The Nerve
Be specific.
Find the cause.
Our world is one body.
If our biceps is torn,
the entire organism
must work to heal it.
When surgery is appropriate,
use it minimally,
as it will also disrupt or destroy
the healthy nerve.
The nerve senses imbalance,
and feels the bodies pain.
Lose the nerve,
and we may never feel again.
- Brenneman T. February 5, 2003
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For My Pleasure
Just as the orange alert is announced,
my Moroccan clementine is peeled.
I stare at brilliant, wondrous color,
and savor the cleansing aroma
before consuming the foreign fruit.
It's skin hangs loosely,
after disrobing in my hand.
It's body is sweet and succulent.
It is soon gone,
it's existence sacrificed for my pleasure.
The tiny wooden crate is empty.
Code orange persists.
- Brenneman T. February 11, 2003
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Laser Fang
What is missing in fear?
Humor is stripped with survival's machete
until all nuance disappears in cold sweat.
Naked impulses react,
and we are again
running from the saber-toothed tiger
until we're either caught,
or hidden bone-tired and relieved.
The fang of the laser isn't lazy.
Smart bombs don't think
about how dumb our behavior can be.
Today, our only cave of caution or tree of hope
is the spiritual refuge of our own restraint.
- Brenneman T. February 12, 2003
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Cycling
Light follows the dark,
so dark the light.
Red bled the heart
now black in sunshine bright.
© Brenneman T. February 15, 2003
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Other Ways
Body, a fruitless baffle
to shield the seed of God.
Squirrelish spirits travel
Bird-like, defy the rod.
© Brenneman T. February 17, 2003
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Spirit of Sand
Waves of uncommon occurrences entertain.
Sleep is never twice the same.
Lapping the shore of consciousness,
the wearing forces of impossible dreams
smooth the edges of my jagged reality.
Memory becomes palpable
to the touch of thought.
Ground I am,
between truth and fiction.
Alas, I roll upon the shore,
where all about me is for this moment real.
I am wrought in the collision
of event and perception.
My spirit ricochets about,
shaped by the uneven forces of life's terrain.
Should I seek to know,
I must not only understand all,
but hold it's history; it's story, in my finite self.
How are you borne upon the beach with me?
Only the sand may feel
the contour of all things.
It moves among all,
yet remains unchanged.
Shape me,
and I shall become formless and foreign.
Know me,
and I shall change.
This is the human condition.
I am not God, and so speak as tossed rock,
an odd-shaped, tumbled stone.
©
Brenneman T. February 19, 2003
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Everyone Kills Snakes
A mound of leaves now rots alone.
I paid a Mexican man to gather them.
In my absence, he killed a snake;
a harmless eight inch garter.
I found the limp body on the brick path. I was indignant.
Brashly, he said, "Everyone kills snakes."
He is sadly correct.
We fail to recognize our own serpentine nature.
One day, without the warning of a coil or hiss,
the shovels of our own making will strike through our vertebra.
Heads will roll about indiscriminately releasing their venom.
Detached from reason, fangless bodies will wriggle senselessly.
Foreign heads will attach themselves to another's mindless flesh.
They will complete an entire, but broken whole. All will be dead.
© Brenneman T. February 20, 2003
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May My Night's Sun Burn
The gift has arrived
in living gratitude.
How easily serenity slips away,
covered in layers of expectation and desire.
Dissatisfaction, narrow thought, sour mood;
they fall as unforeseen snow in darkness.
But my night is as day,
and my day as night.
I awake hopeful, focused, and refreshed,
a simple and ready prayer on the lips of my heart.
In the light, before my blinded eyes, the snow falls.
At first it melts, but over the hours it sticks, then drifts.
By evening all the finery of joy and hope has disappeared,
blanketed and distorted by the winds of my own mind's whim and circumstance.
I note, "the melt of my night's sun occurs in the absence of my ego's focus."
"Today, I must sleep as I walk, awake only to the quiet spirit of peace."
The snow is then but water to the roots of my soul,
and in the night my sight is further strengthened.
I am alive, grace warming me.
Life is good. As it should be, it is.
© Brenneman T. February 21, 2003
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Perishable Progress
The structure of any true success,
however insignificant it may seem,
or boldly it may project itself upon the screen of our collective conscious,
manifests an exact measure of durability, power, and social value
proportionate to the integrity of our commitment to it today.
© Brenneman T. February 23, 2003
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