Lines for inspiration and reflection

Hearts-full, Not location or creed

Instead Evangelicals live for US First--
Group-egotists, of that proud sort

Water piped in from pristine reservoirs
Lush grass, high-tech, enlarged houses and store;

But down below, poor refugees get Walled out,
Live in patched together plastic tents,

Preyed upon by ruthless cartel killers;
Or back down on their small stony acre

Near their shack and Jesus church of prayer
Where peasants Juan and Ana used be

Poverty, local gangs, and disease ruled;
But now hope for kind actions, smiles,and care;


Flighting Surprise

In my morning mug
Cold milk, washed blue berries
Dark and delicious
Lay waiting for another swig

Wait; what’s that?
Adhering--a wispy white feather

Or more briefly:

flighting surprise

in my morning mug--
adhering to wet blue berries
a wispy white feather

--
humming attack

wearing my fiery red shirt
for Christmas, I open our
sliding glass door;
sudden jolt in front
of my startled face--
a flash of feathers hum-buzzes,
darts within inches of me;

but away it flits left
back to that flowering bush
along our fence--
me a reject

--

side of the road

gray shadowed mail box
overwhelmed green, red-purple
bloomed jungle wonder
--


Twilight: Crossing Shimmering Streams into Dusk and Stars


--
fall back to autumn

treetops blazing gold
with the last light of this day--
we lift our eyes


a time for springing
childhood,

festivals of Monet-splashed leaves
that my sister and I raked and piled high
in the deep ditch in front
and jumped down into,

and our large garden behind the parsonage
with pumpkins, melons, and withered corn rows...

and lightning bugs on the wane,
flashing on and off

full of fall...

--

bidingTimeabiding

bite my teeth on famous lines
a hole lot of fragmented shells;
hunger hollows within--
deepening abyss
of lost longing
lone-ranging, reigning the distance
of a round heartless night

of a round heart-last light
lane-ranging, raining the day-stance
of last longing
steepening a-bless
fulness hallows within--
a whole lot of fragranced shalls;
bide my heart on famous lines
--


August 2020:

bolder utah

utah boulders

eye widening rock
pastels bold in harvest's sun--
basalt garden wonder

--

at the park's bat box

my young grandson scooping up handfuls
of dust
and swinging it loose--
fogged clouds of powder
lighted by sunshine
disfused halos
that disperse
back to cleated ground

--

gull wings

gullish wings
lightly spraying over gray clod fields
6-year drought--
so 'irrigating'!

--

In Every Crisis

When flailed, blind-sided,
Going down fast in
A basket abyss shrivel of worth-loss
And hope fails all drowned,
Do we launch deeper into the Deep?

Do we weep,
Do we shrive?
Thrive?

For in every crisis
Chry-sal-is*



*From crawler to butterfly--chrysalis

Even in the worst, most evil events, each of us still has the difficult possibility of heeding Viktor Frankl’s shocking words about their horrific experiences in Auschwitz Concentration Camp:
“Between stimulus [even trying to survive at Auschwitz!] and response
there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
“As we see it, an analogous relationship between the realm of human freedom and a realm superior to man is quite imaginable, so that man is endowed with free will...”
Viktor E. Frankl
“(26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997 was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and a Holocaust survivor, of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering and Türkheim. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy (literally "healing through meaning") a meaning-centered school of psychotherapy…part of existential and humanistic psychology theories. He is the author of over 39 books; he is most noted for his best-selling book Man's Search for Meaning based on his experiences in various Nazi concentration camps...
In 1941 he married his first wife Tilly Grosser, who was a station nurse at the Rothschild hospital. Soon after they were married, she became pregnant but they were forced to abort the child. Tilly died in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. His father Gabriel died in the Terezin concentration camp(Theresienstadt) in 1942. His mother and brother, Walter, were both killed in Auschwitz
--Bio from Wikipedia


--
Dan's Brief Bio:
How did I become a hobbling mutant with a red walker?
Got struck with bad stroke of bad luck 4 1/2 years ago, shortly after returning with my sweetheart from a 12,000 mile Ram camper van trip to the heartland of the U.S. and the Great Lakes.
Plenty of scenic hiking, history-learning, photo-taking, cusine-enjoying. So many
beautiful natural scenes, historical places, colorful lighthouses, quilting stores, and chilly weather!

Would you believe, we encountered 3 weeks of stormy weather in May and June?
About May the 24th I encountered a dense snow storm in western Colorado, gripped knuckle-hard my Ram steering wheel because of dangerous side-winds in eastern Colorado, barely missed 2 tornados in Kansas by about 5 minutes, but got severe lightning all about me.
And survived coat-cold weather in Michigan in June. Hit by heavy hail coming into Duluth, Minnesota.
And it rained, rained, rained--especially in Missouri.
However, we loved the trip:-)

Now I am virtually stuck here looking out at the chilly gloom of January 2024 on the Central Coast of California, at our bare-branched plum tree, our 2 rambunctious cats, the Sphinx and Selah.
-----
You might like to do a Google sleuth and find washed up pieces of my poetic driftwood lines on the vast shores of the Internet.

