Jerry Ward's Blogspot

 v   Lines for 9/27/2021   Blue wine skies COVID suns Pancake moons Amber stars   inhabit a calculus mathematical genius dislocates in perfected minds   Breaking News: twenty-fourth century arrived before now is marked by middle-age   Terrify a page with sub-atomic belief incarcerated for   inhaling and exhaling, for riots and revolts of pumping blood   Mathematicians follow the science native to the end of time.   Jerry W. Ward, Jr.      

  Lines for the day   It is fashionable (how bespoke can you be) in the aftermath of disasters to say   Je suis un prisonnier politique   It is universally known (in your sector of duration) in the aftermath fashion is a birthplace of deceit.   Jerry W. Ward, Jr.    9/20/2021  

  Lines for Monday Morning   Instant opinions zoom down West begging peace to be still   Unhappy with the fire they flap up East leaving   peace to be still   Instant opinions life fluids in grains of sand apologize for nothing   Discontent with the water they pivot North to find the South abandoning peace to be still   Devout makers of misery they follow the science, the sad snafu of broken minds birthing   peace to be still.   Jerry W. Ward, Jr.             August 23, 2021    

THE WORDS OF ST. RUFUS   I have fractal faceprints. All saints have fractal faceprints and footprints.   My father carried crosses; I carry words.   You can read my thin biographies   in the Catholic Encyclopedia .   It disappoints me that after more than a thousand years only a fistful of people have read my epistles, letters that the Roman Catholic Church have ostracized from the liturgy. I advise folks who are incarcerated by the black/white binary to read my letters.   The letters may save them from the oblivion of damnation.   If the letters do not, it ain't my fault.   I have walked in the valley of despair,   and my feet are intact and clean.   When, dear Lord, is this business about washing in the blood of a lamb?   As far as I know, people ought to wash in water not blood. It is all future-hype to me.   I have climbed   the mountains of equity and found cosmic discord   that is as ...

  SITUATION REPORT   The summer heat in New Orleans prompts me to sweat ideas.   As might be the case with many Americans and citizens around the world, I am weary of pandemic,   journalism that makes a travesty of what news ought to be, a growing moral depravity among millions of people, and the international   disorder that might provide firm grounds for WWIII. It seems "natural" to be annoyed by uninvited robot calls, by terrorism, by road rage, by the grief that must be carried when friends die, by sundry assaults which preclude harmony and peace. I DO NOT LIKE THE 21ST CENTURY.   Not liking the days of my life is not exactly a free choice. Yes,   I do have an option to tell myself beautiful lies.   I could tell myself that the enslavement of my ancestors in the State of Mississippi does not matter now. But the summer heat reminds me that enslavement before and after 1865 matters greatly. I cringe when I am reminded that historical sor...

 v Lines for August 18, 2021   Ultimately,   as if ultimatum is a flddle-footed   notion, people by habit account for obnoxious stuff----   the mysteries of a   planet, the sublime   debris   of essentials----   those   mini-testimonials   cancel aged beliefs in values, confidence in the what matters .   People by nature cannibalize patience the way Columbo   and trench coat ate tolerance,   the way the daily news cancers a human heart or a human thought.   People by custom insist that they are entitled to obliterate Creation.   Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

IN   APPRECIATION:   John Oliver Killens (1916-1987)   The Minister Primarily . New York: Amistad, 2021.   464 pp.   $27.99   As Ishmael Reed, a razor-sharp satirist, attests in his foreword for   The Minister Primarily , Killens   "proved that his satirical pen could cut individuals and institutions to ribbons" (xvi).   The twin targets in this novel are struggles against the deadly corruption that plagues many African nations and the deadlier political corruption in the deeply troubled   United States of America.   Good satire afflicts readers with discomfort, and only readers who are stalwart long-distance runners will appreciate what Killens achieves in prose that is exceptionally baroque or rococo   or a tantalizing mixture of extremes. It is easy to believe that Killens might have had Rabelais somewhere in his imagination as he wrote the novel, because his masterful and cognition-troubling satire is Menippean. ...