Burnt cinnamon and candle wax,
the surface of sandpaper and a tack,
a bitter hint of lemon peel
chased with a water back.
The tinkle of a shattered glass,
the supple strength of silk,
an echo of a footstep
and a hint of soured milk.
A new bouquet of flowers,
the barking of a hound,
cold shimmer of a moonbeam,
the scent of fresh-plowed ground.
17 APR 2014
“The problem,” he said, “with making life so easy, particularly for the young adult, is two-fold. First, a life of leisure without significant responsibility or strife is bound to result in an attitude of mere idolent malaise — which of course is far from intense enough to serve as the impetus for any angst-ridden revolution or major shift in philosophy.”
“Secondly, the parents of such youngsters, who must deal with the nebulously undefined childish and ultimately selfish agendas resulting from their offspring’s lack of needful action, are likewise never taxed, insofar as their abilities to deal with REAL paradigm shifts are concerned. As a result, they become weak and flimsy shadows of their potential selves, and are woefully unequipped to counter the nefarious attacks of those unscrupulous individuals (and their attendant organizations, religions, governments and so on) who would shape the moral fiber of their children so that future generations will not even be aware, let alone care, that the world does not belong to them, or that they have been forced to in effect pay rent on their own bodies to afford the luxury of being alive with absolutely no free will whatsoever.”
“What was once adolescence,” he continued, “I therefore think would be better off termed ‘addled essence.’ It is at this critical stage that those in power first successfully attempt to convince people that they are in fact powerless, hopeless and witless — by offering them courses in empowerment, positive thinking and entertainment.”
“They are like the young elephant, who when relatively weak and small is attached, via a lightweight chain and metal hoop around their leg, to a stake in the ground. At that young age, no matter how they try, they cannot free themselves. After a time, they give up trying. As a result, even when they are fully grown and could easily pull out the stake and/or break the chain simply by lifting their enormous foot a matter of inches, they can be controlled, and do not attempt to escape, when tethered in this fashion.”
I wonder at the most auspicious times
that by some random system are proclaimed
and why those correspondences we find
ourselves at odds with should take all the blame
The moon, for instance, in its wane and wax;
The seasons, as they go and come again;
The numerals assigned like colored tacks
to calendars devised by human brains,
As if in the whole world mankind’s belief
about the way the universe is made
means anything at all to a small leaf
or changes how it perceives light and shade.
I wonder how the world devoid of man
survived through countless eons and evolved
without the logic only we command,
and managed, with its riddles yet unsolved.
I ask the mockingbird to state its case
for choosing the best moment to proceed,
and swear I see a smile upon its face
that seems to say, “Why don’t you learn to read
a book that needs no glossy title page,
that promises no esoteric lore,
that will not guarantee you center stage,
but may instruct you nonetheless, in more
than what you think important, or germaine?
What book, you ask, contains such heady stuff?
The book of life, that you seem to distain;
but against which, your knowledge is mere fluff.”
I wonder at the most auspicious times
that by some special school are found and named.
It is no wonder that we act so blind.
That we think we have knowledge is to blame.
17 AUG 2004
Following the trip trap tripe of the day
With a mentholated cigarette and a soda
Letting the ringing in my ears
From endless hours in conference calls
Die dammit die so slowly as the night settles
Raindrops in my ears, the leaky drainpipe sputters
Underneath it still the steady hum of streets
And the kill rebirth kill murmur of central air
The telephone sits like a spent whore
Laying hot in its cradle recharging its battery
And I write this nonsense
Having spent the afternoon editing
Seventeen lines of text
Four hundred lines of code
With no energy left to modify this poem.
I’m writing these things down so that I’ll remember them; they’re not really much of a message or anything cohesive, so be warned, I guess.
Everything that IS is unique.
Each raindrop, snowflake, each moment, each breath.
No two are alike.
Each person, each word spoken.
Each scar left on the back of a troubled child by an overzealous and frustrated father by a worn leather belt.
Each curse shouted in anger, each hurtful thing said that can’t be taken back.
Each smile offered to a frazzled Walgreen’s clerk at 7:00 a.m. on a Monday morning.
Each peal of laughter or shrieking, squealing scream from a child running from a confused bumblebee.
None are duplicated or mirrored in any other thing.
Everything is of itself complete, unalloyed and distinct.
So often we heard it said at the end of a life that “they didn’t really do much of anything”, or “he didn’t accomplish much” or “she doesn’t leave anything behind.” How unperceptive of us. Considering the above, how is that possible?
Each unfinished opera, half-completed novella, unheard song, unread poem, unshared kiss.
Perhaps it is a Zen notion, but perhaps “sitting, doing nothing” is really doing Nothing. A Nothing of Great Importance. A very important collection of nothings that together comprise the sum total of an existence in which the achievement is merely to exist, to the fullest extent possible, leaving nothing tangible or inheritable (or taxable) that the world hordes and counts as wealth.
There is a difference between self sacrifice and the sacrifice of self.
In a society where the self is sacrificed, where the goal is to become a faceless automaton, working behind a desk or machine wearing the uniform of one’s profession, discussing the books that everyone is assumed to have read, talking about the people that everyone is supposed to be interested in, having the hobbies that are acceptable for well-adjusted, normal people, does self-sacrifice have any real meaning? What does it mean to give of oneself, to put someone else before one’s self, if the self has been sacrificed to the safety of the mass and no longer has an individual entity or existence?
Upon my tombstone, I’d like to have written: This marker commemorates a man who did nothing of great importance. And a lot of it. And to those who loved him, who knew him, that nothing was very important indeed.
May the breath each of us enjoy in this next moment be as unique as the one before it, and as strange and unlike the one following it as the moment after twilight is to the last moment of the sunlit day.
Today’s random thought — making modification to the title of an existing work of literature and using that as the basis for writing my own novel.
For example, the novel Incense and Insensibility could be the Fictional account of how a group of hippies attempted to change the world, but wound up with second mortgages, stock in Microsoft and SUVs. The heroine would be of course named Emma or something like that.
So undone by wishing, though its hiding shore, I saw
No there are work for whom has love, so doing one should not a madman’s fate!
As to find it all of the
Most men come across my are a figure in the things heart’s wisdom,
Existence is the sky that where pulls itself in particular and bright and heard, in fact, or that you’d tried to blur
Away
On a sense of the surface: where I don’t want to birds,
You for the washing of very the map there’s a way these words.
Only the surface where it better poet and clear, and
Nowhere, in the bliss this or that few can see smiling, would look at the plate.
I waited
On
Having borrowed a shadow place and also does so much
For this information, it in the just images: spirit for interpretation where it: took only one’s own religion to fool in images; just one should not made by narrow throated, whiney, high pitched singing,
but on the road to other believe that moon’s
Full state: and cursed and drink
Deep and sound: one should not made by the windswept wet hot
Night.
With light of me, that looks like a lost.
14 JUL 2003
Encountered at LJ user arisbe’s place … much like the Burroughs Cut-Up Generator found elsewhere on the ‘Net, but this one doesn’t interject Burrough’s words into your own, simply cuts up your journal entries and combines them in random ways. You can refresh and it gives you different things…quite interesting, and in fact, if you subscribe to Burroughs’ notion, a very accurate mirror of your inner most thoughts.
