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About B Gourley

Bernie Gourley is a writer living in Bangalore, India. His poetry collection, Poems of the Introverted Yogi is now available on Amazon. He teaches yoga, with a specialization in pranayama, and holds a RYT500 certification. For most of his adult life, he practiced martial arts, including: Kobudo, Muay Thai, Kalaripayattu, and Taiji. He is a world traveler, having visited more than 40 countries around the globe.

PROMPT: Law

Daily writing prompt
If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?

If such a situation were to avail itself, I would make a law so that no one person — even a high elected official — could change the law unilaterally. (Administrative policies for the bureaucracy not being laws, said high elected official could go to town on them.) Why? Because one person being able to change law is an affront to democracy and to the very concept of rule of law, and if we make it the object of fantasy to be able to do so we are cooked.

We had such a law in the US. It was called the Constitution, and it was glorious. It said that only the legislature (a body consisting of many representatives) could make law, and only the judiciary could interpret and evaluate the legality of a law. And it was okay that the executive was the least democratic of branches because it was to stay in the lane of enforcing the laws as they were written (and shaped by judicial interpretation,) and if the executive started getting too big for his britches, the legislature would turn off the flow of money.

So, my great fantasy is not to be able to unilaterally change law, but to have three functioning branches of government who stay in their own lanes, applying checks as (and only as) described in the Constitution.

Gray Beard [Haiku]

Photograph taken in the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area, in bayou near Slidell, Louisiana.
Spanish Moss drapes
over Winter's bare branches
like a gray beard.

Stump Gator [Kyōka]

Photograph of a young alligator resting on a stump in the Louisiana bayou, near Slidell.
Gator rests on stump.
but my mind cannot rest.
it's not "gator"
and "stump" in the same place,
but in the same sentence.

Common Box Turtle [Lyric Poem]

Photograph of a Common Box Turtle taken in the Bayou near Slidell, Louisiana.
"The race is to steady turtles!" --
Even if the race has hurdles?
Even with its great longevity
it'll never have lift or levity
to finish before life runs out.

Hold off with race applications.
Is racer your ideal vocation?
I don't mean to be Sower of doubt,
but think speed isn't what you're about,
and that you'd make a fine doorstop.

DAILY PHOTO: St. Mark United Methodist Church, Atlanta

PROMPT: Dream Home

Daily writing prompt
Write about your dream home.

Regularly teleports to new and interesting places. Ideally, compact from the outside but comfortable inside. So, I guess a TARDIS would be my dream home.

River Mind [Haiku]

the river widens,
slows / stopping, in places;
so goes my mind.

Raccoon [Lyric Poem]

Looking like a masked bandito,
Raccoon dunks expired burrito.
It dips it not to get it clean
but to flavor it: Swamp Latrine.

DAILY PHOTO: The Fabulous Fox

Long Days Inside Short Days [Senryū]

the grain is ripe. 
the days are short.
the farmer, weary.