Ed Pilolla

Here's My New Address

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:40:00 +0000

I have a new blog. Won't you join me? I won't be posting here anymore. There's a lot to learn about operating the new site, and that's my homework. Thank you to Lisa at Live High for making it all happen. I don't plan to post here anymore.

Popcorn While Rolling Dice Greases Up Nice

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:51:00 +0000

Marvin Gardens we both wanted. But we mortgaged our properties and gave up the dream. While everyone else was building hotels, we concentrated on piggy-back rides. They paid the luxury tax, and I tasted lemon on your lips.

The rain poured across the drafty window. The kettle blew steam. The tamale lady doesn’t come around in weather like this, but it was like Park Place bundled up in here with you.

Electric Company was the sweetener. We already landed on Chance. The official rules say there’s no payday for landing on Free Parking. But we’re not playing by the official rules anymore. You railroaded my plans good.

Once when I was a boy, I saw the very first ghostly shades of light tickle away the night. They invited me to dance, and I levitated into the cool grass.

They installed a little dancing demon inside me and it never stops. So when you went for the trade and cashed out quick, he popped out for a bow.

I am designed for collapse, as you see. And as I go, I like to grab hold of something dear to me.

There are benefits to being broke and making a quick exit from a long game of Monopoly.

For dVerse Open Link Nite.

I Remain Quite Groggy

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:46:00 +0000

I lulled the world to sleep. I crawled into bed early for weeks. Then I turned in a little too early and woke up in the dead of night. The world heaved in a dream around me.

I strolled outside past tile artwork speaking my bright future. I heard your birthday laugh high in the oak trees. I descended mountains underground to gold mines of ability.

And suppose none of the splendor of this world could knock me off my path, that I never strayed to find your voice or shower in the veins of gold. Suppose I did this to catch the last ferryboat to nowhere.

Good thing I woke up with you instead.

Understand that's the official story of last night and what I will tell the authorities if they come knocking. But the truth is I had to hurry. I met a messenger and entrusted him with the seeds of the universe, including this youngster:

* * *

It’s no fair I think about you.

It’s no fair I wonder how you are feeling.

It’s no fair that my favorite time is our time.

It’s no fair because this really was supposed to be a summer love.

No fair

I love you like I do.

For dVerse Open Link Nite.

Still Drying

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:00:00 +0000

I put my face two inches from a Van Gogh painting the other day. This is no softball setup for a remark about zeroing in on your face and how it’s a work of art and all that. This is about the simple fact that browsing around with you turned out to be a worthwhile activity just like the man’s brushstrokes did.

Before cozying up in our graves, skip with me like a lunatic in the parking garage. Be mildly impressed I know a little something about the modern art exhibit. Walk across the fountain with me while security chases others away. We’ll view the grounds in the last of the day’s sunlight.

I confess: In front of the Monet, I ferried off somewhere and whipped up a little color of my own. I stirred up snow from my childhood, blue from your sky, faith in progression, sugar from our kisses and dark earth from the ocean.

I call it Morning in My Life.

For dVerse Open Link Nite.

Mwah

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 04:32:00 +0000

I learned from the ancients

I lived on the mountaintop

I fell while strolling

and remembered nothing of my past

I met you and you loved me

how else could it have worked?

and now I am remembering

and now I am uniting your tribe

with my family on the mountaintop.

A kiss is when two worlds come together and tenderly say hello over and over.

Recommendations

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:53:00 +0000

I have to chop my Carson Animal Shelter story down if I want to sell it. It's at nearly 10,000 words, so I have some work to do. Polishing and selling it is taking longer than expected when I should have expected nothing less. That's life, at least on this end. I'll keep you posted, and thank you so much for your support.

Since I did it last year, I'll do it again and call it a tradition. I want to plug a few friends' projects. Arnal Kennedy, who spent more than two decades homeless on the streets of Skid Row, is quietly becoming an underground brand name in L.A. That doesn't mean he makes money. It just means he makes a lot of appearances to read his stuff. His book of poetry, You Woke Me In the Dark, is truly beautiful, plumbing the depths of the human soul as well as the love we are capable of. Arnal works as the dishwasher at the Los Angeles Catholic Worker soup kitchen.

