The Cats Herded Me Today

The cats herded me today,

no easy task either.

I'm not resistant

but am a good bit aimless,

and by a bit I mean reluctant

to pick a direction

and head into it.

All things told,

I'm on indefinite hold

on a phantom call with my past

trying to connect to my future

if it's not been sold

and split the difference

if I may be that bold.

I could leave a message

but don't know what to say.

I could hold all day.

So, cats, show me the way.

Is there a place we can stay?

I will get out of the way

and follow today.

                                The Cats Herded Me Today Writ Large

My two cats spent 12-plus years together living in our cabin in the woods with me, above a creek with its broad forested sandy natural floodplain, and a few minutes' walk through the woods alongside and to a beautiful cove. We three would sit on our own personal little floating dock for hours.

They explored everything and everywhere. They learned how to mingle carefully and safely beside and among deer, possum, raccoons, and Red Slider turtles from the cove, sometimes while the turtles were laying eggs in a hole they'd dug in the woods. I'd sometimes see the egg-laying because I'd wondered what the cats were looking at in woods nearby.

They brought me to see tiny fawns curled up in camouflaged spots out of sight of the cabin waiting for their mothers to return, which they always did. They learned about life and themselves directly by observing days' and evenings' activities through the tall cabin windows, from our covered deck, and being out in the bountiful wild. They learned how to detect and avoid coyotes.

I learned and enjoyed hundreds of things about nature and wildlife just by following their line of sight toward things that had caught or commanded their attention. For instance, in the mornings if anything outside the cabin or even well beyond it had changed from the day before, they'd usually notice it upon first venturing outside and very quickly gravitate to it.

It could have been a two- or three-inch deep upside down perfectly conical hole in some dusty ground that an armadillo, possum, ringtail or raccoon excavated in search of food. Among invisible things they'd notice were fresh scents which were especially attractive to them. I could almost imagine the invisible wafts of scent floating their way. It could have been from a twig on the ground next to a well-worn path where someone may have brushed against it or just from the animal's proximity. It could have been a familiar scent wafting in from across the creek from where deer and coyote would sometimes emerge.

If they'd look up, I might follow their lead and see a cardinal couple about to sing an alternating duet or launch from perches very nearby each other. If there were deer about, they'd know it long before I did and indicate their presence by looking in the direction from which they were approaching. I'd see them looking at what appeared to be empty woods, Then suddenly comes from around the corner of the cabin a big strapping Doe leading a couple of Fawns or small group of juvenile and other adult group members.

More than a few times, even in daytime, their glances would soon reveal to me a nearly legendary presence unnoticed by me that quickly became the sudden entirely silent launch from a low-stretching Oak branch of a full wingspan takeoff by a Great Horned or Barred Owl, each looking every bit as large as the two-foot height and four- to five-foot wingspan of which they are biologically capable.

I usually was one to two seconds late to see the moment their massive muscular talons relinquished their grip on the Oak bark and the instant the Owls began their skillful flight outward on air, but I'd shiver a bit and quietly gasp to see those long and broad dark gliding wings flexibly navigating among and between thick clusters of tree trunks and tall saplings as the Owls made their way toward a creekside Sycamore or Cypress or to the steep wooded slope across the creek, either place a safer vantage point away from unpredictable humans. Sometimes they'd leave the entire visible area for strictky Owl reasons. The sighting would feel most amazing when those powerful fully outstretched wings would turn entirely vertical between two trees tightly close together and then bank back toward the horizontal as needed as spaces opened wider and at that point were beginning to flap again after the required gliding had gotten them to where they needed to tactically be. I do wonder if the cats were feeling awed like I was or if they were maybe only a little bit less nonchalant than usual when these very close-by Owl events occurred.

Once I was even able to literally save a fellow cabin neighbor's cat from the jaws of a coyote clamped around the cat's head as his neck and shoulders were pinned against a tree trunk. Inside my cabin, all three of us heard the cat's two long, loud and frightened sorrowful cries for help, about five seconds apart, but I only knew for sure exactly where the attack was specifically happening when I looked down and saw my cats' four ears and two faces, with determined eyes fixed, directly pointing to where I'd immediately need to dash.

Surely enough, the intense activity was exactly in the direction they'd thought it to be, about twenty-five yards from the cabin front door across the wide lower stone patio and into the woods, and I'd guess they were accurate about the range too, and the intensity lightened and relief began to flood in as the Coyote finally opened its jaws and peeled then melted away into the woods toward the creek as I, running and screaming as experts said I should be doing, reached within ten feet away.

My cats excitedly enjoyed exploring the crime scene after the lucky cat was safely back with my neighbor and being placed in their car for the trip to the vet to stitch up the big gash across his handsome right cheek. His self-bitten tongue would heal over time. His shoulder was dislocated and recovered nicely. He was back exploring the woods after two months of mandatory rabies quarantine.

I think my cats found enough sensorial circumstantial evidence to recreate the crime in their potentially four-dimensional minds. I was glad they were reminded to stay cautious out in the wild. My favorite way to describe their natural guidance of me is this: If I've seen something interesting in the woods, it's because the cats saw it first. In this case they were looking with their ears.

Their togetherness had grown immensely close after a beginning of distrust and territorial disputes in the cabin. The second cat had been introduced to the first cat after the first had been my only cat for a year. They soon negotiated wisely a truce that blossomed into a life of acceptance, love, and a deeply intertwined mutually beneficial companionship.

