Six Ways from Sunday

Screwed.

No public option, no Medicare buy-in, no re-importation of drugs: what's left of this alleged "health care reform?" A neverending goddamn gift to insurance companies and big pharma, that's what. Let's break it down.

1)The bill as it stands would require that you buy insurance.

2) It would require that insurance companies cover you regardless of any pre-existing condition.

3) If you could not afford the premiums, the government would provide assistance.

4) It would NOT establish any limits on what insurance companies can charge.

5) It would NOT provide any substantive change in regard to the insurance companies denying specific care on the basis of what they deem is "reasonable" (ie, what is profitable).

So the insurance industry would gain 30 million new customers, and both they and health care providers would have all the incentive in the world to send prices skyrocketing. People needing specific procedures could still be denied based on what is most profitable for the insurance company.

This farce would be almost an exact duplicate of the goddamn bank bailouts: an enormous transfer of public funds from the middle class to a handful of extraordinarily wealthy corporations, and no sanctions to encourage said corporations to conduct business fairly and ethically.

I must add that watching that slimy piece of insurance cartel dogshit Joe Lieberman simper and grin about once more fucking his constituents, and all of us, right in our un-lubed asses, has sent me over the top. I really hope that falsely pious pile of chickenhawk pig vomit dies of a brain aneurysm.

not feeling peaceful,

What Happened?

I pulled out some pictures from my trip to Peru eight years ago, and while Craig looks much the same, I scarcely recognize the slimmer and more vibrant version of me in the photos. I am now, perhaps, 20 pounds heavier than I was then, and my face has settled into a softer and weaker rendering of masculinity. The hard lines of my jaw have all but disappeared these days, and the eyes in the mirror no longer communicate the unfettered joy and danger that, for good or ill, defined that young man in Peru, or hell, the young man who left and came home.

So what happened?

I blew my knee out a couple times and fell off the workout wagon, I guess, and stopped treating my body like a temple; and I had to quit school before the boys were born. The absence of concentrated and violent intellectual challenge has had much the same effect as the absence of concentrated and violent physical activity: the product of both being an overwhelming and near-fatal ennui.

I guess I fell out of love with myself, or stopped trusting my own instincts. I don't know, it's not as though my instincts have ever brought me any kind of tangible benefit or long-lasting contentment. I remember, though, waking from my midafternoon nap in the Ishinca River valley and being so slain by the mountains and the river, and by the benediction of a walk with my Friend, that despite my fatigue and rotten altitude sickness, I hiked and sang up the side of the mountain (I did stop singing at about 12,000 feet when I had to throw up about every 20 yards). From the outside, it sounds like mawkishness, a silly response to situational inspiration, but I know better. It didn't just happen on the side of the mountain, or on holidays or special occasions. I routinely allowed myself to be moved, to not take things in stride. I don't know what happened, or what changed, or what now seals me off from that dynamic experience of the world, but I need to find it again, desperately. I know I must in many ways be serious and solid these days, and I am, but if I don't find some way to reconnect to that vitality, I am pretty sure it's absence will eventually kill me.

much peace,
tjb

I Am Not Clever

...but this song is a little, or what I have of it thus far.

Spaceman

Out into the ether, where the stars collide
and flash their long-dead smiles through the cavernous night
Good old spaceman won't put his helmet on again
He's out in the cold and the ghostlight wearing nothing but his skin

And beneath the sweet physicality, there's closed doors in our minds
We're miles apart in your tiny bed, and I'm leaving you behind

I'll choose the vacuum, where there's nothing I'm required to feel
Yeah nothing but want and wanderlust and a nagging urge to breathe
Into the outside through a blue-white picture frame
I can't see your face from outer space, I can't remember my own name

And to shed the false solidarity and barely murmured lies
There's a skylight above us, and I'm leaving you behind...

