MENU
Joy Works Everywhere is an urban heart center, a place of welcome, created for the joyful development and expression of holistic living. Joy Works is a philosophy of living that speaks to our ability to attain health, wellness, peace, and laughter.
August 10, 2025
Rocks & Hard Places
Rock faces wild whirling vortex drinking itself
again and again—like a Sisyphean myth; this
ocean sea river pool named monster, named
relentless evoke trembling resolve, defiant
fear;
Rock, jagged sharp, mysteriously irregular,
unforgiving; she too named monster! Child of
careless feuding confusion;
Convenient mythology deny passion power of
black hole able to release itself, spray salty mist
onto crag fragments from mountain monster think
itself volcano.
Fragile Threads
Fragile tapestry threads have absorbed much pain;
Tears’ laughter congregates like dog’s piss on familiar;
Meals taken here neither digest nor nourish.
When God cries, impotence notices a vacuum,
People see mother’s death, it’s her tears that disturbs,
Fragile tapestry threads have absorbed much pain.
Celebration is awesome like snow after earth’s quake;
Timidity once bowed to power knows no bounds,
Meals taken here neither digest or nourish.
Winter was mild, spring like fall, summer passed;
The castle was not owned by any who ate;
Meals taken here neither digest or nourish.
Crimson first, yellow last, green is for dying,
No final act, this demise of endless years;
Fragile tapestry threads have absorbed much pain,
Meals taken here neither digest or nourish.
June 18, 2025
Skin
Under skin runs a river reaching for an ocean
Sunrays transform pigment, absorb wetness
Blind fish in vast deepness of ocean swim freely
Quiet deep echo, once a hello, contains tears
Salt laden drops of confusion wet blind fish
Molecules of clear oil seek futile bond
Two legged sapiens walked from fire
Webbed mammals beach on sand
Summer dreams winter, winter free falls
Inside sound is a quest for hearing
Sirens deafen, close listening break drums
Moon is howling thunder, calling tides
River rushes clear through dryness
Howls pierce death
Moon shine reflects into darkness.
April 29, 2025
The stillness making a difference in our lives, allowing us to see the support we need and have to nourish our health and wealth, and/or to heal our bodies, our hearts, our minds. Giving us the gift of peaceful living and recognition of eternal spirit. Joy Works contains our laughter, tranquility and tears, our warm tingliness, our anger, our fears. It allows us the clarity to learn and receive our lessons and to connect with ourselves and others.
November 12, 2024
A Call: Step-up, Step-up…Cross Over
Stepping up here, to the finish line is saying one is done with the rape & dominance part of the walk into humanity. Significant sections of the animal world have—or appear to have in human study and interpretations—power hierarchies with group leadership determined by brute power. We have learned and are learning—as our human emotional and intellectual insight evolve—to acknowledge that many sectors “cooperate,” negotiate and “converse” without force. However we have evolved, we know there are models other than the one that says those best at being violent and aggressive survive. This belief and understanding of Human Interaction and Organization as one controlled and defined by brute force and/or aggressive coercion is no longer an easy default. It does not explain the brutality and militaristic models we continue to accept as primary and necessary. A model spilling domestic violence residue into all aspect of human life. We can change!
Knowledge and insight, our broader understanding of what exists in us and with other life forms in the world, the environment we inhabit, make it possible to contradict the violence-dominance paradigm representation of “human” what it means to be human. We can continue to develop our abilities to think, feel, empathize, project and—most importantly—grow in our empathetic awareness and ability to make informed choices. Group and individual dominance as deciding factors in who eats, who eats what part of the food, who gets sexual bond to propagate (and with whom), who gets to love, learn, breathe, and live free falls outside of evolving human definitions of human, of what it is to be and act civilized—form whole, vibrant community for all beings.
Step Right Up! Be done with rape & dominance! Cross on over, come on over the finish line.
