F.E. Feeley Jr.'s Blog, page 15
August 12, 2017
Tina Turner (poem)
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I love Tina Turner
Cher
Billy Joel
and Elton
I love Pink
Bon Jovi
Evanescence
and Brandi Carlile
Mary J Blige
Sure knows what she’s doing
give it to me
Lauryn Hill
Eric Clapton
is great
no one is greater than
the faith given to me
by Leonard Cohen
Marc Cohn
Walks me through Memphis
The Eagles helped me escape
California
and Madonna – well – I’m gay
George Michael, Prince,
Nothing compares to you
Melissa Ethridge
I climbed through your window
Janis, Joss, Joan
God is indeed, one of us
Lindsay and Stevie forever
as I took this love and I took it down
Sweet Caroline, Neil
You don’t bring me flowers no ‘mo
Barbra
but god woman, can you sing
Heaven is a juke joint
on Karaoke night
and I can’t wait to duet
with my favorites
What does love, really, got to do with it?
Everything.
August 10, 2017
I am your Voodoo Lady (poem)
[image error]Hand me a Ouija board
throw out some candles and
give me your tarot
the demons are talking tonight
all at once
even with Emile Sande
begging for something to believe in
through my headphones
It’s a map, all laid out
not a single memory
it’s all of the memory, all of it
my room is crowded with them
I am you’re voodoo lady
Pay me in trade, boy
sit in front of me and wait
while I cast bones
while I spin tables
with the taste of cold coffee
on my tongue
I hear stories I don’t want to
forbidden fruit
sweet to the taste but bitter
in the gut
as voices speak through me
each line I write
I’ve paid for in chains
and a pound of flesh
Last night
I prayed my first rosary
Holy Mary mother of God
I’m so tired
I counted the beads
and said the ‘Our Father’
but tonight I’m reminded
what a jealous creature
I am
Tonight, I thought
I was emptied out completely
that nothing would stir
but it does, precious
it stirs in me
as I am now ghost writing
what they want me to say
I’m untalented
all this is a conduit
the praise, the adulation
your five star darling hooker
and I can never tell when
the door is going to swing open
but I have a fear
deep in my soul should
it one day swing open
and the crowd steps through
this time it wont be to deliver the goods
It’ll be to take me with them
There is no Sibley Road for me anymore
August 8, 2017
Censorship is not a form of protest
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I read an article today on Vulture.com entitled The Toxic Drama of YA Twitter.
In this article (linked here) Kate Rosenfield explored an interesting trend happening on social media.
Laurie Forest wrote a book called The Black Witch, ARCs or Advance Review Copies were sent out to different reviewers to create buzz for her book. Everyone loved it.
Everyone except for Shauna Sinyard.
This is an excerpt from the article:
The hype train was derailed in mid-March, however, by Shauna Sinyard, a bookstore employee and blogger who writes primarily about YA and had a different take: “The Black Witch is the most dangerous, offensive book I have ever read,” she wrote in a nearly 9,000-word review that blasted the novel as an end-to-end mess of unadulterated bigotry. “It was ultimately written for white people. It was written for the type of white person who considers themselves to be not-racist and thinks that they deserve recognition and praise for treating POC like they are actually human.”
What follows in the article has to be one of the most chilling tales of an attempt at censorship that I’ve ever read.
In this age of Trump, Fake News, rising accounts of racism, homophobia, antisemitism, anti – religious bigotry concerning Muslims, Russian involvement in our elections, and just generally shitty behavior by adults (a term I use loosely) the world has become a terrifying place.
With all eyes on Washington, the media, the majority of Americans, and entertainment has been wringing their hands ready to jump at the slightest totalitarian movement out of this current administration. The first being, censorship. If you shut down the media that’s a deaths blow to democracy.
Thank God for them.
Yet, this article shows us another group of people. Readers. Yet they’re more than that. They’re readers turned social activists that lead campaigns to have major (and minor) publishing companies pull books off shelves. They ‘drag’ people, these authors, on social media. There are even threats on their life as well as they tell these authors to ‘kill themselves’.
We seem to have found ourselves, lately, in a world of extremes and it’s terrifying. On the right, in our government, we have out and proud fascists who would clamp down on this country if they found any headway.
Yet this group of people who are doing this, are just as fucking scary and I am not sure if these people are doing what they’re doing out of a desire to do good or a desire to become the next INTERNET superstar.
Social Media has become a fertile ground for radicalization.
