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Tag: death

Uncertain Eternity: bref double

Published on April 24, 2025

Pretend we will not meet again on some bright future shore;
once they are gone, the things we love are gone forever more.
But then again, there is no me to miss them when they go;
I likewise will just disappear at some point, even though

I’d like to think eternal thoughts, and in some future, know
the secrets of the universe, and say, “I told you so.”
My energy may linger on beyond this mortal coil,
but there is nothing past the grave except some worms and soil.

Quite honestly, that is enough; one life is enough time
to figure out just who I am. The pressure is sublime,
but keeps me honest, truth be told, and there’s some good in that.
More, and I’d be self-satisfied, and grow lazy and fat.

What would you do with endless time, nothing to figure out?
Not much more than we’re doing now, of that there is no doubt.

23 APR 2025

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Too Fast, Too Young

Published on April 19, 2025

When people talk about all the celebrity deaths at age 28, it’s always to ask, “Why did they die so young?”. But as these folks occur among your own peer group, your perspective changes.

In my own case, I find myself asking, whenever reflecting back on it, “What did I do to live so much longer?”

What would [great deceased artist] sound or look like or talk about if they were still alive today? Imagine what you could do at 28 and pretend you could still do it the same way today. What would THAT look like? Wouldn’t you start to figure at that point that you’d given a lot already, and didn’t feel it absolutely necessary to pull it out of mothballs and get a few dollars for it?

You say, well, there’s all kinds of folks out there who are your age and older who still seem to be living an authentic experience and sharing it in some way with millions of other people. Lots of artists who influenced you growing up that are still around and making it happen.

And I say, well, they all lived past 28 too. Everybody’s got to live their own life or someone else’s. And everyone one of them is different. Except for one thing: we all survived our Saturn return. And we survived by changing something in ourselves. Not the same thing, of course, but something.

If we can get past that, then we can think on what I actually wanted to talk about.

When I ask the question, “What did I do to live so much longer?”, what I really mean is something completely different. What I should have said, and what I was really thinking at the time, was “How did I actually live longer?”

Did I just give up sooner? Did I not have the inner drive to make a bigger or better impression? Was it just never in the cards? Or was I really just afraid: scared of producing the frequencies that would destroy the record player? Does any of that really matter? Then, or Now?

The answer is, “I don’t know.“

The path is where you have your feet. You don’t have a map, because you are the territory. All you do is keep moving forward. Many years ago I wrote the line, “The path I’m on doesn’t have a name. It’s not done yet.”

I haven’t wasted 38 years since just worrying about that. There are too many much more important minutes to consider and live in right here and now.

You can’t worry about how you’ll get through the next five minutes. You already have.

And here we are. Still standing. Still here. With most of ourselves left.

What now?

20 Apr 2025

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Birth and Death

Published on April 1, 2025

I have nothing to say, and I am saying it. That is poetry. – 13 Words, John Cage

Where does it begin? What is “it”? What is a “beginning”? If you’re going to plumb the depths of the universe and try to come up with a way to explain each and every thing from sea to shining sea, you really have start with a definition of terms. Right?

If you subscribe to the idea of cause and effect, every cause is an effect, and every effect is a cause. Like the old mythological riddle goes, “it’s turtles, all the way down.” There is no beginning and no end – just an endless collection of here and now’s that meet as two ends of a myriad of sticks. And you can’t pick up one end of a stick without also picking up the other end. Every birth has bury it in.

So if you’re going to write something like an autobiography, where does it actually start? With your conception or your live birth? Or does it start with the energy that fuels you, that fueled your parents and their parents, that is simply passed on from generation to generation in one form or another without pause or ceasing? How could you become what you became at birth without whatever your parents were at that time or any previous time in their existence? They didn’t get to where you became a thing just by flipping on a switch, any more than you got to be 50 or 60 years old by blinking your eyes at age 5 and wishing you were a grown-up.

Can you explain the fact that you’re not the same person you were in elementary school using some exact science, or is there invariably (and perhaps unfortunately) no small degree of magic involved? How much mumbo-jumbo is actually required to explain the universe, after all – and doesn’t that inclusion automatically defeat the purpose of rational explanation?

31 MAR 2025

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Let’s Toast: stave

Published on June 5, 2017

It makes no sense to soldier on;
the dusk looks so much like the dawn
that even should the sun eclipse
there is no cause to do backflips
or celebrate the coming day.
But come, let’s toast life, anyway!

Each day begins and ends the same;
with no specific cause to blame
except that living tends to drone
and carry on. You’re born alone,
and by exception find your way.
But come, let’s toast life, anyway!

You buy and sell each moment’s art;
it can’t survive, if split apart
from what creates it, the bruised whole
that struggles to maintain control
and tolerate each passing day.
But come, let’s toast life, anyway!

In vain, we seek to understand;
inventing myths, and gods, and man,
as if we had creative strength
except to measure, width and length,
the box we’ll fill, returned to clay.
But come, let’s toast life, anyway!

What is the point of this charade?
Just prancing horses, on parade,
whose blinders lead just straight ahead
and walk until they fall down dead.
We know this, but walk night and day.
But come, let’s toast life, anyway!

05 JUN 2017

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I Cannot Speak: rondeau

Published on May 4, 2017

I cannot speak of what I’ve seen:
the smell of bleach is on those scenes,
and faintly, on each memory’s breath,
a subtle scent of loss and death,
with hints of joy and hope between.

I hear the dripping fat, I dream
of crackles in the kerosene
that sizzle ’til there’s nothing left;
I cannot speak.

I stand aside, and watch, and lean
a while. I wait as the new green
begins to sprout amidst this death;
a garden is a grave, reset,
that in each’s season prayer and sweat
writes of the sacred and obscene
I cannot speak.

04 MAY 2017

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Blank Canvas: kyrielle

Published on March 31, 2017

Believe it: in a moment’s time,
what plans you’ve made can all unwind
and with a splash of turpentine
your canvas is again a blank.

No matter the expense and time
in pigment, brushes, sweat and wine,
no other act is as sublime:
your canvas is again a blank.

Perhaps it’s opportunity:
to start again, to disagree
with first intent, to be set free.
Your canvas is again a blank.

Or maybe just a timely prick;
ego’s balloon deflates so quick.
True art employs such dastard tricks:
your canvas is again a blank.

The simple blinking of an eye,
and one’s whole lifetime flashes by
before an ounce of paint is dry,
your canvas is again a blank.

The painting is your legacy,
but won’t reflect the means, you see,
only the end is guaranteed:
your canvas is again a blank.

31 MAR 2017

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