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Cory Ellis Jun 2013
Hey guys. This isn't truly a poem but a paper I wrote for English class. I wanted to share this view with people and this is the only vehicle I knew to use. So here it is. I hope you enjoy it.
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The amplifiers were turned up to ten. The young and fresh crowd looked at us with anticipation.

What were they waiting for? As the music began I noticed the subtle movements and growing tension in

the crowd. Men shook their heads and we shook ours in a violent duet between the crowd and

performer. Women and men flailed their limbs as they awaited the ******. We knew when it was

coming; they did not. When we decided to let it all go I witnessed something crazy! There was a brief

pause in the music and when it began again we kicked it into overdrive. We shook our heads with a

more frantic pace. We jumped about like madmen. The crowd erupted; it became its own entity. You

could feel the heat and power of this new creature. We were locked in a violent psychic-sphere of

crazed young teens and when the ****** was over there seemed to be a sense of relief and happiness

in the crowd. Had my after school hobby become a healing agent, even if only temporary, in society?

This papers purpose is an attempt at piecing together the phenomena of catharsis by merging

philosophy, psychology, history and spirituality.



First, to understand the psychology of catharsis we must think back to the roots of this behavior. Since

human life has existed we’ve formed crowds for various reasons. The first reason held the sole purpose

of protection. Tribes of people, men as hunters and women as gatherers, teamed up for the benefit of

human survival. Erich Fromm says that “the meaning of life is not to be found in its fullest unfolding but

in social service and social duties; that the development, freedom, and happiness of the individual is

subordinate or even irrelevant in comparison to the welfare of the state.”(Fromm, 1947, page 51) This

states that a crowd is actually very necessary to the function of human life. The second reason crowds

gathered was in form of revel, shamanistic healing and worship of deities (Ehrenreich, 30). Men and

woman would often enter trances, speak in tongues and become involved in a collective ecstasy while in

worship of their God. In later years, politics, entertainment and rebellion or protest was a main factor in

the gathering of people (Ehrenreich, 102). People gathered at Festivals that were in the midst of being

suppressed and would dance in mockery of their Kings or leaders.



What exactly is catharsis? Catharsis is a purging of emotional tension brought out in a crowd through

the viewing of a tragedy or tragic play. In the article “The Power of Catharsis” Kearny says the following

More specifically he (Aristotle) defined

the function of catharsis as 'purgation of pity and fear'. This comes

about, he explains, whenever the dramatic imitation of certain actions

arouses pity and fear in order to provide an outlet for pity and fear.

The recounting of experience through the formal medium of plot,

fiction or spectacle permits us to repeat the past forward so to speak.

And this very act of creative repetition allows for a certain kind of

pleasure or release. In the play of narrative re-creation we are invited

to revisit our lives — through the actions and personas of others — so

as to live them otherwise. We discover a way to give a future to

the past. (Kearny 1)

I figure that, even though he states that it is a purgation of pity and fear, it could also be involved with

many other suppressed emotions. Take my introduction for example. These kids were not releasing

pity and fear, they were releasing their angst! They were releasing their desire for competition.

They were making up for the violent feelings of agression they felt in their body that had been

suppressed by society for so long! They were revolting! Could catharsis also be used to purge other

emotions as well such as ****** suppression or communicative issues?





How would one come about actually attempting this catharsis that I speak of? We need to first look at

some ways in which people have controlled crowds in the past and realize that crowds form by

themselves but often look for leadership due to what Nietzche called that “herd mentality.”

In the article “Seducing the Crowd” by Urs Staheli it mentions that repetition is a key factor in beginning

to control the crowd. (Staheli, 69) This means that through repetition you can get the crowd to side with

your beliefs. The crowd could begin to think about what your suggesting and potentially be swayed by

the other people that are now following your ideas. It could also be repetition of body movements as

well. What better vehicle is there to sway a crowd than music? It’s repetitive in instrumental and lyrical

form!



Another way to “******” a crowd is to act like a madman! Specifically how I stumbled upon this in

the first phenomena place.

The leader himself is possessed and hypnotized by the ideas

and visions he holds, obsessed to such an extent that he cannot rationally exercise

control over the crowd. Instead, he devotes himself to fascinating the

crowd by more ecstatic means.8 He often resembles a madman but fascinates

by the mere power of his determination. What distinguishes the leader from

the rest of the crowd is his will alone, not any particular intellectual capacity

or a superior morality. (Staheli, 68)

The theory is that through mythological story telling or acting tragically and in a spectacle, we can

actually release negative emotions and potentially even heal neuroses or psychic ailments. Later in the

article he goes on to say that a shaman was actually documented to have cured a woman with a blocked

birth canal and in labor by telling her a story about a warrior trying to exit a cave that had monsters on

the outside trying to get in.

The function of a shaman is to heal his tribe. He uses drugs or plants to change his state of mind and

then by going over to the other side of reality he invokes spirits that help to heal.