Jeff Dietrich, who also works at the soup kitchen, has authored his second book, Broken and Shared. Jeff has lived in the LACW community for more than 40 years, and his writings reflect on his work in Skid Row as well as living among the poor. I'm not a religious person, but I enjoy Jeff's take on the Bible. Here's a quick excerpt:

Though we have been conditioned to think that the focus of the Gospels is the twelve male disciples, the truth is that women disciples hear and respond immediately to Jesus's message, while the male disciples consistently miss the point. The Gospels aren't anti-male. Rather, they are in opposition to the political, economic and religious structures of the world founded and administered by men.

Proceeds from Broken and Shared benefit the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and its soup kitchen that serves thousands of poor and homeless people every week.

Lastly, my former photo editor Dan Habib has made a documentary about his son with cerebral palsy, how it shaped his family as well as a look at the inclusive movement for the disabled. I learned a lot. Including Samuel is incredibly moving and informative, which is probably why it has won a couple awards. If autism and inclusion are issues you care about, or if you just want to watch a really good documentary, I highly recommend it.

Dan also happens to be gearing up for the release of his second documentary, Who Cares About Kelsey? The film looks at how kids with emotional and behavioral challenges can be included in regular education classes. There's a sneak preview and discussion with Dan on Monday in L.A. I'll be in attendance.

Side Effect

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 02:35:00 +0000

In college, I worked in an animal kennel in Illinois that housed both strays and dogs boarding for a time. I didn’t like holding for euthanasia, but I was proud I was strong enough to do it. I was young and stupid. Another worker had more seniority than me and had the opportunity to be supervisor, but she didn’t want to help with euthanasia. After I eventually quit, she did help with euthanasia. Then she quit.

Some states allow use of the gas chamber. In some rural areas, they shoot strays. It all depends on what the state law allows. California has one of the most humane laws on the treatment and impoundment of stray dogs and cats, including the method of euthanasia. Animals are to be injected in the vein of their front leg.

In Illinois, it’s legal to inject the euthobarb serum straight into the animal’s heart, or thereabouts.

Getting a heavy-duty needle through a rib cage isn’t painless, by the way.

I, too, eventually had to let the pain in. But not right away. I found myself despising the animals at times, especially the boarders. They were so lucky not to be a stray. I’d stare at them as I moved down the main aisle and they’d know I was pissed. I’d swear if a dog shit in his cage after I cleaned it. They understood they had done something wrong.

One week, I went overboard twice. I placed my Doberman in a cage with another stray and egged them on to fight. When they commenced to fight, I stopped the proceedings instantly apologized to my dog only.

The other time I went overboard with a friendly, cute little Beagle. He was a boarder. I told him what a bad dog he was, cleaned his cage of pee and squeegeed it dry after knocking the squeegee against his legs a couple of times as I reached it to the back of the cage.

I wasn’t done. I emptied his paper water bowl, struck him on the head with it and tossed the empty bowl on top of his head as he cowered in the corner. I told him he was bad, shut the cage door, made sure no one had been watching, and left him there for the night.

I didn’t sleep much thinking about what I had done, what I had become. I loved animals. That’s why I took the job. So why was I acting like a monster?

I arrived early the next morning, went straight to his cage and found him in the exact position I had left him, curled up with a paper water bowl upside down on his head. He peered out from under the rim. I opened the door, snatched away the bowl, filled it with water, pet him, apologized and told him what a good dog he was. I was whimpering. The Beagle allowed me to pet him, though warily.

When I brought the dog to his owner in the lobby that afternoon, the dog was happy to go home. The owner didn’t even look at me or the dog as she paid the bill. Had she, she probably would have seen pure guilt in my eyes.

I wondered if the dog would return. If he did, would he bark, back away from me? The universe provided an answer. A couple weeks later the Beagle and his owner returned. I answered the call that a dog was in the lobby and needed to be brought back to the kennel. The Beagle saw me and followed on his leash without hesitation, even wagging his tail. I couldn’t believe it. I thanked him, and for his stay I treated him like he deserved, like royalty.

I never became angry at a dog or an animal after my experience with the Beagle. I didn’t love them all and cuddle with them all either, but my time intimidating the animals was over. The Beagle was my savior in that way.

