Don Coorough's First Book of Essays Has Been Published

Dear Friends and Readers,

My first book of essays has been published and is now available for purchase. It is a 456-page quality paperback.


http://www.publishamerica.net/product51902.html

Love-ism Volume II, Book 1: Essays on a Philosophy of Compassionate, Common-Sensed Evolution—Politics, Economics, Environmentalism and Ethics Studied from Historical, Contemporary, and Future Points of View contains essays written by Don Coorough which reflect his desire to promote a better world; a world based on love, peace, liberty, mutual respect, understanding and cooperation. This revolutionary book of essays is steeped in a profoundly historical perspective, each essay building on the ones which come before it, and promotes a united world which would reflect the wishes of people everywhere. The book urges a mass, people-power movement to create this new world. Some of the essay topics in the book include a look back at the decade of the 1960s, the development of the thesis which reveals how war and occupations of other nations cannot and do not work, an in-depth analysis of Capitalism, Communism and Fascist-Socialism, and a look ahead at how to organize societies through wise economic practices and a sound ecology. 


I hope my friends and readers will consider ordering a copy. Please click on the link to get your copy today. Also, please feel free to share the link with your friends.

Warm regards in peace and with love,
Don Coorough

The Approaching Age of Equality

Life is change, an ongoing process. No one controls the procession of social order within cultures, societies or nations. History is marked by the flowering of world civilizations from epoch to epoch.

Western Civilization has been defined by ages - epochs marked by specific qualities and social movements. The Middle Ages began after the fall of the Roman civilization, and lasted some 1000 years until the first sparks of neo-Platonism ignited the Renaissance in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The Renaissance lasted through the 16th century and into the 17th.

By the 17th century, the Reformation ensued. Together with the advance of the printing press and the translation of the Bible into local languages, the Reformation helped spread literacy. Because of the rise of literacy, new ideas expressed by the philosophers and political theorists of the late 17th century through the 18th century period known as the Enlightenment empowered masses of people to cry out for basic human, individual rights for all classes and individual autonomy over their lives and life choices. The Enlightenment ushered in an age of Revolution from the mid 18th century through the mid 19th century which was expressed through the clash between monarchists and liberal republicans.

A backlash occurred as the powerful elite sought to retain power, as exemplified by the spread of empires and imperial clashes for economic, political and military hegemony throughout the 19th century in the aftermath of Napoleon and because of the reconstitution of nobility throughout Europe as designed by Metternich. The Industrial Revolution, which began centuries earlier in England, eventually spread to France, Germany and the United States. By the 19th century, the powerful and wealthy elite discovered that the Industrial Revolution provided them with new avenues to wealth and power. No longer did they need to indenture people to the land and agrarian servitude, nor must wealth accrue solely from agriculture and mining. Industry meant the creation of new products and new sources of wealth.

The rise of industry fostered a movement of people from the countryside to the cities as a means of finding employment, their search for greater personal autonomy, and the opportunity to explore new experiences. A synergy arose out of the migration to the cities and the institution of assembly line production. Those conditions, in concert with the Industrial Revolution and the advance of science, including the creation of new technologies, products and services, also contributed to the synergy, which unleashed a population explosion.

Wealthy industrial magnates found a means to extreme wealth beyond their previous imagination with the proliferation of mass-produced products as well as a ready source of both cheap labor and a rapidly expanding consumer class. This new economic dynamic indentured workers to their industrial and assembly line employments, and became their only means of survival. The wealthy elite wielded a broader hegemony than ever before, and learned how to control governments with their wealth instead of having to be the governments as in the past through their status as nobility or royalty. A new, politician class arose to handle the task of governing in a sort of proxy for the wealthy elite. That new class was sufficiently susceptible to influence through their greed, corruption and narcissism, so the machinery of government was (and continues to be) easily manipulated by the wealthy elite.

The 20th century was marked as an age of devastation, destruction, sociopathic war and dehumanization. The wealthy elite broadened their economic interests by creating multinational corporations with highly diversified lines of products and services. In the wake of WWII, the advent of television, and the spread of mass-marketing campaigns designed to brainwash the public into orgiastic consumption, an excessive response to the still-not-forgotten Depression years grew. The consumption of products further enriched the wealthy elite at the same time as it plunged the middle class into permanent debt. The baby boom in conjunction with the sudden affluence within the rapidly expanding middle class of the post WWII period fed a new culture of greed and complicit corruption among the wealthy elite and their political lapdog lackeys.

Today, we stand upon the edge of a palisade precipice. Across a chasm of uncertainty lies a new paradigm. Recognizing the chasm, finding the best pathway to span it, understanding the parameters of the new paradigm, and cooperating in creating the world of the future is this generation's task.

Change is inevitable. Trying to hold on to the past will only lead to greater suffering as time ticks off the clock leading to the inevitable future. Oh yes, the wealthy elite and their strong armed governments can postpone the movement into the new paradigm through force, repression and conditioning, but that will only lead to a long battle between the classes which is in no one's best interest. Once the movement towards change has begun, there is no stopping it.

The wisest course ahead for humanity would be to recognize that we can ease our pathway into the new paradigm, save the best of our current civilization, and reduce the potential suffering for the greatest number of people by uniting our efforts, cooperatively, through the coming social evolution. We can accomplish common goals and effect a positive outcome by embracing change and integrating it systematically rather than fighting it and undergoing tumult and turmoil, enmity and struggle, and a great sociological soul-sickness which would derive from a consequent division of humanity accruing from any great class struggle for power, wealth, position and prestige.

There are signposts everywhere which indicate the nature of the coming new paradigm. Four movements which began in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s offer insights into the nature of the new paradigm: the peace movement, civil rights, feminism, and environmentalism. A fifth presents itself out of the 1980s movement of people in the primarily southern hemispheric regions for basic human rights for all people, even in the so-called underdeveloped nations. Other factors continue to arise: climate change, the development of information technologies in conjunction with the internet, the continuing population explosion, and the current popular demands for an economically just and equitable system - including a more reasonable distribution of income and wealth.

I look across the chasm and see the new paradigm as the Age of Equality.

How do we get there from here?

First, we must address climate change and the types of energy we will use in the future. Humanity cannot maintain a sustainable culture, economy and civilization if it continues to invest in petroleum products for its primary source of energy. However, by immediately initiating a change to clean and renewable energy sources, we can not only abate the worst effects of climate change in the future, we can also start to clean the environment, reverse climate change, provide a better world for our children, grandchildren and the generations beyond them, as well as employ masses of people in every city and town with careers that will be sustainable as far into the future as one can imagine.

Second, we must rethink the whole notion of a global economy. The point of the global economy is to further enrich and empower the already wealthy elite. The whole premise is: corporations can produce products where ever and everywhere costs for production (especially for labor) are cheapest, and these corporations can ship those products to markets where ever and everywhere prices for the products can be set at their highest level.

This system is designed to put the greatest amount of capital into the hands of the wealthiest people, and extract as much of that capital as possible from the hands of everyone else. This system explains why American jobs have been exported overseas, why the debt of most Americans has increased, why the jobs which remain are generally underpaid (the glut of available workers creates an employers' market, so they can pay what they want for labor), and why the accumulation of wealth among the wealthy elite continues to grow at rates higher than ever before.

Third, people of all genders, colors, races, creeds, ethnicity, classes, and cultures must be valued equally and treated with equal respect and consideration, while also being offered equal opportunity for prosperity. If everyone, everywhere, is paid the same rate for their work, while at the same time is taxed equally without loopholes or deductions favoring the wealthy, then income, wealth and prosperity will redistribute naturally - easing the burdens on the poor and middle classes, making affluence available to all, but also denying ostentatious wealth to anyone. Cooperation, understanding, respect, appreciation, acceptance, interconnection, and mutuality become the bywords for the ethos for this new society.

Fourth, in such a society, where everyone is included and valued, the new ethic of community and mutual prosperity will naturally create a need for, and engender a commitment to, peace. Nearly all the wars fought since, and including, the Spanish Armada attack on the British in 1588 have had as their root cause economic competition, religious intolerance, and/or ethnic or racial prejudice. These root causes would be naturally eliminated by the social changes which are inevitable as the world moves into the new paradigm.

Finally, in order to better foster all the prescriptions for change, and to best create a sustainable civilization in the future, population levels must decline, probably by about half - not by execution or war, but slowly, evolving naturally, through education, removing the social stigma on contraception, making contraception widely available and affordable, and the rise of a common understanding regarding a mutual need to reduce waste, reduce the strain on our natural resources, and create a climate which will increase each individual's affluence in the future.

To assist in these goals, a redistribution of the population is also advisable. In smaller communities, where local production of products can supply and satisfy local needs and appetites, everyone's contribution becomes necessary. That leads to everyone being equally valued. At the same time, every community will have a local investment in employing wise, ecologically sound methods and materials, waste will be reduced to a minimum, and individual participation will be maximized. Those conditions will also lead to a more even distribution of labor, affluence and prosperity. I am not talking about capitalism, communism, socialism, or feudalism. I am suggesting that the new paradigm will be based on community, cooperation, respect, mutuality and equality.

Yes, the Age of Equality awaits.

Thus I Heard Zarathustra Tonight

The following are a few brief excerpts from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. The passages are especially poignant at the current moment in time. I add my commentary afterward, which is intended to challenge you to think about your choices and put Nietzsche's words into the perspective of the contemporary world.

First, allow me to quote from the chapter titled "The New Idol."

"Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states."

"A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.' But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen."

"The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all - is called 'life.'"

"Culture, they call their theft - and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them!"

"Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money - these impotent ones!"

"Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, these idolaters."

And now, let me share some lines from the chapter titled "The Flies in the Marketplace."

"Little do people understand what is great - that is to say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great things. Around the devisers of new values revolveth the world: - invisibly it revolveth. But around the actors revolveth the people and the glory: such is the course of things."

"To upset - that meaneth with him [the actor] to prove. To drive mad - that meaneth with him to convince. And blood is counted by him the best of all arguments."

"Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place, - and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour. But the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also from thee they want Yea or Nay. Only in the marketplace is one assailed by Yea? or Nay?"

But -

"Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great: away from the market-Place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values. But take care lest it be thy fate to suffer all their [the rich and powerful] poisonous injustice! They flattereth thee, as one flattereth a God or devil. Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones. They think much about thee with their circumscribed souls - thou art always suspected by them! They rejoice if once thou be humble enough to be frivolous."

Yes, indeed, "Thus spake Zarathustra."

Nietzsche wrote these thoughts in a different age, in a different world. The world of the marketplace was only just beginning to develop into what we have today. He knew not of the cajoling of advertising or the subtle, yet insidious, seduction of television and movies and the planned obsolescence of high-tech toys. He had not seen newscasters molding public opinion even as they fabricated news, slanted to make you believe in the necessity of the state and the necessity of its laws, its wars, its tax codes, its destruction of the environment for profit, and its erosion of individuality.

Our ancestors were herded off their private farms into cities. Humanity cannot subsist any longer without big agriculture and the multinational corporations that ship their packaged food to the supermarkets of the world. There is no land left to subsist upon. Your lives are those of serfs, selling away the precious hours of your so-short lives to earn a few dollars to feed and house and clothe your families. Those hours of your lives are stolen and can never be regained. Meanwhile, your toil further enriches the wealthy, while today, in the current marketplace, you are lucky if you can find a job. And if you cannot, some smug Repugnican says you are lazy and really just don't want to work.

This is bigotry in action my friends. These are the same bigoted epithets once used against African-Americans, still hurled at Latinos, and now hung about your necks. Today, the bigotry is against everyone who is not among the wealthiest or who does not, will not or cannot conform to social norms, as well as anyone and everyone who is willing to stand up and complain about the current situation. Yes, those who Nietzsche called idolaters, and seekers of wealth and power are the one's who mold the opinions of the sheep, who are then taught to direct their bigoted epithets at you for them.

The wealthy want all the money and all the property. They want you to keep doing their bidding. And if you cease to be of use to them, they don't want you to be around. They don't want to educate you, because you might wake up and see what is going on. Without education, you will not want anything more for yourself, and you will not question their pre-eminence. When you reach your mid-forties to early fifties, you are undesirable as a worker because your most productive years, your most malleable years, and your cheapest years are all behind you. If you are old or infirm, you are useless, so you may be discarded. They do not want to pay for you to be made well again, there is no profit in that for them. They do not want to pay to ease your health concerns when you are old and they have used you up, there is no profit in the for them. They do not want you to have a Social Security pension, there is no profit in that for them, either.

The state will not protect you, it is owned by those idolaters. They pay for politicians' campaigns, and advertising. They keep the elected in their pockets with perks from lobbyists. The state is here, not to serve you, but to serve the wealthy, that is why the wealthy are not asked to pay taxes. The wars that the state fights in the name of some platitude are really only fought to advance some economic advantage craved by the wealthiest within the state whose money buys the politicians, the judges, and the newscasters. The wealthy own the media, and then they create the myth of a left-wing media bias, but only to convince you to shut your mind, stop thinking for yourself, avoid listening to anything contrary to their official point of view, and buy into their programs, their wars, and the favored status for the wealthy in the courts and tax codes.

