No Regrets Journal
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Spring 2010
A journal of poetry, words and images documenting twists and turns of the human condition in the search for love, meaning and community.
No Regrets Journal Website: noregretsjournal.com email: claymedeiros@noregretsjournal.com
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Editor Clayton Medeiros is a poet and collage artist interested in love, the human condition and the search for meaning. claymedeiros@noregrets.com Contributors Kim von See grew up in Garland, Texas and escaped to the Pacific Northwest as soon as she could. She lives in downtown Bellingham with several plants. Neil McKay is a Bellingham poet and provider of technical assistance to the web site. Robert Lashley was a semifinalist for a 2007 Pen/ Rosenthal Fellowship. He is trying to be an honest man and a good writer. Submissions Submissions are by invitation of the editor or contributors. Copyright May 2010
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Contents Compassion
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Lonely
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Clayton Medeiros
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Kim von See
Home Boy Paints a Northwest Mural! !
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Robert Lashley
Sunday Morning!
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Clayton Medeiros
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Three Sheets to the Wind! !
Kim von see
Grandpa Tasting the Dirt From his Sweet Tomato Garden! ! !
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Robert Lashley
Turn of Mind! !
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Clayton Medeiros
Wrong Numbers!
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Kim von See
Disarray in Gray !
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Clayton Medeiros
Love Butchered!
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Clayton Medeiros
How Not to Think of Slavery While Watching the Ying Yang Twins Rap on a Georgia Plantation: A Users Manual! ! !
Robert Lashley
Does God Hear Us! !
Clayton Medeiros
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Contents Wislawa Symborska! ! All Collages and Photographs !
Clayton Medeiros Clayton Medeiros
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Compassion The greatest gift we can offer is compassion. The greatest gift we can receive is compassion. When asked what the most important practice was, meditation, asceticism or other acts, the Buddha said, if you could only do one thing, you should be compassionate. The Lurianic Kabbalah describes how God tried to create the world with equal parts compassion and judgment. Each creation fell apart until more compassion was added. Much of the difficulty between groups, whether they are gang members or church members, is the belief that they possess an exclusive truth. A truth that distinguishes them from others. This truth can be religious, political, racial or cultural. The problem with exclusive truth is it isolates believers and closes them up in a box surrounded by righteousness. Only those who are true believers are allowed in. All others are excluded. It is like tribes where the only word for humanity is the name of the tribe. Any one who is not a tribal member is not a full human being. Righteousness turns everyone else into an other who is somehow less. The beliefs of the other are less righteous, wrong headed or even evil. Soon the other is a danger to the true belief be it religious, political, racial or cultural. Laws that discriminate against outsiders are passed and their rights are narrowed. As their humanity is stripped from them, they are arrested and branded as outsiders. This is soon followed by blood shed as the police increasingly operate outside civil rights guarantees and vigilantes are encouraged to take action as authorities look the other way. Religious truths are epitomized among the sons and daughters of Abraham, Jews, Christians and Muslims. Each group, along with their true believers, knows that their God is the only God. All other gods are mere superstitions at best and blasphemous at worst. 6
Societal beliefs are equally powerful and pit capitalists against socialists and liberals against conservatives. When civil discourse deteriorates into hateful speech and death threats, civil liberties are violated and violence is not far behind. When religion provides the basis for government, prejudices are amplified and utilize the power of the state to ban other beliefs within the society and wage war against non believers from other societies. Church and state must be separate to allow for religious freedom and space for civil discourse and freedom of speech. Compassion opens a place for others. It makes room for the shared divinity of all human beings, even those who disagree. Compassion is love bereft of needs and wants. You are compassionate because it is the right thing to do not because you garner some return from it. Compassion must begin with yourself. You cannot accept others and their flaws until you accept your self and your own flaws. If you open to the possibility of forgiveness, you will find that it is already within you waiting to be recognized. Once we define the other and try to disenfranchise them, subdue them or go to war with them, we have compromised our own humanity. Soon we look at the other as less than human, as objects that can be manipulated and dispensed with. Compassion is required in all actions, whether between individuals, between countries or between the earth and its inhabitants. Humility is required if we are not to self destruct. Compassion is at the heart of humility and a sensible society. Clayton Medeiros
