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Bad Luck Feb 2015
I’m in my prime; at the cusp of my development.
A few more years of growth make decay a lot more relevant…

Glass Elephant,
Glass Elephant,


Irrelevance, benevolence,
Compassion, or malevolence;
I’m one of few who sees it sums no difference.

Glass objects.
Or Elephants.
Irrelevance,
Irrelevance

Striving for motion, with motive elusive
Each thing I endeavor is far too exclusive
I need something inclusive, objectively singular
A sinusoidal wave with a mean lacking integers
Peace in zero and equilibrium inclusion

Glass Elephant
Glass Elephant

Delusions, Delusions
"Bad Luck: In a Wakeful Contradiction" is now available on Amazon in paperback!

Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1691941182
RAJ NANDY Aug 2018
THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE: PART TWO
Dear Friends, having introduced ‘The Enigma of Time in Verse’ in Part One, along with few selected poetic quotes, I now mention what some of the important Philosophers thought about Time down the past centuries. But while doing so, I have tried my best to simplify some of those early concepts for better understanding and appreciation of my readers. If you like it, kindly re-post the poem. Thanks,  – Raj Nandy of New Delhi.

          THE ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE : PART TWO
   I commence by quoting Sonnet 60 of Shakespeare about Time,
   Hoping to seek some blessings for this Part Two composition of
   mine!
“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
  So do our minutes hasten to their end;
  Each changing place with that which goes before,
  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
  Nativity, once in the main of light,
  Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
  Crooked elipses ’gainst his glory fight,
  And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
  Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
  And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
  Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
  And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
  And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.”

              PHILOSOPHY OF TIME
Animals are said to live in a continuous present,
Since they have no temporal distinction of past, future,
or the present.
But our consciousness of time, becomes the most
distinguishing feature of mankind.
Though we are mostly obsessed with objective time, -
As the rotation of our Earth separates day from night.
With the swing of the pendulum and the ticking of clocks,
Which regulates our movements, while we try to beat the clock!
But the ancient theologians and philosophers of India and
Greece,
Who were among the first to ponder about the true nature
of all things,
Had wondered about the subjective nature of time;
Was time linear or cyclic, was time endless or finite?

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS ON TIME:
I begin with Heraclitus, the Pre-Socratic philosopher of 6th Century BC born in Ephesus.
He claimed that everything around us, is in a constant state of change and flux.
You cannot step into the same river twice Heraclitus had claimed,
Since water keeps flowing down the river all the while and never
remains the same.
This flow and change in Nature is a process which is ceaseless.
The only thing which remains permanent is impermanence!
Here is a quote from poet Shelley reflecting the same idea:
“World on world are rolling ever
  From creation to decay
  Like the bubbles on a river
  Sparkling, bursting, borne away.”

Now Heraclitus was refuted by Parmenides, born in the Greek colony of Elea,
On the western coast of Southern Italy, as his contemporary.
Parmenides said that our senses deceive us, since all changes are mere illusory!
True reality was only eternal and unchanging ‘Being’, which was both indivisible and continuous - filling up all space.
Zeno, a pupil of Parmenides, through his famous ‘Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise’ had shown, that when the tortoise was given a head start,
Swift footed Achilles could never catch up with the tortoise,
Since the space between the two were infinitely divisible, resulting in the impossibility of movement and change in motion!
Now the Greeks were never comfortable with the Concept of Infinity.
They preferred to view the universe as continuous existing ‘Being’.  
However, unlike Heraclitus’ ‘world of change and flux’,
Both Parmenides and Zeno have presented us, with a static unchanging universe!
Thus from the above examples it becomes easy for us to derive,  
How those Ancient Greeks had viewed Time.
Time has been viewed as a forward moving changing entity;
And also as an illusory, continuous and indivisible Being!
To clarify this further I quote Bertrand Russell from his ‘History of Western Philosophy’;
“Creation out of nothing, which was taught in the Old Testament, was an idea wholly foreign to Greek philosophy. When Plato speaks of creation, he imagines a primitive matter, to which God gives form as an artificer.”

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE ON TIME:
For Plato, time was created by the Creator at the same instance when he had fashioned the heavens.
But Plato was more interested to contemplate on things which lay
beyond the sway of time and remained unchangeable and eternal;
Like absolute Truth, absolute Justice, the absolute form of Good and Beauty;
Which were eternal and unchangeable like the ‘Platonic Forms’, and were beyond the realm of Time as true reality.
Plato’s pupil Aristotle was the first Greek philosophers to contemplate on reality inside time, and provide a proper definition as we get to see.
He said, “Time is the number of movement in respect to before and after” - as a part of reality.
To measure time numerically, we must have a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, and also notice the difference objectively.
Therefore, time here becomes the change which we see and experience.
Time takes on a linear motion moving from the past to the present;
And to the unknown future like a moving arrow travelling straight.
Aristotle had developed a four step process to understand everything inside of Time and within human experience:
(a) Observe the world using our senses,
(b) Apply logical rules to these observations,
(c) To go back and consult past authorities, if your logic agrees with their logic,
(d) Then only you can come to a logical conclusion.

No wonder in our modern times, experiments conducted by the LDC or the Large Hadron Collider, located 100m underground near the French-Swiss border,
By going back in time simulates the ‘Big Bang’ conditions, that moment of our universe’s first creation.
The scientists thereby, study the evolution of our universe with time, which  resulted in the  finding of the Higgs Boson !  (On 4thJuly 2012)

NOTES :  All elementary particles interacting with the Higg's Field & obtain Mass, excepting for photons & gluons which do not interact with this field. Mass-less photons can travel at the
speed of light with a mind boggling 186,000 miles per second! Now this LDC is a Particle Accelerator 27 kms long ring-shaped tunnel, made mostly of superconducting magnets, inside which two high-energy particle beams are made to travel close to the speed of light in opposite directions, and the shower of particles resulting from the collision is closely examined, presuming that these similar shower of particles must have been produced at the time of the ‘Big Bang’ some 13.8 million years ago, at the time of Creation! Sound like fiction? Well, Prof. Peter Higgs got the Noble Prize for Physics, for locating the particle called ‘Higgs Boson’ among those shower of particles, on 10th Dec. 2013.

NOW TO LIGHTEN UP MY READERS MIND, FEW TIME QUOTE I NOW PROVIDE :

“TIME WASTES OUR BODIES AND OUR WITS,
  BUT WE WASTE TIME, SO WE ARE QUITS!” – Anonymus.

‘Time is a great Teacher, but unfortunately it kills its Pupils!’ – HL Berlioz

“Lost , yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two
   golden hours,
   Each set with sixty diamond minutes.
   No reward is offered, for they are gone forever!” – Horace Mann


PLOTINUS & ST. AUGUSTINE ON TIME:
Now getting back to our Philosophy of Time, there was Plotinus of the 3rd Century AD,
The founder of the mystical Neo-Platonic School of Philosophy.
He had followed Plato’s basic concept of Time as “the moving image of eternity.”
Mystic Plotinus tried to synthesize both Aristotle and Plato by saying that the entire process of cosmic creation,
Flows out of the ONE  through a series of emanation!
This ONE gave rise to the ‘Divine Mind’ which he called the ‘Realm of Intelligence’ and is an aspect of reality,
When everything is understood in terms of Platonic Forms of Truth, Justice, the Good, and Beauty.
However, the later Christian theologians had interpreted this ONE of Plotinus, -
As the Christian God, the Divine Creator of the Universe.
For God is eternal, in the sense of being timeless, in God there is no before or after, but only a timeless present.

Now this lead St. Augustine, to formulate a very admirable relativistic theory of Time!
St. Augustine, the greatest constructive teacher of the Early Christian Church, had written in Book XI of his ‘Confessions’ during  5th century AD, -
His thoughts about the enigma of Time which had perplexed the Greek philosophers of earlier centuries.
To simplify St. Augustine’s thoughts, I now paraphrase for the sake of clarity.
Time can only be measured while it is passing, yet there is time past, and time future in reality.
To avoid these contradictions he says that past and future can only be thought of as present: ‘past’ must be identified with memory, and ‘future’ with expectation.
Since memory and expectation being both present facts, there is no contradiction.  
“The present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight; and the present of things future is expectation,” - wrote St. Augustine.

This subjective notion of time led St. Augustine to anticipate Rene Descartes the French philosopher the 17th Century,
Who proclaimed “Cogito, ergo sum” in Latin, meaning “I think, therefore I am”, and is regarded as the Father of Modern Philosophy.

Now cutting a long story short I come to Sir Isaac Newton, well known for his Laws of Motion and Gravity.
Newton speaks of ‘Absolute Time’ which exists independently, flowing at a consistent pace throughout the universe, which can only be understood mathematically.
Newton’s ‘Absolute Time’ had remained as the dominant concept till the  early years of the 20th Century.
When Albert Einstein formulated ‘Theory of Space-time’ along with his Special and General Theory of Relativity.

Now the German philosopher Leibniz during 17th century, had challenged Newton with his anti-realist theory of time.
Leibniz claimed that time was only a convenient intellectual concept, that enables to sequence and compare happening of events.
There must be objects with which time can interact or relate to as ‘Relational Time’ he had felt.
Ernst Mach, like Leibniz towards the end of 19th Century, said that even if it was not obvious what time and space was relative to,
Then they were still relative to the ‘fixed stars’ i.e. the bulk of matter in the universe.

CONCEPT OF TIME AS 'SPECIOUS PRESENT' :
During late 19th century, Robert Kelley introduced the concept of ‘spacious present’, which was the most recent part of the past.
Psychologist and philosopher William James developed this idea further by describing it as ‘’the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’’
William James also introduced the term “stream of consciousness” into literature as a method of narration,
That described happenings in the flow of thought in the mind of the characters, - likened to an internal monologue!
This literary technique was later used by James Joyce in his famous novel ‘Ulysses’.

TIME CONCEIVED AS DURATION: HENRI BERGSON (1859 -1941)
Next I come to one of my favourite philosopher the French born Henri Bergson.
The Nobel Laureate and author of ‘Time and Free Will’ and ‘Creative Evolution’.
Will Durant in his ‘Story of Philosophy’ says Bergson was ‘the David destined to slay the Goliath of materialism.’
It was Bergson’s ‘Elan Vital’ that life force and impelling urge, Which makes us grow and transforms this wandering planet into a theatre of unending creation.
For Bergson, time is as fundamental as space; and it is time that holds the essence of life, and perhaps of all reality.
Time is an accumulation, a growth, a duration, where “duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances.
The past in its entirety is prolonged into the present and abides there actual and acting.
Duration means that the past endures, that nothing is lost.
Though we think with only a small part of our past; but it is with our entire past that we desire, will, and act.”
“Since time is an accumulation, the future can never be the same as the past, -
For a new accumulation arises at every step, and change is far more radical than we suppose…the geometric predictability of all things, Which is the goal of a mechanistic science, is only a delusion and a dream!”  
Bergson goes on in his compelling lyrical style:            
“For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature,
to mature is to go on creating one’s self endlessly. Perhaps all reality is time and duration, becoming and change.”
Bergson differed with Darwin's theory of adaptation to environment, and stated;
“Man is no passively adaptive machine, he is a focus of redirected force, a centre of creative evolution.”

Martin Heidegger, the German thinker in his ‘Being and Time’ of 1927, had said:
“We do not exist within time, but in a very real way we are time!”
Time is inseparable from human experience, since we can allow the past to exist in the present through memory;
And even allow a potential future occurrence to exist in the present due to our human ability to care, and be concerned about things.
Therefore we are not stuck in simple sequential or linear time, but can step out of it almost at will!

CONCLUDING  PART  TWO OF ENIGMA OF TIME IN VERSE
In this part I have tried to convey what the Ancient Greek Philosophers had felt about Time in a simplified way.
Also some thoughts of Medieval and Early Modern philosophers and what they had to say.
Where Sir Isaac Newton stands like a colossus with his Concept of Time, Laws of Motion, and Gravity.
Not forgetting Henri Bergson, one of my favourite philosopher, of the mid-19th and the mid-20th Century.
All through my narration I had tried to hold the interest of my readers, and also educated myself as a true knowledge seeker.
In my concluding Part Three I will cover few Modern Philosophers along with the relativistic concept of time.
Certainly not forgetting the space-time theory of our famous Albert Einstein!
Thanks for reading patiently, from Raj Nandy of New Delhi.
  *ALL COPY RIGHTS ARE WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY
Ken Pepiton Oct 2018
This is not where this idea began but it ran and I

missed my mark. Mark sin.
-1 deficit reality quotientcy
currency.  Sure.
(Press Sure, to let the bursting pressure equilation expand at will)
Score.

That fine a level of reality
demands more attention than I have to pay.
Patient agent wait and not see or see if/then

you suffer, is there ought that I might do now
for you
that these words are not doing?
All I am is words, in a sence, sense, since

we come in threes, we are some of those sets of thoughts tangled in complexes
better left alone.