Dan's wild lines have fallen to print in many magazines including vox poetica, Fish Food Magazine, Contemporary American Voices,
The Camel Saloon, Ascent Aspirations, Poetry Pacific, Dead Snakes, Paradise Review, The Mindful Word, Enhance Literary and Art Magazine, Knot Middle Eastern Literary Journal, Mouse Tales Press, Mad Swirl, Ancient Paths Literary Magazine, hotmetalpress.net, Front Porch Review, The Greensilk Journal, Bigger Stones, Lyrical Passion Poetry, Eunoia Review, The New Verse News, Decades Review, Quill and Parchment, Poydras Review, Counterexample Poetics, The Copperfield Review, Rubber Lemon, amphibi.us, Poetry Super Highway, Three Line Poetry, The Clockwise Cat, Liturgical Credo, Willows Wept Review, vox poetica, Structo Magazine #4, Four and Twenty, Gloom Cupboard, Clutching at Straws, The Centrifugal Eye, Wild Violet Literary Magazine, Lyrical Passion Poetry, A Handful of Stones, Haiku Journal, Right Hand Pointing, The Bicycle Review, Leaf Garden, The Recusant, Calliope Nerve, Static Movement, Unfettered Verse, outwardlink.net, protestpoems.org, Word Riot, and
Moria Poetry, MediaVirus Magazine, Lunarosity, Hanging Moss Journal, The New Verse News, ocean diamond, The Writer's Eye, Mad Swirl, Abandoned Towers, Writer's Ink, The Scruffy Dog Review, Oak Bend Review, Crossing Rivers Into Twilight, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Cherry Blossom Review, Word Catalyst, The Houston Literary Review, Lucid Rhythms, Identity Theory, Halfway Down the Stairs, Frame Lines, Full of Crow, The Externalist, The Driftwood Review, Western Friend Magazine, Flutter Poetry Journal, Frostwriting, Words-Myth, Ink Sweat & Tears, Erbacce Print Journal, Sentinel Poetry Online, The November 3rd Club, the poetry warrior, The Shine Journal, Mississippi Crow Magazine, The Cerebral Catalyst, Anthrozine, Ink, Sweat, & Tears, Stylus Poetry Journal, Idlewheel Literary Friction, The Indite Circle, The Rogue Poetry Journal, The WriteSideUp, La Fenetre International Literary Magazine,The Other Side Magazine, Gambit, etc.

Previous published poems in the past:
October 2019:
A Poetic Debacle of the American News

May 2019:
trembled
First pub. in Stylus Poetry Journal

April 2019:
playing blues

March 2019:
I became a beachcomber of beauty

February 2019:
El Paso

First pub. in Unlikely Stories IV
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/2019/02/el-paso-rallys-political-contradictions.html
Alluded Fractures

A Twist of Words

First pub. in Counterexample Poetics

January 2019:
my gramma's beheading like the results of Dort

September 2018:
mused moments in nature
including

side of the road mailbox

california dazing

January 2018:
Lemons, "Pineapples" and Mexico
(for my dad)

October 2017:
MORNING GLORY
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/2017/10/morning-glory.html

connudrumed Clockwise Cat
starbacked
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/59489337/klox-and-katz-ink

October 2016:
a haiku, dripping rain vox poetica
http://voxpoetica.com/dripping-rain-drizzles/

December 2015:
bidingTimeabiding Dead Snakes
http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2015/12/daniel-wilcox-three-poems.html

Poem for My Dad Lightwaveseeker

Deaf to Death
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/2015/12/personal-two-poems-for-my-dad.html

September 2015:

Ricochet Dead Snakes
First pub. Yes Poetry

End of a Rope First pub. The New Verse News
http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2015/09/daniel-wilcox-two-poems.html

--

August 2015:
The Signal of the Flag
http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2015/08/daniel-wilcox-two-poems.html


The Wind Blew Away the Young
(Dedicated to Kurt Vonnegut)
First pub. in Mad Swirl

July 2015:

One Dog Night Dead Snakes
First pub. in Unlikely Stories 2.0


Film Over Our Eyes
First pub. in Camel Saloon

Juxtaposition
First pub. in Camel Saloon
https://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/search?q=wilcox

April 2015:
Gazing on Gaza Contemporary American Voices


earstopper
First pub. in The Write Room

our 'checkered' past

https://contemporaryamericanvoices.wordpress.com/2015/04/


February 2015:
The Modern Covenant Dead Snakes
First pub. in The Cerebral Catalyst

Iraqi Temples
First pub. in The November 3rd Club

On Visiting Hemingway's Mansion
First pub. in The Rogue Poetry Review
http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2015/02/daniel-wilcox-three-poems.html

Moon River Poetry Pacific
First pub. in Ascent Aspirations

horse trailer
First pub. in lyrical passion poetry
http://poetrypacific.blogspot.com/2015/02/2-poems-by-daniel-wilcox.html


