Hi, I’m Rodney. I’m a gnome from Gnome Hill. But that’s not what I’m here to tell you about. I’m here to tell you the story of what happened to me one day when I got bored and went out to find my fortune. The fortune I found, but it was not the one I had imagined that day.

I carefully packed my bag with some hardtack and bottled water, a change of clothes, some soap and a cloth, my toothbrush, a pen and notebook to keep a journal of my adventures, and what cash I could find in my pockets and piggy bank. I left a note for my family so they would not worry. I took a bath and ate a hearty meal so I would be at my best. Then I set out for parts unknown, singing a song and skipping a bit as I made my way down the road from my home.

I had hardly been walking a half an hour when I came upon a magick carpet that quickly moved behind me, plowed into the backs of my knees so that I fell over backward onto it, and flew me away above the trees and into the clouds.

Of course I was quite surprised by this, and even a little bit frightened. I was also amazed and delighted to be flying so high that everything on the ground looked small and far away. It was exhilirating to be moving through the clouds.

Then, suddenly, the carpet moved out of the cloud cover and I saw a huge mountain right in front of us. There was a small opening in the mountain, like a cavemouth. The carpet showed great skill in maneouvering us through the tiny opening into a kind of antechamber, where it landed and encouraged me to disembark.

I could not leave through the opening in the mountain because that would have meant plunging thousands of feet, and for no good reason. The antechamber was boring and small, but I saw a brightly colored curtain on the back wall that seemed to cover an entrance to another room deeper into the mountain.”

I walked through the entrance, a little trepidatiously I admit, and found a large, cavernous room carved out of the mountain stone. It was mostly dark and shadowy, because the only light seemed to be a smallish stone table covered with burning candles. Past the table of candles, there stood a free-standing mirror about twice as large all around as I am. When I looked into the mirror I became a bit confused and alarmed as I realized that every time I looked away the image would be changed when I looked back.

It was basically a reflection of me, but larger or taller or older or in different clothes. I was so amazed that I walked up to and touched the mirror. To my greater amazement, my hand passed right through as if through liquid, which set me off-balance so that I fell through the mirror altogether. This, of course, surprised me, but not as much as my surprise at what I found on the other side of the mirror.

There were all my friends and family setting up a big party for me. There was a long table with all my favorite foods. There were balloons in all my favorite colors. There were friends with musical skill playing my favorite songs, to which other friends were dancing. It was quite a production. I was pleased and surprised and happy to join in. I went up to one of my brothers who was fairly near and put my arm around him, but he did not respond. He went right ahead stuffing his face with cake and smiling and nodding at the dancers. He acted like I was not there at all. In fact, nobody seemed to notice me. They seemed to be looking straight through me.

Then, my friend Stan appeared, heading toward me from the crowd. He certainly saw me. He came right up and spoke to me.

My dear and long-time friend Stan and I have had many adventures together. He is an inter-dimensional being, but appears in this dimension as something like a unicorn. He looks like a white horse, of considerably smaller than average stature, with a spiral seashell-like horn on his forehead. Actually, it is an interdimensional communications device with which he stays in touch with the folks in his home dimension. He likes the unicorn look.

Stan is a great one to have on adventures. He is fun to be with, entertaining, and very useful in a great variety of ways. He is loyal and dependable, except when he gets called on his horn by his home dimension family and has to disappear in a wink, sometimes even forgetting to say good-bye.
Synopsis:

Stan tells Rodney that they have fallen into a “possibility portal” — a kind of hyperlink that holds different timeline possibilities which can be perceived as real, but not directly interacted with. These portals have been popping up lately disguised as mirrors, clear water or ice, anything with that kind of reflective surface.

Further, Stan tells Rodney that he (R) had left on his morning’s adventure about 6 months previously and has not been heard from since. Stan and a couple of Rodney’s siblings, Peter and Kayla [please let me know if there are better gnome names] had been out on a frozen pond when they fell through the pp.

