My book One War according to Grok.

ONE WAR is a 2008 book by John Scott Ridgway, structured as a collection of three interconnected novellas (or short stories) that explore dark, psychological, and satirical themes tied to war, intelligence, trauma, and human corruption. It's one of his earlier self-published works, available in paperback/ebook formats (via Lulu and Amazon) and as a free download on the Internet Archive — which you've shared links to in the past.Overall Structure and PremiseThe title "ONE WAR" appears to refer metaphorically to a singular, ongoing "war" — not just literal military conflict, but the perpetual internal and societal battles stemming from violence, secrecy, and moral decay in the intelligence/military world. Ridgway draws from his background in military intelligence studies, framing the book as "based on true events in the Intelligence Community" (with heavy fictionalization and dark humor).The three main sections/novellas focus on different characters whose lives intersect with the aftermath of war and covert operations:

1. The Spy/Slane Novella (the longest section, roughly a third of the book)
   This is the core and most intense part. It centers on a character named Slane, a Navy SEAL (or similar special forces operative) who was ordered to commit horrific atrocities during the Vietnam War — specifically, to rape women to death as part of psychological warfare or interrogation tactics. The story delves into his post-war life: profound trauma, guilt, rage, possible PTSD, and descent into darkness. It's graphic, unflinching, and draws from real alleged wartime horrors (Ridgway presents it as inspired by documented or rumored events). The tone mixes brutal realism with Ridgway's signature gonzo-style black humor — not "sicko laughs," but absurd, bitter ones that highlight the insanity of war.
2. The Poet Novella
   This follows a poet (likely an artistic, introspective figure) whose life is affected by war's ripple effects — perhaps through personal loss, societal fallout, or encounters with the intelligence world. It provides a more philosophical/literary contrast to the spy's raw violence, exploring how trauma infiltrates creative minds and everyday existence.
3. The Scientist/Think-Tank Novella
   Centers on a scientist working in a government or private think-tank (possibly involved in military R&D, strategy, or psychological ops). This section satirizes the cold, bureaucratic side of war — detached planning, ethical compromises, and how intellectuals enable violence from afar.

Themes and Style

• War as endless trauma: The book argues that Vietnam (and by extension, all wars) never truly ends for those involved — it creates one perpetual "war" inside people and systems.
• Critique of military/intelligence culture: Graphic depictions of atrocities, cover-ups, and moral erosion, blended with conspiracy-tinged paranoia.
• Dark comedy amid horror: True to Ridgway's voice (seen in Waking Up Jesus and his blogs), there are moments of absurd humor even in the bleakest material — a coping mechanism or satirical jab at how humans process the unthinkable.
• Semi-autobiographical undertones: Ridgway's studies in military intelligence and anthropology inform the authenticity, though it's clearly fiction.

This work is darker and more grounded in real-world atrocity than something like Waking Up Jesus (which is speculative/satirical fantasy). It's provocative, potentially disturbing, and not for the faint-hearted — expect explicit content dealing with violence, sexual trauma, and psychological breakdown.

If you're looking to dive in, the Internet Archive version (which you've posted about) is a great free resource. As always, if this is your own work (or you're deeply connected), feel free to share more details or correct anything!

Bikers and Cops

      I always felt like anyone who would follow me held the same beliefs, essentially.   Since then I worked consciously with people who were racist, but I was asking them to work together with blacks who might even hate whites.  Prison rules to keep things right.  I prefer integration, but I am not everyone.  

I have rules I go by, people I will never mention, out of respect of their rules.  This is because I wrote something long ago, without any clue of implications of what I was writing.  Had I went along from the beginning, my God, what would you people have done?   It was a set up.  I am embarrassed to think I have anything worth saying if I even did.

Now that Trump has to be voted out before he destroys the ability for most to have basic access to health care, clean water, air...  if he tries to steal the election again, the people must act.  It is not a 'problem the politicians will fix.'

I pray we have enough Grace to work together against this anti-Christ, which he is if you know the peaceful Jesus of the Gospels.  He would not praise war, or even hitting another.

