stolen proclamation of important business

• Good guitars hold value better than a 401K
• Guitars make you feel better
• Art has real value
• Take control of what is truly important to you
• A good guitar helps you play better
• Considerably less costly than expensive cars or fast women
• Stimulation: both for yourself and the economy
• Helps to meet girls or guys – improves one’s social life
• Stimulates the brain: raises SAT score so you can get into a better college
• Much, much cheaper than a good college
• Music gets you through times of less money better than money gets you through times of less music
• Transports the soul better than top grade tequila – without the hangover
• Only verified and effective portal to another time and place
• Shortest path to Zen release and a higher consciousness
• Why compromise on the very things that make you happiest?
• If you are happy, those around you can be happy
• If not now, when?
• Good guitars hold value better than a 401K
• Guitars make you feel better
• Art has real value
• Take control of what is truly important to you
• A good guitar helps you play better
• Considerably less costly than expensive cars or fast women
• Stimulation: both for yourself and the economy
• Helps to meet girls or guys – improves one’s social life
• Stimulates the brain: raises SAT score so you can get into a better college
• Much, much cheaper than a good college
• Music gets you through times of less money better than money gets you through times of less music
• Transports the soul better than top grade tequila – without the hangover
• Only verified and effective portal to another time and place
• Shortest path to Zen release and a higher consciousness
• Why compromise on the very things that make you happiest?
• If you are happy, those around you can be happy
• If not now, when?
• Good guitars hold value better than a 401K
• Guitars make you feel better
• Art has real value
• Take control of what is truly important to you
• A good guitar helps you play better
• Considerably less costly than expensive cars or fast women
• Stimulation: both for yourself and the economy
• Helps to meet girls or guys – improves one’s social life
• Stimulates the brain: raises SAT score so you can get into a better college
• Much, much cheaper than a good college
• Music gets you through times of less money better than money gets you through times of less music
• Transports the soul better than top grade tequila – without the hangover
• Only verified and effective portal to another time and place
• Shortest path to Zen release and a higher consciousness
• Why compromise on the very things that make you happiest?
• If you are happy, those around you can be happy
• If not now, when?
• Good guitars hold value better than a 401K
• Guitars make you feel better
• Art has real value
• Take control of what is truly important to you
• A good guitar helps you play better
• Considerably less costly than expensive cars or fast women
• Stimulation: both for yourself and the economy
• Helps to meet girls or guys – improves one’s social life
• Stimulates the brain: raises SAT score so you can get into a better college
• Much, much cheaper than a good college
• Music gets you through times of less money better than money gets you through times of less music
• Transports the soul better than top grade tequila – without the hangover
• Only verified and effective portal to another time and place
• Shortest path to Zen release and a higher consciousness
• Why compromise on the very things that make you happiest?
• If you are happy, those around you can be happy
• If not now, when?
• Good guitars hold value better than a 401K
• Guitars make you feel better
• Art has real value
• Take control of what is truly important to you
• A good guitar helps you play better
• Considerably less costly than expensive cars or fast women
• Stimulation: both for yourself and the economy
• Helps to meet girls or guys – improves one’s social life
• Stimulates the brain: raises SAT score so you can get into a better college
• Much, much cheaper than a good college
• Music gets you through times of less money better than money gets you through times of less music
• Transports the soul better than top grade tequila – without the hangover
• Only verified and effective portal to another time and place
• Shortest path to Zen release and a higher consciousness
• Why compromise on the very things that make you happiest?
• If you are happy, those around you can be happy
• If not now, when?
• Good guitars hold value better than a 401K
• Guitars make you feel better
• Art has real value
• Take control of what is truly important to you
• A good guitar helps you play better
• Considerably less costly than expensive cars or fast women
• Stimulation: both for yourself and the economy
• Helps to meet girls or guys – improves one’s social life
• Stimulates the brain: raises SAT score so you can get into a better college
• Much, much cheaper than a good college
• Music gets you through times of less money better than money gets you through times of less music
• Transports the soul better than top grade tequila – without the hangover
• Only verified and effective portal to another time and place
• Shortest path to Zen release and a higher consciousness
• Why compromise on the very things that make you happiest?
• If you are happy, those around you can be happy
• If not now, when?
• Good guitars hold value better than a 401K
• Guitars make you feel better
• Art has real value
• Good guitars hold value better than a 401K
• Guitars make you feel better
• Art has real value
• Take control of what is truly important to you
• A good guitar helps you play better
• Considerably less costly than expensive cars or fast women
• Stimulation: both for yourself and the economy
• Helps to meet girls or guys – improves one’s social life
• Stimulates the brain: raises SAT score so you can get into a better college
• Much, much cheaper than a good college
• Music gets you through times of less money better than money gets you through times of less music
• Transports the soul better than top grade tequila – without the hangover
• Only verified and effective portal to another time and place
• Shortest path to Zen release and a higher consciousness
• Why compromise on the very things that make you happiest?
• If you are happy, those around you can be happy
• If not now, when?
• control of what is truly important to you
• A good guitar helps you play better
• Considerably less costly than expensive cars or fast women
• Stimulation: both for yourself and the economy
• Helps to meet girls or guys – improves one’s social life
• Stimulates the brain: raises SAT score so you can get into a better college
• Much, much cheaper than a good college
• Music gets you through times of less money better than money gets you through times of less music
• Transports the soul better than top grade tequila – without the hangover
• Only verified and effective portal to another time and place
• Shortest path to Zen release and a higher consciousness
• Why compromise on the very things that make you happiest?
• If you are happy, those around you can be happy
• If not now, when?

