To Whit:

 "Our fundamental want today in the United States is of a class of native authors, literateurs . . . far higher in grade than any known, sacerdotal, modern, fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass of American mentality, taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath of life, giving it decision, affecting politics far more than popular superficial suffrage, with results inside and underneath the selection of Presidents or Congresses -- radiating, begetting appropriate teachers, schools, manners, and, as its grandest result, accomplishing (what neither the schools nor the churches and their clergy have hitherto accomplished, and without which this nation will no more stand, permanently, soundly, than a house will stand without a substratum) a religious and moral character beneath the political and productive and intellectual bases of the States. . . . The problem of humanity all over the civilized world is social and religious, and is to be finally met and treated by literature. The priest departs, the divine literatus comes.

Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas, 1871.

Fall and all

There was a not quite chill in the air,

a damp that skin wouldn't absorb.

Something not here, but on final approach.

Summer's door now slammed quite shut,

a last dog day rolled over to Fall and all.

My Congressional Invocation

So, we heard about the separation of Church and State here in the U.S.of A., particularly from Jefferson, you know, that guy from the Commonwealth of Virginia, who wrote about it when he was merely Governor Jefferson. He also wrote and spoke about equality, liberty, happiness, and independence; things we can aspire to.

But was all of it just an illusion?

The doctrines of The Church and the doctrines of The State work, and have always worked, have they not, in lock-step with one another, and by design have produced, each in its own way, an aroma that can incense the body politic, and drive them, sheepishly, to conform to the powers that be---whether almighty gods, or flawed faux-mighty men?

Alongside every Chief has there not always been a Shaman eager to share the spoils?

Unentitled Opinion

In this post I am going to make a half-hearted attempt to give a fair assessment, as far as that is possible considering my ponderous lack of objectivity, of our current state of discombobulation. I won't go so far as to assert that my conclusions are based on anything deeper than my experience as an observer of my fellow humans for nearly 8 decades. When it comes to matters concerning our very survival, it won't do to become overly tangled up in such issues as scientific analyses, moral obligations, legal issues, and other things that one would ordinarily examine in times of less existential threats than those that now confront us.

We face a number of serious hazards as we go about our daily business, while basically ignoring all of them. You already know what the more commonly agreed upon dangers are: the decline of the West, if not civilization itself, the realization that democracy doesn't have the staying power that we had previously supposed, starvation, thirst, and global resource depletion, global warming and its resulting environmental disasters, enculturated racism, a universal lack of purpose, and not last, the psychological problems wrought by alienation and man's inhumanity to man.

Floating above and overriding this flotsam of detritus is an ineluctable realization that if our lives mean so little to our erstwhile and present fellow beings and our leaders, what hope is there for the human race, let alone for the individual?

Well, not that much, I would proffer. There is one tiny glimmer of sunshine, though, relatively speaking: as heretofore mentioned, I've been an observer of my specious species for nearly 8 decades.

The Crossing

Standing guards shivering in the shimmering shadows--

weighing the fear of the crossing--

the long blue line now waits for their purging--

On Becoming Dismade

It would be easy, as if being easy wasn't the problem.

To say, "well nothing . . . nobody's perfect."

We'll remain awhile, grow, fester, worsen.

What remains to bury will be forgotten.

Easier than we thought.

Had we.

The Agony of Antigone

An ancient cast this unburied corpse

like a leaf blown apart by a storm.

The Fallen cannot be seen by day.

One could drag the bloodied sea, the devil's den,

And seize no scrap of his blackened soul.

Soulless, his face shall sully forever.

His just reward his mirror reflecting

Naught but his eternally open grave.