Tag: understanding

Tasters’ Choice

Published on April 5, 2025

A light bulb glows because it’s fighting the power coursing through it. The harder it struggles, the brighter the illumination.

That’s the real magic of resistance. You don’t dispel shadows until you can taste the dark, and despite how delicious and overwhelmingly soothing, how easily it intoxicates your mind and makes you forget the sun even exists, you choose to spit it out.

We’re taught from birth to comply, to learn and appreciate certain boundaries. The limits of good taste, of honest work, of propriety and grace. At the same time, we’re shown an ideal – whatever its name or what it looks like, it’s a something that is boundless, limitless, usually invisible, and absolutely beyond the reach of cause and effect. It is supernatural, divine, almighty because it transcends beginning – and therefore, knows no end.

Of course, that makes it an illusion. That makes us yearn for something beyond space, past time, out in the great chasm of nothing, a part of ourselves that is like the thing we made up and have no proof has, does, will, or could possibly exist.

Permanence. As if that kind of power, if we had it even for a split second, is something we could wield, touch, use, or even comprehend. Look around you. This too shall pass. Mountains crumble, dynasties topple, governments and institutions fall into dust and rubble. Even a diamond, once a dinosaur trapped in an aspic of tar, compressed in the earth to an anthracite, then squeezed even further into a shiny piece of glass, is on its way elsewhere. There are no destinations, only journeys.

And no kind of travel is without hardship. That’s one of the reasons it’s so essential to experience places other than the one in which you were born, that safe cocoon that shields you, like an insulating sheath.

Hardship is the beginning of resistance. It is necessary for growth, for compassion, for understanding our interdependence.

Thinking creates the spark. You are the kindling. What are you saving that fuel for?

05 APR 2025

Leave a Comment

Whatever Works: ghazal

Published on March 23, 2017

To say positive thinking breeds success
is to a point the truth – well, more or less.

Reality, however, would suggest
what matters more is really openness:

acceptance of what comes as being blessed
with more experience and evidence

that life provides in both pleasure and stress
instructions for achieving happiness;

that seeing plus and minus makes complex
equations of existence that compress

the ebb and flow of being to a test,
a pass or fail we struggle through, at best.

Far better, say the sages, east and west,
to use whatever works, and leave the rest.

23 MAR 2017

Leave a Comment

Freedom of Speech

Published on April 15, 2013

Americans talk loud and often
of their right to speak:
a pillar of democracy
that gives voice to the weak
as well as strong, in equal shares,
so each may truly taste
of freedom’s sweet, delicious fruit
and none will go to waste.

And yet, a legal right to speak
is often not enough;
reality suggests in action
such talk can be tough.
The truth is, outside one’s own home,
and often even there,
we never say just what we want –
we could, but do not dare

to say the speech that we would speak,
if we felt confident
that we could trust those listening
to grasp at what we meant
with honest ears and open hearts
that tried to understand
despite their wish to disagree
or cut us where we stand.

Alas, we all too often hide
behind our words, instead;
encouraging “just bite your tongue
and never lose your head,
take heed of what your friends will think;
the walls have ears, beware!
They’ll use your words against you
if you loose them in the air.”

But truth is not in comfort zones;
it lies somewhere outside
the social structure we impose
to justify our pride
that we are somehow civilized
and will not cause a scene,
regardless of the pain it costs
to forget what it means

when you are truly free to speak,
your voice heard loud and clear,
to cut through the hypocrisy
without regret or fear,
and truly share as equals
in a strength that won’t decay
until we open up our mouths
and find nothing to say.

15 APR 2013

Leave a Comment

Firm Foundation

Published on January 17, 2006

A note to whom it may concern:
fortunes may change, and tables turn,
adversity may try and get you down.
The world is often hard and cruel,
it makes the wisest men just fools,
and fashions from its gold a thorny crown.

The more you try to get ahead
The more you find yourself misled
by summer confidants and so-called friends;
and when your health and money’s gone,
the bread and circuses move on.
There’s only one thing on which to depend:

Build your house on a firm foundation,
look for rock buried under the sand,
find a place for your roots right beneath your old boots,
and connect to the place where you stand.
It will improve your whole situation
though in ways you might not understand;
’cause the universe works in mysterious ways
and fate laughs at those who make big plans.
Let your word be the code that you live by,
let your hand lend itself where there’s need;
and despite of the strife that comes throughout this life
You’ll have true happiness guaranteed.

