Giving Thanks For Lack

Thanksgiving sunrise (above) and sunset (below).

And the Manzano range after a front came through.

 I never really thought to give thanks for lack, but there you go.

Aviation has been a part of my soul for as long as I can remember, but lack of funds always held me back from the participation for which I longed.

Now I understand why.

I didn't have the maturity to cherish the gift. I took stupid chances, once almost killed myself (I did manage to cut my throat), and, not having learned, continued to showboat.

Lack let me live.

Similar thing, with cancer. Insurance went away long ago, and instead of hanging my hopes on others' 'healing prowess', I was on my own.

I had to work with God to reinvent every day, to find motivation to...well, not thrive, that's out of reach...no, it's motivation not to quit. For one more day.

There's no anxious waiting for test results, no waiting rooms freighted with the scents of antiseptic and doom.

There's just the here and now.

Mind, by the time the insurance ran out the doctors had given up, and were only offering palliative care. So there wasn't a whole lot to lose.

But in my lack, I won.

I cannot afford insurance,

had to care for self instead,

and have thus found, with some assurance,

that had I wealth, I would be dead.

I had to fight each living day,

I had to learn my enemy,

but if perchance I might just pay

someone to do this work for me

I would have ended drugged and slack,

petitioner to human grace;

persist in this, you can’t go back

to that harder, better place

where alone you pit your will

against that thing which aims to kill.

This sonnet first appeared as a comment on Steve Laube's blog post Money Problems.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is LIKE. I like it.

Ok, dude, so well it's like

not too good and not too gnarly;

don't remember where I parked my bike,

and the worst thing, it's a Harley,

really too big to misplace

so on will come my thinking hat,

and thus I hope by God's bright grace

I will recall just where it's at.

Could it be out on the street?

Nope, it could be, but's not there.

Did I ride it out to greet

the arrival of the dogs' au pair?

Oh, I worried much too soon,

it's parked here in the living room!

Doesn't everyone keep Hogs inside?

Three and a half minutes. Doesn't show, eh?

Here's The Holly And The Ivy  by Mediaeval Baebes. Yes, really.

Sylvia says, as long as I don't lack ice cream, no-one gets hurt.

 

Indivisible

 Ok, so these days just aren't going

just the way that I had planned;

there's no way that I'll be knowing

what may be the next at hand,

but each day still holds every hour

that the Lord above ordained,

and it is my choice to be sour,

or to live each with unfeigned

gratitude for every smallest blessing,

and for the biggest blessings, too,

for to be truthful, I'm confessing

that, 'till now, I never knew

that so much could be provided

with joy and pain left undivided.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is LAUGH. It's what I do best!

If you cannot laugh at this,

you really are not trying,

so give the whole darn thing a miss,

'cause what's the point in dying

if its humour hides from you,

and puking becomes tragedy;

I mean, what else is there to do

but just not take it seriously

along with its most bestest pal

(yes, I mean incontinence)

which makes you race on down the hall

just to stumble at the fence

of quickly taking down your jeans,

and you can guess just what that means.

Four minutes flat, no apologies.

Music from Van Halen, with Jump.

Sylvia will jump for ice cream.

 

Election Daze

Belle The Wolf and Henry are playing with Bella, who was found in 2013, broken-backed, in a flooded ditch. Her spinal cord wasn't severed, but the spine itself was shattered. She can get to her feet, and take a few steps. But she usually just scoots around, and is a terror to the big dogs.

So the elections are over. I didn't pay it much mind, taking the view (watch the very short clip) of Crocodile Dundee.

It's just that no more campaign mailers means that I have to find something else for the bottom of the parrot's cage.

Well, if we had a parrot.

Politicians come and go,

bless their little cotton socks,

and when speaking often show

they're dumber than a box of rocks,

saying this, misspeaking that,

then onward to a photo op,

holding babies and a cat

that you can see they'd love to drop,

but they do make me really glad

that we have committee rule,

for it would be quite clearly mad

if we'd bow to a public fool

with vision of newborn retriever

and saw in him a True Believer.

Still, there are good public men and women. It's just that they seem to die young.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is EXTREME. This might not be extremely hard.

People yell from left and right,

words of quandary and riddle,

never thinking that they might

just meet in the middle,

and share a coffee or a beer

(heck, pass around a joint!),

'cause it's getting really clear

that we're close to the point

where agenda and ideas

come to matter more than life,

and Hell's on a massive bender

in celebration of the strife

that pushed us to a dark extreme

on each side, beyond obscene.

Four minutes thirty, including a hesitant keypad. Good enough.

Music from Dion, with Abraham, Martin, and John.

Sylvia votes for ice cream.

 

Light And Shade

I love the interplay of light and shadow.

It's been a rough week (internal bleeding stopped for a bit, and it's back, with fever) but I don't do despair, so I decided to write a sendup of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem, just for fun. And as poetic justice for all you out there who had to memorize parts of the thing...or, for Pete's sake, the whole poem.

The poet pondered, weak and weary,

self-pity for his lost Lenore

in rhyme that was quite awful, clearly,

when there came at chamber door

a tapping from a spectral raven

that reinforced his pain and sorrow

to justify his bad behavin'

like there wasn't no tomorrow.

I've been there and I've been back,

and I have this word for you

that faced with Satan's sad attack

the one thing you can say that's true

to bird now perched on head of Pallas 

is, "Shove despair right up your a**!"

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is PERFORM.

