Wednesday sits naked
         and ordinary
             waiting

between the bookends of restive Sunday
and social Saturday. The day is
       little more

than a cluster of hours or a stop on the
 treadmill. Indecisive and
     lonely

nobody chooses a Wednesday. Nothing
happens
           on a Wednesday

and it’s the same each week.

© j.g. lewis

 

Sept 11/01, a Tuesday. London Subway bombings: July 7/05, a Tuesday, also July 21/05,
and also a Tuesday. Assassinations: John Lennon on a Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. a 
Thursday, and John F. Kennedy a Friday. Kurt Cobain’s body was discovered on a
Wednesday, but he chose his way out three days earlier. Nothing happens on a 
Wednesday.

There are fewer concerts mid-week, and opening night is never a Wednesday. They 
never open the Olympics on a Wednesday. Nobody gets married on a Wednesday.

Yet, each week, I choose Wednesday.

When I launched Mythos & Marginalia.com more than seven years ago, Wednesdays were all I planned.I had other thoughts, daily, but Wednesday was the day. I made that commitment.

I wrote every damn day, so I began filling up more than Wednesdays. Mondays became young Fridays, and there was a lot more going on than I originally thought, so here we are.

This is Wednesday and there is a new design to the page; it’s another challenge I will slowly figure out, yet that’s the same for any other day. But today is Wednesday and there is more to read and more to see.

And I’m sure there will be something more tomorrow.

-j-

 

 

   we litigate our sorrows

   mediate happiness

   negotiate contentment

barter wisdom for unsuspecting logic

 

did we stop

looking

for the trust

for the certainty

in what we know

   what we carry

 

   veiled imperfections

   spiteful recollection

   accepted resentment

the perseverance of inadequacies

 

as we keep

close

to the truth

to the familiar

to what we know

   what we carry

 

   compromised ethics

   unwritten guarantees

   pathetic promises

admit what you have lived through

 

© 2019 j.g. lewis

Guns keep killing people.
I’m just putting that out there.
I am just stating the obvious.
It is simply a fact.
It’s a fact that will continue
to prove itself correct
each time
there is a shooting.
Guns kill people,
and they keep killing people.
It is a fact.
It is.
It is common knowledge.
A common occurrence;
too common an occurrence
if you ask me, but
you needn’t ask
because the facts
speak for themselves.
Guns.
Kill.
People.
They did yesterday, and
the day before, and
last weekend multiple times
in my city (more than most
weekends, more than many
cities, and a lot more times
this year). My city is really
not that different
from any other place where
there are guns and people.
Guns are everywhere.
People are everywhere.
Guns kill people.
They did yesterday in
a very noticeable way.
We will grieve the event
and question why. We will
ask questions of ourselves
and questions of our
politicians and each other.
Fact.
And we will hope, and
we will pray, but
guns
keep
killing people
anyway.
It is a fact.
It is far too obvious.
How can we change
the fact without
allowing emotions
to become involved.
Just the facts.
How do we deal with
a fact, and how can we
alter the fact that guns
kill people?
I’m just putting that out there.
Just the fact.

© 2018 j.g. lewis

I am numb. Like everyone else I was shock by the news of another school shooting. Again. It was 10 children, then 14, yesterday. This morning the headline I first read was “19 students and 1 teacher killed in Texas elementary school shooting.” I can’t write; what more can I say that hasn’t been said. It has been said again and again. I wrote this four years ago. It reads the same today as it did then. Nothing has changed. Guns kill people. It is a fact.

j.g.l.

 

 

Frequently designated a dreamer, in perpetuum,
among many other things, he does, he admits,
allow little space to plan.
                                          Rightly or wrongly,
        this is the path
            he has ended up on. Difficult, perhaps,
              at times when cracks in the concrete led him astray.
Only recently discovered, by accident more than fault, is balance
maintained in a world cluttered with discrepancies and dogma
forced upon him by conspiracy theorists, self-serving henchmen,
   Jesus freaks and hangers on, black hole believers
      and Masters of the Universe
        who continue, ad nauseam, to propagate fear.

Erstwhile encounters not forgotten, not
soon enough, minutes bypass memory, he has clung to details
      accounted for nostalgically and passionately,
       each plank of a moral platform galvanized and scandalized.
   He continues, white-knuckled grip, adhering
to a belief system founded over time; tested, altered,
as deemed fit or favorable.
Fully aware and seemingly appreciative, he has crossed the line
from seeing himself merely as a character in this long drown-out drama
     to bearing witness
                   to what happens, as it happens.
He, alone, will not wait to understand, but
   carpe diem, record the state of a disingenuous planet.

Each event, as it unfolds, to be accepted as what will.
No longer a second-hand story in third person narrative,
                  this first-person view could offer confusion at worst,
discomfort at least, through instant, authentic, and liberating in ways
only he will determine.   Tenet nosce.                                                               Each element of freedom comes at a cost.
       He will taste the summer ahead, open mouthed, open-minded,
             without concern of those in the past, but
                with a belief not to get too far ahead of himself
in the dreams he conjures.
Self and the spirit pacified today with the joy offered,
      instead of looking for what
               is no longer there. It is easier that way.

© 2018 j,g, lewis

     we can only wonder

how big is this planet
and how many

     steps

              we must take

this is a journey
as much as
an adventure

    each of us gets lost

all of us lose our way

     at times

if she didn’t know her direction
you could always leave a few

     breadcrumbs

should she follow the path
perhaps then you
          would share

your sandwich

          we could all use
               more picnics

©2022 j.g. lewis