I am a lover of the 1st Amendment, am a card carrying member of the ACLU. I do not believe in censorship. I believe in the marketplace of ideas. The free flowing exchange of ideas. To me, and to most rational people, it is in this place where debates rage and freedom of the press, freedom of ideas, freedom to express those ideas in a peaceful way, is at the very heart of a healthy democracy.
Some would say these people are just passionately participating.
I disagree.
There’s a difference in actively participating in a forum of discussion and bringing a bomb to it.
Silencing your opposition out of fear, is not advocacy.
It’s terrorism.
Shauna Sinyard’s review reads like a manifesto. It’s 1/6th of a novel’s length which, quite frankly after reading all the glowing reviews on both Amazon and Goodreads, people pointed out that the book was ultimately about a young woman overcoming societal views on race.
That’s a good thing and quite frankly, something we need in the world today. The detractors have said that, “Well, it just enables white people who treat POC good like they should be rewarded.”
Well, this white girl just go the Rachel Dolezal award for, “Trying too hard.”
That being said, even if the book was the equivalent of Mein Kempf part 2 – it still has value. Even if that value is negative.
The marketplace knows how to deal with it.
That’s a free society.
Despite this groups efforts, it’s done nothing to curtail the sales of this book. As the article points out, it was 1 on Amazon. Also, the Young Adults have all left whatever social media groups these people have taken upon themselves to protect and have disbursed leaving a bunch of harried, angry, and foolish people all alone.
Most people would think that was a win for Laurie Forest. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?
Ask George Tiller how that worked out for him.
As the term ‘political correctness’ is now a political football used by everyone today, mostly by people who want to have the freedom of using the “N” word without repercussion, similar to adding ‘gate’ to everything that is politically scandalous, Australian Comedian Steven Hughes describes where we are perfectly, “….the age of political correctness which is actually intellectual colonialism and psychological fascism for the creation of thought crime.”
Silencing authors or the written word is nothing but fascism. I don’t care if you voted for Barack twice, are a card carrying member of the ACLU, and lead your local PFLAG meetings – shutting down authors, starting write in campaigns to publishing companies to get them to pull books, telling authors they should kill themselves, is nothing more than a mob mentality.
There are other people who are out there who want fiction ‘cleansed’ too. The Holy rollers. Advocates of ‘clean fiction’. Then there are those on the right who burn books.
At some point it no longer matters what boot is on your neck, be it right or left. You’re still choking.
This is chilling and it ought to scare the fuck out of lovers of a free press, free exchange of ideas, and free thinking individuals anywhere.
We’ve got to start standing up to this.
“The Black Witch is the most dangerous, offensive, book I’ve ever read. “
No ma’am.
The only ‘dangerous thing ‘ here is banning books.
August 7, 2017
I’m having an affair (Poem)
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You want some tea?
Can you handle the lemonade?
Let me spill a bit for you.
Let me quench your thirst on this
hot August day
I’ll fill your glass with ice
and pour it over
with a shot of Greygoose
Sip it down, baby
that’s right
how you feelin now?
Good?
Good.
Well sit a little closer
lean in and let me whisper
in your delicate ear
I’m having an affair
mmmmm yes, that’s right
Can I bum a cigarette?
Got a light too?
Oh, baby, come on
Wipe that shocked look off
your pretty face
It’s true
With who?
MMMMMMM
I’ll get to that in a bit
It’s been forever since I’ve had one
No, I mean a cigarette
No, I’ve had affairs before
But this guy, this guy, this guy
Ha! Oh yeah, does my man know?
No. No. I’ve not told him
hmmm – Baby, I don’t creep usually
But this dude’s got me feelin love
but it ain’t the rose given kind
it’s my shorts riding up on my thighs, kind
It’s the Paula Cole, kind
It’s kisses down my neck, kind
and his hands make me say his name
a kind of puppet master
speaking an X rated kind of sign language
whispering along my skin
while my hands grip the headboard
ice cubes have never been this hot before
and rope burns have never had me so frozen
His lips, are like rose petals
soft and firm at the same time
Yes, this affair has got me turned out
and when we – well….you know..
I’ve never had someone look at me like that
those blue eyes set my mind on fire
after – I can’t remember my name
or how to walk
but I now know sleep better than I ever had
Okay, okay
Alright – I’ll tell you who it is
because I love him.
I do
I love him.
Who is it?
Who’s got me like that?
It’s the man who put this ring on my left hand
That’s right.
