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oni  Apr 2017
tradeoff
oni Apr 2017
she broke herself open
just to let you in
and all you did was show her
why she shouldnt have
John F McCullagh Dec 2011
We batter our foes
with bomb, shell and shot.
Now Despair walks their streets
And their children do not.
The average Marine
Spends more time at the front
than his grandfather spent
As a World War two grunt.

At home when we travel
We wait in long lines
To be poked and prodded
Even X rayed at times.
At home prices rise
For most essential things
The bankers are  flush
Ben Bernanke’s their king.

As the empire creaks
And grounds to a halt
Will he hyper inflate
or simply default?
Mourn the Republic
For which we once stood
When all food was organic
And we worshiped the rood.

Heed old Ben Franklin
He had vision to see
He warned long ago
What the tradeoff would be.
If they offer you “safety”
in trade for your Liberty.
You will never be safe
for you will never be free
Annie Medosch Jul 2013
the slip of hand
that costs so much
a serrated knife
while making lunch
a pool of blood
seemingly ******
just cutting bread
in response to hunger
I never meant to cut you off
a sandwich for a hand
is the worst tradeoff
Adam Wayne Terry Sep 2015
A man's mind is his height,
his heart is his depth,
A man's mind is his height, his heart is his depth, and his soul spans the distance between.
-
Sometimes I smile to hide the pain, but that's as fake as I get.
-
Patience is built on deep thought and self-restraint.
-
You can take any failure and make it motive to succeed.
-
So many good people die so young. All we can do is carry their care and honor on.
-
Some pain can last a lifetime.
-
We may not always see it, but the sun shines all the time. Sometimes it just gets obscured by the clouds of our everyday lives.
-
I am fortunate to have had a natural inclination to see the silver lining in most situations, but as with everything, there is a tradeoff. Seeing only the good in things can let complacency run amok, allowing too much of the bad be ignored. Another example of what I call The Duality of Existence. Everything has a counterbalance.
-
Appearance is just a surface; true beauty lives beneath the bones. (In the heart and mind.)
-
Show gratitude today instead of regret tomorrow.
-
An affinity that perpetuates to infinity, that's what I seek.
-
Photography is an art of timing and perspective.
-
When you look at the moon looming ~250,000 miles away in the night sky, take a few seconds to notice which direction it's moving. Take from that what you may.
-
Having children does not make you a man, handling your responsibilities does. Going beyond that by helping others to handle theirs makes you a good man. I am a good man.
-
Words of Interest (with meaning):
dithyrambic (passionate);
scintillating (clever);
comburent (blazing);
ecumenical (universal);
edification (illumination).
--
I think like a creative machine, but I feel like a tall leprechaun.
-
Some men just want to watch the world learn.
-
Music is poetry to sound.
-
Reflection deepens your perspective.
-
I can only trust that I won't let me down.
-
I judge distance, not people.
-
I know better than to play with fire, but you burn brighter than any I've ever seen.
-
Where others have the law, religion, or karma, I have a strong conscience. It guides me by what my heart feels and my mind knows is right, which can at times contradict the aforementioned disciplines. The thing is that I have to live with my heart and mind, and both understand that everyone else has to live with theirs too. I am my own discipline, because I could be you.
-
The heart can beat without the brain, but the brain needs the heart to survive.
-
Take nothing for granted and appreciate all you're given.
-
Inaction is an action.
-
The greatest words require the greatest actions to substantiate their meaning.
-
There are more stars in the heavens than there are grains of sand in all the beaches AND deserts on earth. Think about how many grains of sand you can hold in your hand.
-
Hope can be a tenuous attachment.
-
Maturity recognizes that responsibility is not optional.
-
The ratio of humans that confound me to humans that impress me is staggeringly unbalanced.
-
Change is the only constant.
-
Good things come to those who do good things.
-
These words just traveled through your mind in a sequence I designed.
-
The best things in life aren't free, they're freeing.
-
This is a collection of adages and laconic constructs.
Dada Olowo Eyo Jun 2014
Between the ears, between the legs,
Therein lies the ultimate tradeoff,
Follow your heart or the magic stuff,
One or the other, the question begs.
Kurt Philip Behm Oct 2020
I was perfectly happy,
a singular chime

