Tag Archives: wholeness

Folly’s Promenade

What folly perpetrated in my youth,
before thoughts of mortality began
to permeate my eager thirst for truth
and close the width of my attention span,

has wrought its retribution over time
and haunts me on occasion? What old song
that lingers from that bygone, careless prime,
seems fractured now, its notes awry, gone wrong?

My karmic debt is, doubtless, still unpaid,
compounding interest daily even now.
And no one, not a saint, nor sacred cow,
will pay the bills that at my feet are laid.

There are no luck, no miracles, no chance;
the universe is more or less mirage.
If you would join the party, you must dance,
and pin the universe with your corsage.

And folly? What is that to never try?
What worse regret than acting the wallflower
for so long that the grand ball passes by
and you need not corsage, but funeral bower?

15 May 2005

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The Politics of Deconstruction

A moment, more or less, of deconstruction:
by which I mean to delve into the soul
that strives to separate life from destruction
and yet maintain some semblance of the whole,
to claim by sacred right the single kernel,
the isolated truth-soaked grain of sand
that by its presence negates the infernal
in concrete terms all can understand.

It does not matter what stated intention
the writer may have claimed explained their work.
Creative types are just show and pretension;
in equal parts: saint, sinner, genius, jerk.
Believe me, I have far more poignant insight
by virtue of not wasting any time
in chasing muses past the hour of midnight
to be rewarded by one simple rhyme.

Besides, too many think themselves creative
and squander precious time lost in that haze.
The world needs workers, not more contemplatives,
who pass up duty just to navel gaze.
We need poetry, ’tis true, but with some guidance:
interpretations that have been approved,
that faced with doubt and free will, choose avoidance
and recommend such options be removed.

It only takes a moment’s intervention
to steer a young and growing mind astray;
remember, cure is harder than prevention,
so put those blinders on without delay.
Besides, it only starts with art and culture;
are politics … religion … far behind?
Trust me, do you want, hanging like a vulture,
someone with vision checking your design?

We deconstruct to make it seem like science,
instead of art or magic, sacred stuff
that at its core encourages defiance
and shows our plans for what they are, a bluff.
In pieces, the world fits into our puzzle,
and none can see the holes we’ve yet to fill.
With so-called education as a muzzle,
we can do what we want, and always will.

30 APR 2005

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Gratitude

Thank you for not giving me
the Powerball numbers from the astral plane;
for postponing that move to the Florida Keys
at least another decade;
for the psoriasis that precluded my career
as a playboy Lothario;
for the hesitation, that lack of killer instinct,
that limited my musical ambitions;
for my overdrawn bank account,
for the grey hair on my head,
for the gumption to quit college,
for the brain cells I’ve lost to self-medication,
for the little things.

Thank for the bathroom walls
rotting into disgusting flakes;
for the vinyl siding hanging down
against the untrimmed rose and jasmine bushes,
for the neighborhood watch that always reports
when my lawn misses a week’s worth of trimming.

Thank you for a self-centered teenage child
with a hand full of gimme, and a mouth full of much obliged
(although, truth be told, not too often with the thank you);
thanks for senior year expenses:
cap and gown
announcements
college applications
senior portraits
prom gowns
car insurance
cell phones

Thanks for all those unwelcome comparisons to other parents,
who obviously have their act together,
and know how to understand and respect
the needs of hypochondriac, selfish shopaholic children
who can’t be bothered to clean their own dishes,
cook their own food,
or even pick up the bath mat after themselves.

Thank you for these extra hundred pounds
that make me much more difficult to lug around
all this gratitude and appreciation.

Thanks for long hours, high standards of living,
neighbors that vote Republican and think they’re doing the right thing,
and will debate me,
like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons,
that society is to blame.

Thanks for the patriarchy, and for right-wing conservatives
that help me keep in perspective my own radically different value system.
Thanks for the 78% of Americans that call themselves Christians,
but act anything but. It helps me with my own hypocrisies.

Thanks for being there, even when you’re not there.
Thanks for the dawn, and for twilight, and the hours in between.

Thanks for all those payroll deductions that represent money
I’ll owe to the IRS anyway.
Thanks for credit card interest, for installment loans, for insurance premiums.
They help me keep it real.

Thanks especially for those big, flying cockroaches.
Killing them gives me some fleeting sense of power.

Thanks for keeping the sources of my inheritance alive
but not making me resent them for it.

Thanks for nothing. Thanks for everything.

I don’t say it often enough.

28 APR 2005

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Seed Thought: Page 43

I wonder why it is that the folks over at 43 Things picked the number 43. Could it be related to my favorite David Crosby song?

