New poem: "A Tide in the Affairs of Men"

 

 

A Tide in the Affairs of Men

 

For years I was lost in the wilderness of life,

struggling to survive as I looked for a way

out. I read, studied, and asked everyone I could

to point the way out; but no one could help me,

and I despaired. I was so lonely that I turned

to God for help. Looking up into the sky one night,

Shakespeare came to my mind: “There is a tide

in the affairs of men /Which, taken at the flood,

leads on to fortune.” Was my tide at full flood?

I pleaded with God: “Is my fortune here, or must

I look for it elsewhere?” A bright star shot through

the sky, and I knew in my heart I had to leave home

and look in the wide-open world for a way out. “And

we must take the current when it serves, /Or lose

our ventures,” said the noble bard. I took the current

and fled to Annecy, France where I began my quest

for a way out; and when I returned from my year-long

sojourn, I found a certain teaching in the hallowed

halls of academia that opened the way to my true self;

and with heaven’s help, I blazed a literary trail out

of the wilderness of life for other lost souls to follow,

beginning with my novel that shocked the people

of my hometown, What Would I Say Today

If I Were to Die Tomorrow?

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Sunday, November 24, 2024

 

 

New poem: "His Sacred Mission"

 

His Sacred Mission

 

Trump did what he had to do

to get to the Oval Office;

and now that he’s back there

with an overwhelming mandate,

he can do whatever he needs

to do to fulfill his sacred mission

of making America great again,

and there’s not a damn thing

those loony progressives

can do about it.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Friday, November 22, 2024

New poem: "By Way of My Personal Library"

 

By Way of My Personal Library

 

I have over three thousand books in my personal library;

a thousand or so on make-do brick book shelves in the basement,

and the rest in nice bookcases throughout our two-story home

here in beautiful Georgian Bay, Ontario, the most necessary books

handy for my writing in what Virginia Woolf called “a room of one’s

own.” But I certainly have not read all of my books, and probably

never will. As Andrew Marvel said to his coy mistress, “But at my back

I always hear /Time’s winged chariot hurrying near,” and what time

I have left on this side of the Great Divide, I hope to spend on the books

I have already written and are ready to see the light of day. It’s been

a long journey of self-discovery, and every book in my library has served

its purpose in my quest for my true self; the unread books giving me

comfort and support (and a little guilt) just being there to look at; many

books that I read for knowledge and intellectual stimulation; and many

more books that I read for spiritual guidance, two, three, and four times

even (Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous that introduced me to

Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way teaching that changed my life; Jung’s Memories,

Dreams, Reflections; Glenda Green’s Love without End and The Keys

of Jeshua that opened up Christ’s cryptic teaching; Adam Begley’s biography Updike that I read four times to write my novel Talking with John Updike;

and books of poetry and personal essays that I re-read for the pleasure

they always give me), and as I paused this morning from reading my novel

memoir Three Friends: An Atheist, An Agnostic, and Me that I hope to see

published before I cross over to the Other Side, I looked at all my books

in my writing room and smiled at how far they had taken me to get to where

I am today, to the mystical union of blissful resolution of my inner and outer

self that Carl Gustav Jung called “mysterium coniunctionis,” also known

as the sacred marriage of our paradoxical nature, my Soul Self.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Sunday, November 17, 2024

 

 

 

 

New poem: "The Great Gulf of Life"

 

 

The Great Gulf of Life

 

Has the divide spanning the exoteric outer circle

of soul’s evolution through life and the esoteric

inner circle of life become so great that soul

cannot hear life’s call to higher purpose? Were

the Gnostics right to believe that Nature can only

evolve soul so far, and no further? And did Jesus

come into this world to show us how to bridge

the great gulf of life that divides the outer and inner

circles of soul’s evolution to wholeness? Was this why

Gurdjieff called his Fourth Way teaching “esoteric

Christianity?” Maybe there’s more to Christ’s

teaching than meets the eye.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Thursday, November 21, 2024

New poem: " Trump's New Golden Age"

 

Trump’s New Golden Age

 

“To speak the truth is the most difficult thing

in the world,” said George Ivanovich Gurdjieff,

who gave the world the Fourth Way teaching

and the “way of the sly man.” “To speak the truth,

one must know what the truth is and what a lie is,

and first of all in oneself; and this nobody wants

to know,” added the mystic philosopher. That’s

the dilemma of the human condition, and finding

a way through the horns of this dilemma bedeviled

the human race from the golden age of Athens to

the new golden age of the United States that Donald

J. Trump wants to usher in with his second term

at the Oval Office; but the only way he can achieve

his goal of making America great again will be

to banish the mendacious woke ideology that has

maligned the soul of his beloved nation and restore

America’s greatness with honest intention, which

he will begin to do on Day One as the 47^th

President of the United States.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Saturday, November 16, 2024

