Japan
I'm a ghost
floating numb
my soul is dust
my heart is shattered
my world has disappeared
my normal is gone forever
my refuge is bits and pieces
my hope, the wreckage I embrace
my nurture, the poisoned air I breathe

Dreamscape

...was sailing weightless around the room, when suddenly I'm standing alone on the moon...and there in the long view and the space between, saw stars explode on a vast black screen, spelling secrets to life that we've never seen...

( took the photo below to prove that I'd been :o)

'Wasted Man'...for all the boys of Passchendaele

Wasted Man
Oh, what beauteous dawn
brushed orange pink chiffon
paints such charm on torture land
flaunts her promise warrior man

What dawn forswears in myriad hue
over fields of bottomless muddy glue
for mine and many wretched soul
trembling fearful in this hole

Canned gutslop breakfast choke it down
chin up boys we'll pass around
that soured whiskey donkey piss
our bitter remedy saved for this

Now scramble the shitslick duckboard bridge
toward our targets trenchless ridge
through cesspools muck and rotting corpses
of what were gallant men and horses

Then race the barrage all exposed
as all around us shells explode
once lovely lads now human fodder
pure hearts and souls and flesh for slaughter

Felled drowning in this groaning pit
I've nothing more to give or get
dear God please have a cigarette
and something sweet packed in my kit

Ascend to angels bugle band
my bonny boy, my handsome man
released forever mothers hand
fair soldier boy, brave wasted man

Oh, what beauteous bloodred sunset taunts
all promise lost to warrior man
whose shattered, headless torso haunts
the dreams we share for freedom land.

"Please Remember Us"...

Mio Bio...a CV for the real me

from 'the Edge'

I start in dull conventions core, restless, but accepting the relentless drum of dogma, its rusty iron box sealed frozen by orthodoxies ruling hand whose dusty locks and levers horde labors fruits and silken suits make threadbare plans with monopoly moves and magic math, in fancy flight through walls of power hidden from the footprint path of human toil, in ivory towers removing soil from worthy work, instead to bid and bet and barter for paper gains forget the charter, no rights but ours we're so much smarter, we get first and fast and always, in towers and endless marble hallways monuments to all that's mine, proves to all we've won the race, this pedestal our privileged place...and what's leftover trickles down...
And then in upper urban town, with middle people all around, where seamless asphalt never ends and grassy sprawl pretends for all a special place, yet people here in sleepwalk pace and seldom see a friendly face, always chasing extra action treading frantic losing traction, speeding to repeated chore don't forget to lock the door, driving kids afraid to walk never any time to talk (Shit! did we turn the oven off?)... We used to read we used to swim we want to learn the violin, we wanna go to twist and shout but work sucks all the juices out, so lets go play computer games ad contacts to our list of names, slouch on the couch and click on the box, lets start with Fox... We'll fill our minds with silly chatter, murder mayhem, any clatter blocking serious thinking matter...or wander to the monster mall fill up bags of loot and plunder, stuff that we don't really need, but under rules of social play we gotta buy it anyway, as its becomes the recipe for all those things we wanna be...
And fed up now with all of this, decide to seek elusive bliss, to rural places we will travel, where the highway meets the gravel, we'll finally find some peace of mind, in sunlit fields of corn and berry buy some cows and start a dairy, or a cabin on the lake a dreamy place where we can take, some weeks away, some golf to play, some fish to catch, a tennis match, and lots of new friends we will gather to our new home when we'd rather socialize, and recognize our lucky life with daily jogging just for strife...
But still remains this nagging doubt, there must be more than this about, my visit to this Earth?
There's nothing that I've done or do helps me to remove the glue of thoughts that stick inside my brain and want me moving once again...I don't know where but its not here...Then brooding sleepless a moonlit night, I catch a glimpse of what I might, a dangerous scary thing to be, too long ignored...it must be me.
Eager now for what could be, I relinquish all of what was me, seeking answers everywhere but where I've been no compass there...With all at risk I still don't care, fate can take me anywhere...
Still faithful in that guiding light I find a stairway up a flight, where flat earth beckons I must go beyond what reason tells me so, right to the Edge precariously a thin line to eternity and trusting flight I leap to Thee on angels wing I scream with glee as Universe lands its dust on me and stars explode on a vast black screen, spelling secrets no one else, has ever seen.

How to Teach Creativity in Business

(from Linked In)
Earlier in this discussion, I recommended Julia and The Artist Way for very specific reasons which I'll attempt to explain;
Her work speaks to the soul of our most creative citizen...the person whose insatiable desire to create is innate. This person, whom business needs so desperately, yet rejects so routinely as an impractical outsider unable to conform to business dogma...is the Artist.
As a result, the starving Artist and the moribund business model coexist, neither recognizing their crucial need for the other, while our markets/societies continue to idle in wait for another remarkable accident of Artist and business, like the phenomenal Bill Gates.
As I see it, from long experience, the problem is the $$ sign and the habit of business to view a good idea only as anything that makes money by noon tomorrow (or sooner). Moreover, our current aversion to risk and our growing acceptance of replication as innovation simply reinforces the definition of 'creative business' as an oxymoron.
Most of business culture is in fact antithesis to creativity...and any doctrine that preaches this oil and water mix without a prologue outlining a behavioral renaissance by business and the capitalist system is mere lip service.
So, I think if we really want to develop creative, critical thinkers...we'd best take off the business suit, and remove the $$ sign. Find sources of reference beyond the barriers of business culture...in the realm of the Artist, where we can learn how to be creative from the natural, while we learn to unthink all of that myopic business humdrum that we've glued to our mind map.

"WHERE TO BUILD YOUR MOSQUE"

by Alfred K. LaMotte

Dear Muslim friends, if you can't build your mosque
in lower Manhattan, build it here,
in the ground zero of my heart.
Here is infinite, empty, ancient space
to fill with the call of the minaret.
But you will find a Christian church here too,
a Buddhist temple, a shrine to Radha Krishna,
and a sacred tree for the Gods of ancient Ireland.
If you don't mind sharing
the space of compassion,
it's yours"

It's Time to Unplug and Disappear

Like a seasonal alarm clock, the static buzz of Cicada in mating serenade, somewhere out there in the leafy glade beyond my open window reminds me that the 'dog days of August' are here...and its time to disappear. As we say in Ontario, "I'm goin' up north".
To the land of Algonquin on the edge of the Precambrian...where 3 billion years ago, continents collided with such force that mountains melted and then cooled to form the unique 'shield' landscape celebrated in the Group of Seven paintings...and where once mile high glaziers in their thousand year melt, gouged and tapered this land, shaping the rivers, valleys and lakes we now enjoy...
Where a tiny cabin, a sparkling lake and a vast cool canopy await...with Red and White Evergreen pine...hardwood trees of every kind...ancient Cedar as old as Peter...rocks to uncover and fossils to find...hooks to thread and fish to catch...down by the meadow a berry patch...with bacon and spuds for shore lunch fry...and books to read as night slips by...as clouds of skitters and black fly whirl...in a dark green forest...so silent its unreal.
These days, the only way to recharge a human, is to completely 'unplug it'
So, cheers my dears...see yah later tater.
If I don't return from there...and I hope that you'll care, please look in the belly of a bear.