I am... or it least I'm trying to be...

[Whitebird Sings]

how do I introduce myself?
who am I?

I am made up of everyone, every thing, every experience and ever word I have so far encountered

like these words that I have made mine...
"I am a militant pacifist"
"I am an intelligent optimist"

To be honest, this is really what I HOPE I can be.
The truth is sometimes I'm not as militant as I should be, and sometimes I let pessimism cast a shadow on my heart.

Who else am I? Or is it, who do I want to be?
I am who I love and what I love -- and I wish I loved more perfectly.
I am what I do and how I do it -- and I wish I did everything always passionately.

I like to dream when I'm asleep, and even more when I'm awake -- and I wish I always let myself dream.
I like to believe the sun is there even when I can't see it -- and I wish I did not so often focus on the clouds that block out the sun.

I try to be kind,
And am sorry to say sometimes I'm not --
Even though I want to always be treated with kindness.

I try to forgive,
And am sorry to say that there is some pain that I have held onto -- Even though I want to be forgiven.

I am still learning, growing, making mistakes and becoming.

so I am
so it is.

[judih]

whitebird sings and smiles and fights for rights
and holds back and ponders
and heads out again to flow

blend a mohammed ali with a gloria steinem and a margaret cho
- add a little intrinsic mama sensuality and a softness like a smooth summer breeze, feet in the forbidden fountain kind of attitude
and you'd begin to describe this birdwoman called whitebird sings

[stilltrucking]

I am happy to meet you white bird, I am a militant pacifist too. But at age sixty seven I don't really have much choice. Blows my mind to see old men who can never serve in the military advocate for war.

My highway hero
why I don't study war no more...

He attributes his pacifist consciousness partly to his wartime experiences: he had been sent to Nagasaki, Japan six weeks after the city was destroyed by the world's second atomic bomb

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: I was a skipper of a United States subchaser in the Normandy invasion, the first morning, 6:00 a.m., anti-submarine screen around the beaches of Normandy. And so then I went to the Pacific the last year. I was a navigator on a troop transport, and we were steaming toward Japan. And in the military, you don’t learn anything except what you need to carry out your part of the master plan. So we hardly knew what we were going to Japan for, except with all the other ships heading in the same direction loaded with troops, it was obvious that we were an occupation force. No, it was supposed to be an attack force first, and then when the atomic bombs were dropped, the occupation force was changed into a—I mean, the invasion force was changed to an occupation operation. And we went into Sasebo in southern Japan. And that was about—we went in on captured aerial photographs of the harbor. We didn’t have any charts for the harbor.

And one day ashore, we took a train over to Nagasaki. It was just a few hours away. And I think it must have been about seven weeks after the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. And there had been time to “clean things up,” quote/unquote, for some time, but still it was a devastating scene. It made me an instant pacifist. There was just three square miles of mulch with human hair and bones sticking out, and on the horizon a sort of—a landscape you’d find in the painting of Anselm Kiefer these days: blackened unrecognizable shapes sticking up on the horizon and teacups full of flesh, teacups—

AMY GOODMAN: Did you understand what had happened?

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI:—with flesh melted onto the teacup. Oh, we had no idea what—no one knew what radiation was. We walked around. I never had any ill effects, but maybe some of the others I was with did. It was just—

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/9/3/le ... r_and_poet

[Arcadia]

long time since I read you!!!!
nice to re-meet you!!!!

[Whitebird Sings]

12/11/10's the date
and i return to this place
a place where i can muse on musings
a place where i can rest among muses
a place where the daughters of mnemosyne and zeus come to play
and are gracious enough to let me join in
a place where men and women merge their musings
mostly when the sun goes down

and the crickets listen

[SadLuckDame]

I'm glad you're here,
welcome back.

[Steve Plonk]

Missed your posts on this site. Welcome back.

[Doreen Peri]

I missed you, too!!!! Welcome back! It's great to see you here again!

[Whitebird Sings]

kindness in your words

and i imagine
kindness in your faces, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smiles

that's why i love here