August 22, 2024
…smile drops…
smile drops release sunshine—teardrops follow suit;
laughter is neither outdone or overcome—missing no beat,
the rhythm of soul sounds freely through this landscape of
fear—picking up sorrow, enfolding it into embrace; believe that
burnt orange moon orb heard note, slowed to a hover over
Central Park giving view to eyes seeing and knowing satisfaction of
joy, satiation of peace, solemnity of love drip from a drop.
April 11, 2024
You my peace, your smile satisfaction reflecting eyes, eyes in peace. Deep satisfaction in the belly of life, a satisfaction to quell hunger, eat rage, big peace with joy nucleus. Peace walk the mine fields defusing disaster, peace gather limbs blown away.
Powerful calm peace walk into death to listen to the destroyed—returns with truth. No vengeance, hear peace, no vengeance. Peace carrying arms fingers and toes, walking with death into death listening to the sent, those blown into death. Peace walks with a message, the message is no vengeance, there is no vengeance not bowing down to itself, living, rotting for itself, its silence exploding perpetual motion destruction.
Peace teaches it stops here. Peace teaches it stops here. Every “it” of violent clash stops, opens its mouth and gives voice to the blood shed, and begins the journey ending in peace. Big peace walking into munitions factories eating bombs, bullets and lies, big bad peace strut and prance chewing bombs with spikes, bombs with clubs, bombs with bombs; chewing bullets, flat nosed and pointed, ripping bullets and shredding bullets; eating guns and rifles, rapid fire and slow; eating grenades and jagged edged knives. Big Peace with Joy in the nucleus laughs carrying peace children, siring and birthing peace children.
Peace is smile’s satisfaction.
*excerpt from “Peace Building: A Manual for Living Peacefully Every Day”
February 6, 2024
More February Story—Movement in Black Joy…
Luna took the sketch pad she had been drawing on the night before with her to the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum for Art and Storytelling. Her mother had signed both Luna and Baybay up for summer classes. Luna would be there all day until 3pm—her mom said, “idleness needed content and container.” For Luna the words meant “whatever”; never-the-less, she thought the museum was fun and Tspice and Squirrel were enrolled in workshops there too—workshops were what the classes were called. Today in Luna’s workshop they had a guest artist talking about how light and dark defined shape and space. There were slides showing trees, buildings, furniture, and people in different light. After the talk and the slides the students were presented with differently lit things to draw.
Luna thought about light, darkness, shadows and walking through them, how a thing, how a person could seem to appear and disappear. Someone seeing, then not seeing Great-great grandma Hattie could think sunlight was playing tricks with their eyes. Luna noticed when Tspice arrived moving quickly because the collage workshop had already started.
It was nice that the museum was both efficient and orderly, and also flexible. Tspice rushed because of being interested in the workshop content, not from being scared of chastisement for lateness. Tspice loved collage because it facilitated bringing the word pictures in her mind into realness in an alive, visual way.
“Hey Squirrel.”
“Hey Tspice.”
“You see Luna?”
“Yeah.”
“Nature, Ms. Deena said the collage theme today is nature.”
“Nature?”
“Yeah—garden, forest, beach. you know.”
Squirrel had already meticulously cut out several different trees from the Nature and National Geographic magazines in the pile on the table. Tspice watched as Squirrel was now cutting out a rose bush. Squirrel was careful and exact with everything. He had cut the images precisely; same care as he used cleaning the bicycle chain—not simply wiping it but brushing the cleaning solution into every joint, then wiping. Now he cut the gross outline and then the fine detailed aspects of the image. Ms. Deena returned to the art lab, quietly, saying hello, with a smile, to Tspice.
The three friends liked the museum, the people were friendly; what they liked best was that it was an inside that was like being outside. They enjoyed the feeling of freedom the thoughtfully designed high ceilings and moveable walls and changeable room dimensions next to fixed lab areas provided. Ms. Deena told them that David Adjaye, the architect that designed the National Museum of African American History and Culture, had designed the building. They didn’t know who he was but they liked the feeling of knowing he was connected to this building. They liked how the entire space was art. Exhibits were hung on the walls and sometimes the art was part of the wall. A video screen flowing images as if you were seeing the wall moving as you stood watching. And then there was an art installation composed of paper, 1000s of 2″ square pieces of red, blue, green, black, white, brown—every color—arranged and grouped in patterns that formed a picture story filling three wall surfaces around the main hall of the museum.
