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"Souls are fires whose ashes are the bodies."
--Kahlil Gibran

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Nonsense

Here is a mountain of many flags

Here a hornet of bees

Here is a time colored heartache

A fiat of muppets

Not blackbirds fly but stones

Here the pages ring off the hook

Sun circles the moon

Here eyes taste

Here we here

Here is military intelligence and honest politicians

Here compassion

Here humanness

Here care

Here is a mountain of many flags

Hermeneutics

"Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people -- otherwise there wouldn't be any religious people. But don't listen to me. I'm just the messenger. And you should know that these messages I bring are open to broad interpretation; they were given to me as symbols and signs like satyrs and angels, adders and icons -- just a thought of a whimsical mind.

"If there's one thing I've learned over all this time it's that there is no objective truth. Think about it. A scientist says he wants to study the effect of gravity and the weight of the world falling on a newborn child. He says his study is neutral, with no preconceptions. Now, how can that be when he himself was once born and lived out his days held fast to this planet by said force? How can he be objective, 3rd person omniscient? How do you put all that lived experience in brackets in a flesh and blood world? How can he claim to be transcendental, claim to be a god, and remain neutral?

"You see, science is no more than another religion, and rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. I am Hermes, the messenger god, the god of travelers and thieves. You should know better than to listen to me.

Razorbill

Standing on a barachois,
stone still above the high watermark
among driftwood,
seaweed and twine,
a razorbill
unhinges its beak and bawls.

If this pen had been the barrel of a gun,
had these words been bullets,
I would have fired upon it,
as cherubs take potshots at us,
if only to silence the squawking.

Ockham's Razor

It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer.

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graffiti on time and

space

like a binding spell

earth
bone
and winding sheet
let this spirit come to me
yet send it in peace or not at all

never the deceiver
for things unspoken are not always unsaid

never forgiven
for you may do me no harm

but what I want to know
is
if I am
or I am not
in your heart
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Conch

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Everything speaks in its own way. The earth speaks. The plants and animals and insects and birds speak. Everything has a voice. This world is not mute, only waiting for us to say a word it understands, to recognize the many names by which it calls itself.

If we should come to listen to the world around us, if we should come to hear its voice and learn to whisper back its words, the clouds may pause in passing, the sleeping hills may shift and rumble, a blade of grass may bend.

Everything has a purpose it means to carry out -- sometimes important destinies lay hidden inside pebbles and crumpled leaves, between the fine fibers of a feather. Sometimes all it takes is a moment to breathe (for the mind to become still) for all things to be revealed, so we may listen to a shell...

...and hear the sound of the sea.

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photos in collaboration with Tom Craig (the poor fella who's trying to teach me to use a camera)