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Tag: awareness

The Great Pretender: sestet

Can you pretend that all is going well,
that your imagined life is here and now,
and what you picture in your mind as hell
strikes only those you hate and fear, somehow?
What will it take to break that noxious spell?
How much injustice can your soul allow?

Can you pretend you have nothing to lose,
that your life is secure and safe from grief
thanks to the privilege of luck? Here’s news:
what happiness you have is sweet, but brief.
When you protect your self alone, you choose
a private hell beyond help or relief.

Can you pretend to be so without thought
that what may happen doesn’t cross your mind?
It makes no difference what result you sought.
What matter then is eyesight for the blind?
You proudly made the trap in which you’re caught.
It won’t be a grand paradise you’ll find.

03 JUL 2025

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Any Day Now: Sicilian sestet

Beneath the whisper quiet rush of dawn
as the still sleeping earth begins to wake,
before the last vestige of dark is gone
and daylight gives its weary head a shake,
enjoying one more furtive stretch and yawn,
the chains of each new yesterday can break.

The morning of each now is always new,
its gentle glow scrubbed fresh from last night’s toil,
and with an inner light brings into view
a world not so besmirched with mud and soil,
where there is opportunity for you
to contemplate and shape this mortal coil.

Before you let such moments slip away,
examine what you plan to do, and why
the time you set aside for work, and play,
is more than hours and minutes passing by.
What’s here and now can no more simply stay
than what is born can hope to never die.

02 JUL 2025

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Sense of Loss: sedoka

How does this thing work,
living without much thinking
outside your own box?

What a little world
that makes the whole of your life,
with just your own mess.

How does that make sense,
with so much beauty outside,
just past your front door?

What a sad living
you make, trapped with just yourself
and no sense of loss.

02 Jul 2025

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Shut Up and Row: rionnaird tri-nard

Don’t ask me how I’m doing,
or just what I’ve been thinking.
I’m far too busy bailing
my little boat that’s sinking.
I must keep things in focus.
Do not keep up your prattle,
belay your hocus pocus.
It’s hard enough a battle.

Leave off me with your jabbing.
I don’t need added tension.
Besides, what good is gabbing
when I must pay attention?
There’s no time for that nonsense
when we both should be rowing.
Spare me your show and pretense
’til we get where we’re going.

23 Jun 2025

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No Time: rimas dissolutas

There is no time, we cannot start again.
The clocks do not run backwards on command,
nor do the years reverse their gears on queue.

You cannot substitute a now for then,
nor rearrange the instance where you stand.
There is no try again, just simply do.

Besides, who wants to just relive the past,
imagining again those glory days
or that crushing defeat? Who needs the stress?

It’s only memory that really lasts,
until it disappears into a haze
that we call history. Well, more or less.

There is no time but now, and it exists
for just this moment only, and no more.
What starts must surely finish when it’s done.

So let it go. It’s useless to resist.
Besides, what good is all forever for?
There is a thing as having too much fun.

20 Jun 2025

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About a Horse

I’m writing a book. Now if that’s not the stupidest idea I’ve ever had, I’ll eat my hat. Not because I’ve run out of words, but because the book I have in mind doesn’t solve anything, teach anything, or have much nutritional value at all. It’s a recording that when played back includes the frequencies that will destroy the playback device. It’s a song that hits the notes that will crumble the human vocal cords as they vibrate them. Not that it really matters. I can’t sing it anyway, and even if I could I’m not sure you could hear it.

The point of writing a book is to communicate something, right? To share an experience, whether that be instructive, cautionary, hypothetical, or just diversionary. To pass on something you’ve seen, heard, felt, or maybe even learned.

But the people who write books use a certain “voice” to tell the story they think needs telling. A narrator, whether reliable or not, live on the scene or relying on a delayed broadcast of from anywhere to a few seconds to thousands of light years away. They may break the third wall, or not. A story either shares its secrets with you as soon as possible, or makes you work for it like a last case before retirement detective in a bad suit and sensible shoes.

A lot of that depends on what the writer wants to say. No matter what, the author wants you to take them seriously. The subject matter may be light and airy, soft as eider down, or smooth as Tennessee whiskey, but the act of reading is serious stuff. So much depends on the wheelbarrow you use to haul the flotsam and jetsam away, doesn’t it? Without a willing reader, someone to engage on all cylinders with the premise and the people in your book, the great American novel, whether it’s about gangsters, spacemen, big or petty business, true love or false hope, the real nitty gritty or a real soft soap, doesn’t make any more impact than a gnat flitting across the Mississippi River, if nobody really reads it.

Of course each reader picks up a book for a different reason. Some are always questing, whether in their actual lives or only in their imaginations, for some single grain of sand that will explain to them the entire beach. Others are simply bored and want entertainment, titillation, or electric shock therapy. Another might be looking to learn something that will make them interesting at cocktail parties. Never mind that being interesting or cool by imitating interesting or cool people is like learning to play guitar by listening to Eric Clapton and wondering why you don’t really sound like him. No one who thinks about, obsesses over, or worries that they are cool or interesting will ever be either. But that doesn’t stop millions of lemmings from finding just the right cliff edge for demonstrating their individuality.

So, a book. A story, a narrator, a tone, a message or underlying moral. A sales pitch. If you read this book, you’re going to get something.

Problem is I’ve got nothing to tell you. Because no matter what I say, there is no story. This is happening in real time. And as we’ve already learned, to relay the story, to sing the song itself, is to reproduce the frequencies that will destroy the teller.

There is no story. No guru, no method, no teacher. What I’ve got to say in a book can’t be said in a book. That doesn’t mean it’s important or even needs to be said. It’s not like the Tao that can’t be spoken and therefore ip so facto could never even drive through the neighborhood where the Tao rents a weekly room. What is it John Cage once said? “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it. That is poetry.”

So here goes nothing.

15 Jun 2025

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Good Morning: gloss (glosa)

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning – Carl Sandburg

You say you’re woke because your eyes
are open and you’re out of bed,
and yet describing what you see, you fail
to see yourself and choose instead
to catalog the failings of the world
that won’t conform to how you feel
and what you really want to see,
since reality has no appeal.

Your eyes are open, but you’re blind;
the world is what it’s always been.
It spins around each morning
and repeats itself, again.

You wonder why so few around
seem to believe your point of view,
without the benefit of your insight
or the mirror looking back at you.

You say, “Wake up!” to those who sleep,
“and smell the coffee’s sweet perfume,”
but disregard the fact that some
see more than just your tiny room
where stranger creatures come and go
to satisfy your cravings,
and make the world a better place
and something good worth saving.

02 JUN 2025

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