The gargoyles, who are not really mean but have a rather twisted sense of humor, had become aware of the portals, which affected them differently in that they were more aware of the illusory nature of the possibilities and were able to maneouver through and use them. They have decided it would be great fun to capture the gnomes who fall through the portals by arranging for them to believe they are about to be seen by men. To hide themselves, the gnomes will take on a temporary garden gnome statue state. The gargoyles have a stasis raygun which will keep the gnomes locked in the statue state. The gargoyles intend to take these gnomes, when they have a good supply, to sell to garden supply stores as garden gnomes. What fun it will be a couple of decades down the line when the gnomes unstasis and scare the people whose gardens they are in, and vice versa. Gargoyles have very long lives and very little time sense.

Peter and Kayla were captured by the gargoyles. Stan, being an interdimensional being, also has other rules in the pp and can not get out without assistance. He has been wandering the pp world and learned about the gargoyle’s plan. Finally, he thot to contact his old friend, the flying carpet, with whom he has a telepathic link, asking the carpet to bring someone who can help him. Thus Rodney was brought to the mountain.

Rodney and Stan must save Rodney’s kin. They find that there is a large wall mirror at the back of the party room. Rodney jumps on Stan’s back and they are able to fall through the portal mirror back through the mountain portal on the other side. They take some candles from the stone table and continue through the inside of the mountain path to make their way to where the gargoyles are holding the captured gnomes, 6 months in the future.

There can be any amount of adventures while they are journeying through the mountain, including a time when Stan is called to his home dimension and winks out, leaving Rodney alone and unsure of how to proceed.

Along their journey, Rodney and Stan discover that the way to break the statis is to perform a certain ritual song. The specific vibration of the notes of the song will cause the stasis victims to dance back into life.

Of course, eventually Rodney and Stan reach their goal, find the captured gnomes, perform the ritual song and free them. Afterwards, there is a big party — the same party from the first pp. Rodney has learned that his true fortune is his friends and family. However, he is certain to go off on many other escapades to be true to his adventurous spirit.

The End

The right amount of government —
just enough to protect freedom
without destroying it.
Just government
protects everyone’s freedom
without destroying anyone’s.

But who decides what that line is,
each with our own dispositions?
It may be up to the fate of
social evolution.
Not a satisfactory solution
for we who cannot wait.
Our lives are forfeit now
to silly fields of behavior
deemed acceptable
to the respectable
who rule the day.
While life is so disrespected,
devalued, expect those
learning their behaviors from
the crowd
to coldly laugh and kill.
If that is the will of the people …
Such death is what we freely choose.
Those who would desist
are not allowed to exist.
Instead organized Reality tv fights
define our rights.

Thirteen Wizards Shall Guide You, rotating in 7s,
to be chosen from a wizard test administered at regular intervals
to any who wish to apply.
Each wizard shall serve at his/her pleasure — until they decide to move on.
Any wizard may return by retesting and getting the highest score amongst
those currently in line at the time of a vacancy, like any other candidate.
The test to be devised by a wise pre-council to ascertain qualities of
wisdom, compassion, responsibility, integrity and clarity of communication.
The test may be reviewed and revised at any time that the full council agrees
to do so, based on evidence of better result to be gained.
The wizards do not make the laws.
Laws are made by direct democracy, after a sufficient period of debate when
an overwhelming majority of consensus seems likely.
Wizards do have veto power.
Wizards do not control the economy. That is the province of the market.
The wizards do oversee the use and conservation of common resources.
They do oversee a social infrastructure that assures everyone a comfortable, secure
livelihood. They do oversee disputes to assure that everyone is treated fairly
in the course of commerce, and in the course of community life.
They are not paid an outright salary.
They are given comfortable living conditions that their minds may be free
of personal want.