Tspice and Luna’s classes had been invited to visit when the installation was being mounted. They were amazed by the detailed plans and mapping that occurred. The process was as interesting as the results were awesome. Among their other favorite of favorite exhibits was Faith Ringgold. Seeing the stories they had been read as young children as pictures hung sequentially on the wall was enchanting. A blow-up of eight years old Cassie Louise Lightfoot from Tar Beach flying over their Harlem neighborhood was grand. In these moments possibilities opened wider. Tspice could be a writer, Luna an illustrator, Squirrel an art installation crew leader—maybe they would design a building, like David Adjaye who Squirrel had of course looked up and shared his findings with Luna and Tspice. It started them thinking about architecture in Tanzania, where David Adjaye was born, the Middle East, where he lived as a kid, Ghana, his birth nationality, and London where he also grew up. Tspice said David Adjaye was a geography lesson.
The morning, lunch time and afternoon passed quickly. At 3pm the three friends met at their bikes and rapidly agreed that today they would go to Marcus Garvey Park. Tearing down Saint Nicholas Ave, taking turns in lead, middle and rear position, whooping like escapees even though they hadn’t been confined. Pass 125th Street they veered leftward on 121st going east toward the park. At the park they got off their bikes and half carried, half bumped them on the steps and surfaces they descended, ascended, and curved around on the way to the Bell Tower at the apex of the park.
“You think they will open the fencing around the Bell.”
“I hope so! I want to put my face next to it.”
“You stupid.”
“Adventurist baby, adventurist.”
They all laughed, filled with energy from biking, ascending the hill to the Bell and a full day of doing. Tspice yelled, “Three ladies!” At once, in one motion, they laid their bikes down and sat on the rock mound jutting through this courtyard plaza featuring the Bell Tower and leaned on each other. They were imitating the pose of the sculpture in front of the building near the park. The three women looked happy relaxed and carefree. They no longer remembered how they started this game of imitating, becoming those larger than life figures in vibrant repose on the corner of 121 and 5th. They loved doing it, falling against each other supporting each other in raucous quiet and laughter.
The few other people wandering to and through this Bell Tower plaza paid scant attention to these young playful teens as they went about their own enjoyment of the vast 3600 vista view of the city this high ground provided. In an earlier time this huge brass bell had a job. It was used to alert the fire stations of fires.
Tspice, Luna and Squirrel watched robins, starlings and squirrels, sky and clouds as they thought about everything and nothing. How clouds formed, how cumulus clouds formed into different shapes—some anthropomorphized becoming horses, dogs, goats, or a heart or a boat. They eyed the sparrows flitting in a mound of loose dirt like it was water; then they saw a squirrel scurry up the fencing around the Bell Tower.
“That’s me scaling the fence.”
“You wish!”
“Squirrel! You the squirrel, that’s you on the fence.”
The little shiny black-brown coated squirrel stopped in its fence ascent, seeming to look at the friends, before leaping onto a branch 6 feet or so from the bell enclosure, disappearing among the leaves.
“It’s tomorrow Luna.”
Luna replied, not in words, she took out her sketch pad opening to the drawing she’d started the night before. It showed a busy city street with all things comprising an urban metropolis densely concentrated, like in the kid’s children’s book, “Things That Go.” There were cars, trains, boats, scooters, and mopeds, drones, helicopters and trucks; blinkering signs and streaming video interspersed on and among the people and very tall buildings. At the end of a wide main street that ended at a river was a vertical cloud-like formation; there, a person, partially obscured by the cloud, could be seen.
“Grandma Pearl said Great-great grandma Hattie must of stepped into a time that was future to us even now. It was loud, fast, busy and, when a little flying machine headed towards her, she stepped backward into the place she hadn’t quite left.”
“Where was that?”
