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Tag: purpose

The Write to Read: caudate sonnet

Published on April 28, 2025

What good to write when so few have the time
to do much more than nod and swipe me gone?
Opinions vary, but to ramble on
without an audience seems too sublime.
Besides, what difference can a few short lines
make when the world needs changing, not anon,
but here and now, before the chance is gone?
The line between much good, and none, is fine.

What matter does it make, ten thousand friends,
when only two or three may even try
to navigate through streams of postured talk
that lives for but a moment, then it ends,
before it has a chance to qualify
as something just more useful than a rock?

You read me? I’m in shock.

It does me good to think of you out there,
afloat in that great ether realm, somewhere;
I write on, since you care.

Together, let us seek some peace of mind;
there is no limit to what we can find.

28 APR 2025

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Your Feet Know the Way: benison

Published on April 21, 2025

Your path begins there at your feet;
the first move is the hardest one.
Until the last step is complete
you will not know the task is done.

Along the way, you’ll see the world;
you’ll wonder why, and how, and when,
and sift through miles of sand, and pearls,
each whole day through, and then again.

What answers will you seek, or find,
no one else knows. They are your own.
If you will learn, or lose your mind,
depends on you and you alone.

You have a choice, with every breath:
to love or hate, to lose or gain,
to see rebirth in every death,
to seek out joy or dwell on pain.

May you find what you need to do
to build more bridges where you can,
so that when your time here is through
you don’t regret taking a stand.

Your path begins right here and now;
your feet already know the way.
You need not wonder where, or how,
but only when: and that’s today.

21 APR 2025

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These Three Things: triad

Published on June 7, 2017

On these three things the world depends:
life purpose, effort and one’s friends.

The first provides velocity:
forward motion, destiny.
The second supplements one’s sails
when wind and tide desist or fail.

The third reminds us to respect
those in the world whose paths connect
with our own journey, for a while,
and share our sorrows and our smiles.

Without these things, the world is flat;
and our adventure, nothing that
is worth much. Neither time nor health
is substitute for this true wealth.

07 JUN 2017

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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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Bargain debasement

Published on July 14, 2010
Always thought that I would be 
important to humanity; 
save the world and all that kind of stuff. 
And if the end came, when it did, 
I’d be right in the middle of it 
Talking loud and acting kinda tough. 
But that was then, and this is now, 
and standing here at last, somehow, 
it doesn’t seem to matter any more: 
The high road’s seemed to wash away 
(it wasn’t that great anyway) 
and I’m not all that keen on keeping score. 
Kings and pawns are all the same. 
Nobody wins, it’s not a game; 
No trophy case, no “win one for the team”. 
And any kind of evidence 
That any of it makes much sense 
Is either mild psychosis or a dream. 
So let the world come crashing down, 
right now, while I am still around; 
I knew that I would witness the demise. 
And if it starts right down the block 
I wouldn’t be at all too shocked; 
I’ve met the perpetrators on both sides. 
And when it’s over, what is left 
to steal, or burn, or somehow wreck, 
won’t tremble at the mention of my name, 
but more than likely, for a sec, 
will just breathe deep and then reflect: 
the more things change, the more they stay the same. 
JUL 14 2010
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What good is art

Published on May 16, 2005

What good is art if it does not instruct,
or for our “better angels” cast new wings
beyond utilitarian design,
reminding us that beauty without form
is doomed, under the sheer weight of itself
to force its rigid framing to collapse?

Art is like all religions, in that all
are but a generation from extinct;
the evolution of a form requires
that it do more than simply change its clothes,
grow gills and fins to swim in altered seas
or learn to hunt new game to feed its young.

What good are schools if they do not provide
a context beyond simple black and white,
and offer views of different paradigms
where parasites are not the food chain’s end?
That corpse is sucked of marrow, and its bones
are far too fragile to host us for long.

The arts are an essential to the whole:
without creative outlet, we are chained
to follow, sullen, on pathways not our own
in search of some elusive, unknown truth
that if found, will be meaningless, or worse,
to our imagination’s limits, dead.

What good is any dogma that insists
on praising uniformity’s facade
while damning the poor souls behind those bars
whose torment is to see outside the cage,
and fed on lies of common brotherhood
to mutate into monsters, thugs, and whores?

True culture does not denigrate the arts
if it intends to do more than survive;
and Beauty, unappreciated, dies,
its empty shell an ugly, barren waste.
What good then is mere rhetoric that claims
some great prize as its end, by any means?

16 May 2005

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