FootprintsintheWind.com

There is a messiness
to being humus

:- Doug.

We can humus better
But not yet

:- Doug.

My life is for something
for no good reason
as reckoned by anyone else
something I must love
something I must live

:- Doug.

Today how would you respond to the question “Who are you?”

:- Doug.

I invite you
to write poems
with me
poems to stir hands to
human better

:- Doug.

I am groaning
cheeselessly

:- Doug.

Anger, rage, and fear
are within me
I want
kindly and gentle
others have others

:- Doug.

I write poems
You too?

:- Doug.

Fear not. Proceed instead.

:- Doug.

The poem
wrings from life
the precious

:- Doug.

Where do you get the grace to receive help joyfully?

:- Doug.

Offer tenderness.

:- Doug.

Find ways to
make these
precious days meaningful

:- Doug.

That we will war with ourselves, with our better natures, means it is uphill all the way. Sisyphus rolling his ball, Prometheus having his liver eaten out, but each by his own hand and beak. Though there be no hope, the work is our duty, and for some of us at least, our oracle, our sentence, our decision. We must steal the fire!

I don’t like Sisyphus because of his violence against humans. Then again, he is the symbol of humanity’s refusal to human better. Further, Sisyphus was punished by the gods for twice cheating death, not for his meanness and viciousness.

:- Doug.

This is the highest age I’ve reached thus far.

:- Doug.

We will grow weary. We will doubt. We will dig in our heels.

:- Doug.

If we are, since we are, our own adversary, how do we get away? How do we vanquish, progress—except by crawling?

:- Doug.

Who? We. We will argue with us; defy our better natures, defile. We are the ones to war.

:- Doug.

75! This day is the 75th anniversary of my birth. I am starting all over, my birth just happened, and I am opening my eyes to a new world.

:- Doug.

Rather than attempt to answer the question in one session, it is well to let it percolate, strain, and ooze.

:- Doug.

Is the central thing, then, to seek in our days our meaning and our load?

:- Doug.

The sacred suggests there is something larger than one’s own human life that concerns us, that impinges upon us. It drives into our skin, pinches and squeezes us, stands in our way, demands something of us, loads us. A meaning and a load.

:- Doug.

To bring meaning and reverence to our days, this is the work of doing human better.

:- Doug.