“Edenton, North Carolina, fall 1861”
“That time is at the beginning of the Civil War!”
“Yeah, and Grandma Pearl said the Tar Heel State was the last southern state to vote for secession.”
Tspice and Squirrel peered more closely into the picture. “Luna, your Great-great grandma Hattie looks like you.”
“Yeah, Grandma Pearl said I was the “spitting image.”
* Luna, Tspice & Squirrel–excerpt from novella continues; for first excerpt see February 2023 post.
January 8, 2024
Thanks to us participating in the Peace & Joy—many believe that Peace can’t face down tyrants, aggressors, and madmen. Peace can!
A peace that refuses to live and thrive off the manufacture and selling of weapons will begin the end of war. A conscious journey toward disarmament and the weaning of the United States’ economy off its dependency on arms manufacturing can lead the way. We can begin to transform the killing machines into technological wonders of wind, water, fire and earth power. We can energize our transportation, food production, house production and our ability to be artistic. We can take all that we’ve learned, regard the destructive and ruinous aspect of our development and let go attachment to behaviors we exhibited when we didn’t fully understand our human ability to create things causing vicious horror and hardship.
Let us give peace a chance—let us face the tyrant, aggressor and mad person that dwells within—let us transform us and heal our projections. Let us amaze and delight ourselves with the ease with which we face and embrace our fears armed only with our naked courage. Joy and Peace Work Everywhere!
Thanks to Us.
October 27, 2023
Can we stop believing in armies and guards and soldiers and policing? Can we clear the road to go another direction? Away from mass displays of power and might in the form of tanks and weapons of mass destruction.
Can we be dazzled, awed and impressed by our own and others’ ability to sing, walk, convert combustion engines to solar power? Can we see through clean sparkling windows; can we be dazzled by water: seas, oceans, streams, lakes, rivers, creeks? Can we open each and every threat? Can we open each and every threat face to face in open trust?
Can we sit with each other and make lists of what scares us? Tall people with beards, unfamiliar shades of flesh, people going hatless in winter and wearing coats in summer; where does our distrust begin?
When, how does exploring and curiosity turn into interrogation and opposition? How do we deescalate hatred fueled by adrenaline fear? Can we open the grip, run the energy?
Can we run and run and run and jump and scream until we can breathe free hear free see free into the face of threat, recognize our face, sit down with our face, rest, eat, talk with our face. Can we continue clearing our road being dazzled, awed and impressed by our ability to just be?
Don’t make another bullet, no ammo holders, no chambers for bullets to pass through. No more bullets, not one last one for one last shooting. Let names fade, let children live; erase the names on those bullets: John, Maria, Shatequa, Carlos, Arianna, Alice, Dimitri, Yaseen, George, Yacov, Susan, Kwasi, Mark, Nihm, Mohammed, Yaso, Harrison, Rachel, Paolo, Yuri, Ahmed, Khadisha. Sand shrapnel, let filing dust strengthen road to peace. Lay water pipe lines with pistol barrels and rifle barrels; irrigate dry.
Bare your arms; reveal your beautiful loving arms. Use them to carry, use them to embrace the wounded. Bare your arms as you build peace. Bare your strong arms as your brain tackles the art of peace, the skill of resolution, the patience of conversation, the task of rethinking. Bare your arms, prepare your arms as you ready to dig through right, move boulders containing your rightness about rightness that becomes your every breath and thought, that you kill for, die for, live for.
Let’s get naked, wrestle with mud until covered completely, until we’re all indistinguishable mud, like the dead and wounded spilling blood and bone. Enemies and innocents, combatants and artists and musicians and skaters and dishwashers and mothers and planters and lovers all; the same blood and bone and torn flesh in every city, town, hamlet, village, in every state, government, country, republic; the same victory, the same tears. Bare arms, become naked in the mud, wrestle with right in mud until earth and dry fashion you into sculpture born of the same mud; soft wet, squeezed through your hands and fingers, slightly gooey harmless mud.
Don’t make another bullet, bomb, weapon.