Page 43

Look around again
It’s the same old circle
You see, it’s got to be –
It says right here on page forty three …
That you should grab a hold of it
Else you’ll find
It’s passed you by

Rainbows all around
Can you find the silver and gold –
it’ll make you old
The river can be hot or cold …
And you should dive right into it
Else you’ll find
It’s passed you by

Pass it around one more time
I think I’ll have a swallow of wine –
life is fine
Even with the ups and downs …
And you should have a sip of it
Else you’ll find
It’s passed you by

— David Crosby, Stay Straight Music

David Crosby, in the liner notes for the CSN boxed set, says about his song “Page 43”:

It’s about the mythical instruction booklet to life that we all wish we had and don’t. An optimistic song nonetheless.

While I agree that the song does present an optimistic outlook on life, particularly if you adhere to the “Be Here Now” philosophy as espoused most popularly by Ram Dass (a.k.a. Richard Alpert), I think that far too many people on this earth feel that their particular “instruction book” is somehow applicable to a wide range of individuals with which they have little, if anything, in common except their humanity and the natural milieu upon which their lives are dependent and inter-related with (which in fact is quite a lot, when placed into perspective against their cultural and societal differences). In any case, it is my philosophy that each person must write their own guidebook, and that “book” must be by default more a memoir than a practical “how to” reference. You can investigate and evaluate the memoirs of others, hoping for a bit of insight into some of your commonalities, but, as they say, the Divine is in the details, and there’s where it’s always necessary to stray from the recipe. Then, too, Mark Twain commented once that if you truly want to describe a person so that another would recognize them without question, you cannot paint them using only their good points as a reference. The individuality of humankind is determined by its flaws, the aberrations from the norm that make us each unique.

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What is the Secret Song?

What is secret song that the whole world
hums underneath its breath, too soft to hear
unless you sit in silence, in the dark
and listen as intently as you can?

And when you hear it once, why it is so
that its refrain eludes your memory’s grasp?
Does it vibrate on some harmonic scale
that with its very echo self-destructs?

The melody, so simple and so pure,
seems to be shifting constantly in flux
so that each phrase is new; no line repeats,
nor lends itself to rote and mindless chant.

The rhythm pulses static long enough
to catch your heartbeat’s diastolic thump,
but suddenly it swells in pregnant pause
to fill all time in but a moment’s breath.

I have heard music played beyond my ken,
so wild and free it stretched my sonic grasp
to breaking; and then all the pieces slipped
back to their assigned cells of time and space.

Long past that last note’s echo I will know
what symphony the universe conducts;
and in that gaping chasm, my small voice
awaits the cue to loose its single note.

What secret song is known to the whole world,
yet takes a lifetime’s listening to hear?
The sound of living, one breath at a time,
and finding sacred every sip of air.

20 APR 2005

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Galileo

The stars are fixed; they do not move.
Instead, what we call firmament
is just a shifting lens that’s bent
to suit the seasons. To approve
or disapprove such things is vain
and futile; our whole history,
that we would carve in stone and brick,
is but a wisp, a palimpsest,
that the next epoch writes anew.

And gods, if such are said to be,
perhaps employ more lasting inks
yet too will fade to faint indents
and leave no greater marks than men.

What once was center is now freed
and to circumference lays the lie;
great spheres of thought that wise men hold
more dear than life itself, deflate.

So what of fate, no more ordained
and best left to the seer’s glass?
What purpose do those notions serve
that would enslave the yearning mind?

We are in motion without end;
there is no point at which, full-stop,
the world could even for an hour
reflect upon its then-new state
so that an unseen force could smile
and praise his finished handiwork.

The stars are fixed; they do not move.
Instead, we hurl through space and time
in some eternal dance of life;
and no stiff doctrine made of men
has power to change the truth of it,
nor outraged, claim as heresy
what they, while blind, deny my eye.

05 APR 2005

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The Flute

To think your way the only way,
or see your God alone,
is to have the world as a flute
and play a monotone.

Now, it is music, to be sure,
that constant single drone;
but there is more to music
and each song is not a clone.

Some may choose among other notes
to make their melodies;
if each applies their breath
by their own methodology,

that does not prove your note is flat
nor that their song is best.
Instead, it builds the repertoire,
and can merely suggest

that each must seek their own true song,
and with their own two hands
find ways to cover the great holes
that help them understand

the music of the universe:
a million different notes
sung out with the same longing
from a hundred million throats.

Some choose a drone, and some a dirge,
while others like a reel;
the flute will play in any style.
Each new song helps reveal

the myriad of melodies
that range within our hearts.
Your own song is not ending
when you hear a new one start.

07 MAR 2005

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