They placate you with gadgets. They give you Play Stations, and iPods, and iPads, and Social Networking, and cell phones with digital cameras that are also mp3 players that also offer a constant stream of apps, and hundreds of channels on television, and designer clothing. Then, they charge you exorbitant prices for these items, and plan them to be obsolete in 2 or 3 years so you'll buy the products all over again. Most of these items are made of plastic, so when one becomes obsolete, it will sit in a dump for thousands of years since it won't biodegrade. And all this plastic is made from petroleum. Every product is shipped across the world to local marketplaces, and that shipping uses more petroleum.

To assure an endless supply of petroleum, these multinational corporations demand states go to war in the Middle and Near East. So your sons die, not to free people from oppression, but to further enrich the already wealthy by securing the oil needed for the companies to make their products and ship them to you.

Meanwhile, the state tells you it is your use of the automobile that destroys the climate. No one can legitimately argue that individuals using the combustion engine do contribute to climate change. But the greatest damage to our climate through petroleum use arises from military engagement in wars, the shipping of products around the world, air travel, and industry as it makes the useless toys and products that sap future generations of natural resources and which brainwash you into thinking this is such a marvelous life which it is anything but. The state takes special care not to regulate those uses of petroleum, only yours.

And yet, you have come to believe, you have no way out. Your children must have the latest gadgets, latest clothing, most desirable designer labels, and hippest new games if they are to be popular at school, have the right friends, and properly be indoctrinated into conformity. You have to pay for the petroleum which heats your home and your bath water, and which powers your automobile. You must put food on the table and shelter your family. You must provide abundant Christmases and the funds for an endless stream of mind-numbing entertainment - movies, restaurants, vacations, and parties, not to mention whatever your drugs of choice may be, including alcohol.

To further numb your mind, your culture creates stars out of the most attractive people. You become obsessed with them because the media tells you to be and bombards you with their pictures, their movies and TV shows, advertising with them as spokespeople, magazine articles, gossip shows on television, and on and on. So, you give yourself over to fascination with them and join in the cult dedicated to celebrity worship.

To buy all these products, provide a comfortable life for your family, and enrapture yourself with the fascination of shiny toys and beautiful celebrities, you must sell your life, hour by hour, week by week, and still you must go into debt. You must also live with stress, and a constant fear that if you lose your job, you could lose everything. So, you shut your mouth, take whatever shit your employer decides to shove up your ass, and you go to work everyday, for the rest of your life. In so doing, you have so few hours left over to spend with your loved ones that you forget what love is, lose your connection to them, and end up divorced or find your kids arrested or overdosed. Why? So you can keep paying the interest on the debt you have accumulated. And then, you will die far too young because of the accumulation of stress and the toxic conditions corporations have wrecked upon the environment.

This is not freedom, my friends. This is a form of slavery, indentured servitude, which you cannot opt out of. This is the future for as long as can be imagined.

Is this the life you want to give your children? Is this the world you want to endow upon future generations? Is consuming, amassing debt, selling the hours of your life, and creating piles of non-biodegradable refuse while you idolize beautiful celebrities the future you would choose for yourself if you had a choice? Is this servitude to the marketplace really fulfilling enough to bequeath to all future generations?

Or -

Are you brave enough to be an individual, think for yourself, take your balls out of your bosses' wallets, and demand a better world?

The Avenging Dragon

Witness the avenging dragon!
He breathes fire in the night,
forcing you to notice
the future's starving children,
entombed by the bondage
of today's commerce.
Yet unborn waifs spit up
lungs, hurling a bloody pile,
overtaxed by their ancestors'
bequeathed burden. Who
represented their right
to consider and refuse?
No soul guarded against
usurping politicians
who funneled inconceivable
mountains of money
into the wealthy's vaults,
hoping to save their own
position, prestige and power.
And you let them,
in your lustful orgy
advancing today's interests
over tomorrow's foreclosure.
The avenging dragon roars
with Robespierrean authority,
as collecting masses coalesce
into a single spirited voice,
"Today marks the beginning
of the end of wealth."

The Flying Squirrels' Wailing Lamentations

Frozen outside,
on roughly coarse crags,
the vanilla king rode
on the back of a coal
colored panther
flinging Melipona bees
at dark orchid pods
until ice cream rained
over every velvety carpet
that stubbornly refused
to stimulate consumption.

Acorns, meanwhile, ceased
issuing from oaks and hickory
nuts eschewed to be chewed
with inanimate reincarnation,
leaving a whole generation
of starving, skinny, crazed
squirrels to offer their bodies
as asphalt roadkill sacrifices
to the great nut god -
for whose favor they pined
throughout the unfalling
autumn failing in 2008.

The god of nuts, cruelly
and remorselessly
denied sustenance
to flying squirrels,
relegating them to a fate
Boris and Natasha never
succeeded to inflict on Rocky.

"What's a few squirrels,"
pundits deadpanned in the Post,
as the entire east coast
became an acorn free zone.

The god of nuts bellowed
bellicose guffaws, as he schemed
in league with the vanilla king,
and the risen-cream's rain
suffocated each bank's acorn
retirement stash squirreled away.

The flying squirrels' wailing
lamentations fell on deaf ears,
echoing through empty safes'
depositories; for redemption,
the sole solution
offered by the vanilla king
sanctioned doling out more
bees to pollinate the orchids
believing that increased vanilla
wealth would end up trickling
down to feed the squirrels.

Unquenchable Thirst

Concrete and asphalt sprouted palm trees
as the caravansari out-flanked the oasis
in every direction. The one-time savanna,
bared of all nurtrient laden vegetation
by the grinding, pulsing prurient horns
blaring out "The Stripper," bore witness
to shrinking wetlands' evaporation while
deep within Gaia's bowels her black, oozing
blood gushed upward, poisoning the sky
with the fool's gold of scheming human
design. Metropoli blossomed on the polluted
banks. Glaciers, melted by the stifling,
rising temperatures, which should have fed
irrigating rivers who wailed the agonizing
screams of poverty's emaciated children,
while the bottled remnants wound their
way to the lap of luxury, shipped across
the globe, slaking the opulent craving
of a nation who polluted their own
waters into actual undrinkability
with the plastic, petroleum chemicals
they force-fed into Gaia's dusty dermis.
The nation's public only cries out
in concern for their wallets' reduced fat,
blinded to the onrushing sandstorm
of unquenchable thirst.

On an American Homeless Odyssey

We are, all of us, everywhere, poised upon some precipice in one or more areas of our lives. Relationships sail along on waters seemingly as smooth as glass. Nonetheless, storm clouds seem to billow up from nowhere at odd moments when we least expect them. Careers march their progress along apparently natural pathways until shifting winds alter trade parameters, upsetting traditional market patterns, thus creating imbalances which industrialists address with a lack of creative insight by reducing the workforce, placing road blocks in the boulevards to continued employment and economic security. The mettle of enduring friendships often erodes when the forge's heat exceeds convenience's limits. During those moments which impose life's greatest challenges, people - individuals, families, friends, communities and nations - must learn to band more closely together, coming to one another's assistance, lessening each other's burdens, cooperating in a harmony of mutuality, expressing understanding and communal empathy, and building an atmosphere of social unity. Those kinds of behavior patterns offer the only real opportunities for weathering the onslaught of sudden calamity.

However, the only model the contemporary world possesses for dealing with global catastrophe finds its roots in capitalism's expression of the Puritan ethic. The viewpoint endemic to that paradigm expresses only one potential solution: compete harder, with a leaner overhead and overwhelm the competition with a more efficient business model. Out from such an approach, the individual seeks to hang on to possessions, hold tight to belief systems and find a way to defeat one's competitor(s) - who are always one's neighbors and counterparts, fellow human beings. Thus the competitive model to which we cling stresses disunity, disharmony and disassociation. In the process, the self is exalted over all other interests. In this way, survival of the fittest breeds inhumanity on all levels, coalescing humanity's focus solely on self-interest.

In the contemporary world, the ramifications arising from the capitalist's approach to all areas of life (competition and a determination to defeat all others in one's own quest to gain a reasonable life) yields two related and predictable outcomes: 1) the rise of a super-wealthy class, along with 2) the rapidly growing underbelly of capitalism's waste as seen in the ever-spreading homeless phenomenon. Homelessness spreads throughout the contemporary culture at an alarmingly and exponentially increasing rate.

Those people espousing the contemporary world's version of the Puritan ethic tell you that homelessness only arises in those who are: 1) too lazy to work, 2) too stupid to learn the skills necessary to work, 3) addicted to a substance and consequently rendered unfit for the work force, and/or 4) psychologically/emotionally unfit for acceptable social interaction in the contemporary work force. The entire line of thinking which gives rise to the use of those four circumstances as explaining away the social maladjustment and economic plight of homelessness derives from elitist propaganda, spread and nurtured over the years, and which has now risen to the level of conventional wisdom. However, this propaganda does not gain veracity simply because it has become culturally accepted.

In the first place, there is no single model which can be applied as the common face of the homeless. Men and women of all ages, from all backgrounds, with varying levels of educational advancement, differing religious and political beliefs, and even multifaceted lifestyles all comprise the ranks of the homeless. Psychologists want to name all homeless as bipolar and give them mind-control drugs to reduce the vigor with which they express their individuality so the psychologists can then take the now malleable individualist and shape him or her into a meek, conforming automaton who will act in what society deems as acceptable behavior. Meanwhile, city governments enact laws declaring that no one may sleep on the streets, in the parks, or other areas within city limits.

Many of us who are homeless are highly intelligent individuals who possess an extensive work history of having been employed in highly responsible positions. Many of us are life-long non-conformists who refuse to be forced to not only accept but willingly conform to the culturally accepted lifestyle. Many of us believe that much of what comprises the culturally acceptable lifestyle is actually immoral, unethical and unnatural. Many of us have been cast aside by proper society as no longer offering a worthwhile contribution. Many of us suffer from injuries or ailments, yet find that the government refuses to cover under the terms of the disability insurance the citizen has paid into one's entire working life. Many of us function in the world just fine, finding employment, occasionally shelter, often camping out, and enjoy the mobility afforded in this lifestyle to move from city to city with the passage of seasons or years much the same way as the cowboy did in the 1800s. However, none of us are going to go away simply because you decree through municipal legislation that we cannot sleep within your city limits. Furthermore, many of you will find yourselves in the same situation during the next 2 or 3 years as this economy continues to reel, sputter and crumble due to mismanagement and corporate greed.

Let me provide a little glimpse into the homeless existence.

Most shelters are administered by the Salvation Army or other religious entities. Nearly all of these religious entities are Christian. The food served to individuals staying in a shelter is provided by charitable entities (sometimes, but very rarely, individuals) who are most often church groups. In order to stay, and eat, in a Christian run shelter, the individual is always required to participate in some kind of extended religious prayer service (the Salvation Army usually requires a half hour, other Christian groups require as much as an hour of prayer in conjunction with an actual worship service, all before the meal will ever be served) administered by the shelter's affiliation. Even when an individual finds shelter with a non-denominational, secular facility, many of the church groups who serve food require a pre-meal prayer.

I happened to stay in a secular shelter. I am primarily a Taoist/Zen Buddhist who does not believe in a thinking creator who consciously willed our physical universe into being and that there is no real plan or reason for existence other than to experience, grow and share love, honor and respect to, from and between all life. I could never, in good conscience, stay at a Salvation Army shelter or Gospel Mission shelter. The prayer requirements would be oppressive and the constant shoving down my throat of religious dogma would be demeaning to me and my beliefs as well as an unwelcome expression of superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

The shelter where I resided has beds for 100 men. Every shelter has requirements that homeless individuals must follow in order to remain continuously at the shelter. Salvation Army shelters put one to work, unpaid mind you, for several weeks or months in return for staying at the shelter. At the secular shelter where I stay, one must sign up with the "works" program and accept any job offered. Those are usually manual labor and normally pay at 10 cents per hour over minimum wage. If one is disabled, or has filed a claim with Social Security for disability benefits, that individual is, not only, not required to register for work, but is required to not look for work and may not accept work (meaning that individual will not have any source for money until the Social Security claim is decided (and those usually take a couple of years). Everyone, at all shelters, from what I can ascertain, is required to provide a daily breathalyzer sample as one re-enters the facility at night (meanwhile, pot smokers and hard drug users can come and go as they please without any real check or test). One cannot have any amount of alcohol on one's breath exposed by the test. If one does, one is denied entry, has their items given to them, and they are sent packing back to the streets.