New poem: "A Line I Cannot Cross"

 

A Line I Cannot Cross

 

There is a line I cannot cross,

but I must cross it to spare myself

the agony of knowing what I know,

the deepest secret revealed to me

in the course of my life`s journey

through this world, all the suffering

crying to be understood for its true

purpose of helping us grow in love

and understanding, a line I must cross

to quell our longing of not knowing

why we suffer as we do in this

wonderful world.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

New poem: "Their Precious Ego"

 

Their Precious Ego

 

“I fire them, and they write books

about me,” said the former president

of the United States who went on to win

the federal election and become the 47^th

president; but he bruised a lot of egos

in and on his way back to the Oval Office.

Oh, the bruised ego is a dangerous thing,

forever attacking the person who assaulted

their pride and made them feel so small

and irrelevant that they can’t go on living;

but they do, and rather look into their own

soul and see what they refused to see,

they spend the rest of their life spewing

bile on the person who bruised

their precious ego.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Thursday, November 14, 2024

New poem: "A Quiet Knowing"

 

A Quiet Knowing

 

I have a quiet knowing

of the way of what is to come

now that Donald J. Trump

has won back the Oval Office,

a certain awareness that democracy

will prevail now that the demonic

woke has been slain by the light

of common sense, a quiet knowing

 that America, and the world,

will right itself again.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

New poem: "The American Dream"

 

The American Dream

 

It’s true, that much sought-after American

dream is still viable, as Donald J. Trump

amply proved with his stunning victory over

the Democratic Party by retaking the Oval

Office to continue his dream of making America

great again, a native-born son with a ferocious

drive to succeed in his father’s New York

real estate business that he took so far beyond

Fred Trump’s expectations that he had nothing

left to prove; that’s when his fate called him

to parlay his raw genius for business in the much

more dangerous arena of politics to serve his

beloved country by contending for the Oval

Office and become the 45^th, and 47^th president

of the United States, proving that the American

dream was never dead and one could still become

whatever they wanted to be in that glorious

land of the brave and the free.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Friday, November 8, 2024

 

 

 

New poem: "The American Election 2024"

 

 

The American Election 2024

 

If this life is the way, the long sought-after

way to the unfathomable, which we call divine,

as the Wizard of Bollingen realized when he

explored the human soul with his inner guiding

principle and superior insight, then it does not

matter who wins the Oval Office in the American

election today, November 5, 2024, Kamala Harris

or Donald J. Trump, the way of what is to come

will be the destined path that the American people

will have chosen to realize their inherent purpose

of wholeness, whatever the price exacted of them

to resolve the opposing forces of their dual nature,

and one day, hopefully much sooner than later,

they will give birth to the magnificent soul

of the American people.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

New poem: "Grandson of a German Draft Dodger"

 

Grandson of a German Draft Dodger

 

He stands tall, above it all, and remorseless

in his ambition to make America great again,

the grandson of a sixteen-year-old German draft

dodger who bought a one-way ticket to America

where he began his adventurous life as a barber,

restauranteur, saloonkeeper, hotelier, entrepreneur,

gold rush prospector, shipwreck survivor, and New

York real-estate investor who married a woman

from his German hometown of Kallstadt and sired

his father Fred, who made his fortune in real estate

and married a lowly domestic who gave birth to

their son Donald who, with great prowess, multiplied

his father’s inheritance and became a billionaire

real-estate developer and 45^th president of the United

States who was called by fate to become the 47^th,

the loving son of an American-German father and

Scottish-born mother, a native American who loves

his country and wants to make the United States

safe, strong, and proud again.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Monday, October 28, 2024

New poem: "The Banality of Evil"

 

 

The Banality of Evil

 

Who are these agents of chaos who walk

among us like you and me sowing discord

with fake smiles and think nothing of the harm

they do to the order of things, ordinary people

in high and low places who don’t answer

to anyone but their own malevolence? What

order of god do they serve? Are they not aware

of the harm they do to their children? Are

they so blind that they cannot see the disorder

they bring to the system? Can’t they see that

they impair themselves more than you and me?

What kind of people would do this? Did nature

go wrong with these people? Are they puppets

on a string who say things they don’t mean

but can’t say no to whoever’s pulling their string?

Have they forfeited their conscience for selfish

interest? They have free will, don’t they? Do

they willfully choose self-deception over telling

the truth? Is this what Hannah Arendt meant

by the banality of evil? They puzzle me,

these ordinary people.

 

Composed in Tiny Beaches,

Georgian Bay, Southcentral, Ontario

Friday, November 1, 2024