They had individual adventures and ones together, and many with all three of us. They had tweir own tastes and preferences. One cat loved rooftops and climbing trees for sport. The other loved being in the cool air under the raised cabin's breezeway in summer or under a chair on the patio out of the sunlight. One cat loved walking into open doors of other cabins and making himself at home and accompanying strangers down the trail by himself to the floating dock on the cove. The other cat was very content with the one cabin he finally could call his own and wanted as little to do with other people as he possibly could.

One cat, once when on the deck and catching the scent of a coyote lying in wait nearby, would do a startled double-take of his head and hurry into the cabin. The other cat remained sitting up on the deck in the Sphinx position staring intently at the coyote down the slope toward the creek hiding behind some trees, as if thinking, "I dare you" or “just try and catch me”.

On our group walks to the creek, always in the daytime, one cat always made certain that the first thing he'd do was drink from the fresh water. He'd head straight for it. The other cat, standing alongside me, would join me in watching the other cat drinking with pleasure the cool quenching laps of creek before we'd all start walking along it in one direction or the other. One way leads upstream to deeper woods and large boulders strewn like an island chain in the stream bed. The other leads to where the creek joins the cove and where the cove begins to spread out into its great width.

Before we began walking the creek, the thirsty cat would take long drinks, then look up, down, and across the creek, and then take second and sometimes third drinks. He was in no hurry. This cat had previously been homeless in the city not far from downtown but had a creek nearby to help sustain and refresh him. It was very dear to see him cherishing his own creek moment with us.

I wondered while drinking then if he experienced any trace of a welcome subliminal emotional return to those precious quieter moments when his urban yet wild creek quenched his thirst and provided him treasured quietude and at least temporary relief from risk. I do know he warmly welcomed finally having a home he could gladly call his own, regular meals, safe loyal companionship, and a different kind of interesting life that still allowed him access to living wild when he felt like it and also living well.

Both cats loved to wander the woods by themselves, with purpose I'm certain, and upon their returns to the immediate cabin area, their bastion of shared territory and creature comforts, they would always, to me who grew to learn to interpret aspects of their feelings, and even of beliefs about their lives, it would seem even before stepping up onto the deck they would begin basking in if not cherishing the comfort and familiarity of their own lair again, a safe haven after risking confronting who knows what while off in the woods somewhere.

It seemed they were feeling a proprietor's belonging to the place, and not of an ownership of the cabin proper and immediate surroundings, but actually more like an overall pride that they feel fortunate to live with and contribute to, like a pride of lions, lions who only happen to be of a different size, but no less proud and assured of who they are. They felt very proud and assured actually. They were blessed. I don’t know if they knew it, but I’m sure they felt the cat equivalent, which may even humble our own human experience of gratitude, for all we know.

These two kind old gents - their visiting vet called them golden bachelor lions - were my comfort, joy and sustenance. Together they made my early golden years an era of soulful found treasure through the pleasures of their inestimable company, the thoughtful habits and casual intricacies of their cat livelihoods, and their good and sweet natures. Nature herself embraced and enfolded our time together, and freed us up to enjoy each other, and I was happy largely because they were too.

 

Loving Our Very Existence (L.O.V.E)

I'm the beginning of life
I am the end
I'm the Mystery's wife
I am godsend
I am a guest of life
which will never let me die
and I enjoy all of this
without knowing why

I'm the illusion of time
I'm in full bloom
I'm a river in rhyme
I flow from the womb
I have a path to climb
yet I am enough
and I'm truly amazed
that I'm all of this stuff

Here are the answers you seek
here is the soul
here there is hope for the weak
here you are whole
here is where you can now speak
here you'll be heard
here's the presence of prayer
without even a word

Where can I go from here
why would I try
where is the tender and dear
where is the sky
when is the moment most near
when is it not
how can what I want most
seem at some other spot

Now's the time for life's kiss
now is a sign
now is a season of bliss
now's a deep mine
now is a time that I'd miss
now is a pearl
now is patience and grit
in this best of all worlds

I'm the beginning of love
for which there's no end
I'm a singing sweet dove
I am your friend
it's from love I am made
as sweet as a child
I'm the hope you embrace
and I yearn to go wild

I'm the meaning of life
I let my heart rend
I abandon all strife
I'm on the mend
I'm the truth about life
that's hidden from view
I'm free now today
I know what to do
it's the beginning of life
beginning with you

For Flo Piltz, from Larry
(I flow from the womb)

 

                                                                  Mother and daughter

LOVE WILL song

Love Will, with Nimiwari's vocals, arrangement and instruments by Lamar Pecorino, song and produced by Larry Piltz