(Copyright 2006, Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Untitled in Progress

Maybe you'll finally make that mythic run south or
prove your repentance with a gun in your mouth
but you always lose your nerve
in the shadows' evening length
caught in your private hell between weakness and strength............
(Copyright 9/2009, Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Of Mortal Gods

There is joy in a well-thrown football, in the lovely lethal hiss of air around the composite leather, in velocity born in the balls of one's feet, and in the violent and terrible force transferred smoothly from hips to throwing shoulder. It's the same joy, love, to be honest, that occurs in the humbling attack of a summit by bicycle, in the grim and glorious struggle against oxygen debt, and, in truth, in the absolute desperate necessity of a well-turned phrase or verse hunted and found in in the despairing wilderness past midnight: the surrender of one's body and intellect to service of the cause at hand. I have no illusions about my own talents, physical, intellectual or otherwise; I am die-hard mediocre, at best. I am privy (in a small mean way), however, to the paradoxical juxtaposition of self-surrender and utter self-possession that I believe is the hallmark of all great creations, be they those of Whitman or McGrath, or those of Ali or Montana. There's a rising up and a thinning of the skin, a fragility and a belligerence, a passion and dispassion, between the points of which the constant artist must steer. In those moments, when the artist permits himself to be as weak and as strong as necessary, he imposes his will upon his environment, and in turn cedes internal territory that is neither returned nor forgotten.



Max and Will (my three-year-old sons) have begun to be fast. They used to run and I could catch up to them in a couple of long strides. Not so much anymore. Now they run, and I have to turn on the wheels a bit. They also are evolving from little stick figures into sinewy, athletic little boys. They have developed little lat spreads, and miniature muscles play around their shoulders and arms. As I begin my slow (very, very slow) decline into physical irrelevance, I am comforted to see my boys begin to recognize the strength and speed written into their DNA, and in the obvious and unconscious satisfaction they take in the purposeful use of their bodies and minds. We threw the football around in their yard today, and I recognized the fey light that shone in the blue-grey eyes they inherited from me, and their revelations of speed and feats of strength. Don't misunderstand, the same joy is apparent in their steady mastery of language, space and math (and just as encouraged) but nowhere are the little wild things as purely abandoned to happiness as in running, jumping, throwing and wrestling. It's a bit sorrowful to know that when they achieve mastery of their bodies and their sweet, elastic minds, I will be inexorably declining. I am a god to them now: large strong and knowledgeable beyond reckoning. Little do they know the want and worry I feel for them, or how much their god's happiness is bound to theirs. Perhaps all gods feel this way; beside themselves with love and care for their creations. I feel curious panic in my gut when I think of the inevitable time when their god becomes mortal to them, when they recognize me as just as mean and insignificant as the world for which I am trying to equip them. They will ultimately outgrow their need of me, but I shall never fall out of love with their sharp eyes and their red-blond curls, or with their belly laughs and singing.

I have proclaimed my aversion to any and all religion, but today I sympathize with the gods of Abraham and Muhammad, with Osiris and Isis and Zeus and Apollo, and Wodin and Loki and even evil old Cronos. I sympathize with all bereft deities who demand temples and alters, tithes and worship, and even sacrifice and blood from their creations. I understand the terrible love and the beautiful, inevitable despair; but it's our blood, our lives that must be freely sacrificed. Jesus came closest, perhaps, but even he got it wrong. I can't say "take my body so that you may be free, but you have to do as I say and build the right temples and say the right words to receive it." I must instead say, "Here is my sacrifice. Do with it what you will. The gift is yours because I love you, and nothing you say or do can negate it." The burden of faith is therefore mine, as it should be for all gods. So should Max and Will read any of my hopeless ramblings someday, long after they have recognized their flawed humbug of a father, I want them to know that this intention and service, at least is pure; and that I love them as dearly as any mortal god can love his children.

much peace,
tjb

Another Song

Similar Ways

A nameless cold stalks these small-city streets
in the aftermath of snow and of sleet
It's been years since I dreamt out loud
Thus dies the child/So falls the proud