Before quitting, I held for less than thirty euthanasias while working at that small animal kennel during college.

Twenty years later I found myself living in California and volunteering at the Carson Animal Shelter, where more than 7,000 animals are euthanized a year. There are no “cardiac sticks,” or needles piercing hearts, as that method of euthanasia is illegal in California, and that's a good thing.

As a Carson volunteer, I didn’t assist with euthanasia. But I knew from experience that type of work can be difficult spiritually.

I remember a young animal care attendant working in her first week at Carson. She talked about positive energy. She waved her hands over me while I cleaned kennels to share some. I saw her a week later and asked about positive energy. She said there was euthanasia happening in back, and there was no positive energy.

She never talked about positive energy again, and quit soon after.

Pit Bulls are the most common breed of dog at the Carson shelter and the most euthanized. The above photo is the only photo I took at Carson while I was a volunteer. The Big Man was one of several dogs I befriended before they were euthanized.

My Boy

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:35:00 +0000

Way back when, I entered young adulthood without knowing a whole lot about how to connect deeply with other people, perhaps like many of us. I had my friends from childhood and that was about it. I socialized only when I had to. And I consciously limited those occasions.

In college, I worked at an animal pound and ended up adopting a dog. I had no idea what this would mean.

He wanted to be with me all the time. He loved me no matter what. It was all a new experience for me. I found joy in giving him a good life, and I ended up getting in touch with something inside me I hadn't often experienced since early childhood: The ability to be with another exactly as I was, without fear of judgment.

For someone who never loved a pet this may be hard to understand, but he was the twinkle of my mornings, the blue of my evenings.

Love can lift that way.

After arriving in California in January 2006, I rented a beach cottage with a large yard for my dog’s last couple months. He had a brain tumor, and when he died, I understood that I was going back to an animal pound to do some work and honor his memory.

This multi-media project I’ve completed is nothing more than my best thank you for all the impossible doors he unlocked within me.

Deadline Creature

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:42:00 +0000

I used to have one of the greatest jobs ever: A daily newspaper reporter. Mostly I covered local news. I reported on city government, breaking news, features, the police and fire departments, some politics and an occasional document-based investigation. When my father died in 2004, I found myself not producing to the level I had come to expect of myself. My dad was a former journalist and after I went into journalism in my 20s, my father and I instantly developed a special friendship. Reporting and writing stories just wasn't the same without him. So I took a break.

I quit my reporting job in New England and, slowly, moved across the country to Southern California. I figured I'd do some volunteering until I was ready to return to reporting. The newspaper industry and economy went in the tank, however. Standing job offers were no longer available as my contacts had been laid off.

I tore through my savings account, though it lasted longer than I ever could have imagined. More than $120,000 lasted more than five years, during which time I took vacations to Italy and Paris, and took several trips to Portland, Chicago and Cleveland. I mostly lived with friends or family. But I also have had my own apartment as well as lived in a run-down beach motel during a couple off-seasons. Sounds romantic? At times the journey has been. Other times I have struggled. Like everyone.

After my money ran out, I picked up some spot work for AOL, and I continue to be grateful for that.

This year has been a return of sorts. I have learned once again how important producing good journalism is to my self-esteem. I am so lucky that the best non-fiction narrative editor in the country agreed to help me with my story of the Carson Animal Shelter. Working closely with an editor is a gift, especially a great one. Any story gets better under the direction of an experienced editor. It's a painful process, as the editor inevitably makes cuts and says it's not good enough, but such moments are a test for the writer to determine whether the work itself has improved from the changes or not. My story sure has improved from the first stab at a draft. It's not a book. It's a feature story, and I'm still shopping it. If I didn't have to pay the other journalists who helped with the story, I'd probably just run it in my blog.

But everything happens for a reason, and I hope to find a home for it soon.

The deadline for my finished story was last Friday. Since then, I've been putting together photos and captions. The photo above is what it looks like: Two volunteers giving a stray dog a bath. I wanted a photo of the dog shaking and the volunteers ducking out of the way of the spray, but this simple framed photo I ended up liking best.

