Sheila Rambles

This is a piece I wrote for an event called Write Club, in which pairs of poets compete by writing pieces on opposing themes.  I was given War, and another writer given Peace.  Peace won, which I will take as a hopeful metaphor to console myself. One—The Imagine Fallacy John Lennon’s dream was a world without war and his roadmap to such an achievement was best summarized in the song Imagine. I can’t recite the lyrics without crossing the boundaries of fair use, and I don’t feel like being sued by Yoko Ono. But I’m sure you’ve all heard it enough times that it’s already an earworm in your head as I’m reading this. At any rate, permit me to summarize. If we no longer had religion to fight over, there would be no war. If we no longer had countries to fight over, there would be no war. If we no longer had possessions to fight over, there would be no war. John Lennon had two sons, but they were born to two different women and raised on two different

This is a sequel, of sorts, to  The Ugly Handsome Man .  It is a true story. I was in meditation class, listening to a recording of the Dalai Lama and his entourage chanting at the sickbed of Vaclav Havel.  Somewhere in the midst of breathing and listening, I saw the Ugly Handsome Man in the eye of my mind.  He was in a dark room, lying on a stone bier, slit open straight down the middle.  Around him were gathered gremlins in mourning.  His body was completely hollow.  Then he abruptly caught fire and burned until all of him was completely consumed.  The flames then flowed into me, giving me back everything that he had taken.