I believe the length of continuous stay is limited at all shelters. The shelter where I was located allows one up to 90 days, but one must meet weekly eligibility requirements and have one's eligibility approved by one's case manager each week. In other words, one may stay for up to 90 consecutive days, but is approved for 7 days at a time (and, of course, any day one could be expelled from the facility for breaking a rule). Once one finishes one's initial 90 days, that homeless man must return to the streets for a minimum of 90 days before he may return to the shelter. At that point, the individual may choose between a 30 consecutive day stay (which would conclude the total number of days that individual may stay at the shelter during a calendar year or a 5 day stay. If an individual opts for the 5 day stay, that homeless individual must return to the streets for another 15 days minimum before he or she can return for another 5 day stay. One faces a cap in the total amount of 120 days in the shelter for a calendar year. If a homeless individual enters the shelter on the 90 day program and screws up along the way (for instance, comes in with an alcohol reading on the breathalyzer, or gets in a fight with another person residing in the shelter, or refuses work offered by the "works" program, or breaks some other rule) that individual will only be eligible for stays of 5 days at a time with 15 non-shelter staying day interludes. However, the remaining days not used from the original 90 consecutive day stay, continue as eligible days within the 120 day total framework.

The shelter within which I resided is a warehouse. There are 100 single sized bunk beds (50 upper bunks and 50 lower bunks) in the facility. The communal shower accommodates up to 6 people at a time. The shelter provides 3 urinals and 3 toilets along with 6 sinks. The dining hall does not have room for all 100 men at one time. However, there is a large outside patio area with several picnic tables and benches one can use as additional dining space.

The day begins with lights on and a good morning announcement over the loud speaker at 5 A.M. The dining area is opened for coffee at that time. The coffee is usually very weak, and many men purchase their own instant coffee to have a decently flavored cup. The coffee maker/dispenser is pulled by about 5:30 A.M., so one had best be quick if one wants a cup. Breakfast is usually served at about 5:45 A.M. The breakfast varies, depending on which charity is providing that meal. One day a week “clients” usually receive scrambled eggs with cut up hot dogs in them (they call it quiche). On another day, “clients” receive scrambled eggs and bacon. Once in a while, four students from the University of Arizona drop by to feed the sheltered men breakfast omelets consisting of diced potatoes, scrambled eggs, grated cheese and beans or sausage in a flour tortilla. The shelter also serves some breakfasts. When it does, the meals are: one day a week is reserved for pancakes, another for French toast, another day is usually reserved for cold cereal and a fourth day is reserved for oatmeal or cream of wheat. Only on rare occasions does the shelter prepare eggs and sausage for inhabitants.

All shelter occupants at all shelters are sent packing, and must be out the door by 7 A.M. If one does not have a job, one must go looking for work. That usually begins with a trip to the "works" facility to register and see if they have any work for you that day. If one does not have a job, that individual's continued residency is earned by showing 10 jobs applied for per week. Since I am disabled and pursuing a disability claim, I was not allowed to look for work, but I was still sent out at 7 A.M. with everyone else. None of the “clients” may return to the shelter and be on the lot before 4:30 P.M. Doors for re-entry open at 5 P.M. What men do between 7 A.M. and 5 P.M. is up to each individual. The homeless men must fill their own days.

Dinner is usually served about 5:45 P.M. Dinner usually consists of a main dish, a side dish, bread and a dessert. The main dish nearly always contains meat. The rare times when it does not contain meat, it contains cheese. If there is a vegetable, it is nearly always put in with the main dish. The side dish is nearly always coleslaw or a green salad (and salads are nearly always just lettuce out of a bag). Very rarely, canned corn is served as a side dish instead of salad. The main dishes might be spaghetti with meat sauce, meat lasagna, sloppy Joes, macaroni and ground beef in a sauce, bean burritos, or a dish they call gumbo but which is boiled beans with some kind of meat in it (and no okra). I'm sure you understand, there are variations of these kinds of meals, usually with ground beef as the basis. Once a month, a family brings fried chicken.

The men are not allowed to bring food into the shelter. Therefore, if we want to eat, we must eat that which is served to us. I am a vegetarian. I am unable to process meat through my bowels. If I eat meat, I end up not being able to relieve myself of waste. Several weeks into my stay, I saw my physician. During the course of that doctor visit, I was informed that because of my high blood pressure, I may not eat dairy products anymore (no milk, no cheese, no butter, no yogurt and no eggs). Also, an analysis of some kidney stones I passed revealed that the stones are 70% calcium caused by excess calcium buildup from green leafy vegetables, especially spinach. I was told to stop eating green leafy vegetable matter (salads), to stop eating beans of all kinds, and to stay away from calcium enriched items (like orange juice which has calcium added). As you can see, from that point forward, I could no longer eat anything served at the shelter with the breakfast exceptions of cold cereal (but without the milk), pancakes, and oatmeal or cream of wheat (again without any milk on them) and the dinner exceptions of the occasional corn side dish and some of the desserts.

I receive food stamps. The amount I receive basically allowed me to spend $5.50 per day (that amount was increased on April 1st to about $6.60 per day). So, I have to live on what I can purchase at the grocery store for that amount. I find I can get an apple, an orange (or tangelo sometimes), a couple of bananas, two or three Roma tomatoes, an avocado or two, a carrot stick or two, some juice, a bread roll or two, a small tub of potato salad (if I get this I must reduce my vegetables and fruit somewhat) and maybe even a treat like an apple fritter or cherry turnover each day. It's not a lot, but I make do.

The shelter where I stayed offers another service which I believe is unique to it among shelters nationally. This shelter has a van capable of seating 12 people. So, the shelter provides one ride (for up to 12 men) in the morning from the shelter and makes stops at the closest DES office (Department of Economic Security, the office which administers state economic aid), the Guadalupe "soup kitchen" (this charity operates 7 days a week, is funded and staffed by a Catholic church) where one may obtain morning coffee, day old bread donated by the bakeries of local supermarkets, and sack lunches prepared by the Guadalupe staff. The third stop offered by the van was a downtown park, however, due to the current economic crisis the third stop was changed to a branch, day office of the homeless shelter near that park. At 4:45 P.M., the van did return to the downtown park to pick up as many as 12 men who wanted to ride back in it to the shelter. However, when the economy turned sour, the ride “home” was discontinued entirely. Nonetheless, I think this is a pretty remarkable kindness offered by that shelter.

In the evening, after the dining room is cleaned up from dinner service, the room and the patio are open for client use. Cigarette smokers tend to congregate outside since smoking is not allowed indoors. The shelter has a couple of chessboards for those who want to play chess. A water fountain is provided in the dining hall (strangely enough, another one is provided in the bathroom area). A large screen, flat screen TV was donated for the dining room. However, the TV doesn't go on until about 7:30 P.M. It is at about 8 P.M. when a snack is provided and a DVD is selected for evening viewing. One may stay up as late at night as one's inclination or whimsy dictates. However, after the movie is over, the TV goes off. Sometimes the snack is fruit. Sometimes it is cookies. Once a week the snack is a sandwich (a piece of lunch meat inside two pieces of bread, plain - no mayo or mustard). However, the usual snack provided is pretzels.

The shower is open for use 23 hours per day. There is a hygiene table which offers soap, shaving cream, roll on deodorant and shampoo. However, the shampoo and the shaving cream are doled out in small doses, just enough for one usage. The soap bars are small and don't seem to make much in the way of suds. The deodorant is communal, so if one wants to use it, one applies it at the table (and the same roll on dispenser is used for each person who uses it). One can also apply a dab of toothpaste to one's toothbrush from a communal tube. No mouthwash is allowed into the shelter, because mouthwash contains alcohol and could be used for drinking purposes. The same is true of after shave lotion. One may also obtain a Q-tip a day. The shelter stopped supplying razors due to the budget crunch it incurred along with the rest of the nation. I was fortunate because I had my own Q-tips, shaving cream, deodorant, toothpaste, razors, bath soap and shampoo while staying at the shelter.

For most people, the lifestyle provided by this shelter wouldn't be too bad. The food, especially, is great for people with a normal diet. However, there exist circumstances making life in any shelter, even one as kind and giving as the one in which I dwelled, less than desirable.

The mix of men residing there is varied.

Some men in the shelter are what I think of as being, institutionally homeless. Those are the men who really do not want to work. They are mostly alcoholics and drug addicts. They come in for a day or two, or maybe even 5. They do this when the money they receive from their government check (VA pension, Social Security pension when old enough, Disability check, etc.) runs out toward the end of the month. As soon as the new month arrives, they go rent a room in a motel, buy the substance of their choice, and binge until they are broke again. These men are prone to arguments. They might even be dangerous.

Also present are methadone users. These are the men, who theoretically are using methadone to quit their heroin habit. However, most of them never really kick. They stay addicted to methadone, getting weaned down to low levels, but then getting sick enough to need more. I can't tell you how many there are, but there are more than just a few as I've become aware of at least three, without even asking. Some of these men are prone to theft, and one's personal items are not necessarily safe in the shelter.

Let me offer this example. I had coffee stolen a few days running when one of the methadone users weaseled his way into a “stay in” program for a few days in a row. He had asked me for coffee and I told him, "No, I don't ask for anything from anyone and can't give anything to anyone." Well, he just took it. One morning, I confronted him about it. We were called into the office to speak to one of the shelter managers. I was calm, kept my arms folded on my chest and leaned back against a desk while I explained why I suspected him (and there was strong circumstantial evidence, and I admitted it was circumstantial). The man came at me as he started his reply. I didn't flinch, but I didn't move to protect myself either. The shelter case worked got in between us, protecting me from any possible attack, and wrote the other man up for it. I felt I had to stand my ground and protect my possessions if I were to be respected and my property kept safe. It seemed to have worked, for a while.

With the institutionally homeless, the drama never really ends and they will bring it into the life of anyone they decide they don’t like. For instance, a few days to a week after I had the “conflict” with the thief, someone ratted on him for using drugs. There is a woman who is in charge of the shelter, so she decided to go through his belongings to see if he was in possession of any drugs. She never actually found any. However, the whole time she was conducting her search (and when one enters the shelter, one signs a waiver allowing one’s belongings to be searched at any time during one’s stay), the man continued to get in her face and spoke in a very loud voice as he expressed denial. He was expelled from the shelter. I’m sure he was expelled because he couldn’t control his behavior with her just as he couldn’t with me.

After that, I did occasionally run into this man. At first he accused me of ratting on him, which I didn’t and couldn’t because I wasn’t aware enough of his activities to be in a position to rat him out. Furthermore, I wouldn’t do that anyway. I am well aware that could get one killed or severely injured. He later found out I didn’t rat on him. Nonetheless, whenever he ran into me, he always had some accusation to sling in my direction. One time, as we rode on the same bus, he commented that he wished he had a gun so he could kill me. His reasoning was that, because I got him in trouble once (notice he never accepted any personal responsibility for any of his own actions), and he was written up for it, that led to him being evicted.

My response to him was to ignore him. I never looked at him and never responded to anything he said. I was pretending he didn’t exist. I liked to think of him as a figment of everyone else’s imagination. Things didn’t end there, however. Recently, I had some shower shoes stolen from my property. The shoes had pumpkins on them (my birthday being Halloween, it seemed fitting to have and use those shoes), so I realized no one would dare wear them around the facility. But I also realized this was likely a message. He had some new friends who, shortly before the theft, had come to stay at the shelter. I believed it was a statement, letting me know, “See, we can take anything of yours we want at any time.” I brought the loss to the attention of the man on duty, be he wasn’t concerned.

Now, at the same time as this occurred, that night and for the 3 nights preceding its occurrence, no charities showed up to feed us. The shelter didn’t have much on hand available. The dinners, which weren’t very edible for me in the first place, turned into something you wouldn’t feed your dog as table scraps. Given that I wasn’t feeling safe there any longer, the lack of food available to me, and the cutting back on services in general, I decided it was time to leave the shelter (at about the 60th day).

I’ve been struggling mightily since. I found a dry wash near the University in a residential neighborhood that seemed safe, so I spent a night there. I didn’t see anyone come around that night. So, I felt it was safe enough to leave my backpack there with most of my things in it. There was an area where the road went over the wash, a cemented bridge over a cemented wash. The thing was, it was blocked on the other end because it was cemented closed. Consequently, most of the area was completely dark. I put the backpack way in the back of that darkened area, thinking it wouldn’t be seen there. Well, I left the U of A before dark only to discover that someone did find it, had torn it all apart, and was laying there taking possession of my things. I chased him off, but realized I couldn’t leave my things there, so I needed a new sleeping site.