I know there is always blood.  I do not want the brotherhood of killers to grow...  I do not always get what I want.  I do not even know what you are doing.

I will not hate you if you hate me.  I will not hate you because you hate someone else, or think them lesser.  We have to find a common ground from which to talk.  But I do not know who you are, so why do I go along with this at all?   To please the visitors to the zoo?   A watched one in a weird game you play. I may use whatever I have influence to protect those who I see what you have been doing all along.

I forgot all I knew.  I knew better than to trust the CIA because I had never read anything good about them.  Democracy Now showed me they were racist when one of them lied to me, saying they should help the left on this continent.  Stupid asshole I was, reactionary...

I cannot tell where there is Justice.  Just was thinking this morning the rallying cry should be Justice.  When there is no Justice in the law...  well, ask me and I will tell you what needs to be done, but the powerful forces would not let someone like me at the table.  Oh, they can use me as a living religious icon.  And I do not know what you are doing anyways.

The subtext of Bikers was a surprise to me.  I was a fool.  And am.  Now I understand this.  I am not going along with you anymore but what the fuck does that matter?  

I have helped create a nightmare.  Helped you shatter truth into a meaningless opinion, whatever they were ordered to think, however scientific.  I did not know myself?

I keep thinking of the Bishop on Democracy Now being angry at me, as if I had known this group was oppressing blacks when I had made clear that was not my way.  If they went there, then the people who I see who need to be at the table, the people who I have known and loved who were black over the years, mentors even.  Along with many others, but...  I will not give into stereotyping, and I cannot be angry as was pointed out by being stereotyped.  It is natural at this point.  Blacks have had to prove themselves forever.  I get a bit of that sting.  I need to go well beyond emotions, to the sane, emotionless part of me that thinks about the best answer.  And remembering my ignorance.

I am spreading disinformation still in a way.  Writing things I am not sure are true is a form of dishonesty, and I am ridding myself of this.  I have to.  God works through me.  Nothing cool or fun or foot steps to walk in.  Jesus did not want his followers getting crucified, according to the bible, tells them they are going to deny him.  Forgives them for acting in self interest.

What do I know of Jesus?  Some of the quotes I know from that Holy Book resonate to me, and I believe in the Golden Rule. 

 I am not blaming God for what humans do.  This is why you were given free will.  I have learned that this free will is something that they try to take away from you.  

The belief that Justice is for all is a santa, I suppose.  The rich run the world.  They will not let me in, say I passed my time;  I grew up with a deep hatred for the rich instilled in me.  Stupid.  I am not going to hate the rich.  Again, stereotyping.  I know Illinois might be better off with a Billionaire at this point, and I believe events AROUND ME are usually not an accident.  Even though they may hate me.  

I saw Democracy Now brought MSnow's actual head, and I pray this was a sign that they have some autonomy?  This could be a very good sign, and I am sorry I made light of him.  A perfect example of my having common ground with someone.   We both feel for the people who lost everyth ng in these fires, the deaths, the forests...  and how the climate will make this happen more often.  An important book.  I need to build on such things.  I know my words are right.

I let myself get angry this week.  M. gets fired on one six.  The president is my enemy, the people I worked with when I got into this place probably hate me.  Though there is some cushion, etc.  I feel at the mercy of some game you are playing with our lives.  Long ago I asked for a normal life, thinking in other places I was famous, other planets, and I acted like I did not want it... or did not... the post brainwashing shit that drove me mad.  What craziness it sounds like now.  A religion where I wanted the focus not on me but on giving to the poor.  Stolen money I never saw and did not even fucking believe in by then.  I had no idea I was a prisoner.  Or hostage?  Whatever.  I wish the fuck someone had told me what was going on.

Would of ended right then.  You showed me a fiction on tv.  I assumed they were lies.  I never meant to protect this system.  I did know that I had no idea how to go from my everyday life into your world.  I am not not willing to go live with a bunch of racists.  M has the magazines out one day, then they disappeared.  I have never been involved in anything nefarious or racist that I meant to be.  Any organization that is, they don't have my backing, that is for sure.  If they think that way but are not fucking with people than I am not going to pretend I get to tell them how to think.  I would not do that to you again...  I write.