The whole city estranged since you I
since river birds wheeled through an untroubled sky
And sharp-handed men, they cut ugly and deep
and the summer-brown sorrow pulls me from my sleep

I walk down by the big Missouri
where the wind sings through these old oaks
past the dying buildings and the coffee shops
East of all the pavement and the smoke

In search of some soul at the old reservoir
and the prairie blows in through the wide open car
In bits and pieces, the day becomes clear
In shards of sunlight and the absence of all fear

And out past the cardboard graveyards
I leave this shell of glass and steel
and melt along with the last of the winter snow
lying naked in the creekbeds and the fields

In cowshit and straw by the side of the tracks
I've waited my whole life for trains to come past
Perhaps we've been broken in similar ways
But can't we just call that love and I'll have you
here with me today

And far past the sand and sagebrush
through mountains choked with springtime snow
we come at last to the arms of the ocean
a salty kiss so deep and cold...

(Copyright Thomas J Burbach 2006)

much peace,

More of the Same

She claims to recall in the August blues/
in the painful sweep of a windswept sky/
a young man stuck in an old man's shoes
and summer rushing by

In the wide expanse behind, there's three years dead and gone
but I can see salvation in the twisting hills of pine...
The car door slams in the rising wind/
In your skin is born the light/
of a thousand prairie suns as I go
down into this night

I recall your innocence/
your blond hair scattered across the grass/
the sweet release of your last defense
and the sorrow slow to pass

She called me beautiful...said everything's all right
but all I ever was was blinded in the antiseptic light
Over the lake, under the sky
with nothing in between...
our bodies and the rain and stars
the elegant machine

...and a young girl stands in her summer shoes
at the water's edge on the edge of night
and a young man loses these old man blues....

(Copyright 2009, Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Christ's Church on Earth

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090520/ap_on_re_eu/eu_ireland_catholic_abuse

Please note that much of the evidence in the report cited above came from Vatican records. Again, these weren't files hidden away in individual church or school basements, but records kept at corporate headquarters, records of crime and abuse filed, stored and hidden by the fearless and noble leaders of God's kingdom on earth. The richest and most powerful were more than happy to sacrifice the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children to protect their own lily white Roman robes. They are all of them honorable men, no?

much peace,

Quick Moment of Self Congratulatory Bullshit

I am under 200 pounds for the first time in three years. I have lost 30 in the last four months. I have 20 to go. Should I reach that goal, I will likely post an "after" pic. I am, of course, too vain to post a "before."

much peace,

Reciprocal

The sun heats the bedrock from morning 'til night,
and the wind breathes a song to the grass:
"hush, hush"

The sand shifts around the bright cactus blooms,
and whispers a song to the stone
"sigh, sigh"

A surprise of rain patters and cools,
and the granite repeats to the sky:

"I love thee
I love thee
I love thee"

Copyright 2009, Thomas J Burbach

much peace,

Outpost

I think when I have reached the fabled end of this unbearable beginning
and all my many wounds and scars dissolve
into the blessed crucible of night,
I will if choice is given me forgo a resurrection of the body
for assumption or deserved descent
or any sale of this alleged soul

May the doe-eyed Huris (hidden pearls) not disturb the sweetness of my rest,
nor the clamor of the sexless seraphim
send tin hosannahs to rattle through my dreams.
And keep me, please, from the glare of a hilltop Sodium City,
from all the meccas, temple mounts and churches
in whose names the fervent spill their blood.

No Eden can shelter child of man, nor any love anneal his written Fall
so on my belly let me sleep as I have crawled
in the failing light and unforgiving dust.

Let the rushing wind that swells and soughs across these bony plains
coax my every weary molecule apart
and in the empty darkling night let me be free…
and lay me ‘neath the holy prairie grass
and let grass become of me

Copyright 2009, Thomas J Burbach

much peace

Forms

No wispy strands of cirrus,
or mountain ships of cumulus piled
on a blue, sweltering sea.
Just slate grey skyscape from horizon to horizon,
and wind shaking the jumbled communities
of mismatched sedge and biblical thorns.

