where is your treasure?

 

when the mud is so thick

and the world is so cold

look to the Heaven

to that city of Gold,

your reward awaits you

for all those long nights

you prayed for a miracle

for wrongs to become rights,

for all those long seasons

when hope kept you from fear

and you walked in the grey-light

your angels were there near,

for God has been watching,

indeed, God has been true,

so keep your eyes on Heaven 

until God sees you through.

 

The way forward

 In a tech-centric world, the creative arts are tolerated. They are for those who do not fit the maze-like mentality of the Program Nirvana. Their talents lie outside the future of the global circular hive.

Consider the vast millions freed from box-like thinking, from a box-like world. Forty years ago, we peasants of the pen were still struggling with typewriters and word processors that slowed our creative geniuses crafting word-painted works. 

Technology freed us from those containers, then stifled us by hiding us in the toy closet. Too many grown-ups gravitated toward that which would not be composed of word-pictures. Unless the screen observant followed code, the creative could not come out to play in the sand box, nor in the arcade. The code enforcers tolerated us, even enjoyed our works, but did not value nor compensate us with a superior value set.

Twenty-six years on from the aftermath of the Y2 embarrassment, the tech elite have not learned from their failures, nor their hubris. When word-painters are relegated to the fringes of "contemporary culture," a systematic decline is inevitable.

The AI Revolution, or "Data Center Revolution," is unraveling. The glaring holes in reliability have been exposed. When Wikipedia, Instagram, and You Tube are elevated as "factual data," rather than what they are, your AI entity becomes less reliable than the factual standards solidified in the age of the dictionary, encyclopedia, and statistical-based standard reliability source. Why do we need "data centers" where deviance is glorified as statistical?

Meanwhile, those seeking to enlighten the populace with stories illuminating the truth of human nature and reality, encouraging the creative, stirring the soul, find too many potential audiences mesmerized by the less human, the less kind and gentle, the less compassionate. As authors, driven by creativity, we need to offer them a positive alternative to the Narcissistic, an alternative to soul-less culture. So, let us throw off every obstacle, and create a compassionate alternative, a spirit-driven soul-filled excellence that artificial intelligence can never create. And in the end, the populace will open their eyes and see the world as realists, not those manipulated by a soul-less revolution seeking the degradation of the human spirit.

An Excerpt From My Novel

     

     Not everyone in the parking lots on Baker Street saw the amber-hooded track star, painting her lips with ruby red, sitting inside her drained-yellow pickup truck, dreaming of malls, money, and cologne-drenched men.

     The grocery store supervisor, out on his smoke break, his mind fixated on Billie Jo Wells, the youngest cashier, stood at the edge of the parking lot.

     The postmaster, who parked near the edge of the ball diamond grass beyond the pavement, lay back in his seat after consuming a large slice of cherry cheesecake and a few sausage patties.

     Across the lot, the cable guy slept in his back seat while the company paid for an elaborate breakfast he left largely untouched forty miles downriver.

     Most people on Baker Street saw the long-bearded figure checking his phone, as lunchtime pushed into an hour-long break, but he looked like just another logger standing around wasting time before taking his massive haul up the next mountain highway.

     Across the street, a tractor-trailer sat in the gas station parking lot. The owner, Joe Jackson, sat in his cab eating a snack cake. He remembered a similar town, several miles back, where he'd met a man with goats...and he daydreamed about a life with freedom.

     For a couple hours every week, Joe Jackson was an important man. People counted on him; they waited for him. The rest of his existence, between bathroom breaks, coffee breaks, and a nap in the cab, he dreaded. The hours on the road were never ending.

     There were many times he drifted, driving by rote, sobered by the appearance of a tow truck, a school bus, or a clueless compact car driver going much too slow.

     But the man in the big rig dreamed of goats, fifty acres, a pond, cabin, and barn, off a gravel road in the middle of nowhere.

     And few on Baker Street watched the black-hatted lady, in low heels, pushing a grocery cart with a small sack of dog food. She clutched her alligator purse, ignoring the tears leaking from her eyes. As she climbed into her small white truck, she set the purse down, opened it, and dabbed her eyes with handkerchief.

     She, like the man in the big rig across the street, opened a Zebra Cake, and ate the icing before the rest of the snack. She wiped her hands with the monogramed white handkerchief. Backing out, she floored the pedal and sped out of the parking lot to get momentum to snake up the mountain to her empty house...

     They, the locals and visitors alike, went about their business with waves around the parking lot, but no one revealed their dreams, their hopes, their cares. In Messer's Cafe, in Hamrick's Convenience Store, Grayson's Grocery, and Cogar's Hardware, folks from out of town, like the hiker, met those from deeper in the hollers, hills, and mountains... beyond Laurel Springs and the nine hundred people who called it home.

Mesmerized

throwing bones to the dogs

enticing an audience of legged creatures,

they've all the energy in the world

while i race for a boomerang in the wind

worse than grasping confetti in a parade-

mesmerized by potential.

 

 

Dating in the blue world...2007

Ecstatic...

she faces a screen i have not seen

a blue world on her side

composition flows, the flower grows

both sides blossoming in the side bars

while i have chartered a new vessel

to reach out and touch your picture

you're eating an ice cream sundae

with limerence in the luminescence

you type your mobile phone number 

and i am at one with my credit card

paying for another month of chasing you

this chronic appetite for a taste of the new world.

you sound like yourself on the other end

yes, i am drunk with a common new disease

for every man ever dumped like a stray dog

yearning for more complicated connectivity

the world slows down when i hear your voice

and one of us is captured by the enraptured.