Exciting news!!! ‘The Treasure of Forgotten Island, A Poetry Collection‘ is now published and available to the public on Amazon.com. The collection of over 60 poems and 11 paintings is a treasure . . . packed with treasures for any poetry reader or art lover. Order your full color copy of the book today, or if you just want to read the poems, order the black and white paperback, or pick up the Kindle e-version. Then let me know what you think. Enjoy!
I herald the trumpets
vibrating hills
tremble on mountains
rushing rivers and churning the seas
there is a better way
you don’t have to suffer
you don’t have to kill each other
then all i hear is silence
silence can be loud
silent can kill
rumbling herds of elephants echo from all directions
grasslands and valleys
they blow their trumpets for every ear to hear at any distance
each note loud
reverberating
angels and demons and wizards gather
I summoned the drummers
the trumpets keep coming
nothing to stop them
suddenly the sound of an
electric guitar
then all i hear is silence
silence can kill
there is a better way
.
BLM (Black Lives Matter) is a case study in irony. While they promote their cause that black lives matter, they also seem to endorse the fact that white lives do not. A hateful and certainly racist opinion, no doubt.
I cannot (and do not) believe that the majority of intelligent black Americans believe in this violent hatred. I give them much more credit than all of the current stupidity and idiocy. I do recognize the fact that there is a significant minority of vengeful black racists that insist on violent civil disobedience and on fueling the fires of hatred. In effect, promoting killing and death.
And I do very much feel that Barack Obama has further fueled the hatred instead of endorsing unity and peace, as many truly believed he would. Despite what any of my friends may think or feel (or anyone else) – – – he is a failure. He had the opportunity to unite and heal. Instead he chose to further promote exclusivity, elitism, segregating protectionist legislation, divisiveness and hatred. It is a direct reflection of his lack of character and continued incompetence.
The reality for all of us is that BLM and any other groups promoting such hatred are no different than the Ku Klux Klan, or foreign terrorist organizations. War is easy to incite. Just about anyone can do it. Peace, on the other hand, is a cause that has to be worked on every single day. It is an arduous and often long term process with miraculous results.
I applaud all of my friends and celebrities such as Ringo Starr that are promoting peace. But unfortunately, in order to have peace you must FIGHT hatred. Promoting peace and love is all good and well, but without fighting ignorance, hatred and violence it means nothing.
God Bless and guide with strength the families of those brave American heroes that died in the line of duty protecting our freedoms and our rights to live peacefully. And have mercy on the family of the misguided young man that committed the barbarous acts of evil, under the guise of hateful groups and individuals such as Black Lives Matter.
Amen
There are three reasons why socialism will never work, neither as a philosophy, nor as a viable political system of government.
First, the idiot is never equal to the genius. Socialism assumes we are all equal. We are not. This is why a productive, intelligent person gets paid more than a sloth.
Second, when you compensate the productive, intelligent person, the same as the sloth, you have no incentives for creativity or productivity. In short, the genius will live and perform like the sloth because the rewards will not differ.
And third, much like a democracy, when given the opportunity to advance at the expense of others there is an inherent tendency in human behavior to gravitate toward greed. In a Socialist system you always have to have ‘the distributor‘. This is the one person or group that is given the responsibility to ‘distribute‘ resources. And like many governments and countries today throughout the world, the concept of ‘one for you, and one for me’, soon morphs into ‘half for you, three for me and I’ll sell you another half for a price‘.
The difference between the two systems, Democracy and Socialism, is that with Democracy citizens have the power to change things no matter how diluted the capabilities may sometimes be. In Socialism, you don’t have a vote. You don’t have the right to protest, and you certainly don’t have the right to change the system. You are stuck with the results every time.
All attempts at partial Socialism have failed because the philosophies of Democracy and Socialism are at odds with each other. They are complete opposites and two completely different ways of thinking. They cannot be ‘gracefully merged’ in a social system or political. And they cannot be ‘intertwined’ in an economic system.
Communism is the bureaucratic implementation of Socialism. It augments the Socialist ‘dream‘ with ‘youth brigades’, ‘party elders’, and ‘neighborhood vigilante squads’. It is a forceful extension of the concept of Socialism with a dictatorial bureaucracy built to assure all the servants are abiding by the strict rules of the State. It creates a burgeoning bureaucracy, complex enough to make any bourgeois bureaucrat proud.
It has never been implemented successfully because it is a philosophic, economic and idealistic FAILURE.
And always will be.
.
.
picture: acrylic on canvass, ‘Poppycock and Thistle’ by fj llorente
I enjoy film, photography, poetry and music. I am an artist. I am also interconnected to everyone else on this planet. I have crossed paths with many people throughout my life. Those people have crossed paths with many others. We live in a woven fabric of connectivity, weaving denser every day of our lives. When most of the world is at peace, we are at peace. When most of the world is not, we are not. Violence always exists somewhere in the world. Often in many different places at the same time. The world is that large. Humans are that flawed. When there is extreme violence going on in some part of the world, and we are made aware of it by the many strands of information we are connected to, many of us are compassionately moved to stop it in any way we can. No, not everyone feels that way. Nor do they act beyond their own survival requirements. But some of us are inspired and conscientiously forced to act.