I see you doing shit and never think I am having some effect. I have been feeling defeated for awhile.  Concentrating on the afterlife.  I do not see myself doing anything other than leaving for heaven, a place beyond all wants...  What I imagine is my own vision, the nothingness without the pull of planets and life and love and pain.

I am very much just looking away from the pain...  in the place where there is nothing to want.  The trip out here down.  I had a lot of weird thoughts on these matters, heaven and this tunnel I saw.  Drugged up starvation....  what I saw helped change me, I thought.  Then the bloodshed started.  I was unprepared, as always.  Made very questionable decisions, in the isolation of the myths they have given me to live within.  

My door has been closed.  A rule to never talk to the prisoner, the one we laugh at...  when I am not a threat, and God knows I do not wish to be one.  I wish to be a threat to ideas.

I found group after group simply used the system you have to take liberties with the law that I could not imagine happening.   California I am sorry, Colorado, everywhere else.  The actions I could not believe were happening.  Like I wanted Colorado.  I did not have any desire or way I could see to move, or any reason to when I trusted No One.  All the states wanted me for a bit, but I did not wish to move though the love was interesting.  God would not allow you to use me like you wanted.  I die before doing certain things.  I have no idea why I asked you to kill me at first.  Any of those things.  They made little sense to me.

The world seemed to march when I asked, or they reacted, with no kings.  I am not a king, unless in your underground world, which I do not begin to understand.  I would tell my citizens I am chained and in prison, what is going on in the world above my pay grade.  Do NOT take any orders from me.  Not that you would.

Anyone who backs Trump is doing a lot of people a lot of hurt.  Amoral people.  The death of the world, quicker, with less planning and no money for the liberal states.

.  No, I certainly did not

did you...

 fire her?  The weather wonders?

The Noose Around My Neck

     After a lost battle...  which the enemy thought was a lost war,   I was once asked, long ago, why I walked around with my chest puffed out.  I replied, "As long as I am alive I am winning."   They really thought it was over.  I told them that and now twenty years later, they are long gone and I am still solicited to help with the resistance... the guy who knows peaceful resistance will work.  The one who has seen too many guns and revolutionaries and death and mass graves...  does not want to ignorantly draw blood.   PEACEFULLY WORKING THROUGH THE ISSUES... or join the corpses rotting around me.  

     All I knew back then was that some group had messed with my life.  Telling the world this dangerous creature would now rule the world?  The absolute confusion, coupled with the brain washing of Jesus into my head, which led me further away from whatever plans these were.  I have always strived to be moral and am instinctually in most situations, and angered by injustice.  Add to this possible divine powers and my head was one huge mess.   But I have not been defeated.

Twenty years later, after I told you I was going to end up surrounded by an ever increasing pile of bodies if you attacked me.  Sadly, misinterpreted. violence of the most vile kinds manifested. I do all I can to bring peace between all people, though in Chicago I got to be friends with a lot of black people, and meet THOUSANDS DRIVING CAB which is intimate at night in the big city.  Heard stories.   To hear of this kind of strife, and know that this is probably happening already.  I keep seeing the power is yours, play hard ball. Do the words mean...

They are not random I have seen mostly.  I thank again all the messengers and humbly bow to your efforts, and apologize sincerely for your pain.  The part I had in it ignorant or not does not make much emotional difference, same acidic, pit of guilt.

I once had way too much influence.  What bit I still have has to be used in ways only professionals know.  I am not lying to any of you anymore.  No reason to.  I am following the law and the last thing I want is to influence someone to hurt someone else or themselves.   My thoughts are all about how to avoid violence.  If violence comes I leave that to the professionals.  

Though I will never abandon Chicago and that means everyone.  I will never abandon my ethics, and that means I will never abandon even an enemy.  Christianity allows me to hope for redemption.  Before I felt a fire from God fill me when I preached for blood. I was trying to correct troubles that I had noticed over the years, while I could, on some level.   Though I surprised myself.  I did not feel like me at all, and ...  .  I do not expect this again.  I have become something else.  Now I will act silently and effectively as possible at giving people hope, spiritual direction, and reasons to carry on the curing of the diseases mental and physical that plague our land.

