By Godsil
Mon
Should “man” become “mon?”
Should “woman” become “mon?”
Should “persons” become “mon?”
Hey Mon, the way Bob Marley said it,
Is very easy on my mindbody.
What about yours?
WormMon
Dodging Bullets Riding Whales
Dodging bullets
On the way up the mountain.
Dodging bullets
Down deep in the sea.
Dodging bullets
Riding whales.
Spirit trumps bullets.
Rainy Spring Weekend Morning
Worm Mon, Chicken, Junk, Fish, Food, and Love Mon: Good Mon
Worm Mon
“Worm Mon” and “mon” is, for me, gender neutral.
If you would prefer “worm man” or “worm woman,”
We can oblige.
Worm Mon raises worms.
Chicken Mon
Goes to the forum to suggest chicken farm industry for Milwaukee.
Junk Mon
Hopes to figure out good uses for all of creation, starting with what some call junk.
House Mon
Learning how to mother and father and shepherd increasingly lovely homes.
Fish Mon
Partnering with Milwaukee yeoman urban agrarian in efforts to transform industrial slums ito fish and vegetable farms.
Food Mon
Working with family and community gardeners to advance locally grown, intensive, natural, urban agriculture.
Love Mon
Enjoying conversations with Rumi, Hafiz, and the mystics of all people’s most authentic spiritual traditions offering food for thoughton creations most dazzling mystery—
Us!
Water and Weed Your Visions!
I swear it’s true that
Hope tends to quite often
Somehow materialize
That which it contemplates!
Not always, but often enough
That I water and weed my visions.
Gargantua’s “Depression” Stirs Primal Powers
As humans pause
‘fore gargantua’s gaspings…
Gasping themselves
In all that foul air…
Forced to meta reflect,
And explore new daily rounds.
Good anti-dementia exercise.
Fresh and happy neural rhythms.
Boomers’ Children: The Greatest Generation
Stocks tank,
Boomers keep working.
Forced entrepreneurship and victory gardens,
Small businesses and barter networks,
Co-ops and small is beautiful solar architecture.
Our young become…
The greatest generation!
I Want To Be a City Fish Farmer
I’ll feel safer for our bodies’ futures
If fish are farmed in our ‘hoods.”
Our children and our elders
Will be joyful
While visiting our fish farms,
And eating our fish.
I have no doubt that Mother Earth
Prefers protein for humans from fish
More than from cows and/or pigs.
And I’ve a better chance
To lose my bulging belly’s shameful girth,
On a diet of baked fishIn virgin olive oil and fresh garlic.
Home Depot Paint Desk, 3/7/09
Give God a Morning Kiss
Give God a kiss,
While walking
Out your door.
Give God a kiss,
While walking
Through new doors.
Give God a kiss,
While walking
On this floor…
We call…
Earth.
Inspired by Karen Hafiz Kolberg
Bonobo Mamas At Heidelberg Gardens
Bonobo Mamas at Heidelberg Gardens
Surrounded by East Grant Boulevards…
Getting that tree ready for my nest…
After my 100th.
Sitting up there…
Mixing my mushrooms…
With my Avalon breads…
My Gardening Angel greens…
My King Solomon Baptist Church honey…
Communing with Grace and Starhawk.
Happy.
Climbing Out From The Second American Civil War
I think we’re climbing out from a second American Civil War,
Not as manifestly bloody as the first,
But bloody still and more blurred in boundary.
We’ve a long way to go.
We’ve a long way already come.
Hang in there!
Hang on!
The best parts…Yet to come!
Thank you for working toward this day!
Bounty Once Thought Waste
What gift, the bounty
Once thought waste!
No Imperium’s edicts
Could approach
The benign effects
Of so luminous an…
Appreciation.
Olde
The Story of Loaves and Fishes From the Holy City of the Sweet Water Seas
First.
It began in earnest when the kid from the hood,
Just 15 years old, shot in the stomach,
A fine Riverwest, gay, pub worker/owner,
A few weeks after an intemperate leader
Gay-bashed rogue cops
Rather than thoughtfully, powerfully,
Seize the reins of justice.
‘Second.
This outrageous shooting, plus
A rash of thuggery that summer, 2005,
Brought forth a community gathering,
Which I attended, at the Art Bar on Burleigh,
Across from old St. Mary’s,
Where the shooting had occurred.
I had the same sinking feeling in my stomach,
As during the 1970s and 1980s, when I and friends
Had done our best to inspire thought in things better
Than racist scapegoating at community meetings,
Following notorious crime events and momentsIn struggling Milwaukee.
Third
But when I arrived at the Art Bar, there was a
Spirit of graceful, powerful…resolve.
A succession of strong and warm people,
A polyglot, rainbow melange,
People with deep roots in the neighborhood
And the movements of our times,
Expressed thoughts and feelings aiming to heal and renew,
To draw upon our deepest imaginations and
Sources of resilient endurance…
To keep our eyes on the prize that
Ghandi and King, Rosa, John, and Bobby,
Mandela, Grace Lee Boggs, and many more,
Had blazed in great visions in our youth.
Having spent much time aliveIn the dark, dank tombs of pharaohs,
While not witnessing manifestations of bestial hate
Aimed at minority “others”
I was overwhelmed by theseBursts of warm light
Coming from everyday people.
I had to leave early,
Lest I lose my composure,
And while driving home
Along sacred city trails,
Alongside resurgent neighborhoods
And cleansing rivers,
The notion of finally meeting Big Will Allen,
The legendary urban farmer already renowned
In awakened circles for his avant-guard
Permaculture and urban agriculture innovations,
Innovations agricultural and “biological,” e.g. vermaculture,
Agriculture ecological, e.g. gloriously productive
Simulated indoor river valleys with sweet water
And fat, healthy, tasty fish,
Innovations social and cultural, e.g. farmer training youth programs.
And when I got out to Growing Power, on 55th and Silver Spring,
More than one incredibly exuberant persons,
Starting with Miss Karen, greeted me with a warmth and generosity
That continues to inspire, and even, startle me.
Later on I learned that I had experienced my first moment with…
Growing Power Magic!
That’s what Miss Karen calls it.
And it’s true!
Fourth
I returned home to fine an e-mail
Sent from Harvey Taylor, Milwaukee poet and stevedore,
Which contained a song he’d just written
About Big Will Allen and Growing Power!
And then at my 60th birthday party,
Sally Leiser, whom I’d never met, showed up
At the Kern Park “country club,” out of the blue,
And shared the Growing Power story,
In perfect pitch!
Information Age Movement Organizing!!
There are those among us who would gladly
Make money at a regular job,
And craft a life focused on raising families
And creating the good life…
And there are those who don’t quite fit this mould.
Squeezing the Bad Out of Life
Let us pray we improve
Our skills
Squeezing the bad out of life!
Exhale that bad in your life!
Dance it out!
Laugh it out!
Cry it out!
Do it!
Do it!
It feels good!
Get hot!
Get loose{!}…
Squeezing that bad from your life!
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