My personal method is to enlighten through film, photography, poetry or writing. In the past few weeks I have been at a crossroads once again. I am painfully torn apart by extreme merciless violence in parts of the world. I am also hurt and torn by people who prefer to target a group of people for the crimes of certain individuals within the group of people.
So I have taken on the responsibility of enlightening as many people around the world as I can possibly reach, with all of my strands of connectivity. The most noble purpose in this life is to teach others how to teach enlightenment. I will teach ‘differentiation’. Differentiation is the skill of being able to analyse and process the perceptive difference between two or more things which otherwise seem to be similar. I will begin with a topic I have been most ardently involved with for the past month. I will continue as time moves on with topics in need of evaluation and reassessment. In the end, our goal is to explore new ways of improving the lives of everyone. And reducing or eliminating those things that attempt to block us from achieving that goal. The first ‘differentiation’ I will explore is ‘the merciful and the merciless‘. Please feel free to reblog or repost any of the essays. Courteously include author credit. 
‘There is Nothing in the Desert, And Every Man Needs Nothing’
The actual quote is from ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and it reads, ‘There is nothing in the desert, and no man needs nothing’. It was recently used in the film ‘Prometheus’, from Ridley Scott. It’s a great line and very significant in the film. Where once again we witness the dangers of technology and the humans that create it. Mary Shelley warned of us how our passion for striving to be as powerful over others as God, could lead to our own self-destruction. But we don’t have to read ‘Frankenstein’. All we have to do is look around us every day. Man’s attempt to reach that divine plateau of knowledge, mimicking our own concept of ultimate power we have perceived as God, can be both a blessing and a curse. It is only by our own cautious manipulation of those great powers we have achieved, that we will control our own fate toward advancement or destruction.
Need I remind you of this as you stare at your computer screen? Or dabble with your phone? Or sit complacent for hours in front of your television? What I can remind you of . . . is how every technology is simply a tool. And like any tool, it can be used for good or for evil. A hammer or a wrench can build or fix the greatest of challenges, but they can also be used to strike the life of another living being. And a tool is not a human being. We can use tools to improve the lives of other beings. But tools do not have a heart. They do not feel and they do not love. We often use tools to win the love of others; a new car, a new phone, a new toy. But are we giving with the assumption that the work involved to acquire and gift that tool to win someone else’s love, is equivalent to the love we gift as fellow humans? Is the material gift we give, equivalent to the love of our smile, our compassion, or most important, of our time?
Most of us do not live in a desert. We live in a world where the illusion of abundance surrounds us. An abundant illusion so perfectly manipulated, that we feel no remorse when discarding those things we no longer deem valuable. Our abundant world immediately offers a replacement. We can always buy a newer car, a smarter phone, or another plastic container of water; all of them disposable and replaceable. Of course, only if we happen to be lucky enough or wealthy enough to afford them. But where has our disposable existence of material objects led us? It has led us to another illusion. An illusion where we do not have to face what becomes of our disposable resource once we discard them. We are allowed to wear our blinders and walk away from the refuse of our own existence. There was a time when man’s only disposable waste was his own excrements, or the bones left behind after a meal. We were equivalent with all of life around us, because we shared the same requirements, and we left behind the same by-products. We weren’t leaving our discarded by-products strategically buried for future generations. We were simply returning them to the Earth, where they would recycle into the basic elements of the Earth.
We have learned to accept the illusion of abundance, surrounded by all those material possessions that provide us with the comforts we require. And so I journeyed to the desert. And it is here I realized . . . every man needs nothing. Without a relative perspective in our existence, we have no bearing. And without bearing, we have no existence. All of the material possessions in the world cannot provide the necessary direction for existence. This is the lesson Buddha learned from self-depravation. This is how he achieved enlightenment. There are two examples I will provide (although many others exist). The first example is the child born to wealth. Unlike his parent, who may have started with nothing and achieved great wealth, the child has only known wealth. An entire life will be wasted in a pursuit of happiness through material possessions. And although this person may achieve limitless joys in hedonistic exultation, there will always be an inescapable empty hollow within their lives. Without ‘nothing’, ‘something’ is worthless.
The second example is the starving artist. A master of their Art, but impoverished. In their barren material world, they can create masterpieces of painting, music, and literature. They have the perspective of ‘nothingness’. So to them, every meager possession is a possession of wealth. Here again, their life’s fate can move in either of three different directions. They might continue broke and desolate, creating magnificent works of art. And likely die broke and desolate, but a great artist. Or they can achieve wealth, and their lives will take one of two paths. Either they will lose their creative spirits and immerse themselves in their newly found material wealth. Or, if they are wise, they will continue to create art, but maybe not as passionate or inspired as before.
There are countless examples, every day, all around us, of both the wealth born child and the starving artist. And then there are the rest of us, somewhere in-between. Without knowing ‘nothing’, we will find nothing. And without finding nothing and knowing what we have found, we will not ever find anything else. I have found nothing in the desert. And in the desert I have found everything. I can now see that although I have had everything in my life, without finding ‘nothing’ in the desert, I would not know what it was that I had. I would not know what others do not see. And I would not be able to give you ‘nothing’. Knowing that it is the only ‘something’ I could ever give you, that will keep you nurtured and without thirst, in any desert.
“I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
THE CIRCUS . . . . . . . . . AND THE ZOO 