November 2014: The Road to Elsewhere Fish Food Magazine October 2014: RELEASE OF KINDLE VERSION OF THE FEELING OF THE EARTH August 2014: The Pull-Out Coyote vox poetica http://voxpoetica.com/pull-out-coyote/ dark cliff walls Three Line Poetry http://threelinepoetry.com/issue.php?id=27&issue=27 July 2014: If you haven't checked out any of my other creative websites, hark over to them: http://www.selahriver.com/ Social and Spiritual and Personal Poems http://lightwaveseeker.weebly.com/ More Poems and Stories, Light in the Darkness http://lastthings.weebly.com/ Speculative/Science Fiction Poems and Stories May 2014: 1967 Dead Snakes http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2014/05/daniel-wilcox-three-poems.html Use Your Head First pub. in Unlikely Stories IV Face-Overs First pub. in Mouse Tales Press JANUARY 2014: THE FEELING OF THE EARTH A Speculative Novel of the Past and the Future In 2013: Short story, "The Gift," in Scattered Hearts: An Anthology and available on the website November 2013: Film Over Our Eyes Camel Saloon http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/2013/11/film-over-our-eyes.html October 2013: Juxtaposition Camel Saloon http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/2013/10/juxtaposed.html September 2013: The Dog's Bite...in Syria Dead Snakes First pub. in The Recusant, UK Gum Up First pub. in Poydras Review http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2013/09/daniel-wilcox-two-poems.html August 2013: Retreaded Poetry Pacific http://poetrypacific.blogspot.com/2013/08/1-poem-by-daniel-wilcox.html July 2013: Nail Holes Enhance Literary Magazine June 2013: "Roll Ever Columbia" cavalcadeofstars Northeast Night two hands vox poetica http://voxpoetica.com/two-hands/ May 2013: The Last Libation Dead Snakes First pub. in Sentinel Online Midnight Voyager http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2013/05/daniel-wilcox-two-poems.html First pub. in La Fenetre in France April 2013: The Revolution Dead Snakes First pub. in Lucid Rhythms http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2013/04/daniel-wilcox-poem.html March 2013: Ah, Bird Poop Van Dead Snakes First pub. in The Bicycle Review November 2012: In Every Crisis Ancient Paths Literary Magazine After the Battle The Write Room They Have Procedures Mad Swirl Face-Overs Mouse Tales Press October 2012: At the Retreat Ascent Aspirations September 2012: Three Sons Fight and Allah Knot Magazine, Middle Eastern Journal First pub. in outwardlink.net Whether...an Arab Spring First pub. in The New Verse News Shell Casings First pub. in different form in The Recusant El Paso Unlikely Stories IV Use Your Head? http://www.unlikelystories.org/12/wilcox0912.shtml Monks Brawl in Holy Sepulcher First pub. in The New Verse News August 2012: AWOL Paradise Review July 2012: Shipping Thirty Pieces The Camel Saloon http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/2012/07/shipping-thirty-pieces.html WayLight The Mindful Word 4-Letter Praise http://www.themindfulword.org/2012/poems-daniel-wilcox-present-moment/ Discarding First pub. in Tipton Poetry Journal Present Moment First pub. in Liturgical Credo Retina Shadow First pub. in The Greensilk Journal Outside the Limit First pub. in Flutter Poetry Journal June 2012: horse trailer Lyrical Passion Poetry First pub. in Stylus Poetry Journal May 2012: Clammy Chops vox poetica http://voxpoetica.com/clammy-chops/ Their Beekeeper's Moon The Greensilk Journal http://www.thegsj.com/poetry_3_spring_2012.html 4th poem down The Journey Rime of Faith Rubber Lemon April 2012: Lapping Ideas Front Porch Review First pub. in The Centrifugal Eye Out of the Carcass Enhance March 2012: " Let's Do the 'Twister'" The New Verse News http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2012/03/lets-do-twister.html February 2012: Gum Up Poydras Review End of a Rope First pub. in The New Verse News January 2012: Human Imitation Bigger Stones Joan of Arc The Camel Saloon http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/2012/01/joan-of-arc.html December 2011: Rock the Nations as a Cradle The New Verse News http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2011/12/rock-nations-as-cradle.html Sunday Morning Quill & Parchment http://quillandparchment.com/archives/Dec2011/sund.html November 2011: Cape May Light hotmetalpress.net The Mystery of Modern Life Missouri's 'Job' Markers Ventura Beach October 2011: Summer of Love Quill & Parchment First pub. in Wild Violet http://quillandparchment.com/archives/Oct2011/summer.html Reflection in Glass Westward Quarterly First pub. in The Oak Bend Review 'Whether' The New Verse News Of the Arab Spring http://archive.feedblitz.com/8753/~4086452 Remix: Babbling On, Again, River Eunoia Review http://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/remix-babbling-on-again-river/ One Dog Night Unlikely Stories http://www.unlikelystories.org/11/wilcox1011.shtml Brief Decades Review Mean 'Wile' Unlikely Stories First pub. in Frame Lines Tomorrow and Unlikely Stories and Tomorrow and Tomorrow First pub. in The Medulla Review July 2011: Walls The New Verse News http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2011/07/walls.html June 2011: Ah, Bird Poop Van amphibi.us First pub. in The Bicycle Review May 2011: A Last The New Verse News http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2011/05/last.html April 2011: Perception Poetry Super Highway the bumps Haiku Journal March 2011: sliced Three Line Poetry dark tent black barred window http://threelinepoetry.com/issue.php?id=2&issue=2 earstopper The Write Room Our Indy Pacer Casting Out February 2011: The Paradox of Truth Western Friend Magazine Borderlines The Camel Saloon http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/2011/02/borderlines.html Traveling Within The Camel Saloon January 2011: Time Lapse Widowmoon Press The Animal Sound in the Trees Widowmoon Press First pub. in The Driftwood Review Stone Seal Widowmoon Press First pub. in The Writer's Eye Magazine The Cat's Scientist Windowmoon Press First pub. Abandoned Towers Magazine
And many more before. Do a Google search and find more washed up pieces of his poetic driftwood on the vast shores of the Internet.