I am guilty.  There is no other verdict.  I am just not sure what I am guilty of?  Being a guy who got brainwashed, over and over, by a group that wanted...  whatever.  Others would say Murder.  Mass Murder.  The ones I found about afterwards.  Lord, do not do that to me again.  I know you are there, but we must 

Does anything I write matter

I have been wondering that lately....

The Fascists Are Closing In

      They have caste the net of the media, the anti-Christ fishing for souls...  modern version has Trump blowing up boats that have not proven to have any connection to drug dealing.  One was just a fisherman whose wife and son miss him.   This is Trump preparing to go to war to take Oil, which should be left in the ground, from a country which the Armed Forces outguns.  This could be solved peacefully, Maduro could be asked to make changes, their money released.  This would have stopped the refugees that flooded the states seeking asylum.... which the USA is constitutionally required to offer.

Trump has turned the constitution into a rug to wipe your feet on.  Something they get together and heterosexually all pee on together.   No one knows, they just put up a fake from the Trump Store at the White House in place of the real one...  one night when Trump got mad at it, after he spilled some special sauce from his big mac on the constitution, and couldn't lick it all up.  He could see a stain, which meant some was still there.  He was going to eat it but he was handed another Big Mac.  Still they had to let him 'pretend truth social' about hating the constitution until the sleepy shot hits.

Later, they told him he had ordered this was going to be 'their secret' and how they owned the libs, just like he wanted.  Trump loves hearing his great ideas told to him. All kinds of smart people in industry do, then give him money.

If you know what I have done, you despise me perhaps.  You have my profound apologies, and if there is anything I can do to redeem myself in your eye, you have only to ask...  I may say hell no...

At this point the past in not what worries.  June worries me.  They are going to take away the Democracy, with an illegally ruling Supreme Court.  This has to be stopped.  I cannot imagine the world they are imagining these racist actions will lead to?  Folk like myself will do what we can.  How you see me?  I understand you have seen the supernatural, and seen me used by God.  I am still baffled by the prophecies all coming true around me.  Now, in my stories, told from an unconscious have oddly come true, though not in ways I would have even imagined.  Trumpland.  I had forgotten that this was the time when Ralph rises and figures out a way to peacefully stop Trump and fix things up.

I am surprised how much of it came true.  I look at his and wonder WHY was I believed to be this creature by all these people?   A creature I did not even believe in most of my life.  Now, in the past I recklessly used fear and stripped people of their dignity with my judgements.  Judgements made from far away and based on the dubious reporting

Were I to finish that story, I would have Ralph realize he was part of Jesus as they were all part of something greater, which he likes, having always been slightly embarrassed he could do miracles.  Set him apart.  During the drive he would be told that his followers were losing their minds by the accidents.  Oh, God I can hardly think of this, and what happened.  The brainwashing left me with no logic, and no idea the power of my words.  Or the powers of being to manipulate the weather.  God has blessed me again and again.  

Though I believe my time has come to ask those who know to know.  I saw this coming as well.  Saw the rift between here and the East Coast liberals.  We have the most people, and must come together to stop Trump, and charge him with Insurrection.  This would cause his administration to be arrested for collusion, and many others.  If the Government has finally truly and utterly turned on us, and they are certainly showing signs this could happen.... they no are no longer legitimate.  Take away black and brown votes, gutting the voting rights act, will cause chaos.  Rage.  War.  Riots.  Or...  I do not know.  I am part of no underground that I know of now.

I am always humbled when one of you does something to protect me, or the Cardinal or others communicate.  Democracy Now.  I apologize for the burden I have placed upon you.  I am sorry I have not shown the proper respect for your pain.  I pray each night to be forgiven, for me, me, me....  all day I pray for you.  I think only of my sins, so I try to avoid those thoughts that blast into my mind.  I think of the Bishop turned away from a movie on Christmas, with his mother.  Orange.  Unless you are working with the blacks, the Mexicans, liberal whites, and true conservatives who want the constitution, and know it's purpose was not to make Kings who scoop up the starving at the gate to make soylent green to serve their slaves.

