F a t h e r L u k e ’s dot Blawg

I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER

I am tired of fighting.
Our chiefs are killed.
Looking Glass is dead.
Toohulhulsote is dead.
The old men are all dead.

It is the young men who say no and yes.
He who led the young men is dead.

It is cold and we have no blankets.
The little children are freezing to death.

My people, some of them,
Have run away to the hills
And have no blankets, no food.

No one knows where they are.
Perhaps they are freezing to death.

I want to have time to look for my children
And see how many of them I can find.
Maybe I shall find them among the dead.

Hear me, my Chiefs, I am tired.
My heart is sad and sick.

From where the sun now stands
I will fight no more forever.

by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

- -
Okay,
Father Luke

Support the Small Press.

I do.

nibble - a poetry magazine
oh, what a tangled website we weave…

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Okay,
Father Luke

I used to tell the story about when I moved
from Ray and Gloria’s into The Pigeon Coop.

The story went that everyplace I had lived in previously the landlord had said one of two things:

Stay right were you are, I’m calling the cops.

or. . .

Get the hell out of here before I call the cops.

Funny about my writing. For years I’ve written. It was another way of not being involved when my Dad was beating my Mother. I read Robert Frost, and I didn’t need to listen to my mother screaming as my Father beat her, and raped her. I read Woody Allen and suddenly I couldn’t hear my Mother crying as my Father hit her in the face. I read Jack London, and I didn’t see my Father walking naked through the house dragging my mother by the hair as she struggled to free herself. I read, and I began writing when I ran out of things to read. When I was writing I didn’t see my Father dump a pot of boiling spaghetti on my Mother. The world was gone.

I have written all my life. My family all saw that before I did. How is the writing going? They would continually ask me. All I knew was one more hobo job; one more thieving employer taking my life minute by minute.

Recently I had a man write to me and tell me that he wanted me to stop posting my poems on the internet. Instead I was to send them to him. He would decide which poems I could have.

Ludicrous, right?

I heard from him again recently. He told me I was making a big mistake not sending my poems to him. He wanted to give me reasons why I was wrong in not sending my writing to him. That was the last I spoke to him.

Tonight, as the screams from my Mother fill my ears from echoes ringing to me from eternity, I will look to this man for solace. I imagine he would be shocked to have me screaming in his face. So I’ll write instead. And I’ll put what I have written up on my website for the free and the fun of it.

- -
Okay,
Father Luke

Either this makes sense to you or it doesn’t.
Maybe it’s funny even if it doesn’t.

A tech guy’s typical afternoon moment:

- -
Okay,
Father Luke

I have been putting my computer back together. I mean, what a nightmare. The machine froze one night, and upon rebooting, it went into a never ending, spastic reboot sequence.

Vista
4 gigs of RAM
HP 24 inch display
Two terrabytes of hard drive space

Fucking paper weight.

I wiped it all, and I installed XP

No sound on the fucking thing for five days.
I wiped it again, and re-installed Vista.

The sound came back.

Computers solve the problems that they create.

It’s like employment:

I go to work to be able to have money to do the things I can’t do because I’m at work.

So. I have the machine.

A complete and total nightmare, and the whole time the absolute best I can do is to have my IM working to be able to talk with my girl friend. And I understand I may be single again.

We’ll see.
I have hope, but you know how I get.
She’s right of course.
But so am I.

Neither of us wins when either of us wins.
It’s compromise, or demise. There really is no other way in a partnership.

Really. I mean compromise means both people get what they want. Winning only means someone has won. I’m not foolish enough to want to win.

So, now there’s Poker.
And it awaits.

In Poker I may win.

- -
Okay,
Father Luke

Like a lot of people I work.
It’s not fun.

Today is Friday the thirteenth.
I wrote something.

Does this make me a writer?
Not exactly.

But it doesn’t hurt.

I got this in the email:

Company: Blogtalkradio
Job Title: Web/Graphic Designer (full-time) - Streaming Media Network
Description: Established streaming-media network seeks a web/graphic designer. In
this role you will be responsible for:

-JavaScript/Ajax experience a plus

email me if you are interested . . .

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Okay,
Father Luke

My ass hurts from sitting in a chair all day.

Guess what. I wrote something today.
I’m a writer.

- -
Okay,
Farther than Luke

- -
Okay,
Father Luke

It requires a great effort to convince myself that I am now as old as those who seemed so old to me when I was young. - Andre Gide circa 1930

And time, the trusted companion who now walks beside me each day, has taken the place of death, who once breathed heavy, foul, hot breath constantly upon my neck. I don’t know when it happened. It just did. And I look to this new day without any expectations.

Well.

Maybe one. I’d like to have more time for poker, my woman, and my writing.

In the meantime I got shit to do.

- -
Okay,
Father Luke