Kick the can down the cliff

"Kick the can off the cliff;
swipe your card cuz what's the diff?
Find a hole and dump your load;
Kick your bucket down the road."
Get your kicks.

This is what cousin vinny said
before he odeed and woke up dead.
Then he sent a postcard from hell;
what he said I'll never tell.
Well maybe.

He said he'd just as soon take a dive;
to preserve his image of cook and jive,
but then his jig was up too soon;
he cooked it up in a dirty spoon.
Y'know what I'm sayin?

It all started back on the road,
when jack left home and kissed a toad,
but then it pricked us in the back
and sank our mission in lake kerooac.
Cool!

That beat all I ever seen,
to shuck the buck and shoot up the dream;
'til along came a slicker hack;
he sat on a candlestick, that newer jack.
Far out!

"Steal this book. Question everything.
Forget the picket fence; have a fling.
One pill makes you larger; one makes you small."
Now the folks who paid the bills
won't do anything at all.
Stall.

Kick the can down the cliff.
Snort some plastic and take a whiff.
We be high, but now we broke
since we went upstairs and had a smoke.
Fugedabodit.

I read the news today oh boy
lady gogo got a new toy,
and some whacko shot us, news at eleven:
forget about heaven.
Happy new year.

Glass Chimera

The Star

There was this unique star,
okay?
And these wise men were expecting it,
and so when they saw the star,
they followed it,
expecting something good.
But when they arrived,
the news of their enquiry fell into the wrong hands,
and some terrible things happened.
But it wasn't their fault.
And furthermore,
not everything that happened
was terrible.
There was some glorious stuff going on too
in spite of the evil.
There is a lesson in this.
Even wise men
will generate unintended consequences
in this world.
But the star of hope still shines.
And the woman with child
is still to be treasured
and protected
in this precious life
no matter what happens
no matter who goes crazy and kills people.

Glass half-Full

A Ticket to Handel

Comfort ye, my people.

They say that
George Frederick Handel wrote his best known musical oratorio in London during the space of two or three weeks. That's hard for me to comprehend, especially after experiencing the Messiah's immense musical scope and spiritual conviction in Charlotte last Wednesday night. The North Carolina Symphony and Oratorio Singers of Charlotte performed, while I, stunned with constant amazement, watched and listened, along with my wife Pat, and daughter Kim, who had so thoughtfully gifted our tickets. There's mine, up at the top of the blog.

"I have waited all my life for this," I told Kim, as we were ascending that grand stairway at the Blumenthal.

It's true.

After Handel's symphonic overture, the opening words, lifted from our ancient prophet Isaiah, sounded forth from the mouth of the tenor: "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God."

Glass half-Full

Recovery as Idol

My present reading (for novel research) of William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich has revealed a surprising, though very disturbing truth--mainly this:

Under Hitler's hyperactive dictatorial leadership, Germany achieved, during the mid-1930s, what appeared to be a miraculous economic recovery. By 1933 Hitler had deceived his way into being elected as Chancellor of Germany. From that year 1933, to 1937, unemployment in Germany plummeted downward--from six million unemployed to one million unemployed.

In only four years!

How did Hitler and the Nazis pull off this amazing turnaround? They put people to work building up their war economy. But it was a bellicose accomplishment that would later prove to be their tragic undoing.

Furthermore, on page 262 of the Simon & Schuster edition, Shirer includes this statistic: "The heavy industries, chief beneficiaries of rearmament, increased their (profits) from 2 percent in the boom year of 1926 to 6 1/2 percent in 1938, the last full year of peace" (before Hitler launched his mad plan to enslave Europe, ed.).

And this: ". . .most firms reinvested in their own businesses the undistributed profits, which rose from 175 million marks in 1932 to five billion marks in 1938. . ."

But then consider where that impressive recovery eventually took them--to an agonizing, ill-fated national destruction a few years later.

This history lesson, courtesy of Mr. Shirer's prodigious research--and his first-hand witnessing of life in Nazi Germany during that pivotal time-- should serve as a warning to us.

Do not make of economic recovery an idol. Much more important is the retention-- among a free and inquisitive nation of people such as we are-- the retention of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, for all of us. To that list I would add: the general preservation among us of a decent respect for the rights of all persons and people groups.

Do not make of economic recovery an idol. Freedom and dignity is much more valuable.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress