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Tag: debts

New myths are required

Published on June 9, 2005

There’s just so much that you can take
as karmic payment for mistakes
before you start to wonder and
imagine that you understand
the link from cause to each effect:
that every action or neglect
results in a changed universe
that’s neither better, nor is worse,
but different, needing different acts,
new myths to organize the facts,
revised agendas, maps and tools,
new visions, sages, holy fools,
and more important than the rest,
new meanings for both cursed and blessed.

On faith, we take for granted most
of our advantages, and coast
through life without imagining
much beyond what each new day brings,
and fail, too often, to observe
that most get just what they deserve,
or at least, just what their belief
embraces: joy, bliss, sorrow, grief.
Through all the trials, tests and strife
we must accept, to accept life,
one thing remains: those who feel blessed
are obligated to the rest.
To claim dominion of some kind
is to expect that dumb and blind
the world will simply bow and serve,
a sad fate that nothing deserves.

09 JUN 2005

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Friday the Thirteenth

Published on May 13, 2005

Are you afraid the universe
might some be conspiring,
that the unseen, neglected soul
of the whole world is tiring

of folks whose hands say gimme
while their mouths say much obliged,
all the while with backs too stiff
to bend an inch in thanks? Such pride.

Are you afraid that karma comes
in ways you don’t expect,
that punity is due for all those years
spent in neglect

of forces beyond your control
that pulse through this world’s veins
despite your bold denial
that such things are, well, insane?

Are you afraid your staunch beliefs
are nothing more than dreams,
put on like a pressed Sunday suit
that’s worn out at the seams

and won’t hide nature’s anger back,
nor give you a free lunch;
be careful now, avoid that crack.
Perhaps it’s just a hunch,

but all your superstition shows
how weak and without pluck
so many seem to be these days.
I say, make your own luck,

or rather, listen in again:
the universe still sings,
and bids you join her in a chorus
with all living things.

Are you afraid the world is closing
in on you, in chase?
Stand still, enjoy the moment,
or it will have been a waste.

13 May 2005

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The Food (for Thought) of the Gods

Published on January 10, 2005

Who decides what lives, what dies,
based on more than the needs of some,
but on what is best for the entire world
so balance can be maintained?

Who thinks they have the right to choose
that some should flourish while others fail,
that their kind is much more essential
and so deserves more space, more food?

The gods of course.

For only the gods act out of concern
for the whole; their own interests are not part
in any way of the actions made.

The point is this:

if you benefit in any way from a decision
to kill or not to kill today;
if you gain more ground, or food, or power
by taking others’ things away,
you’re not a god.

This is not your dominion.
You are not the most auspiciously born.
You are only a small part of the whole.

And if you act as if you’re a god,
without that knowledge,
you will only result in destroying everything.

You will fail.

And you will find excuses for your failure,
like “man is a fallen creature,
bound by sin to make mistakes”
because you don’t really think so —
you think man is a god,
and that the world just doesn’t work right.

Well, it just doesn’t work the way you think it does.

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Parenting 101

Published on December 5, 2004

Parenting teaches, like nothing else did
that you pay for the bullshit you pull as a kid
the invoices rendered by children who ask
for clemency, extended curfews, and cash

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