My life's become command performance 

that is staged for God alone,

mix of peace and violence

that's something of a twilight zone

between the promise and the real,

between the newly sown and sere,

between the hunger and the meal,

between the hated and the dear,

but somehow as I tread the boards,

the footlights blinding in my eyes,

I know that I am headed towards

the truth that will dispell the lies,

and make of this conundrum vast

a memory of distant past.

With a balky keypad, five and a half minutes. Well, I tried.

Appropriate music from Smash Mouth.

Sylvia barks at ravens, and won't share her ice cream with them.

 

Heaven

Yes, Heaven is real.

I've been there, through the lens of death become birth.

First some pictures, then the poem.

 

How can I relate to you

where I traveled on that night,

make it bold and bright and true

that as I passed into the light,

that when a final breath did pass

I heard a lovely joyous song,

and stepped out on the living grass

to join a happy dancing throng

beneath a vast and coloured sky,

so fresh and sparkling clean,

a breeze that was a holy sigh

of happiness upon that scene…

on Earth I now know Heaven’s lack,

but also know that I’ll be back.

It’s very hard to describe the essence of a near-death experience, and that loveliest of destinations, without sounding like a bit of a crank.

But I promised I would try.

One thing that I think validates the experience is that while I am not a People Person, I was immersed in a crowd. I don't think it bespeaks a wish to be social; it's just the reality of the place, and, perhaps, a gentle nudge from God that I need to change.

(This first appeared as a comment to Bob Hostetler's post 7 Favorite Writer Destinations on the Steve Laube Agency blog.)

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is WHILE.

Coincidentally, Barb picked up a movie from the library for me..."While You Were Sleeping."

I love romantic comedies.

While I walk upon this Earth

I know that not far up ahead

there lies the glorious rebirth

that gives lie to the phrase, "He's dead.",

for I have been there and have seen

promise made actuality,

more real than a waking dream,

a solid practicality

that turns this sad world upsidedown,

that makes of somberness a joke,

that makes a Pharisee a clown

who from his inner dark has woke

to find the journey that he's on

is lit by an eternal dawn.

Four minutes thirty-nine seconds.

Music from Montell Jordan and Beckah Shae, with Shake Heaven.

And in heaven there  is ICE CREAM.

 

The Bleeding

 I guess God is in the editing business, too.

The sonnet below describes my body trying to bleed out on October 19. It's couched in literary terms because it first appeared as a comment in Tamela Hancock Murray's blog post for the Steve Laube Agency this morning, on developmental and copy editing.

I don't know what to say or think. I can't even state with certainty as I write this if I am on Earth, or in Heaven.

See, I am surrounded by love.

And yesterday the plot was changed,

a literal bloodletting 

in organs now so disarranged...

is this what's called Dev Editing?

And my grammar's diff'rent too,

words are spoken with more care,

respecting that which I've gone through;

am I still here, or am I There,

dead but called to higher days,

transition that I somehow missed

along the bleedout's paths and ways

that brought me with a happy twist

to blindly vault bright Heaven's fence,

and would I know the difference?

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is TESTIMONY.

I don't have a testimony,

I just have what I've been through,

and I will not be a phony,

and tell the story straight for you.

I am bleeding, right inside,

and it does not want to cease,

but I have no need to hide,

'cause bubba, I'm at last at peace,

and can let the ol' world go,

while I journey on ahead,

and in my heart of hearts I know

that dying never will mean dead,

and that what you see me as gone

is me awake to Heaven's dawn.

Three minutes. Maybe that means something.

'Bye for now. Maybe I will see you in the morning.

Oh, and this... I try to counter the blood loss with strong red wine and pasta sauce.

During WW2, blood donors were advised to drink a lot of red wine, so that they might give a pint every week.

The pasta sauce is on my own hook. It's red. Deal with it.

I am fully aware that pancreatic cancer and alcohol do not, to put it mildly, go together. I'm just out of options.

Should be interesting to watch.

Music from the Alan Parsons Project, with Closer To Heaven.

Wherever I am, Sylvia's glad to be with me. She'll even bring the ice cream.

 

Mirror, Mirror

I am going to have fun this week.

If you can't laugh at cancer, why even have it?

I really can't be clearer

in what I'm telling you;

when feeling down, I get a mirror

and just enjoy the view.

It's not that I'm good looking;

I've left that term behind

with biceps that are cooking,

and smile to eas'ly blind

someone who had not the sense

to quickly don their shades.

I really do not mean offense,

but the way that I was made

puts me upon a GQ page

while others simply show their age.

Last week I referenced high fevers and the old fried-egg-this-is-your-brain-on-drugs commercial...well, here's the link!

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is COMPROMISE. That's a big word. I like small words better, so...

You may sigh and roll your eyes,

and whisper that I'm odd,

but I don't think I'll compromise

with life, the world, or God.

I've seen fashions come and go

(and most are better gone),

but there's one that lets me know

the planet that I'm on,

so bring gold chains, slick back the hair,

button silk shirt halfway up,

channel Travolta through Astaire

and drink deep of the disco cup

because I am a true believer

in Bee Gees and the Sat Night Fever.

There! Five minutes, and with a squirrelly brain keypad too!

Appropriate music for today can only come from Right Said Fred.

And in the interest of transparency, I do still work out and eat right (and, yes, both REALLY hurt), and do look a bit like this bloke in the video (think Asian, shoulder-length dark hair with fashionable sun highlights, and NO I will not post a picture).

Well, OK. Here's a picture. It's just not a picture of me.

Sylvia would roll her eyes (as Barb is doing as I write), but she could thereby miss a lick of ice cream to the Chihuahua Pirates.