In the séance, the shaman led. A sensuous panic, deliberately evoked through drugs, chants,

dancing, hurls the shaman into trance. Changed voice; convulsive movement. He acts like a

madman. These professional hysterics, chosen precisely for their psychotic leaning, were once

esteemed. They mediated between man and spirit world. Their mental travels formed the crux

of the religious life of the tribe. (Morrison 1967 pg. 71)

This shows an ecstatic crowd dancing and chanting while one man acts out a tragic spectacle. Through

this spectacle the shaman acts like a madman. This causes wild emotions within the crowd and allows it

to release their built up and suppressed emotions. Also, the dance and chants bring them to a feeling of

unity and oneness!



One may not believe in the spiritual shaman because of their own beliefs about God and religion. Some

may not believe in the other world that parallels our own.  It is a skeptical concept without a doubt and

there are probably many people who disagree with the legitimacy of the shaman. Is there a way that we

could think of the phenomena in a psychological sense rather than strictly spiritual? The answer lies in

Carl Jung’s theory of the unconscious mind and dream therapy as well as in Nietzche’s philosophy on art

and aesthetics.  



Carl Jung believed that there is a conscious mind and an unconscious mind. The conscious mind is the

everyday mind that occurs in waking life. It is rational and helps us survive. The unconscious mind can

be found in dreams or whenever you experience a déjà vu (Jung 1964 21).  He also believed that through

the study of dreams you could heal certain aspects of your psyche that have been altered by neuroses.

Symbols and archetypes make up dreams and the unconscious, and often you will find that archetypes

appear in the form  of people. Jung believes that through living in society that men and women have lost

touch with their feminine or masculine characteristics depending on their gender. Dreams can help us

get back into union with these lost roles through connecting us with our anima(female) or animus

(male) through symbols in our dreams or unconscious minds. Jung wrote that when society was

formed people took on roles and caused a dissociation in their psyche and caused a duality rather

than a unity when they suppressed one side of their mind.  He mentioned that at all times the

unconscious mind is connecting us on a psychic level.



How does this tie into shamans and catharsis? It seems like something completely different all together

right? My theory is that the shaman or crowd leader brings forth a forgotten union of the masculine and

feminine forces in the universe. Nietzche believed that there are two polar forces that are natural in this

world and in art. These forces are given the names of deities in his book “The Birth of Tragedy.”

The first is the Apollonian force that is masculine. This force in art governs form and dreams. The

Apollonian artist directly takes ideas from his dreams and brings them to life whether it is in form

sculpture or poetry. Apollo appears through an oracle often in tragedy or in visions of the waking life.

The second force is the Dionysian which is feminine. This force governs intoxication, revel and ecstasy.

Dionysian artists are improvisers and dancers and are usually tragic figures. Nietzche believed there are

three different types of artists: Apollonian, Dionysian and the fusion of both (Nietzche 1872 14). This

latter artist is what I believe the shaman is.



Through connecting these polarizing forces he fixes the psychic neuroses in his own mind. He becomes

a unified artist, or a magician of duality. The shaman, as stated above, takes drugs to intoxicate himself.

Often the drug of choice is wine or alcohol though it could be hallucinogenic drugs as well. This tied with

repetitive revel is the Dionysian side of the spectrum and also helps draw the crowd’s attention through

spectacle and repetition. Everybody is ecstatic and experiencing the collective vibrations of the crowd.

Through his intoxication he is able to go into the unconscious mind and produce dream symbols in

reality! The crowd follows the leader into this unconscious mind and brings back forgotten wisdom of

mythology and archetypes. This is the Apollonian side of the spectrum because it deals with the

unconscious mind and dream images. It also could be this “other world” that traditional shamans speak

of. Now the psychic duality is merged and a tie is formed between the masculine and feminine forces of

nature! People feel at one with themselves and the crowd and the societal suppression is vanished

briefly. All the neuroses caused by the suppression fades away in the ecstatic revel. This is the appeal of

the rock concert. Notice how many leading figures of rock bands have androgynous features and

shamanistic nature. This is because they have fixed the psychic neuroses in their own mind and become

at peace with the masculine and feminine duality of their psyche.



Stumbling upon this phenomena in my rebellious youth was very eye opening. Ever since I have been  

very excited about this theory and I’ve been trying to piece it together. It seems to be coming along

further and further in my study of this. What exactly this ancient wisdom is; I don’t entirely know. I

do know that I have witnessed this in reality and the subject is interesting and fascinating. My theory

still has a lot of work before it is completed but I think that within this article I’ve given a decent

amount of history about the topic as well as my own thoughts. Whether this phenomena is true or

not, we can leave that up to the psychologists and philosophers to decide, though I think many may

agree. Either way, catharsis surely does exist and it is a fun way of entertainment as well as a

therapeutic option for many stressed out individuals out there
"The surest way to corrupt a Youth
is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem
those who think alike, rather than those who think differently."
-Nietzche
"It is the mark of an educated Mind
to be able to entertain a thought
without agreeing with it."
-Aristotle
Leo Jun 2017
Friedrich Nietzche once wrote that god was dead. It was a fictional death befitting Nietzche's fictional god, but as my eyes scanned the pages his words rang true. I am the world's ugliest intellectual -- stabbing at the eternal witness with shattered fragments of his own reflection.
Spake Zarathustra
PEARL PSYNATCH Jul 2019
(for Nietzche, who cowers behind art.)

The world calls the conquered ******
to remember that the sun every night yearns

to rise, to rise, to rise

when there is no guarantee, no promise, no sure thing.
Yet still it yearns

to rise, to rise, to rise.