Untangling twisted knotted realities is what we do best.
We've been wadding up proteins,
since God knows when,

time's less twisted than people think it is,
but it is silly to imagine
time's arrow is a metaphor for these meta-gnostic moments.
Is it?

Apophrenia
or mere
Dejavu, you believe,
what if it is your memory lying by ignoring time
attention ratios determining the observations stored in HD?
What if it's just a glitch?
Blue screen of death.


If you suffer, is there ought that I might do now
for you
that these words are not doing?
All I am is words, in a sence, sense, since

we come in threes, we are those sets of thoughts tangled in complexes
better left alone.

Untangling twisted knotted realities is what we do best.
We've been wadding up proteins,
since God knows when,

time's less twisted than people think it is, but
is it silly to imagine
time's arrow is a metaphor for these meta-gnostic moments?

We come and go. To and fro up on the face

messengers bearing news in both directions, watch
the trickster, Jacob, in this story, he sees the messengers from
heaven bearing leaven thither and hither

upon the face of the earth.
the wrinkling mother, smiling now, chuckle head
I ain't no ***** saint.

Jah, I know. Joy is my dance, this is my song.
Is it good Grandmother?

---- on the porch facing my west gate ---

fences don't play exactly, out acted, the role of walls.

The idea that something
there is that does not love a wall,
has frozen my pond

the stillness beyond the sylvan **** crowned head
radiates through the medium of the message to me in time
to you.

Miles to go, you recall the feeling of feeling miles to go
before
I sleep.
That was yesterday, and you know yes ter everything's gone,
roar.

Aslan can pierce the barrier between mere Christians and me,
how would be fun to know, but
knowing why would help us keep the story interesting as life goes on

Who controls my peace?
Am I a mercurial sheen in between chaos and order,
chronus and zeus?
Could be, ya thank so, ye know so, less unlessed as

unlessing means nothing to you,
that means you are visiting here.

Visting whom, vis it ing whom?
Who's in charge, where's the power
short

age, wrinkles in time, rogue waves at the quanta scale,
we were dancing
with the thoughts emanating

from some IDW smart guy proffesing
Critique-technic-magi action, post mode'r'ism
at the point of Dada und Scheizkunst,
the unmass-queque,
the line of lies awaiting unbelief,
idle words lingering,
hoping
to be noticed and added back into the story book of life,

a simple wish.

It could be every child's, should we think that
if we can or may,

sometimes I'm still, and

confusion troubles the water,
it seems,
then another hurt is healed, another lie is gone and life goes on

we won again, this never gets old,
I do love my opposition,
pressure pump
pump pump. De-us-me-can-onbeoffbeyond

five years ago unmasking and rhetoric meant nothing to me
the purpose of learning forever and never
knowing anything beyond all things

our bubble is metastasizing, a mercurial film forms
informing us
in its reflection,

this is the ying yang thang in 3 or 4 d, HD+ chaos one half

order the other,
sharpest imaginable thing
me trick being mag ift just if eye winged show

how beautiful are the feet of them who bring good news,
you see, it flows, sweetwater flows
winged feet
whish through leaving, leavin' leaven…

unleaven that which has been leaved?
Fat chance, all who
eat this bread and don't get gas,
they are our same bread people. Companions.
Vectors of sour dough,
webs of fungal
axions
make a way
bore, pore, poor-with-us, pour

in to it ish, that idea, an opening through,
trickle down good gravity leveling stillness,
gentle rocking earth
roll round and round and round

the pythagorean version
of Euclid's point in his mother's story,

the point of this song? To know the point you must have been

to the point of in-forming the point on which we dance and you recall

we come in threes, and just, we are, just, if it, that idea,
rests in your
back roads, gentle on your mind. We make peace.

Being young is easy from my POV.
I've lived in my future for sometime now

I can't say how, beyond saying aloud, this was never hidden,
in my accounting of idle words I claimed,
upon hearing the stories each contained.

i'da swore i hear that wise *** o'balaam's abrayin'
Braindeem, deemed 'eem. Wham, uptheyhaid. Relig, fool,

or chaos wins and no hero ever lives again!
Drop anchor, wait it out.
let patience blow her nose, gnostic snot caught in the nets,

nonono nothing's wasted in patience work, we make glue
from gnostic snot that patience sneezes
when reality grows cold,

that has happened, you know, temperatures are just now,
oh, wait global warming, bad dam,

Script, bust it,
leveling is essential to eventual temperature
equilibrium.
The heat is on, the bubbles are forming, informing one to another
below the surface
greasy tension, slippery slopes putting pressure on chaos
to conform to the curve

Ying yang, mercury film upon the sea of time and the scene of chaos
in this bubble of all you can imagine real.

Hows' that feel? Why?

You want that? What are you standing under? Does chaos win?
You are, as we say, cognisic magi we-ified,
practical magic at
the moment
the point
is made, then the creation begins fractalling outward

and not before or is this all
unrolling ex nihilo, no magi ever knew…
come, let us reason together,

why am I empowered? To live, first thought wise, that's good but
evil forces me to think again and I see the pattern

life goes on, John Molenkamp, Sam, soldier 4,
(as the credits role by, the name catches my eye)
never in a thousand years,
'cept unbelievable is one of those lies I came to **** by strangling
on bile while
rescuing every idle word ever involved in the infection

from the point in the absolute center of the bubble,
objectively, you see everything
that is
seeable

but would good prevail if evil had no hope?

I know that one, yes. why?
evil has no mind, soul, some think--
same same medium message spoken spelled chanted danced
who care's?
*** 'er done. Life has a chaotic side, the churning creates

number one from none, the cult of one divides itself
go do be
we three we three we three a wavy song ding ****.

Aware? Awaken? Avowed-wowed-wit-wise,
fullcomp, retired
Peacemaker. Me.

All my hero's imagined or real, were Peacemakers.
Just now, peaceful now, mindful now
we remain
the same blessing promised in the package of yeses
stolen from Cain by his older sister, his
bride,
keep that quiet, eh?

Secrets made sacred, always
those are lies, no lie is of the truth,
all lies are about the truth.

What empowers you, poet or poetry? Right, you know,
God, good god knows, resentment lives in lies

the rotting idle words deemed curses at best, secret at worst,
those idle corrupting thoughts sparking as if absolute annihilation were thinkable by rational minds

of ---wait, there's arub, a sore
ex nihilo, the homeless wanderer screams,

"May the whole world perish, may you all go to hell,"

the mad man wept his hell, and imagined his curse,

not mine,
I don't have one. I did, but I went back so often to find pieces of my heart that now I have an Elysian network woven through All-hell, the big idea that broke loose infecting the mind as wisdom's leaven builds her womb
inhabitation
placenta
stem cell informing builders empowered, pressure empowered, what must be, but is not verse, versus
us, the we that be
we must
choose,

let this be, come and see,
life goes on.
Agree, or empower us as we bubble by and
takenallwecan expanding gobbling bubbles,
good
by ye.

Once we flushed the Dada poison and let mito mom
instill the patience gene with
epigenetic peace we can pass on with a touch or a word,

we've never woven lies for no reason,
if a rung breaks
and they can, last straw and all that weight,
you know,
Jacob's ladder is an escalaltor-ladder, wittily invented,
with knots and twisted fibers electricked,
there are automated steps, algoryhmes of reasons to repair the broken rung
with a reason to believe the rung has been repaired,
only believe, take a step,
re
paired again with the idea of meaninglessness masked in create-if-ity

