Infidels

Disappointed in man’s inhumanity to man,

I live each day like it’s my last

Time moving so fast

Everywhere I turn, someone new is hurt.

Living on the edge of despair striving to stay afloat and hold on to my hope.

It’s all I’ve got left.

I bide my time and wait behind closed curtains in love with a perfect life gorging

on dreams of a different world where everyone’s my brother.

I turn on the evening news in time to hear the brother speak,

the one who killed his brother’s wife last week,

He says she was just no damn good anyway. 

He knew for sure because she used to be his wife. 

She disappeared around the same time he was convicted of killing her. 

He said, "I already served my time for killing her,

you see it’s called double jeopardy 

and they can’t charge me twice for the same crime. 

Thank God I got rid of the no good bitch once and for all 

She can't do this to no one else no more."

The scene switches to the crazy Jewish guy in the orange jumper 

the one who tortured the little Jewish boy then dismembered him. 

They caught him abducting the boy on one of those street cameras

It’s enough of a dose of TV to last several days.

I try to decide what I can do about man’s inhumanity to man 

I bring it all home. The buck has to stop somewhere.

I examine my life in a whirlwind of thoughts to discover 

I’m trapped in a medieval prison where I’m tormented the same way 

every day and still can’t learn how to escape.

Man’s inhumanity to man makes me suffer.

I envision a day it will be different.

Julio examines my planet’s positions.

He declares that now I’m full of romanticism.

I told him that no he’s wrong that now I obsess on man’s inhumanity to man.

African and east European towns there are wars and bombs in the middles east.

Women raped daily, life disrespected as a matter or course.

I don’t know what to do. Where has my romanticism fled.

Searching my mind for a better place in time I reassess the layout.

A perfect place is hard to find.

It won’t matter where I go so I decide to sit this one out

and work on creating a better space inside myself.

I go inside and look around to find a better place and instead sit

Here today and gone tomorrow
I sit and cry and pray every day for a better world someday.

20 Essential Chinese Novels Plus Other tidbits

20 Essential Chinese Novels | Bachelor's Degree Online

These are worth a look with a contemporary and classical mix.

One of my personal favorites not listed here is the Buddhist Tale of Monkey King with drawings and text.

Below is an abbreviated story line to the famous work, "Monkey King", known to the Chinese as "Journey to West",written by Wu Ch'eng-en (1500?-1582), a scholarly-official, is one of the renowned classical Chinese story about an allegorical rendition of the journey, mingled with Chinese fables, fairy tables, legends, superstitions mixed with popular beliefs, and includes stories about  the Taoist and Buddhist religions. It was based on a true story of a famous Chinese monk, Xuan Zang (602-664). After years of trials and tribulations, he traveled on foot to what is today India, the birthplace of Buddhism, to seek for the Sutra, the Buddhist holy book. When he returned to China or the Great Tang as was called that time, he began to translate the sutras into Chinese, thus making a great contribution to the development of Buddhism in China. Monkey King is an indeed rebellious extraordinary being, born out of a rock and fertilized by the grace of Heaven. A being extremely smart and capable, he learns all the magic tricks and gongfu from a master Taoist and is able to transform himself into seventy-two different images such as a tree, a bird, a beast of prey or a bug as small as a mosquito to enable him to sneak into an enemy's belly to fight him inside or out. Using clouds as a vehicle he can travel 180,000 miles in a single somersault and he wields a huge iron bar that serves as ballast of the seas and can expand or shrink at his command. This becomes his favorite weapon in his later battles. He claims to be the king in defiance of the only authority over heaven, the seas, the earth and the subterranean world -- Yu Huang Da Di, or the "Great Emperor of Jade" in Chinese. To declare himself as emperor is an act of high treason, coupled with complaints from the masters of the four seas and the hell, he invites the relentless scourge of the Heavenly army.
After many showdowns,the emperor offers the monkey an official title to appease him. Enraged he revolts, fighting his way back earth to resume his claim of his own kingdom after learning that the position he held was nothing but that a stable keeper. Eventually, the heavenly army subdues him after many battles and with the help of all the god warriors.
Having a bronze head and iron shoulders, all methods of execution fail and the monkey man dulls all swords used upon him. As a last resort, the emperor commands that monkey king be burned in the furnace where his Taoist minister Tai Shang Lao Jun refines his pills of immortality. Instead of killing him, the fire and smoke add fiery golden crystal eyes that can see through what people normally can not. He frees himself and fought his way down again. Finally, with Buddha's help the monkey was suppressed under a great mountain known as the Mount of Five Fingers and could no longer move. Five hundred years later, ,the Tang Monk, Xuan Zang, came to his rescuer.
The Monkey King became the disciple of the monk and escorst him to insure that he could bring the sutras to the west. He travels with two other disciples, actually also arranged by the Buddha. Here begins the four's stormy journey west which is packed with actions and adventures that brought into full play the puissance of the monks' disciples, the Monkey King in particular.
The story of Journey to the West is divided into three parts: (1) an early history of the Monkey spirit; (2) pseudo-historical account of Tripitaka's family and life before his trip to fetch the sutras in the Western Heaven; (3)the main story, consisting of 81 dangers and calamities encountered by Tripitaka and his three animal spirit disciples - Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy. The average readers are fascinated with the Monkey King, all prowess and wisdom, while many critics agree that the protagonist embodies what the author tried to convey to his readers: a rebellious spirit against the then untouchable feudal rulers. This story has the appeal of the ages with its moral thrust and pictures.