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lonely when everyone is gone she will yell, as if tiny and injured, from the bedroom. madeline the cat has nothing to hide. "come here," and she does, chirping a response as she creeps along the sofa like a face painted soldier in a trench. "madeline!" i say, just to say something friendly and familiar. "yes!" she says, excited to hear a word that has, slowly, woven itself into her cat-language. "yessss!" madeline disagrees with very little. food and water are fabulous, an open door or a sunbeam, all of it is good to her except the loneliness. having just realized the house is too quiet and the lamps have been left on unattended, she calls out to the washing machine or the stove, whoever will listen. the lamps ignore her. "madeline!" "yes!" and she races toward the voice that is connected to the hands that stroke and feed her, to the hemisphere of light where i type. Kim von See
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Homeboy Paints A Northwest Mural in the beginning was the wall; a slab of brick mortar, industry concrete reformed to formelessness by the miracle of krylon reformed by a line almost moving itself in layers, tags, accents; spray painted breaths of grass and the earth a signature of dawn alive in the sideswipes spoken in the nature in the bubbles and the homeboy laid down his can and smiled and said it was fly Robert Lashley
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Sunday Morning There is loneliness, From a table Meant for two, On Sunday morning, Dull eyes stare over Coffee cups to no Particular thing. An infinite distance, Not to be overcome On this day of days. Hours meander, Empty moments, No difference with What came before. What will follow, In circuitous purpose Against the clock’s Linear tick and tock. Arbitrary minutes Across life’s surface, Held in memory. As if past and present Wandered indifferently, Until there’s no center, Just random dots Without a Seurat To color and shape Perpetual picnics, Where eyes stare Over grass and water To no particular thing. Clayton Medeiros 12
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three sheets to the wind
a figure in the dark of the sidewalk, outside the door-handle store, danced a scattered jig, his bag threatening to lose its lunch. his friend walked behind, confused maybe, just following the sidewalk. the dancer noticed me, alarmed under his driver's cap—my friend from the coffee shop. we exclaimed and hugged as if we haven't spoken in months which we haven't, only he's up to here with whiskey. he says my name again: "it's so good to see you!" i say his name again, hoping i've got it right, tripping a little. the whiskey sloshes about inside of him, organs pickling beneath it like strange olives. he compliments me on my scarf. i am so beautiful and the night is so full of myriad nights viewed from the sea inside of him. he will go dancing, kiss a girl or humiliate himself wildly on the dance floor. the days will layer themselves on top of each other like fossils. his skin is so clear and his hat still standing on the porcelain pedestal of his body, shoes still tied. the dancehall will beat inside of him like a second stormy heart.
Kim von See
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Grandpa, Tasting The Dirt From His Sweet Tomato Garden. Â An intimacy, invisible, yet vivid in movements. A interchange of earth and the body In the garden, all agony is sanctified, made holy washed clean in the sediments, the purifying of mud and the field, for a moment, redeemed in the spring crop, in the renewal of sweetness and the seasons. Taste, and what is broken becomes whole in the roots. Taste, and all is vivified in the body Robert Lashley
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Turn of Mind A turn of mind Sustains the romantic In spite of indifferent Universes that expand, Round and round. Perhaps dreams about Midnight curved space, Time’s back and forth, Mind’s Mobius strip. Alchemical wizardry Justifies forlorn query. Heaven incented minds Perform the impossible, Unlike slippery ends, Clearly in doubt, Caught in twisted fabric, Finite beginnings, Wrapped one in another. Fruits of constellations, A saintly tinged Zodiac Bridge cavernous gaps, Moment of moments, Time hesitates. We look backward, Curves and corners, Before story tellers Frame how it was.