good enough. okeh. don't believe lies.
Don't pass undigested lies to see if farts burn.
Listening to Hicks Explaing Post Modernism after watching Tenant's Voltage Within spark a fire. This reality is storyteller heaven.
Breethyr Nov 2020
When i tell people about how i saw beyond reason, they tell me i'm not making any sense. Ironically, that's exactly the point. Something beyond reason can't make sense, logically, but it doesn't mean there isn't anything beyond logic.
We as people often act defying logic, although, arguably, the logic we live by is relative, and that leads to certain logical conclusions. What i am more interested in is, if all the relative points of logic can be seen as parts of objective, or even universal logic, then can i map it's boundaries? The answer is no. For the reason that if you can't see beyond a certain point you can't tell what's behind it. Say i stumble upon the logical end of my thought - it seemingly ends at a certain point, but what is beyond - i cannot know, that's why i can not tell if it's the logical end of it is relative to me or objective. But that is a logical mistake on my part. It's the relatively logical way to think, but objectively it's doomed for failure. For the same reason why we can't find the edge of our universe - not just because we don't see beyond the visible space region, but because it is impossible to reach such an edge in three dimensional space.
Allow me to logically explain why, on example of a two-dimensional space. Imagine yourself in a jar with water, you are swimming on the surface. The boundaries of the jar is your observable, or for better word - reachable universe. But the jar is not the entire universe, beyond the jar there is enormous amount of water. Whether it exists on a three-dimensional sphere or simply goes forever is irrelevant - you will never swim to the edge regardless. But if you were to be able to jump up from the surface of water then you would have understood that the true edge of this universe was actually vertical and you've just escaped through it into a new 3-dimensional one that is an extension of the two-dimensional one you previously were floating in. Now how do you then escape this 3-dimensional one you found yourself in? You know the answer, you jump into the 4th dimension - the logically only true edge of it.
Whether you can do it or not is irrelevant, what matters is what it tells us about logic - the exactly same thing - you can't reach the end of logic by simply looking around for it's borders, you have to fundamentally defy logic and go beyond it from the start.
Before we attempt that i have to lay down some things i kept secret from you until now. Why do i even chase the logical end? The answer is - i don't, i chase the fundamental understanding of the universe. "Whoah - hold up there" you might say, "what a perverse charlatan you are with your irrational methods, leave the universe to scientists!" And i will tell you - you are completely right. I don't understand anything a physicist or astronomer does when they examine what they can about the universe, but i believe, even though objectivity is not a matter of belief, to have a full understanding one can't study things from one aspect. Logic is the counterpart to fact, it is due to logic that facts exist the way they do, and it is due to facts available to us that we have the relative understanding of logic that we have today. Logic is the interpretation of the universe. And to reach a logical limit, in a sense, would be similar to reaching the limit of the universe. I can't jump into the fourth dimension of space, but i still i want to gain the fundamental understanding. I am desperate. That's why i will not stop until i have found it.
I have to derail from logic, and to do so i first need to deconstruct it. Construct is the foundation logic. By tying things into constructs, logic allows for interpretation of facts. Take for example the three dimensional space. It's construct is simple - it is existing in a three-axis fashion. There is left-right, forward-backward, up-down. Very simple, yet if need be it allows for great complexity, which can always be traced down to it's construct - three axis. To go beyond logic's very basic construct would be reaching my goal, but it is too early for that, as i can't yet pin-point what that is; i can do it for the relative space that i operate in, since with logic i interpret it, but to break down the very thing i interpret the world with is a completely different task.
Let's return to constructs. As i have realized, they are the foundation of logic. But further than that, they allow for existence of concepts. Now, beyond being a pretty word, a concept is something that we can logically interpret - understand, deconstruct or construct. Now not to play this game of terms any further, for the sake of logical simplicity i have decided that there are two types of concepts (and nothing further) - relative and objective. Relative concepts are understood in connection to other ones, while objective ones don't need the presence of others to still be ready for interpretation. The truth is, no one operates in objective constructs, because for that you would have to be outside of logic and universe, know it completely and wholly, only then would you truly be able to tell what constructs are objective. Even though relative to us, some concepts seem objective, for example - evolution, we describe it as the process of continuous adaptation. Seems very objective, right? But to proclaim such a thing is a fallacy - as even though it may be connected to our entire relative field of logic, we cannot tell whether is a fundamental property of all layers of the universe beyond our own. Another example - the concept of process. Well, time flows and with it something changes. Very objective. But time is relative to our perception of reality, there may not even be "time" at all and all there is is the way we experience the universe. What if we experienced time backwards? What if we experienced all time available to us at once? What if we did not experience time at all and stayed in a single "time-frame"? Is the concept of process still valid then? As such, all concepts available to us lie in the relative region of logic, and as far as we can understand, they don't stretch beyond it at least objectively.
Now that i have decided upon the features of logic, i need to derail. I don't know where to start so i will attempt to deconstruct a concept, and hopefully i will reach a logical failure - that will indicate to me that i have reached the limit to which i can deconstruct the concept, unless of course i have failed to stay true to logic, which seems contradictory, but really it isn't, as duality is the nature of the universe - even in logic.
If i have to "derail" then i will go with the concept of "a train". The one that travels on rails. What is a train? Is it a machine powered by fuel that goes on rails to transport someone or something, and usually consists of many connected wagons? Yes, but a lot of that is formalities, as how exactly a train works isn't a fundamental part of it's concept. The human idea of train can easily be seen in how we use the word alternatively - "train of thought". Fundamentally, it's something that travels to (hopefully)_a destination (but this train is doomed to fail). As such, i have discovered that "train" is only one of the faces for the fundamental concept of "transportation". Transportation is so fundamental to not just our existence but all life on Earth; because of this the invention of train by humankind was inevitable.
Let us transport somewhere. Conceptually, transportation means continuous movement of object by another. I want to go from point A to point B and i transport myself: i put myself in a cart and the cart takes me there. I want to transport a can of soda from the store to my fridge: i transport it there by carrying it in my hand.
I have realized that transport is a bad word for all of this, since it is not yet the most fundamental concept. What an oversight by me! Let's quickly fix this by proclaiming that more fundamental than transportation is movement. That truly is a great concept, as it is very fundamental, so please replace the word "transportation" for the word "movement" in the previous examples i'd described.
Movement is the primordial concept. I have arrived to such conclusion by thinking for an entire minute. If the construct of our perceivable reality is the three-axis, then by adding the concept of time and cause-effect into the mix, movement inevitably appears. Actually i have messed up with the terminology, so i will clean up the mess: construct of perceivable space is three-axis, but the fundamental construct of our relative reality also consists of time and cause-effect. In such a formation, movement is the primordial construct of this relative reality, as it is the most fundamental act. If you didn't know, non-movement is impossible in our reality due to the principle of relativity: even if you stay in place - from many perspectives you are in fact moving.
How does movement occur?.. What does it describe?.. A process of me moving from one point to another in a certain period of time? But what if it can also be reversed and describe me as moving in time in a certain length of space? Yes, it should, absolutely. Because from a detached perspective, it's the same thing. For me to move a certain distance, a certain amount of time has to pass; when a certain amount of time passes, i inevitably move a certain distance. I can't move to a certain distance without passing through a certain amount of time. I can't pass through a certain amount of time without moving some distance. In fact, i have an idea, i will move through time just because i decided to, and for that to happen i only need to go over a certain distance, or i may not even need to go, as i move through space all the time anyway. I still can only experience the time in one direction which is dictated by the cause-effect first being cause then effect in my relative perception of reality, but all it takes for me to go backwards is to turn around the cause-effect axis the same way i would turn around in the spacial three-dimensional axis'es. Everything would be exactly the same, just going backwards, and would make perfect sense once you apply a different logical interpretation strategy (with the effect being prior to cause).
Now i turn on the cause-effect axis in such a way that to my right is the cause and to my left is the effect. Time is at a standstill. I can't tell for sure but either i experience just one time-frame or all of them at once, but time no longer plays a part in my perception of reality, in fact now i see that to my right is the past and to my left is the future - it's frames like the one in which i currently am but slightly alternated, only if connected in a sequence they combine into time, but standalone they are like three-dimensional pictures.
I have experienced the world in a way i never had yet, but it still makes complete sense. I need to start removing parts of the logical construct. As i still witness past to the right and future to the left i decide that i can also see the alternative pasts and futures - all of those that intersect the one frame i currently inhabit. Why did i even decide i can do that? Because quantum mechanics told me i can, since according to their principles, universe is both deterministic and random - all effects occur from all possible causes and thus form infinite amount of timeline forks - all of which happen but a single observer feels like he only experiences one.
So i am an observer who turned perpendicularly around the cause-effect axis and decided that he can see what other observers he interconnected with experienced and will experience - them being technically other versions of me that cross paths in this frame. Now, when i say i've decided, you must understand, that even though factually none of this is possible, logically it is, just as much as you don't need to actually perform an action to sort of experience it - when you play a video-game or imagine things. Now, back to my experience of this ultra-reality, it is not very comprehensible, as it is similar to having not just one vision but 3 powered by infinity. I can't take it all in, but all my counterpart versions did come to this time-frame too, after-all. Which means that right here and now there's infinite amount of me, and all-together we can comprehend this mess of infinite pictures, one by one. This is definitely some sort of super-consciousness, made possible by all of us observers realizing that we interconnected from divergent paths in this one frame, which in turn was made possible from us rotating on the cause-effect axis. This is as close as it comes for me experiencing something truly divine. Not factually possible, yet logically experienceable.
Now i have seen it all - the entirety of my personal observable universe - or to be more factually correct - the entirety of my relatively available logic. Being only one of those infinite converging observers, i can't really tell you exactly what it consists of, but if you follow me in my previous steps you will understand it without me having to explain it.
Now only just one thing remains to finally derail - as i see everywhere i could ever see, and still wish to see what i could never see. Just like from that two-dimensional water i jumped into the three-dimensional air above it, i have to jump from whatever this thing i currently am experiencing to somewhere beyond it.
And i actually do so. In a way. I can't see **** here. Or at least, i can't figure out what i see, it makes no sense, it is beyond logic, beyond comprehension. Not even the infinite amount of my brethren can figure it out, it is on a completely different plane of existence, or maybe it even is unexistance, i can't know. It's completely quiet, even though maybe it is actually loud, just that the sound doesn't make any sense to me, so it's the same as if i don't hear anything. I just stare into it which is both nothing and so much everything to me that i almost drown in it. It pretty much ***** my thoughtful entirety into it much like a black-hole, it can't really do it but all my thoughts are attracted to it. It is to me like a great void that probably has lots of stuff inside but i can't possibly ever reach it, so to me it's a void. A void beyond logic, the delirious nonsense itself. I cannot reach it.
I get back from it to my plane of existence and turn around into the normal position on cause-effect axis of my relative reality. I really did it, i found that edge, that border. It's such a strange insight unlike anything else i have ever experienced in my head. I both know and don't know so much more about the universe - i experienced that black hole in my head, the end of the line for the train of logic, that drowns out into the vast void of complete irrationality relative to me. Now i know where and how to find it, and while it's not of any use to me, it brings me both despair and solace.
And did You find your end of the line?
Not a poem but a small personal philosophical absurd "treatise".
TB Dentz Jul 2018
Be open-minded and admit the possibility
That some things are objectively wrong
We all live in a constant state of gray area

I see you pretty often, maybe once every week or so
For a moment our bubbles come very close to overlapping
But they so far have always held firm
Which is, in one respect, kind of amazing
Yet in another, to be expected

Our bubbles are made of rubber and concrete
Our lives are so different - we’re separated by
Class, gender, age, ethnicity and health history
Different in almost every way you could imagine
Save for location, which again is amazing

If we ever step out of our bubbles one day
And I actually hope we do
It will be uncomfortable, I imagine, and also
Potentially dangerous for both of us
But it could turn out great

Most people ask themselves I guess
Whether it’s worth the risk
And say no and they probably make assumptions
And I so far haven’t made too many about you
Although to make none is impossible and so of that I am proud

Some things might be wrong even if
Everyone does them and even if
You or I do them constantly
Without an ounce of guilt
It’s possible anyway
This is about finding the ways society tricks us into believing we are good people.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2020
back toward my usual: relaxing over a sudoku
while drinking -
honestly: if i, were a man,
that greatly desired an expansive biography...
a sort of life akin to: ******* against the wind...
asking questions:
   what's a pumpernickel to windmill?
          out of the lucky drawn of blind oaths
paranoia -
         i am calm like the best of them:
calling the shots to spice up the difference
between verbatim and verbatom
  (last time i checked verbatim implied:
word for word - the ditto of dittos -
the dog's ******* sort'ah cue)...
it's wasn't a pumpernickel to a windmill
to begin with: gingerbread -
that soft fudge kind... not a hard crisp:
moses! moses! the tablature! type of ginger...
so a mix of the two... lucky day as any:
i'll just dye it with having completed
the think-tank task of solving the shoelace
"riddle"..
          and i guess i will not find a buckle:
it's otherwise so impossible to have
read a bastion from the 18th century...
that not many have...
and that it has been the 21st century nibbling
at me...
and that people still haven't...
what a sorrow of exclusivity:
a broker of: to read a work that...
persists at being pop among moths and dust
and some extension of the term
necromancy...
                    by now anything cartesian:
revised or otherwise becomes a faux pas...
a sort of "revision" of:
irish catholic - in the name of the alt vater...
the blistering kiss to summon
the son with his body the apple
the crucifix the tree of trees...
                       not that new metaphors
couldn't possibly be generated:
but that there's a fear of transcending
the superstitious...
                          in the shadow of the cross:
i hollowed out my bearings bare...
i married thought to a dream
and i had a dream of: a bellowing -
of a greater grand yawn of: nothing...
i was never the architect of or in them...
    having to come back...
there was still the same robotic heart...
and liver... and stomach...
i was having to discover less
a nuance or adventure:
but the whole process of automation...
that i had some freedoms:
i will claim the skeleton owned
most of it... in terms of thought:
  i probably thought of what someone else
thought of: whether as an original
intactness -
my "original sin" was that...
i probably succumbed to a plagiarism...
at some point...
whether to revise of innovate...
i became a generic this that & the other...
like beauty: esp. of women...
oh the generic side of...
when the face starts to contort under
the pandemonium of onomatopoeias
in the *** act...
                   like a cubistic:
if the rhombus is beyond the square
then that sort of face is beside a rhombus or...
les demoiselles d'avignon...
   perhaps it was always a concert of
a nose or a scalp or a chin... or a beard...
for the itch... and the impossible translation of:
well... there is no right of genius
by a mere easing of the itch with
a scratch...
unless... i'd be scratching that itch
with a feather...
there! the impossible! a well off image that
can't be translated into a sound...
back to the fore:
objectivity is overrated...
i find that each and every day...
that Kafka feared...
it isn't / it wasn't a communist / capitalist
dichotomy... sparring...
both share a capitulation for
bureaucracy... the "safe space" walking
abortions of: pencil-pushers and nostalgia paper...
grizi-piórek: quill-nibblers...
   yes... that agony of trades as the hamster wheel
plumbers: forgotten eastern european
extracts in the houses of western
journalism...
after all... i read a newspaper that doesn't
exactly inform me...
i am more informed concerning
how i might / ought to feelz zis...
       bistro!
                     please... no thought experiments...
i have one already:
thought as the moral: (th)ought...
that's the only one i have...
the rest has to succumb -
notably thinking loitering and subsequently
put to paper:
  thought as a pleasure -
from a deeply personal stance of
narration or some variation
of punctuation - metaphysical -
or thought as an agony -
when the brain (the source of thinking?)
starts to mimic the rest of
this automated corpus -
those automatic / repetitive thinking
patterns that exhaust both mind
and body: esp. when there is no
menial task at hand...
or hands to mind: for that matter...
no... thought as a postcard: wish you...
wish i...
a 21st century faux pas... reading descartes...
i re(a)d kant and have no one to talk
to about... because i'd want to?
least probably: no nein nie niet...
there was a mind-body duality?
i guess there was...
that there is now a mind-body dichotomy:
a metaphorical schizophrenia -
why would normal, sane, people...
masquerade this dichotomy
in a psychiatric metaphor:
how easily can you hear the suffix
being cited: casually... schizoid...
   so... the mind-body duality was...
but not really...
in that the metaphor for schizophrenic...
and that's... parallel...
not linear bilingual...
people casually infer these metaphors
because...
  it's a clarifying calamity...
        
   the collective continent will never:
dearly appreciate the efforts of the english...
suppose they are too near to the mainland...
this... awkward looking thing... island...
like italy...
             because it's no iceland...
you can read of a czech writer flabbergasted
over a Flaubert...
but... Evelyn Waugh hardly creeps up
to the market value of export
for the global stage...
     what's that composer... "then again"...
Handel was a ******* polyphonic...
german...
           Holst too... never mind Orff...
old wounds: new blood
well... new wounds - old blood...
              Elgar?
      really? Elgar is my Penderecki -
i find it becoming to think very little
of oneself:
i suppose there was a body that exerted
enough pressure to type these words...
but i have a shadow: a proper extension
of thought to mind...
within the confines of this body...
i probably daydream and gesticulate
at bargaining or... gambling...

no overt use of pronouns:
whenever i look up at the starts
from the copernican genesis
i am panged with a myopia...
but... given some insect -esque detail...
i am having to shatter my eyes with
all those attentions to detail...
such is english... grammatically:
the overt-staging of pronouns
and conjunctions...
these stars are myopic staring-match-up...
these insects are my ordeals
of escapism...

pièce de résistance -
on the topic of culinary adventures...
can one be objective for such demands...
well...
come first served:
there's this demand for the objectivity
of sitting on a chair:
it's hardly a subjective experience...

objectively: as in - the opposing party -
socialism was exported
to mongolia to balance the deeds of
the horde -
    by objectivity i sense a need
to oppose - to make critique -
to elevate some alleviation of summons
of the encyclopedic courtesan -
crustacean halal?!
pork best fed: there's a leash and a dog
barking inquisitive as to
where the bite makes a churn...