Unclaimed Position

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:19:00 +0000

Yesterday we served coffee and oatmeal and hard-boiled eggs while security guards hired by the business association took photos of the homeless in line. They’ve done this regularly since the police and county health inspectors tried chasing the food servers away earlier in the year.

How about the position of the homeless in downtown L.A.: Being photographed in order to receive a free breakfast.

Afterward, my friends and I attended a burial ceremony to commemorate the year’s unclaimed bodies in the city.

There’s a reasonable chance some of those bodies ate food prepared by my friends.

Here's the latest on the breakfast line.

The Step-Down Room

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:52:00 +0000

The step-down room on the second floor was added to the Victorian in the 1940s. It is the most popular bedroom in the house, with good reason, beginning with the four steps leading from door to floor.

Sunken rooms are fun, especially in a hippie house where everyone lives in voluntary poverty.

When my friends began occupying the Victorian in 1978, they used the step-down room to put together editions of their radical newspaper. The newspaper’s overflowing archives and parties have since been moved to the basement of the back house, so that the step-down room has passed from occupant to occupant, and I mean couple to couple.

Jim and Joyce lived in the step-down room 20 years ago. Now they live in Long Beach. Jim still enjoys driving up and answering the phone at the house on Saturdays, while everyone works at the soup kitchen.

The ceiling in the step-down room was painted a few years ago by a couple who fell in love after meeting here. After they moved out, Kurt and Sybilla moved in for a year.

Now the step-down room happens to be my girlfriend’s room.

Last night I fell asleep staring at the ceiling and listening to the sound of helicopter blades churning over Occupy L.A. Five members of this community were present at the eviction. Four were arrested.

I’m so grateful there was no serious violence, despite the local newscast repeatedly and unequivocally stating beforehand that 15 to 30 “bad apples” among the protestors were going to become violent with the police and the police will have to respond.

Don’t you just love it when reporters tell you the story before it ever happens.

Of all the garbage the local newscast dished out, my favorite was a demonstrator grabbing the microphone of an on-scene reporter and criticizing the mainstream media for showing images of people with gas masks ready instead of interviewing school teachers planning to be arrested. The station cut away to another reporter on the scene showing protestors with gas masks ready.

This morning, I flew to Cleveland to complete the data analysis for my animal shelter story. I'm really looking forward to sharing it here later this month.

Issues of fairness and justice have been on my mind, and how these sorts of stories are told. I find myself thinking about the future of this world plenty lately.

But mostly I just like hanging out in the step-down room.

Enough Food For All

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 18:58:00 +0000

For Thanksgiving 80 people showed up. Forty were invited. It usually works the other way. Half as many as invited show up.

I washed a total of four plates and spent the afternoon playing croquet on the lawn with our guests.

I don’t get the alone time I’d like to have here in order to write, and this past week was especially challenging with the holiday.

But that’s the world. I’m thankful for a roof over my head and for being able to swing a mallet while the cleanup was done without me.

Clothesline

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Kids from the neighborhood occasionally crawled up the hill at night and stole jeans off the clothesline. That happened in the 70s and 80s and even 90s, before this neck of East L.A. gentrified. Now many of the kids in the neighborhood wear nicer jeans than the hippies and anarchists who live here, and a pair hasn’t been stolen off the line in years.

One washing machine spins the load here and no dryer. There is no shortage of clothespins, so long as side-by-side items share a single pin. Dish towels and general cleaning rags from the soup kitchen are washed and hung before personal laundry, which is how it usually works.

Pictured above is Catherine Morris. She has been to jail more than 40 times over the past 40 years in protest of various injustices, from the latest war to the consistent treatment of homeless folks.

So it’s a kick to know these people who have been doing civil disobedience for a long time, especially when we load up the pick up after working a full day in the soup kitchen and head out to feed everybody at Occupy L.A. Today they got ice cream.

Staircase

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 06:16:00 +0000

Working and living here and working on my draft of my animal shelter non-fiction narrative has consumed a lot of my fire lately. But I chased some light in the stairwell this afternoon after my nap in the closet and wanted to share. Looking forward to reading blogs this week.

I plan to add a couple more photos of the staircase over the next couple of days. Ten minutes of light wasn't enough to do justice.