I cannot knowingly fight on an unjust side.  I will fight like a God  (I have no weapons other than prayers and FRIENDSHIP earned by proving I will give my life to fight injustice.  However, how I reconcile this with saying stop slavery by taxing people, the rich.  Then of course people attempted to once again think they could define me as racist, or predatory.  God seemed to have stepped in.  I see things happen and feel no agency.  What the Simpsons showed me about Orange was the opposite of what I wanted.  I wanted peaceful marches.

WE GOT THEM... now they need to be aimed.  Now the crowds nurtured on peaceful community with law enforcement, can begin to publicly demand a trial for the President and his cohorts in an Insurrection.. 

Dying Over

     I know I will die before giving up my morality -- an idea that some says means nothing in their minds.  Though without Moral people, they would not exist.  People like them, would have killed each other off long ago.  I have worked with such killers in my time.  I cannot imagine the worlds they inhabit, that NEVER 'SEEM' to mind killing large numbers of people.  I would not have involved myself in such a world, but I was drafted, then thrown into a war, made even more than a general, a God Emperor...

I looked for an agent but I never suspected they were using me as one, to do acts I would fight against with my life.  What was done to Jews in Chicago was never explained to me, though I knew one innocent man whom I had nothing except love and respect for, who treated me so well...  who you burned.  A fucking lobster toy put out is taken as a form of torture.  I would never hurt someone physically, or wish to harm, someone over their religious beliefs.  That is to me, kind of their own business, unless they wish to share it, then I am an interested student in most areas of ethics.   I hated this could happen in my name.

Once someone names Walt told me this was my mess and I needed to clean it up, after I found out the truth of what was happening, by humiliating even worse than I ever had, though people made clear they were watching everywhere.  I did not think all these people were watching.  I regret that act for the ...  actions that took place afterwards.  But if this had not happened, I would not have been interrogated, asked about all this shit I was hearing about for the first time.  All these accusations, or acts that would not enter my mind, let alone order done to another person.  This is not me.  So I was fighting before that for a race...  but I will not fight as a white person, some huge majority or not, I will fight as a just person.  I have to.  I have always been like this.  BUT I DO NOT EXPECT to tell people how to live.

I love the cultures you have.  I am not here to change your religions, to be worshipped as your God.  I am here to perhaps remind you of what your religion means.  That there are great parts.  There are also traps of religiosity, that lead to a zealotry that can make sins even of murder seem morally acceptable.  Other than being forced to kill in a war zone, or as I have, due to what I believed would help this country.  The people who died caused me ten days of feeling like this attack was needed, to break a spy ring, which would not work for this countries interests, in the end....  I needed a break that would prove to the world that I was not a spy.  That the left were not these foreign influenced entities.  And I needed the tactics used to be shown in the light of what I expected from a soldier....  after all these years.  

All of these horrors in the last few years, that I heard about.  The cult, which I bow before, and say I wish I had been there for you.  I would never have been what they told you.  They are making money off of me even now, or... you would have heard me say that my plan did not know who the players were.  I was not trying to lead you.  You thought I did.  I hated seeing my life, which I was trying to live despite you...

This is why I trust you only to a certain degree, as one . .   in my  mind, I can only tell the difference between your professed political beliefs.  Right now the right wing seems to be taking over all these things, though I am netflix which has shown leftist beliefs, getting Warners may be good.  What do I know?  I am the guy who ends up in prison all the time.  During the election I saw them flashing Manson with the word Chaos, in red over his bearded face.   

I guess I write now from a podium of bones.  Not that I have much choice in the matter, it seems at times.  I am at this point writing and wondering why I put up a Hart when I do not know what they stand for.  I always think of the time David Letterman had a heart attack and I had no idea that had a thing to do with me or I would have stopped it.  I never even figured out why they decided to attack him?  This was usually the case.  With the exception of the things I preached against, wanting only to change a few peoples ways of thinking, but never force people to do anything at all.