a kippah for a keeper...
and the same loiter for the tonsure in
imitation...
when it's all dark and critter
ennobled from the east end
locket of prizes that summon:
London - a shelved ordeal of both
Mammon and Moloch...
       the crescendo approach...
the polyphony of teasing taste...

it can be objectively staged:
i ate a carrot...
not past not nor present...
i ate an apple...
objectively i will eat an apple...
           i can also eat
a kohlrabi with some radishes...
and a peepsqueak
red onions pickled in rice vinegar
all things kosher (salt)
and olive oil...
         objectively i will nibble
at a carrot... a beetroot...
objectively... why?
  it's hardly a wittgenstein question-dome
of nuance to loiter with lions
and folding napkins...

there's this "coming together"
of how... disembodied parts come together...
it's beside the objectivity of
nibbling on a raw carrot root...
there's this subject of:
a "polyphony" of the guise of
a bolognaise sauce...
you can't expect to shelter
subjectivity sensibility of (a) topic
concerning this one...
paramount...
that eating a raw carrot is...
staging objective "superiority"...
that a tomato is categorised as a fruit
but is used as a vegetable...

withering assumptions of:
lost-begotten: and some humour...
schadenfreude: and that ******* child
of the ominous tedium
that's lost for the worth
of god: in the guise of hyper-morality
of a karma....

my own pleasurable ordeal:
this 7&s...
                 posit of karma will
never be a positive excavation:
pro-jection...
        i can objectively eat a carrot...
but when it comes to
a bolognaise sauce?
sorry... will have to borrow some
mandarin... i will
have to resort to the local "bias"...

you simply can't create an objective
polyphony...
objecting to all the details in
making: consorts...
taste like: giving length...
or the posit of strengthening a
curvature of an original *****: banned
"a.m."...

there's this ******* and there's
the prop-of turkey inbreeding..
loitering the condor...
and the ******* as some new allowed
uvula beside the frothing
penguin jazz and *****...

mr. shoe and mr. shoo...
and the unforgiving mandarin lock...
stock... tai chi and that
mandarin dancing gingerbread...
marathon skipper...
shoes of pauper that made
a broker for borrowing a skittle fight
that couldn't happen in some
variation of begging warsaw:
tease the bliss...
tease the overtly salting of peanuts.

that the mandarins have no atomic
"concepts":
devoid of vowels, consonant
and swastikas:
prized assets of syllables..
voodoo projects...
             yes...        my conundrum
and a kettles broth.
There is no need to dwell on the exterior cliche of an injured soldier, the propaganda is superficial. Civilians have only plastic green men, heavy dusty movie set costumes, and Army-of-One heroes to populate stereotypes. Keep your images larger than life, no use touching up a paint-by-number. Mine was banal, foolish, and 19; enough said.

One fence is the fraternity itself, the next is brain injury. No other way to understand but be there. A Solid-American-Made-Dashboard cracked my forehead at 45mph.
Crumpling into the footwell,
unaware that the flatbed's rear bumper
was smashing thru the passenger windshield above me
the frame stopped just shy of decapitating my luckily unoccupied seat.
Our vehicle's monstrous hood had attempted to murderously bury us under,
but the axle stopped momentum's fate and ended the carnage under dark iron.
Shards of my identity joined the slow, pulverized, airborn chaos.
Back, Deep, Gone.

Unconsciousness is the brain's frantic attempt to re-wire neurons, jury rig broken connections, the doctor's desperate attempt to re-attach, stand back and say, good enough. Essential systems limply functioned, but unessential ones were ditched. Years later a military doctor diagnosed an eventual triage: Hypothalimus disconnected from the Pituitary Gland, Executive Function damaged, long pathways for emotional regulation interrupted.

I woke up still kinda bleeding, crusty blood in my hair, a line of frankenstein stitches wandering across my forehead.   My sense of self had literally dissolved into morning dust floating in a sterile hospital sunbeam.  My name was down the hall, words and the desire to speak were on a different floor.  Life became me and also a separate me under constant renovation, a wrecking ball on one half, scaffolding and raw 2x4's the other.

Waking up in the hospital, I realized I needed help to get the blood cleaned up.   A nurse came in, largely glared at me in disregard, and quickly left… for an hour.   She returned and brusquely dropped a useless ace comb and gauze on the blanket over my feet and abandoned me again.  This was my introduction to the shame of a VA hospital.  I minced my way to the bathroom, objectively examined my face in the mirror with shocking stitches above one swollen eye.  Gingerly rinsing my hair, the water ran pink in white porcelain.  I remembered the sound in my skull between my ears when a doctor scraped a metal tool across my skull, cleaning debris before stitching.  I recalled that in the ER I was asking Is he ok, repeating it like a broken record, knowing I should stop but I couldn’t.  There was also perhaps a joke about an Excedrin headache.

It was morning, and since there was no such thing as time or purpose or feelings anymore, I wandered to the hall with my only companion, the IV pole. One side was a wall of windows, and I was, what, 10 or 12 stories up from the streets of a much larger city than where I crashed.  The hall was warm and sunny.  I wheeled my companion to a blocky square vinyl chair to sit next to a pay phone.  I didn’t have any thoughts at all, or care about it.   After about an hour my first name floated up from the void, then with some effort my last name.  It took the rest of the morning to remember I had a brother.  After lunch we resumed our post, and I spent the afternoon in concentration piecing together his phone number.  God had pushed the reset button.

Thirty years ago the doctors didn't understand head injuries; they only recognized the physical symptoms. At first there was good reason to be permanently admitted to the hospital.  My blood pressure was unstable, sometimes so low that drawing blood for tests caused my veins to collapse even with baby needles.  My thyroid had shut down completely, only jump-started again with six months of Synthroid.  I had to learn to live with crashing blood sugar and fluctuating appetite.  For years afterwards, any stress would cause arrhythmias, my heart filling and skipping out of sync, blood pressure popping my skull.  Will the clock stop this time?  

There is always at least one momentous event in every person’s life that becomes punctuation, before and after.  The other side of Before the accident truly was a different me.  I have a vague recollection of who that person may have been, and occasionally get reminders.   Before, I was getting recruiting letters from Ivy League colleges and MIT, a high school senior at sixteen.  After, I couldn’t balance a checkbook or even care about a savings account in the first place.  Before, I had aced the military entrance exam only missing one question, even including the speed math section.  They told me I could chose any rating I wanted, so I chose Air Traffic Control.  Twenty years later, I thumbed through old high school yearbooks at a reunion.   I saw a picture of me in the Shakespeare Club, not recalling what that could have been about.   On finding a picture of me in the Ski Club I thought, Wow, I guess I know how to ski.   A yellowed small-town newspaper article noted I was one of two National Merit Scholars; and in another there’s a mention of a part in the High School Musical.  

This side of After, I kept mixing right with left, was dyslexic with numbers, and occasionally stuttered with word soup.  Focus became separated from willpower, concentration was like herding cats.  The world had become intense.

(chapter 1 continues in memoir)
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
.oh yeah... chris isaak's: wiucked game - plenty of "facts" went into taping as many covers as the song spontaneously made replica... so many objective "facts"... too many to count... when will certain subjective taboos be recognized and other, objective "truths" be denied?! how long must humanity be obliged to secure the argument by "confusion" be deemed liberation as necessarily-arguing the case of confiscatory material? what?! my grammar is bad? if my grammar is so ******* bad... ask someone from Rotherham!

.i tend to forget that people have this, collective amnesia regarding subjectivity, somehow they only associate it with news spew... they vaguely recognize an old widow walking from a surgery to a bust stop, stopping my a lavender bush, to pick a few flowers off of it... like some quasi Notre Dame hunchback... joyous that she bypassed all the ghost souls on the "waiting list" of an English doctor, joyous... clearly innocent... there can never be a place in this world for objective truths... objectivity is limited in the realm of aesthetics... whereby objectivity is a truth: whereby two uncorrelated people say the same thing... but  when it comes to a taste in music? what is objectivity that focuses on the differentiated between the sound of Wagner with / without an orchestra... and a traffic jam? objectively? both are sounds... extreme comparisons... but you can't call one black and the other #A, can you? subjectivity is not a 1-dimensional propaganda machine, it is also a truth... and when it comes to aesthetics... within the confines of personal taste(s)... i can say Wagner works better without an orchestra than with one... but... you can't tell the two apart... subjectivity is not a bias... it is a profound truth... in comparison objectivity's claim for truth is a tirade, compensated by the mere excavation deposit of journalism, which is becoming ever more fractured in compensation; it was always the case that life, expired prior to the, death... but now? it appears? death expires prior to a, life. Wagner isn't anemic without the orchestra... Wagner merely hijacks an orchestra to overdo the purpose of the piano... to enrapture a concert hall; nothing more, and i wouldn't expect nothing less.

i'm drunk...

  you're sober...

good luck
reconciling either,

even if either:

invokes:

         none....

   who gave the reigns
to the internet,
under a sober guise?

****! quick!
catch me a moth in a lampshade
and send me off to
a CIA acid camp!

IVANA BELIEVE!
and congregate
like a ******* beehive!

or a termite mount...
whichever...
            what?
i'm drunk... you're sober...
    
unless you have some
fetish for Swedish pop music
akin to Roxette...
  we, have, seriously,
nothing, to, talk, about...

  savvy? is that privy enough
for you?

tell me the difference between:
i have no rank, no lābrador
to mind suite for an orchestra
worth a Wagner...

**** it... i just watched
Apocalypse Now...
   3 and a half hours of what i could
make of the heart of darkness...
prior to the ride of the valkyries...

but to be honest...
i'm with david...
             take of pure piano...
of Wagner's
     the entry of the gods into Valhalla...
sole, piano... it's not anemic...
it's justified interpretation,
it''s... the justified counter
to Chopin...
  a refined honesty...
                 i never liked
Chopin...
   unlike most Polacks...
i never like Jean-Paul II either...
like most Polacks...

i'd envision a Jean-Paul II emeritus...
like all old Polacks lay claim:
it you have been nice to see
an otherwise different,
process of dethroning...

no... the orchestra undermines
Wagner... the piano will do,
for now, for as long as it takes...
the piece doesn't require orchestration...
if the mere piano makes the pieces
anemic...
then the orchestra makes is
gluttonous...
  
people shouldn't expect their children
to be intelligent by merely
listening to classical music...
what they should expect...
is listening to classical music...
elaborating into jazz...
and then coming back into classical music...

why do i hear such horrors...
that the only classical music made pop...
is classical music underscoring
moving image...
why is the only classical music
"worth" listening to...
the music composed for movies,
or at least, incorporated
into them?

            no... Wagner is not anemic
on the sole basis of piano...
     das rheingold: is not anemic...
Chopin might be...
with his intricacies...
a bountiful butterfly in the age
of Bonaparte...
              
               but? listening to the piano?
of Wagner's exclusion of
orchestra?

   Handel is the new Bach...
and Wagner is the new Chopin...

you don't make toddlers listen to classical music
because they might be better
at arithmetic like some prized
monkey who later struggles
with economic biases -
or tax returns...

                     you need a classical
music appreciation,
to hit against jazz...
and if it doesn't return to classical
music?
then the original investment was
worth... zilch!

       orchestra ruins what perfects,
or rather allows Wagner
to stand-out from a Baroque tradition
of Germanic exfoliation...
   and hurts, hurts...
hurts the gentile spirit of a Schubert
or a Schumann...
      
the just Libra interlude hanging
within a composition,
the dangling in the air...
or a dire, interlude, a dire... note...

                   Wagner minus
orchestra...
                      what a fine affair to...
anticipate:

                                              ­    en oeuvre.
Jamesb May 2017
Loss
That's what they call it,
Or mourning,
But I've lost before and
I've mourned
Before
Yet never ever
Known pain like this

Pragmatic,
That's me to a tee,
Yet pragmatism ain't cutting it
This time
Because I fear and I feel
Your departing
Before the decision
Or announcement made

And it hurts!
Oh sweet Lord it hurts,
In ways I cannot clamp down,
Or externalise or
Stop the feeling of,
A crippling *******
Of sobbing deep inside
Where none can see

And you're reading our poems
Which might be hope
Or might be farewell
I just don't know,
And not knowing is bad enough
At any time but this?
This matters so much more,
This is killing me

Objectively I know we should part,
Objectively I know you'll struggle
Because you love and desire me
On so many levels,
And to not have me would ****,
Yet is it enough my sweet?
Is it enough
To save you n me?

And if not?
If not enough?
If I lose you to another,
If I never get to hold you,
Make love with you
Fill you with my love and
All I am?
How do I then live?
Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.
I don't see anything objectively.

I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
When I speak passionately,
That's when I'm least to be trusted.

