Prose Power

A good turn out for my second class at KSR last night. Twenty students read aloud from their papers assigned last week that included their most intense moments and thoughts on Mongo Bear Wolf's "Man in his Cocoon."
     I was told when I first started teaching at KSR that the prisoners were secretive and would not want to read their papers out loud to their class mates. Quite the contrary. In three years I've had only a couple of students who complained. It really is a catharsis for most of them. And once they get started look out.
     Last night two of the men actually wept during their readings. One fellow wrote about his beautiful wife who died of cancer in front of him and his two children. Another wrote about his dead mother who he adored. The others wrote about their crimes or seeing their children born. All of the writing was heartfelt and all the men listened in respectful silence.
     What they witnessed was the power of prose. Carefully written, emotional descriptions of the their lives that at times approached poetry.

Truths and Birthday Trivia

2004-08-22 17:09:35</logtime>
<subject>TRUTHS AND BIRTHDAY TRIVIA</subject>
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"God ain't no white bearded man up in the sky somewhere. He's a spirit. He ain't got no body... The only body he's got is us."

                         Brother Carl Porter,
                         Evangelist

"The poet hath the child's sight in his breast,
And sees all new. What oftenest he has viewed,
He views with the first glory. Fair and good
Pall never on him at the fairest, best,
But stand before him holy, and undressed
in week-day false conventions, such as would
Drag other men down from the altitude
Of primal types, too early dispossessed.
Why, God would tire of all his heavens as soon
As thou, O godlike, childlike poet, didst
Of daily and nightly sights of sun and moon;
And therefore hath He set thee in the midst,
Where men may hear thy wonder's ceaseless tune,
And praise His world forever as thou bidst."

                       Elizabeth Barret Browning


  

 A glorious weekend. Yardhog is now  officially 57 years alive. D gave him a raku pot engraved with a woman's face, he had actually picked out for himself several weeks ago after seeing it at a shop on Frankfort Ave. He told the owner to put it away for safe keeping until D purchased it for his birthday. Sometimes you just can't take any chances.

Enigma - Addendum

MORNING AFTER

A strange,
 clown faced man
    performs perversions
      and sells choir robes
             in his
                basement

BEWARE THE UNSATISFIED MAN

HE'S THE FIRST TO VIEW
THE BODY,
HUG THE WIDOW,
GIVE CONDOLENCES

AND THE FIRST TO BE
REALLY,
REALLY,
SATISFIED.

d.o. 6/4/04