Yesterday

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:24:00 +0000

Got up at six. Had tea and toast. At the soup kitchen, we swept the outside seating area by 7. By 7:20, I was eating a pancake the cook whipped up for the early morning help. I made salad dressing for 1,200 people. I forgot to mix four garlic heads into half the batch, but it all worked out because the cook needed to get the pasta going quick and when he found out what I had left in the blender he was thrilled. While we served food, I tossed tomatoes in the salad and buttered bagels and opened donated bags of pasta, the sample size.

Got home at 1:15 p.m. The week’s community meeting began at 2. It was noted that an unusually large amount of food was served for the first day of the month, which is when people who live on checks usually receive their checks. They don’t visit soup kitchens until their money runs out later in the month.

I made dinner. It consisted largely of leftovers from an acclaimed Monday meal. I’m lucky that way. On my very first “house day” in 2006 a friend of the community’s dropped off an entire rib dinner for forty. There were twenty in the house at the time, but we put it all away. I accepted credit for the rib dinner as I did the leftover buffet, though little was forthcoming. After dinner, five people performed a Gregorian chant after the cat was removed from the room. The cat knocked over a photo of Cesar Chavez on the top-most tier of the Day of the Dead altar in order to sleep. Luckily, there are many pictures of Cesar in the house. Also lucky that someone snapped a photo before Star was evicted.

Before I locked up the house at 10 p.m., I forgot to fetch the 10-gallon pots from the garage and fill them with water on the stove so the early risers could fire up the burners for whichever anarchist or hippie happened to be making coffee and oatmeal in the morning. I fell asleep in the closet to thoughts of sugar plums and having the entire afternoon free today to write in my blog.

The Closet

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 05:22:00 +0000

My room is the closet. I've lived with my hippie friends three times, and I've stayed in a variety of rooms, but never the closet. I've heard tales of watching the hummingbirds come to the feeder outside the window and other enjoyable experiences, like napping, in the tiniest of rooms. The closet is the first room on the left at the top of the staircase. It was originally the bathtub and shower portion of the third-floor bathroom. Then somehow cement fell down the drain, and the tub no longer worked. A community member at the time, John, remodeled it into a nook of a room with a slim loft bed. This was about 1980. John didn't sleep in the room. It was more of a showcase piece. People just started living in it. These days beneath the loft is a dresser and a built-in trunk with a trap door that John originally fashioned to be a desk with a swinging tabletop. The space beneath the loft has undergone many transformations. The room itself attracts much in the way of decoration. Sam hung the bird feeder outside the window a few years ago. Sybilla painted the walls, floor and door a couple years ago. Before I moved into the closet this week, Mitchell was living here. Someone will stay here after me.

I plan to live in the commune through the end of the year. I'm grateful for what is my fourth stay here since 2006. I am diligently working on my animal shelter story and expect it to publish in December. I will keep you posted. I'm looking forward to talking more about putting it together. Meantime, I may write a little about this alternative lifestyle I will be participating in for the next couple months. And the house we all live in.

Peace Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:43:00 +0000

The official decree says we aren’t supposed to hold hands. The newspaper of record says it’s an act of treason to smile at each other. The politician announces that we are not allowed to assemble in public if we plan to do so for longer than ten minutes.

My flower power queen, I want to climb the nearest garbage truck and sing about us. I want to croon it to the haters doing their best to disguise their fear. I want to drape my arms over the redcoats and chalk pink hearts on their shields.

Experiencing the basic principle of this world is a tradition: You do what the man with the gun says.

The expectations dwarf me. The grand plans might wash us away. I was born under a purple moon and honestly, no one really wants to see us together. But I’ll go anywhere you lead me, no matter which world, no matter which brand of gun.

For dVerse Open Link Nite.

Mr. Slow Learner

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 23:22:00 +0000

I have learned something worth learning.

Sure, I know how to touch your body a thousand different ways.

But it’s love that brightens the sky.

And making you happy is the greatest turn-on of all.

The Cave

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 04:59:00 +0000

I lie wounded in this cave. Deeper, something sleeps. Soon it will smell blood and come alive.

I won’t have to wait long. My head wound gapes wider each time I pull myself out of my acid rain and into this cave.

When I began evicting monsters from my past, I foolishly thought the project was all finished after a cleansing. Now I know the spirits own the catacombs of a damaged mind.