It's very sad, really: all my life I've been praised
For my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight-
In the end they're wasted-

I never see myself.
Standing on the front steps. Holding my sisters hand.
That's why I can't account
For the bruises on her arm where the sleeve ends ...

In my own mind, I'm invisible: that's why I'm dangerous.
People like me, who seem selfless.
We're the cripples, the liars:
We're the ones who should be factored out
In the interest of truth.

When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.
A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.
Underneath, a little gray house. The azaleas
Red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself
To the older sister, block her out:
When I living thing is hurt like that
In its deepest workings,
All function is altered.

That's why I'm not to be trusted.
Because a wound to the heart
Is also a wound to the mind.
Chasson eli Jun 2018
If you're expecting a regular, silly me,
well this is not for you.
And if it makes you uncomfortable,
I recommend leaving right now.
But my body
literally cannot take it anymore
and I feel that making an essay
explaining how anxiety affects me
will not only help me cope and deal with it,
but it may even help other people out there
come to terms,
or relate,
or empathize on just
what it can do to a person.
If there is only one single person out there
who finds even a smidgen of solace or comfort
in knowing that they're not alone,
then this whole essay will be worth it for me.

As you may or may not know,
I like to keep my personal life private and away
from strangers
as much as I can for the most part.

Not because
I'm embarrassed or scared of what people might think,
but mostly because I think it's unhealthy
to share every waking moment of your life
with a collection of strangers on the Internet.

Everyone deserves privacy,
and it's not something most people
even have to think about.
Never in a million years
did I ever even consider the possibility
that my privacy would be something
I may have to worry about.
So what does this have to do with anxiety?
Well,
in May of 2018,
I vanished for nearly a month.
I barely posted anything anywhere,
the only place you could have found me
was on classes.
Where I definitely wouldn't have mentioned
or talked about what was
happening to me at the time.
I did answers questions, where I loosely and vaguely
explained where I was for that time,
beating around the bush and avoiding
the exact reasoning,
but let me explain to you what happened.

Near the middles last semester, or early April,
I can't really remember,
The play and my overdue assignments
I have to catch up to,
had been tiring me
to a quite extreme extent.
And thus personally
it started to get...
insane.
No, I'm not talking about stupid essays
or poor language.
I mean exhausting,
crushing, abhorrent nature
of relationships
This includes not only relationships
between classmates and such,
but all members of my social circles:
my family, lecturers,
combined with some very personal issues
that i may or may not talked about.
I even developed multiple "voices" in my head
that was dedicated to ridiculing
my abhorrent behaviour
saying things like,
'Nobody likes you.'
'Why they would even bother anymore.'
And not surprisingly,
this completely threw me for a loop
and ever since then,
my anxiety has been
pretty much a daily struggle.
It can be anything that causes it
Maybe only a small thing, like...
being too scared to call up friends
to notify others about my sickness
because they are excited
about the play
and need my cooperation.
Or rushing out from classes and events
just because i don't want
to interact with people.
Or even more destructive behavior, like
panic attacks that wake me up at like 6 AM
and leave me shaking and out of breath
for seemingly nothing.
Or locking myself away
and refusing to interact with anyone
and just leaving myself
to my own terrible thoughts.

The cycle of anxiety
is one the worst things about it,
It's a spiral
that just gets worse and worse if you let it.
You may be saying to yourself
'Well, that's dumb, stop!'
'Just don't do it, that makes no sense!'
And you're right.
The thing that agitated me the most
about anxiety at first was the lack of being able
to find a reasonable explanation or cause
for why I feel the way I do.
Because the awful thing about anxiety
is that it's not reasonable.
It defies logic,
it is wrong.
It's a thought process and
a destructive vicious cycle
that is very hard to
wrap your head around at first
and only gets worse
the more self-aware about it you become.
Anxiety is destructive,
Crushing,
It hurts you both,
phisically and mentally,
It ruins relationships with people,
It makes you feel pathetic and lost,
It makes you feel wrong or broken,
Embarrassed and sick.

But let me tell you something;
You should never
feel embarrassed or ashamed for something
you have no control over.
Whether it's a mental illness,
your skin color,
your ****** preference...
Don't you let anyone EVER
make you feel like you should be ashamed,
guilty or embarrassed for that.

Objectively, on paper, I should have
absolutely nothing to worry about.
I have a very comfortable and safe life.
But another cruel symptom of anxiety
can be a sense of constant doubt
and worry.
Things like, my classes is doing TOO well,
My life is going TOO smoothly,
My partner is TOO attractive and TOO perfect.
Things are going too great for me,
and maybe I don't deserve it.
Even if you're joking or not,
the 'I'm stressed' thing
is something I hear extremely often.

But I remember a few years ago
when I worked in retail for a bit
Someone called me over to ask for help
I politely told this guy what to do,
as you're supposed to
and his response was to rudely say
'Well, how the **** was I supposed to know that?
I have a real job'
Now, I'm definitely not suited to retail
because I found it to be horribly crushing
but in saying that
conversely, anxiety was hardly
a problem for me at the time
It was still there,
but the difference is
I had no investment in weekend
throwaway jobs like that
So it was easy to shrug it off and forget about it

But when your life completely revolves around
interacting with an audience of people
that you are always constantly
trying to impress and make happy
because you really, really care about it
I found that I started to ignore basic human needs like...
staying healthy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
I now work every single day of the week
in some regard
I never switch off
I find it hard to switch off
It's always in the back of my mind
I used to take one day of the week to try
and relax and do nothing
But now I going out on that day
Which I thought would be fun
because I'm really bad at interacting with my friends
so I thought this would be the perfect way to avoid it.
But I've been met by a large backlash of people who
because I'm sacrificing even more
of my time to try to interact
and entertain my audience
and its not related with the
my current tasks at all...
I've people saying things like
'You has to get more hardworking.
do you not sympathize with others?'
You get the idea
And comments don't usually bother me,
but every now and again
there will be that one
that will catch me at the wrong moment
and will just make me ask myself
Why do I even bother?
So if getting more hardworking
results in me being able to sleep at night
and not have panic attacks
then please, somebody go ahead and
swap with me, yeah?

I do realize i was wrong most of the time,
or sometimes don't care about my laziness
but sometimes i tend to get overwhelmed
because I'm pretty "unlucky"
The truth is
I like working and talking to people.
I'm happy with it.

I used to often chat with people regularly
but that often led to times
where I forget my tasks.
where a couple of hours
would've made it that much better to me
To be honest, I m a quite forgetful person
and easily distracted with certain things cough
But going back to the main subject of the essay
I'm not talking about this
to try and get some kind of
sympathy vote from you guys.
Although anything kind or supportive
will not go unappreciated
But the whole point is
that anxiety is more common than you think
and if you've been suffering in silence
or relate to anything I've said
or who have let it gradually
build over the years and
spiral out of control like it did for me
Then please, please, please
make an appointment with your local general practitioner
and just talk about it
I know people who have dealt with anxiety
just by talking to people about it
You don't need to suffer alone
there are plenty of us out there
Seeing as anxiety is caused by
your body overproducing adrenaline
as soon as I saw the doctor
and explained my situation
he prescribed me with some tablets that lower the adrenaline output
and I've felt, like, really good ever since.
I know this has been quite a serious topic
but I didn't think wacky lines
and jokes left and right
would be suitable
for the subject matter
This has been on my chest
for a long, long time
So I'm glad I've finally got it out there
I hope this has been helpful,
interesting or eye opening for you
and good luck to all of you out there
who are dealing with similar issues.

See you soon.

Bye.
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2016
as with any plaster work, or draping muscles and bones and
organs in skin - i knew i reached a zenith of some sort:
forever introspective, that chance momentum
that never reaches a museum of retrospective
finalised banalities -
and with that's happening in America,
i get a chance glimpse into that part of the world
so bogus, so *****-like, so haphazardly
put together - the chance to see the rats (artists)
jump ship and head to Tangiers, Paris, London
(for the pillars of the movement to come,
London especially, but might i suggest Edinburgh?
the capital of the offshoot that's to come
from Scandinavian novels?) -
i wouldn't suggest heading to Prague -
or Budapest - never to tourist hot-spots, obscurity is
what you need - Edinburgh out of season,
then the theatrical circus isn't there -
***** poetics: poncy monologues and Annabel
art-house flea markets... but that's the beauty,
flea markets in France, charity shops in England...
but i did exhaust this one musical avenue,
i dropped the ᚱᚢᚾᛖᛋ - it got boring after a while:
all that charged up mythological feeling -
the way we always wanted: myths to feel with,
to eat, rather than the sterile scientific facts...
i've learned enough to later ditch them,
even a Professor of Chemistry will have a postcard
of Edward Hopper's painting by his desk,
that window to view the world that doesn't
necessarily encompass sun moon and constellations...
how anyone would be foolish to scrub off
some inspiration from such things bemuses me,
the lowest of the low of poetic expressions is
sung to things that manage too much: the moon
and the sea tides, the sun and the seasons and
phototropism - it's a double edged sword...
only from one art to another do we get to see
our labourers of attention, else the same old deficit:
god... who in his glee took offence at anyone
having more awe-inspiring sense to please such
things... no alone can you master contemplating
both the beauty and the utilisation behind such
objects as a single man... however well...
it's impossible... you're sharing the bronze platform
with those that simply wrote of the shallow
beauty, and those that found these objects
were not simply aesthetic, but meaningful in
the machinery of things... it was never up to
us to find that electric genius of combining the aesthetics
with the machinery as one...
for in that sense god is a form as fraction
of 9/1, 8/1, 7/1, 6/1, 5/1, 4/1...
the fraction of wholeness... a complete set to start with...
man has already proved the limit as a fraction
with the base 3... 9/3, and that didn't really end well...
at best man is composed of a fraction base of 2...
by sharing the world through marriage to a woman,
or through a learned devotion, a crumb of what a woman
is, a philia (love) of his interests, a soloist voyage...
some just say: you will either take to being faithful
to philology and yourself as its devotee,
or you'll take up a wife... oddly enough chemists are
defilers of marriage having any purpose other than
to distract... but as i said: you can rarely write
decent things when trying to admire celestial spheres...
more ambition comes from the distraction of the zodiac
"prophets" and astrologers... a poem about the moon
is just a poem that is levelled with a poem
about a dustbin... but hey... Top Cat lives in the dustbin,
Neil Armstrong bopped along the lessened gravity
surface... but which is easier to acquire for a smile?
Benny... cue the violin theatrics of lamenting to a comic
end.
well... we have to juggle each other's impressions,
taking at hacking the raw meat will not give any of us
medium-rare barbecue steaks marinated...
taking the moon as something else is: nice...
and you know how nice things end up as... as tacky
suburban *******... if you're going to tackle the
thing with all the rawness... i'd first spend looking
looking at that thing of your attention in a graveyard...
just to get the feel to the idea: well... my fellow daisies
sniffed from the roots up would probably have
said something sulky similar.
but it's like that, you get to exhaust certain musical avenues...
i'm currently at a period where i have enough
stash of jazz records to rekindle my interest in it...
on today's menu? the real McCoy (McCoy Tyner,
Joe Henderson, Ron Carter and Elvin Flynn -
Flynn makes his mark, even though not the star
of the album, Art Blakey has a match) -
then onto the tragedy of Sonny Clark with his
cool struttin' alongside Art Farmer, Jackie McLean,
Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones...
i must admit that after watching the film whiplash
my ear-buds staged a coup to move from a certain
type of music into this... and even though
i already said that the climate in America at the moment
is very a second attempt at a Beat movement...
it's very much different... i guess jazz makes all the sense
in a pure urban environment...
jazz and urbanity, the hipster parties where wine flows
like poetry and people get to do their wild marijuana
******... but Bukowski changed everything
by bringing a taste of the classical into the scene...
it feels just like that these days...
there's no jazz on the radio...
going back to watches and radios, mono-utility things
that are the glamours of the inoffensive cluttering of a room...
no digital screen... the radio position at the back
of my head, behind me, the little fly-eye Rubik cube
ahead of me...
that's the odd thing with coming with jazz these days...
it's like Bukowski in the shadows of the beat movement
back when it was the beaten track...
so i said that jazz and urbanity are perfect partners...
well... take jazz from an urban environment and put it
in a outer-suburban environment, in a place
about 30 minute walk from farming fields with bulls
and horses... foxes the thieves rummaging in people's
trash... and... as classical music took to
teaching us the language of celestial bodies,
Holst... in this kind of environment jazz does the same...
jazz becomes equal to classical music with celestial
bodies... i'm just wondering if there are enough
instruments to arrange the solar system...
Mercury the Trumpet...
         Venus the Double Bass
Earth the Piano
                       Mars the Drums
Jupiter the Tenor Sax                                   (comparatively,
                Saturn the Soprano Sax                using a Holst
                                                           ­        schematic, the reverse,
                                             yet citing Jupiter, not as a planet,
                                           well, the bellowing voice of paternal fury)
Uranus the Clarinet
                                           (takes sheer magic to play that thing)
so that just leaves us with an Neptune as either
   Alto Sax or Trombone...
but that's how jazz morphed since it last came across
poetry... someone stole it from its urban environment
of busy streets and ugly manners and quick quick snappy
and the millionth time i could compare it to a spontaneous
encounter with someone in a bar... jazz lost its cool there...
people said the same thing about jazz
as Kaiser Joseph II did of Mozart... "too many notes"...
translate this urbanity into an outer-suburban environment
and put it against that kind of backdrop?
well... personally, there are just enough notes in each piece...
you looked outside the window? you could hear
a **** from a mile away and no tree would even sway
in nodding approval even with a galeforce wind slapping
them... jazz lost its synchronisation with the urban environment
it emerged from... but in so doing, it managed to mature
like good wine on the outskirts of large cities,
where it literally became the only thing that could ably
make a Kandinsky moment from semi-detached houses.
NEWSFLASH... what is this concern about art being
subjective? i don't see where these arguments go...
i thought art was about revealing the intimate,
not revealing the objective shallows of a method...
of limited scope like any philosophical systematisation...
if Christopher Columbus ever did things
objectively he might have discovered Lisbon or the Canary Islands...
art can't be objective... trying to argue that art is
"only a subjective" expression... well, if it was to be
a "greater" expression objectively, an artist would
walk into an art gallery, take all the paintings from
the canvases, and turn to the public and say:
now let's see your subjectivity, otherwise go ponce
off the art critics to take something they said to your
date about how: the light contorts the features of expressions
blah blah blah blah blah... the point of art being
superior as a subjective vehicle is so that i can feel someone
else's feelings... as opposed to thinking someone else's thoughts...
art is the sensual, not the premeditated dogmatic funeral -
which all philosophers attend: they're objective to the
point that they're afraid of having a personal attachment
to their outputs - they will hardly ever want to invite
a criticism of their objectivity, because they're such emotional
paupers - they fear criticism of their subjectivity to such
a point, that you can simply look at their pronoun usage
strategy, they really do use these words like kings -
but when Mozart is criticised by the Kaiser... he thought
nothing of it... he actually thought, nothing of it,
perhaps his vanity was wounded, but his virtue wasn't...
which is why he remains with us...
for the fatal wound incurred is not that of virtue,
but that of vanity... and true virtue is unafraid of criticism,
there's this cognitive blockage that enriches the
heart and leaves the mind blank... the sort of blank
that accommodates the Pyramid of Vanity:
bishops, priests, doctors, kings, queens, portrait artists,
Versailles... such things are so ****** void of anything
but scare-mongers, sycophants, leeches and finally tourists...
for whatever you take from the realm of Hades,
there's a stamp-duty on each precious element from that
realm... each thing is stamped: worthless...
you couldn't extract penicillin from Hades...
changing gold into a ring is worthless if such symbolism
of a union of monogamy end with the ring being
nothing more than a thing disputed over the divorce settlement.
Jonathan Oct 2018
I can break the laws of the universe

