When you are into nutritious, plant-based eating, you can’t help but take a peek at what foods other people in the checkout line are buying.  I was really shocked today when I observed what this old man who was just in front of me was buying.  There were no vegetables or fruit at all — zero, none.  He bought a large amount of soda — a six pack of sugared Coke and a dozen of those little bottles of diet Ginger Ale.  There were two large bottles of wine, a loaf of white bread, a quart of ice cream, and a package of chocolates that claimed to contain some peanut butter.  That was it.

The man was only slightly overweight but somewhat stooped, possibly from early onset osteoporosis; his skin was splotchy with rashes on the face; and his thinning hair was lack luster with large clumps of hair missing…

You don’t have to be Walter Mitty
To come up with a pretty little ditty.

You don’t need the approval of a committee
To write down verse very witty.

Just use imagination itty-bitty,
And you will compose something nifty.

You don’t need to employ outlaw banditti.
You don’t need to call a subcommittee.
You don’t need anyone else’s pity.

Just imitate the antics of your little kitty,
And throw the dice in dear old New York City —
That’s the nitty-gritty.

So hippity hoppity too
And bippity boppity boo.
Serendipity truly loves you.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

In the middle of my back there is an itch.
I twist and squirm but cannot reach it — it’s a bitch!
Mind over matter, philosophers say, melts that witch,
But, try as I might, I really could use a switch.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

The big political story in the United States is becoming less and less about the various bogus political attacks against Trump, and more and more about the splintering of the Democratic Party into two mutually distinct and potentially incompatible camps — the traditional Democrats (who have held power) and the so-called “progressive” wing of the party whose members tout themselves as “socialists”.  The fissure between the two groups is growing larger and larger, to the point where one might conjecture a complete rupture of the party where the progressives break off to form their own new party.

My Story

Recently, a senator claimed he was having his Spartacus moment, indicating that he was going to the mat for some principle, risking being expelled from the Senate because of his unruly behavior.  That was hardly the case.  It turned out to be quite a joke on this “brave” politician, as the supposed confidential information he said he was revealing at his own risk had already been approved to be released.  Hardly Spartacus; more like unintentional, egg-in-your-face comedy.

But there has been a true American Spartacus in our history, even though he himself was not a slave nor a black man.  His name was John Brown, an abolitionist but with a puritanical, visceral hatred of that “peculiar institution,” American slavery.

Financed by a cabal called the “Secret Six,” a small group of well-off abolitionists in New England, John Brown went about acquiring 950 pikes and 198 Sharps Rifles for a planned…

Where were you before birth?
And after death?
In the same non-existence?
You pass from one into another non-existence.
No choice, pre-planned.

One loses only the present moment in death.
One gains only the present moment in birth.
You are a captive of it,
For there is nothing else –
There is no future
And no past…
Illusions.

Let your mind roam free today.
Let it leap with associations.
Let it inspire with originality.
Let it frolic in the lush pastures of pure thought.
Let it rejoice, complete and entire unto itself.

For we are silly little things,
Trapped by a narrow existence,
Snared by time and space.
Yes, “a little soul carrying a corpse.”
Indeed, Epictetus.
But your mind, that is free —
Free as a bird.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

Generations come and go —
The only permanence the flow.

Little waves lap upon the shore;
They thrive a moment and are no more.

Your time on earth a blink —
Even your memory long extinct.

So how to live the issue
When life itself mere tissue?

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

Light from the sun created the first eye.
Millions, perhaps billions, of years ago,
A creature evolved a light sensitive set of cells,
And so emerged from sightlessness.

This creature had an advantage over its blind competitors,
Which led to the breeding of offspring with the same mutation.
So it was the lit world became visible.
Let there be light also meant seeing the light,
Not just groping in the dark.

So, now, millions, perhaps billions, of years later,
Many creatures are endowed with highly evolved eyes —
Eyes that, furthermore, can see deep into the universe with telescopes
Or deep into the once invisible, microscopic world with microscopes.

Our vision has become transcendent over time,
One of the great achievements of the species on Earth,
Having evolved from a brutish, dark world
Where there was light, but no sight.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

O joy! O joy! The bells are ringing!
Our bonny boy arrives, we are singing.
His future, that remains unclear,
But our hopes, they are in the stratosphere.

Might he become another Einstein?
Will age produce a very fine wine?
Or perhaps another Shakespeare?
Certainly someone without peer.

But, alas, our hopes quickly dashed by time.
What he becomes in a flash a crime.
By the age of ten, surly and fat,
Our bonny boy an ordinary brat!

All Poetry – Henry Barnard