The world called Canaanites ******
while they traded and toiled along the shores
of land promised to the aged heretic of Sumer,
whose wife could give only love.

The world called Hebrews ******
while they raised Pharoah tombs
Provided respite from the eastern chariots
Stubborn in refusal of the living gods
Drinking only Eloheim's bitter grape
That provides brief respite from his decrees
When delving deep in one's cups.

The world called Britons ******
When flogged Boudicea fought and fought and finally fell
To Roman spear and gladius
When Angles and Saxons raided then stayed
When Cromwell climbed the pale cliffs

The world called the Iberians, Gauls and Teutons ******
when Caesar crossed the Rubicon
Pax Romana for Citizens born
Land for the wealthy, voting rights too
Taxes and tithes from their toil.

The world called the Khoikhoi of South Africa ******
From the VOC to fatal Apartheid
Up rose a man
The heart of the land
A man named Nelson Mandela.

The world called the Viet Minh ******
from Can Vong to Dien Bien Phu
'till they slogged howitzers above
to reign Napoleonic terror below.
And to them it was just
The American War
After the world called them
Vietnamese.

The world calls the conquered ******
to remember that the sun every day yearns

to rise, to rise, to rise

When there is no guarantee, no promise, no sure thing
yet still it yearns

to rise, to rise, to rise

'though it never watches its own rising
undoing raiment of fading embers
swimming naked in the royal blue
bathing all with daily newborn naked glory
chasing the celestial tidal tease
that seems to wander where it please
reminding that all are born free
but can grow into ignorance
and be called ******.

Seek truths
that hold in unity;
that provide nourishment
beneath the lash
allowing one

to rise, to rise, to rise.
Megan Sherman Apr 2017
God is dead,
Killed stone cold in our head,
Buried in our hearts,
From which, one time, repentance bled.
An ocean of faith,
Shrinks to a sliver,
No laurels placed, any more,
At divine altar.
God's ceased to breathe,
With fledglings to bereave,
But no devotees to leave,
For him no soul to grieve.
God is dead,
Killed stone cold in our head,
In just the way,
That Nietzche said.
Faith Inesso Mar 2015
It seems that I am indeed
Just another lost soul
Perhaps Floyd was right
Maybe the world is a fishbowl

But you see, the trouble
In all of this nonsense
Is that I still hope to see
You hop over my fence

Please tear down my wall
Oh, won't you come in?
I've been feeling comfortable
Yet numb, dismissing my sin

So what are we?
Essentially good, or not?
Do you find favor in Socrates?
Is Nietzche's idea the one you bought?

Let's question, let us wonder
Should my thoughts go assunder
Don't tip or toe, or go tumbling under
Nevermind the noise, it's just thunder

Get caught up in the spark
The rigid structure of light
Because you are alive
So live this gift of your life
Westley Barnes May 2012
NIETZCHE  YOU ****
YOU'VE RUINED MY LIFE

I was once so innocent Without You.

Now I can hardly contemplate the light of day
from staring into the abyss for so long.
How can I ever forgive you?
Cynic-master, who taught me how to think for myself
who taught me how to speak with such lucid contempt
Now I can never trust the government
Now I can never have faith in anyone's heavanly aspirations,
The sun having long set on any protests of idealism.

And yet I still find you remarkable Nietzsche
You never fail to make me laugh
at the times when I need it the most.
You're the rebel friend who I can
never introduce to my parents.
Yours is the poster which should adorn every angry teenagers' wall
With quotes highlighting The Will to Power and violent determination.
A hopeful voice in a godless world.
I'm reminded of you in the girl that speaks
or stealing every crucifix in her former convent school
after her friend was expelled.
I'm reminded of you with every protester
who throws a Molotov cocktail at armed police
I'm reminded of you
in eery artist who does'nt follow formality
in every caged bird who continues to sing.

For all your anger
I must thank you Nietzsche
Even if I can never be as happily ignorant as I once was
For wasn't the very crux of modern life challenged by you?
All of Humanity
All the cruelty
All the spit Fullness
All the Hatred
when you threw yourself in front of that horse
being beaten in Turin
and for losing your mind
Just to prove a point.
The German post-enlightenment philosopher Frederick Nietzche (1844-1900) often cited by scholars as "the father of modern thinking" was the author of such groundbreaking texts as Human,All Too Human (1878) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885) and Beyond Good and Evil (1886).
RW Dennen Sep 2014
Around the eighties the Mumers New Year Parade in Philly
lost a bit of its tradition. It originally was made for
the average working family. But around this period
people were charged to watch them do their famous strut
and extra displays of course only at City Hall.
And so let us begin my poetic story...