I’m having an affair with my husband
I’m lucky
August 6, 2017
New release: When Heaven Strikes by F E Feeley Jr
Blog stop number 939820934.1 for my book When Heaven Strikes.
Book Title: When Heaven Strikes
Author: F. E. Feeley Jr.
Cover Artist: Goonwrite.com
Genre/s: Contemporary Romance, gay literature
Length: Words: 60,400/No. of Pages: 298
Blurb
Can love survive heaven’s wrath?
Artist Ted Armstrong lives a solitary and eccentric life. The survivor of child abuse disguised as religion, Ted has cut himself off from the world.
Then Ted meets Anderson Taylor, and it’s like being struck by lightning.
Anderson is a cardiac surgeon whose passion for his work has consumed him. He fears he’ll never find a partner—until he sets eyes on Ted. It’s happening fast, but both men know what they feel is right.
Confronted with an angry preacher, a scandal, and an act of God that threatens to destroy everything, their relationship will face its first true test.
Excerpt:
“He was scared.
“Grandma, what’s wrong?”
“Thunderstorm, baby. Hang on,” she said to him, and then to his mother…
View original post 365 more words
August 5, 2017
Sinners who hate other sinners
So, I’ve been thinking about this guy quite a bit lately.
A friend of mine posted this earlier and for any gay man who was raised in religion – we have a fickle relationship with Christ.
The other day I made a comment on a Facebook page of a Popular priest, a Jesuit, who is working really hard to reach out to the Queer community as a whole. He seems very kind.
However, after I placed the comment about my husband and I, it didn’t take very long for someone to come along and start throwing scripture at me. Leviticus and Romans – mostly. He brought up the Apostle Paul yada yada .
When I was a kid, as church would begin someone would lead the congregation in hymns and someone else would sing a special – and that part of the service always had my attention.
I mean, the love of God that they sang about was so overwhelming in songs such as The Love of God.
The second verse goes something like this:
Could we with Ink, the Ocean fill
and were the skies of parchment made
were every stalk on earth a quill; and every man a scribe by trade
to write the love of God above, would drain the ocean dry
nor could that scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky
or take a verse from It is Well by Horatio Spafford
My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!—
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
Or how Great Thou Art
Oh, Lord my God. When I in awesome wonder.
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made
I see the sun, I hear the rolling thunder
thy power throughout the universe displayed
And then the microphone was put down and in the ten steps from the piano to the pulpit God changed. He went through a metamorphosis.
In the ten steps between the piano and the pulpit God changed from this awesomely powerful, all encompassing loving, being to a twisted, angry, petty, creature akin to a brat hovered over an ant hill with a magnifying glass.
In those ten steps I went from open to the experience of God, not just the message, but my body would react. My heart would beat. I would get gooseflesh and tears in my eyes tooooooo…….. nothing.
Not anger. Not boredom. Not fear.
Just. Nothing.
It is an amazing feat to be a child/ teenager and sit still and stare forward at a man prowling the altar like a lion, shouting, pointing, sweating, and not move a muscle and yet, be as far away as a person could be. This would go on for a couple of hours every Sunday morning, Sunday Evening, and Wednesday night and God help us, if there was a tent revival because then that shit just went on all week.
7 days, often times, seven different preachers, each one of them come to deliver us from the pit of our transgressions.
And always the same, the music was there. I would be enraptured with it. Moved by it. Experiencing God, I believe.
Then. Whamo!
The door would slam shut and I’m mentally redecorating my bedroom.
There was something off about the message. Mostly, I think, it was because we made Christ into some kind of schizophrenic.
My husband has been watching this lecture series on The Great Courses with this professor who is as dry as an accountant’s field manual. Honestly, he’d turn it on, meaning to watch it, and before long I’d hear him snoring in the living room. But I am listening to this guy as I am working and he’s going on and on about the gospels. Not just Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John but all the gospels that didn’t make the final cut. The Gospel of St. Thomas, The Gospel of Mary, and on and on it goes.
I tried watching him full on, and im glad I had the filter of whatever I was doing because my eyes crossed and all I heard was, “Bueler, Bueler, Bueler…”
I digress…
Anyway, what’s interesting about all of it – and I do mean all of it – is Christ was almost Greek-like in the stories. Like it was Mythology. He was petty, mean, vindictive. There were crazy mythological stories about magic beasts etc etc etc and it dawned on me. These weren’t included because they all made Christ and God by proxy sound …just….human. Petty. Stupid. And it was then I realized that these preachers had done the same thing.
