FOR ALL FATHERS ON FATHERS DAY

A POEM FOR DAD

I never did sing for my father,

While he could hear,

Nor did I dance for him

That he might see me celebrate

His strength, courage, integrity.

For far too long

Did I imagine him against me,

And so decided

To be against him.

He did not love me

In ways I wanted,

I needed him closer  

To set me straight.

I grew crooked 

Without his attention..

Remembering him now though, 

Straightens me.

My father never quit a thing,

Complained, or shed a tear

 For himself.

Holes in his socks,

A drunken wife,

Five children and he stayed.

I never honored my father

For pulling the wagon

That was his family, 

Dutifully day after thankless day.

My immigrant father,

Peasant farmer,

Cosack survivor,

Who measured men from the neck up..

after 96 years

has finally fallen.

I sit with him in his final hours

With nothing left to say.

He is gone without a word,

to that place i don’t exist,

I place my hand upon his once broad forearm

and shed a parting tear.. and suddenly,

 “He’s Awake!”

And startled back to here and now.

“I know you! “ he exclaims,

Surprised and glad to see me.

“Why you’re my number two son, Harvey!”

A leap of heart,

A flood of joy,

An ocean of tears..

All I ever really wanted from my father

Was for him to know who I was.

Hello dad,

Goodbye dad..

THE ORIGINAL

  THE ORIGINAL

I AM 

always looking for 

an original

like myself..

a snowflake of unique design, 

an intelligence unlike any other, 

that explains it’s understanding of the universe

in it’s very own language

a version like no other

though she may stand upon 

the shoulders of her ancestors

who wandered the same wonderland

searching for their lost joy,

she alone has trod her own unique path

to that God of her own understanding..

I AM 

growing into my own truth

after sixty years of searching 

outside myself

for my self,

Life has a twisted sense of humor,

irony plays the perfect game of hide and seek..

Boo!

I can not be frightened any more

for i know exactly who 

I AM

Startled?  Yes! 

startled by the phenomenal

unfolding miraculous mysterious wonder

of miracles 

perpetually giving birth to more miracles, 

engulfing my every sense

moment after sacred moment..

I AM

in eternal awe, 

mouth agape,

completely enchanted

by the overwhelming beauty

of my constantly changing surroundings,

the universe reinventing itself at

186,000 miles per second-

yes that’s right, 

we live at the speed of light 

because we are made of light

we are new born stars

made to decorate the night,

I AM 

home at last

comfortably nestled

inside myself,

swaddled like a fat, giggling baby

I happily fart

and the world around me 

explodes intelligently

in cosmic laughter!

God loves slapstick 

to make me laugh,

Irony to teach me what is truly true,

Tragedy to crack 

my heart open with compassion,

and silence 

to quiet and embrace 

the sacred me.

O Chi Tuwakawey

 Awakening Otter

120410

Oh My-Promiscuous Corrupt Politicians? What a Surprise!

THERE are at least 2 things that trouble me concerning the growing number of politicians who get caught cheating on their marriages and their jobs; one is that they actually get to have any choice in the matter of whether or not to resign and the other is in most if not all cases, they are having these affairs on our dime.

When your average spouse in the “real world” gets caught cheating, having an affair or even just planning one it usually leads to divorce-end of conversation. The offending spouse does not get to refuse the divorce so why does a public employee like Weiner have any say so whatsoever in whether or not to lose his office?

The other really offensive piece to me is that most, if not all of the covert promiscuity of our officials involve the use of our tax dollars. ”Honey, I’m going to be working late at the office tonight so don’t wait up for me.” Thank you Mr. Clinton.

Most of us who get caught screwing around on the job get fired or at the least get docked pay and given a last warning.  Most of us who get caught using other peoples money for our own selfish purposes are accused of stealing and are arrested and sent to trial and then prison. So how come when Senator Mark Sanford of S. Carolina got busted not only for cheating (on the job) but for using public monies to fund his flights to S. America, his hotel rooms, and other seduction expenses he was not arrested?

Why are politicians seemingly exempt from breaking the laws and rules that the rest of us ordinary folk would go to jail for? Why do they have any voice at all in whether or not to resign from their job?

It’s real simple to my way of thinking. I am Weiner’s boss. I pay his salary. Mr. Weiner, you screwed up. You are now  fired!

 What’s that? Oh, you were texting and sex chatting on company time? In that case you are fired and fined x amount of dollars paid to you for doing a job that you weren’t doing. Don’t do the crime if you can’t pay your dime and do the time.

Enough is enough, is it not people? Why do we put up with this type of behavior? Is it because half of us are guilty of the same behaviors and their is a part of us that justifies and acquits us of any wrong doing?  Hmmmm?

Tune in next week for more on the way you and I support political corruption in this Proud Land of Liberty and Justice for All....



come visit my blog and join the dialogue!

http://otterssong.blogspot.com

PAST TIME TO STOP HITTING THE SNOOZE ALARM!

WAKE UP TIME!

Have any of you noticed lately that the frequency and intensity of natural disasters has been increasing steadily for the last decade and longer. If you add up the recent onslaught of deadly tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes combined with man made crisis’ like the oil spills in the gulf and the nuclear plant failure following the tsunami in Japan to name a few recent disasters,  the evidence seems irrefutable. It also gives some credence to the idea that the earth itself has it’s own “balancing” system and when that system is threatened, it fights back for it’s own survival. And if that means getting rid of the species responsible, well-so be it.