I spent one night in the University of Arizona library, working on my writing all night. The next night, I couldn’t stay at the U of A because they announced they were going to check for non-students between 1 AM and 7 AM, times the library computers are reserved for students, faculty and staff only. I spent that night in a 24 hour Laundromat. The next day, I had a suggestion made by some people I knew from the shelter about a place to stay where I had a general familiarity already with the location. It was in the dry Santa Cruz River, where I stayed when I first arrived in Tucson, but further south, just out of the city limits, meaning fewer potential hassles with the police. I stayed there the first night incident free. I even took a trial walk out to a Walgreens to pick up a prescription that was ready, a walk that probably took me a couple of hours. I left my backpack, and when I returned, it was there and no one had bothered my area. I finally felt safe. Well, I shouldn’t have. The next day, when I returned from the U of A, my sleeping bag, plastic tarp and backpack had been stolen. In the backpack were all of my clothes (other than what I am still wearing), all my paperwork from the doctor, my application for housing assistance, the paperwork for my Social Security Disability claim, and a folder in which I had placed the last of the photos from my life which I had saved (photos of old girlfriends, old friends, clippings from stories about me in newspapers and magazines, autographs from famous people I had met, and other personal items of memorabilia).

From this description of my experiences, you can begin to see what it is like to be a homeless person today. The petty becomes your focus. Drama circles in on you, even when you are trying to do nothing more than stay away from the world and its circumstances. There is really no where one can feel safe. There is no way to be certain you can hold on to anything, even your sanity. Just when you think you have secured some measure of routine and some reasonable lifestyle, the buzzards circling overhead will strike from above and eat your flesh while you are alive. Don’t ever get comfortable. Don’t ever let your guard down. Don’t ever feel safe. Don’t trust anyone.

I’m sure you are wondering, “Why doesn’t he return to the shelter?” Well, I can’t. Because I left, there is either a 30 or 90 day waiting period before I could return to it. But, since you’re likely still thinking the shelter isn’t half bad, allow me to return to describing shelter life, there’s more you ought to know.

The shelter also has its fair share of ex-cons. Some of them get on a program which aids them in re-integrating with society. Most of them end up become institutionally homeless. Most of them have addictions to one or more substances. They can be argumentative and dangerous as well. They are also prone to theft.

In addition to these men, the shelter houses a number of people, like I, trying to obtain Social Security Disability benefits. Some of us are really infirmed (again, like I, who Social Security seems to think is willing to make myself homeless just to avoid work, so benefits are denied, and one must learn to play the institutional bureaucracy game). Others are looking for a free ride. One also discovers that there are a large number of former military veterans living in shelters. It seems, over the last several decades, all of you out there who have demanded we support our troops when they are sent off to war refuse to support those same troops when they come home. They often return with PTSD. They have difficulty finding employment, and many end up on the streets - unwanted and no longer of use to the society who sent them to fight battles on their behalf.

There seemed to be a fair number of pot smokers at the shelter. There also seemed to be a fairly constant supply of pot. I don't use any these days. However, in the morning, when walking away from the shelter, I was always greeted with the aroma of burning marijuana in the air, announcing to everyone except the shelter workers that a group of men stood nearby, smoking marijuana. Since I did not know who I could and could not trust, and therefore, did not want to risk my bed if someone decided to rat me out (read, Mr. Methadone Man), I'm stayed clean. Besides, I really don't need it, and I never really liked the wake and bake. I never got anything done and later in the afternoon I ended up with a headache from the wake and bake, so I tended to eschew that scenario. At the end of my time living at a friend's home, I was only having a couple of hits a night anyway, and only when he offered (I, obviously, didn't have any money with which to purchase pot). I don’t really miss marijuana. However, it was the best pain reliever for my chronic back pain which I have yet found.

There are clearly a number of drinkers among the homeless in the shelter. I do not know how they get away with it, but I saw empty half pint and pint bottles of Popov vodka on the ground, so someone is drinking and getting away with it. I hardly ever drank during the last several years. So, not drinking was not an issue for me. Clearly though, Popov seems to be an alcohol used often, because I see empty bottles of it all over Tucson in my daily travels. Maybe it's cheap? (Perhaps one can say, "One knows when one is bottoming out because one starts drinking Popov Vodka.")

The hygiene habits of many of the men in the shelter leave a lot to be desired. No one covers their mouth when they cough or sneeze. When I first got there (and was eating the food), one man coughed directly at my plate of food. Needless to say, I was sick for 2 weeks after that. Few of the men wash their hands after using the restroom. Some don't shower regularly. A few never shower at all (and smell like it, too!). Some men never seem to even change their clothing, let alone turn their dirty clothes in for laundry service (which comes up for everyone in the shelter every 8 days - and which I took care to make sure I used each time my turn arose). There is no Kleenex provided in the shelter. So, rather than tear off a bit of toilet paper, nearly every man in the shelter, and nearly all homeless men I see on the street, simply uses one finger to close one nostril and blows hard out the other. They may do that into a bathroom sink, into a large trash can, while they are standing next to you and engaged in conversation, or just anywhere when the urge strikes them. One could become jaded to the occurrence except that the really liquid, runny mucus which comes out sometimes drools down their facial hair or face. The art of "hocking a loogie" has been mastered by most of these guys, too. Perhaps I am a little too squeamish for some of these practices? However, I do, nonetheless, find them repulsive.

Another of my pet peeves while staying at the shelter concerned how a particular situation was handled. One sightless man lived among us. When he needed to get around in the "dorm," he usually asked someone near him to lead him. So, when he needed to urinate, all the men who help him lead him to the urinal. However, by the time the sightless man gets ready to urinate he invariably misses the urinal and ends up urinating right on the floor by the urinal. So, there is nearly always a puddle of his urine on the floor by the urinal that one would have to stand in to urinate at that particular stall. I really don't get why the men who lead him didn't simply suggest that, since he never gets it in the urinal (and it isn't his fault), why not lead him to the toilet so he could sit down and be fairly certain of hitting the mark? I guess that would be too much to ask. I guess it was also too much to ask to have a restroom sanitary enough not to present such a health hazard.

I also have to wonder at the logic behind sending all of the men out of the shelter for 10 hours every day from 7 A.M. to 5 P.M. Is this not a reversal of AA/NA principles? With so many men at the shelter having substance abuse issues, isn't the idea of sending them back out to the streets essentially one which puts the addict back into the very same environment, among the very same people and in the same situations which would provide temptation and potentially lead to relapse? I understand that the shelter cannot take on the problems of 100 men 24/7 unless it has a much larger staff and one trained to handle a wide variety of psychological, socially adaptive, and emotional issues. However, sending them right back into the environment which reinforces substance abuse rather than deters it doesn't make any sense either. The shelter does provide a couple of AA meetings per week in the evening, but I am sorry, I just don't think that is enough to offset ten hours per day, 7 days per week of re-immersing the addict/alcoholic into the environment of temptation and among the association of users.

What do homeless people do with their days? Some panhandle. Some drink and/or use drugs. Some get methadone and find a quiet park in which they sleep most of the day away. Some walk around, not really knowing what to do, looking for coins on the ground. Some shoplift. Some look for work. Some go to the library and read or use the computers, mostly playing online poker or mob wars. Some find friends, hang out and talk the day away. Some do puzzles. Some work on their writing projects, or pen new blog entries. Some find a place to watch TV, or watch their favorite shows on the computer at the library.

How the public reacts to homeless people and homelessness in general imposes a profound influence on the homeless. Let me offer myself as an example.

My appearance tended to cross boundaries before I had my belongings stolen. I was always clean and neat. I smelled decent. However, I also wandered around some of the time with nothing to do, looking for change on the ground. I do that even when I am going somewhere in particular. I also have a much darker tan than one would expect of someone not living a homeless lifestyle not named George Hamilton. I use the computers at the University of Arizona, and because of my age (56 years), I do not look like someone who belongs there (I don't dress like a professor and don't carry books, notebooks, writing paper or go to classrooms and certainly do not look like someone in his early twenties who might be expected to be a student). Yet, my clothing, even now, does not look disheveled or filthy. I still make sure to wash my face and hands as often as ever, and I take showers as often as I can (up to three times a week). Sometimes, when I eat my lunch, I sit on a park bench (or just munch while using the computer at the U of A), but, other times, I have to sit at a bus stop to eat. One dead give-away of being homeless is carrying too much stuff around, or carrying bedding around.

Consequently, I am sometimes approached by homeless people asking for change or cigarettes or bus fare. However, I also get stares from people who show their disdain and contempt, clearly viewing themselves as superior to me. Hey, people, I am the same guy today I was a few months ago. I'm still the same man who worked on "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "Annabelle's Wish." I'm still a published poet. If you look me up online, you'd think I was "somebody." But, when college students see me on campus or when someone approaches a bus stop and sees me sitting there eating my lunch, I become sub-human in their eyes and am treated as such.

I've got news for you, folks, all homeless are not drug-addict, alcoholic, panhandling, smelly, unkempt, useless bums. I've met a homeless man who speak 14 languages, fluently (!), and just wants to escape being badgered by the CIA into working for them. Another homeless man I met (about half my age) dropped out of the University of Arizona, though he was a philosophy major and has a clear and keen mind. I've seen other homeless: who travel the world, who can offer keen insight into most situations, who are excellent chefs, and on and on. There is a wealth of talent and skill among the homeless which is not being utilized for the betterment of society and the individual's opportunity to lead a productive and affluent life. This is not the fault of the homeless person, nor does it render that person as being less than human, or at least a substandard human who deserves to be treated with disdain if treated anyway at all.

The way the economy is going, more and more of you are going to be joining me on the streets before much longer. Don't think it can't happen to you, because if you do, you will be the exact person homelessness will take in its grasp. I've seen married couples in free clinics for the homeless seeking badly needed medical attention because they lost their jobs, their homes and their medical insurance. I've met skilled tradesmen who have been rendered homeless, men in their 30s, who should be in the prime of their lives. I've met people with naïve personalities and trusting natures, taken advantage of by others and rendered homeless as a result, and then continually robbed of their own funds as they con the naïve into supplying liquor and drugs just to retain their friendship. I've met youngsters in their late teens and twenties who cannot adapt to the current culture and don't want to because they find it anathema.

Everyone alive deserves a little respect and to be treated like an equal. Sure, it's no longer politically correct (and consequently, not socially acceptable) to treat racial, ethnic and religious minorities as less than equal. However, nearly every single one of you, nearly every day of your life treats the homeless as inferior. By treating us that way, you reinforce poor self images which were ingrained by demanding parents. You reinforce our lack of belief in ourselves.

Consequently, you help keep us in our position. You, who want to preach about Christian charity, can go do something nice for someone once a month, or maybe donate a few bucks to a charity once a year, and pat yourselves on the back. You daily actions and attitudes expressed to the homeless belie that image of the charitable humanitarian and brand you as being a social elitist and classist bigot.

Do not believe that your savior will absolve you of your arrogant inhumanity and narcissistic sense of superiority. No, because if the stories about your savior are to be believed, he took the leper in his arms and healed the leper, he stopped the stoning of a prostitute and he loved all the downtrodden and he damned the consumerist, elitist commerce practiced in the temple, while preaching a message that sought to bridge the divide of classes, demanded everyone live a daily life which exemplified the teachings of their religion, denigrated opulence, scorned wealth, and offered love and inclusion to the poor, the hopeless and the downtrodden! Indeed, ask yourselves just how would Jesus treat the homeless? Would he scorn them, ridicule them, ignore them, refuse them aid, food or shelter? No! He would tell you they are your brothers and sisters and must be treated as such.

Well, the saddest truth of all is that the continued manner in which this generation, this culture, and this economy seek to proceed in the face of so much suffering will doom you to the same fate as those you scorn today. Your economy is in an accelerating downward spiral. You are caught in a cycle - too few people have enough discretionary income to buy the products the wealthy want to sell you. So, the wealthy lay off more people as a means of trying to maintain their income level through reducing expenditures. The more people laid off, the fewer products bought, leading to more layoffs and on and on. This will continue until the widespread poverty becomes so perversely proliferated that the poor will rise up against the wealthy on a global scale. You cannot defeat the economic enemy called poverty with competitive, truculent, avaricious capitalism. You must create a new model. The model must be one in which all people can share a modest, responsible affluence, no one should be wealthy and no one should be poor. That is the goal this world must learn to pursue. You must learn to work cooperatively, harmoniously, responsibly, ecologically, and humanely to create a better future, a lasting future, a peaceful future, and a fulfilling future.

This essay has been selected by Sabellapress for inclusion in an anthology which they will publish and release in the summer of 2009 under the title, "Unhoused Voices: Granting Change for the Homeless."