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ooTFV_MUhcLdrPb0y1AF5xLvQcZmm_K7/view?usp=sharing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZBLAmdULkQ&feature=youtu.be THE DIFFERENCE Pro-death sentence? One of the Ten Commandments says otherwise (and the others imply otherwise), as do our consciences. Vengeance ain't mine, even though schadenfreude is of familiar acquaintance and a guilt-ish pleasure when the karmee feels so damned deserving. Still, the two are not a strained 'both-sides' question. The only question these days, and maybe ever, is how many people have to suffer and die when a choice is possible. Right now, a choice is possible. I'm writing really about the current coronavirus pandemic. A very large but minority subset of humanity lacks the courage. spiritual maturity, or just plain impulse control to unfollow the path of unnecessary - and in this case totally unworkable - herd immunity. They'd rather get it over with and let likely millions of people unnecessarily die, with prolonged horrible deaths no less, than, well, just plain try to ease the suffering and prevent the extra dying by using proven measures of prevention. The difference between the pro-death sentence subset and the majority people of compassion and patience is courage. We've got it. They ain't, at least not when it comes to some of the most crucial matters of the heart and soul. The difference may be a complete accident of birth or fate, such as we know such quixotic determination, and we're the ones both cursed and blessed with this particular courage of insight and action, but we have no choice but to live up to it, live with it, and act upon it. It's not an impossible dream to enact love and peace in our lives and in our world, but it is incumbent upon the compassionate among us to suffer the uncompassionate, or seemingly less so, whom we shall always have with us. They do possibly have an advantage though. They often would by and large be glad and many even giddy if we were the part of the herd that disappeared, while if they were the part of the herd that disappeared, we would grieve and agonize over how it could have been different. The Difference makes all the difference and makes the world livable and enjoyable, for all, even for our friends who it seems rarely stand down from their harsher shorter-sighted views of the world. It takes all kinds, we know, but both sides are not equal and some things are not negotiable. However, good things are possible, and that's no dream.

The Flight Attendant and the Tumbling Turtle of Turtle Cove

The Cats and I were walking the woodsy trail alongside the cove to the small floating dock. I was in the lead. They were moving along as the feline spirit moved and accomplishing their typical various goals of grazing select grasses, sniffing suspect drooping branches and cone-shaped holes left by browsing armadillos or possum, and malingering with purpose with occasional forward progress made. They've been known to dart ahead of me or keep up with my patient pace, but this wasn't one of those walks. They eventually caught up to me but not before all the excitement had commenced and the drama concluded.

Suddenly something ahead of me caught my attention. At a medium distance, it looked and sounded like a 10-pound rock tumbling roughly over and over down the steep shaded rocky slope to my left. I wondered why it had suddenly fallen, if maybe a deer had brushed up against it as I’ve seen happen, or if eroded ground beneath it had finally given way.

Surprisingly, it was a turtle, its shell now lying almost evened-out flat with the dusty ground contiguous with the harder-packed trail, with the critter's nobly-shaped head and soft neck protruding out the front. It must be in shock or stunned, I thought, because normally it would be hiding entirely inside its shell with someone as close to it as I was, about one foot away. I looked closely for wounds or a crack in the shell but could find nothing except maybe a scuff or two. It seemed turtle had escaped a more debilitating fate.

Turtle is one of the numerous red slider turtles native to Turtle Cove, which its beautifully hued red horizontal racing stripe on each cheek divulged. It's a small adult, likely a female, who might have been trying to find her way back to the water after laying her eggs, or maybe she was still searching for a great spot for a nest. Either way, the hard pounding jolts she felt while piggybacking on gravity’s way down the slope, the partial hollowness of the shell providing the loud thunks, interrupted whatever mission she had been on.

Given her condition, her state of shock or mere dazedness, and because she's probably just shaken up and only a little bruised, I decided she most needed to get back in the water. That cool quick immersion would uncloud her head, I reasoned and hoped. After that, she could decide what she needs to do next. It’s still her life, after all. Turtles pretty much live in water and right beside it. There’s nothing like pleasant familiar territory and creature comforts to buck up one of nature’s unlikely little miracles

I picked her up, with her aerodynamically shaped head and slender neck a fuselage sticking frontward out of her shell, and carried her at a quick pace in front of me waist-high, her deeply dark and clear eyes peering directly forward. She was virtually flying through the air, and she seemed actually amazed though was probably more stunned still than anything else.

I'd give almost anything to know what she's thinking, or feeling, as she flew along out in front of me. She turned her neck right and left and back again, looking for familiar signs to try and help make sense of what was happening to her. She seemed to briefly catch sight of me, which could cause alarm, but most importantly to her, when she looked back to the right and slightly downward through the line of cypresses, she saw the silvery wetness of the cove stretching out glistening almost as far as she could see.

From the moment she first saw the water - until I gently set her down on a flat limestone rock directly on the edge of the shore and she immediately leaped down and into the water - she had kept her head turned directly toward the cove and never took her eyes off the water, knowing she had found her salvation. She knew, just knew, that if only she could get back to the water she would be okay, and there it was, beckoning, no matter how strange things had become for her in the last brief interval.

The whole interlude, from tumbling down the rocky slope to her split-decision, once set down on the rock, to quietly plop down into the shallow depth, lasted only about one minute.

I think her instantaneous, sure-footed leap a few inches down into the cool cove water made me almost as happy as it made her, though I know it's impossible for me to truly walk a mile in her shell. Congratulations, little friend. You made it back to your cove harbor, your haven, partly the hard way, partly at the insistence of a taller power, and finished with a splash entirely your own.

Thought Xperiment @JEWanon #jfds;lfjrjfsdr

There's a fluid stasis
as the basis
for those thoughts
that hound and chase us
reduce and trace us
and would erase us
and debase us
if not waste us
real head cases
that mentally race us
instead of pace us
and embrace us
and truly face us
in our places
of oasis.