the walking artichoke

The Pangolin                                               

                                                       

                                        

Another armored animal -- scale
....lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they
form the uninterrupted central
..tail-row! This near artichoke with head and legs and grit-equipped gizzard,
..the night miniature artist engineer is,
........yes, Leonardo da Vinci's replica --
...........impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear.
........Armor seems extra. But for him,
...........the closing ear-ridge --
.............or bare ear lacking even this small
.............eminence and similarly safe

contracting nose and eye apertures
....impenetrably closable, are not; a true ant-eater,
not cockroach eater, who endures
..exhausting solitary trips through unfamiliar ground at night,
..returning before sunrise, stepping in the moonlight,
........on the moonlight peculiarly, that the outside
...........edges of his hands may bear the weight and save the claws
........for digging. Serpentined about
...........the tree, he draws
.............away from danger unpugnaciously,
.............with no sound but a harmless hiss; keeping

the fragile grace of the Thomas-
....of-Leighton Buzzard Westminster Abbey wrought-iron vine, or
rolls himself into a ball that has
..power to defy all effort to unroll it; strongly intailed, neat
..head for core, on neck not breaking off, with curled-in-feet.
........Nevertheless he has sting-proof scales; and nest
...........of rocks closed with earth from inside, which can thus darken.
........Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast
...........each with a splendor
.............which man in all his vileness cannot
...........set aside; each with an excellence!

"Fearfull yet to be feared," the armored
....ant-eater met by the driver-ant does not turn back, but
engulfs what he can, the flattened sword-
..edged leafpoints on the tail and artichoke set leg- and body-plates
..quivering violently when it retaliates
.......and swarms on him. Compact like the furled fringed frill
.........on the hat-brim of Gargallo's hollow iron head of a
.......matador, he will drop and will
...........then walk away
.............unhurt, although if unintruded on,
.............he cautiously works down the tree, helped

by his tail. The giant-pangolin-
....tail, graceful tool, as a prop or hand or broom or ax, tipped like
an elephant's trunk with special skin,
..is not lost on this ant- and stone-swallowing uninjurable
..artichoke which simpletons thought a living fable
.........whom the stones had nourished, whereas ants had done
...........so. Pangolins are not aggressive animals; between
.........dusk and day they have not unchain-like machine-like
.............form and frictionless creep of a thing
.............made graceful by adversities, con-