This Charitable Nation

This charitable nation sends vast sums of money to aid those unfortunates who suffer from the harsh calamities natural disasters wreck. This charitable nation air lifts food, water and medical supplies to the needy and starving citizens in foreign countries. This charitable nation deposes dictators in foreign countries, and in the process of bringing the "freedom of democracy" to the people of those countries, this charitable nation destroys their infrastructure, decimates their economies, induces civil war and imposes a martial law more restrictive than the preceding dictator's government exerted. This charitable nation wants to erect its own Berlin Wall, seeking to prevent the natural, migratory and instinctual urges of the poor who only want their fair share of the affluence available within its borders. This charitable nation supplies funds, and sometimes even equipment and manpower, to assist in rebuilding the infrastructure relevant to the businesses within its own cities - while ignoring the needs: evacuation, food, health, housing and welfare of the citizens in those cities - devastated by natural disaster. This charitable nation offers hundreds of billions of dollars to businesses and businessmen whose insatiable greed induced them to exercise poor decisions, wrecking havoc in the national and world economies, while supplying the mere pittance of $500 to most of its citizens, all of whom were affected by the economic collapse and most of whom engaged in no contracts or other circumstances which led to or induced that collapse. Meanwhile, this charitable nation provides no relief whatsoever to the poorest citizens - who need assistance the most but will, instead, find public assistance to the poor, as well as privately funded charitable assistance to the poor, drastically cut. This charitable nation spends exorbitant sums for projects and policies its elected officials deem necessary, whether or not the citizens concur, and then passes on the bill for payment to its children and grandchildren with accumulated, usurious rates of interest at the same time as incorporating irrational and economically stifling inflation. This charitable nation provides tax shelters and itemized deductions to the wealthy, enabling them to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, while the middle class is taxed into poverty. This charitable nation systematically reduces funding to the poor and those who give aid to the poor, stealing the shelters for the homeless as it both creates more homeless everyday and also enacts laws to prevent the homeless from camping on any land within its national borders. This charitable nation has converted LBJ's war on poverty into a war against the poor, everywhere, seemingly seeking to exterminate the poor of every land in a cultural/economic genocide.

A Critical Mass

“For the human race to survive, the human race must remain civilized.” - Rod Serling

Dreams form the space between heartbeats – life
advances by inhaling rain’s perfume, or listening
to the ocean’s roar; unrelenting torrents release
information in floods, at lightning speed. What are we
missing right now? Why must we yearn?
Knowledge appears complexly thorough,
yet remains a blank page to the superstitious.
Oh Clio! Lead me down your byway, to understanding’s harbor.

Kether
Anticipation
Unity > Infinity

An airless breeze hung
still, languidly unblowing
on a faceless void.

Breath suspended in still silence. Uniform
un-form sketched itself upon a blank
canvas. Uncondensed molecules, huelessly
unpainted, roamed where a needleless
compass failed to indicate.

Eternal nothingness floated
upon a waterless sea: Oceanos.
Behold Oceanos as the circle,
a completed, omnipresent circuit.

Latently, origin and terminus
co-situated non-existently.

Oceanos sat poised, ready
to beget endlessly,
self-satisfied within unprovoked potency,
a unified whole – unrealized contentment.

Singularity, coreless and unclothed,
rested: inertialessly inert.

Tranquil harmony tolled unimagined bells
with a soundless, polyphonic symphony,
unheard, desireless and unsung.

Oh immanent Oceanos, in Oneness
with Tethys, inseparably united
like the caduceus, you wind indivisibly
as Father/Mother: the Original Originator –
your realm transcends contemplation:
not of the Beyond, just the Beyond.

Pre-existent Pluto’s subatomic potential
hid in the yet to be conceived Underworld,
scalelessly balanced, an utterly
whole unmanifestation.

Dreamless sleep permeated
while Undifferentiated Unity soared
unexpressed, unaware and undesigned:
pre-cognitive, like Oliver Sacks’
“sleepy sickness” patients.

Chokmah
Action
Singularity = Duality

The monad yawned and stretched. A great,
insatiable, Supra-Massive Black Hole pulsed
incessant rhythm at Unity’s
heart – uncovering Splendor, impelling
Singularity to erupt from a critical mass.

Universal Supra-Consciousness, Ouranos,
emerged into Duality with Gaia: each saw
their reflections arise together upon Oceanos’
placid face – the looking glass,
where Ouranos’ and Gaia’s gazes awoke.

Ouranos, the great impeller,
Prime Mover, through Eros
you embolden Creation:

Copulation encouraged –
worth’s ultimate expression:
union through Loving intent.
Birth implicates meaning.

Mass and energy differentiated. Yang
quark encountered yin electron
intuitively. One mitosis yields two:
Adam/thesis/male/positive/active/energy/light
inferred a shadow reality –
Eve/antithesis/female/negative/receptive/mass/darkness.

Only awareness of other yields self-comprehension:
definitions express nuances in relationship.

Mercifully, from the primordial relativistic
jet and plasma beacon,
illumination flashed: lightning
bolted from nowhere –
a strobe light upon the vast nothing,
kick-starting energy’s ignition.

Compressed to implosive collapse,
a critical mass exerted pressure’s
presence from crevasse.

Binah
Fertilization
Triplicity ≠ Infinity

Primal Adam and Eve fell
in love at first sight, instantly
kissing and caressing –

potential energy kineticized
and condensed into dew
drops, atomic energy. Free
radicals initiated a revolution –
attraction manifested fusion and fission.

Exhibitionism’s brilliant explosion –
rainbow-hued fertilization: the Cosmic
Dialectic exacting synthesis.

Darkness cleaved itself
from light: Unity committed suicide.

Pre-eternity
spiraled in an Irish jig
hosting its own wake.

Gaia, Creation’s organic thread,
slowly poked her orphaned head
from a womb - expiring Unity.
Awareness, born from Death’s fertility,
sang out a joyous tune
for the palingenetic retinue
and deep respect for the loving gift
implicit in Saturn’s severe shift.

Adam’s sweet kisses and soft
caresses inflamed Eve’s passion.

Quarks fused randomly: protons
and neutrons invented
a tango. The dance lacked form until electrons
encircled nuclei. Their orbits consummated
dance, plucking notes (harmonic string vibrations) –
the Celestial Song, upon the lyre: spacetime.
hydrogen and helium configured.

Oceanos’ infinite potential
issued vas deferens’ river, chance,
through Ouranos’ uninterrupted current:
a primal stream inseminating fertility.
The incessant urge impregnated
Gaia’s eternal vaginal dance,
releasing fertilized eggs –
imagination’s embryonic proclivity.

Tension mounted. Atoms accumulated. Impelled
by an intuitive, yet inarticulate,
memory of Unity, (desire) Oneness
insisted union. Atoms shared adulterous
electrons, the dance’s grip tightened. Mutually
obsessive embraces urged erotic
copulation: nuclei devoured
nuclei, merging – increasing
complexity ≠ modeling – and expanding Splendor.

Passion’s heat intensified. Speed
persisted fomenting friction and prodded.
Adam and Eve wed, their marriage sanctified
by eternal vows. Perpetual mating, monogamy’s
ultimate expression, co-mingled
essences. Slowly passion secreted
pre-orgasmic fluids: the lovers’ ritual
shone forth as the original, active, galactic
pulse in cosmic darkness - a rapturous beacon.

Adam’s energy willfully inseminated Eve’s mass,
lewdly fueling expansion, impregnating her.

Atoms and molecules sparked
into existence. Ceaseless labor conceived
streams, painting spacetime’s curvature.

Imagine a spherical rosebud – petals unravel
in pairs, emanations stretch: each petal
a universe within a voidless void, infinite
fields where quarks’ and electrons’ energy
remains yet unkineticized. Our petal breathes
youthfully – still unfolding and becoming.

Adam and Eve’s petulant hearts
sustained, multiplied and diversified
nature through emanations - petal after unfolding
petal. Unending union sanctified and glorified each
pregnant, protruding universe, curving out
a dimension unique and complete unto itself.

You’ve just dined upon the fruit from the Tree
of Knowledge. The pulp, so succulent
and meaty, always perfectly ripe, nourishes
the cosmos. Devour it! Slurp up
the juices! Swallow the pit whole!
Only when yin and yang combine
is perfect sustenance provoked.
Without seasons’ spicy balance, the fruit
fails to satisfy: The Fall’s augury.

Consuming the fruit was never forbidden,
the act lay implicit in spacetime’s
petals’ flowering. Taboo lay
in discarding the seed.

Da’ath
Gestation
Unity/Singularity

The landscape forged unformed as substance
proliferated shapelessly. A kitten-like curiosity
resonated amid haphazard mewing musings.
Mystery sought adventure in Poseidon’s realm
through an Odyssey – wondrous encounters
across the Celestial Aegean. The mischievous
celestial sea, fertile contingency, inundated
Splendor with paradox, as Cronos
tick-tocked into existence.

Yin and yang coalesced awareness.
Knowah herded them onto the Ark,
Together they might navigate Cronos’
Chaos. All the while, our petal of spacetime’s
flower inculcated existence:
myriad machinations’ manifestations.

A Supra-Massive Black Hole – no where’s center,
nothing/all – discovered a seed at its core
and erupted in great jets, mass spewed: cosmic
dust, atoms, molecules and microwave
radiation. Then it all collapsed back
into the maelstrom’s insatiable black hole –

Creation fed upon itself, as Cronos ate
his own young. Then, Creation erupted:
just as Cronos’ young sprang from his gut,
vigorous actors upon the stage.

Adam and Eve’s tango’s tempo torturously torqued –
a dynamic, universal turbine. The perpetual motion
machine embarked on self-discovery’s journey,
consciously initiating Original Orgasm: The Big Bang!

Knowah scattered seeds across the Celestial Aegean.
Yin and yang germinated into Super-Massive Black Holes,
eyes in each new maelstrom: perpetual,
self-inseminating incubators – each wielding
a relativistic jet, pulsing – feeding
the black hole’s insatiable hunger,
simultaneously spewing forth material to populate
the vast, blankblack canvas. Thusly, Knowah birthed
galaxies across an instantly expanding spacetime.

Fecundating Love spread out like honey
on the rose petal, dripping and oozing into newly
formed reaches. Love pumped the lifeblood –
Splendor flowed through every expression.

Whirling, swirling clouds of cosmic mass
and primal energy warped
the expanding universal curvature.

Pregnant with possibility,
galaxies developed according to their own volition:
Oceanos’ halcyon waters slowly receded.

Mass condensed into matter:
stars were born from molecules,
collecting into white-hot furnaces.
Adam and Eve’s fruit: only
evolutionary death breeds revolutionary Splendor.

Matter’s denser collections spiraled
serenely across spacetime.

Evolution’s inertia
incited cosmic revolution’s
determined expression – liberating actualities.
As Adam and Eve perpetually copulated,
Knowah encouraged yin and yang, who populated
the universe with multiplying galaxies.

Mysterious Balance constantly reasserts itself.

Chesed
Expansion
(Air + Fire + Earth + Water) = Infinity (Unity/Singularity)

Profligate potential
imprinted our petal,
spacetime, with physical Laws.

When Moses encountered the Burning Bush,
he apprehended justice as an epitome,
Jupiter’s expression –
“Love and Creation are one!”

Life emerged from Unity’s merciful
sacrifice, hope vested in its child.

Chance’s soothing balm forested a desert’s
landscaped imagination with undreamed saplings.

A nascent eternal flame reflected wildly
in Moses’ cornea, etching upon his retinas
a vision: Adam and Eve’s perpetual union.

Mass gathered into white-hot cores, spinning
molecules collected, whirling masses corralling
electromagnetic fields, tightly compressing –
spheres. Constant combustion: stars blossomed
in the night like lily islands on a tranquil pond.

A Hebrew slave conceived and delivered Moses.
This child, as future lawgiver to a nation,
would impose Order upon Chaos.

In the beginning, Chaos dominated
spacetime. Super-Massive Black Holes sparked
flaming expansion where No-Thing once reigned.

Coupled, Adam and Eve spawned
generation’s random fountains. Our rose
petal wove a hive and structure bore fragrant symmetry,
just as Zeus orchestrated the Greeks from Olympus.
Accumulating atoms and molecules coalesced, balled
up – denser and heavier, energetic masses.

Gravity and electromagnetism bound
Infinity in limitations.

Moses, the child, floated on the Nile –
life’s river –
until discovered by Bithia;
she bequeathed him a legacy –
power, wealth and kingdom:
a proffered glorification to her own vanity.

Egyptian society arose from a schism:
Unity spawned Duality.

Temptations, power and greed revealed
a flaming eternal truth: rule by one
enslaves multitudes, rule by any –
tyranny. Complete, unbound, unfettered
Freedom liberates all. The only Laws?
Free Will, Opportunity, Respect,
Understanding and Acceptance.

Moses rejected dominion, traversing his desert,
ignorance; he found nourishment in union
With Zipporah: his necessary counterweight. Moses
overcame obsession by achieving Balance,
ascending a knowledgeable mountain.

The Burning Bush, a living
flame, revealed Unity in aspiration.

The Burning Bush inflamed Moses,
whose descent from the penultimate height
bridged a chasm separating Adam and Eve.
So, Moses mainlined insurrection’s injection
into Free Will’s bulging vein, releasing
Egypt’s Hebrew slaves.

