H_M_S_X_ _L_TY
Redefining marriage
It’s easy. Just add vowels. Then hmsxlty won’t look so weird!
Archive for July, 2008
Gay Marriage?
Posted in Language about Language, Special interest on July 22, 2008| Leave a Comment »
How The Church Made Jello
Posted in Streams of Consciousness, Uncategorized on July 19, 2008| 3 Comments »
Something insidious must have put us to sleep
Droned on and on till we unknowingly fell somnambulant
Surely it came with a humming
A vibration
A disturbance less than a tremor
I know—it was stealth!
A clandestine break-in upon consciousness
Some miscreant, bent on capturing alertness
The first to fall was the sexton in the bell tower
Drowsed by watching the rope swinging in the warm breeze
Next the parson dozed
And the parishioners slumbered
Prayers, which began as a stirred and stirring cacophony
Cooled into responsive reading,
Then chilled into a liturgy
and finally, jelled into contemplation
The loud, jarring, white-water oomph of dissonant heart cries
Slowed into a hallowed swirl of codified praise
And stopped in a wide sea of whispered calm
The doors of the church creaked shut
As the walls began to close in
We feverishly colored the windows with
Wan pleasantries
Pale wishes, and
Pastel memories
Oh, bordered with lead
We all synchronized our watches
Pressed the alarms switch off
And climbed into safe, sterile body bubbles
From a voice recorder came
a Psalmodic instruction:
“When the craft reaches heaven
The suspended-animation chambers
Will automatically decompress”
Poem of the Unknown Savior
Posted in Poetry, Science Challenges on July 5, 2008| 4 Comments »
He saved the world
And no one on the planet knew what happened
They still fail to recognize him today
Even though his action saved their very lives
and make possible their posterity
The whole world was in his hands
its destiny at the tip of his fingers
For that brief moment
he held the scales that balance the nations
War and peace was his to determine
Life and death, his to command
Ten thousand martial messengers
were waiting on wing-tip in the shadows
He chose life and peace
esteeming the human race
believing the world deserved
the benefit of a doubt
For that we should be grateful,
indebted that he remained calm
as scores panicked around him
Tell your children and grandchildren
of that fateful, sleepy Sunday afternoon
When an unlikely savior bought them time –
a lifetime – and lifetimes to come,
with one decision
It bothers me that so few know his name
What is more troubling is how those who do know
seem not to care what he did.
We know about the sports idols,
the perfect goddesses of the flat screen
But what have they done for us, really?
None have saved us
Nor made the world a better place.
Sadly, It is always the same:
We worship those who gratify us
while we scorn our Saviors
My dream is to go to Moscow
Take a cab to the small apartment of a pensioner
And there meet – and even embrace –
Stanislav Petrov,
the man who scratched his head,
stroked his chin
and in reflecting so, saved the world.
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: Станислав Евграфович Петров) (born c. 1939) is a retired Russian Strategic Rocket Forces lieutenant colonel who, on September 26, 1983, deviated from standard Soviet doctrine by positively identifying a missile attack warning as a false alarm.[1]
To read about Stanislav Petrov’s heroic decision go to the following link: http://www.brightstarsound.com/world_hero/article.html
writer’s note: It is ironic that Petrov made this decision shortly after midnight, which was September 26th for him. It was still September 25th for Americans. Thankfully he allowed us all to see what he was seeing: September 26th.
Lamar Howell's Weblog 