‘80s legacy

Don’t honor Bush II’s administration with undue blame.
Twas Reagan and his merry crew reset our country’s tenor.
Of course progressive opposition clamored through post-Nixon ‘70s,
hot and sure about every error.
The point is, we had that luxury. Yes, there was poverty,
discrimination,
aggregations and individuals in need; but hunger,
untreated disease, was not perceived as righteous penalty
for lack of decent wage. There was real spirit of community,
especially on the lower rungs, but noblesse oblige philanthropy still
held, built civic structures, cohesion.
Neighbors could meet upon moral foundation that made sense,
incorporated well-wrought reason.
The ‘80s brought in a different paradigm,
more wily and wild. Days of cocaine,
champagne, glamour and celebration for sweet deregulation,
when every schemer
could conjure a neo-capitalist heritage of wealth unbound.
Before it was found that
poisonous as plutonium, in the gleeful hands of elitist true believers,
just what we
were free to become.
Since then it seems proportion and balance speed spinning to demise.
Wisdom demonized in mad shrapnel’s wake of
blast-warped brains.
Games of harassing hatred and spitting disdain. Contemporary
Cassandras warned: his numbers are 666.
A man possessed by
Hollywood fantasies. America construed as big screen portrayed,
folie a deux with a nation.
And here those snowy yesteryears roost
in loyal rafters, lay out
macabre future ruled by disaffected youth.
Who is it, really, that we as a people choose to be?
Distanced from encouraging history,
adumbrated by convenient lies, what are our chances
for recovery?

Under Lying Message

Coma Baby, salivation of ubiquitous tragedy.
Petroleum under the sea
breaks surface.
Fissures exposed, eroded social contract.
Corrosive wealth.
Corrupted Earth.
Tell me a tale of forgiveness.

“Tough choices must be made!”
Congressional random phrases.

The difference between faith and bliss.
Engine of tar-black submarine,
leak of held back tears, grief of millennia.

I feel America crying.
Taste blood salt, polluted brine, dystopia.
The best hope for our regeneration,
for our continuity,
for our survival:
Let GO
Let the race be won,
the trophy given;
the competitors disperse
aglow in glory.
While we who endure
quietly, quaintly, alive to each moment,
slip between the slicks

New American Century

After Shock and Awe,
extreme conflict booms – a
“transitional time of untidiness”.

We bombed in Baghdad.
Cast crusade banner blame
as if to clean up this mess.

Common folk, forced collateral,
pay braggarts’ debts of hubris
compounded and raised.

Drunk on destruction to fell
inclusive truths of good faith,
triumph of the crazed.

Timothy McVeigh Is Still Dead

It’s morning in America
The morning of June 11, 2001
A warm and beautiful Spring day
And in Terre Haute, Indiana — a little after 7:00 am
–Timothy McVeigh is dead.
What more is there to say?
We all know the score:
Murder: 169, Mercy: 0
Antihero “bloody, but unbowed”
Silenced, but ever proud.
Ashes to scattered ashes.
Nihilist descant.

Infocontainment

Valerie Plame, Valerie Plame
The very fact that we all know your name
is a crime.
So, who’s doing time?
American splendor,
a pop carnevale.
The greedy get famous.
The poor rot in jail.
Dazzling glitter of star light
is doing its job:
distract and divide while
they rape, kill and rob.

Is that a pimple on my face?
Oh, I’m such a big disgrace!
I can’t keep it all together as I should.
The only explanation’s I’m no good.
I ask too much. I need too much.
I never learned to mind my p’s and q’s.
I didn’t toe the line and pay my dues.
Inexcusable.
Chance of viable career connection
cut to ooze beyond my puny reach,
bleed out,
annihilate.

What am I even saying?
If upright people hear, surely
despair’s a treasonous crime.
And, unlike those Whitehouse lackeys
I may well end in a cell hapless, maligned.

Live Revolution

Revolution comes when it is ready.
Sparks so many times seem sure to light, embolden change.
Only when the tinder is sufficiently arranged will fire take hold.
Blaze clear fidelity to this erupted moment, charging forward.
After images, ash flakes in settling dark, take flight,
swirl within echoed breeze.
Readiness, relative to chaos, free range of human whim.
Revolution is but a shared anthem, parts of anger and revenge,
parts of reaching toward a new religion.
In the aftermath of violent schism,
what bright vision will sustain?

