Peace and Love

Everybody talks about Love, but Love is a thing you do;
Everybody's seeking Love, but Love is a thing you give ;
And everybody knows about "loving thy neighbor". So let's
do it.

And that's exactly what we're setting out to do, here at
The CommonPlace. "And just who is my
neighbor?", the righteous gentleman asked. Every last
one of you, was the answer. And with this brochure, we most literally
are your neighbor: For we're beginning out of a Bellaire
home, and our publisher was once the paper-boy to many
of you in West U.

There was a whole lotta talk, thirty-something years
ago, about Peace and Love. Just how many of those
folk, do you suppose, have peace in their hearts?
And just how many do you think have kept unsullied
those commitments they made to love the ones nearest
to them - their husbands or wives, their fathers and mothers,
their children? To answer that, we have but to ask the same
question of ourselves. We, none of us, have done that as well
as we know we ought to have done.

Peace is not a placard, and Love is not a feeling.
The CommonPlace is an attempt to bring us all
into the same sitting-room, for the purposes of mutual
service, encouragement, comfort, and edification. In
short, to fulfill the command that we love our neighbor
as we love ourselves.

So, we hereby cordially and officially invite you all
to drop in, pull up a chair, and have some grub, as it
were. The food we have on the table will not, we are
promised, leave you unsatisfied.

Sincerely,

All of us here at The CommonPlace

http://www.thecommonplace.net

*************************

Lipogastrosis

By David Coulson Adams

He who stops his ears from hearing about bloodshed
And shuts his eyes from looking upon evil
His refuge will be the impregnable rock.
His bread will be given him
His water will be sure.
Your eyes will see the King in His beauty.

To do the dirty work, we most of us
Are squeamish in this country in this time.
Hence I, for one, have never dressed a deer,
Although I have no quarrel with the beer
And shotgun set, under whose nails the grime
Of the repair shop shows; they drink and cuss,
Their issue near the double-wide run wild,
Clad only in a white disposable,
Which when disposed the Wal-Mart parking lot
Contracts one more I will not park there slot.
The family defines "dysfunctional":
There's black-eyed Mommy and the bruising child,
Cause Daddy's there, inebriate and riled.

I have not dressed a deer, nor lately fish
Have hooked; I could not slaughter sloe-eyed calf,
Nor wooly baa-lamb; baby seals are safe
From bludgeon here; nor could I ever strafe
The quacking V. Walking between the half
Of covenanted sacrifice I wish
And hope, nay, know for certain, I could do.
The prior things are given latitude,
The family fed, the meat upon the board
Provided by those tempered to the sword
And blood; but intestinal fortitude
Is vouchsafed likewise to the gentle who
Will go to Ai when commanded to.

Some things are necessary, like the war
Fought currently from Canaan east; or like
Flow-stanching medics at the grisly scene,
Reviewed ad nauseam on News Thirteen
At 6 and 10; or midwives, or the Shrike,
Impaling chicks upon the fence's spar.
Some things are not: the Theisman video,
The Savage Crescent with a ghoulish smile
Decapitating Berg and slitting Perle -
These things ought not be viewed; as maiden girl
Stains purity admiring Britney's style,
Pornography of blood is even so;
The News at 10 is just another show.

I know my puppy loves are sentiments
Derived from this sterile modernity,
As some would name it; Jumbo Jacks say moo,
An Egg McMuffin clucks. We never knew
The ancient slaughterhouse reality,
Our bacon saved by distant armaments,
And sliced by butchers in Midwestern states.
Conversely, Laura Ingalls sausaged up
The pig she grew from piglet; Denver's bed
Saw each incumbent bred and wed and dead.
Mortician strives to pretty it all up,
While Sexton hammers nails into the crates;
So stalks the hunter as the fisher waits.

Let those who hunt the deer still hunt the deer,
For venison or antlers; and their wives,
Chinchilla still shall wrap their silken frocks.
And let me still my ice box fill with hocks
And cutlets. Let the cattle lose their lives
For mine, for since the fig leaf is the spear
Let fly. Let those with guns, and those with furs,
Defeat those heathen hating men with guns;
For hating Man is murder; Crockett's hat,
Though cute the living coon, is merely that.
The gentle man such pacifism shuns,
But lily-livers think to win their spurs
By throwing crimson paint on Madame's furs.

Hey Rome! Issue another Papal Bull;
Your people cock-fight til the rooster crows,
And Ole! cheers the flaming Matador.
Yo Southern Man! Redneck Conquistador!
I got no problem with the fishing shows;
I got no problem with the autumn cull;
But turn off please the wrestling, and drop
The Jim Beam bottle. Love your child and wife;
For otherwise, their blood is on your hands.
If Daisy Mae exchanges wedding bands
With someone just like you, a man of strife,
Your brother from a womb sown by your pop,
Then you're more gutless than the city fop.

Turn off the circuses, your bread's secured.
Their cotton-candy has a lurid hue
And they would sell you lyes and cyanide.
The rotting smell of hydrogen sulfide
Screams "Peril!", though the tube worms drink the spew
For nourishment, to poison inured.
But they are gutless worms, and what is food
To them is death to you. Eat what you hunt.
Now, NASCAR's not run for the fiery wreck,
And football's not played for the broken neck.
It's 4^th and 10, and late. You cannot punt:
Meat is commanded us since Noah's flood,
But temples can't be built by men of blood.

These are not His: To take from fuzzy peer
His hunt, or from the Amazon his right
To plant. The Hindu by the cow is cowed.
These are: when Puritan men disallowed
Bear-baiting; Corrie Ten-Boom's lonely night
Companioned by the Ant. May Baalam hear,
Though Ass instruct him never to revere
The thing created but to steward it.
And for the puppy-lovers, come a day
When gentle lamb down with the lion shall lay,
And child shall put his hand in viper's pit;
Because The Lamb from Earth's foundation year
Was bloody slain for us, it's drawing near.

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