Tag Archives: absurdity

Happen

If it doesn’t ever happen
was it ever gonna change?
Do the puzzle pieces ever move
or just not look the same?
Are the ones that make it happen
just the ones we find to blame?
Do we pick and choose the enemies
who help us feel less strange?
Are we really hoping those like us
are all that will remain?

If it hasn’t ever happened
who’s to say it ever could?
What percentage of the greater
helps define the greater good?
Are the enemies we’re fighting
just dressed up in different hoods?
Is the only thing preventing change
that no one thinks we should?
Do we really think the universe will
end, misunderstood?

If it’s never gonna happen
what is evolution for?
What’s the point of boats, or bridges,
standing land-locked, on the shore?
Are the only ones who ever learn
the dying, dead or poor?
What’s the reason to keep going,
or for trying any more?
When there’s no one left still standing,
does it matter who just scored?

10 AUG 2015

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All Possible: a poem of lies

The sky above is never blue,
the earth is flat as pie,
youth is eternal in the world
and villains never cry.
True riches can be hoarded,
real pain fades by and by,
belief is always justified
and nothing good will die.
The truth in this is plain to see:
so long as I am never me.

16 APR 2014

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The Camel in the Room

Tonight, I answered questions
from a survey-taking girl
who wished to know where I weighed in
on God’s place in the world.
The purpose for the questions
seemed to me a bit unclear;
more fodder for pro-Christian ranting
or control, I fear,
but I took part, and did my best,
although the answers seemed
to only fit such a small range
of my spiritual scene.
She asked after my parents,
and the job I thought they did;
if moral guidance and the Bible
formed me as a kid.
I told her it was by example
that my parents taught;
they did not spell out right and wrong,
and certainly did not
expect that I would blindly follow
their belief or creed,
but rather taught integrity
and finding what you need.
It’s odd – responsibility
seemed not to be a part
of the survey; I guess
that would put horse after the cart.
Instead, did I attend a church,
or pray, or fellowship,
believe that Jesus Christ had sinned?
At that, my kindness slipped,
and I said, how would I know that?
I never met the man;
he lived two thousand years ago.
And if you think you can
believe what’s printed up in books
and sold like blessed snake oil,
there’s not much hope for anyone
escaping evil’s coil.
I strongly disagree that evil
is personified
beyond the selfish, clutching hands
who prey on those outside
the mainstream, where the status quo
dictates that blame be found
in others first, before yourself.
You seek God? Look around
and make the world a better place
by caring for more than
your own private and shallow soul.
Try that on, if you can.

Whose God? Whose Bible?
Whose church service
would you have me grace,
when everyone I meet has
good and evil in their face?

Truth is a pathless land;
it wanders beyond black and white.
To posit otherwise is like
a blind man, in the night
giving directions to a man
who cannot hear a word.
One’s map is forged, the others’ blank;
both seem a bit absurd.

12 JUL 2005

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The Politics of Epiphany

It occurs to me that all poets at some point in their lives experience something of the profound, and the nature of this experience colors and informs their writing from that point forward. Robert Graves might have said it is the presence of the White Goddess that is that initiating profundity, that point at which the salmon in the stream bed of inspiration is first discovered, that instant when Taliesyn’s finger is burnt gold by Cerridwen’s foul potion of hyper-knowledge. James Joyce echoes this theme, in a way, through his constant obsession with epiphany. There is always a point in his writing at which key characters, in a moment of absolute clarity, realize that in order to be alive they must embrace a certain level of awareness to which their ignorant compatriots are blissfully unaware. That blinding moment of illumination is found in every poet’s work at some juncture. What triggers it, of course, is different for each writer, but it always involves a painful awareness of the difference between mere commonplace angst and profound turmoil.

Interestingly enough, this grand profundity more often than not is expressed negatively. That is, it is communicated as a loss — of innocence, of joy; or as the sense of something ponderous, weighty and sad — a sense of isolation, of powerlessness, of triviality, of uselessness, of pointlessness. It is the rare writer that colors their illumination as a positive experience, as if ignorance of the reality of things is something worth losing, if exchanged for an awareness of one’s true place in the universe. Perhaps that is because in order to communicate to those who have not had their own epiphany, one must appear to grieve as those without profound experience imagine grief to be, if only to establish some basis for communication. Never mind that the language of profundity, like the language of the acid trip, is meaningless outside its context, even to one who has made the journey and is now safe back at home.

And too, people who see the profound where others see simply the ordinary are often ostracized, ridiculed, and even institutionalized in order to maintain the fabric of society. We accept grief, loss, isolation, loneliness, powerlessness, and pointlessness as part of every day life — so long as one does not wallow in it, nor force others to witness its impact on our neatly scrubbed, public faces. I suppose it’s like agriculture, to some extent; we are pleased and proud as a culture that less than 5% of the population has to work directly with dirt in order to feed the rest of us. In a similar way, we are pleased and proud of that small number among us who serve as artists, poets, dancers, sculptors, musicians — pleased that they are indeed only a small portion, whose dalliance in profundities siphons but a meager amount of gross national product from more practical, useful and ultimately controllable employment.

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Random Passing Thought

The difference, in a nutshell, between what Michael Moore is saying and what I’m saying:

MM: The emperor is naked!
ME: That naked man is NOT the emperor!

LOL

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Father’s Day

Ultimatums are absurd,
like “I will not write one more word
until those reading clap and say,
‘Bravo!’ and ‘Watch the genius play!'”

The Sufis had it right, I think:
“Don’t name wells from which you won’t drink”;
and yet, to stand aloof and proud
from rabble, sometimes, is allowed

When lines of poesy and wit
Are cast aside, in praise of shit
the gauntlet’s thrown, the challenge made.
Now, let mere pundits be afraid!

The bards of old were greatly feared,
but their kind have all disappeared
and in their place are only found
experiments in time and sound

The erudite, vanity press?
Who reads that stuff, and more or less
who gives a damn for words these days
that speak the truth, when lies are praised?

The torture of the gentle soul
who speaks against such mind control
and casts their nets for bigger fish
and writes exactly as they wish

Is to live in a dull gray place
Where art is schlock and soon defaced
Where schools are meant to churn out rows
of mindless robots too well-clothed

And Music? Who can bear the tune
That blares out Sunday afternoon
Lambasting resting ears with tripe,
vulgarity and guttersnipe

Too loud, the world seeks truth in vain
for it hides behind windowpanes
a throbbing headache from the noise.
It waits for men, and finds, just boys

Who dabble with a word or two
But think of drink and fight and screw
Without the faintest sense of shame
That they know not their father’s names

And yet, this sad, misgotten lot
Who claim a God that knows them not
Will look at me with great distain
As I stand out and smell the rain

Oh, wash this street, and filthy town
destroy its streets, and bear them down
along the river to the sea;
It cannot come too soon for me!

And ultimatums? I refuse
to leave this place, to cede, or lose
until my words, like slow, cruel time
sink in and waken just one mind.

21 JUN 2004

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