough to pick up a dear friend on His way out (which really, really rocketed things to a whole ‘nother level of THIS SUCKS.)  And to top it all off the “Nightmare Neanderthal Carnival” of the “Who-Can-Ride-The-Hate-Train-To-The-White House” election season spiraled things straight down into the 9th circle of Hell.

And so here we are - the bell has rung yet again and we, tired, staggered and more than a little bloody, are wobbling back towards the middle of the ring.  Why?  Well, it’s 7 degrees outside and the furnace has died.  It is no more.  It has passed on, moved behind the veil, crossed over, tripped to the Otherside, chosen to return to the ranks of those seeking reincarnation and joined the Choir Invisible.  (My tribute to Monty Python there.) Now, at this point I should be done.  I should be screaming curses at the ceiling.  I should be sobbing, scrambling on my hands and knees searching for any stray bullets that might have rolled under my bed in a bid to opt out of this particular, prolonged visit from LIFE.  But I’m not.  

I’m hanging sheets in my living room to create a fort around the single space heater we have because the repairman can’t come until sometime tomorrow (maybe).  I’m counting furry noses and courting my menagerie of pets to see how many I can squeeze into my bed to help us all stay warm.   I’m joking about Eskimos, arctic date nights and ice cream.  I’m bouncing around pointing out the newly discovered benefits of hot flashes and thanking the Gods that be that I am not living a thousand years ago when all that would stand between me and a frozen death was a cave and a wooly mammoth pelt.

To most people this may seem nuts - like certifiable, padded room, lithium kool-aid kinda crazy.  But for me it’s the only alternative.  It’s either scramble for a different perspective, find a way to take it in stride and laugh or start digging a grave.  Because, let’s face it, life is wonderful, but LIFE SUCKS as well.

But then, it’s supposed to.  I really believe that.  It has to.  Otherwise, being here is pointless.  I mean, who grows, reaches higher, pushes deeper and changes when everything is flat, even and on course?  No one. Least of all me.  Complacency is a coma-inducing drug.  It lulls us into doing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, challenging nothing. Certainly not ourselves. It’s the blue screen of death, the red ring of doom.  There is no life in it. And there certainly isn’t any security to be found there.  Just look at what happens when something goes out of sync.  People freak.  They turn panicked, nasty, demanding, hateful, fearful, selfish…

On my side of the screen successful existence is all about learning adaptability.  It’s figuring out how to ride that board until the waves stop or crawling down the cliff with my fingers and toes when I run out of rope.  It’s about finding a way to be better, braver and stronger than anything LIFE can throw at me and mine.  Not that I always manage to do it well.  I don't.  In fact, there have been several times when I very nearly gave up when I got knocked down.  But I didn't. And I don't.  I always, always found a way to take it in and get back up.

Of course, sometimes to do that I have to scrape a few other things off my plate and make room to focus.  Such as avoiding certain folks who need more than I can give at the time (this is called making myself a priority).  Maybe canceling plans with a friend because I need every ounce of strength to get through some Dark Night of the Soul (because, let's face it - I'd be miserable company anyway). Or spending the two days it takes to write and edit pieces for this blog that would center around the latest disaster that I am trying to recover from (kinda like this one did).  

So, there you have it.  "Why I've been gone" mingled with a bit of "how I'm working my way through it" fashioned into a sort of half-assed apology for not being here lately sans the lie that I will do better in the future.  Because that's not going to happen.  I try really hard to be realistic.  Which dictates this is inevitable.  All hell will break loose, the creek will dry up, the dust will blow over the foot prints, the shutters will swing in a dry, hot wind, and the crickets will be wrangling the tumbleweeds across the screen once more.  And when that happens, try to ride it out and laugh...

Sunday, November 13, 2016

The Struggle by H. Newberry
















I stare outward around myself
vision fracturing with what I see
and I wonder in wounded horror-
have we always been...
frightened? selfish? complacent? ignorant?


As anthems and pledges and slogans
chant in tones of mindless devotion
my ears grow numb from trying to make sense-
have we always been...
self-serving? apathetic
? un-evolved? fragmented?


My mind flips through the sheets of damages
peeled from the flesh of so many
and I ache to understand-
have we always been...
callous?
base? cowardly? greedy?

My God-
I watch what could have been
a human soul retreating
from this world once more
and I can no longer hide
from the fact that we
have never been anything
other than masquerading animals
solitary in our pens
placated by our toys
making love to our pockets
and selling our children
on street corners
to the wolves
who reign inside us.

© 2015 - H. Newberry

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Naked by H. Newberry




Let's get naked,
peel off all the lies
makeup and hair gel,
and wipe the stains of
red and pink shit
off our lips.
We can swap sins
like madams in a
brothel bartering virginity
to see who can sell it fastest.
We'll curl up - eager-
in a tight space
where the whispers
of our confessions are
the only tangible things
weaving a world
out of something
more real than the
glossy, billboard life
we're pretending to live.
Let's strip for real
and have a real life
kind of moment
where I listen as you
crack open the cages
that make you cringe,
the ones you hide
under paint and powder
and when you're done
I'll unlock mine
and show you all the
god-awful, self inflicted
wounds I threw on other
people who were just
me in a different skin.
Then we'll huddle in
this place truth will build,
made safe by each others crimes
and we'll compare notes
on how we traded
"Love Thy Neighbor"
for "Fuck You- Me First"
and gave away "Love Thy Self"
for the discount, knock off
of "Soul For Sale - Cheap"
and how we confused
a high, tight ass
and big, fat bank roll
for the prefect Gods.
How we spent lifetimes
selling sweat and insecurity
like a couple of old whores
strutting around on a sloping stage,
the prancing stagger of our days
lived out on a greasy, imaginary catwalk
going nowhere but down
really,
really
fast...

 © 2016, H. Newberry