two kinds of people

From a work to be abandoned.

Mango said, “There are two kinds of people in the world.”

“What are they?” said a Cambodian orphan.

“They are subdivided into specific sub-species. There are people who want to blame you and people who want to distract you. There are people who want control or approval. There are people who face the music and there are people who run for cover.

"There are people who pay attention and people who don’t know or care what the fuck is going on. They are too poor to pay attention. There are people who make things happen and people who dream about making things happen.”

“That’s a mouthful of mango logic if you ask me,” said the orphan. “You mean, according to the philosopher, Damon Younger Than Yesterday, ‘distraction is an inability to identify, attend to what is valuable, even when we are hard working or content.’”

“Yes, that’s what I said I mean because I mean what I say and say what I mean jellybean,” laughed Mango doing the tango with Taoist monks at the Temple of Complete Reality in Sichuan.

“Disorientation begets creative thinking,” said Confusion. 

 

Tinker’s Penny

“Non, je ne regrette rien.” - Edith Piaf

She was a delicate mountain flower
A trifling unremarkable darling
An inconsequential diminutive.
But she made my juices flow
And in them my head swam.

She was the petaled perfume
Of my one time, forever, spring.
And I loved her well -
The best I could -
In my rounder’s heyday.

She was a precious copper
In this wanderer’s pocket, dispossessed,
In my gaudy wagon, spent,
On the back roads’ secret waysides
My hammer on tin.

What was this treasure, once in my hand,
That I tossed unthinking for a pebble
And now is gone,
Lost all ways,
Beneath concentric rings?

From Mountain Wizard by Thomas J. Phalen, an Irish-American poet friend.

Halloweenie

"I wish everyday could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks."
 - R. J. Palacio

"There was a time when the coming of this night meant something. A dark Europe, groaning in superstitious fear, dedicated this Eve to the grinning Unknown. A million doors had once been barred against the evil visitants, a million prayers mumbled, a million candles lit. There was something majestic about the idea."
 - Robert Bloch  Read more…

  

slow down the world

Women laugh, cut, cook, stack fruit, chat,
Gossip, feed fires with kindling and charcoal,
Chop meat, caress greens, forget their troubles,
Remembering families far away near mountains and rivers
Under a sheltering sky.
I don't know and I don't care, said a laughing market woman,
Pouring batter into tin cups for baking
Confections and coconut balls above her fire.

elevation

Cool temps in wild west town.
Footprints in dust.
The sky is crying.
Goggle motorcycle man comes into town with a load of fresh greens.
Hmong girls sell on sidewalk.
We have everything we need.
We grow rice, ginger, beans, peanuts, peppers, bananas,
Squash, sugar cane, corn, papaya, cucumber and sweet potato.
Life is sweet.
We carry our abundant world in a wicker basket.