The first primordial stars compressed
tightly, exploding mini celestial
orgasms. Mass spewed forth
from cores. Super-massive nebulae
and great clouds billowed cosmic
dust, demarcating seeded regions.

Electromagnetism and gravity
restricted dispersing mass: cosmic
dust swirled into elliptical orbits
collecting new galaxies:
stars, solar systems in billions,
planets, asteroids and comets.
Cohesion’s spell bewitched the rose petal.

Electromagnetism and gravity express
subservience to Attraction
in opposition to Repulsion –
together, they reflect a union, mass
and energy. Re-consecrating Adam
and Eve’s marriage wrought Symmetry
across spacetime’s fabric.

Moses returned to Egypt,
and lovingly liberated Free Will,
leading the former slaves through
a parted Red Sea. His nation’s birth rushed
headlong between menstrually mature,
labia-shaped, oceanic pillars, leaving
behind the security-blanket
placenta – Egypt – to suckle upon nourishing
breasts: happenstance, mother sea.

Harmonically Symmetrical spacetime
underlies cosmic Creation.
Evolution cuts a wake,
releasing ripples, possibilities,
from chaotic shackles
vibrating across celestial waters.

Geburah
Disintegration
(Smell + Taste + Hearing + Sight + Touch) < Unity

Love,
physics,
evolution,
and natural selection
carry
a
metaphysical
DNA.

Mars bled struggle and strife
as limitation and death’s imposeur
Ares introduced the eternal battle:
orator facing orator in endless debate.

Evolution severely demarcated Universal
Boundary –
one thing’s was
transforms into
some will be to come.

Moses led his nation to a great mountain’s
foot. He ascended and received ten
Laws. The people forged a golden calf
and offered up wild reverie: idle idol worship.

The primal stars exploded in brilliant
supernovae. The giant plume
clouds, gas and dust: gestating wombs
which gave birth to all
elements and every chemical reaction
occurring in stars, solar systems
and planets unleashed Splendor.

These supernovae blossomed across
spacetime sowing fields –
solar systems in Gravity’s plowed
rows. Consciousness evolved
from “I am and you are”
into “I become as you sacrifice.”

Upon this stage, ten newly cast actors graced the playbill:
inertia, friction, combustion, dissipation,
reduction, definition, interaction,
inspiration, condensation and
creative expression.

The petal’s rosy expansion slowed
as color’s first blush
brushed in broad strokes:
Gravity curved a rainbow
from all wavelengths.

Moses promised his nation milk and honey –
entry’s right required rite’s passage.
Forty years the Israelites arduously
roamed the desert expanse fraught with hardship:
evolution exerts change slowly and exhaustively.

The dissonant jazz,
cacophonic counterpoint,
segued into a bolero
performed in adagio cadence.
Like a chalcedony chalice
bejeweled with emeralds and jade,
Order crystallized: chordal triads
echoing through the rose petal.

Seasonal cycles yielded eons – progressive permutations,
innumerable experiments in evolution’s
laboratory, editing the play
with Shakespearean craft.

Every law etched by Moses
upon the stone tablets ossified
wry smiles from marrow into bone.
A societal skeleton, framed on communal variety,
supported sinews, loosely linking every extremity.

The Israelites entered a mountain pass and stood
upon the borderline to the Promised Land.

Tipareth
Integration
The Heart = Infinity/Unity

Nuit gazed lovingly upon the Earth. Feminine
intuition informed her, this tiny-blue orb spiraling
through the heavens reached fertility. She ached
to express her Creative urge, so Nuit planted
two seeds into the rich, virgin soil.

Ptah saw life’s seeds gestating
in the Nile’s banks. Smiling broadly
upon Nuit’s impulse, his countenance
beamed bright, warming rays, life
activating, golden sunlight.

The Nile swelled with joy and flooded
its banks. First spring awoke Earth
from hibernation. The seeds
germinated, sprouted and bore fruit: Isis and Osiris
manifested – goddess and god incarnate.

Evolution spins a constantly diversifying
web, complexity. Solar systems throughout
the galaxies felt the heat in the tango’s beat,
whirling across the rose petal, rhythmically
to the Celestial Song. Natural pacing in planets’
orbits brought tranquil regularity to gravity.

On Earth, as it came from heaven, a violent
collision with a celestial body ripped off
some mass and formed a lunar satellite
(Athene was born from a lopped-off piece
of Zeus’s head), tilting the planet. The axial
tilt induced seasons’ forced labor.
Persephone, winter-death and spring-rebirth,
arose with fresh blossoms
from her Underworld descent, giving rise
to seasons on Earth and grains’ sprouts.

Comets and asteroids pelted
the Earth’s surface, depositing
water by the mouthfuls upon the sere
crust. In eons, oceans washed the globe.

Organic molecules and carbon compounds
carried on intergalactic winds
inseminated Earth though cosmic comets’
pelting, seeded with DNA.

Seasonal mysteries unraveled before
Osiris and Isis, agricultural masters. Together,
they tamed oxen to lessen burden’s
onus. They taught harvest and husbandry,
neither to dominate nor restrict
nature, rather, to advance Splendor.

Life on Earth stewed up from chance's
organic chemistry experiment, still occurring
right now, far off in interstellar space’s
cold reaches. A double helix wove within
chemical reactions. Molecular structures sparked
single celled organisms. Colony combining,
they cohered into multi-cellular
bodies. Eons ticked off.
Earth’s waters’ vitality teemed.

Above the seas’ reach, where moist
soil began to stretch, the first cyanobacteria
injected molecular oxygen into the sky.
Fungi spawned an atmospheric renovation. Insects
crawled from the seas and fed
upon fungi, explored the land, carrying seeds
away from the waters. As the atmosphere grew
oxygen rich, the double helix evolved –
plants proliferated and insects assisted,
abetting pollination’s conspiracy.

Aquatic beings migrated
to the land where socialism reigned:
all workers received complete sustenance,
sole payment, a natural expression –
their unique life force.

In a world ripe with nourishment,
life forms evolved in gigantic proportions.

Set’s personal expression, emotion,
entertained desire’s taint and perversion:
Set envied his brother
craving Osiris’ earned adulation.

Osiris and Isis administered
prosperity through integration.
Streaming under serenely flowing viaducts,
their barges navigated the Nile
carrying equal harvest to all.

Set sought to impose tyranny.
Through acquiring great storehouses,
he could amass wealth and wield power.

Domination interposed through dominion
lay within Set’s scheme.
Set sought to murder his brother
and wrongfully reign as king.
Plot, contrived and exacted,
Set sent to Osiris’ feet
his flesh, anticipating aggrandizement,
hidden in a jar, an offering.

Once the jar was presented,
Set broke through the confines,
thrust his blade into Osiris’
heart, hacked off each arm
and leg, along with head and phallus.

A lifeless trunk gaped open to flood –
hope’s escape: oozing drops, sacred blood.

The seven severed pieces
were strewn in separate regions.
Thus sat Set upon Osiris’ throne,
a narcissistic sycophant
indulging chaotic whims.

Infinite potential expressed
in Creative Love received
restriction within the boundless
appetite for size achieved.

Immanent in nature’s expression for huge
erections - living, throbbing, gristle, muscle,
blood and bone, a critical mass - insatiable
hunger - consumed every nutritious
root and life force sown.

Dinosaurs devoured the landscape, frenzied
by riot, looting what they conceived
as their own supermarket, sucking diversity dry.

Adam’s involuntary vasectomy
spawned an eviscerating hysterectomy,
constraining Eve.
her un-inseminated fertility
yearned for Adam’s virility.
She longed to nurture and conceive.

Evolution’s abortion reduced abundance.
Capitalism, a rampant consumerism and illusive
affluence yielded universal poverty: diversity
gave way to monstrous edifices unable
to sustain themselves, monopolizing all paths
to prosperity – completely consuming
an economy not really their own.

Osiris navigated Styx,
the Underworld’s river. Maat weighed Osiris’
Ka upon the scale of deeds, finding
Balance against the feather.

The greater a being’s bearable lightness,
the less weight borne by the soul.

Maat admitted the divine son, unladen by personal
desire, into Abydos’ Elysian Fields. Osiris lacked
the obesity self-gratification accumulates through
stockpiling. The Osirian sacrifice opened Abydos’
doors for all who pass Maat’s test. A redeemer
and re-vitalizer, Osiris sat upon a rightful throne –
paradise unrestrained in the Underworld.

Under the world,
Earth’s bowels poised to hurl
up a rotting botulism, a dead end, for –
Splendor’s expansion found inhibition in self-absorbed,
gluttonous, consumptive demands: dinosaurs
insatiably consumed all inferior competitors,
monopolizing the marketplace with bully tactics,
and dominating the new world order’s didactics.

The dinosaur strategy to global, economic
ecology evidenced a naïve belief: its market
share could expand. The more they ate,
the hungrier they grew: ever-expanding
appetite in a world with limited resources.

Undaunted by their oxymoronic faith, have-more
dinosaurs subjugated the have-less classes –
order, genus and species, too! Dominion exerted
through hostile takeovers – have-less corporate
bodies led down the inevitable road
marked by a street sign named extinction.

Evolution refused to be imprisoned,
and appealed its sentence. A court with higher
authority, Nemesis, granted certiorari, and overturned
the verdict. The illegal search and seizure
inherent in the domination exerted by Splendor
over itself thwarted Adam and Eve’s free
expression. Splendor’s encroaching
corpus delicti rendered habeus corpus moot.

The decision Nemesis drafted stated:
“Self-preservation does not confer legitimacy
upon pre-emptive incursions! Honor, security,
civilization subsist through wisdom – equitable
distribution, and reverential respect for all life forms.”

A brilliant, heavenly ball crashed
into the Earth releasing
a firestorm which consumed
many huge, corporate bodies.

A free marketplace’s pressures directed
all wealth into obese bellies, the most massive
economic units. The schism between classes spread
out in the widest chasm, the entire economy grew
perilous, until the market crashed in a momentary
flash from the cataclysmic event.

Nemesis, acting in evolving Earth’s name, imposed
her own revolution against tyranny by spewing
a pestilence from within Gaia’s bowels.
She erupted with great clouds - methane, sulfuric
acid and ash - amid molten lava oceans. Crystals
cut esophagi and poisoned lungs.
Dark clouds blotted out
light’s elixir and froze
the planetary surface. Wintry eons
consumed the opulent dinosaur monstrosities –
as, tiny mammals, the meek, entered,
and trod evolution’s stage.

With a revised manuscript, natural
selection began its task anew:
the vasectomy was reversed
and a critical mass averted, when
evolving mammalian DNA rose
from within the eddying gene pool.

Isis refused submission to grief:
motherhood yearned from within her.
She searched every remote locale
and gathered six Osirian extremities.
Only the phallus eluded her grasp.

It came to pass in her wanderings
that a fish explained to Isis
tt had swallowed the member,
still whole in its belly.
Isis begged for phallus’
release. The fish agreed
to sacrifice its own desires and life
so Osiris might raise his scepter again.

The fish swam into Isis’ open hands.
She gave thanks for selflessness, sliced open
the fish, grasped the phallus and exposed it
to the Sun’s brilliance. Isis blessed
the fish, and sewed closed its wound,
returning it to the Nile. It swam away.

Isis gathered together each body
part and reassembled Osiris lifeless form
upon an expectant altar. She placed
the phallus inside her womb and rocked
herself on the member. Finally, Isis kissed
life’s breath back into Osiris’ lungs.

Ptah and Nuit sanctified their offspring’s
copulation. Osiris shuddered, and issued forth
into Isis’ womb, conceiving Horus, as
Osiris rose from the dead.

The earth moved from the conjugal explosion
and Set was non-violently toppled
from the precarious throne
aggrandizing self sets atop tranquil Splendor.

Netzach
Opulence
7 Chakras = Infinity/Unity (Air + Fire + Earth + Water)

Consciousness evolved in bounds and leaps.
Through invention, neurons and synapses,
a ladder was built upon the tree
igniting a chain, synaptic complexity:
the path to a doorstep, humanity.

Venus reflects in morn and eve.
Hypnotic glints attract
neurotic hallucinations,
indulging voluptuous appetites.

Cronos excised Ouranos’ phallus
from whence it fell into the ocean;
the restless waves tossed the member
upon wild abandon’s currents.

White foam gathered about the phallus –
waves’ crests issued from Poseidon.
The frothy, foamy white coalesced
into a phosphorescent maiden
with beauty and countenance
no mortal ever laid eyes on.

Aphrodite swam and surfed as if she floated
till she reached Cyprus’ shore.
Mystified, Zeus awarded
a charge and office well adorned:
over whispering maidens, laughter and hoaxes,
sweet lust, kindness and over lore,
upon beauty, Love and all art forms
Aphrodite reigned, forevermore.

Individuals mated, consorted, and bred,
grouping as families through intuitive
urges - synaptic evolution.

