Poem from the new poetry manuscript "Overheard In A Drugstore," by Andrew Glaze

Mr. Frost  

(an undocumented biographical note)

Mr. Frost like most champions of the prize, was a large person, towering over the miniscule poets skittering about the local minstrelsy. One day a gaggle of them worked out a magisterial moment for him to meet an ancient rebel confederate, it was said, alive on this earth a hundred and seven years. They wished to scrabble up the usual TV detritus

about a New England bard discussing            the unlikelihood that there was a still extant  rebel miner out in the dumps and pea patches of the Appalachian crags,  -- but when they got there,

they found it was only an old colored man      of a hundred and seven N-ears who lived in a wooden piano box on half an acre of ravine covered in pine slash, out Jasper way.

He raised a dozen chickens, had a hacking cough, and the two of them got to talking what it meant to be old.

"You've got to keep moving,"said Mr. Frost.  "Else your bones will freeze," agreed the old man.

"How do you eat?" said Mr. Frost.                 "Oh, that ain't so hard," the centenarian replied.

"I use my welfare to buy me chicken feed,      and I has an egg for breakfast, dinner and supper.

"It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for my lungs they awfully full of itchy dust from the mines. It seems like nothing but whisky will cut the dust."

Mr. Frost ruminated a moment,

then held up his hand as if someone had started to speak.

"The principle is" he said, that I think we should leave this gentleman alone.

He's got his life pretty well licked into shape, and as a pledge of concern,

I'll buy him a bottle of whisky," said Mr. Frost. 

Andrew Glaze

2010

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Thought for the Week

"Having been brought up in a serf-owners family, I entered active life, like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing and the like. But when at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprise and to deal with [free] men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy consequences, I began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and discipline and acting on the principle of common understanding. The former works admirably in a military parade, but is worth nothing where real life is concerned and the aim can be achieved only through the severe effort of many converging wills."
Pyotr Alexevich Kropotkin--Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1899)

                  ***************

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.
Robert Green Ingersoll     

       (The extension and explanation that God(s(s(s) gave your dedicated reporter, Snar. 

THE TRACT X OF MOSES -- CLARIFIED

The following was dictated directly to me after I assumed a proper obeisant posture and asked the question, "Considering the pompous, insulting, contradictory, misanthropic language of these ten commandments we’re supposed to post throughout this land, what exactly were you trying to say?"

Now I asked this question while in a lovely little meadow atop a hill, surrounded by woods.  I recall the spot as being near the upstate New York cornfield which produced golden tablets for Joseph Smith and later a pumpkin full of fiches for Richard Milhous Nixon, Roy Cohn, et al. I was only mildly surprised when it grew rather hazy, with no clouds in sight, and a rather quiet voice spoke from everywhere at the same time.  I am, after all, a product of my society and susceptible to the most inane of impossibilities.

Anyhow, this voice said, "O.K., Snyder, ya got a hammer and chisel handy?"  "No, but I can draw a line in the ubiquitous Laptop screen."  "That'll have to do, though I do prefer granite to sand or magnetic data.  Now, first off, understand it wasn’t my fault that that megalomaniacal Moses came up with that stuff in the first place -- self-appointed leaders do all kinds of lying in order to get and keep power.  And, it was yer elected representatives who decided to obscure the realities of education and legal justice by posting that tyrannical nonsense on the public walls.  You’re lucky they didn’t have it posted at every street corner under the 'Thou Shalt Not Walk' signs. Still, I’ll give a hand trying to make sense of what that apocryphal person Moses meant."  It (God) talked, I chiseled (sorry, typed) the following.  When It finished, It (God) said, "Now, stop calling me back here.  There’s a great new crop in the Australian vineyards that needs my expert oversight."

I hurried down the hill to spread the word of this consummate translation.  But, God (It) had forgotten to take the haze with It, in Its rush to taste the new-growth Australian wine, and I tripped and broke the tablets (sorry, Laptop).  Still, I hurried home and wrote everything down verbatim -- or nearly so.  Certainly it lost less in the translation than did the words of the chimera that became Jesus Christ as recorded by that secretarial quartet of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John a century after the purported events.

            THE TWELVE COMMANDMENTS

I am the It-thy-God the human animal has created.  I-it-we brought you out of the East and West land masses to these Americas and entered you into slavery: theological, industrial, economical and penal.  Whilst thou remain in slavery thou shalt follow these commands.

I:         Thou shalt have no other gods before me; never mind that no two individuals of the ever-breeding billions of people on earth agree on who/what I am.  Ergo, thou must not have other gods before us billions.

II:        Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images of anything in heaven above or earth below or beneath the waters; nor shalt thou bow down thyself to them or serve them.  These shall include, but not be limited to: stone tablets, arks, stars with six points, crosses, fish, doves, olive branches and golden calves.

III:       Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.  Be especially wary of using my name in any religious temple, for that would certainly be without value.  If I am anywhere, it isn’t in a theological institution.

IV:       Thou shalt observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  Six days shalt thou labor, but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God and thou shalt not rest, but thou shalt waste that day listening to some willfully ignorant fanatic tell you what you should have been doing -- rather than doing your best to live decently and humanely.

V:        Honor thy father and thy mother as do all the theological and corporate entities which want your parents’ money before you can get your greedy little hands on it.

VI:       Thou shalt not kill -- except as commanded by theological hierarchies and government entities to establish their supremacy.

VII:     Thou shalt not commit adultery; deny that flash of lustiness and you’ll realize that sex with your duty-bound partner is boring and love can only be realized by filling the coffers of your preferred theological Ponzi scheme.

VIII:    Thou shalt not steal; and thy gods [sorry, god] prefer that you do not complain about those who steal from you -- the multi-national corporations, the insurance companies, the military-industrial complex and especially the entities created in my name which grab the widow’s mite with much more haste and less obsequiousness than they take the billionaire’s stained glass window.

IX:       Thou shalt not give false testimony against your neighbor -- unless you work for the C.I.A., the M.I.A., the F.B.I., the I.N.S., the I.R.S., the US Army or Navy or Air Force, a civil law enforcement agency, a county or state or federal prosecutorial office, an established political party, Fox/ABC/CBS/NBC, or the ubiquitous G.O.D. groups.

X:        Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife -- nor any of his other possessions.  On her part, thy neighbor's wife is commanded to not be flattered by another’s attention.  She shalt also remember that she may be discarded -- but may not be traded-to, honored, or loved by someone else.

XI:       Shouldst thou violate or misconstrue any of the above, I shall strike thee a mighty blow -- at least that’s what I’m told by those who make a great noise in my name.

XII:      Finally: thou shalt display these nebulous, biased, xenophobic commands in all public places to substantiate that all despots, utilizing these tyrannical commands created by power-riven megalomaniacs and their scribes throughout history and blamed on me, shalt control your life hereafter on earth.  Not in heaven – wherever that might be.

                                                                  Signed,
                                                         Godsssssss

chipped in magnetic media by
Arlen Dean Snyder