No my country's not made of good people who make sick things up and stick by them because they know it scares and intimidates everyone else. No it couldn't be..We're better than that. We're not total nazis yet. Are we? ARE WE?

THE MENACE APPRENTICE

The Menace Apprentice

is a fate that's not meant us

just a mistake life's lent us

come to divide and rent us

an unreality show star

whose known wide and far

for his inimitable genius

for lying and meanness

and the smoke and mirror

make his confusion much clearer

a mental hologram of blubber

fool's gold and used rubbers

The Eternal Dolt

a dodo in full molt

a pitiable ignoramus

who will die trying to shame us

loves the suffering he causes

accepts only escape clauses

feels nothing but threat

even his saliva's flop sweat

he's a blob of self-pity

what he touches turns shitty

he's all about the teardown

and meltdown and beatdown

mad clown with a shit crown

he's a nervous condition

of demolition absent contrition

a public masturbation of dissipation

his excitation now a capitulation

to his fear of a fight

a scared dog with a bite

drowns in the hate he's sown

with us in the splash zone

and a pandemic he's blown

it's your very life he'd own

he's an exploding supernova of gall and bile

the only space force we'll see for a while

a dark matter show of hook and crook

of deny steal lie plunder and rook

our suffering his happy place

good ol' larceny and bear mace

he and his axis of weevils

their role models medievals

minds in constant upheavals

I may yet believe in evil

Larry Piltz

April 14, 2020

Five Pulitzer Winners Walk Into A Bar In My Amazon Dream


I realized tonight I've known five Pulitzer Prize winners. They are described below, not in chronological order, but with attempted aspiring candor, wit and cleverness.

The first one I'd known had been a high school friend and a fellow member of the school choir, she as celebrated and accomplished pianist and accompanist. She won her Pulitzer in 2005 for Biography and Autobiography with a Willem de Kooning biography, co-authored with her husband. I took heart when she told me it had taken ten years to write it. She and I at the earliest had been fellow participants in, I think, a local 4th or 5th grade patriotic speech competition. She recited "I Am An American", and I recited "The Gettysburg Address". I believe she won the competition, despite my earnest gratifying Lincolnesque performance (if Lincoln had had the larynx of an elementary school boy). She was a most talented girl, which is a vastly understated compliment. She is an excellent person of highest integrity and is sweet, kind and charming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annalyn_Swan

The fourth Pulitzer winner I'd met, Lawrence 'Larry' Wright, I met in Austin because I knew his equally brilliant wife from a helpful but now somewhat embarrassing personal growth seminar called Insight II (I demur from describing the exhaustive energetic hysterics of its Limiting Characteristic Theater; that's all I have to say about that). Larry won his Pulitzer (Those words put together in that order!) in 2007 in General Nonfiction for the book The Looming Tower. He wrote for Texas Monthly at the time I met him in about 1988. I was impressed when meeting him even then, and his ego was not at all corrupted by his talent and his already gathering reputation for insightful well-crafted writing. Talent wins out sometimes. That Larry can write! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Wright

The third Pulitzer Prize winner is Ben Sargent, editorial cartoonist for the Austin American-Statesman when I worked there at the City Desk from about 1984 to 1987. He had won his Pulitzer in 1982. He was the lanky friendly bearded legend (way back before not-shaving was compulsory lemming behavior) padding around the newsroom as if he were merely mortal. Ben was quiet and unassuming and had a wicked and sharpened sense of diabolical humor that gave incisive hilarious hell to people who well-earned it. Luckily for him, Texas politicians even then were especially mock-worthy, as were the national 1980s Republicans, and the Pulitzer committee likely especially enjoyed Ben's fearless skewering of them and of their precious cherished right-wing delusions. I was city desk assistant and, among other celebrated duties like 'hand-populating' the template with temperatures from around the country and world and calling area funeral homes to gather the names and information about the most recently Hill Country deceased and writing their obituaries for the afternoon/evening edition of the daily paper, I also received and solicited public information and then conveyed it to reporters and editors and other staff including Ben, the gentle giant with a mighty set of drawing pens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Sargent

The third Pulitzer Prize winner, Raymond Bonner, won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of writers while on staff with The New York Times. He also won first prize in 1985 for 'Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador,'' in the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Awards program. Bonner was a NY Times reporter when I met him in 1982. I had called the NY Times Washington bureau office because my Austin neighbor's ex-Marine boyfriend had a hot story to tell and hopefully sell. Bonner and another NY Times reporter, Philip Taubman, Jr., son of a senior NYT editor, flew the next day from D.C. to Austin to secretly interview the ex-Marine, who had been one of the earliest pot smugglers across the Rio Grande into Texas and had contemporaneously in 1982 been a part of the CIA's then-secret operation to create a right-wing guerilla army (The Contras) in Honduras along the border with Nicaragua. He scouted landing zones for C-130 Hercules transport planes.

