Darla has been doing some thinking lately...about the state of the world as it is. All these loose ends just begging to be caught up into a bundle and wrapped and labeled. The word for that is "our time" or "these times" but what it really is is just some loose ends bundled up again and again...and still unresolved.

Resolution is really what peace is made out of and you just cannot expect it without resolving the original conflict(s). Darla sees this pretty clearly as being the collision of the material world with the immaterial one...call it what you like but it is found throughout the discussions from Buddhism to Economics, athiesm to belief, soul to lack of soul.

And no poet would ever cop to not having one of those! Or would they?

Darla has come to the inevitable conclusion that Allah works in mysterious ways. When Darla (and her good friend Lilac) were children they both attended the same Catholic school up on old Higgins Hill. Back then there was no home for crack addicted women across the street like there is now and the county jail which is just across from St. Pats had roughly twenty cells total in a Mayberry type of affair. The CC jail now holds upwards of two hundred and fifty prisoners at any given time and has been moved down into the toxic waste region where the garbage dump used to be (where the garbage man used to stow his money in Clabber Girl cans). You have to really look at things in order to see them for what they are...you have to pay attention.

Darla and Lilac used to sing in the pews...how they loved that part of the service i.e. which included the Liturgy according to so and so or so and so....they sang Kumbaya and it brings tears to the eyes after a lifetime of seeing the facts of the matter played out in the material world:

Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya
well Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya
Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya
oh lord, Kumbaya

I am humble now lord, Kumbaya
I am waiting lord, Kumbaya
I am searching lord, Kumbaya
oh lord, Kumbaya

please Kumbaya my lord, I'm waiting, Kumbaya
Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya
Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya
oh lord, Kumbaya

I'm full of love now lord,
Oh i feel full of love now lord, please Kumbaya
yes i feel full of love now lord, oh Kumbaya
oh lord, Kumbaya

They sang the song of St. Francis:

Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me bring your
love.
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord
And where there's doubt, true faith in
you.

Chorus:
Oh, Master grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace
Where there's despair in life, let me bring
hope
Where there is darkness, only light
And where there's sadness, ever joy.

Chorus:

Make me a channel of your peace
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
In giving to all men that we receive
And in dying that we're born to eternal
life.

Neither one of them knew just how profound the words were that they were singing. Neither of them could have predicted the hypocrisy that would ensue in the years to come from their very own Church let alone their country, banking industry, media and even neighbors. Who could have imagined really!

They really believed in those songs. Obviously or the Lord wouldn't have blessed either one of them in such astounding ways. One of them could have ended up a Jehovah's Witness you know....running around town and harping about how people needed to join their Christian Cult/Sect instead of any other one or maybe even one of them could have ended up a Mormon and believed herself to be of the Godly Class on some tight-knit Xenophobic planet getting ready to go to heaven and spawn God Babies.

Alot could have gone wrong you know...but it didn't. Out of the thousands of people in their local environment....both were chosen to be muslims. It never ceases to amaze either one of them you know....how extraordinary it all was! How extraordinary yet how very painful it actually is...to know that you have been blessed in a way so outside of the norm that you end up being nearly all alone in a land that is just beginning to realize some terribly drastic truths about their mistakes. Just waking up. It's so incredibly bad that Lilac has to invent a Darla and vice versa because there's no one left to talk to about the truth.

There is a reason for this you know....a reason a person is chosen to be a witness and a reason a person isn't. Its a difficult case to explain really...it defies the normative logic of "our times"..this loose-ended morass into which most people are so desperate that some of them even lose their job and come home to murder their five children in short order. That the man did so after faxing his executioner and saying that he told him to do it....well....Lilac has to gasp aloud at that lethal last blow at "the system". The same system that turned off the heat (more or less) in the home of a confused 93 year old WAR VETERAN'S home (the man had not been late for paying his bills for fifty years) and the "company" didn't bother to tell anyone (including the old man) about it. He died a freezing and lonely death...who knows if he even knew he was dying? Oh....it's not pretty anymore....not pretty at all.

It is so hard to watch when a person knows the cause and as well, the cure.

So many words come to mind,
causa belli is always one of them.

Eulogy for the Artist's Child

I raised my head up from him
and said, I bet Phyllis Schaffly
wouldn't do that for you
such a surprise it was
because there wasn't a thing
to tell him about this
soul essay of mine.
I've tried to shield them
from this aperture
for so long but without
success because it leaks
out of the pores sometimes.
She is dead they say,
she is in a photograph
in another time, she was
the best thing that ever happened
or was ever lost.
This whole memoir
written on the head
of a pin, scattered
in the cupboards,
established a reality
even though no one
thought to look at such
a thing. Her own soul essay.

This is the day no one wants
to be that guy.
As Gaza is surrounded
and buries the dead
and waits for more,
this is the day no one wants
to be that guy.

Incantations for the dead
and the living, incantations
cannot hold the shovels
or level the dirt upon the graves.
Secret messages go out
between the bird squabbles,
the air here contains
some of the smoke,
some of the incredible
heartbreak of others.

Here is the wisdom
of the soul essay
as it counts up and remembers
each unlucky one.
We've been very lucky so far.

Our Babies Are Good Enough

Would Phyllis Schafly shoot fish
in a barrell like they do in Gaza,
shoot babies in the cradle like
they do in Gaza, the Jews,
yes the Jews who are not
funny anymore, pathetic
How to say Hi! to the Jew
anymore after the fish
in the barrell come floating
to the top, boycott the looking
yes, Jew. You. How to shoot
fish in the AusDachauBlederling?
You the quiet Jew minding
his own business, you being
Jewish controllingtheworld
like you do, quiet minding
the business of the heartbreak
AusDachauBlederling.
All our babies line up
for your photo albums
don't they? Lay real
still for your photo albums
don't they you Martha
blueberry muffins. The Fenshui
of AusDachauBlederling
is one on top of the other
in good rubble, hard rubble.
Phyllis Schafly loves me,
she loves me not.