Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Poem: The Quest

By Jack Brummet



It’s all one story—
                           A ragged
                                        shape-shifting tale

Of incredible coherence and constance,
                                                           Encompassing all you know,
                                                           All you don’t know you know,
                                                           And all you one day will know.
There is more
                     To be
                             seen,
                             tasted,
                             heard,
                             and felt
                                         Than can ever be known or told.

Our myths flourish and spread,
                              Person to person, 
                                          And the mysteries of the seas and skies and stars
                                                             Fill our collective conscience

With mystical scenes,
                      Quests, and tales of greatness.
                                           These myths, tales, and fables
                                                               Cannot be invented or denied.

When you strip away
                       The stage flats, makeup, and costumes,
                                            It’s all one story
                                                                Starring private heroes and dreams.
                                   ---o0o--- 

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Faces #618 Lost & Found - Confessions

By Jack Brummet


  • I stare at the wall. It's not long before the wall stares back and the walls start closing in and the walls start to undulate and mystical vibrations come through and I start feeling the pulse of everyone who had ever . . .
  • I get so self-conscious I have to hide.  I don't actually hide; I just never appear.  It's something like agoraphobia magnified by a potentiation facctor and exacerbated by The Willies.
  • Everything that breathes, everything that swims, crawls, creeps, flies, oozes, wiggles, or hobbles scares me.  I am scared of the rocks, mountains, streams, and oceans.  I scare myself.
  • You have to have something.  You need a reason to believe.  I’m still looking for mine.
  • I am a fraud.  Everything you know about me is a lie.  I can never tell the truth when a lie is close at hand.  The lies multiply logarithmically.  The best part is keeping the intertwined lies straight.  It's my game, sorting out whom I told what when, whom they know who heard another version . . .
  • It wasn't me, but I could never prove it.  They had no evidence I actually had. The lack of evidence was inconsequential.  The finding of guilt was a foregone conclusion.  The winds of mercy were blowing in the wrong direction.
  • T.M., yoga, dart to be great, Buddhism, repressed memories, drum circles, primal screams, rolfing, gestalt therapy, hot stones, mud baths, hot springs, transactional analysis, dreamwork,  tai chi, Catholicism.  The odds are sooner or later something is going to work.
  • Who what when where why? I'm still sorting it out and there are roads and byways yet to explore.  Half the fun is the chase. I’m not lost yet.
  • After Desert Storm, nothing seemed to work right.  About half the puzzle pieces were missing.  I tried this, I tried that. I went here, I went there.  All the king's horses and all the king's men could not put me back together again.  I was never despondent, but I could never feel again.
  • I was abducted on April 23, 2002.  I remember nothing from the moment I was taken until I came to at 3:19 a.m. I’m pretty sure I am a throwback--I show no signs of implants. *Sigh* I don't even fit in with The Greys.
  • My heart is like a big bucket of cold tar. I feel nothing.  I am indifferent to every person I meet. I don't belie in anyone or anything.  I don't believe in me.
  •  I am an upstanding community member.  I am a deacon in the first Baptist church.  But I lost my faith years ago when my wife dumped me for a 22-year-old heir.  I lost my faith in the church, and most of all, in myself.
  • I have a secret. I have never told anyone, but I want to tell you.  I really want to tell you, but when I do, it is out of the bag.  My safety depends on this staying inside me.  I have to tell, but I can't.  If I told you, I'd be sowing the seeds of my destruction.
  • There's something in my past.  A repressed memory of something terrible that happened to me when I was younger.  I've tried and tried to remember but it never comes back.  No matter how long I try to remember I come up with nothing.  And it hangs over my head like a dark cloud.
  • I've been stealing money from my company for five years.  I keep it covered up in a sort of revolving shell game.  But the auditors are here next week and I don't know what to do.  In one more week, I could hide it, but I've run out of time.  I don't have enough to run away.  I don't know whether to confess of end it all.
  • I cheat on my income tax.  I sometimes steal commissions belonging to other salesmen.  I step out on my wife whenever I make a sales trip to Toledo.  I don't really like my second daughter.  I can't wait to collect my inheritance.
                                  ---o0o---

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Men vs. Women

From the Compendium Of Demonology and Magic (ca. 1775)


---o0o---

The latest GOP-Tea Party Presidential Poll (Monmouth University)

By Jack Brummet

The latest Republican Presidential poll from Monmouth University are in, or as Andy Borowitz wrote in the New Yorker, "The former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would bring much-needed dignity to the 2016 Republican field, a new poll shows."



Undecided 18%
Jeb Bush 15%
Donald Trump 13%
Ted Cruz 9%
Mike Huckabee 7%
Scott Walker 7%
Ben Carson 6%
Rand Paul 6%
Marco Rubio 6%
Chris Christie 2%
Bobby Jindal 2%
Rick Perry 2%
Rick Santorum 2%
Carly Fiorina 1%
Lindsey Graham 1%
John Kasich 1%
No One 1%
George Pataki 1%
Jim Gilmore 0%
---o0o---

Drawing: Faces #1174 - atrophy

By Jack Brummet

---o0o---