The two reporters and my scary new friend and I spent two days scouting isolated locations around and outside of Austin where the interviews were then conducted. I was taught to conceal my activities and not be followed. My friend's story was to be part of a larger story being written about other ex-military people also taking part in that covert operation. By that time, Bonner had already made journalistic history with a 1982 NY Times story that first exposed the weighted fist of oligarchic capitalist genocide and oppression in Central America at the hands of the American-trained, American-supplied, and American-denied El Salvadorean Army El Mozote Massacre in which 800 to 1200 fleeing civilian peasants including children were hunted and killed in the countryside in 1981 by that army’s Atlacatl Battalion, whose officers (and other members) had been trained at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia in Columbus. Bonner continued in the same journalistic vein with a lifetime of equally intense and historic other reporting elsewhere such as Rwanda, Bosnia and Indonesia. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Bonner

Lastly, the second Pulitzer Prize winner I'd known was a journalism professor at Louisiana State University whose Advanced Typography class I signed up for and dropped in 1973 after coming to terms with the fact that I had no interest in typography whatsoever, advanced or primitive.  James Shoaf Featherston won his Pulitzer in 1953 as part of the reporting team for the Vicksburg Herald's coverage of a 1953 tornado in Vicksburg, Mississippi.   Much more famously, Featherston was the Dallas Times Herald reporter on November 22, 1963 who, immediately after John F. Kennedy was shot in his motorcade, secured a witness (Mary Moorman) for the police to interview and himself later testified before the Warren Commission.  Also, in the 1950s, Featherston covered Emmett Till's Mississippi murder trial for the Jackson Daily News.  It's remarkable his Pulitzer Prize was not given for either of those but for coverage of a tornado.  He probably assumed he'd peaked early until the Emmett Till trial and the events of November 22, 1963.  

The dream was that I win a Pulitzer. I've wanted one since I first learned what a Pulitzer is. So I majored in journalism in college, where I dated a woman last-named Pulitzer. She was a real prize, actually, but not THE prize, and I wasn't convinced I wanted to 'win' her, nor had she shown evidence she'd want to be 'won' by me.  Since then I've come to understand more fully that someone actually needs to write an especially outstanding cohesive series of articles or one really gigantic blockbuster of a news story to win a Pulitzer or a book.  There's always a catch.

Anyway, that's a Rubicon I super duper likely will never even locate let alone cross. However, having been exposed to actual Pulitzer winners will serve me well if my writing stars align well enough for me to essentially win what would be for me the journalistic lottery. I'll be able to name-drop as I awkwardly negotiate interviews, and perhaps I will have learned by osmosis how to behave accordingly. At least I've gotten close to the Pulitzer Mojo of the five Pulitzer winners I've known and met, good people all, and my life's been elevated and enhanced because of them.  I count that as a win. And finally, here's the Amazon part of the dream.
https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Urban-Primeval-Larry-Piltz/dp/1530871085
____________________________

Coming Eventually....how as a Little League shortstop I made an unassisted triple play (without any help!) with the bases loaded, and of how in one game I made all three outs - AT BAT!!! - in the last inning of play. A true hero's journey.
____________________________

                                             
























ERGO WHERE GO?

Where does the time go
the same place the years go
the same place the winds blow
and the same place as flies the crow
in our mysterious status quo
our lives a happy hobo
without a care or need to know
if there's some final glorious show
or a surprisingly gentle undertow
either way I've got to go
tomorrow's the only thing I know
and tonight I have a furlough
and fields of love still left to sow
so good night from this old fellow
who wishes you well and says hello

For Eli on his upcoming 40th

YES, IT’S ALL A FREAK SHOW, INDEED* I can well believe it takes all the air out of the room. I didn't watch Frontline’s Charlottesville** documentary though. I know what happened, basically, and may see it someday. I'm very happy it's televised and available. Right now though, it's all too real and near and possible. I need the mental cushion of just knowing, and not looking. I well know what it looks like already. As did many of my relatives back in and around The Pale, who didn't live to speak of it, and I've lived the entire silence about the subject with an extended family for 60-plus years. It's too loud a devastating subject to ever even whisper about. What are ya gonna do? Anyway? Well, I could join my son, wonderful young man now of dual American-Canadian citizenship living in B.C. It's tempting. I'd love to live near him anyway! Go Northwest, old man, I hear myself think at times. I have felt the strong presence all along, from childhood, riding along with me on a continuum where the past is still happening in its original form, as well as in newer different forms with different victims and different perpetrators, and have followed its course, surfacing here and there, the evil of Rwanda being a signifying manifestation, for instance, Columbine, for another, knowingly perpetrated on Hitler's birthday, subscribing for years to the Southern Poverty Law newsletter which recounts all reported hate crimes in the U.S. in climbing monthly totals into the dozens per month after month and rising with a bullet, with accounts of the crimes and those committing them and why. You don't have to look far or long. You can scan the headlines every single day. It's too easy. What's hard is to block it out. It's amazing how many people do, for different reasons. Two of them: Because it could never happen to me. Because it could happen to me. You're both wrong! It's happening now, somewhere, all the time. The fuse is lit. The race is on and here comes heartache. And now that "it" has the American presidential and one major party’s personal approving imprimaturs on it, with no American institution yet proving capable of seriously restraining it or cutting its power off at the knees with one swoop of the sword of justice, I think it's okay to begin to feel, or anticipate the beginning of feeling of...It. Is. Happening. Here. And yes…It. Can. Still. Be. Deterred. But it's easily as likely that it won't be. Already it's underway, with the easiest victims first to be demonized, officially denounced (yes, that is key), and gotten rid of like slaves at auction, with their prospects torn limb from limb as if by wolf packs, if not brutally imprisoned. Yes, not too cheery lately. I’ve even felt the need to reach back eight years for an upbeat song to record, just to feel like I'm doing something positive, that something's worth doing, and hopefully to soon send it out into a cold perplexed confused world that's looking for some warmth and clarity. I'll keep my warmth, thank you, until 'it' pries it from my cold dead body, but the world should have my clarity. It’s refreshing, and terrifying. With this song maybe I'll finally make a buck out of art! Or at least out of music. It'd be nice to be rewarded for my long harrowing doctor-it's-my-eyes personal monitoring of what's now emerged right from under our own 600 million feet**, and my musical response to it. It'd be almost cleansing, so to speak, though not ethnically. It’s easy to get lost in such a big parade*** * Title borrowed from Liz. ** Other potential and real documentaries among a galaxy of possibilities: Andersonville Georgia (not far from Plains) 13000 murdered, Sharpeville Transvaal South Africa 69 murdered, El Mozote El Salvador 800 murdered, Kigali Rwanda up to a million murdered, Srebenica Bosnia 8000 murdered). And the beat goes on. Drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain. Maybe Cher can still do something. Sonny Bono wrote a hell of a good song, ya know? Distracted yet? *** Actual carnage may vary.