Aphrodite’s heart radiated rainbows
and songs, pulsing through her core
from high above into every noble human
endeavor. Harmony rained
like doves’ feathers fluffed.
Unremitting frolic cavorted through the woods
as Balance reigned over Splendor through Love,
till arose a new infection:
with base emotions was this reign rebuffed.

Aphrodite’s charm, so chilly, encouraged
elitism and manifested imagined
destiny. Entranced by pleasure, leisure yielded
desire, and Aphrodite decanted insatiability
in her lust for insouciant luxury.

Mother Earth warmed again to nurture
human clans. Nature’s scale redefined
size with touches subtle and refined: grandiose
passed from fashion, a new sensibility arose.

Humans found the warming world
generally to their liking, relocating
from their caves, claiming the most valuable
real estate, even erecting homes they designed –
so momentous in the Earth’s annals, nature
now had a competing creator
who would will, for better or for worse.

The riven bark from the myrrh tree yields
a resinous gum, fragrant and sweet. A god-child
condensed from this substance, more handsome
than any mortal man, miraculously born
and elegantly chiseled – he could bear
only the name, Adonis. Love’s goddess, struck
with lightning by the apparition, awe provoking
perfected male. Her lust deepened with the myrrh
tree’s roots and branched through the heavens,
ever-unfolding, her seductive fragrance
permeated the firmament. Aphrodite sought
Beauty in variation. Vagaries and chance
excited her curiosity. Every succulent pomegranate
leaving flavor’s aroma on Aphrodite’s tongue whet
her palate for wine, grapes demanded cheese, and love,
for Love’s goddess, insisted Adonis.

Aphrodite shared Adonis with the sweet
Persephone. Zeus decreed this. The two goddesses,
together, nurtured Adonis from child
to adult. Since both showered him,
unbridled lust demanded a claim.

Zeus opined, “Love does not own,
nor does it ever restrict;
Love’s meant to rain in torrents,
freely, unfettered and unfixed.”

Since they expressed Love as a selfish need,
neither Aphrodite nor Persephone earned,
entitlement to take Adonis’ seed.

One third year was awarded to each,
to compensate for the debt,
while a third Zeus bestowed on Adonis
to wield from his own intent.

“Through free expression does true Love flow,”
decreed Zeus, in wisdom’s course.

As humans tamed fire, they arose from ashes
as gods. The wheel revealed the calendar,
calculated the seasons,
propelled the barrow,
encouraged agriculture,
and charted stars’ movements across the night.

Aphrodite, having so much,
feared losing even a little.
She ached for more, cowering
at notions that pleasure be whittled.

Open minds shine light in dark places.
Narcissus’ spawn cloaks in shadows,
and into lucid daydreams casts nightmares’ traces.

Aphrodite’s languid, petulant mercy
induced a permeating perfume
enticing infinite permissiveness.

Hierarchies’ paradigms
amid schisms’ permutations
ingrained human lore
with fascinations for machinations.

Classes – doers and deciders –
divvied up the spoils all wrong!
A few embezzled premium grade –
the many shared meager survival.
Greed and jealousy sailed desert ships,
telling tales – glory and revenge. Nightmarish
fascinations incited destructive passions.

Hod
Curiosity
Wavelengths = Duality (Air + Fire + Earth + Water)

Socrates entertained Mercury’s realm as he passed
knowledge while asking questions.
Plato refined and revealed Socrates. They both sought
answers to the most impenetrable deliberations.

Impetuous Aristotle placed himself above those learnèd
teachers. He boldly believed he could intelligently
design answers from his imagined logic.

Thoth collected, transcribed,
interpreted and taught thought.
Thoth informed all Alexandrian wisdom.

From thought arises conscience.
Consciousness of insatiable appetites
instills conscience with remorse.

Civilization’s sprawl incessantly encroached
upon newly conquered regions. Animals’
habitats shrank. Human population’s swell
diminished diversity, the census, and the life
quality for all generations and every genus.
Communities built fences, segregating wild
Splendor from bland regularity: civilization consumed.

Osirian/Isian Balance was forgotten.

Merlin also exemplified Mercurial force.
His story recounted: a wizard,
wizened by eons’ existence,
wielding magical potency
with sage insight and grandfatherly advice.

Merlin taught fellowship and fraternity
through rationality. He sought
a gentle, human approach
to other-than-self, altruism made manifest –
the Round Table’s cooperation.

The Grail embodied these qualities
through an admonition,
“The king and the land are one,”
a co-efficient for “Love and Creation are one.”

All nature expresses Unity. The king’s sacred
role, Merlin taught, evoked essence in embrace.
The Grail quest enriches
everyone who undertakes it.
Its responsibility demands
moderate appetite and respect for exquisite Splendor.

The self-willed search for pre-eminence,
dictated entry into empire’s age.

Seti, Khan, Alexander or Caesar;
Mongol, Viking, Cossack or Hun;
Nixon, Hitler, Napoleon or Bush;
comrade, terrorist, Netanyahu or nun:
all are one.

Affection’s fragile chalcedony chalice –
the Grail’s very picture –
was smashed by the golden calf,
re-forged and worshiped anew.

History’s annals glorify conquerors –
marching progress legitimizes devastation.

The Grail lay hidden in the golden calf’s
belly. Altruism’s brilliant light obscured
by carbon emissions’ clouds! Intellect sacrificed
wisdom, suffering subjugation to privilege's cult.

Nemesis unleashed a plague, war, infecting
humanity. Its spore spread, an endemic epidemic,
diffusing dark despair: dread. Disease disseminated
disaster. Dulcet voiced doses declared
from royal daises and pompous, papal pulpits.

Human seed’s waste
lay spent upon the ground,
lifeless weeds spread
maimed, homeless and orphaned all around.

A stern severity, divisive decadence,
raucously revels at its own reflection
upon a mirror, marshaled by Mercurial,
mental pre-eminence unbridled with Venusian
affection for the virtuous virtuosity
only obviated in a messianic manifestation:
evolution’s unremitting revelation – variation.

Yesod
Dreams, Myths and Gods
A Reflecting Orb = The Heart (Infinity/7 Chakras)

A realm in shadows slowly creeps
across a wintry landscape’s face;
a crystal ball clouds up within
from smoky fingers’ inkless trace.
The light from stars, not dimmed or diffused,
reveals that hope still shines through gloom;
though sunsets darken after dusk
the night’s illumed by yonder moon.

Selene, sister to Helios, appeared
in slivers, quarters, and all her phases.
She arched through the bright, night sky so clear,
wrapping the Earth with tender embraces;
reflecting light from her silvery sphere
in delicate webs and shimmering laces,
she conjured dreams in the mind’s sheer veneer,
dripping, like dew, on mornings’ awed faces.

It’s in sullen, silent darkness when
consciousness cedes imagined
dominion – loosening synaptic bootstraps’
laces, as the mind dips into cool,
placid waters: sleep.

Where will the I go when eyes go shut
and ego sinks below sunset’s strut?
When lust and desire find rest,
a grander awareness manifests.

Endymion, a mortal youth, bore features
rivaling the gods’, his aura glowing
as he hunted. Selene trained a close eye
on the mortal, captivated by innocent strength,
and his knack for reflecting Olympian light,
so akin to her own seductive mystery:
reflecting the sun’s rays while Helios slept.

Endymion’s name transcended the personal
in significance for all human travails.
His name’s meaning, “He who finds himself within,”
allowed an oracle for all human destiny
to whisper on zephyrs through woods’.

Fantastic phantasms exposed demons and angels,
laying dormant in thought’s untapped regions,
as yet-unborn conceptions, images,
unvoiced conversations and songs.
Yes, even in scenes unseen and settings un-sat
upon, which some mind
(is it one’s own or some god’s?)
blocks out the action
the playwright described –
those plots within tales
unimagined in daylight.
Could the phantoms within
reveal our true selves to scrutiny?

Selene, a temptress and seductress
so sweet and alluring, mysteriously
found her beloved Endymion
sleeping nightly in her own dear cave,
the place where she disappeared
just before each new dawn,
behind her beloved and shimmering
Latmos’ mountain crest.

First soul conceptions sparked in Cro-Magnon mind
from the elusive visions
which nocturnal emissions’
active synapses un-designed.
Revealed within dreams –
angelic imagery and demonic schemes –
soaring serenity and cacophonic confusion
harkened, as harbingers, superstitious illusion.
Explanations required otherworldliness entwine.

It was in that cave beyond fair Latmos
where Selene and Endymion stole snippets from thyme;
they spoke in shadows reflecting starry passion
until one morning yawned, and Eos ushered Helios
into the sky. Endymion bade his belovèd Selene
spare him from cruel death’s sting
by granting the gift of eternal slumber.
In their secret cave of wonder,
with lovers’ caresses they would adore each other’s
reflected light beyond eternity’s last breath.

To this request Selene consented, though
she added one lingering longing. Her own
dear yen she grafted onto the chore: she’d whisper
Unity’s secrets and guide Endymion
to that self within while his love would forever
wash over her, even through his slumber.
With eyes always agape Selene unendingly
would see love shine through his gaze.

The sweet nothings Selene whispered
to Endymion in his unbroken slumber
shone as pyrite picture dreams. Reveries
examined facets’ gleams within, revealing
an intransigent, glittery fiction. With blind eyes
open to the world around him,
Endymion unlocked his mind to second sight.
Selene tended Endymion, who she taught
to see through whims’ deceptions.
From trips into other, no words would uncover
relationships to the mundane.
Through every reverie, profane and heavenly,
our nonsense reigned over our brain.
From nocturnal seeds, grew superstitious creeds
vain humans disdained to contain.

Out from our confusion and dark disillusion
Gaia’s needs in her seed convey
some hint in Order that through nature’s border
all Balance sings scales in play.
So, a man named Lao-Tze searching deep did pursue
within and without him The Way.

The Tao: a path with steps which respects and accepts,
and aims never to meddle.
Through silent insistence, paths least resistant
are never marred by a nettle.
By disdaining extremes and all personal dreams
no one infers we settle,
since all natural roads lead us to high abodes
everything gleams monumental.

A path wanders though harmonious glens
past reflective pools into lush, wide
pastures. No personal needs for stuff elevate
desire. By honoring Adam and Eve’s eternal
mating and the Universe they’re creating,
Splendor embraces Unity without
approaching a critical mass.

Malkuth
Transcendence
(Multiplicity x Infinity)/Prismatic Refraction = Unity

Blue green orb which floats on an eddy
ticking through space and inching through time,
spin and revolve through cycled spirals
and wake ripples through fabric sublime;
your issue teems beyond a child’s count
how many-splendored embraces surround
this still, just barely begun, evolution
where all possibilities abound.

No hurry resides in natural selection.
Every song is played till coda concludes.
No race need have been run,
since all that was won -
potential’s diffusion.

The Buddha explained a caustic paradox
within the symbiotic tribulations in life:
suffering accrues from accumulating karma –
resulting from both pleasure and strife.
As deeper passion electrified the living,
sorrow and suffering grew rife.

One day, as Gautama ambled through India,
heat and exercise took its toll.
Seeing a lone bodhi tree on a hillside,
the man acquiesced to break his stroll.
Right there he sat to rest and relax,
and gain from suffering a brief parole:
from calm meditation came freedom from longing.
It’s said the Buddha never left that grassy knoll.

Humans insist the right to change
any natural phenomenon
according to expediency.
Humans possess the might to raze
and replace pastoral invention
with egotistic pre-eminency.
Might never makes right and blindness
to global interdependence
yields social degeneracy.

Karma in Sanskrit means doing – how we spend
our lives. Rewards’ and punishments’ accumulation
meted out by an ethereal, conscious judge
expresses no similarity to the Buddha’s teachings
on karma, it simply arises as a product –
one’s own doing, not a gold star, time out, or user error.

The Wheel, Karma, accumulating attachments, reveals
an exponentially growing, insatiability: all our fleeting
unattainable and unending stream of desires lead
to suffering – our own karma through our own doing.

As long as the moon circles the Earth,
waves will continue to crash on sandy shores.
Whenever the sun’s warm rays shine above,
plants will photosynthesize and create oxygen.
Where ever water rains down from the heavens,
animals will congregate to drink and feed.

If humans interpose will too widespread,
they can so diminish Splendor
as to endanger the Mammalian Age.

Mother Nature’s intent
will only invent
new models’ differential
from her infinite potential
to repopulate woods, tors,
plains and shores.

Our belovèd mother and benefactress,
the hostess through whose virtue and grace
we exist, has a warped eternity to express
evolution’s unending possibility. Natural
selection will toss humanity upon its scrap heap
one day, so, we should re-evaluate
our subscription to entitlement.

Reconfiguring the landscape to fit
human designs, while destroying
the wild, causes a critical mass –
extinction, strangling the planet.

