Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Slim Morning

Slim Morning  ~ Lali

She is stirring
in our room
I can hear
the dogs move
I know she'll be
getting up soon
The sun is
barely up
it's not yet
nine-o-clock
and I wish
she was sleeping
til noon

It's not that
I don't love
her constant
company
Or wish she
were other
than mine
It's just that
silence
Is a rare
commodity
And one I see
as sublime

My artist
is a hermit
a focused
(curmudgeon)
who doesn't care
who she may hurt
It's hard for my ego
To clean up
as we go
but if you go hard
yer gonna
eat dirt



(c) 2012

Monday, February 13, 2012

Coming to America

The CorpWhoreRations are trying to
land back
on our shores
The Second Tide of White
Greed come back
with hand, with hat
Stretched out like the Prodigal Father
returned to the arms of his
starving homeless orphans.
When he sails by Lady Liberty
Do you think he gets on one knee and
begs forgiveness,
gives her some jewelry,
slides his hand under her dress
To get a little feel of freedom...to see if the fields are still fertile
enough to grow blood turnips?
squeeze us again in your arms and wrap a boa (constrictor) around our necks
bedeck us in bling and bitches and riches and three lattees a day
so we remember who you wanted us to be
open your mouths
good little consumers
Daddy is coming home.

If I had my way
and when you roll up on the boat,
I'd turn you right back around and say
"We have enough of your kind here"

~Lali 2012

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Setting up for Success

When a father's son reached a certain age, the father decided the son should go into business for himself. The father's idea for the son was to own and operate a lawn business. The father was gleeful at the idea and very much enamored with his vision for his son's launch into entrepreneurial success. This was not the son's passion...the outdoors, manual labor, hot sun...but as a good child will, the son put on his game face and shouldered this new responsibility and the several thousands of dollars in debt (real and psychological) which came with all the equipment and expectation.

Was the son set up for success?  No; not for the want of a generous benefactor, but for the mismatched ambitions. The son did not know the father was playing out his own psychic needs...and the father didn't know it either. The father did not know the son was being polite and dutiful, but was not sharing the vision. The resentment drove the wedge between them deeper. The son had been set up for failure. Not because he could not achieve his father's dream for him, but because the father had no right to assert his dream for his son.

Imagine you are growing a garden. A successful gardener amends the soil to support the nutrient needs of the plants. When the rains of heaven fall more scarcely, the gardener nourishes dry plants with life-sustaining water. A good gardener knows that some horseshit is going to be needed, but if it is applied at the wrong time, it will burn the tender greens. Even the very best rose fertilizer that money can buy will kill an African violet.

Success is measured very individually. Knowing what success means to you is critical to embodying it. Advertisers spend huge money telling you what success means: Money, Luxury, Adoration, Enviability, More! Bigger! But if these things don't turn you on, you won't be happy with success measured with those yardsticks. The yardsticks you are looking for measure down deep into your soul, into your heart. You can set yourself up for success by tapping deep down into that True Measure of success for you as an individual. And by realizing that success is so individual, you find that you can easily set others up for success by learning what success means to them and then offering assistance. Help is only help if it is help.

For the son of a father, and for any of us who have "failed", it is worthwhile to consider that if success is individual then so must be failure. You may loose money, property, customers -- you may lose everything. Ideas may fail, even whole dreams may collapse on you. That fire that scourged through all your underbrush may have been needed to clear some paths and make light and nutrients available for new growth. When your roots are deep your success is much more likely.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

A Virgin Post

A blank page.
Bursting with potential and
so much hope
that what you say will mean something
and not just rhyme
the same
old words
the same old line
love dove above shove
me out a window please
or let me slide between the cracks
of your mental floorboards
so I can seep into your basement
and lend love to the Good Fight
down there.

This is no blushing virgin poet
shivering on cold white sheets
This is a goddess with a bow,
an arrow leveled at your heart
This is my part.
This is the start.

~Lali