                                               Two Dreams of One Thing

After about seven or eight years in our home, and of those seven or eight years of immersing himself outdoors in our little woods, loving the outdoors as the Life Itself it is for him, because he is so fused with its grandness and its fascinating particulars, and its sensory wonderland, after all this time the seven or eight brutally hot summers have finally driven Tsavo to this August corner of the living room cottage surrounded on two sides by its five-foot tall rows of windows that provide a comprehensive visual immersion into his woods.

He finds rest and summer solace behind these windows and naps more deeply and prolifically in residence here than anywhere else in our home, instead of his more brief usual cat naps that have sustained his outdoor ranger forays and helped bring him home each day to complete the pride.

Even when one day he becomes old and can no longer be an easily vigorous embodiment of feline outdoor curiosity and investigation, he will be able to bask and nap in the windows to his world, his private enclave where invigorating memories of scents and sights and sound intimate knowledge of the creature kinds who inhabit Tsavo's world will play out before him, visible and real, beckoning him to knowingly inhabit his worlds in an expanded dream,
the dream of a lifetime.

Tsavo, the Bird Feeder, and the Journey Down to Home

He's still there on the roof now at dark, 9:18 Austin time. Coyotes prowl. Big hoot owls hunt, occasionally in pairs. A big loud hoot owl couple live here alongside us. Middle of the night yesterday they landed in our front yard and started a really loud hootenanny, for some reason, close to our open window. It sounded so raucous, spontaneous and odd it was fairly hilarious to hear and lasted a few minutes.

Will Tsavo make it past tonight's gauntlet and get home safely? Will I feel the need to pick up an empty laundry basket, hold it upstretched over my head, and coax him to jump into it from the roof as we've done numerous times, usually during the daytime? It's not as far down a jump as you might think. I stand on the steps to the porch so it's only a short drop for him. And when I feel his gentle touch plop down in the floor of the basket, I am genuinely relieved and happy, and he and I feel close.

Then I'll carry him home in his 'sedan chair' with him ruling over all he can see, including me, as he peers out over his realm. He will from time to time lean back and rub his head on my forehead. I am his and he is mine. And I am at your service, my liege, my King of the Forest and Rooftop.

When we make this sedan chair sojourn at night, nocturnal Tsavo truly becomes in his element, and if he's not high in a tree overseeing his domain, the laundry basket is his next favorite perch.

It's almost decision time for the basket bearer. I wonder if Tsavo's come down yet. Sometimes he stays there until I'm safely removed from the scene so he can exercise his now-free choice to wander the woods at night against my preferences. He knows about things like strategy, you see. A good hunter always understands his prey and his pack animal, of which, to be clear, I am the latter.

In the dark of the roof, Tsavo took several seconds longer than usual to trust I wouldn't drop the basket and him with it and also to secure his footing for the drop-in. Yet it went as smoothly as it always does.

He rode home in the sedan chair, was placed down on the living room floor still in it, jumped out of the basket (it became a basket again after being carried inside), ate his kibble dinner in peace, and washed it down with water from the big leftover dog bowl, and he probably is experiencing a bit of a letdown (oh, good accidental pun) after being up high alongside the big oak branches he's climbed by day and under a mellowing clear sky about to be lit by a big round bright orb on a pleasant cooling-down night.

The wages of being civilized. The Tradeoff. Not a living wage, I will add. But we make do.

PEER OF THE REALM

And it is his realm
from the scaled heights of oak branches
angling for the best sunlight
to the leaf beds in the shadows of twin trunks
where an ant courses around his languid resting profile
and along the cat paths connecting all his favored spots
Tsavo peers into a realm best experienced
as a shared cascade of signs flowing
into his accumulating sensorial awareness
the better to understand the grand minutenesses of realm.