I was perfectly happy,
alone in my mind

I was perfectly happy,
my world underscored

I was perfectly happy,
my feelings secure

I was perfectly happy,
adrift in my world

I was perfectly happy,
no feeling’s unfurled

I was perfectly happy,
till one fateful day

Now misery haunts me
—in love I must stay

(West Philadelphia: June, 2018)
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2019
every friday i get a chance to plug into
a gramaphone, ditch the headphones
blasting into my ears
           at high volume...
  pulverising me to a finite submission
in an infinite space...
crack open a bottle of henry westons'
like some archimedes revisionist
with a cigarette lighter...
    the footie in playing on mute in
the background,
  and i put on a "cliché" vinyl...
     well... it's only "cliché" if you haven't
found something deeper in it,
or maybe: it's actually this **** good
that you need to imagine it
as an onion,
                       you peeled so many
layers off the record already,
         you even encountered scratches
on your 80s disco glitz compact...
   it's still only the "first commandment"
the first pillar of modern music,
miles davis' kind of blue...
             hey, hey!
i wasn't born in the 30s to "figure-out"
this 1959 release...
               what i have figured out, though,
well, jazz just sounds pristine on
vinyl...
   the whole experience,
the physicality, the intimacy with the music...
it's not some hidden c.d.,
      it's not some quickie-bypass
of an mp3 file...
    it's there, rotating,
      much more than a t.v. does in imitating
the promethean fireplace...
well **** me: zeus oopsie dropped
a thunderbolt
        to earth and that became
the new point of congregation: t.v.,
don't get me wrong,
             the current climate of crafting
meaningful dramas
outside the english soap opera marathon...
it's nice...
            but putting on a vinyl,
and allowing music to fill the room,
while you're drinking a 8.2% bottle
of cider, not smoking...
          that's like glancing at Jupiter
really close to it...
              the experience of music
without the headphones: that's truly
something else,
   and by now i can attest:
  jazz on vinyl is what vinyl was meant
to be, sure, it's a simpler technology...
but this carousel "ride"...
  admiring the subtle grooves
and indentations of some obscure
microscopic tendency to follow
the indentations of a canyon...
   round and round and round it goes...
but then comes the appreciation
of jazz...
       i give it "you" were exposed
to classical music as a child,
    i know i was...
              apparently it's called the i.q.
booster "food"...
            well... i sort of had to move away
from the rigid concessions of
classical music...
        the very aspect of a strict
methodological form of its expression,
it dies after a while,
for a very long while...
                 jazz has to naturally replace
it...
             to start off with classical,
let it devolve,
   and then to appreciate all this wonderful
modern bonanza of genres...
   must be a "black privilege", "thing",
well without a few africans being
shipped off to the h'americas...
    no blues, no jazz...
                        a thorn in my backside
listening to the the nexus vox
                    surrounding the rehabilitated
future generations of
the post-colonial present...
          ******: no german or russian
every dished out reperations for
   what my great-grandmother suffered...
why should you?!
                   oh yeah... we received
russian reperations: communism!
          why is jazz superior to classical music?
it, breaks, rules...
           it's akin to some sort
of japanese art of painting...
                     it's intuitive, spontaneous...
like this: a complete improv.,
          hence the naughty "n" word
in this text...
              there are times when i can
stand the *******,
   and there are times when...
                            i just... ha ha... can't...
like last night...
          having succumbed to one
of the two higher impulses...
        what are the two higher impulses?
crying...
                    and laughter...
           i can't remember the time i giggled
so much into the breaking dawn,
over the whole: well the Zulus didn't
take **** from Michael Cain's brigade...
          and if all these slavs (e e e e)
  where shipped off... who remained?
   the people who profitted from the trade,
shady agreement...
                   oh i'm pretty ******* sure
no man would go so easily,
        unless...
                     their tribal leaders,
persuaded them to go,
         sold them the h'american dream...
well... then Idi Amin Dada never happened,
nope, nope, neeeeeever happened...
only that Saudi Arabia gave him
asylum and a comfy "retirement" from
all the work surround skull pyramids...
black people could never be evil
to other black people,
                             like white people...
       if i have some Israeli shmuck
tell me that the polacks collaborated with
the nazis: perhaps... forced with a gun
pointing at their head when building all
the concentration camps:
build them - or die...
            nice, that's a, ha ha, nice ultimatum...
come on,
there was no collusion between
the slave traders and the african leaders
at the time?
          no one talks about that...
like that ****** joke about having a great
distate for rap music...
     'you actually think, it's that easy
to hunt down some of an n.b.a. posture?'
well either i'm dumb,
  the history's dumb...
              or we're living on another planet...
guns... ????
             slave trade...
  so... there was a tradeoff...
           the african chieftan got something
in return -
otherwise why would it be a trade
   and not a slave hunt?
                                     me?
i'm good thanks,
i just have to live a few germanic retards
who derived a false etymology for
a whole ethnic group of people,
namely the Slavs...
    hmm... last time i checked...
the word for slave in latin was
   servus... not slavus platypus origami
         servus
...
      o.k. o.k. i'm dealing with
intellectual retards...
           i get over it...
               słowo (swovo) - meaning word,
no, really, in western slavic that's
what it means...
                      i really hope we can
find a commonality...
         one side attacked for their skin,
another for their understanding of
languages...
              i don't even know who to attack,
i've heard the retards etymological
"research" and "know-how"...
              extension - słowianin -
commonly associated with being a wordsmith...
maybe that's the reason for all
those great russian novelists,
   and so few... being...
    ahem... of germ-                     origin.  
                  double edged sword, isn't it?
Kurt Philip Behm Mar 2021
Competing infinities,
which one to choose

Existential polarities,
exchanging their views

Superpositioned,
anthropic in scope

The tradeoff endemic,
whose difference elopes

Twin parallel universes
push and then pull

Existing in quantum,
the vacuum is full

Symbiotic in concept,
his razor now sharp

As we search for their meaning
—ever lost in the dark

(Villanova University: March, 2021)
comraderie feels so abrasive
honesty invasive
when i know you're only talking to me out of pity

isolation feels the safest
so i hope don't you take this
the wrong way but what do you want with me

because if the interaction was pure
why do i feel cored when it's through
my peace for yours
the tradeoff feels tainted and skewed

kinda wish you hadn't asked
or tried to swat away my storm clouds
be content with what you have
and i'll grieve the way my heart allows

your kindness not taken for granted
but i feel how i feel even if you don't understand it

think me oversensitive or unreasonable if you must
but i need loyalty and genuity and intensity and trust

and what can you give but fodder
why even bother

i think i just lost the purpose of my life
and you think you can just tell me it'll be alright

just cut me even deeper if you'd like
if that's the way it is

— The End —