Thoughts to Go with Two New States

Despicable is the only word for those who state John Edwards is looking for a bounce or sympathy vote from the announcement Elizabeth’s cancer is back. And chiding him for keeping his campaign going. Tony Snow has announced he will come back to work. Are they treating him the same way?

They should not be.

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I call myself a mostly unbeliever, but I wonder. Last week I was interviewed by a believer for a church sponsored theology class. She was to interview a believer, skeptic or non-believer. She concluded I was an unbeliever with skeptic leanings.

But I’ve been thinking about whether I am. I think I’m more an unbeliever in religion, that I don’t see any reason for organized religion except control. And I’m don’t believe in creation, unless the creator was a small child with a chemistry set, who forgot the experiment as soon as it was started.

The Big Bang theory is good enough for me.

But…

I do believe in Evil as an entity – that it is alive and feds off of humans, some such as Bundy or Pot taken over completely, even whole groups as in Rwanda. And if Evil is real, then I suppose there is a counter-balancing force for Good. Whether it is God or a god is debatable, though of course, we do hope it is more powerful than Evil.

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This week’s states are New Hampshire and Oklahoma. But before they are provided, I would be remiss in telling you that three States have been published.

Colorado and New Mexico in Loch Raven Review’s Spring edition at http://www.lochravenreview.net/2007Spring/blankenship.html

Massachusetts in the first edition of Crush to Pulp at http://www.crushtopulp.co.uk/archive.php

There might be others but they are pending or were not accepted.

And in the interest of full disclosure, Jacket as a couple of River Transformed in the April issue, #32 at http://jacketmagazine.com/32/index.shtml

Bounded by Tony Barnstone and Forest Gander is like being in the company of Rock Stars.

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Poetic States XLII – New Hampshire

The Frosting, Not the Cake

I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down.
--Robert Frost on free verse

His hands are work-rough, fingers bent;
his face weather-beaten, a crag,
lost in words that crowd his aged mind
though his energy never flags.

No longer a rock-and-roll star,
photo on the cover of Time,
he squints at the sun and recites
an old poem that does not rhyme.

America’s poet reads on the step
of Camelot’s new capitol –

This land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people…

as if its valleys were empty,
and Yankee blankets made it full.


http://www.bartleby.com/73/475.html

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/gift.htm

In the link above, most critics see the hundred years as those before 1776 and our freedom from Britain. One, the last, does not and might agree with mine.

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Poetic States XLIII – Oklahoma

American Idol Auditions, Houston

I never met a man I didn’t like.
- Will Rogers

With nothing more than a rope,
grin and prickly pear wit, he starts
his act with a joke about a county judge
and jackass, “though that may be the same thing.”

The producer, sharp as a horned toad,
turned his back and mumbled,
“Where does this clown think he is,
at an audition for a new Hee-Haw?”

The bass player compared him
to Jimmy Dean, another sausage
who made a fortune talking his way
through one song that can’t be sung.

The singer looked at his costume
and tried to thing of something nice
to say settling for “Are we back
in Seattle or did we land in Dogpatch.”

He never set foot on a stage again,
though in Rogers County, he wowed
the boys at the VFW with rope, smile,
and “Well, there was this one time…”

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Until next week, when I may show you my Bushies.

Peace,

Gary

BTW, it is my birthday.