Copyright 2009, Thomas J Burbach

much peace

upon departure

Today is heavy upon my shoulders;
it began in disarray, before first light,
struggling back into my defenses from
the supposed sanctuary of your bed

So hard to leave you; almost your warmth had reached me:
In bits and pieces I was comforted until
a chill edge crept into your talk,
within me met an answering cold
and, of a sudden,
we are miles apart in your little
bed

Two penitents at opposite ends of the cathedral,
too proud to kneel in servitude to the one
cause worth serving; and so we lie, stiff-necked
and quite separate, and moving in separate directions:
you to your clandestine loves (a heat I may not touch),
and I to ponder, hands shackled behind my head,
why my own heart is so cold

_______________________

So I am brought unto the morning:
the sun drags behind him a formless morass
of clouds, slow as a funeral procession:
and I a faceless mourner, lacking
the wits to grieve.

Copyright, 2001 Thomas J Burbach

much peace

Untitled

Fragility:
A thinning of skin in the cold light
and Caution:
The keen edges of leaves and
the quiet, lethal blades of barely grass

Intent:
The dark burgeoning river strains
against its banks and bed
and Malcontent:
Simple sots who dreamed the mouth
and once believed it pure

Intuition:
Every shit-filled canal and little creek
knows something of the open sea
and Revolution:
The storm claims corpses to spite the levy
and drums and howls that war is yet alive

(Thomas J Burbach Copyright 2009)

much peace

"The Evil You Deem Most Terrible..."

So there have been a couple news stories lately about the grand high bastard Archbishop of the Omaha Archdiocese, his Super-Duper Excellency Elden Curtiss. You know, the asshole who moved priests around in Montana and helped at least 30 kids get sexually abused there; the one who transferred at least one pedophile priest and one child pornographer priest around Omaha, then castigated the church employee who called him on it. The one who told the World Herald he sleeps beautifully at night; the one to whom the Catholic church is giving a $300K house in which to retire (hope to see you in the eye of needle, fucker). My brother had the singular pleasure of interviewing Curtiss, and I am glad it was Christopher and not me. My boys need their Daddy whole, strong and not in prison for life.

These news stories have brought me face to face again with events from my youth, and shocked me into recollections of darkness and of evil.

I'm not a believer in a supernatural overlord, but I have no problem raising my children to follow Jesus of Nazareth. I can believe, to a large degree, in the church of Oscar Romero or Desmond Tutu, or Mother Teresa or Maximillian Kolbe. The church of Ratzenberger the Nazi, though, the Vatican's Pit Bull, and of John Paul II, the CIA's pontiff, and of Bernard Law and Bishop Curtiss: This church fundamentally frightens me in a way I haven't felt since I was frozen with night terrors when I was a kid.

I fear. I fear. I fear.

I am afraid of a corporation that holds over 800 million in thrall and has for centuries aided and abetted the felony sexual abuse of children, me included. The boys start Catholic pre-school in about a year, give or take, and I am terrified of the potential harm that may be done to them by an organism that has shown every willingness to let the children suffer until they are caught red-handed. Sure, there are sick fucks everywhere; in every school and every park, but the Catholic church has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the law, blamed the media for its crimes, and thrown a middle finger to victims. It is fact that Elden Fuckhole Curtis transferred a known pedophile priest around Montana for years, resulting in damage to at least 30 kids. I don't want to make this about my experiences, but I know something about the hurt and injury that occurs when a kid has his doors broken down in that manner. I spent over 20 years in spiritual poverty I didn't recognize and that I finally realized, sort of, I did not deserve. I could not love, and it was just part of my identity that no one could possibly love me. It no longer defines me; I am stronger and better now; but you're never entirely free of it.