His wild lines have fallen to print in many magazines including vox poetica, Fish Food Magazine, Contemporary American Voices, The Camel Saloon, Ascent Aspirations, Poetry Pacific, Dead Snakes, Paradise Review, The Mindful Word, Enhance Literary and Art Magazine, Knot Middle Eastern Literary Journal, Mouse Tales Press, Mad Swirl, Ancient Paths Literary Magazine, hotmetalpress.net, Front Porch Review, The Greensilk Journal, Bigger Stones, Lyrical Passion Poetry, Eunoia Review, The New Verse News, Decades Review, Quill and Parchment, Poydras Review, Counterexample Poetics, The Copperfield Review, Rubber Lemon, amphibi.us, Poetry Super Highway, Three Line Poetry, The Clockwise Cat, Liturgical Credo, Willows Wept Review, vox poetica, Structo Magazine #4, Four and Twenty, Gloom Cupboard, Clutching at Straws, The Centrifugal Eye, Wild Violet Literary Magazine, Lyrical Passion Poetry, A Handful of Stones, Haiku Journal, Right Hand Pointing, The Bicycle Review, Leaf Garden, The Recusant, Calliope Nerve, Static Movement, Unfettered Verse, outwardlink.net, protestpoems.org, Word Riot, and
Moria Poetry, MediaVirus Magazine, Lunarosity, Hanging Moss Journal, The New Verse News, ocean diamond, The Writer's Eye, Mad Swirl, Abandoned Towers, Writer's Ink, The Scruffy Dog Review, Oak Bend Review, Crossing Rivers Into Twilight, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Cherry Blossom Review, Word Catalyst, The Houston Literary Review, Lucid Rhythms, Identity Theory, Halfway Down the Stairs, Frame Lines, Full of Crow, The Externalist, The Driftwood Review, Western Friend Magazine, Flutter Poetry Journal, Frostwriting, Words-Myth, Ink Sweat & Tears, Erbacce Print Journal, Sentinel Poetry Online, The November 3rd Club, the poetry warrior, The Shine Journal, Mississippi Crow Magazine, The Cerebral Catalyst, Anthrozine, Ink, Sweat, & Tears, Stylus Poetry Journal, Idlewheel Literary Friction, The Indite Circle, The Rogue Poetry Journal, The WriteSideUp, La Fenetre International Literary Magazine,The Other Side Magazine, Gambit, etc.

There are 3 collections of Daniel's published poems,
Psalms, Yawps, and Howls,
Dark Energy
and selah river.
All 3 areavailable at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local bookstores, and coffee shops.
For Daniel's speculative writing, futuristic poems and stories warp over to
http://lastthings.weebly.com/.

Other websites include
http://lightwaveseeker.weebly.com/
http://planktonpelican.weebly.com/
and
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/

And OLDER PUBLISHED POEMS:

December 2010: Ricochet Yes, Poetry November 2010: Of Princes and Frogs Liturgical Credo But the Cesspool... Right Here The High Way Chair Present Moment http://liturgicalcredo.wordpress.com/present-moment-daniel-wilcox/ The So n' So Argument MediaVirus Magazine October 2010: The Last Act Midwest Literary Magazine Short Story Morning Four and Twenty http://4and20poetry.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/4and20_v3i10.pdf A Word from the Tree Front Porch Review September 2010: All 'Hail' Gloom Cupboard August 2010: A Love Affair The Clockwise Cat Iraqi Temples http://clockwisecat.blogspot.com/2010/07/two-poems-by-daniel-wilcox.html Giving Talk 'A' Graded Clutching at Straws July 2010: Sign of the 12 Rubber Lemon #1 Tomorrow The Medulla Review and Tomorrow and Tomorrow June 2010: The Hatted Fish Structo Magazine #4 UK http://structomagazine.co.uk/ The Canine Trail vox poetica http://voxpoetica.com/the-canine-trail-memorial/ Onslaught Danse Macabre Live Branch Reach Willows Wept Review Night Watch Psalm May 2010: manta ray Lyrical Passion Poetry Retina Shadow The Greensilk Journal http://www.thegsj.com/poetpg5sp2010.html The Teeth of It The Centrifugal Eye April 2010: Israeli Morning Wild Violet Literary Magazine http://www.wildviolet.net/2010/04/13/israeli-morning/ red peaches A Handful of Stones The Last Exit Right Hand Pointing March 2010: molten froth waves A Handful of Stones February 2010: Sayings so Unkind The Centrifugal Eye Ah, Bird-Poop Van The Bicycle Review Three Poems The Copperfield Review Midnight Voyager Unfettered Verse The Cheyenne Gift Scattered Hearts Anthology Short Story January 2010: On Visiting Leaf Garden Hemingway's Mansion Only Left Standing The Modern Covenant Calliope Nerve Of Things Past Static Movement and Future December 2009: The Nemesis Counterexample Poetics Three Sons outwardlink.net Divergent Learning A Song of Songs http://www.outwardlink.net/features/danielwilcox/song_of_songs_into_olding.html The Wind Blew Away Mad Swirl the Young Caught in the Act in Iraq October 2009: To Whom it Does Not protestpoems.org Concern http://protestpoemsdotorg.blogspot.com/2009/10/daniel-wilcox.html August 2009: End of a Rope The New Verse News http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2009/08/end-of-rope.html Her Strands Writer's Ink Walking the Night July 2009: Dark Energy Diminuendo Press Book of Poems The Trouble with Names In the book Writing Cheerfully on the Web and Terms a few blasphemies The Recusant The Winged Ones Black Light Comcerning this 500th Anniversary of John Calvin and his Tongues of Fire June 2009: love's bullion Full of Crow mowed field May 2009: Picture Identity Oak Bend Review Under the Sky World The Green Silk Journal Hardwood Tap Dancer http://www.thegreensilkjournal.citymax.com/poetrypg2may09.html Ever After The Shine Journal Our Human Real Estate Word Catalyst The Miser For Goodness Sake April 2009: Cambria in Gray The Houston Literary Review restless slumber March 2009: 'ExHume' the Mind Counterexample Poetics The Incredible Shrinking Consciousness Eye Bandits A Twist of the Words Alluded Fractures The Cup Wild Violet http://www.wildviolet.net/linked_lives/cup.html February 2009: Mean 'wile' Frame Lines The Cat's Scientist Abandoned Towers Print Magazine #2 Cold as Hell Frostwriting First pub. in The Externalist In Store for Less the poetry warrior January 2009: Missing Star and Cradle Danse Macabre December 2008: Live Branch Reach Western Friend Magazine Less Is More The Daughter's Return Word Riot Body Parts California Mythic Death Moria AWake http://www.moriapoetry.com/wilcox.html November 2008: The Nature of Fishhooks The Centrifugal Eye Art Clasps Mississippi Crow Print Magazine Getting the Slip Up Early after the cyclone Hanging Moss Journal A Modern Psalm Monks Brawl in Holy The New Verse News Sepulcher http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2008/11/monks-brawl-in-holy-sepulcher.html The Mythic Mask Mad Swirl after the loss The Slowness of Danger three haiku ocean diamond Stone Seal The Writer's Eye The Faces of Rock Danse Macabre Short Story Reprint Perception in Late Night Word Catalyst Magazine Under the Big Sky A Song of Songs Into Olding October 2008: Research Filing Cabinets Mad Swirl In the Far Lane The Scruffy Dog Review Wasted Wealth Word Catalyst Magazine The Shell Zebra Mussels In September 2008: The Dog's Bite The Recusant The Loss of April Oak Bend Review Reflection in Glass The Lady in the Garden Baja Abandoned Towers Without Rime The Possibility of Suburbia Divergent Learning Paradise The Space Clown First pub. in Right Hand Pointing August 2008: Gargoyle The Clockwise Cat Utter Common Sense library census Reflection While 'Lying' on a Bed at a Slant Collapsed Falling http://clockwisecat.blogspot.com/2008/07/five-themed-poems-by-daniel-wilcox.html July 2008: Dirge in the Night Danse Macabre Night Watch Psalm The Cherry Blossom Review Messed-Up News Crossing Rivers Into Twilight June 2008: The Road Kill Cliche The New Verse News May 2008: Two Haiku Ink Sweat & Tears The Crucified Isle The Centrifugal Eye April 2008: Black Samaritan The Houston Literary Review of the Street Rock Life Partially Found Poem Lost-- Hemingway By the Waters erbacce print journal surreal morning Stoned for Truth Dear Susan B The Modern The Cerebral Catalyst Covenant March 2008: the animal sound in the trees The Driftwood Review Of Things Past and Future Half Way Down the Stairs http://www.halfwaydownthestairs.net/index.php?action=view&id=76 February 2008: Aesopian Snail The Cerebral Catalyst Discarding Tipton Poetry Journal http://tiptonpoetryjournal.com/tpj8/wilcox.htm Waking at the Funeral Lunarosity Montana's History Lesson The 'Darlossness' The Clockwise Cat of Dawkins http://clockwisecat.blogspot.com/2008/01/five-themed-poems-by-daniel-wilcox.html Only Left Standing What Nerve of the 23rd Psalm Artesian Well of Voice Losing Your Head January 2008: Be Forewarned The New Verse News http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2008/01/be-forewarned.html December 2007: Outside the Limit Flutter Poetry Journal The Revolution Lucid Rhythms The Space Clown Right Hand Pointing November 2007: Shell Casings The Recusant shadowed garden The Green Silk Journal http://www.thegsj.com/page/page/5161101.htm Conflicted West The Writer's Eye Fable of the North The Centrifugal Eye My Canadian And in the book Dark Energy Memories From Below the Line Caught in the Act The Clockwise Cat http://clockwisecat.blogspot.com/2007/11/five-political-poems-by-daniel-wilcox.html Kiss of Death 'Heir Ball' The Day My Battery Died Carpet Diem Pomona Hills Identity Theory Her Santa Right Hand Pointing Barbara Way Court Hearing The Faces of Rock The Danforth Review Short Story http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/danforth/2007/no20/fiction/09_07/wilcox.htm 2 Haiku Idlewheel literary friction http://idlewheel.wordpress.com/volume-2/esch-haiku/ Summer of Love Wild Violet in Philadelphia http://www.wildviolet.net/blue_moon/summer_love.html Harvest Time Words-Myth and in the book Dark Energy Yosemite The Indite Circle Sitting... Word Riot Natural Selection Lapping Ideas The Centrifugal Eye I Love You Flannery O'Connor The Last Libation Sentinel Poetry Online http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/0207/wilcox.html Redux of Moose Words-Myth and Men And in the book Dark Energy Iraqi Temples The November 3rd Club One The Green Silk Journal http://www.thegsj.com/page/page/4231640.htm 3rd poem down On Hemingway's Mansion The Rogue Poetry Journal Fall's Impression The WriteSideUp and Dark Energy Book Cold as Hell The Externalist and in the book Dark Energy Word from Tree La Fenetre International Literary Magazine The Wearing Midnight Voyager The Essence of Software The Cat n' Mouse Anthrozine http://anthrozine.com/ptry/cat.and.mouse.html 3 Haiku The Stylus Poetry Journal Sunday Morning The Other Side Magazine The First Gulf War The Evangelical Visitor Supper The Other Side Magazine Fall Eyes Gambit Editorial Columist The Forty-Niner of Cal State University, Long Beach Other Poems and Articles Small Magazines and School Publications Short Story Award Scholastic Magazine National Short Story Contest We're Disturbing the Chaos Honorable Mention
--

Daniel's wandering, wondering lines have appeared in many magazines including Contemporary American Voices, vox poetica, Dead Snakes, Word Riot, Centrifugal Eye,
Write Room, Enhance, Static Movement, Counterexample Poetics, and Unlikely Stories IV.
Three large collections of his published poetry are in print: Dark Energy,
Psalms, Yawps, and Howls, and selah river. And a speculative novel, The Feeling of the Earth, one of alternate history and futuristic science fiction.