versities. To explain grace requires
....a curious hand. If that which is at all were not forever,
why would those who graced the spires
..with animals and gathered there to rest, on cold luxurious
..low stone seats -- a monk and monk and monk -- between the thus
.........ingenious roof supports, have slaved to confuse
...........grace with a kindly manner, time in which to pay a debt,
.........the cure for sins, a graceful use
...........of what are yet
..............approved stone mullions branching out across
..............the perpendiculars? A sailboat

was the first machine. Pangolins, made
....for moving quietly also, are models of exactness,
on four legs; on hind feet plantigrade,
..with certain postures of a man. Beneath sun and moon, man slaving
..to make his life more sweet, leaves half the flowers worth having,
........needing to choose wisely how to use his strength;
...........a paper-maker like the wasp; a tractor of foodstuffs,
........like the ant; spidering a length
...........of web from bluffs
.............above a stream; in fighting, mechanicked
.............like the pangolin; capsizing in

disheartenment. Bedizened or stark
....naked, man, the self, the being we call human, writing-
masters to this world, griffons a dark
.."Like does not like like that is obnoxious"; and writes error with four
..r's. Among animals, one has sense of humor.
.........Humor saves a few steps, it saves years. Unignorant,
...........modest and unemotional, and all emotion,
.........he has everlasting vigor,
...........power to grow,
.............though there are few creatures who can make one
.............breathe faster and make one erecter.

Not afraid of anything is he,
....and then goes cowering forth, tread paced to meet an obstacle
at every step. Consistent with the
..formula -- warm blood, no gills, two pairs of hands and a few hairs -- that
..is a mammal; there he sits on his own habitat,
.......serge-clad, strong-shod. The prey of fear, he, always
...........curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk, work partly done,
.......says to the alternating blaze,
..........."Again the sun!
.............anew each day; and new and new and new,
.............that comes into and steadies my soul."

                                              Marianne Moore

,,,

you must believe in spring

When lonely feelings chill
The meadows of your mind,
Just think if Winter comes,
Can Spring be far behind?


Beneath the deepest snows,
The secret of a rose
Is merely that it knows
You must believe in Spring!


Just as a tree is sure
Its leaves will reappear;
It knows its emptiness
Is just a time of year

The frozen mountains dreams
Of April's melting streams
How crystal clear it seems
You must believe in spring

You must believe in love
And trust it's on its way
Just as a sleeping rose
Awaits the kiss of May

So in a world of snow
Of things that come and go
Where what you think you know
You can't be certain of

You must believe in spring and love
You must believe in love
And trust it's on its way
Just as a sleeping rose

Awaits the kiss of May
So in a world of snow
Of things that come and go
Where what you think you know

You can't be certain of
You must believe in spring and love


















.      bergman demy bergman....michel legrand


















/










///

the soul transposed

 Before You Came                                              

                    translation:  Agha Shahid Ali

Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, 

                                      of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, 

                                     of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don’t leave now that you’re here—
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror,

                      just a glass of wine.

                      Faiz Ahmed Faiz  ( 1911 - 1984 )

..

OLD AGE

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.



                                   Edmund Waller








...

a poem with no title by madeleine delbrel

It is at this point we ought to recall that
God has not created us for human loving
but for that eternal awesome love 
 with which he loves 
everything that he has created.

We should also accept this love 
not as a large-hearted magnificent partner
but as the idiot beneficiary of it that we are,
devoid both of charm and basic loyalty.

And in this adventure of Mercy
we are asked to give whatever we can
until we have nothing left. 

We are even asked to laugh
when the gift that we make is defective
whether because of failure, filth, or impurity.

But we are asked also to be full of wonder
with tears of thanksgiving and joy
before this inexhaustible treasure
 that flows into us from God’s heart.

It is at this intersection of laughter and joy
 that we find a peace beyond all confusion









...

like walking into self-awareness

               turned                                                                                            














A notch at
 the top of the mountain—                    


the eye
without a thought threads the sky through.                    


How hours take the stain of hours
and hold beneath their glare
these things arranged to resemble a season.                    


Summer’s hum and lag.                    
To walk into it—                    
breathe the frequencies that knot the air,


another animal
baffled to be an animal.






                                    William Massey
















....