There was no ascension happening. No moving toward heaven. No moving the church toward God. No rapture.
Christ was actually attacked from behind at a gas station, a bandanna soaked in Desflurane was placed over his mouth and he was thrown in the trunk of the grocery getter.
It’s like they couldn’t believe God actually loved them.
They would sing about it.
But when it came to having the faith – that was different.
They didn’t really believe him.
That they were loved.
That they were so loved.
The idea that the grace that ‘saved’ them in their circumstances, would be needed to save someone else they deemed inferior and therefore made Grace as a concept, offensive.
That’s why they hang out in the Old Testament so much. They want a God to punish them.
And they want a God to punish those who they see as inferior to them and therefore become the worst kind of sinner.
A sinner who hates other sinners.
I don’t pretend to know the wisdom of God, but I do know the wisdom of man and I think these men – in not being able to deal with God as he is – had to bring him down from heaven and make him dumber than we are.
I remember when I first started dating my husband. When I realized he loved me. I hated him for it.
I was so twisted inside out with what had gone on in my life and what I’d put myself through – I resented this guy who told me that he loved me. I believed him 100 percent.
But I hated him for it. I knew me. I knew me. I was the least deserving, in my mind.
I sabotaged our relationship. I wanted him to hate me back.
When I asked him later on why he hadn’t given up on me. He looked me dead in the eyes and said, “You did nothing to earn my love. You can’t lose it.”
It makes me wonder, now, whenever I see a “Real Men Love Jesus” bumper sticker.
Do you love him for loving you? Or do you hate him for loving you because you know you?
Knowing you are not deserving of it.
Thank God, for all our sakes, we did nothing to earn it.
August 2, 2017
9 published works (poem)
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walking on shattered glass
all that remained of my life..
I stood in the midst of my turmoil
storms had come
and all around me chaos
reigned in fragments
of my sanctuary
I stood there
hands shoved in my pockets
afraid to take another step
for fear of cutting my feet
all that I was and would be
had exploded into unrecognizable
shards
I didn’t know what to do
I cried for a bit, called out for help
but no answer came
and as the wind swept the curtains
inside the hollowed out home
I’d never felt so lonely
I dried my eyes with my sleeve
cold from the wind and the rain
I found a red tape recorder
I’d been given for Christmas
laying at my feet
kneeling down I cleared a spot
until I had a place to sit
then, with recorder in my lap
I recounted the wolf like
screaming of the wind
and pounding of fists
of thunder and rain
there alone and in the dark
I told my story
nine times
Over and over
adding detail to some
removing names from others
but each time telling the truth
I fell asleep at some point
My head resting on my right arm
the left clutching the recorder
i curled up inside myself
with my truth pressed against my heart
When the dawn woke me
and voices calling out my name
jolted me from a fitful night
filled with nightmare images and ghosts
who’d leaned in to whisper
in my ears
stories children shouldn’t hear
but ones this one knew by heart
I yelled out for God
When I was swept up
I’d realized in horror
that my recorder had been handed
off
and someone had pressed play
in silence of those who’d come
I heard an old man
telling my nine truths back to me
It was motionless in the ruins
No one moved
I couldn’t even hear myself breathe
The world should hear this
The one who held me whispered softly
when the tape ended
I turned to my head to look my husband in the eyes
They did.
Where do you think the storm came from?
He gathered me to him
and in silent reverie
walked me out into the morning sun
BLOG TOUR: When Heaven Strikes by F.E. Feeley Jr
Blog Tour : Stardate something something something something point something
Khaaaaan!
Because two men are better than one!
Book Title: When Heaven Strikes
Author: F. E. Feeley Jr.
Cover Artist: Goonwrite.com
Genre/s: Contemporary Romance, gay literature
Length: Words: 60,400/No. of Pages: 298
Blurb
Can love survive heaven’s wrath?
Artist Ted Armstrong lives a solitary and eccentric life. The survivor of child abuse disguised as religion, Ted has cut himself off from the world.
Then Ted meets Anderson Taylor, and it’s like being struck by lightning.
Anderson is a cardiac surgeon whose passion for his work has consumed him. He fears he’ll never find a partner—until he sets eyes on Ted. It’s happening fast, but both men know what they feel is right.
Confronted with an angry preacher, a scandal, and an act of God that threatens to destroy everything, their relationship will face its first true test.
Excerpt:
“He was scared.
“Grandma, what’s wrong?”
“Thunderstorm, baby. Hang on,” she said to him, and then to his mother…
View original post 365 more words