Before that, Dan hiked through the University of Nebraska, Long Beach State (Creative Writing), Montana, Pennsylvania, Europe, Palestine-Israel, Mexico, Canada, Arizona, and many other states. Now he resides with his quilting wife on the central coast of California. Life gets difficult in elder age as I got a stroke of bad luck, so am mostly house-bound. But as circumstances get tough--we MUTANTS get tougher:-).


In the Light,
Dan Wilcox

Tightrope Wonder, Discarding, After Backpacking

Tightrope Wonder

Precarious life,
To be present here
In this moment
Between birth and death;
Not unknown skyrocketing futures
Or dead-bogged pasts;
More difficult than the highest trapeze
Artist—our brief human
Awareness,
The poised tightrope balance
Of this present
Moment

--


Discarding

On the way to the town dump
Our junk in the back jostles in the turn.
Dark blue clouds curtain rain down.

I pull onto the miry dirt road
Past tall leaning one-story screens
Where many dark birds and wrens perch

But launch to flight as I pass and reverse.
Backing up my loaded van to trash heaps,
I get out and step through thick hogged mud,

Throw out our old broken stand and chairs,
A rusted bike, worn shirts and old ‘genes,’
Failed hopes and my grouchy frustration;

Yes, and my bulging head off-tilted
With church dogma, loads of heavy tenet,
And too many years of clouded regret.

Driving home—so empty and satisfied.

--


After backpacking

Yosemite
Half Dome
Granite monolith eoned in time
Glaciated but not destroyed
Majestic time lord
But unaware of anything--
Ever mattered

daniel
half done
fragile being decaded in years
ruined and soon inert
temporary time slave
but conscious of the Ultimate--
soon matterless

why?

--


In the Light,

Dan Wilcox

1st published in Tipton Poetry Journal
and the poetry book, Dark Energy

What Fiction books have you read more than once, novels that inspired, even changed you?

HERE’S my CURRENT LIST of
BEST NOVELS:
Ones I’ve read (most at least 3 times) that have incredibly real characters, suspense, setting, and theme—novels that take you into another life,
where for 2 hours or more,
you live a different life in a different time and place,
totally forget your own life!
Novels that have such deep meaning that you reflect on their themes repeatedly,
novels that inspire or warn,
that leave you changed!

THE TIME MACHINE by H.G. Wells

EXODUS by Leon Uris

WATCHERS by Dean Koontz

ONE DAY AWAY FROM HEAVEN by Dean Koontz


THE PEACEABLE KINGDON by Jan De Hartog

THE HOST by Stephanie Meyer

THE ORIGIN by Irving Stone

THE BONESETTER’S DAUGHTER by Amy Tan

THE SHORT STORIES OF JACK LONDON

11/22/63 by Stephen King

THE COVENANT by James Michener

IN DUBIOUS BATTLE by John Steinbeck

FLOWERS FOR ALGERON by Daniel Keys

BIRTHRIGHT by Nora Roberts

JANE EYRE by Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte)

ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens)


In the LIGHT of Truth and Goodness,

Dan Wilcox

Reflection on "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY.

by Walt Whitman

1
FLOOD-TIDE below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you
also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how
curious you are to me!

On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross,
returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are
more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might
suppose.

2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of
the day,
The simple, compact, well-join'd scheme, myself disintegrated,
every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings,
on the walk in the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,

The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to
shore,

Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and
the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;

Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half
an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence,
others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood- tide,
the falling-
back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

3
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so
many generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,

Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the
bright flow, I was refresh'd,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift
current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-
stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd.

I too many and many a time cross'd the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air
floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,

Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left
the rest in strong shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the
south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,

Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of
my head in the sunlit water,
Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look'd toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,

Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender
serpentine pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-
houses,

The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of
the wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the
frolicsome crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of
the granite storehouses by the docks,

On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd
on each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated
lighter,
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys
burning high and glaringly into the night,

Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow
light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of
streets.

4
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,

I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
The men and women I saw were all near to me,
Others the same—others who look back on me because I look'd
forward to them,
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)

5

What is it then between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails
Not...


First portion of "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
by Walt Whitman
--

REFLECTION:

Not sure when I first encountered this powerful poetic meditation on Life, time, place, travel, and death...

The first time I remember was when I introduced it to recalcitrant students at Westminster High School in the fall of 1979 during my student teaching...
and strangely there I encountered one of those transcendent ALIVE moments that sometime occur in our life, and shock us awake! But then shortly afterward--a few several weeks--one of the first "deaths" of hope struck my life. I was still an idealistic, naive individual, though I was 32 years of age, traveling late into my career because of the wanderings and wonderings of my 20's.

Somehow, someway, the day I stood amidst the desks, orally interpreting Whitman's prescient awareness of the relationship between him and the people of his day and those of future times who read his poem...
somehow
for some students, and especially myself, I encountered one of those deeply alive times when I experienced that wide consciousness which Whitman refers,
a vivid awareness which explodes out from our usual unaware, hum-drum daily life--

A moment in which suddenly we are so aware that place and time even "...hundreds of years...avails not"...

