In later years, my writings tend to incorporate hope

I hint at it, allude to it, or even praise it outright

But I have so precious little of my own...and I wonder why

I thought of Pavlov:

If a dog is beaten every time it approaches people food

Eventually, after years of abuse

That dog will cringe whenever it sees a delicious morsel

To the point that the dog could be left alone with a steak

Without daring to sniff at it, likely afraid to even consider it

I realized, I am that dog

Beaten down by life, disappointment, tragedy, solitude

Driven to terror by the possibility—even the hint—of hope

I wonder if there are any therapists out there

Who accept payment in kibble...

Mothers know best, or do they?
We get used to anything these days,
It is all conditioning in these ways,
Why was Pavlov's hair so soft?  I say,
Because he conditioned it! Hey, hey,
Mothers know best, or so they say,
Who is conditioning whom today?

You are the bell ring
Baby, you’re stimulating
I’m just Pavlov’s dog

"Untended Thoughts"


Untended thoughts falter softly
Leaving emptiness to be filled
With                whatever
Slow transformation bends
Awareness
Into something else
Pavlov would understand


Dingggg!

The glass of wine spins on sins
Encircling the royal roulette
All rotating on a hamster wheel
Pinned on canvas and illusional walls

So tiny in errors and unbalanced books
Unaccounted annotated distributions
Twisting hands on colluded coils
Deeper projections from the heart

An eruption of the social notions
Extracted on the paradise of life
For no truth echoes authenticity
Eccentrically finding a lived reality

Plato symposiums and simulacrums
Pavlov trails of social conditioning
Sampled in tented objectifications
Functioning within the invisible rules

We sniffle as we expose the false actuality
Reactive explosions from robust heat
Unloaded rods dancing under the moon
In our tenderness rejecting the paradigm

*******, Pavlov.

As I close my laptop
and it snaps shut

my dog sits up
ears perked,
chest puffed, and

at the ready for
me to stand up
and grab a leash
and a plastic bag

for his ****.

And he knows this routine
because it has been seared
into his brain with the white-hot
branding iron
of repetition.

A force of nature.
A category-five hurricane.

We laugh at them
for chasing their tails
when the microwave dings,
for salivating at bells,
but
I am no better than they are.

The same routines
are seared into my brain, too—

stimulus, response
stimulus, response
eat, sleep, ****, walk, ****,

love, reproduce, etc.

and I will continue to do so
aimlessly
just like Ivan Pavlov said I would.

One day I’ll find myself
like he’ll find himself—
lying on a cold slab
in a sterile room
only half alive
aghast at how quickly youth slipped away
but otherwise numb

as loved ones circle around,
hands over their mouths,

horrified
to press the button.