It is often thought that when Gautama taught
emulate him to reach Nirvana,
he meant, “Stop all doing.”
Procreating is doing. The Buddha
really intended we discard desire.

Throughout humanity’s recorded history
a precious few control wealth, perpetuating
their dominion over all others while critically
exercising executive privilege’s health. People’s
response – acquiesce to power’s consolidation,
usurped with or without stealth.

Awaken from raving delusions – people exerting
dominion over nature! Who are you to believe
your life force is most worthwhile? Dominion
only meant we’d overcome Neanderthal, not
evolution. So, Cro-Magnon invented
a god in his own image who promised no Earth
without sapiens; what a small grasp of infinity.

We’ve all become wind-ups, our keys
being turned so we can march off to place
our cog-selves into that wheel which is
the economy to amass ever-increasing
fortunes for the elite class from every generation,
who, we are taught and cajoled,
to celebrate and idolize.

Now, we sit at time’s edge:
our geometrically expanding population
approximately doubling every 35 years
threatens to strangle all life, including
our own, with a critical mass -
insatiable mouths to feed and bodies to house,
claiming, in time, all the land for human use,
strangling all other life on the planet.
Our war weapons prey to extinguish
all life on the planet
with a critical mass –
arising from a button’s push
threatening to vaporize every living thing.
Our waste chokes the air
and infects all water on the globe –
a critical mass of pestilence looms
as the air becomes un-breathe-able and we
murder coral reefs with our excrement,
refuse, and preheated, carbonated oceans,
killing the Mother-of-Life-on-Earth.

Nemesis sends warning to everyone, invoking an ancient
oath – mandatory attendance at a critical mass
of spiritual hearts, expressing love and reverence
to our Mother, the Earth. Promise to cease
eradicating Splendor. Vow to leave some
wilderness for diversity to blossom and bloom.

Mother Earth scolds us,
“Children, play nice.
can’t you all just get along?”

Nemesis requires open hearts
expressing joyous gratitude
for life’s gift, to avoid a critical morass.
Life abhors will’s path. Both
mind and heart must fully engage.

Mass expresses variations on denser octaves
etching energy’s formative reflections.

Variety, diversity, multiplying endlessly –
subtle distinctions imply, commendlessly,
that every blade on every lawn
soaks up light from Original Dawn.
Our planet is a single-family dwelling
within a ‘hood of brothers and sisters swelling –
as life proliferates love must grow!
Let acceptance and understanding flow.

The sky, the sun, the stars, the sea,
your wife, his mom, her dad, our auntie,
they and more waddle pregnantly
through Splendor’s immanence in Unity.

Smiles and laughter and giggles and glee,
kisses, caresses, snuggles, even urgency,
snow-cones and ice cream and chocolate and tea,
are these not enough to fill eternity?

No edifices will survive humanity long.
In time, no traces will remain:
all that really survives and persists –
the love we create and share.

Twelve pelicans form a line, gliding on the air –
barely inches above the sea’s rolling waves,
while a glowing red ball slowly inches lower,
far behind the rocky crag of a jetty,
beyond where land curves out from the bay’s
border, further, still, than the horizon’s edge.
The planet revolves as gentle winds rustle
through palm fronds, and shadows lengthen
across sundial faces.
Gaia inhales. Ouranos exhales.
Cronos winks a constant beat.
Zeus balances the scales by disarming Mars.
Merlin allies all competing interests
into agreement and a respectful Round Table.
Selene and Endymion reflect Osirian/Isian Balance
as they entwine into a new caduceus,
and that red, glowing, incandescent ball
sinks slowly into the cold, blue, eternal sea.

Endnotes for A Critical Mass

Homer called Oceanos the origin of both the gods and all of creation. Oceanos, a river god, was the river which continued to flow to the outermost edge of the Earth and back, forming a circle. From Oceanos, all rivers, streams, seas and oceans were said to have issued.

Tethys was the Greek Great Mother Goddess and original water goddess who conceived all of creation.

Pluto, in astrology, represents atomic power, the potency of the unseen, death and regeneration.

The underworld was the realm populated by the dead; the Greek god Hades (also called Pluto by the Romans) ruled over this realm, the dead, death, change, regeneration, wealth and precious metals in the earth.

Oliver Sacks, M.D. related in his book, Awakenings, First Vintage Books, 1973, rev. ed. 1990, case studies of post-encephalitic patients who suffered from what he termed “sleepy sickness” symptoms. They scarcely moved, but occasionally experienced moments of release, moving with great energy and force. However, they returned to their previous, motionless states after brief moments of release. The patients were “awakened” from the malady for significant time periods when Dr. Sacks’ used the drug L-dopa in their treatment. While awakened, the patients never recalled thoughts, memories, dreams or sensations from during the “sleeping” state.

Ouranos was the Greek god of the sky who came to earth at night to mate with his wife, Gaia, and sired by her the first generation of Greek gods and goddesses. Ouranos hid his children in the hollows of the earth. Cronos, one of Ouranos’ sons, cut off Ouranos’ phallus, which, according to myth, gave birth to Aphrodite and led to the transfer of pre-eminence over the gods and goddesses from Ouranos to Cronos.

Gaia was Ouranos’ wife and mother of the first generation of the Greek gods and goddesses as well as of the Erinyes, Giants and Ash Nymphs. Gaia is also often identified as Mother Earth.

Ouranos and Gaia combine as symbols of polar opposites expressed as duality: self and other-than-self.

Eros, Hesiod explained, was the loveliest of the gods and ruled over all gods and men. He compelled the mating of Oceanos and Tethys.

Synthesis, according to G. W. F. Hegel, is the resolution of conflict between a thesis and antithesis, but on a higher plane of being, and exemplifying progress. Hegel believed in a Universal Mind and, in his broad view of human history, asserted that all change was progress and all progress arose out of the conflict between competing ideas, people and/or events. I do not assert all change is progress nor that change only arises from conflict. However, I suggest that change is inevitable and arises out of the natural interaction between ideas, people and/or events (interaction between thesis and antithesis). The interactions result in a slow evolution of incremental variations forming a procession of syntheses leading to a generally progressive historical flow. I suggest this progressive flow can best be pictured as a spiral which alternately cycles through positive and negative effects, constantly re-balancing one another as the Planetary, Solar, Galactic and Universal Consciousnesses continue to express their intrinsic purpose through the creation of infinite complexity and diversity.

Palingenesis is a term used in philosophy, theology and biology. In philosophy, it denotes Pythagoras’ theory that the human soul does not die with the body, but is born again in new incarnations (reincarnation). Schopenhauer narrowed the application in his system to indicating the will does not die, but manifests itself again in other individuals. Schopenhauer repudiated reincarnation. His ideas did not incorporate transmigration of souls. Rather, he believed it was the will alone which passed on from living being to living being. To the Stoics, palingenesis traces its origins back through the word palingenesia to signify a perpetual and continuous re-creation of the Universe by the Demiurges. In the Bible, the word appears twice, referring to baptism and the state of repentance. To modern biologists, the word signifies the exact reproduction of ancestral features through inheritance, the passing of traits through genes.

Saturn, in astrology, is a symbol of hardship, challenges and lessons, all necessary to promote progress.

My reference to the Tree of Knowledge is a reference to The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil mentioned in the Torah which is part of the Tanakh, also commonly referred to as the Old Testament of The Bible. The biblical story involving the Tree of Knowledge provides an implication that knowledge led to “the fall,” implying knowledge, itself, is a form of evil. It certainly would always have been considered by organized religions as being in their own best interest to maintain an ignorant population since any detailed study of nature only disproves Judeo-Christian-Islamic dogma in terms of Creation, as the history of the advancement of our knowledge of the natural world can attest.

Yin and Yang generally represent feminine and masculine principles, respectively. I use them to illustrate polar opposites, vis-à-vis thesis and antithesis, prior to interaction, synthesis and balance.

Poseidon was the god of the sea with a palace in the depths of the Mediterranean.

Cronos, the son of Ouranos, usurped pre-eminence from his father upon severing Ouranous’ phallus. This ushered in the Golden Age. Cronos married Rhea. Together they begot the second generation of gods and goddesses (including Zeus). Cronos jealously guarded his dominion knowing his overthrow was fated to be executed by a powerful son. So, he swallowed his children. However, Rhea was aided by Gaia in protecting Zeus, who eventually overcame Cronos, usurped authority and freed his siblings. Cronos also symbolizes time and transitions.

In Knowah, I created an intentional variation for the spelling of Noah, who, according to the Torah, built an ark and collected a male and female pair of every animal on Earth prior to its alleged flooding.

Science has discovered super-massive black holes at the center of all observable galaxies and postulates their presence at the core of all galaxies. These super-massive black holes appear to recycle enough mass and energy to perpetuate their existence and to fuel their galaxy with sufficient energy and mass to assure continued perpetuation of that galaxy for eons. A super-massive black hole might be another name for a quasar, which also spews out incredible jets of mass and energy even as it sucks in everything within a certain gravitational radius. Enough spews out not only to keep feeding the core of the super-massive black hole, but for more to escape the black holes’ gravitational fields and thus feed the galaxy with sufficient mass and energy to sustain the galaxy.

Jupiter, in astrology, is a beneficent influence and is the planet of justice and good fortune.

Chaos comes from the Greek word chaos, signifying the void and implying a yawning. Later, it acquired a secondary meaning of turmoil and confusion.

Zeus became King of the Gods after he overthrew Cronos. Zeus married Hera, and they begat the third generation of Greek gods and goddesses. Zeus was a philanderer who consorted with many goddesses and mortal women, to Hera’s consternation. He also provided wise counsel, and was a fair judge and arbiter of disputes.

Mars, in astrology, is attributed as being the planet of war, conflict, temper, anger and revenge.

Ares was the Greek god of war.

Ten actors on the playbill is a reference to the ten laws allegedly received by Moses.

Nuit, the Great Mother Goddess of Egypt, symbolized for the night sky, the canopy of the stars and the celestial sea.

Ptah preceded Amoun as the most ancient father/king god of Egypt.

Isis and Osiris were sister and brother, goddess and god, and according to myth, queen and king of Egypt. I also use them to represent the twin entwining strands of DNA (this reference is enhanced by references to the caduceus).

Athene, the daughter of Zeus, was the equal of her father in wise counsel and courage. As patron to Athens, she also blessed the city with her protection.

Persephone, Demeter’s daughter and goddess of seasons, harvests and grains, was Queen of the Underworld.

Set, brother to Osiris and another god of Egypt, represented war, anger, greed, lust, gluttony and selfishness.

Egyptian religious beliefs expressed that a departed Pharaoh’s soul was required to navigate the river through the underworld to find Maat in order to be judged worthy of eternal life. I believe Pharaoh’s fate extended to his people as well, that his motives and actions embodied the collective Egyptian soul and morality. In that sense, I believe the redemption of the Pharaoh symbolized redemption for all his subjects. Thus, the public works projects for entombing Pharaohs would have been toil gladly engaged in by the Egyptian public – not just a duty to Pharaoh, but also sacred toils allowing them to earn their place in the afterlife as well.

Maat judged the recently departed Pharaohs by weighing them on the scales of justice against a feather; a just soul would not contain the weight of sin, and therefore would be equal in weight to a feather.

Ka was the Egyptian term for the soul.

Abydos was the name of the abode of the heavenly afterlife for ancient Egyptians.

Elysian Fields was the name for the Greek after life abode or heavenly paradise for those worthy to enter. It was situated at the end of the world, the place where those chosen by the gods were sent after death.

Nemesis was the Greek goddess charged with the duty to exercise righteous anger against all who violate universal and natural order.

Horus was the son of Isis and Osiris. He was the god who represented the era of the reign of balance on Earth.

In astrology, Venus is the planet of love, beauty and the arts. Venus was a Roman goddess with those same attributes.

Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love, beauty and the arts.

Adonis was a Greek god of regeneration and resurrection as well as being considered the epitome of masculine appearance.

Narcissus’ story is of a human lad whose beauty was so great all the girls longed to be his. However, he expressed no interest in any of them. One day, he looked into a clear pool, saw his own reflection and fell so in love with his own image nothing could induce him to stop staring into the pool. He died, pining away, staring at his own reflection.

Mercury, in astrology, is the planet of mind, communication and knowledge.

Thoth (and I am purposely intending the pronunciation to be the same as the word “thought”) was the Egyptian god of knowledge and communication. He was Osiris’ brother and also his scribe.

The line "The King and the land are one," was borrowed from the 1981 movie, Excalibur, screenplay adapted by Rospo Pallenburg.

Selene was a Greek moon goddess.

Helios was the Greek Sun god.

Endymion was a mortal who was Selene’s lover.

Eos was the Greek goddess of the dawn.

Lao-Tzu was a Chinese philosopher who gave humanity the philosophy known as The Tao (in English, The Way).

Nirvana, for Buddhists, is a state of perfection and bliss.