A note to whom it may affect:
misfortune comes, and through neglect
the strongest love may turn to bitter hate.
The world is strange and can be wild,
it turns a man into a child
who doesn’t grow up until it’s too late.

The more you try to find your way
The more you’re tempted, led astray
by soft illusions that too soon are gone,
and then your life has come and went.
Be sure your time is more well spent;
invest in something you can depend on:

16 JAN 2006

Leave a Comment

The Politics of Deconstruction

Published on April 30, 2005

A moment, more or less, of deconstruction:
by which I mean to delve into the soul
that strives to separate life from destruction
and yet maintain some semblance of the whole,
to claim by sacred right the single kernel,
the isolated truth-soaked grain of sand
that by its presence negates the infernal
in concrete terms all can understand.

It does not matter what stated intention
the writer may have claimed explained their work.
Creative types are just show and pretension;
in equal parts: saint, sinner, genius, jerk.
Believe me, I have far more poignant insight
by virtue of not wasting any time
in chasing muses past the hour of midnight
to be rewarded by one simple rhyme.

Besides, too many think themselves creative
and squander precious time lost in that haze.
The world needs workers, not more contemplatives,
who pass up duty just to navel gaze.
We need poetry, ’tis true, but with some guidance:
interpretations that have been approved,
that faced with doubt and free will, choose avoidance
and recommend such options be removed.

It only takes a moment’s intervention
to steer a young and growing mind astray;
remember, cure is harder than prevention,
so put those blinders on without delay.
Besides, it only starts with art and culture;
are politics … religion … far behind?
Trust me, do you want, hanging like a vulture,
someone with vision checking your design?

We deconstruct to make it seem like science,
instead of art or magic, sacred stuff
that at its core encourages defiance
and shows our plans for what they are, a bluff.
In pieces, the world fits into our puzzle,
and none can see the holes we’ve yet to fill.
With so-called education as a muzzle,
we can do what we want, and always will.

30 APR 2005

Leave a Comment

An End to Parables

Published on January 24, 2005

I’ve spent a life in parables,
disguising my ideas
in costumes and strange metaphors
deliberately unclear

and so perhaps convinced the world
that I’m a harmless quack,
imagining just chimeras
with no spine in their backs.

But recently, while looking through
and sorting sundry stuff,
I’ve started thinking parables
are just not clear enough.

So I’ve decided to speak plainly,
well, at least plain as I can,
and for a while, pretend that I’m
a new idea man.

Besides, it seems at present
the world needs of bit of this;
so I beg your indulgence,
and hope you won’t find amiss

the fact that I’ll be writing things
to stretch your world, and mine —
and perhaps we together
can build a new paradigm.

24 JAN 2005

Leave a Comment

Common Grounds: a forensics poem

Published on April 15, 2004

“The one thing I want is to be understood,”
she yelled as she slammed the door. I yelled back, “Good!”
Now looking in hindsight, I know that I should
have tried to defuse the melee, if I could.

But knowing is one thing, and doing is tough,
so against the door, I said, “Not good enough!
You claim independence until things get rough,
and then want help fixing things. I say, get stuffed!”

She opened the door a crack, threw out a plate,
and screamed, “Your compassion is misplaced, and late!
I don’t want to argue, or start a debate,
but frankly, your attitude is second rate.”

With that, I was fuming, and righteously so.
I picked up the car keys and quipped, “Well, you know,
I’ll leave the door open wide after I go.
Just pack up your suitcase with all of your clothes,

your angst-ridden CDs, your Sylvia Plath…”
And she answered, “And the rest, I’ll take my half!
I’ve suffered your breathing and miserable laugh;
that’s worth pain and suffering, you worthless calf!”

And so, she left shortly thereafter for keeps,
assisted by Valium and two Mohawked creeps.
The last thing she said was, “you sowed, now you reap.”
And I got my life back, on the whole, quite cheap.

15 APR 2004

Leave a Comment