Adapted from HaiWang Yuan, Western Kentucky University

On another note keeping in the Chinese vein, yesterday I visited Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel NY where after some meditation I received the gift of books and shared lunch with the monks. Here are some photos. 

 Below are people giving the service to keep up the grounds.

 They call this the temple of a thousand Buddhas for a reason - you think?

Bracelet Four - A Renaissance

Walking down Bleeker towards McDougal Street in a cold rain on February 14th I kept my head down and my eyes trained on the street we were about to cross. Traffic was moving at a crawl pace because it was Valentines Day and an early Saturday evening when the Village would be normally crowded.
There were less people around than usual but that didn’t make me sad. What did make me sad was my boyfriend who said he was quote, taking me down here to have a good time but first he wanted to buy me a present of something I liked.
“What?” I said surprised. Sandy didn’t usually take the initiative unless there was good music involved which I had nothing against either.
On a roll he continued, “I figured we’d make a night of it. First we get you some pretty silver earrings, sorry but twenty-five’s the limit, oh ok sorry thirty’s it. I’m not rich and you’re my girl and I want to do something special for you and pay for it all too. After the earrings we’ll for a bite to eat and be ready for Buddy Guy at the Lone Star at eight.”
My mouth gaped for and I tried to prevent myself gushing all over him.
And now here we were, an hour and a half later and we still couldn’t get past the first part of the adventure. Time was moving fast and the show was at eight and it was already 6:45.
“Don’t worry,” he said reading my mind. “There’s still plenty of time. I know this little place over on McDougal.”
I began considering my life and feeling depressed that I would never meet a man who really understood me. He had made a good try, but obviously he couldn’t pick out anything I’d possibly even think was halfway attractive – even though he was mostly very smart and had fine choices in movies and music and interesting introspections that made me consider art I wouldn’t normally pay attention to. It seemed my life’s search to find a partner and mate seemed hazardous at best and mostly pretty hilarious.
We were about to cross against the light when I spied gold glinting in the pale streetlight through the fog and haze of the rainy night. I spied a car moving slowly towards me through the drizzle. I decided to make a run for it and run I did. Holding my hand up high as though I were a crossing mistress at the schoolyard I lithely pranced across the wet street bent over momentarily holding my right hand high while with my left I swiped the golden object off the wet pavement and wrapped it close in my fist continuing my run to the other street side of the street where I awaited my surprised boyfriend who was trying to please me and so not. I was starting to soak through my shoes, my hair hung limply and my mascara was running. I hadn’t yet examined the object clutched in my fist. My heart was beating fast and my breathing had sped up from my short sprint. The adrenaline rush moved me.
“So what is it?” he nagged. Or at least I felt nagged. “I suspect it must be something valuable,” he continued fluidly, “for you to take a chance on your life like that on such a dim night running into traffic against a light.” He paused for a breath too. “Well are you going to open your hand and let me see or not?”
My breath slowed and I answered. “I guess we’ll have to see it together for the first time because I have no idea what I picked up only that it glowed golden in the pale streetlight.”
I opened my fist and the bracelet glowed like it had a halo. I inspected it and there was miraculously no damage. Passersby looked at us. I closed my fist.
“Hey I said, I’ll show it to you at home. It looks like may be valuable and I don’t think it’s a good idea to show off out here. I don’t want end up some statistic.”
“Yeah,” he said agreeing. “You’re right. We can look at it at home.”
I kept this watch for thirty years even though the man I’d been with when I found it had long ago moved on. Sometimes I looked at it to examine the handwork and beauty. I had the watch fitted a gold safety chain to make certain I wouldn’t lose it but then it looked too rich for me. I like to wear silver plus I’m not particularly crazy about watches although the band was definitely a wide band bracelet. I obsessed about how much an 18-karat gold watch would be worth according to the price of gold. Hand worked with etchings it looked like something one might find at an estate sale. The clock said 17 jewels and Argentina. It weighed near to 3 ounces. I thought maybe I’d leave it to a family member since it seemed a waste to sell it.
This year, when I decided to put down ceramic floors and retile my bathroom. I sold the gold watch. At first I was disappointed. The dealer insisted the watch be popped out. He had no interest in the watch’s hand carved beauty or that the band was hand etched in three colors gold or that the watch had 17 jewels. Plus I had to pay to have the watch popped out or he wouldn’t buy. His female clerk examined the bracelet. "So old fashioned," she said, "Time to melt it down."
After all was said and done I ended up with one thousand twenty seven dollars. Not bad for a Valentines Day random find on Bleeker Street thirty years ago on a cold rainy winter night.