It's true
Everybody can
Everybody has

Even you!

It happens in a special place that exists in the peripherals of your mind
When you look for it it hides
When you think about it it ceases to exist
And you can never find it
But you visit it almost every night

This space is the brink of your subconscious!
The space between worlds and realities!
A singularity, where physical law is a mirage!

On the nights we sleep but don't dream, we visit this place
It's between the day's last conscious thought and the following's first
In this space hours past in faster than an instant
There is no body, soul or mind
There is no void
There is no colour
There is no concept of empty

Pure, absolute nothing!

In this space, the entire universe ceases to exist

We wake the next morning with no recollection.
We know objectively that time has passed,
And eventually the feeling of our temporary transcendence fades
And we carry on without asking

This happens to all of us,
On nights you sleep, but don't dream
And in that space

You can break the laws of the universe
This was an attempt to illustrate the concept of Solipsism, which puts forward that the universe exists only because we consciously perceive it.

Quite mind-blowing.
Mark Tilford Jun 2016
Honesty:
The quality of being honest
Look at me directly in the eyes
Before you lie
When you agonize
And dramatize
I will analyze
And
I will realize
And
Recognize
I will not empathize
I will brutalize
So I would not jeopardize
Integrity:
The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles
With dignity
Empathy
Without enemies
Ethically
No jealousy
Purity
Seeing objectively
Respectively
Never causing unpleasantries

The two go hand and hand
Not
Separately
!!
Harry J Baxter Apr 2013
I was a nerdy book loving
video game playing
weird music listening
awkward little short kid
in high school
the only difference
between now and then
is now I'm not in high school
and don't have the money
to buy video games
but throughout it all
since I was around 12 years old
I've been madly in love
like border line obsessed
with words,
they carry a mystique about them
capable of so much
yet objectively irrelevant
they are the conduit of humanity
and existence
and for every girl I've crushed on,
and a few time when it was more than a crush,
I would have picked the words over them every time
the same could go for my good friends
and even when I'm alone,
I'm never really alone
the words are everywhere I look
my first love
my only love
Looking subjectively at others
can sometimes be the best way
to objectively look at yourself.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2016
.the crows' persistent croak undermines all attempts at man's adventure into universal fame, or one that might distinguish man's composition, from earth, as intended for adam, to air, as intended for odin, to water as intended for poseidon, to fire as intended for the tetragrammaton.

it fails, most of the time,
poetry is scarce,
too much fondness of the abstract,
hence residues of
distracted verse, whimsical,
overburdened pronoun usage -
such likes - complex punctuation
to replace diacritical marks in
france or germany or norway,
poetry doesn't have the impetus,
just doesn't have the impetus to
package fudge, package fudge paragraphs
of fiction, poetry isn't anything
unless it's anti-fiction,
there's no point idealising
how you would fit into a glass stiletto
when it doesn't allow a fitting: cindarella was first
two jealous sisters got their heel
and big toe cut off, you want to encode
that as .pdf or .jpeg?
technophobes ***-standing:
is that enough for a start-up religious cult?!
i'm just wishy washy wondering,
all bets on it taking off - congregation of
en masse suicide seems a fanciful expression,
mind you, i have no excuse.
where there's a middle there ain't no finger,
no message evaluation and furthered to
an execution, the middle has an eroteme:
not exactly erotically thematic, just
a hunch off huh...
so... poetry... it's scarce, tumble **** practice
of a lost joke...
poetry exhibits itself sometimes in tight-tangle prose
of a knausgård - fancy wording a mile apart
would make traffic accidents aplenty,
and it happens... ramble ramble ramble (worded),
then some poetic ecstasy like an unguided tour
of a gallery making you kneel in anti-catholic
gesticulation of a painting by francis bacon...
shouldn't happen, but it did...
so while prose writers are like things infused
with packaged designation of the right
digestion and right diet content of carbohydrates,
poets are like: what sustenance from air?
we ramble sometimes, **** naked i presume,
but we do, and when we do, we draft novels
for other people, we're not into nation building
or writing novels... we're the anorexia of prose...
and that's grand... because it means
that our readers have to be self-involved,
not ready to grasp the rooting of prose diction...
more fused to the open airs
of writings' scarcity...
we need strong readers not numbers...
we need people who are self-involved,
who would spit and kick a copper statue of
the poet represented in a public square with
people of the spoken tongue the real tourists
wondering: who's that?

that aside...
          i went to sleep thinking about chess...
into bed at around 1am
woke up at around 9am...
past two nights? interludes of
perhaps 2 / 3 hours...
    cutting on the alcohol is one thing...
keeping a tally?
proof: co-op sells 1liter labelled bottles
of scotch,
but as it turns out, according to my braille tally?
it's: ⠷⠷ (500ml) + ⠷⠷ (500ml) + ⠷ (250ml)...
they label it as a liter...
but it's actually 1.25liters...
three days later: you get the full picture:
-esque akin to 'and on the third day he rose
again, according to the scriptures...'

good luck to the men and their vanity
projects...
   i will never become as famous as
the man who "invented" stumbled upon
fermentation to produce beer / wine...
distillation to produce whiskey / *****...
dom perignon and albert hofmann
are known now... give it a few centuries later...
****! gone!
       but to overshadow the universal
stability of a woodland pigeon cooing,
a crow croaking, a fox laughing?
   my words are here: yet these examples
retain the future unchanged...
by void, crook, vogue or folly...

so i went to sleep thinking about chess...
there's the king: the point
of the game...
              to topple the king...
get ol' charlie firsty on the chopper...
distract charlie zee 'eck'und
with pseudo-harems and handel...
and fireworks on the thames...
little learning tool offshoot of louis XIV...
the king is just an elevated pawn...
it seems the king only controls the pawns
given his own movement rules...
the queen though?
   she's the bishop and the rook combined,
as she's also the king and pawn, combined...
the knight is the only odd piece
on the whole board...
   why? didn't queens feast their eyes
upon knights of old, at tournaments...
chivalry: the dropped oopsie handerchief moment
when the king wasn't looking?
the knight piece is the only outsider piece
on the board... hence it's ontological
grasshopper routine of jumping
outside the line of pawns and then
jumping back into line...
the king is a king in name only:
it would appear...
  while the most powerful piece on the board
is the queen: since if the king merely
control the pawns:
   at a battlefield a king command pawns
(soldiers)...
  in the background...
the queen will command...
   the bishops, the knights,
   the rooks (houses, castles) -
she's not on the battlefield with with pawns...
and soon knights become judges
and lawyers - merge with the bishops...
i never like playing chess -
but i liked thinking about chess...
  from the perspective of: the queen is
the most powerful piece on the board...

you could even rewrite chess by expanding
the board... so it would look like so:

1. denotes pawn         9. denotes king

2. denotes bishop        6. denotes queen
3. denotes knight        4. denotes rook.


1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
         9 3               (battlefield formation)
      2 4 4 2             (behind the scenes formation)
        3 6    

but the board would have to be expanded from
64 to say... 100 squares... per board...
it's still chess... but with a twist...
it's what real life would look like...
one knight would be faithful to the king
and stand behind his army on the battlefield...
the other knight would be *******
the queen in secret surrounded
by castles and the clergy / the judicial system...
well: so many people have become so good
at the game of chess...
   kasparov vs. deep blue...
         so smart: and yet no imagination.

besides... i had more important things to do
today than remember what i fell asleep with...

1. making the perfect sausage rolls...
the most pristine invention of the english
and how the french fumed when their puff
pastry was "degraded"...
never use meat from sausages...
always minced pork...
and instead of adding carrots...
celery... and who would have thought
that fennel seeds are the secret ingredient...

2. watching india get their *******'
whipped and their ***** put into
a meat grinder by the new zealand side
at the cricket world cup...
**** me the last 5 overs!

3. lamenting the state of cinema...
the pursuit of "being" via distraction
with the end goal of fulfilling "happiness"...
so much for "being" and so much for "happiness"...
take two prime examples...
it only took 8 years to spare all the details
that seperate them...
1958's the inn of the sixth happiness
starring ingrid bergman...
those movies! mmm hmm!
i would gladly take away all the current
heavy editing and metallurgy scaled
CGI for a classical western panoramic view...
no dialogue... just an expansive camera
distance where the characters are dwarfed
by the grander scheme of things:
even if it's just a valley or a field...
cinema dropped the paranoramic
   interlude, resorting for the clausto-****
of heavy editing with multiple cameras
switching backwards and forwards
like watching a game of tennis...
    actually: both genres degraded themselves
dropping the panoramic view at times...
less in sport, more in cinema...
but this is 1958... the 1950s! the glory days of cinema...
fast-forward to 1966... and the film:
ALFIE...
       what's the difference between a lothario
and a ****? a self-employed ******...
or some other weird combition of 'not-a-joke'...
wait a minute... why are the women
so ******* dumb come the mid-1960s in cinema...
while back in 1958: they were so admirable?!
ingrid bergman learned mandarin,
she was ambitious, she was stubborn...
she was bossy...
  come the 1960s we're talking about
    beings without either soul or will
simply orientated at being dumpster *** toys...
i don't even know where the men
did that to them...
           the women in 1950s cinema
gained respected... they were commanding...
or at least decisive in giving
the least expected virtue: generosity
and on top - a sense of fairness -
                             a merit pyramid...
1960s cinema women, "women" are nothing
more than sloppy teenagers...
these women are not women...
1960s cinema doesn't depict women...
it's starting to depict one direction:
  pissy-pants teen girls...
               ******* at the sight of harvey styles
sighing and ****...
        plus... back in the day:
cinema used to be... engaging...
ben-hur? how long? 5 hours?
  gone with the wind? how long? 7 hours?!
cinema like opera: 15 minute interludes,
toilet breaks before the next part went on...
now? a quckie 1.5 hours long CGI ***** fest
of minimal dialogue and the heavy editing
juxtapositions of "angles"...
       people don't watch modern cinema
because it's engaging...
they watch it... because it's... distracting...
pretty bright lights! ooh! aah!
i love the fact that i'm being snarky
           and sarcastic... what else can you be?!
   i don't even think is missed that much
when it comes to the sub-culture of drugs...
psychadellic or otherwise...
i ****** well missed on a decent amount
of cinema...
   and when that happens...
       look at me...
                            what's that phrase...
a bitter old man... aged 33...
bitter doesn't even cut it...
              it's not even a bitterness...
it's an elevated sense of nostalgia...
   for me nostalgia is something i was present
at when it started going to ****...
late 1990s... cartoon network, early internet...
etc.,
              1990s date night movie quality
requiring adults to employ babysitters...
i was there...
1950s cinema? yeah: i wish i was nostalgic
about that... but i wasn't there...
hence the technical observations...
and how, objectively: movies were...
oh god so much better.
Axion Prelude Aug 2018
Genuinely feeling hope for something good, and being lead by false hope to believe a lie as truth, are two different beasts