That moment in the midst of the stress of student teaching to earn my credential, dealing with some intractable teens, in the midst of more world political crises, in the midst of personal troubles, in the midst of long hours,
there came
a moment of mystical clarity
that has stayed with me
and which
often leads me
to re-read
this
poem of transcendence,
of being,
becoming,
and
time.



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

John Adams: "You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”

This is such a catchy maxim, one written by President John Adams
to his son, John Quincy Adams: "You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”

However, quickly, deeply, key questions arise:

1. Is this true, that you will never be alone?

2. Which poets ought one to include, without so stuffing your pocket it begins to look
like you have a huge wart on your leg?

3. Besides, Adams, spoke of only one poet at a time. So that leads to the more difficult question,
what poet ought one to put in his/her pocket first?

4. And most of all, what poem deserves to be hugged closely to yourself, bleeding deep into you--
one that you read with shock, powerful reaction,
sometimes in delight or in horror,
and eventually with deep reflection
that gets down into the marrow of your bones and heart?

You--with that pocketed poet in your soul and gut--then like the proverbial camel who chews his cud,
you chew on it for years.

The camel goes incredible distances through difficult terrain and inhospitable weather, and can survive without water and other things that most animals must have.

Does any poem do that for you?

Here's one powerful poem, a stunner:


in time’s a noble mercy of proportion
with generosities beyond believing
(though flesh and blood accuse him of coercion
or mind and soul convict him of deceiving)

whose ways are neither reasoned nor unreasoned
his wisdom cancels conflict and agreement
– saharas have their centuries; ten thousand
of which are smaller than a rose’s moment

there’s time for laughing and there’s time for crying –
for hoping for despair for peace for longing
– a time for growing and a time for dying:
a night for silence and a day for singing

but more than all (as all your more than eyes
tell me) there is a time for timelessness


by e.e. cummings




In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

The Ultimate Nature of Existence--We Think, Therefore It Might Be

A thinker needs to start with two moral values as presuppositions: Honesty comes first when one thinks about what is true, and humility is a close second.

The latter, humility, means keeping a constant awareness that even as a committed thinker, one is still only a brief finite being, a primate with limited reasoning ability, living within a relatively short specific culture within all of human history which itself is only a blip in the age of the earth, which is a very small planet

in a far corner of a minor galaxy
in the vast universe;
and there may be gigantic
universes outside of our universe,
the multiverse that some cosmologists
have speculated about.

And who knows if there is more existence outside of Space and Time as we know it?

Most of us seek to be meticulously honest when dealing with the nature of existence, but many of us often fail at the second beginning point--humility.

Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Pagans, Atheists, and so forth often talk as if they 'know’ or are at least fairly confident about the ultimate nature of existence.

Whenever I make a point, I will do so with IMHO—as the stated undertone. Each moment we live, we encounter choices; so we have to make decisions and in order to make those decisions, we have to assume that some things are scientifically, philosophically and ethically true.

But I am well aware that in many areas, indeed possibly in all areas, we may be in error or even worse very deluded. Look to the past; recall how many leaders and billions of humans in nations in history have chosen sincerely wrongly, and done so after much thought and discernment.

So let us constantly doubt and re-evaluate what we discern to be true and what we think might be the ultimate nature of reality.

All of this gets very speculative…

To paraphrase Descartes: We think therefore, it might be;-)

These are some of the main views of reality that humans have considered, speculated about, even fervently thought were true:

#1 All reality came about by cosmic chance.

#2 All reality came about by a cosmic determinism of meaningless matter and energy which is eternal.

#3 All reality came about by emergent possibilities in a quantum singularity vacuum or some unknown ultimate reality. But where did the quantum singularity vacuum come from? Here goes "turtles all the way down."

#4 All reality came about by an impersonal ultimate reality of cosmic beauty. Scientists such as Albert Einstein stated this was his view, that he thought the impersonal god of Spinoza was true. But this seems similar to #3. Unlike #2, the emergent possibility cosmos isn't meaningless and purposeless, but filled with meaning.

#5 All reality is coming about by the everlasting but limited Process God of thinkers such as philosopher and mathematician Alfred Lord Whitehead, philosopher Charles Hartshorne, theologian John Cobb, etc. This cosmic but limited God who is far beyond human understanding "woos" matter and energy and conscious life such as homo sapiens into increasing patterns and forms of beauty, meaning, and purpose. This is also the view of some Reform Jews.

But where is the evidence for this? Process thinkers explain that consciousness, reason, mathematics, natural law, creativity, aesthetics, etc. are the evidence.

#6 All reality came about as just one of an infinite number of universes of an infinite multi-verse, the view of some modern cosmologists. What is the ultimate of the multi-verse is unknown or maybe the multiverse itself is ultimate.

#7 All reality came about by the Omni-God of absolute sovereignty and meticulous control who does and plans and ordains everything only for his own glory, including all natural and all human evil. This is the view of Augustinians, Calvinists, some Lutherans, most Muslims, etc.

#8 All reality came about by the ultimately essentially all-loving God of Open Theism, Arminianisn, Quakerism, Universalism, and other forms of mystical, ethical religion, and so forth.

#9 All reality came about somehow by a temporary, finite, imperfect, even distorted, expression of the perfect eternal Ideal Forms of Platonism.

#10 All reality came about by the impersonal Brahma God of Hinduism and some modern New Age leaders such as Ken Wilber with his Integral Theory, and Deepak Chopra, etc. . The impersonal God Brahma is conducting a cosmic dance in which it forgets its self and dreams into billions of separated forms including in one minor edge of the universes, thinking humans.

