Thomas Wyatt: There was never ffile (Undeceived) / Easter Lilies

.

#Afghanistan An Afghan blacksmith works at a shop in Kandahar. @AFPphoto: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 25 April 2017

Thomas Wyatt: There was never ffile 

There was never ffile half so well filed
To file a file for every smythes intent
As I was made a filing instrument
To frame othre while I was begiled
But reason hath at my follie smyled
And pardond me syns that I me repent
Of my lost yeres & tyme myspent
For yeuth did me lede & falshode guyded
Yet this trust I have of full great aperaunce
Syns that decept is ay retourneable
Of very force it is aggreable
That therewithall be done the recompence
Then gile beguiled plained should be never
And the reward little trust for ever  /

Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542): There was never ffile (n.d.); text: Devonshire MS. Add17492 (British Museum)

SYRIA - A Syrian boy stands against a bullet-riddled wall in the rebel-held town of Douma. Photo @AbdDoumany: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 25 April 2017

#Nigeria A member of Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) screens an old person at the entrance of the town of Damasak. @Floplaucheur: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017

#Iraq A man walking amidst wrecked vehicles, some previously used as barricades, piled in a junkyard in Mosul. Photo @ahmadgharabi4: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017
 

#Nigeria A boy sells boiled eggs on the outskirts of the town of Damasak. @Floplaucheur: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017

#Argentina Villa 31 is the oldest and most emblematic slum in Buenos Aires. @chatoeitan #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017

#Iraq Displaced Iraqis from western Mosul arrive at the Hammam al-Alil camp during #MosulOffensive. Photo Ahmad Al-Rubaye: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017
 

#South Africa Clashes in farming town after protests over police handling of a murder inquiry. @mlongari: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017
 

#Iraq Displaced Iraqis from western Mosul arrive at the Hammam al-Alil camp during #MosulOffensive. Photo Ahmad Al-Rubaye: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017

#China A man stands in his workshop in Baoding, in China's Hebei province. @freddufour_afp: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017

#Mexico Dozens of municipal tanker trucks in Mexico City distribute water in neighborhoods that do not receive piped water.  Photo @YuriYurisky: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017

#India A statue of the Hindu god Lord Krishna is seen at a cow shelter in New Delhi. Photo @Money_Sharma #afp: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017

SYRIA - Hundreds gather in Damascus to mourn the victims of a suicide bombing that struck during a landmark evacuation. Photo  Louai Beshara: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 April 2017


 Ann Coulter cancels her speech at Berkeley amid safety dispute: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 26 April 2017

Simple pic speaks to #Merkel cultivating the Trumps. Less "what do you think" than "look who we have here." #Ivanka #W20 @ReutersPictures: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 26 April 2017

Trump proposes slashing business tax rate to 15 percent: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 26 April 2017
 

'Fist bumps' at hedge funds over Trump's tax plan: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 26 April 2017

 
Trump's plan to slash business taxes seen as 'guidepost' by congressional Republicans: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 26 April 2017

 Trump's tax cut proposal shines light on MLPs: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 26 April 2017


Per HUD 2015 Homeless Assessment report to Congress, 70.8% percent of unsheltered people are male. #forgottenman #homeless #men: image via Stephen Crowley @Stcrow, 26 April 2017

Easter Lilies

[Portland]: photo by Lucas DeShazer, 24 April 2017

[Portland]: photo by Lucas DeShazer, 24 April 2017

[Portland]: photo by Lucas DeShazer, 24 April 2017

[Portland]: photo by Lucas DeShazer, 18 April 2017

[Portland]: photo by Lucas DeShazer, 18 April 2017

[Portland]: photo by Lucas DeShazer, 18 April 2017



Portland: photo by Austin Granger, 8 April 2017

Feel Better. A woman from the Stockton Blvd street life, who still wears the fashion of fitness whenever I see her, takes a break near the former Shanty, a small bar that has been barricaded since three of the four old roadside motels near here (echoes of the former US Route 99), closed and wiped out much of its regular clientele: photo by Rick Ele, 20 April 2017

No one is their president. No one has been their president in decades. Stockton Blvd (old US 99), South Sacramento.: photo by Rick Ele, 20 April 2017

No one is their president. No one has been their president in decades. Stockton Blvd (old US 99), South Sacramento.: photo by Rick Ele, 20 April 2017

No one is their president. No one has been their president in decades. Stockton Blvd (old US 99), South Sacramento.: photo by Rick Ele, 20 April 2017

Practice. Berkeley Marina.: photo by efo, 24 April 2017

Practice. Berkeley Marina.: photo by efo, 24 April 2017

Practice. Berkeley Marina.: photo by efo, 24 April 2017

Easter Lilies

Easter lilies in window on Fresno, bringing

back early maunderings

upon the idea of death, plain and simple, or

cosmetically clothed in familiar

ritual mollifications of

an ordinary uncanny or uncanny

ordinary, in which everybody lived

but only for a while... Then later

God would be there, positioned on a sort of dais

made of blue vaporous cloud

or else simply upon something large and vague

and your childish mind would be ever alive, wondering

what kind of lounge furniture do they have in heaven

a cloud, awash in a soft spray of golden

yellowish light... God-light... perhaps extending a hand

or more likely ignoring your presence

as though you hadn't really died

yet, but were just being treated to a brief

preview of the festivities, which for that

matter didn't really appear to have anything festive in them

certainly no creaturely joy or solid colour or sweet wild song

for without the material world, how

throw together a halfway decent festivity?

Is there no change of death in paradise?

When they roll away the stone, does light pour in?

Are there, like... snacks? 

The idea of death

in the mind of a child

is an idea wasted on an unformed mind

way back when, in the pre-world

before imagination died

God would be there, in that spray of golden

yellowish light

coming out of a bright mist of cloud

through which one might walk

or fall...  that wide water

without sound

but for the soft calls of the wood doves

beside a pool in Palestine

along the Perkiomen,

the deer coming down to water,

the quail uttering their spontaneous cries

as Jesus walks off

with Pontius Pilate and Pontius Pilate's dog

into the stars, on a beam of light

but are these memories or dreams

or the mere last blurts of the imagination of the child

from under the pillowcase

in the moments of forgetting

something important, what is it again?

... what is there left to believe?

He walks with me and he talks

with me and he calls me his own

as we walk out into the cosmic dark

on the broad beam of light

across that wide water without sound

2017-92. Berkeley, CA.: photo by biosfear, April 2017

Covered car compo [south LA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 26 April 2017

Semi dock [LA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 26 April 2017

LA: photo by Andrew Murr, 23 April 2017

North Chinatown: photo by Andrew Murr, 21 April 2017

Night palm tree [DTLA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 24 April 2017

Car seat [south LA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 25 April 2017

El [Griffith Park, LA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 22 April 2017

Caddy: photo by Andrew Murr, 23 April 2017

Magpie Creek [North Highlands, Sacramento]: photo by Rick Ele, 25 April 2017

Magpie Creek [North Highlands, Sacramento]: photo by Rick Ele, 25 April 2017

Magpie Creek [North Highlands, Sacramento]: photo by Rick Ele, 25 April 2017