From The Spiritual

Anyone who has ever done the 'resume dance' with a prospective employer,  has had more than two burger flipping jobs and a 'grounds maintenance' position in their work history, knows the bitter truth of expectation versus reality. 

Well now spin this around, to the 'dating dance'...interminable meets and fails, hopes, needs, expectations, and ultimate denials. Let's spin it one more time. You're desperately depressed. Someone sets you up, for therapy with a 'mindfulness meditation group'. 

The therapist calls, says...he hears you want to join his group, but you've missed one of twelve sessions, already...can you make 'the next Friday'. Well, no, it's a three hour round trip, and you already have another clinic appointment on Thursday, same town, same place. 

"Oh well then, that wont work...you would have missed the first two most important group sessions. Maybe we could set it up for the next cycle?" , says a whiney liberal voice. Whatever. They don't do 'meditation'  here, like they do in Asia. They don't do Accupuncture here, like they do in Asia. 

They don't have 4,000 years of history in these wonderful arts. They have a hundred and twenty hours, at a community college of some kind, and a brittle diploma of 'bonafides' on the wall. 

A Buddha statue sits somewhere in the environs, some 'canned' environmental music piped in, and a 'tight chic/ or dude' with a sprout eating attitude, that passes for spiritual...and they wouldn't say 'shit', if they had a mouthful! 

This is what passes for 'spiritual' in  the good old USA. So, you go, you listen, you watch them stretch their tight ass tendons. You listen to them 'discourse' a few well trod wisdom's, from world teachers, old and very old...and new. 

You haven't exactly happened upon Dharmasala, or Shambala, or Lhasa. You leave, more depressed than before, and you wonder about 'connections', phoney liberal pretenders, to the arts and sciences of the spiritual, and you decide to stay home, next time. 

Home is always better, and you wish for your guru, but you'll just have to be your own. You walk to the mail. An envelope. A bill...from 'the spiritual'. Jesus Christ, that's a lot!


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2017, at Deming, New Mexico

Art: Key Gompa, India

Dirty Rat

Can you face the quickened, with their thunderclouds of anger, their flash like, lightning'd eyes, their impotence of patience, for the mercies they have rendered,  of the kindnesses asunder'd...by your craven disregard?

Can you stand against the judgement's, to be heralded by angels, in your bald faced lies...and little else? Prepare...till time's atonement ticks no more, my dears!

Then, stagger toward your lightless pile, you salt of vile earth...and fall upon your worthless swords, till, be no more, where it is finished...that you cast the bones of children off!


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2017, at Deming, New Mexico

Art: Google pic

Some Bear Gifts

We humans. Some of us bear gifts. We can bless, and so can we curse. I am sparing with blessings, but they work and they count. I am seldom motivated, and will not cast away a perfectly good blessing, on one unworthy.

You may say, I judge, but I need not judge to know. On the other hand, I have withheld the cursing's, out of good sense, and kindness, and a propensity to suffer, rather than inflict suffering. That means, I have a lot of snowballs here, needs throwing. They are piled up like 'popes turds!'

I have looked at this world, and I see little among its ruling race worth saving. I would not even, at this point, ask for salvage rights. Everyone casts blessings...like birdseed. How many do you think are real? I will not give mine away to enemy's, knowingly.

Simple respect, for this world, its creatures, and the word, put into carefully considered frames of thought...would gain one a true blessing. But humans do not reach for the gift of God, as chimpanzees would, in an instant, and I would grant the gift openly to they, and the creatures of the world.

You humans...you now revel and make comedy of your cruel and lying ways. I, for one...find it un-funny, as a poet and a human. I am sure, the god of god's has not come here for this! So, save your spit, for the fire you will face...if you find no respect within your person...for anyone but yourselves!


Written by Bruce James Clyde 2017, at Deming, New Mexico

Art: Japanese garden, Pinterest