Standin' among the crowd,
watchin' blue police-van-bleeders
being escorted; wearin' city-steel-wrist-braclets

And now struttin' my way,
psychopathic eclipsers
of physical freedom
seekin' potential comatose heads
to tap

And squads of finger thrusters
of back pockets for targets,
dart in and out of crowds,
quickly countin' their *****
in dark unseen places

Feet freeze
as sounds travel,
" Oh dem golden slippers"
soundin' like cheap tin toy Kazoos
and toy glockenspiels

The wind kisses
my **** end blue
as a flyin' Budweiser
kisses my right foot wet

Man made pop art
reflects the times
at the times
at Broad and Spruce
of cigarette butts,
chocolate wrappers,
and crushed beer cans
climaxin' montage
of the mountain- ****** eighties

Boozers and blue
sweet puffers
wearin' smiles
outside
and within most inner thoughts
puff-buffed away from some reality
step in cadence to their
own music within themselves

And wailin' children
havin'
more sense
than adults
become early sacrifices
to the fruit of Bacchus

The marching high strutters of "Big Bird",
they strain and struggle under the weight
of heavy hernia suits;
with feathers and sparklers,
their instruments wrestle as steamy air puffs shoot forward
from their nostrils
like  red-devil-painted-dragon faces
in the bitter cold air
warmly protected by their attire and *****,
they stop seemingly for eternity,
in the suspended purgatorial
halts
one after another,
only waitin'
for the grandstand reserved section
around City Hall
Yet we wait and pray together
that perhaps like in the older days
we will get a sneak of
a nostalgic, spontaneous,
free dance-strut
that never comes

Attached, yet unattached
and cryin' inside;
always on guard
for flyin' and drunkin' fists
or flyin' articles
of all sizes
Seein'  through
the facades of we must act
like ha! ha! ha!
I cry inwardly
with anger
doin' the rat-tat-tat
of no more nonsense
of my inner-self
Strivin' and movin' to flee Freddie Kruger's bladed fingers
I sting all over,
my teeth clinch with anger,
darkness intensified
The crowd becomes uglier,
blackness
engulfs
black souls
Vehement, crazy,
hordes and hordes of frustration bellows
outward
The call of Nietzche,
The ouch under my skin

This damnable real parade
not shown in Liberace-livin'-Color

No commercial breaks of luxury cars
that drive livin' manikins
Livin' manikins that wear dial under their arms
while smilin' the brand of Crest toothpaste
but instead,
a street drunk with
broken ugly teeth
as he begs for quarters
and blows his odorous breath
beyond description

And City Hall payin'-grandstanders
with tv cameras
bein' in the spirit of "Disneyland"
presents
the overly organized narcissistic prostituted
elegance of forever, floatin', bouncy,
dancy, prancy,
skippin' to the tune
of  mom's Apple pie,
a small slice of my reality

And the applaudin' money makin'
TV grandstanders
of goody goody
look mom I can do the swan dance
while holdin' multiple
colored sparklers
wrapped in feathers
But why must I
see through the eyes of a Godless Nietzsche,
**** it!!
Arke Sep 2018
I think about time I've spent
moments in my life
watching ****** movies
eating bad food
working dead end job
after dead end job
staring at the blank wall
listening to ticking clocks
cheerfully counting down my demise
long walks I'd take at dusk
down the trails by the river
pretending I enjoy running
because the pounding of my heart
in my head made me feel alive
I'd think about life and death
and whether god exists
and whether love exists
about ***, philosophy, infinities
the hours I have spent writing
poetry and nonfiction
displaying myself for scrutiny
painting canvas that I hate
to make myself feel something
to hope it reaches someone
reading Nietzche and Foucault
as if my existence could matter
but along the way I found myself
and maybe all of these moments
have led up to something
consequential and meaningful
every moment is part of my journey
every experience is part of becoming
every hour has lead me to you
so not a single second
of my life has ever been wasted
Connor Thomas Mar 2013
Let the rain fall all night
Sitting in puddles on the street
With your ponytail soaking.
Let the May showers come again
With the repetition of Nietzche.

You lie on your back in the cool wet mud
Spitting insults in a million different ways.

You let your golden hair fall
As the leaves might in Autumn
Continuously spitting with fury
Hiding your anguish behind those self centered eyes.

When you fall to your knees like the mortals to gods
You sing, quietly, the song your mother sang
After which, your hair back up, you appear from the shadows
Looking a bit worse for wear.

You let the rain shower down,
Ripe yellow hair turns almost brown at the roots
And as you tear off the drenched silk dress
You find you might like yourself better that way.
Grading curves....
Wrongly ruptured neurological nerves.
Condemned by societal hate,
his fluctuating brain synapses tend to create
vicious, malicious and practitious acts
that gravitate to attack the faith
in every church enlisted in every homestead household.

Retaliation puts him in a chokehold.
A headlock, a leglock, a deadlock of the mind
consciousness revoked, the button is broke
vain attempts to find rewind.

Press Pause.

Bask in his murderous glory,
the bodies of the converted; epitome of gory.
Bloodshed because god is dead claimed Nietzche
He kills all his idols and struggles to think freely.

You see the doctors had his mind locked in a cage,
they built the bars since he was at an illiterate stage.
They taught him how to act, then how to think,
a mindless drone choked cause they revoked the power to speak-
toungue in cheek, they'll chop off your arm just to make sure
nothing's hiding up the sleeve
and questioning authority's their biggest pet peeve.


But enough is enough...I CHOOSE WHAT TO BELIEVE...
Drop my textbook, throw my desk, and through those
guidance doors I leave.
Ken Pepiton Oct 2019
Nietz
sche:
the warrior with the heart of a girl. According
to Will Durant,
odd intel-informs
this POV of the channel, deep 'neath this stream,

slow Sunday morning flow into a pond to wait, awhile, yet and we
shall see geni-us grow kind

of a blob of peace, a scab to dam the loss,
"the life is in the blood"
"your brother's blood cries out... how long?"