But all is illusion. And all events both good and evil are produced by Brahman. That is why Ken Wilber and other such leaders claim that Brahman caused 9//11.

#11 All reality came about by unknowable factors. Everything beyond and before the Big Bang is such a complete unfathomable mystery that it will probably not ever be solved by finite humans.

Could a flea figure out the Theory of Relativity?

#12 All reality continually comes about by infinite impersonal reality which never had a beginning. No creator god exists. Some forms of Buddhism (though other forms are theistic).

Think deeply on all of this. Take your pick:-)

What do you think?

To be continued--

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Through this time so sorrowfully past
We dropped countless explosions, flesh-blossomed,
So clever pushing the brainly-designed pods
And now comes far more tomorrowed smart bombs.


Oh, this endless scientific avarice,
To discover again our ghoulish genius,
We who launched a million ships
Since golden Ilium burned with Greek fire
Through the time so sorrowfully past
And dropped countless explosions, flesh-blossomed
Lightning the sky like Zeus in a righteous rage.


Shrewd cunning slithers through our high-tech success,
Swallowed until our gorged stomachs implode
Through the time so sorrowfully past
Like the golden apple thrown to the Three
And dropped countless explosions, flesh-blossomed,
Slashing the moral sky like Gorgoned hubris,


Leaving Sophia cut up like the Levite's concubine
Through the time so sorrowfully past
In this vast historical ever forgetting,
Thundering the sky like fallen messengers
Where we squander mind blossoms in this
Moral smart-aleck Hell of tomorrow.



by Daniel Wilcox
First pub. in The Medulla Review;
also in Unlikely Stories 2.0

A 3-Way Paradox

*

"The past, the present, and the future walked into a bar...It was tense."

Humans seldom live in the present. We are either regretting or longing for the past, or hoping and reaching for the future. Filled with loathing and fearing, remorseful or nostalgic, dreaming and planning, anticipating and aspiring...


That’s even what is happening as I write this article, I am dwelling on the past and the future:-), not living present at this very moment—except right here, Now.

First, let’s look backward. Take a journey into the past. And see history in a new way. So we can change the future.

“We are all ruled by the past, although no one understands it. No one recognizes the power of the past…The individual is sitting on top of a mountain that is the past….That is why I say, the future belongs to the past.”

“Just think about it, the past has always been more important than the present. The present is like a coral island that sticks above the water, but is built upon millions of dead corals under the surface, that no one sees. In the same way, our everyday world is built upon millions and millions of events and decisions that occurred in the past…” 500 years ago and 1,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago.
Michael Crichton, Timeline

As far as our physical selves go, a breath-taking study of our past is The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins, where in the illimitable study he takes us on an evolutionary journey back through history all the way to the beginning of life at least 3 ½ billion years ago!

And all of the future is also built on our present use of that past. We are moment by moment creating our future right now by how we use the past.

For instance, our whole species, racial and ethnic background, worldview, society, culture, and family outlook is based on the past. And at every moment we live out those past realities, adapt them, or change them, or create something new.

Of course, the further a person goes down in levels the more difficult changing is. There have been millions of creative individuals who have altered their family outlook, moved to a very different society and culture, or who have changed their worldview for a different perception, religion, or philosophy. And they may even have tried to alter their ethnic and racial background. When I was a teen I remember reading the short controversial book, Black Like Me, where a John Howard Griffin, a Caucasian journalist got his skin darkened medically and lived as a Negro in the South for 6 weeks.

No one can change their species, though I suppose there are mental patients who even imagine themselves doing that. Reminds me of a famous essay entitled, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” by the American philosopher Thomas Nagel.

Or a cat? When our cat Fizzy has again acted oddly—from our perspective—I sometimes stare into those feline eyes with their intense kiwi-green color and slivered black pupils and wonder how she perceives, what her consciousness is like.

But here’s the paradox again. While most animals have consciousness, few if any other than homo sapiens have the ability to consciously plan out their future. So not only are we ruled by all the past, especially our being of a particular species, we very strongly affect our future by our new choices of our worldview, our goals, aspirations, and dreams—whether for good or bad.

Think how different the 20th Century would have been if Germans had chosen differently? Or of the 21st century if Muslims, and other determinists didn’t think that Allah/fate/cosmos, etc. has ordained every detail of the future?

Contrary to what some scientists such as determinist Sam Harris claim that nothing can be changed, that even if time replays a "trillion time" it will always come out the same, other thinkers disagree.

“What you commit yourself to be will change what you are and make you into a completely different person. Let me repeat that. Not the past but the future conditions you, because what you commit yourself to become determines what you are—more than anything that ever happened to you yesterday or the day before.’
Dr. Anthony Campolo

With enthusiastic rhetorical flourish, Campolo overstates the case, because he wants individuals to realize they can change. For we are limited or enlivened by our physical characteristics, our temperament, our background, our culture, our society, our worldview, etc.

But as Dr. Eric Berne, the famous psychologist and creator of Transactional Analysis emphasized in his books and practice, we don’t need to be stuck reliving the past like a helpless twig caught in a whirlpool, repeat, repeat, repeat. Nor do we need to spend countless hours doing endless mental archaeology, trying to figure out what happened to us back in our family’s past or our country's past which causes us or leads us to behave as we do now.

NO! We at this moment can decide to reject attitudes and behaviors of the past, and re-decide how we will live now and in the future.

It won’t be easy going; nothing worth doing ever is. Consider, it took Thomas Edison thousands of attempts to invent a light bulb. But he didn’t give up. He said,“I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

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