There is a lot of scientific research and evidence that’s predicts, explains and cautions us, and there is also the intuitive, gut wrenching, perhaps mystical perspective that advocates the belief in the Gaia Principle which describes the earth as a whole living organism. Many scientists have been attempting to inform us that we need to heed the effects of our way of living, for years now but they have been ridiculed (alarmists doom and gloom) discredited and ignored  by administrations and their hired media, resulting in the majority of us ignoring the writing on the wall and carrying on the business of our lives as usual.  Since our natural tendency is to resist change and remain comfortable and complacent it doesn’t take much to convince or reassure us that everything is A-OK when it fact it is not.

  

 As individuals the many cancers and other diseases we suffer from are treatable, even curable if detected early enough. I think the same principle applies to the entire global ecosystem and all it’s intricate interconnections. And if this is the case then a slow and gradual reduction of air, ground and water pollution, oil fuels dependency, token penalties and unenforced regulations of industries and the tons of toxic wastes they spew into the environment daily will be a case of “too little, too late”.  Goals like 20% reduction of energy reliance on oil by the year 2030 isn’t going to reverse the inertia of what appears to me to be an unacknowledged catastrophe of epic proportions no longer waiting just around the corner but smack in our faces, at least to those of us whose faces are no longer buried, heads in the sand. It is very possible that we are past the point of no return. 

The same sort of shortsighted self centered compulsion for more, better, newer, faster that led to the current global economic melt down is leading us to the end of the world as we know it. We can no longer live the A-More-I-Can Dream if we want to have a future worth dreaming. It is time, it is past time to sound the alarm. 

The world itself will renew itself; only humans have been able to impact nature intensely enough to change climates and pollute and over consume natural resources. With our extinction, systems will work to bring a return to homeostasis. Ironically, it is the so called “developed countries” that have wreaked havoc on the earth; it has taken great advances in technologies to do this much damage in such a short span of time. The past 100 years have changed the way we live in extreme ways only science fiction writers could imagine. 

The freedom guaranteed us by the constitution to the “pursuit of happiness” has literally manifested. We are lost in the “pursuit” and few of us have arrived at the intended target of happiness. The vast number of drugs we of the “developed” countries have to devour in order to simply cope with our pain, exhaustion, depression and great disillusionment attests to the fact that material wealth and external comforts do not bring us health, security and serenity. We are enslaved by the very luxuries that once obtained can no longer be lived without. We are captive to the artificial “needs” promulgated by ceaseless commercial marketing. Research has found measurements of personal contentment higher among people who are living remotely and in the harshest of climates than here in  Disneyland which we tout in yet another commercial as the “happiest place on earth”. If you’ve been to Main Street then you know the best part of the day is sitting down and resting your weary feet.

The recent tornadoes damage and fatalities across several states are just one more wake up call to action. The rate of speed at which we are depleting or poisoning the few essential elements that sustain life for us all does not allow us the luxury of the slow, passive gestures we are making to fix the enormity of the real issues of the day. 

You may call me an alarmist, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day (soon!) you will join us, so the world can continue to go on.

“Imagine” that. Thank you John-

Schools or Prisons?

“Murderer wins stay of execution” 

read the bold print on the front page of Valley & State a couple weeks back. I had previously heard it was being postponed due to difficulty obtaining one of the three drugs we combine to pull off an execution. Somebody help me to understand my cultures priorities and decisions regarding allocations of MY and YOUR monies. 

Correct me if I’m wrong but don’t people drop dead daily from accidental overdoses over doses from a variety of individual prescription and recreational drug usage? 

Why do we require 3 specific (apparently hard to get hard to get) chemicals when one injection of any number of common drugs would induce immediate and painless (merciful) death?  Along with so many other current government decisions, I just don’t get it!

I also don’t get how we continue to support the costs of maintaining (and building new) prisons over our support of 

schools. It costs anywhere between 27 and 40 thousand dollars a year average to imprison a convicted criminal in Arizona. We allocate 6 to 7 thousand dollars per year towards our childrens educations. What is wrong with this picture? How about ..Everything!

How many honest out of work and working Americans with families to support

would kill (figure of speech and pun intended) to be receiving that amount of money from the government.  

Yet we continue to house many dangerous, dishonest, self serving, law breaking convicts  at the cost of education..education-you know, that stuff that prepares you to make an Honest living and become a productive member of a healthy society. 

I hear that guards have a pretty strong union and evidently prisons have persuasive lobbying power. What do they do with all that money?  I know that guards are paid better than teachers in many school districts around the country. Do you have to go to graduate school to become a prison guard? I don’t know. I doubt you need college or even high school to qualify for the rigors of jail keeping.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating or supporting the death penalty. However, I am totally against providing anything but the barest of necessities and comforts for to the ner’do wells who are serving time for breaking the laws the rest of us choose to follow. Prison should be a punishment, especially if it is to work as a deterrent to future crime.

But many of the inmates are more secure, better provided for and content living in a prison culture than out there in the “real” world. I am not without compassion. I know that many if not all crime is the result of unspeakable neglect and violent emotional and physical abuse perpetrated upon children who later grow up to do the same to others.

But unless we design a rehabilitation program that actually works, I vote for a sentence of hardship, void of television, work out equipment, sports, deserts and the like.  Maybe if prisons weren’t so comfy less people would be willing to risk going there. 

Then maybe we’d have a little more money available for schooling young people and giving them the amenities that would better prepare them as productive adults who contribute to society instead of becoming yet another low priority casualty of the congressional debates over where “our”  money goes..

4/23/11