Study war for fifty years, learn one lesson last.

abso unique ununununun I suffer
this to be so, now,
how else might this be if may were your word,
now,
whodat? eh, we bein' odd, now, are we
even?

Only you would know, but
only if I allow.

You must shine for me to see your light.
Mightn't I reflect the glow,
whereby you see, through words to the mean
ing ing ing
first the thing, then the name,
knowing the name is not samesame
knowing first the
thinked thing, then the
name
by which you may know what I mean,
after
a period of complete ion depletion

batter batter batter upery upery up

and the magic pen flows once more,

once
more, past the sluggish mediocrity settled
into
quiet peacefully beyond the maddened crowd.

--- The mad Nietzsche, gone to Dionysus,
--- left a dangerous, laborious trail to peace and quiet,
--- "Lisbeth, why do you cry, are we not happy"
I suppose I have attained such a state, at a far lower cost than poor Fred.
Happy Sundays are expected, these days. Live long, and prosper.
John Hosack Mar 2010
Moses descends from the rugged heights of Sinai bearing the tablet
"You shall not ******"
Nietzche organizes the cobwebs of his mind to declare morality is his own
"God is dead"
Even Monty Python creates mockery and mishap from "The Meaning of Life."

A Macedonian, a ****, a Patriot
with Intelligence, Voice, and Sword
step over the caution tape and march nations
into the deepest valleys                  atop the heights of Everest.
The likes of Augustine put their chips on the table for patience
but Patton has a pair of aces                  and the academics fold before the river.

The denotations of Good and Evil are forever
infinite and versatile to the dismay of the Philosopher,
                while God himself
                  is denied power
                  to undo the past.
                  Humanity lives
                on the nourishment
                    of knowledge.
Kagey Sage Nov 2021
The hadron collider showed an unknown influence affecting subatomic particles.

“Is this proof of a higher power in the universe?” asked Marianne Williamson.

“Is this Will, is this magick?”

Yes Herr Nietzche, there will always be unknowns in human science as the scientists should have known all along, instead of substituting the most recent names of observations as the replacement of God.

No, there probably isn’t free will but we seem to be life in the unknown with more power than any other around.

This universe may just repeat on and on but what do you do with that knowledge? Can you even help to choose what you choose?

All these past influences and instinctual impulses lead the charge. But there's that spark. That mystery if we can ever really know and comprehend it all with limited senses, time, and minds.

Maybe you don’t have a choice in your life, but you can have the feeling you do. The feeling you can shape your world amid the destiny you feel in your heart.

Practice being a yeasayer to life because that just might be your fate.
Amor fati each time around.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
having just finished reading heidegger's
ponderings II -VI -
   i still i can't believe i spent over 30 quid
on a book -
i peered i to the shelf that has stacks of
books from the floor right up to nearly
touching the ceiling...
so the interrogation began: which one you
inanimate objects, requires animation?!
huh?! which one of you deserves my
attention, been wasting the longest?
       seems pretty obvious after a while,
it needs to be a work of aphorisms -
   i'll pass on nietzche, i am a monarch with
a library, and i have ensured in being
democratic, in having many varying
"advisers" - plus with drinking being
my foremost enterprise, i require: "snippets"...
ah!
        spinoza's "liber scriptum in infernum"
(a book written in hell) -
the theological-political treatise
will do just fine...
        it is written in aphorisms -
       i'm starting to take to the style -
                     i abhor the anglophonic
regurgitation of maxims,
                regurgitated as hypotheses
rather than theories... ugh,
excruciating...
                              plus the necessary
interludes of glug glug glug of
ms. amber with some caramel fizz...
  it'll do...
          mind you, i have to stress an observation...
and it's most shocking...
so i walked into my local library...
the central library of romford -
             and believe me when i state
my bewilderment:
i invested and subsequently accumulated
a more meaty library than the entire,
*******, town!
                        it's almost, scary?
sure, they had thomas mann's doctor
faustus... but that's about it!
   i've never seen a poorer public
library in my life!
                            i still can't
fudge-pack this fact into my head!
i'm trying to push it in, but every time
i try to push a square object through
    a triangular hole i get the same result!
won't go through!
                   to think that some people
aspire to a contentment of owning books,
that some even desire the facade of
owning books, as to dupe the opposite ***
in "being" well-read...
                       staggering to think that
people dare to collect books and pretend
to have read them!
    perhaps i write "poetry" because
i read... perhaps my struggle with:
  why can't i write a single novel(?!) stems
from the fact that: novelists probably
read scarcely?
                i can't imagine a novelist reading
a lot...
as i once heard, this one novelist didn't
read jack(****), because he had the phobia
of un-originality / temptation of plagiarism...
maybe my frustration at being unable
to provide a novel, a "creative" writing piece
is that i have the libra maxim:
  never read as much as your write,
  and never find yourself having read: enough.
maybe you can only become a poet
  when you become a reader: proper -
democratic... a democratic reader:
  and never the monarch of fictional puppets,
ever pulling the strings...
  how does that sound?
              - so,
in poetry a hyphen is like a new paragraph,
but, given the limited space, the cascade,
you have to excuse me when i want to
suddenly change course:
        from aphorism of 1 - 7 of
spinoza's preface i'm already hooked...
the style? it's antithetical to narrative,
  language is very mandible,
   i mean: extremely mandible -
words act like punctuation marks,
even though punctuation marks are missing,
they are ingested by words shyly
   being invested in dance-impromptu of
choice, i.e. when to punctuate / take a breath /
a cognitive moment of self-release-into-deviating
narration of one's own choice / accord...
sure, it was later replicated by joyce in
ulysses: too obviously, and immediately
plagiarised by sartre -
               but as literary traditions go:
too obvious, since both joyce and sartre
didn't use words as punctuation marks -
sartre still encompassed the paragraph,
  joyce just spewed an amalgam of a:
a honest attempt at being dishonest about
allowing razor incisions into
          - which doesn't make much
sense to me at present...
what was it, at the end of ulysses?
          ah... like a sculptor working backwards
from a sculpted piece of work,
back into its raw state: a block of stone,
perhaps rectangular, but not necessarily so...
yes, but spinoza toys with words as
being punctuation marks... even if
a few punctuation are invoked:
  too few, too few...
       the words back up the reading style...
i still can't believe that the majority
of books in my private library do not
entertain the shelves of the public library,
in a town, that is nearing the half-million
mark of its populace.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
i do a pretty good rendition of vader’s cover of mayhem’s track: freezing moon.