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The bent, whirled medium, Fertile escapades, Searches for answers, Fate, faith, free choice. Moments that will not, Cannot, come again, Because there is No return trip in this Episode of reality. Clayton Medeiros
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wrong numbers people calling, sometimes urgent, asking for robbie. early in the morning i tell them i'm not who they thought i was. my phone came with someone else's number. he could be in prison somewhere, or anywhere. one woman is incredulous, heartbroken even, the wash of sound behind her voice sounding like a highway. no, i don't know where he is. Kim von See
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Disarray In Gray Sky and ground in disarray Rain slants across windows Street framed bricks Tilt the world’s structure But no end of time Just tangential streaks Entertain my eyes In morning’s gray scale Windy walkers tug coats Hats yearn to be free Sail for points west Follow Gaugin’s trail Escape human frailty Endless pushes and pulls Yesterday tomorrow As if they meant something God’s desire for company A break from infinity Allah kept writing From the angels Who watch and wait For our enlightenment Even on this gray day Of splattered side walks Someone retains faith In sometime sunshine Justifying suffering This leaden morning Clayton Medeiros
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Love Butchered Faced with love’s butchery Hope lost once again As if childhood never was Fairytales endlessly spin No kiss saves the day For sleeping princesses They dream on Books rot on the shelf Tales are forgotten Tragedy and comedy A single story line Usurps Greek Myths No end of day fanfare Just darkest simplicity Disarrayed Constellations Astrological chaos Children lie awake Wait for stories Angels and wizards Discuss time’s passage Forward and back Unsure of their role In the growing silence Of useless wands
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Once upon a time There was the word A sense of purpose Everything named Hierarchies of being With no end of days A tree grows quietly Prepares the needed cross Clayton Medeiros
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How Not To Think Of Slavery While Watching The Ying Yang Twins Rap On a Georgia Plantation: A Users Manual. Look away from the Ice, the glitter and such. Do not think of cattle, oxen, or pain for the pictures, though silent, say far too much. Don't think of the blood, the soul catchers punch the taking of bounty with encrusted chain. Look away from the ice, the glitter and such. Don't think of the gentry, the dawg's or the dutch nor the color of dirt, the clay or the grain for the pictures, though silent, say far too much. Don't think of the auction, the prod or the touch the sizing of the breast, testicles, brain. Look away from the ice, the glitter and such. Dont think of the bee, the chopping block crutch and the cut of the day, come shine or come rain for the pictures, though silent, say far too much. To think of it all is to think far too much. To think far too much is to think your insane. Look away from the ice, the glitter and such for the pictures, though silent, say far too much Robert Lashley
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Does God Hear Us? Our voices Cry out to God Words and music Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil Christ born of woman God’s commitment Death understood In heaven and earth Adam’s sin overcome Eve bears God’s son Forgives fallibility Earthly love’s limits Voices rise in unison Celebrate the cross Abandonment’s pain Forsaken by the Father Hope in faith alone Psalmist songs Sung once again Old Testament times Support good news Some don’t believe A prophet answers Timeless questions In parables open To all comers
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An immanent savior From Abraham’s seed Muslim Jew Christian A redeemer could Bring something new Long awaited of All that was All that is All that will be Clayton Medeiros
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Wislawa Syymborska A rose by any other name Smells just as sweet, But Szymborska knows You still can’t be one. Holding a breath doesn’t help, No leaves grow, You will not be a rose. So after this effort, If flowers aren’t possible, Live peacefully with a body. A final acceptance That things will not change, No matter the coins tossed, Or otherwise conveyed, To the world’s fountains. Quietly rendered memories, Others would understand. Dismal categories no poems Meant for reader’s eyes. Leave critics behind Seek solace in words, Life’s bounded cultures, Genders oblivion, Many years familiarity. Unnecessary language Overcomes the darkness, Both sides are seen, With apologies To anyone forgotten, To anything forgotten, Living, dead, Or yet to come. Clayton Medeiros
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No Regrets Journal www.norgretsjournal.com claymedeiros@noregretsjournal.com
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