Darkness and Light

Studies in contrast
rarely clarify
what needs most
clarification

When comparison, an obsession
classification a fixation,
polar opposites
attract the most attention

Woven in between
ignored, hardly seen,
details in the daily
(nuancing makes us weary)

Is the idea dramatic
or the idea of dramatic
that resonates?

Coding is different
from Creating
"unity of thought"
although promised,
(sold AND bought)
t'was something
Art never sought

Pride: Of Time and Space

Curious the chasm
possible
within a room
scaled not by distance
but agony
and gloom.

"Heroic"

"For the sake of peace"
"In the name of faith"
"In an act of piety,"
"HE"
"opens the gates"

"Selflesness,"
"Courage,"
"Bravery,"
are all equal parts
of "The Story"

But so is the "Opposition,"
the naysaying "OTHER"

(regardless of what is said,
that is, details are such a bother)

Now that believing depends
largely on the "telling,"
"heroic sacrifice"
notwithstanding
Would it even be heroic
if nobody was watching?

Expression in the Margins: Limited Literates

Freedom is a feeling
expression, thinking.

Neither is dependent
nor excusively
a function of writing.

Our mutual limitation:
I needed to write it down
to say it.

My words fell in line
and you followed to get it.

Grammatical Afterthought

By coalition
of throat
and tongue
at first
cacophony
of vibration,
later,
proper
accent,
intonation,
diction,

Speech
was born
and wanted
more.

Sound expressed
approximately
the intended
(more or less)
but eventually
discovered
it could
evoke,
even provoke.

Perfecting
manipulation,
marvelling at
its own creation,
it made
a leap back
to the apparent
forming lines,
arresting thought,
freezing reality
as if
permanently
symbolic.

War of Wor(l)ds

"The medium is the message."

Marshall Mc Luhan, 1967

Holy man
Speaks of peace
Enlivens
deepest hate.

Erudite
Unworldly wise
seeks merely
to advise
through soulful
thought
(or as is claimed)
in scholar's tone
not to preach
upon throne
but successfully
lays the bait.

Woeful
he mourns
the chasm
Fury of the irate
Enlightenment
and reason
adorn the costume
that is Faith.

Decaffeinated (7 days and counting)

Lacking
the buzz
my body seems intent
on relaxing
which i dread
as idleness,
lack of alertness,
numbness,
but
the irony
seems to be
my other senses
are free.

I hear other people's voices
children's tiny, little noises
distant traffic
mothers in their daily panic
conversations around me
all of a sudden
forced outside my thoughts
I feel the sun stinging
and I am exactly
where I am: outside

The Age of Impersonal

(Ode to the Television Generation)

The search
for self
is wholly
external,
and sense
of belonging
in dollars
and cents.

Often equating
communication
with the device,
in it, we look
deep
into the mirror,
ending up
seeing only
with its own eyes.

Freedom of Thought

Before the myth gets started
before a story is told
around the time when experience
meets impression
but
before they congeal
into a hardened mass -
into unshakeable faith
into irefutable truth
is around the time
when thought
becomes a possibility
a fleeting moment
a dream
unfamiliar,
freedom

Survivor

This war
like the others
isn't new
and
it isn't
a surprise

Your amazement
at my choice
amuses me, this
puzzles you in turn

I learned that war
is never new
It is a given
although
mistaking silence
for peace
is common enough

Its really
rather simple
than you perhaps
care to admit

Which war
would you
rather be in?

If I get shot here
it won't be because
I am a target
Neither am I
obliged to fight

In between
this raging conflict
there is still
room enough
for me to live

If eitherway death
is a possibility,
and survival
a game of chance

I'd rather live
before I die.

Inward in word

"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us."

Marshall Mac Luhan

Inside
there is no
purple sky
dappled clouds
yellow beams
and dazzling white
no crackling
sounds
or insects chirping
no humming
buzzing
symphony playing

How do we ever
endure
the abstract
as if
it was pure?

The letters
I use
to spell
the colors
and
the sound
are the same tools
we use
with precision
(of the clinician)
to think
as if
we do not feel.

Freedom as thought

"To think and to be fully alive are the same."

Hannah Arendt

Pauses
are rare down
the well-beaten path

Details
go unoticed
the sounds
drowned out by
silence
of overfamliarity
the comfort
and safety
of the well-beaten path
though only
imaginary
the illusion works
as it should
shielded
from worry

We feel
no pain
outside that
of our own

Centers in the Margins

Speech
as sound
and
nothing else
takes little
to produce

costing
less
than what
it would
to enable
thoughts original

proper elocution
aims gain
and
not much else

a tongue
well trained
is able
sufficiently
to resemble
animate brain
of possibly,
people

Patriot Acts

- for Aaron

Simpler then.
No longer crown
but country
territorial
marking
property.

Somehow
complicated
now.
A notion
"freedom"
changed
the story.

Democracy
purportedly
knows not
an "other"
still Patriots
insist.

Difference
often converging
in sex, color of skin
and money.

Odder still
Patriotism
makes
a comeback
worn
like a hat
eaten
like a doughnut.

Ironically
the most
patriotic act
is to purchase,
buy,
and transact.

punk poets

written words
so banal
as to provoke
emotion
yet often
too exclusive
to be common

privileged
to the point
of mass production

monopolized scripts
point it straight
to oblivion

once in a while
punks emerge
waxing lyrical
to the tune
of the politically
personal

A Prior Problem

nothing goes
without
saying
not even
"nothingness"

even merely
saying
something
or
anything
ends up
meaning
something else
to
someone
or
another
or
simply
nothing
at all

Mean Girls

From
early on
little girls
learn
the price

affection
is paid for
in
hooks
and
talons

most
"friendships"
temporary
alliances
among girls
"necessary"

to get
the "other"
girl out
of the way

boys make wars
but
girls live it,
wage it,
and
all the while,
deny it

is powerlesness
the motivation?
is meanness
of spirit
an instinct?
or
a defense reaction?

Unpopular Democracy

Liberation
is never
a mutual
equation

democracy
hardly
egalitarian

louder voices
always
drown out
feeble ones

but
the biggest
joke
still is
the vote

to have
the freedom
to choose
but not
make
the decision

My Faith: An Argument

Faith
is
not
instruction,
neither
code
nor
symbol

not all
ritual
spiritual

hesitation
plauges
meditation

of saints
who
lived
to
die

our minds
we lost
somewhere
between

the break-up
of
body
and
soul

Instead
I argue:
Faith is
a relation
a compassionate
reaction

Meaning
is in
the looking
and not
the sign

Humanity
is elemental
to
the divine

Edible Principle

Yours
are
mighty messages
giant phrases
I am
supposed
to seek
protection
from harm

thunder
and
bellow
scaring
every fellow

they
who harm me
by believing
they
could buy
me

they
lorded over
me
you said
fumbling fools
and
drunken idiots
who had
to pay
to
get laid

I lost all
dignity
you said
and
I wondered
how
fools and idiots
never did

I listen
your shiny principles
how I wish
they could be
warmer
to the bitter
cold
of the heart,
the soul,
the pit
of my stomach

The End of a Notion

Once worthy
of oration,

my nation
is now

just
a station

a temporal location
a minimum relation

memories movable
just as
familial connection.

Agony of a Gnostic

It makes no sense
all those symbols
rituals
gone awry

why take
a blessing
from someone
unworthy?

his hands are dirty
by association

his mind
even dirtier
through confession

Compassion knows
no native soil
it sprouts
in unlikely
potholes
and
grows
in between
barren rock

amid
the stoic faces
of saints

in the blank
stares
of devotees

perhaps
not nurtured
but
chanced upon