T R U E   H O M E L A N D

Larry Piltz

Act 1
Why is this sweet world we live in
so torn between chaos and Zen
with such extremes at either end
like enemies and lifelong friends
starvation and stock dividends
a young child's death yet love transcends
are we really blowing in these winds
with not that much on which to depend
can we compromise in a scale of ten
must our safe place be a lion's den
and our safe word something to defend
must we wait around for the worst to begin
if peace breaks out don’t we all win
there's a lot to learn if we don't pretend
that chaos comes from some original sin
what starts the wars again and again
who stands to gain from this which men
they must not care we all are kin
nor care about the shape we’re in

In truth there's hardly mystery
what's up with all our history
a volatile and blistery
irrationally pissed story
no wonder it's a fist story
a violence is the gist story
bombs bursting makes the worst story
and despite the good a cursed story

I prefer a herstory
to bring about the best in we
much more than just a cursory
retelling from the nursery
but a story shared with honesty
and fearlessness to help us see
that greed is a type of sorcery
that mainly creates enemies

I'm not immune to tempting fate
and hope I'm not unfascistically late
to point out what I think is great
it's surely not resentment hate
exclusion a scapegoated immigrant's fate
instead we need to congregate
just inside an open gate
and share this world this very date

There's more than enough to go around
enough to make the world resound
with gratitude while love compounds
on openminded common grounds
employing hearts and minds unbound
many reclaimed from lost and found
this will bring a great reknown
and a kind and generous rebound

Great wealth's goal is control and power
not to share but to hoard and glower
if you dare ask more per hour
and think for yourself and forget to cower
Regard the daisy be a flower
be pretty and sweet and don’t be sour
you look so nice from my golden tower
say how's that trickledown cold shower

And you'd better keep a smile
or be called disloyal and hostile
so be a threat and not servile
but give an inch and accept a mile
let's work our magic break the dial
be the resistance go mobile
and see it through with grit and style
though great wealth acts with gall and guile

It's not us seeking out to blame
there's someone seeking to defame
and bully good folks with his shame
and forcing a vile hatred game
and doing it in your good name

Who’s this bully is he insane
is he a Christ a king to reign
he’s one who truly loves your pain
and craves your loss makes it his gain

The bully lives high above the laws
he commands the heights and admits no flaws
challenge him you’ll suffer without pause
his wealth and fame are his one true cause

It's the bully's con and you’re the mark
his thrill to keep you in the dark
to him we’re servants on his ark
to the new world of The Patriarch
a world of wars and oligarchs
a world of madness cruel and stark
for his own sake The Patriarch
keeps our sweet world his private park

The bully is who starts the wars
you fight to the death that's what we're for
there's always violence in store
cause bully needs a little more

ACT 2
Welcome to the USA Patriarch Act & Panic Attack
with spying dying and lying to your face and behind your back
it’s a crackdown smackdown trackdown and meltdown
I’m indicted with fiction though punished in fact
by death or internment in or deporting from my homeland

Does your brain contain some interesting thought
from a book you checked out maybe read or bought
or from some nice tune you were humming or sought
that’s the heinous crime that’ll get you caught
in the web of the worldwide homeland

Well your mind is free but what a twist
it lands you smack on that guest list
now rest assured you will be missed
when you get out of line in the homeland

Is speaking up a dangerous crime
say the thought and do hard time
then parable and verse and rhyme
pardon my grammar and my paradigm

Please just threaten me with jail
or make me watch you hurt a whale
so I’ll let you read my personal mail
watch the law go postal when justice fails

Better keep your faith cause you’ll lose your trust
think how you’ll feel right during your bust
you’ll swear the law’s moved beyond natural disgust
as it reads you its rights and insists on your trust

Who might it be who turns you in
your neighbor mother ruh roh my friend
is paranoia now a sin
the paranoids are still after me again
The love of truth it is your code
until persuaded  to implode
your confession due to electrode
oh that will be quite the shock to the homeland

What is the thing you don’t want to hear
on that midnight ride we’re conditioned to fear
that you're queer or some other phobic jeer
from our macho police in their bondage gear

Are you perplexed this very night
deciding between flee and flight
methinks the emperor’s wound too tight
a bully drunk with power's our plight

In ancient Rome when it started a war
dictators were chosen for what was in store
our chosen dictator makes war on the poor
freezes free choice then comes back for more

Are our laws meant to constrict and besiege us
with crude ultimatums both vague and egregious
what’s this lesson someone’s so desperate to teach us
that freedom’s a threat and a reason to seize us

My nation has those recurring dreams
where it divides into various teams
first a moment of silence and then the screams
it’s winner take all in freedom’s purges and schemes

Then the winners buy states with their pocket change
then too many are shackled and memory's estranged
and royal dynasties still become deranged
with headlines still shouting there’s nothing here strange

Now in the interest of my liberal press
I’d like to clear up this news media mess
by daring someone to please confess
rich conservatives own all the media good guess

So you’d better make that living will
and polish up your survival skill
certain preachers say there’s a time to kill
oh the thrills and the chills and whose blood will spill
Work on your table manners bub
you’re invited to the big country club
exclusive rights to that big hot tub
for the boiling in oil a la homeland

Oh say can you see the petroleum
and the rocket’s red glare crematorium
can you hear it above the delirium
as our Air Force bombs our stadiums
oh how so proudly we've hailed
how advanced we’ve become
advanced like dementia
What homeland

Act 3
Is this nation in the process of losing its mind
in compassion and sense is it lost years behind
does it yearn for respect only to find
instead the responses are given in kind

The patriaddicts aren’t like me
they wave the flag it proves they’re free
free to pay The Patriarch Fee
of whatever the Big Daddies say it should be
or else be labeled the enemy

