Lamar Howell's Weblog

There’s a tiny hidden swamp near my house

which runners ipodly miss by just a few feet,

not knowing about the egrets home base,

not seeing the dead trees standing like sentinels

I wait at night to hear the croaking

the deep gutteral sounds of lumpy-skinned grandfroggers.

This is our pad, each seems to say,

with the volume tinnitusly turned up.

Beavers, with flat-tailed nonchalance,

slap the placid murky water

and drag themselves ashore to gnaw

and think about the trees their ancestors felled

The stumps, their alma mater, like huge pencils

jammed upside down in the mud,

pointing chiseledly three feet off the ground.

Bicyclists are ituned-out

and never see, hear, or breathe in the swamp.

As unofficial guardian of this slushy real estate,

I selfishly hope they never discover it.

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Audio CD “Space & Selected Poetry” by JLamarHowell

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There’s a lady in West Texas who started a business selling tumbleweeds. It’s true. Businesses as far away as Mumbai have tumbleweeds decorating the corners of their banks and furniture outlets.

But, that lady didn’t do it by herself. She didn’t make her business! She had help. She had a first grade teacher who taught her to read books about Pecos Bill and learn what a tumbleweed was. She had track coaches who taught her to run so she could catch those dad-blastit fast tumbleweeds in the High Plains wind.  She had government postal workers who stamped and mailed those boxed tumbleweeds overseas. And, she had regulators who helped her give back to those who made her successful.

No, she’s not smarter than anyone else. There are many people out there who could have become entrepreneurs in tumbleweeds. But, they will wait until someone helps them.

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My heart – you broke it, sorta

You started with the aorta

then tugged at the veins and arteries,

unplugged the main part of me.

Next you closed the right ventricle,

choked it tight and then you pulled,

shocking the valves.

You shouldn’t have interrupted the rhythm

and messed with ’em.

But, that’s romance.

You take a chance

when you trust your heart to mortal hands.

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On the planet Geometry lived Shapes of two kinds—Cubes and Pyramids. Cubes and Pyramids had great celebrations when they joined together for life, and when they engaged in secret math, they produced handsome little cubes and beautiful little pyramids. Sometimes a Cube tried to do secret math with another Cube and a Pyramid with another Pyramid, but it was looked upon as strange, too congruent and unmathematical by most of Geometry.

But some Cubes and Pyramids got angry by these laws of math and created a huge rhombus and d id base angles, demanding new rules. Geometry became scared of them and gave in to their demands along equilateral lines. A Cube with a Cube, a Pyramid with a Pyramid, and that became the Second Law, or New Math as some Shapes called it.

After a few revolutions around Geometry’s sun, one day some of the new pairs of Shapes starting making a novel demand. Since they were not doing math to create tiny Cubes and Pyramids anyway and they were together for the simple love of math, they didn’t see any reason why they couldn’t join any number of shapes together. The rulers who made the rules on Geometry did not have a good argument against this by then. If two Shapes, why not three?

So now, on the planet Geometry, any number or combination of Cubes and Pyramids can join together and do math, or just simple arithmetic if that is what they want. They can even make a dual Cube/Pyramid Shape, called a Transversible. So, the New Math resulted in the Higher, Evolved Math, and now math is not complicated on the world called Geometry. Everybody can do it so easily, even in groups.

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This week, Diane Sawyer did a tribute to someone who had a special anniversary to celebrate and enjoined all Americans to celebrate with her. No, it was not a war hero, an inventor, even a celebrity with an amazing marriage to talk about. No one must have died in Afghanistan that day, no Amber alert must have been sent out, no soul in Japan suffering radiation poisoning, no blind Chinese person betrayed by our government, no one shot with an Eric Holder automatic gun. No, nothing worthy of our sympathy, rage, or admiration. Oh, yes, there was one: Ellen Degeneres’ sterling accomplishment. It turned out to be the fifteenth anniversary of her coming out and pronouncing her lesbianism on primetime television. The feature story had her all dressed up in her man-suits, painted up for her J C Penny sponsorship shots, plucking our heartstrings and tearing us up with her squeaky admissions. In case you missed it, in five years Diane will do a twentieth anniversary piece. Ellen, a true American hero.