I don't hate myself for what I felt, or thought, but instead what I was lead to think was okay to believe

I was lied to, again; my words beckoned something I thought was genuine, and deceit was all that met me, just like every time before it

I'm sick of being here, of thinking anything gets better, because it's true that the those who spend their fortune at keeping an authentic heart for others will inevitably end up alone, indebted to those who only care of themselves

I give myself away too often, but only for what I objectively observe as being meaningful, but I'm afraid that closing off my mind will bring me to the dark place again, and I never want to go back there

I have no control of what someone believes or feels, nor do I know what that may be, all the same

I just take what I am given, if it seems and feels good; if it echoes compassion and sincerity, because that's exactly what I lack most

I hate being a slave to this paradox, but my freedom may only come with absolute truth

I have no more faith for that - I still hope; potentiality rings, but I know that's one sided on my end

A wish is a wish..
Jacob Oates May 2014
Have some **** humor
Art is a subjective craft
you ******* hipsters
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
me and my drinking? no... in the next sandpit with christ saving all the retards so heath ledger can **** himself, because the best defence people have against their ****** escapades are a bunch of retards limbless, a crucifix, and the modern trend of premature depression with nothing accomplished and the torture of the immobile christ only trying to provide moloch babies ****** herders: while the rich worry about lip-gloss and gucci spectacles of torn shirts that cost a mammon's tonne but were lighter than an autumnal leaf: yeah, blame the retards on sane people's *** mistakes for saint ******. your choices obstruct my will: fated loathing is my compromise; and by god i hate to be a moraliser.*

i drink to excess when a populist
wants to speak,
and poetry becomes just
another art of the privileged
and i become simply ***,
god give me a life where i don't want
to write, a night without national socialism
and global capitalism:
where's the next competition, mars?!
i used to like playing silverchair's shade
with my guitar, my guitar became an acoustic
5 string rhythm which was hardly a bass...
so i stopped playing...
it's talk about moral darwinism when
a tsunami or a tornado has no darwinism involved:
force of nature, some theories had to fail.
i'm more accepting a retired drunk footballer in me
or an alex hurricane higgins in me that
i wish to delve into poetics:
when the next informal figure of speech
to buy an iron or a jumper? when? oh, never...
never?! ****.
***** acting killed off *** of the usual people,
i knew on the basis of numbering fake *******
that switched sides....
they call objectivity superior to subjectivity...
but in relation subjectivity comes from having
a talk about it, not automatons disposing it...
have talk about ******* and all you can think
of in your little nerd brain is the foreseeable pay-rise
of garbage men... hence?
subjectivity comes from overbearing certain objects
for rhetorical purposes...
and leaving other objects automatically based
like sewage...
objectivity says: this many objects exist
but i don't talk about most of them...
subjectivity says: this many subjects exist
but i dare not see most of them as related to
a specified object for argument that's nonetheless there:
acronym tangle of being relevant, otherwise not...
politics... in rhetorical terms there's a superiority of
one against the other...
i see a fern... can i explore it subjectively? no.
can i explore the fern objectively? yes....
there's a tree next to it...
how does that make feel? it makes me feel like:
i exist, i think, therefore i philosophise by faked doubting
like a woman faking ******... mind that:
men are more nautically optical when it comes to pleasure,
women close their eyes when *******,
they internalise what's otherwise exposed masculine
genitalia forced like a beauty hernia -
male eroticism is optic, female eroticism zeniths are
internalised for the bred fact of being both vaginal
and womb, so scary the eroticism dies when
the foetus replaces the post-virginity fancy of the phallus;
but still the ****** actresses that destroy marriages,
but none can destroy the joke:
lips got the treatment of balloon augmentation
and clitoral lips got islam: the former puffed up
and the latter got the snip-factor for less oral ***.
now will you please play me the arabic trombone?!
Glenn McCrary Mar 2012
Foxy pumps

Visually inviting

Stimulus


Leather jeans

Objectively elevating

Yield


Indie jazz

Naturally circuits

Relish


Vivid suspense

Intellectually appeasing
Ken Pepiton Dec 2018
Kids play differn't these days
not so flat, more points of focus in less time,

more  POVs and Portals and Morphic Resonance and such

Minecraft. If you never watched a child at play
building a world from available resources,
near-infinite, digital resources limited
by algorithms based on

science.
Eco-industrial-only-mortal-home-known science.

You should see it.

Stones and plants and animals and winds and water
using right, effecting change, shaping things
in her world.

You should see what your grandchildren think.

They have access to tools we only imagined.
Remember what you imagined a road grader could do?

She built heaven with a stairway and I suggested
an elevator.

She said I could build one, a heaven elevator,
for old people in a world I make up.

She had planned to teach me if she had the chance.
She made me several avatars, she knows me.

wizard grandpa who asks if we know
the sweet influences of Pleiades,

his hand points up to the right
because this is the night after the first

quarter of the final moon pre-solstice
and he is looking west.

That one,
that is the one I will be-- wizard grandpa
square head with a pyramid on top,

minecrafty me exploring the undeveloped
fractal morphing algorythms

I'll-go grandpa, go go rhythm of the winds

drifting in what might have been a micro fiber dust bowl
waste land of 8640 chips and Zunes

(you can listen to books and play, Grandpa, at the same time)

Ah, Sam Harris, you asked a reason for the faith that is in me and my grandchildren know it so honor is at stake

and many other pride sourced sorts of things
contention tension challenging the tensegrity of made up minds

working together, serially parallel on every level of the grid, kid

Worlds with no evil intended,
that can be envisioned, practically, tested,
in Minecraft the game in conjunction
with the suggested myth in
Minecraft the interactive story

and Grandpa's story
in the world he migrated from, the journey way and back to

The Desert in The Rain shadow of the Moral Landscape
we can jump off right here

I have photos, in the cloud

trust me, things hap
ex acted
when
done
didone done
done
AM radio
The golden tones of Johnny Gravel
Kay tripple AAAAAAAAAA

A delightful ditty from the fifties programing,
in the fifties this one goes out to Rosemeade

Ah, the idyllic four bedroom ranch
now on the end of a street that dead ends
at the I-5 cliff.

A tune, whistle, while you work,
it's a hap hap happy day all the clouds have blown off

the doors of my perception
my mind expended, spent fi'ty years on the trip,
weary wearisome make ever much
some effort to discover the act

of effectual prayer
which took prayer, effectual or not, by faith, leap
fast
over the edge,
you learn that, day one, in Minecraft Training
by Brynn Aulyn

next is always over the edge,

of my perception
my expent
effort to discover the act

of effectual prayer
which took prayer,
and fasting,
over the edge,
you learn that, day one, in Minecraft Training by
******* Grandpa

next is always over the edge,

but I did not grow old after playing Minecraft as a child.
I grew old after playing with dynamite in a mine
as a child.

Major POV cred Grandpa

My weapons are not carnal.

Is there a monster if jack
finds treasure at the top of the beanstalk
and says to hell with the suffering
mother so he becomes
a god, in harmony with the giant, doing any good he can?

Let the dead bury the dead.

This is for ever.
What they don't know won't,
will not, would not, has no volition to hurt them, ever.

Good, you know, good. No good is ever bad and
the nintendray dooblay is, like rackabilly,
intentional
pre
positioning me for the idle word of the day to be ******
from hiding into the light of
double entendre? how do you mean?

light. OK, okeh, no other resupposings,

there is never light in a creation myth
until some utterance of the idea of light is communicated

which btw
mean there must be sentience from the get go

and mebbe, I thank on it, other wise, as well

as before, the get go,

it was gitgo, all the way down back ahead to Happy Together,
the song,
British invasion,
very creative hope sorta vibe
Turtles all the way down,
Hawking could not put it in words. He could keep time.

You had to be then, it was a brief history. Funny though.

The old ones gone on, they say okeh.
We good to go
happy hunting. Merry Christmas, take any open door
and listen.

The game is making many decisions based on what you pay attention to. In reality attention weighs decisively more than money in any form.
Doncha luvit, life is so unbelievable, until

you die, you think, you've seen something like what you think is possible happen, you've seen death objectively

anybody can do that right? That is evil.

Killing or dying?

Both.

Lizard brain.

the great game, neath ever more layers of moth eaten cotton and worm spun silk lace

crocheted and starched to make doilies for the parlor
when the pastor comes to pay his due attention

to chicken, made sacred for the occasion
in boiling oil, not golden,  but
fried chicken could look golden in the right light seen from the right height, apron strings high.

I could say my grandma served the man of god a golden dead bird.
And the blessing that was said came upon me

because the window in the top of my head never shut.
Air head. hearer of secrets where secrets
make themselves known, as truth sets one free. Jesus knows.
If anybody does. Wait and see. Be good.

Soyal, Yule, Christmas and the contenders, also rans
in the mid-winter hope leverage ceremony
rites of passage missing
or missed? Missed
Messages of a way promised where there seemed no way.

It is finished. The wireless grid. On the AM dial one

wee zero beat beyond simple,

you find sublime. define that. You feel what I said, Merry,

my wish to you, Merry, message of the promised way to you,
make you merry upon remembering

good wins, it never quits winning.
good, we know, personally,
good, right now,
not bad, we can touch, you and me, imagine that being good.
if feels Christmassy, in that good way.

the old way, where good is, find that. Then later, I am the way, believe me when I say I know where the kingdom of God is,

My granddaughter, somehow, gifted me a Map,
it was delivered by a messenger fly.
No war toys. *******. Watch the boys play Minecraft.
Real world, Christmas Spirit wish from me, KP, may the best be what you have too much of.
Quinton Weston Mar 2013
I sit here.Hunched over my computer computing

What will become of me?

This lonely mess of an almost man is mostly at wits end

But just when it counts

Like blanking out on a test that can’t be redone

Its no one’s fault

But all my fault

Though statistics say you can only fail just so much

But just enough to feel like maybe just one more try

Just one more try

Which turns into two

Three

Four

Then You find yourself counting backwards

Waiting for time to be up

So you can hand in your paper

So you can convince yourself its the way it had to be

Or at least the way it is

You look at it objectively

You omit words like I and feel

So you can still sleep at night

Or at least not cry in plane sight

So you can still fight

Just one more time

One more time away from oblivion

Cause one is all you need

For its the last step that kills you

That throws you from that cliff

That precipice

From wince you can never return

So i make sure i’m always one step behind

That fine line

Between giving in

And getting up

But eventually you get tired

Of standing. Disappointed.With nothing much to show for it

But a pat on the back and a better luck next time

With that hope in your eyes

But it hurts,almost like sand

Till the tears dissolve it

and all thats left is a brutal reality

Thats must worse than we deserve

But then you look at it objectively

And know.It must be just what you deserve

Which is too much for all the kind words in the world to reverse

So I stand.

Counting forwards.