Late Night Radio

Listen to the grumble like jungle drums.
Beatings of tribal pain.
Bodies bound in confusion, “No solution!
Revolution only changes the chains.
Work for wages, slaves until grave.”
Cry to Heaven; gaze in vain for Justice’s rain,
or the reign of the last of the thieves.
Listen. Those vast conspiracies we the people
choose to believe
give a glance of a chance for a grip, a foothold.
At least we perceive lies prevail, a market of fraud.
What must be sold to buy an award or trophy wife.
What kind of life do these drums applaud?
Listen. Learn to move like music. Lead in daring dance.
Or, listen; then go on dancing alone.
Or, listen, step above late hour trance;
beat true.
Let resonant rousing music call the tune.

culture wars

You lost your faith, Peter Pan.
You lost your wonder
Who told you to sell out to our father’s dream
— Amerikkka?
Where loyalty to the God Success
overrules loyalty to the tribe?
We never believed in you,
the admen laugh.
Do you laugh with them?
At the poor deluded dreamer.
Do you cry inside in anguish over
what you’ve lost?
Is any part of that dreamer still alive?
I cry for you.
I was a child
who wanted to fly.

Prophecy

And He became The One
as we all filed to point together
in His direction
anointing Him our Saviour.
We, so ready to be saved
from evil history
from slavery and hate
looking for a better fate
for our kids
(and, don’t kid yourself, ourselves).
Caught up, trapped, in the trappings
of fashion-conscious
tailored consciousness.
Drugs parade to cure us of our many flaws,
because if you’re not flawless you
haven’t got a chance
in market scored fierce competition.
A youthful escapade can ruin you
for the life
of peers’ and elders’ expectations.
And then where are you?
May as well be burning in eternal
damnation — at last.
At least Satan wants you
for your sins.
In a mythical colony,
far from their petulant King
it is said a people
fought and died, and lived again
for freedom.
It is said such pageant plays
are still performed today.
“Freedom is not Free; but paid
in blood sacrifice.” They say.
Freedom dependent on militia,
on strictly disciplined troops
firing into pregnant crowds.
Ancient sages foretold
potent prophecy.
We will not listen.
We insist on martyrdom
worshipping, as we do,
cults of murder.
This human life leads inexorably
to eternal death,
just as we demand,
when we all come together
anointing yet another One.

Western

Raw, piercing howl
promises places
not here.
Dirt-framed, sore worn tracks demark possibilities,
thankful for the regularity of commerce
allowing travelers meaning.

Caged, kept from indeterminate freedom.
Irony does not escape me.
I find comfort in harsh Revelations
babbled by a shining eyed prophet.
Mad peasants and their Lords,
progress through tribulations,
power games of strategy and fate.
Millennial betrayal. Land sold from under pensioners,
savage beating of broken laborers,
children learning their worth without a home.
Is this Almighty Covenant?
Eras, tools, enemies revise.
The game journeys on.

Rising gold Sun absorbs mist.
A righteous dawn.
The smell of enduring prairie after
the train’s rushed through.
On this side of the bars,
life is slow,
awaiting judgment.

When the national project was stolen before our horrified stares
When it became our duty to kill and destroy for the convenience of profit
When humane policy became anathema, unworthy economic drag
When the will of the gambling elite gamed the rule of law to their pocket
Did you scream so loud that bitter blood poured from your lungs?
Did you set up mourning camps to gather forces,
to train grief and rage into worthy opponents against true freedom’s foes?
Did you gaze into the cold eyes of propagandists and say “No!”?
Or did you march along in the parade, assured: “First they get theirs; then we get ours.”?

social net

Yes, of course we ought be fiscally responsible.
Yet of far more import is that we be rational.
Hyperbolic apoplectic, Apocalyptic rhetoric
reduces us from politic to stagey raving maniacs.
No need for such hysteria; learn from recent history.
The flagrant ways of LBJ, Reagan and GWB
found mitigation in administrations following.
The People, energized, expand instead of wallowing.
Exciting industries take hold, real worth — not hollow gold.

The conversation we as a nation need
is not a war of virtue versus greed
or capturing the rules to win a game
or playing catch with sophistry and shame.
We need to ask and answer in sobriety
Who we best can be as a society