i tend to forget what it’s all about the minute i think of it,
obviously thinking about something can’t make you doubt it /
esp. if you think in a way to deny its existence:
if something is doubted it’s not thought about,
there can’t be a doubling of anything like that -
if it’s... it’s denied... pushed to the back of our minds:
theme park thrills to deny gangsters and terrorists -
there’s no such thing as a cartesian “chirality” - whereby
the thought attributed to something can work
in the classical sense of *i think, i doubt, therefore i am

(cartesian chirality exists on the doubt v. negation axis).
it’s not being that’s doubted, but the consequences of undoubted thought:
that abraham did right, for example...
but it’s not really about that...
i was reading a part of plato’s defence of poetry by julius a. elias
and i recognised, there and then: my aversion to christianity
is due to platonism... i’m from the root of artistotelian philosophising,
not the platonic root... i couldn’t go against nietzche’s rebellion -
plato the boor... plato the bore...
why did plato assume all poets are liars?
why is it necessary to reveal the real of a potter’s *** making as basis for lies
in poem... and excuse a crap bit of pottery as above a really good poem?
as in the language of roofing... someone does a **** job and it leaks...
kiszka panie picasso... kiszka! brussel’s pâté! van damme muscles no more!
there’s a great point being made right on page 12...
i don’t have the original but it sent shocks right through me,
it’s the old chair and table fascination...
should we **** on a chair or **** on the table?
that’s plato to me... more **** than yawn.
it’s not about representing the chair as it is... that would simply
be boring... it’s about distortion, it’s about finding the self
in such a way as to provide a “callous” interpretation...
what would be the point of originality in the creative process
if it was otherwise - the gods created, man interpreted, and only that to
harbour existence per se?
we’re standing on the membrane of originality, given this world,
why would we suddenly comply to it without a “delusional” distortion
to ensure the self is encrusted in it? there would be no point
in such an endeavour... we'd all comply to 90º of the angle
and 100ºc of boiling water and london would
be the capital of hawaii... i.e. i don't lie, i just read a lot - more so:
i guess you get to be a plato supporter if you study philosophy first...
and not science...
i guess you get to be a disciple of plato if you start sheering language
to the bare minimum - the theory of forms...
but i like the telescope and microscope (autism) of aristotle looking
into a bog with tadpoles for spiderweb niches...
so the god of the jews beamed corrupt because of the ******* snipping...
‘looks nothing like what we originally intended!
what metamorphosis of the sword of his will give to rust because
it’s missing a sheath...’
thoth interrupted him - ‘guess what my people have done...
they trim the girls’ *******...’
‘tell you what thoth... i’ll go down and sort it out...
i’ll disguise myself as a burning bush.’
‘ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! ***** on fire! ha ha ha ha ha!’
the god of abraham to abraham concerning isaac:
‘don’t circumcise him! there’s a massive empire in the right top
corner of africa that’ll marry you and prove
i’m a god jealous of the others gods with your warring phallus!
the other gods just don't get involved!
i didn’t want to be involved in the first place, for *******’s sake!’
abraham losing the plot: ‘you want me to **** isaac?!’
‘no, don’t circumcise him! ah ****... too late.’
the whole story loses the medial aesthetic after centuries of
religion / being squeamish / 9am to 5pm / 2000 years of sunday being the last supper:
which is more viper confusion venom injection than the planet’s orbit
provides already: stop the carousel... stop the carousel!
Giuseppe Stokes Oct 2017
When the sun took a day off and the moon stood still
the clouds between them sought each other out for the deal, for real ya feel,
And when that scattered cache of semiotic deepness caught the speal,
it descended in it's gutter thoughts to slander sandy meal.