Author’s note: There are three other bracelet stories written over thirty years ago. This one was written currently.

Let’s get it together

Are you ready yet Daddy
Com’on now don’t be late again
Com’on now Daddy don’t keep me waiting
I’m like a cat caught in a tailspin sitting on a pin
Just say when - I’m ready in the flick of a red crow’s feather
The smell of blue heather a little sandalwood 
some sage wood delight
Come on Daddy get ready
Let’s do up the town tonight
Please hurry Daddy and get yourself together
Get ready and don’t be late
This is a one time date don’t leave this one up to fate
Don’t be coming late now cause fate and I 
won’t wait on anyone tonight
Com’on Daddy let the good times roll
Come on Daddy let’s get down tonight with a little bit of soul
Let’s get down tonight in the bare moonlight
Beneath a starry lit sky
Oh oh my if you're on time tonight Daddy you’re gonna see
Everything’s gonna be alright
If you’d only get out’a bed get ready to get together
and let’s do the town up right tonight Daddy

Randall Radac aka John Lee Brook has a new book!

Posting below is a short interview with Randall Radac who has had poetry and art published in The Cartier Street Review.

http://www.headpress.com/ShowProduct.aspx?ID=96

Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble is the best price. Amazon wants more than the price of the book to ship it.


JL: How did you came to write this book?


RR: After meeting some members of the Aryan Brotherhood in jail, I observed they are fascinatingly violent people with almost magnetic personalities. I decided to write a book about them after doing some research and discovering very little had been published about them.

JL: Radac, how bout some spice on this latest publication?

RR: The book is written under my pen name, John Lee Brook and it takes a close look at a White Supremacist Gang. The FBI has says, “In for life and out by death”, the Aryan Brotherhood known as “The most ferocious and notorious of any of the prison groups.”

As an ex-convict in close contact with the Aryan Brotherhood I've written a devastating exposé, revealing how the notorious white supremacist prison gang has become perhaps the most powerful criminal organization in America, an achievement much more remarkable considering that the majority of its members remain behind bars, and its infamous Commission—the folkloric threesome, Thomas ‘Terrible Tom’ Silverstein, Tyler ‘the Hulk’ Bingham and Barry ‘the Baron’ Mills—are kept in maximum-security solitary confinement, as the US government makes an open effort to subdue the organization by any means necessary.doctorradic@msn.com

JL: Any other little blurb, RR?

Yes, despite government efforts to curtail them, the Aryan Brotherhood continues to thrive. My book Blood In, Blood Out demonstrates how a combination of Machiavelli, Nietzsche, meditation, secret codes, brutal violence and sheer will enable its buried puppet masters to continue to tug at the strings of an organization at the forefront of the black market trade in drugs, arms and money laundering. In Blood In, Blood Out, John Lee Brook provides both an extensive overview of the Aryan Brotherhood and a thrilling look at its untold recent history.

About the Author:
John Lee Brook’s study of the white supremacy movement has led him to strange places, where he met hard men with strange beliefs. Blood In, Blood Out: The Violent Empire of the Aryan Brotherhood (Headpress Publishing/June 2011) is his first book about white supremacy.


Publisher: Headpress, June 2011
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1900486776
ISBN-13: 978-1900486774


To contact RR, write: johnleebrook@hotmail.com or doctorradic@msn.comjohnleebrook@hotmail.com

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is anyone out there having a problem with automatic browser direction?

Is there a way to fix it?


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Top Poetry Blogs 2011 & recommended poems for newcomers

Today traveling the internet and checking my statcounter I noted several people came from these links below - two new listings and awards for best poetry blogs of 2011.


Wow - I'm so honored - two 2011 poetry awards from Online Schools and Online Associates Degrees.


Yippee!


I'm grateful to the universe and my readers to be recognized for my poetry and writings.


I really like Online Associates Degrees little critique of my blog too so here it is for you:


JOY LEFTOW'S POETRY BLOG: Poetry reviews, along with original modern poetry works in a unique tone. Contemporary poetry reigns here!


For anyone here for the first time I recommend these poems below. You can click on each poem to be read the poem.


