Your first breath at dawn
is not the same as the next;
light and air seep in.
How does the eye gain focus?
All illusion is chaos.
The first thing you see
when you choose to close your eyes
is an exhaled breath.
How do you know it is there?
Each summer follows a spring.
A first impression
lasts longer than the last one;
time is relative.
How do you keep it captive?
Once snow melts, it is water.
10 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
Why do we seek something beyond?
The morning sun comes up without our permission,
and warms us in spite of ourselves.
Why do we want to live forever?
The eye of the needle doesn’t count
the lengths of thread that pass through it.
Why do we want an answer?
The stars fade as the sky brightens,
their shining simply hidden by a closer light.
Why do we refuse the answer?
While the fire is burning, it is neither wood nor ash;
enjoy the moment’s warmth.
09 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
What is the point? A blue flower opens.
Who sees a flower? The sky is cloudless.
Where are we going? A wave tickles the sand.
Who feels the current? The wind tastes salty.
Why do we not know? A butterfly passes.
Who sees tomorrow? The moment is endless.
09 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
Haters gonna hate; what else can they do?
Once you choose hate, other options fall through.
What other room is left inside of you
when all your passion, whether red or blue,
is given to your foes, who then control
your very soul? You know that is true.
Haters cannot love; how could that be so,
when only bitterness and violence grow
where there was once a heart? And even though
you weep and laugh and smile, it’s all for show:
a pantomime of living, not alive,
an unforgiving wasteland of woe.
05 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
Poetry does not need to be pretty.
It is a distillation of images, of ideas,
to their primary essence.
Poetry is not about cleverness,
although you have to smart to use it well.
Maybe not book-smart,
but your eyes need to see the world
as it is, as it could be, and as it was:
and each in the other two.
Some say it’s about the show, not tell,
but showing someone a sheet of music
isn’t about what it looks like
on the printed page.
There are rules you need to know, sometimes,
that can serve as prison bars,
or a box spring.
Poetry does not need to “make” sense.
It is for the senses.
It should move you
as if you were a dancer,
and the song
was the only thing in the world
stuck with you in the amber of time.
05 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
There is far too much bullshit in the world:
we spent our time so frivolously, in vain,
imagining the great flag we’ve unfurled
will leave the battlefield whole and unstained,
its edges still unraveled, pure, uncurled,
and with it, all our honor, in the main,
left un-besmirched. Our enemies, those churls,
will die in ignobility and pain.
And yet, what we replace and name the good,
is it all that much better, in the end?
For power does as power thinks it should,
and often fears both enemy and friend.
No matter what we will or try or would,
can our philosophy learn how to bend
or shape the world completely? If it could,
we would need no great army to defend
our bullshit. We could spread it on the fields,
and share with everyone what fruits it yields.
05 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
Today’s Krishnamurti-inspired question: is evil the ultimate result or end-game of a gradual reduction in good, or is evil the ultimate result of a gradual reduction in evil, the end being a state in which good or evil is absolutely and only itself, being absolutely absent from the other?
Are they in fact (or perhaps only in perception) just two ends of the same stick, or two separate conditions from which neither can ever arise? If that’s the case, since most believe that something cannot come from nothing, i.e., unless there is a causeless cause somewhere, whether divine or otherwise pre-existing, where are the seeds of either found in the first place?
Is the answer that neither exists in the absolute? Or is the question, “Is there really an absolute at all?”
If that’s the case, since nothing that is not absolute can possibly ever recognize or understand the absolute, does any absolute – like perfect, ever, never, always, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, etc. – actually exist anywhere outside our limited, non-absolute minds? Just because we want to believe in something larger, grander, more permanent, or at least slightly more purposeful and directed than our own miserable, small, petty, useless, and mostly very mundane existence, doesn’t make it so.
If there IS an absolute, whether it exists only in our minds or not, isn’t choosing one end of the stick versus the other always the wrong choice?
And how would you know, unless you know? And if you know, how could it be absolute?
04 Jun 2025
© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