For if the sun had crashed and burned beyond Ra's power of affect,
it's Das EFX who've got to worry 'bowt that water at their neck;
For when dependent on the flowing of a deeper sense of being
we-in seeing fleeting selves diminish sprecht to dense ennui-ing.

Now the sun, my little homie, fudged right up the garden path,
and left that voyeuristic moon to mock eroded sand, and crass
his laugh a glutton's guttural injection, direct unto the scene.
It sounded callous, sounded violent, sounded object-able-y mean,

but yet the philanderers of flour, and the sorcerers of sauce,
course quite dour in this hour of recourse without remorse
rhetorting 'power captures power, and ostentious is the source'
the sun had forced my force to cower, not devour but endorse.

And so I showered in the grave held views of people passing by
as each took turn to point the lack of sun to my permissing eye,
dismissing why my thought might not rely on their own petty voice.
Rejoice I did when Moon knocked twice on mic, and made that awesome choice:

(he said)

"In stead I sit, ponder, perceive, provok-atate
'preventive' measures that you floundering and feeble fools debate;
I see expletive ridden arguments in punch ups cross the land
and yet the verbal aspect of your balk, is missing today's stand;

So all you shedy modes of being that eek discretely underneath
you better sort your petty shed out, before you compound with this wreath,
and let me warn you with this warning, yo I spoke to him (the Sun),
and he claims to think you slimey fudgers need a day to come undone.

gasps Come undone? gasps Undone? gasps you know that can't be fun!
And yet that Sun would shun his lesser selves to grasp at morbid stun,
and stun us all, beyond an instant, or an instance, with persistence.
No embellishment is needed, for we needed Sun to seeded

up this planet, without ballot, from the other heaven voices;
Now our choice's left our solar system's mother no rejoices,
and so the male figured mother (our gender knows eternal truth)
has chosen to reside with nether thoughts, and nihilistic proof,

He's like a ****** little teenager, reading up on Nietzche
who beseech ya for some aphoristic pleasure, please! Discreet ya
be when dealing with this kind of mess, solipsism can spread
and dread the narcissistic modes of thinking it can sole entread.

So don't equate power to will, and set to truthful being.
Or I'll hawk you out as wasted breath, some 02 needing freeing,
staining up the wall, that phishing contest,'ll never hold your thought
to any standard, 'cause my standard flies inside your whiny fort.

Banded meaning will not help you, claiming relativity too,
just makes you seem to be someone who seeks to level off the crew,
perhaps it aids you in allowing yourself certainty of fact
because if universal truth is true, your opinions deffo whack."

Then the mic was dropped, so by the moon, plummeting towards the earth
and the winds picked up the fast track run of rappers of every single birth.
Without rehearse they ran to grab the mic, and unified their form
but alas the mic was Toronto wide, and burning like the Sun.
Inspired by 'Freestyle Fellowship's: When the Sun took a day off and the Moon stood still'.
Mirza Lazim Jan 2018
It was the third day of my madness caused by your doom
And my inner poet was lying with glooms
trying to perish
But your force was so strong and refreshing,
I felt his endless will to rise again and live
I was afraid to look his eyes even a moment
I had deprived him of worth, had left him to die
I was afraid hereafter of his conviction
I knew he was stronger because he had you...
But what I had my own, except my paltriness?!
What I did to save you
when you relentlessly put an end to yourself inside me?!
He said that he lived more vividly and worthily
And he deserved to live even more than me...
He asked what I had achieved more than ten years?
I shut up only, like before you had also made me
You had called all that I felt only complaints
But in fact, I had perceived you had also been afraid
To face the damages which you had caused to me...

Yes, my dear friend, I often have heavy damages
I was always traumatized in dimensional clashes
As I betray my eigen* and leave myself alone,
I begin to acknowledge my all emptiness
You can just exist in vain with your mind and logic
But you can truly live only by accepting your feelings valuable...

I got my strength with fire in my heart,
I was watching my growing power,
Which was circulating  along my freezing veins
I hugged my innocent, suffering poet,
I promised to create - my own highest values,
My predecessors, my sufferer poet and me
would live hereafter disregarding yours!
But yet it was not fair, yet it was not worthwhile,
I had to cling to my dimensions much more deeply
I was full of energy and had everything to fight,
There appeared a dream to share my horizons I would gain thereafter...
But I lacked you... Who deserved to see it most than others...
As the one who was able to do the impossible
which no one had been able to do before...
You had to see my intentional life you had presented...

I wandered among the graves in my "graveheart",
Resurrected my all soulmates lying in chaos,
Who we shared our sacred dimensions of solitude
Who were craving to be felt and to be understood
Nietzche, Schopenhauer, Cioran lead them of course...
I brought them to life with the laughter you had taught me,
We marched side by side to the source of vitality,
We saluted Martin Eden
and vowed to avenge his suicidal also!

We movingly reached the end of my heart,
where your awesome grave was lying
I kept your cold remedial hands,
As I smiled, in return you smiled warmer than me,
You know, I can never smile or laugh as deep as you do,
I faithfully said that I wanted to live,
I promised one day I would laugh even more deeply than you do.
I understood you had wanted me just to be strong,
However, you hadn't been able to understand me again once more...
As women represent themselves as a tool to strong ones,
contrary they represent themselves as a present to the weak
That is why I was brawling and trying to withstand,
Could I accept you as another worthless thing rather than a present?!