Meanwhile the army's exported all loaded and locked
as Marines and sailors wave bye to the dock
and the next of kin just stand there in shock
look Wars 'R Us is issuing stock
buy yours now be the first on your block
no matter how deeply you and the homeland are in hock
and surprise the wars will come home knock knock
you'll be caught between the hard place and a rock
and you'll wonder how you could have believed all that crock

Propaganda is foreplay full speed ahead damn the prepositions
fight them there freedom's march us or them target acquisition
army strong army of one be all you can be Operation Revision
Defend der Fatherland Homeland Security sloganeering addiction

It's all bullying by bullshit psychological attrition
as the propagandists desperately avoid deposition
to question them they consider sedition
if you accuse them here comes your legal rendition
as martial law’s threatened to crucify opposition

I try to ignore all the militarist poseurs
sitting in armchairs safe from exposure
cheering the killer robot bulldozers
but it’s getting harder to keep my composure

It’s Blood Sacrifice ordered by our leaders all hustlers
bloodletting daily by these genocidal rustlers
slaughtering good people in unjust wars
families towns and cities always starting with the poor

Herding people with unmanned missiles
spewing through the air like bloody thistles
if you listen you can hear the ghastly whistles
as we turn people into ghosts and gristle

We use alienating lethal ideology
zombie all-devouring technology
and treat our war criminals as prodigies
who determine their victims by symbology

Wars are our fatal fashion shows
designed by fascistissimos
with runways launching deadly blows
with the perennial theme of Nihilism's Throes

We give cute violent names to our superweapon models
bombshells for the bloodlust which we coddle
so addictive I'll be shocked if they're not bottled
will we ever learn to pull back on that throttle

We worship our knockout sexy symbols
from pickup truck size to fits in a thimble
resist war culture and refuse to assemble
these future relics so dastardly nimble

The Predators  Cobras  Raptors  Grim Reapers
Tomahawks  Hellfires  Harpoons  Deep Sleepers
Stingers  Crusaders  Tridents  Intruders
why not one named for Jeb Stuart Magruder
Avengers  Black Knight  Shockwave  Javelins
rockets engineered for the bad guy travelin’
The Goodbye Weapon  America’s Ray Gun
and I’m sure those last two are totally way fun
The Punisher  Excalibur  Dread  Apache
and a gas that will make you throw up and die scratching
and remember Fat Man and the Little Boy
oh the nostalgia for some of our earlier toys
and the modern but conventional Daisy Cutter
that cuts down a forest as if it’s hot butter

Screaming Eagle  Strike Eagle  Falcon  Hornet
Viper  Venom  Growler The Disemboweler
Lulu  Matador  Honest John  Ding Dong
Hound Dog  Little Dog  Little John  Lance
Davy Crockett  Condor  Red Snow  Red Beard
Blue Cat  Blue Fox  Blue Peacock  Blue Slug
Blue Danube  Blue Rosette  Blue Water  Blue Steel
Green Bamboo  Green Cheese  Green Flash  Green Granite
Green Grass  Indigo Hammer  Violet Club  Yellow Sun
Orange Herald  Locust  Fort Knox  Hellcat
Bulldog  Hercules  Herky Bird  Spectre
Puff the Magic Dragon  Wolverine  Snark  Slugger
Priest  Wolf  Lynx  Cougar  Fox  Buffalo
Stryker  Guardian Angel  Wrecker  Spooky  Spooky

We knowingly kill children with explosive clusters
no safety from them or the vile bunker busters
there's hot uranium spread among the living and the dead
what kind of mutant strain dreams that up in their head
there can never be enough grieving and tears shed

All the stealth machines glorified in magazines
the fire and forgets without care or regrets
the carriers the Harriers the hurry us to worry us
the minders the blinders the screaming Sidewinders
the brawlers and crawlers the brutes and the stalkers
our own Imperial Walkers
the sieges famines and plagues
these leaders should be in The Hague
with their cheerleader militarist poseurs
how would that be for closure

If you truly believe in fair or free trade
the flow of ideas and the progress we’ve made
then tell me why the de facto blockade
of justice and peace with this homeland charade

If you truly believe in a spiritual love
as on high so below not the pushing and shove
then why not remove your fist from your glove
extending your palm as below so above

Let’s settle now this whole debate
don’t tell me who to shove and hate
and quit living to discriminate
tolerance keeps us hopeful and great
So go ahead and raise my rent
blow my mind it has its bent
but when you come for the innocent
you've gone way too far shame homeland

Speaking of let's lift up high our frosted mugs
our pharmaceuticals and whiskey jugs
someday we'll work out all the bugs
and toast the victorious war against drugs
oh the euphoria Sisyphus shrugs
as Caesar builds new labor gulags
now have another slug and give your homeland a hug

Let’s have our real party on democracy's lawn
and celebrate each vote and each liberating dawn
all equal and free with no class lines drawn
no kings no queens no rook no pawns
won’t keep us in check cause it's all hands on deck

Now we come together as one
through times hard and fun
with no injustice undone
yes our work's just begun
work for each and everyone
all the daughters and sons
and here we’re all Americans
under one common sun
where all living things run
in the one common band
in our hearts through the land
this our truth our demand
and democracy's our plan
our promise our stand
for our new homeland
for our True Homeland
everyone hand in hand
for our True Homeland