I do not think this is healthy.  No one needs that kind of leadership.  Maybe that is where God comes in to certain types, such as myself, where their morality, from the DNA of the creator, is strong in me, and causes physical manifestations.  I am not the attention whore you wanted.

I do not know what to do other than write?  I just wish I could tell if I am on the right side or not...???

I want peace.  I do not want Trump.  Taxes need to rise, a lot, and the IRS tripled.  Right there we can help in ways people will not vote away from.

I will never be able to run for president, or be your leader openly perhaps... I mean, am I hated like that?  Feared?  I know you fear me.  You fear God.  His wrath is real I have learned.  As I felt it coursing through my body, a feeling like speed, with the resolve of battle, to die if this goes wrong, whatever...

A mr pibb commercial comes on and I think about my friends story Dr Pepper, which I ignorantly and crassly and stupidly did not read.  Told me he knew.  Maybe he was trying to tell me. Certain things I did set off kids to use pepper spray.  No, never.  You were going to sweep this under the carpet, blame me and throw me in this jail forever.  A Gorilla in a zoo.  

Or an Angel or 'SOMETHING' that lives a life imposed on me.  I was used by people too powerful to punish, so you came after me, and then I came after you.  I was childish.  Takes a lot to learn.  I cannot take the celebrities who disdain me seriously.  Such a side issue.  A non issue in this world.  No one deserves to be pointed out and stoned by my words.  Only their behavior, and then let the stones fly.

The man you think meant a phrase literally about total war for total peace.  I meant peaceful war... not, war, war...  Had I known people were going to take me seriously, I never would have said this.  I would have written as I do now.  Though one thing is missing from the now writing.

The idea of violence refuses to enter my mind, against anyone.  My mind is repelled.  I once tried to write a book about this revolutionary Christ, so stupid.  The subtle war between the Christ and the Anti-Christ is on line, for the thinking of the world.  As the Climate Changes force waves of refugee's seeking land to keep from drowning.  I do not envy the world a babe born today will go through.  IN the seventies I said with the population explosion I should never have kids.  I am glad I did not pass alcoholism to a child, would certainly have been heart breaking.

I saw on the television two uses of heart, one of babyheart giving babies botulism, and something else, right after I wrote about something, universal love for humanity, of a sorts.  Something one says and feels and is true. 

I let others call me a hart.  I still do not know what they stand for.  I am accepted or not.  Yes, it concerns me.  I do not want to do harm... pretty much.

Do no harm.  Just that would be such an improvement for me.

i never got to apologize

       I long ago lost interest in myself.  

Found all these characters I could play in fiction.

Using first person.

Making fun of the untrustworthy narrator; me.

I thought the fiction was obvious

I advertised a radio show in a mania.

Intent of arriving with a bang.

Starting a movement that would have a huge following,

I was ignorant I would have opposition,

Let alone the law for an ally.

Though I had never had a problem other than weed

which was mental stress, 

which never amounted to anything

because of the color of my skin 

I was not assumed to be a criminal.

And a lot of other signs the police saw.

There was no having to prove I was one of the good ones.

There was no record because the war on drugs jailed blacks,

when they just as well could have gotten 

possession charges on more whites we knew.

Old knowledge to some,

Others see more criminality in a skin tone.

I have been both stereotyped as angel and demon.

A Godling my metaphors read.

I was not humble enough before the vastness

surrounding this tiny bit of mind out in the middle of cosmic nowhere

or everywhere?

The delusions of man brainwashed into my romantic,

Overly scientific mind;

I stereotyped religious people as the southern Baptist fanatics.

I had never actually met in person.

Church people seemed kind to me.

I had no overtly preached reason to be sent to hell.

I never believed such things about gay people or drinkers or...

I have aspired to be a non-violent man.

All the fights in my youth gave me a confidence

that needed no proving to myself.

Trust in God meant 

Rushing in and saving people,

Stopping a crime where I would have let the guy go,

But he was a drunk kid.

Got off.

Saw him in court looking miserable,

Hope he learned a lesson about booze and himself.