Thirty children in Montana and more in Omaha had swaths of their lives taken from them. I am not an empathetic person by nature, but I am almost incapacitated by the extremity of the rage and sorrow I feel for them, and for all victims of these fucking men of god and the fat bloated uncaring bastards who enable them. Thousands of children violated, and Ratzenberger has the malice, the cruelty, to blame the media for blowing it out of proportion. Curtiss told my brother he sleeps soundly at night, and the Catholic Organism, the Roman Spider, says fuck you to law and to victims and to Christ and REWARDS the Vatican's Pit Bull by appointing him pope. They say fuck you to the Montana and Omaha victims and REWARD Curtiss with a $300K retirement home.

So yeah, there are sick fucks everywhere, but I am, unbelievably, going to commend my children into the hands of a corporation that considers itself above earthly law or accountability, and that did everything in its power to hide the suffering and injury it inflicted upon its most vulnerable members.

I fear.

I fear that finding out after the fact (which is when you find out, if at all) would mean the damage to my sweet, precious, beautiful little boys would already be done. I don't want them to be condemned to the same miserable dirty cage that I inhabited for so many years. If they find faith or prayer, I want it to be whole and clean and strong. I want them to be overwhelmed by love and mystery, not amputated by knee-jerk cynicism and hate. I fear...

I fear what their father would do if they were harmed by that organism. I don't believe in forgiveness, for me or for anyone else, and should my children be harmed by the Catholic church, I swear upon my body, my life, and my love for my sons, I will not leave a temple stone standing from Rome to Nebraska. I have no love and no loyalty for these pretend followers of goodness: I will tear down their churches and drink their hearts' blood to the bottom.

I fear.

much peace

Relevant Poem by Thomas McGrath

After Tomasito's Departure

The sun still shines
And the moon moves on the waters.
In the heavy press of the heat,
The flowers and the citizens shrivel.
Everything in order for the summer solstice:

But the whole city empty -
Since you've been gone.

(McGrath, 1991)

much peace

Benediction to Max and Will (to be recited at nap and bedtimes)

I love you in the morning, in the afternoon and
at night.

I love you when I go to work, and when I come home.

I love you at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I love you when the sun comes up, and in the dark
under the moon, and all the way to the stars.

(Copyright, 2009, Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Some More Lyrics in the Mediocre Tradition of ThomasJ

Worn out old cliche leans on the bar, anti-omniscient and
the narrator struggles to the car
Sits and transcribes faces, trying to capture all the spaces...

the wood and the whiskeyand/the cigarettes and the t.v. and
a drunken angel dancing on the bar

and everything is stories and everything is poems
and nothing really illustrates/nothing really penetrates
and every incidental touch reminds him he is so, so
far away from home

Seven hours and fifteen minutes dying in the circle of
her arms while she breathes softly in her sleep
and dawn is never dark enough to reconcile the raging gulf...

the warmth of the bedclothes/the ice on the windows and
the raucous passers-by down in the street

and everything is stories and everything is poems
and nothing really illustrates/nothing really penetrates
and every incidental touch reminds him he is so, so
far away from home...

I thought I knew who my friends were
now it seems that i just can't remember
and this age I feel is sinking in my bones...

So maybe once tomorrow night, I'll try to sleep without the light

let the shadows on the walls
be just shadows on the walls
and slip from fear to blessed eversleep

To let go all the stories and surrender all the poems...
where there's nothing left to illustrate/no secrets to infiltrate
just all this time and all this time just so, so
far away...

(Copyright 2008 - Thomas J Burbach)

much peace

Obama Continues Rendition - Screw Him

Quick post today. I am too angry to try to be witty.

L.A. Times reports that the Obama administration will continue the rendition policies of the former regime. Some apologists bandy semantics and assert that we we will only kidnap folks and send them to countries that don't torture, but that smacks of bullshit to me. If we want to be sure suspects aren't tortured, then bring them here and make the process transparent.