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EMERGENCY?

A tornado is an act of God
A cyclone, a hurricane or monsoon
A tidal wave and tsunami
You name it. What is not covered
by insurance is laid in God’s lap
Sunspots, renegade asteroids,
the San Andreas is God’s fault too.
Does God just hiccup or burp
and sometimes throw up on us
out of some cosmic vendetta?
He lets evil go on, we charge,
and suffering too,
And we think he is bluffing,
that we have a full deck
and he has no clue
or that he sits up there all deadpan
and overlooks me and you.
Listen, justice is ours to show
and vengeance his at the end of the day
Mercy is our lot and love the measure
He did all he could do with his voice
and commands, his uplifted right hand
his courage as a man
when personal disaster fell
He knows it full well
The tornado-spun lies
The hurricane of accusations
The convulsing earth choking with blood
The soot-black power outage of God’s grief
The overwhelming waves of garden prayer
The tsunami weight of water-logged beams
Emergency?
You and I are his emergency. Our fast-sinking souls
the chaotic refuse-filled rooms of our thoughts
Our proud independence to stand atop the rubble
and shake our fists in his face.
Oh, lets kneel down!
crunching the aluminum cans
and rattling leftovers of self-made lives
and bend low to smell the stench of
man-without-God waste that we walk and repose in.
Then we can find salvation.

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I gave my back to those who struck me

My cheek to those who plucked out my beard

Yielded my clothes to the drunken guards.

I was exposed to the shame and the spit

My brow, surrendered to a barbed crown

Presented my side to a soldier’s lance

My wrists and feet to iron spikes,

Offered cracked lips to sour wine.

I gave my mother to my bosom friend

My final question to the black of space

and one last breath to my Abba, God

Then submitted my body to a frigid cave.

I took the keys from an ancient foe

Sealed the tomb of torment

Stripped the power of Apollyon

Brought back saints from beyond.

I fashioned crowns and linen robes

Awarded the faithful, granted life

Conferred my name, bestowed gifts

My version of give and take.

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If we have a crisis in this country which is national in scope, what to do? The answer to this may depend on our preparation. The crisis hasn’t come yet, so we can still prepare.

First of all, get to know your neighbors. Nothing lowers suspicion of strangers more than becoming acquaintances and possibly friends. In a crisis neighbors will depend on each other if for no other reason than geographical proximity.  They may also be able to share resources such as water, food, and other vital items or supplies. Two heads are better than one — multiply that by a neighborhood and knowledge and skills become more valuable. Less material, but just as important, you will have the moral support. In severe cases, neighbors can share even their homes. Neighbors can keep track of one another and evaluate outside threats. They can also travel in groups for safety and accountability.

I remember in the days following 9-11 that ordinary Americans showed concern for one another. Politeness was everywhere, even on the crowed hectic freeways. We must practice that again in our next national crisis.  Remember that a national crisis is simply personal and family crises multiplied over millions of times. If we react in a selfish way, we are in effect saying, “My life is more valuable than another American’s,” and that is not the model of the great one himself –  Christ – or even of common heroism. Laying down our lives for one another during a catastrophe is the core of life itself. For what is life after disaster if there are no honorable standards to live up to, no sacrificial acts to remember?

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The light went out for those among our friends

So sudden, like a wind that slams a door

Not slowly, as when darkness closes in,

or tides that sweep a castle from the shore

The blood drained from our faces, chilled our hearts

Our sobs absorbed within death’s hollow walls

We bent, we broke like trees against the dark.

We spoke their names – and choked – in homes and halls.

Who feels our loaded weight of grief and loss?

They say a child was born to bear our grief

to take our pains, our crimes upon a cross

Our part – a simple prayer and pure belief.

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