I looked at the TV and said I love you.

To ALL CHILDREN,

NONE WHOM I COULD EVER HATE.

Nor could I hate your parents though if they hurt you...

I would save you if I could.

TO TELL ANY HUMAN GOD HATES THEM IS HERETICAL!

You do not speak TO OR FOR GOD.

What was done to children reminded me of being molested.

I have never described it to another human being except vaguely.

Do not think because I criticize something about your parents

means I hate them either.

I told them no matter what color or country or...

I love them.

I mean these words.

I FELT THESE WORDS

still do in a place not so desperate and pleading

for you to know I am on your side.

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

― James Baldwin

 I AM trying to work for the good of the all.

Which includes those who think they are my natural enemies.

I do not want anyone thinking we are enemies.

We have issues.

I want groups to discover we are all on the same iceberg

Trying to fight fire with fire as it shrinks everyday

from our endless wars.

The iceberg is so crowded

People around the edges lose their precarious spots

Once safe in the center of the herd,

their climate denial not stopping the loss of their land.

Melted away,

Each inch lost pushes people off the packed isle of ice into harsh cold seas

Where thirty feet of freezing waves

slaps the misery from them

leaving behind ...

a formless shapeless presence

From there guesses fill Cathedrals, Mosques, Store fronts, Cults in Utah 

with lots of guns and heads filled with wanting

the apocalyptical ending they preach of...

I think perhaps the creature will be 

Baffled?  Euphoric?  Misery?

In my visions we are heading toward a tunnel out of here

from time and molecules and perhaps some

will fly to the place I go to find solace.

The lights of the stars and planets are one side

The blankness on the other free of the distractions of planets and suns 

ending in a vaguely undulating line,

Beyond which there is darkness without distractions.

No attachments 

No gravity or whatever it is that draws souls into lives

for whatever reasons

A design by a creature unimaginable to us 

And in our ignorance

A vacuum of religions

and scientific theories

filled in by shysters and saints.

They say go to the light... the light.

I go into a tunnel bypassing all of this and head to God

the Relief of having nothing to worry about again

yet still feeling

still knowing your fellow travelers

As one family developing cultures of stories to live within

What fit the laws of survival, commerce..,

When I seek comfort in my mind amidst thoughts attacking me

I pray as always for forgiveness from the sins that come to my mind.

Small and meaningless brushes with a fool to many,

to others a friend.

From my hometown move on I was

a weirdo.

Dropped on my head.

The usual prejudice against the fat kid.

Depression was not my natural state.

I had plenty of reason to grieve 

More than some less than some.

The lot of the losers,

though I worked almost Forty years;

I do not judge others as harsh

As they judge me about some things,

others I do not care.

I apologize to Jim Carrey for making his personal life

A weapon that I used against him

Out of a burst of Anger

Damned up Rebukes,

exploding a life to painting in Hawaii so,

but still, a sermon from the Cardinal on the matter

Reminded me of my sins;

I cannot blame Barbara for any damage our relationship did

and I can.

But my life was planned and I never knew

Found out too late to get to know my grandfather

Anymore than he was a very kind presence

Gave us candy money in their tiny, tiny town.

I have been this formless, shapeless presence

three times in my life.

Once drug induced when I tried to kill myself

and died a few times.

The second spontaneous astral projection...

I needed scientific evidence, 

And spending a year trying to astral project...

This happened during this period.

No other time.

I know my spirit can leave my body.

I met a lonely ghost in the woods.

Waiting for my brothers and I

Dave Gilbert.

The ghost story my brothers and I never discussed.

I have let one die without asking.

I should ask the other... 

who felt he failed

Until he could lord his hundred thousand dollar house

over us.

I do not envy 40 years in a factory.  I had more choices.

He was afraid, or never taught, I don't know?

I do not feel this is a race to the top.

We should start out even.

Tax the rich.

Before the anger repressed

explodes the USA

into a bloody horror.

Should the righteous rise to protect freedom

the gospels

ethics...

May God 

give us peaceful solutions or

Let the martyrs lead us to Justice.