To clarify: I could give a good goddamn about five minutes of waterboarding. We had a ridiculous national argument about that while we were haveing people's teeth broken with hammers in Syria and people raped with broken bottles in old Soviet gulags in Uzbekistan. I voted for Obama with some hope things might be different, but the cynicism I manufactured to shroud my optimism has been borne out. Barack Obama is a bad guy owned by the same interests that W. was. Fuck him and all the other professional dissemblers.

much peace

Go Rush!!!!!

Rush Limbaugh is in the headlines again. He's not smuggling drugs this time, or displaying his phenomenal football illiteracy (I mean Jesus Christ, Donovan McNabb has carried this Eagles team on his back his whole goddamn career). This time he's resuming his role as the premier fat-ass megalomaniac of the GOP, which is good news for the Democrats. When the most visible face in your party is a crazy, sweaty, xenophobic talk show host who does no research and doesn't check his "facts"... well, you get the picture. It's way early of course, but if this trend continues the GOP will buck history and lose more seats in the midterms, and probably nominate Sarah Palin or someone like her in 2012. I am not a supporter of any politician, per se, at least not on the basis of their personal identity, so I am reserving judgment on Obama as pResident until I see his policies in action, but he is an infernally intelligent person, and one of the better speakers I have seen in the last couple of decades. Palin barely survived a gaffe-prone Joe Biden. Can you imagine her opposing Obama directly? It would be like sandblasting a damp graham cracker.

If I were the GOP, I would beg George Will to beat Rush to rhetorical death with the lead pipe in the library. If I were the Dems, I would revel in the fact that Rush is again in the news representing the worst and the dimmest of the opposition.

(Author's note: I apologize to George Will for mentioning him in the same sentence with Rush. I know, Mr. Will, that Rush couldn't carry your jock strap.)

much peace

" ... And we did want to be respectful of the neighbors of the Obama family, of all the many people who are feeling great congratulatory happiness. But I think that we have to recognize where—well, that President Obama has now become the chief arms exporter in the world. He’s in charge of the most massive killing machine in the world. ... "
(Kathy Kelly, international peace activist, as told to Amy Goodman on DemoocracyNow!)


Are my sons safer now that Israel has demolished Gaza with U.S. money and technology? Are we safer with 600,000 - 1 million Iraqis dead? I doubt it. After 9/11, this country reserved the right to remember and hate without stint or discretion. What about the Iraqi shopkeeper who saw his son blown in half by good old American know-how, or the 8-year-old who saw his parents murdered in an elective war? Don't the friends and relatives of the dead and maimed in Iraq and Gaza have the same perpetual right to rage and hatred that I would if my toddlers were murdered by another country's bombs, or is the horrible choking, desperate grief of middle-eastern non-christians and non-Jews somehow less real, their bereavement less keen, because American exceptionalism has designated their sacrifice acceptable?

Let's for a moment pretend that these actions have made us safer, rather than simply hardening another generation of anti-American sentiment. I still can't look another father in the eye and say, "your child shall be killed, blown apart, so that mine can maintain the lifestyle to which he is accustomed," or to another son, "Your father will be burned to death with white phosphorous so that my old man can retire without stress." The price is too great.

Self-congratulatory, preening fucks like W.F. Buckley will prate about the existential threat; neocons think it's our divine right to conquer the world. The world bank, the military-industrial complex, and all their economic hit men think only of profit. I just can't get that orphaned father out of my head. I know how I would feel if my boys were taken from me. There is no amount of bloodshed that would sate me, no salve would tame the violence. Our American attitude, though, doesn't recognize our murders as real people or real deaths, just acceptable statistics in pursuit of our "interests." I don't know, maybe we've killed enough people to make us more secure for a little while. I don't think attrition is a long-term fix, though, unless we're willing to implement a Final Solution and simply kill everybody whose interests run contrary to ours. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before those we've brutalized gather enough strength and numbers to attack us again. Hopefully I can manage the casualties in my family.

much peace,