I embraced you and internalized your
spirit,
All my soulmates exulted in it...
I and my pale poet set my new universe,
In company with the souls of our dimensions,
we raised you...
We raised you above all of the tortures and fears,
We raised you above all of the dimensions.
We raised you above all of the meanings,
We sacrificed the meaning of life for you
and I made you the center of my universe
You began to shine like the sun in my life,
Then all separated values and meanings
began in harmony to whirl around you
Around the sun of my worthwhile universe...
*Eigen - inner self, ownself
SC Feb 2016
"Battle not with monsters
      lest ye become a monster,
          and if you gaze into the abyss,
             the abyss gazes also into you...."
                    Friedrich Nietzche.

The struggle with inner demons
      old as time.
The darkness that sometimes consumes
        and cannot be avoided
            must be tamed, controlled.
For I am not the victim
     yet - if the monster is not constrained...
       I leave a trail of victims
          the innocent.
In my heart - that is a true sin....

"The purpose of life is not to be happy.
It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate,
to have it make a difference that you have lived and lived well."
       Ralph Waldo Emerson
¡De qué sirve al triste la filosofía!
Kant o Schopenhauer o Nietzche o Bergson...
¡Metafisiqueos!

                       En tanto, Ana mía,
te me has muerto, y yo no sé todavía
dónde ha de buscarte mi pobre razón.
¡Metafisiqueos, pura teoría!
¡Nadie sabe nada de nada: mejor
que esa pobre ciencia confusa y vacía,
nos alumbra el alma, como luz del día,
el secreto instinto del eterno amor!

No ha de haber abismo que ese amor no ahonde,
y he de hallarte. ¿Dónde? ¡No me importa dónde!
¿Cuándo? No me importa..., ¡pero te hallaré!
Si pregunto a un sabio, "¡Qué sé yo!", responde.
Si pregunto a mi alma, me dice: "¡Yo sé!"
and I let it out and said okay

and I made promises

to what extent does what comes out of my mouth actually have truth?  

what's the correlation between what we say and what we do?

the ideal chess set and the moves, the game plan and the...

truth, ****, it keeps coming back to that

a stoic is prisoner to it, and nietzche warns and warns again

but I'm not sure if Nietzsche ever loved a woman

other than his mother, no, love turns you into a truth seeker
and you're doomed to be a hero, sticking your neck out for nothing, for blows,

and it *****

wishing yourself better

wishing yourself cooler, calmer

the self is confused and hides

why is it hiding?  I ask those questions, which are the dangerous ones


will to power is an easy way out, but I read another piece that had a different explanation, the bible I think it was

and it had equal validity, it had me looking at things differently
and myself is the biggest scardy cat

I wonder what Nietzsche would say about that
Carl D'Souza Jul 2019
The so-called philosopher
Friedrich Nietzche writes:
"Wherever I found a living thing,
there found I Will to Power ...
to the stronger the weaker shall serve".

In an ideal
joy-and-happiness-society
would every person
be compassionate and cooperative
to every other person
instead of domineering and exploitative?
To achieve joy and happiness
in society
must we be
not domineering and exploitative
but compassionate and cooperative?
Jimmy Sep 2018
I can't afford to be free

A dance with the devil might cost a whole life
But a kiss from an angel only lasts for night

Have you ever heard an honest man lie?
Have you ever heard a warrior cry?

Have you seen the beggar put up a fight?
Have you seen the thief do what's right?

Saint Peter was called upon after saying he couldn't deny
George Washington was asked to be king and he said 'not I'

Man is born free, yet everywhere he goes he's in chains
You have no control of fate, from Rousseau to Nietzche its in flames

At least that's what the devil whispers in my ear
Yes I may dance with the devil but I do so in fear

Of the alternative
Terrence Polcari Jun 2019
If you perchance to look into the Abyss
                         Just remember—the Abyss also looks into you . . . ”
                                             – Friedrich Nietzche

I dared presume to reach the depths
Of Purest Pure Thought
To touch God . . .

Down through layers of consciousness deeply I dove—
And deeper still

Until I reached the critical junction of Fathomless Deep Awareness
Where the strobing slashes of light and dark
Became One Hellish Grey Maelstrom
Of Maddeningly Sheer Chaos

The Pearlescence of my identity all but squashed . . .

I beheld the cosmic linchpin of Balanced Pandemonium
Beautifully Resplendent and Repellently Frightful—

Wellspring of The All

It became as mental blows
Pounding lustrous images of Divine Oneness
Into my being . . .
I was connected into the foundation of All
And it terrified me beyond repulsion—
I could bare the Allness Beauty
Of Swirling Hideous Nothing/Something
But an instant only

Aft I desperately swam
Rearward through tiers of awareness
Voraciously upward back into reality
Shaking in raw Astonishment—
Tear-eyed disbelief

And pure Horror . . .
Satsih Verma Nov 2023
This was the crisis of
sacred fig. My ****** pain and
suffering were indigenous.

I adore the beauty of
night blooming jasmine. Unpaid death
follows in day. The milk dries up.

Before Nietzche walks in
I will divide the body of my dream.
A panic takes over the truth.

— The End —