Spot Of Bleach


Tupelo Honey


Dead Long Ago


Twisted, A Sestina Of Love


I Sing The Blues For You Today


Heroes & Superstars - My Bob Dylan Story (All true too!)


Where Did The Day Go

History Of Becoming An Editor at TSCR & Bernard Alain

I first met Bernard Alain September 2008, when he wrote me asking to publish one of his poems in TSCR. I was so punch pleased – this really doesn’t happen too often. Many people may tell me my work affects them and that definitely fuels my drive to write, but very few publishers write me telling me they want to publish me.

It is very difficult for nutsy and different me to get published. You know how they always say you should look at a mag before you submit. So I always look and I see crazy shit on some sites so I figure maybe they’ll like my crazy shit too so I send it off and usually what happens 7 out of 10 times I get a polite reject. “We love the intensity but no, not for us.” Or “Powerful writing and word choice but no.” It’s very hard out here for a poet.

Bernard provided refreshing respite from all this – (Please take me away from all this, Bernie!)

After Bernards initial online request to publish me he asked me for more work. After several months I offered a review. After about a year, I asked Bernard if I could help on the magazine and had several ideas how to do this; start a facebook group, look for art and feature artists alongside poets and writers, and I wanted him to put the issue up at Issuu where readers could click through the pages. He accepted and we implemented these changes. July 2009 was the last issue Bernard and I published together although he insisted that I make all choices for that issue. He did the layout. January 2010, Bernard said he could no longer be editor and I became principal editor of TSCR.

Please editors, feel free to follow Bernard’s example, if you like anyone’s work or mine – go straight to the source and ask them (or me – pretty please) for it.

Bernard Alain has been published and/or featured in a few online journals recently such as the Orange Room Review, Madswirl, Pirene's Fountain, Mississippi Crow Magazine/RiverMuse Press, International Poet, The World Poets Society Electronic Catalog, Bywords, Bywords Quarterly Journal, Smoking Book and others with an upcoming publication in Wood Coin. He is former editor and founder of the poetry journal, The Cartier Street Review, now edited by Joy Leftow and staff.

Bernard believes expression should not be inhibited by form and reflect honestly, though enjoying a wide scope of appreciation for the many shapes the art provides, it is a personal mandate of his to increase readership for contemporary poetry by encouraging more organically formed and conversational text that reacts to and captures everyday events. He is the founder of two online sites, 'The Ink Blot' and The Cartier Street Review. Poets and artist may submit contemporary art and poetry to the inkblot for feedback. TCSR has a rolling open submissions for publication.

About the book
The book is collection of poems sharing the moods of a budding poet dealing with an overly pregnant online community, from the initial inspiration to burial and fossilization, a humorous edge that journalizes the sad reality for most poets.

Buy the book Mammoth Bones & Contemporary Beef by Bernard Alain here and the review I wrote in archives is here.

Joy Leftow's Poetry Blog: The eye in my sky is crying - bluetry16

Joy Leftow's Poetry Blog: The eye in my sky is crying - bluetry16

Stormy Weather

Crying like the weather, a state of mind
Dewdrops run through my heart
Laying claim to devastated waste I make haste and relent to God I repent
Distaste for the same old songs playing in my head
Discarding old wrongs I fight to make wrongs right
Rewriting history I can’t undo the past

Stormy weather holds us together
Destroys my universe fighting to survive bad weather
Putting a distance between me and the storm
The hurricane inside about to explode
Another year another storm
Drinking wine to kill the pain of sitting and waiting for some new snazzy tune
To break through the gloom in an icy room where I sit here
Waiting for the storm to end
Wait to see a bright new sunny day not too far away

Sky aglow an orange gold sunset strives to stop my pain
Dream of tranquility in the midst of war
Extinguished like vapor dreams of restoring a universe of possibilities
I reach out to touch the receding dream becomes a lost memory of happiness
Defeat is feeling like there’s nothing left to lose

A little conversation some music some wine you agree not to hurt
My kind heart enables you to unwind like
Stuck in an underground surreal film waiting on a round of drinks that will never come –
I visualize escape from lost causes, each new struggle another angle
Of seeing the wind writing – I long to stay strong

I want a little tenderness in a dimly lit room by the light of the silvery moon
our bodies a solitary silhouette,
I want a restful haven where I can live in a world of my making

Delight in a morning lit sky with pink and turquoise gazing at a bright white opalescent moon can’t rearrange my mind and I try to remember what I’m doing here
as I sit on the edge of my bed hypnotized by the silver white moon
Contemplate a day when the whole world waits
together by the edge of a clear running brook stream forever

I want a quiet place where rainbows appear after brutal rainfall
A place where dreams can sustain me as I relish the moment
a simple warm and friendly place where I’m unafraid to go