Tag Archives: awareness

The Presence of Today

We either seek to view the world today
through some past generation’s worn and tired lens,
or try to filter what is past and gone
with some new, modern sensibility.

In either case, the picture loses sense;
we only see with skewed perception what we like:
a world that suits our purposes as is,
or one that our reforming might make right.

And while we fight and scrape to prove our case,
what happens to the time that is?
The Now, the only time that is, is lost
and gone before we live its span.

What is the point of living in denial?
The world is what it is; each second’s span
is neither from the future or the past.
It slips away like water in your hand,

and your contention neither gives nor takes
a jot of weight to yesterday’s long gone
nor to tomorrow’s not yet been
if you neglect the presence of today.

24 JUL 2017

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Go Ask Alice

Do without doing,
make something from nothing;
recycle, repurpose,
revise on and conquer.

Gather resources,
interpret instructions;
imagine assembly
as other-directed.

Practice inclusion,
leave nothing untended;
let symmetry guide you
off-balance at times.

Do, or do not do,
remake while unmaking;
there is no old recipe
for what is baking.

Music and dancing,
bring drums for the solstice;
plug in the instruments,
join a new party.

Practice at something:
being and nothingness.
Wake in the morning;
the coffee is on.

for Alice Guffey Miller

26 JUN 2017

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Wake Up: sonetto rispetto

Wake up! The dawn is rapping at the shutters!
There is no time to lose, nor waste away;
you must begin to clear out all this clutter
that gives you an excuse to sleep all day.

Believe this: if the end is really coming,
you won’t hear marching feet or feel the drumming.
Defeat will slip in silent, like a thief.
Your struggle will be pointless and kept brief.

Remember that you asked for this convenience:
demanding automation of all things,
expecting everything be had for free.

Forgive the mindless drones; they know no lenience,
nor any song except the one they sing.
You know the words: we wrote them, you and me.

01 JUN 2017

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Call It Madness: mad song

You gawk and call it madness,
a sickness that afflicts
  the weak of mind,
  the poor, the kind;
by gods, you’re such a prick.

You practice looking sideways,
avoiding the fool’s eyes:
  a damning mirror,
  where you see clearer
your own decay and sad demise.

You laugh and offer insult,
never a helping hand.
  Why bother trying?
  If purged by dying,
so much improved is noble man.

You ferment malice with no reason;
no one is truly mad.
  What’s real takes practice,
  beyond mere praxis,
what’s done and been had.

Your own mind wavers
from sane to madness:
  one minute’s level,
  the next, the Devil.
A shallow life of mostly sadness.

6 APR 2017

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Let Loose: hir a thoddaid

Let loose the chains that bind you to the past;
though they restrict, they cannot hold you fast.
The future is not set; no die is cast.
Whatever plans and schemes you make, don’t last;
tomorrow’s rain and sun mind no forecast.
What is to come, will come, no matter what;
a shut door cannot slow storms so vast.

29 MAR 2017

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Not Those Kind of Blues: blues sonnet

There is no need to holler or to shout,
no need to raise a holler shouting out;
those ain’t the kind of blues I’m talking ‘bout.

The world is in a worry, sure enough,
the world is full of worry, sure enough;
if you don’t like it, man, that there’s just tough.

Ain’t nothing much to say, and less to do,
not all that much to say, nothing to do,
won’t make a difference down at me and you.

Don’t make commotion, sure don’t raise your head,
make no commotion, better bow your head;
might raise it up and find it lopped off, dead.

When darkness lies so heavy near the ground,
sure ain’t the time to think you’ll stick around.

19 JAN 2017

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I Think Therefore

I think; therefore I am
whatever in here gives a damn
and whatever lays inside the lines
that separate me from my mind.

I think; therefore I am,
at least for that brief moment’s span
until I stop and think again
and I am not what I was then.

I think; therefore I am
what separates me, what great plan
lies beyond me? Who can say?
Not sure it matters, anyway.

I think; therefore I am:
What a self-important scam!
Long before that first idea,
there was something less, still me.

I think; therefore I am
whatever out there gives a damn
that I choose to shut up tight
and imagine gives out light.

12 DEC 2016

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