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One of my best friends passed away.

Over the years I’ve experienced the passing of people related to me and have attended quite a few funerals. I’m from a large family with an even larger extended family so deaths and funerals are part of that reality. Not until now have I lost a friend. The loss isn’t any more or any less, but it’s different.

With family, you love them all but treat only a few as friends.

With friends, you love them all but treat only a few as family.

Mary Dell Grey was family.

Mary Dell suffered a stroke several months ago and sadly things went steadily downhill. During those awful months she was watched over and cared for by her son Greg Eversole (my friend since fourth grade), her sister Brenda Taylor (my friend for years now), with help from their family and friends. When Mary Dell passed away everyone was understandably devastated.

A small group of friends and I knew Mary Dell for nearly forty years. In all…

“Sleeping Child” by Archibald A. McGlashan

the child is me
returned to his morning
restored to his wonder
regained of his innocence

second chance
a rebirth unexplained
reimagined from
one dying dream

the child is me
become tabula rasa
receptive to imprint
of brand new ideas

treat him kindly
each person he loves
knows or meets a de facto
new teacher new mentor

to learn from their
patent unwitting example
from even their casual
passing connection

the child is me
soft and eager for life
fresh as spring in relief
of a long painful winter

what shape will
accrue to this new
iteration of character
carried to manhood

what better a
man will be manifest or
was the dream but a prayer
to endure one last night

the child is me
soul asleep in his peace
of departing as clean
as when he arrived

to all who looked

could bear to look

he was diminished

a skeleton of man

the faintest stamp

a vague tattoo upon

earth’s crusty dermis

his ink near finished

vibrant shades now

faded by his hands

a pencil etch-a-sketch

self-erasing shaken with

each dram and draw he took

a tracing watercoloured

in a wornout painting book

a disappearing frame on which

the cloth of life was worn

to disassembled threads

eliminating, obsoleting

even with each breath, he dreads

the final phase, the loss of vocal chords, the emptiness, the void of words – the stoking fear as death draws near, the absent smile, an unchecked tear – the fatal blow that takes him from those loved, those lost – the furtive reek encroaching, the avalanche, the bitter cost – the vapour misting, the misfiring heart, the solemnities, those torn apart – the shitting and the palour, the wasted times – the pungent puke of…

There is never just one thing wrong.

This is the great truth of everything. The connectedness of all the things that are wrong strangles even the most sincere and competent problem-solver. You can get one knot out of a silver necklace but twenty will drive you over the edge.

That’s the situation in Flint right now. There are so many layers of wrongness, going back decades and decades that untangling the current water crisis from everything else is impossible. It isn’t a stand alone event, it’s just an extraordinarily big knot in a necklace with thousands of intractable knots.

Likewise, going forward, remediating the impact of lead poisoning on Flint’s children who are already disadvantaged because of racism and poverty is a challenge of such complexity and gargantuan proportions that no one can even conceive of a plan.

So the people of Flint get a lot of bottled water. And…

Well, the winter season is here, and it feels like I’m snowed in at a horror movie ski cabin full of lunatics, idiots and psychopaths.  The door is blocked.  There is no way out.

Listen–it’s Trump’s Freedom Kids, singing their patriotic little hymn again.  Over here, USA!  Over there, USA!

Hillary is at the party too.  She is cackling at everyone’s jokes, wondering why nobody finds her likable.

Bernie and Trump are playing a game of I’ll do you one better.  “I’ll make America great again!”  “I’ll make America even better than America!  I’ll make it Sweden!”  “I’m gonna win!” Trump yells.  “I’m gonna win!” Bernie mumbles.

“Neither one of you is going to win!” I want to say, but there’s too much clatter just outside the living room door.  Out there, religious fanatics are beheading and shooting people, and blowing things up.  Great.  We’re going to have to…

There are plenty of reasons to be angry about Flint. The racism, the arrogance, the incredible damage to people, pick one or all. We look at the trajectory of disregard, how State officials brushed off complaints month after month, and it seems incredible. But it confirms what we all really know – all lives matter but some lives don’t matter all that much.

Flint is a Black town. The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that 57% of the population is African American compared to just 14% of the State of Michigan as a whole.

Flint is a poor town. It wasn’t always a poor town. It used to be a heavy duty working class town where the term living wage meant a pretty decent life. Now. the median household income of $24,834 is almost exactly half of the State’s median income of $48,411. (A median income is that point where half of…

Boomers in adolescence, the death of short back and sides
‘Shoulder length or longer’ the order of Hair tribe’s new dawning
Age of Aquarius letting in just ‘the flash of a neon light’ bogus sun
not that the free love hopefuls, the weekend hippies could differentiate

Timothy’s ‘Turn on, tune in, drop out’ therapeutic muddled mind psilocybin mushrooms
far out phallic axe hero’s, sex without hang-ups big talk, sisters doing fertility for themselves
no more sweet smile vacuuming for hubby wives ofttimes handcuffed to the kitchen sink
no more blue collar jobs for life, the paternal odyssey discharged as impotent folly

Miniskirts and Mini’s, Quant girls eight inches above the knee groovy extravaganza
go-go boots a ’dancing a punters delight while maiden aunts just shake their heads
material possessions declared a mortal sin by those who had the whole shebang
a murmur of brave snazzy gays, heads above the old…

(source)

licquor pours across all floors

it is not possible to become

intoxicated today when

bota bag bleeds and seeps

its blood-red vintage while

weary herdsmen weep

and skin afresh, hanging

hircine hopes on kids

gathering yesterday’s grapes

for fresh pressing

remembering to decant

old with old, the new with new

and both willing the carver

with every bone in their bodies

to gouge with due caution

adhere with common sense

remember libation to providers

and secure for all, in celebration,

that the horn has plenty