My night demon is coming awake. He is so big and beautiful. And fast. I feel myself smile fully for the first time since I last held such hope. Of course I will scream because I am a man. I can only dream he puts me away this time, and the earth tastes me in my entirety.

Franklin's Wolf

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:19:00 +0000

I read an amazing book, The Wolf in the Parlor. It’s non-fiction and written by Jon Franklin, a renown science writer and talented storyteller. In fact, when Franklin worked as a newspaper science reporter, the Pulitzer committee created a category so Franklin could win the prize in the early 70s because he so clearly deserved to.

The Wolf in the Parlor looks at the probability that early humans and wolves evolved together to become modern man and the dog.

Where we come from is one of the most fascinating and important questions we can entertain, I believe. Even a cursory review of the evolutionary trail brings us in touch with the enormous length of time as well as physical pain it took for us to get here, and how we have occupied the top dog position on this planet so very briefly.

If you are a dog lover, you’ll definitely enjoy the book. But even if you are not, the book provides historical insight on who we are because of where we come from. I highly recommend The Wolf in the Parlor.

Franklin also wrote one of the best books on writing I ever read, Writing for Story, but that's another post and another plug:)

Between picking up some work last week and going to a wedding in Chicago over the weekend, I detached here. But I'm very much looking forward to reading everyone's blogs and getting inspired to write creatively.

Did You Check The Oil?

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:59:00 +0000

The old Chevy van squeaked on ancient springs so that heads and even torsos at bus stops a quarter of a mile away turned to see. There were small dents and scratches, evidence that it was a working van, nothing more. A window was missing for a while. The button on the back door was missing permanently and short thumbs had trouble opening it. The back doors were full of bumper stickers of the far left wing variety. On the sides written in large letters: ‘Money for Human Needs, Not War.’

The steel floor between the bench seats was stained with years and years of spilled coffee from cups held by lazy morning hands during bumpy rides. That’s not to ignore the color contributed by the tea stains and juice stains and oatmeal, raison ruptures, and general grime, it’s just to say that coffee appeared to be the dominant stain.

Over the course of forty years, many different donated vehicles have been used to shuttle these hippie friends of mine between their commune and the soup kitchen they run a few miles away. The blue van served that purpose faithfully for ten years before dying completely.

For dVerse poetry pub's call for bumper sticker inspiration.

If you'd like read more about my hippie friends and I, here's a story from earlier in the year.

Out of Silliness

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 04:24:00 +0000

I am a silly dreamer.

I dream of leaving no debt to our children and grandchildren.

I dream of ending wars most people oppose.

I dream of a very simple and fair taxation system.

I dream of people witnessing an in-depth discussion of these issues by knowledgeable people across the political spectrum.

Among the silliest of dreamers, I tell you.

I don’t plan to write more about this. I want to return to more fun, creative writing. World events get to me sometimes. If you don’t agree with where I’m coming from these last couple posts, I’m extra thankful because how we treat each other is how the world goes.

From the Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:32:00 +0000

My heart and mind is with everyone involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests, from L.A. to Chicago to New York. The love and loyalty of the sun and moon to all who recognize that our political system is broken and all who oppose the continued indebting of our children and grandchildren.

Those who make their voices heard and challenge authority will predictably be mocked by the servants of power.

It is a grand tradition in this world.

Slipped Out

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:13:00 +0000

When the shadows grow so dark and night appears to have conquered the land, I genuflect and kiss the claw of the dark master. I’m very reliable that way. Put a little pressure on me and I powder like ash.

A little friction lets out so much blood because I celebrate the cuts. I salt them and stew.

You are a peppermint cupcake in my throat, but don’t look for me tonight.

I’m tonguing someone else.

Breaking and Entering

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Pilolla) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 05:48:00 +0000

There is a hole in the ceiling of the universe that leads to ancient waters.

There is a crack in the floor that leads to ancient fire.

Within, I hold something ancient, too. It is guarded by illusion no burglar can master.

For I have tried, and I am considered skilled.

We may never know the reason for the water in the sky or the fire in the ground.

All I know is you broke me open.

Thief in the night.

For dVerse Open Link Night and Gooseberry Garden's call for Love and Loss.