Counting backwards

But always stopping at one
Feeling Real Apr 2014
I do not oppose will
nor bend away
when challenged or tied

but to deny me
a true torture
though I will not fight
nor wish for a difference
or an attitude
because objectively
rejection is easy
Roberta Day May 2013
I remember at the party
as blurry as it all was
when you kissed me through my tears
and startled me
I was angry
angry because I took the blame
for the tickets we all received
and you kissed me
I was too blinded by *** to see how romantic
and how sweet your gesture of sympathy
really was, objectively;
internally I was not ready, for reasons
unclear even to myself
(to sum,
I was young and dumb
and frightened of affection)
but even now, a year or two later
I think about your eyes, sparkling
and wired, intimidating and intriguing;
I think about your posture, your wit,
your cyclist thighs,
and wonder why I didn’t think
you were a catch of a guy
I **** at titles.
Morgan Feb 2015
there are
days and
times and
people and

my feet push on
like machinery
or maybe just objectively
trampling the shards
of a million different fragments of reality

i'm here still
in this pendulum of a place that
has always been

and
my feet and
my brain and
my hands

move too quickly but
my mouth does not

i'm still here
with these pieces
these pieces of body
that cost and
tick but

one day

and you
you resonate with a
yellow light that
means warmth   

with an ease a
heat a
‘diamond speckled’ smile

a form that parallels goodness

and
i'll stay here in my
clicking mechanisms

with
my scratches and
my bones and
my structure and

one day

one day i'll die
River Mar 2015
I am a gem
A raw glowing crystal of the earth
With a multitude of sides and angles

I am a spectrum on a continuum
This continuous continuum called life
Forever going, with no thought of me
Existence has no thought of anyone, in fact
And no concept of reality, neither can it perceive the toll it's negative experience allotments has on the individual's life
But existence cannot be blamed, for the hurt it causes us is purely unintentional,
You have to give existence credit for it's intentions--
There are no intentions beheld by the unconscious, therefore if existence were to be personified it would be a neutral force,
though it's impact on our fragile lives from the moment we are conceived and officially a zygote is life-shattering at times,
yet weaved ever so magically through our sadness is joy and the satisfaction of conquering the elements that possess the potential to defeat us.
After every conquest we do become an increment stronger,
though at times we obsess over the bruises we have acquired through our personal wars
Yet, without your struggle, who would you be?

I'm never good enough
You're never good enough
We're all never good enough
We're all not "just right"
These ideas of lack keep us up all night
But if you just let go to those false and self-defeating perspectives
Your true genius would shine, and who could ever put an end to the pure beauty of a soul that emanates the oneness of the source?
We must do away with Capitalism, for it is the source of our discontent and feeling of never ending lack
In the end, we all regress back to a state of being out of touch with the world and being in awe of it simultaneously
When our brains slowly fade back into nonexistence, just like we were before our parents were impregnated with us
Sometimes, you just have to stop and ponder over the cycle
And you start to think about who established the cycle
Which leads to an array of contemplation
One inquiry flowing smoothly but swiftly to the next
My head fills up so quickly with the substance of inquiry
That I can become rather depressed
And it's not the type of depression that's easily cured with rest
It comes to a point where I become obsessed
With finding and deciphering all the answers
That my outward life begins to lose zest
Yet my internal life is growing so rich and so diversely composite that if I were asked to describe my ideas and opinions they would be completely ineffable
I read voraciously, but my mind has a unique system of filtering the articles of myriad genres that I read into this sui generis amalgamation
I have to be careful when I open my mouth to speak
Since my opinions deviate astronomically from the norm
I choose my words wisely to avoid being called insane and treated with scorn.
Since I have to keep most of me a secret, specifically in this provincial vicinity
My heart whispers love to me throughout the day
So I keep the love for my true identity ignited.

I can't deny that subjectively, at times, I view my disposition as a condition that is a contributor of my plight
But objectively I have chosen to wield my sword of might and trudge through this fight
Because I know, just like at the end of every fairy tale is a happy ending
That through the thorny bushes I walk through and all the villains I meet on the way that try to take my life
Their is a sunlit horizon somewhere awaiting me
Awaiting my unique and magical company
Somewhere where I will truly be able to fulfill all of my heart's desires.
Truly, your location is not prejudiced to your desires, but some of the places that you will live will require more courage to fulfill them.

I have many sides, many traits and many distinct ways
About me
But if you want to get to know me quickly and know all of me in one simple image
I will tell you of who I became when the nutcracker played at the end of this children's movie I watched as a toddler
I would intensely imagine the scene that song evoked for me
Coming into character so authentically and indistinguishably from who I was
Out of all of my traits, this one was the one I can recall from the beginning and the one I never lost
My imagination and my strong ability to think visually
Attribute this to genetics, possibly an inherited slight increase of glial cells in my brain (do a google search of glial cells and creativity...
Sometimes, I have to remind myself that Google is not an all-knowing god, even though I ask it just about everything)
So this is who I am
I know myself very well,
but I'm still trying to figure the whole world out.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
well... the hype is over, long gone, done and dusted -
out of Heathen came the soundtrack
of some life - standing out quasi-radio-head black-star,
Lazarus for the video -
girl loves me - and i guess the John Coltrane
accent on dollar days -
but like Caesar said, i too will say again:
i expect a sudden death -
i want a sudden death, i don't want a
delayed letter type of death -
i don't want a thought of death as some
postcard from Monte Carlo - wishy washy
wish you were here -
a sudden death and not this waiting game
under the influence of morphine -
a sudden death, the checkmate -
Damocles' sword hanging on a
horse's hair - VIOLINS! VIOLINS!
during the ballet i charged all the jealous
energies into the art -
i could have looked-on couples kissing
with resentment - with jealousy -
but i put all that cognitive energy into
the ballet - and it worked, plus
i had my Sancho Panza with me, i have only
151 pages of Kant left to finish,
and living in a democratic society
and not being an academic specialist i will
move on to someone else - which always feels
like such a shame to never see the obscure works
of the man - esp. when in such works you
have to engage with the work, you have
to follow the architect like a low-life labourer -
i wish philosophy books could be like
David Bowie's last album, were everyone can
write autobiographies, overload on
subjectivity, sponge in sponge out -
bias and forced trolling - but Heathen sums him up
for me - i wouldn't care for a retrospective on
death - as if it eve gave man a deeper introspective
when he was at mortality's zenith -
i guess it's too bleak at mortality's nadir
to say an introspection is allowed - because it isn't -
it's not magnetic enough for the teens -
it doesn't raise profits - mortality's zenith is
kaleidoscopic introspection - a single image:
a million sound variations, the story is the same:
to leave an imprint akin to the mountain or the sea.
the nadir? retrospection - the limitless space in
a limited time. the English language is good
at shortening philosophical prose of Germans -
but it never really hired enough labourers to
follow the plans of the architect, a book like
Kant's is nothing but a wonky table, when it ought
to be a Statue of Reason - this form of writing
investment will never appeal to many -
read a book of philosophy on the tube and people
will cite very few words of interest in engaging -
you can be truly selfless in the literary realm,
you don't have to do ponce with good-feeling
in charitable work - might as well read Kant -
that's a selfless act alone - funny, isn't it?
i think it's hilarious - i'm working charity on unread books -
or books that if they have been read, get
regurgitated from a single labourer's schematic shortening -
a prior / a posteriori / analysis / synthesis etc.,
i could have worked in charity shop,
Kant's book became my charity shop - i tend to use
my limbs sparingly - why would it be anything else?
the architect envisioned a house, given
the number of eager labourers all he got was three bricks
stacked on top of each other without cement to glue
them firm.
i could have been jealous of the couples in London -
but i charged all my jealousy into the ballet -
i left for home with Kant -
all i saw was butterflies, and 2 weeks from now, est mort.
TC Mar 2013
Smoking American Spirits
Like that name is not sickly ironic
As I watch the moon
And blow your name
Out through my teeth.

After all of it
I still can’t decide
If I’m happy that you’re happy
Or hate you for leaving me
In the cold to gape
At a barren rock.

The moon is a visceral spirit,
Pundit of creation myths,
Vaudevillian purveyor
Of heavy handed profundity,
Reflects the sun
When nothing else can,
Means so much to so many;

The moon is an entropic
Collusion of earth-chunk
That happens to orbit us,
Objectively meaningless,

Communicating with the ocean
As ants ***** chemicals
Into each others mouths to converse.  

Staring together up into
The gaping gnash of space,
Humans give the moon its meaning
Just as two people falling in love
Forever inhabit midsummer nights
'Till one leaves in a haze
Of evaporating brain chemistry.

I really am happy you’re happy,
Because I really do love you
Even after everything,
And I really do hate you
Because it hurts so much
And you were so selfish,
Go **** yourself,
Why can't I feel both?

Just this silly girl,
Just two broken people,
Look at what we made Chlo,
It's hanging in the sky
Strung up with used filaments.

I love you and hate you still
Because knowing the moon
Is a barren rock
Makes what it has become
Incandescently, infinitely beautiful.
Alyssa Underwood Sep 2021
I
--
The LORD is asking, “Do you trust Me, child?”
And surely He is worthy of all trust,
but visceral reactions oft’ seem just
in keeping soul’s anxieties well riled.
While panic, shame and dread stir doubting winds,
obsessive, tight, compulsive thoughts pour fuel
into this downward spiraling boil of gruel
where toxic interactions breed more sins.
So for relationships I feel unfit,
and now old interests die and pleasures wane,
as each new hope in Earth’s good brings fresh pain,
where dark depression’s presently my bit.
Yet in this wilderness I hear God call,
“Child, look to Me. I am your ALL in all.”

II
--
I meditate upon the word of God
to heal a mind that’s broken from the fall,
and lying in morn’s bed I now recall
the former paths of fullness I have trod.
I clear the course of tangling debris
that fogs perspective’s distance-viewing sight
and clogs the narrow way which lets in light,
so with God’s truth I’m able to agree.
I gaze toward the future that is sure,
to glory that is promised out of trial.
I push through lying voices of denial,
rememb’ring my inheritance secure.
So healing first begins by sizing scope,
for in true measure I can grasp true hope.

III
---
Long sheltered in the recesses of mind
on pedestals that overshadow truth
are lies which I have entertained since youth
like tape recordings stuck on forced rewind.    
There‘s something of appeal in misbelief,
some comforting, perverted, dressed-up face
which keeps foul strongholds rooted into place
and lets such rotten seedlings harvest grief.  
But I must choose to undermine their message,
uncovering deception’s hidden lairs
whose cultivation grounds for growing tares
leave roadblocks to integrity’s safe passage.
God’s probing, piercing words—what precious gifts!—
can excavate, expose and extract myths.

IV
---
I apprehend these truths in David’s psalm:
“I’m fearfully and wonderfully made,”
and all my days of life are firmly laid
within the sovereign care of God’s own palm.
And yet another voice keeps creeping out.
“You’re too unfit for blessed community,
hence from belonging full immunity
is your dim lot,” says paralyzing Doubt.
For ‘gainst the Word that says I‘m rightly hewn
rub all the bristling edges of myself,
but would one set forever on a shelf
a Bösendorfer piano out of tune?
No, value is a function of creation,
and He who made has promised restoration.

V
--
Restoration’s anchored in redemption,
and my redemption‘s grounded in God’s love.
Nowhere in far reaches man has thought of
could mind unfurl the breadth of such conception.
Sloshing, hesitating in the shallows,
I wander close to shore in Love‘s vast sea.
Then from the swell I hear a coaxing plea
to dive into the deeper wake of hallows.
What‘s this weight that pins my frame from racing
toward His unknown billows of delight?
Do I not trust that He will clasp me tight,
help me bear the fiercest waves I’m facing?
What guile of devils am I heeding here
which keeps me bound by paralyzing fear?

VI
---
Disheartened by my want for firm resolve
to swim toward agápē’s unplumbed depths
for int’macy with Him who paid my debts—
the only One from sin who can absolve,
I wander, wond‘ring what I’ve missed to see
within my comprehension of Christ‘s love
when He would vacate majesty above
and suffer cruelest death to set me free.
They stripped Him, flogged Him, spit, pulled out His beard,
then pressed a crown of thorns down on His head.
They nailed Him to rough cross to leave for dead—
Creator of the world now by it jeered.
In love this traitor by her King was served:
Christ Jesus bore God‘s wrath which I deserved!

VII
----
Considering what labors Christ performed
to buy my freedom off sin’s slav’ry block
that of His fullness, with Him, I could walk
in resurrected life (not just reformed),
can I not trust that He will see me through
each trial, tribulation, sorrow, loss
when He would not forsake me at the cross
but carried all my grief and suff‘ring too?
And just as death‘s cold grave could not contain
my Savior but gave way to watch Him rise,
whatever loss my path has to comprise
shall work for me eternal glorious gain.
So while my courage may still be in lack,
the settled thing is there’s no turning back.

VIII
-----
Wading through fresh tidal pools of mercy
along a piece of coast that‘s not too wide—
among the crags and caves where stragglers hide,
hoping to evade crowd controversy—
I know I‘ll have to move on before long.
But in the warm meanwhile of the day,
I kneel to rest; and as I start to pray,
my heart begins to open to a song—
a gentle, soothing lullaby I’ve known
sung to the tune of ‘Eventide‘ as hymn,
reminder that this life is fading, dim
but that in Christ I never walk alone.
And as I raise the words, “Abide with me…,”
here comes my Shepherd, walking by the sea.

IX
---
What now is this waylaying, sin-sick soul?
Diversional winds from cliffside descend.
Where‘s pressing fire my devotions attend?
Brain‘s robbed of sanity, sleep, self-control.
Jesus comes near numb heart in distraction
and bids me again to clean deadwood out.
Jesus, I‘m desperate, drowning in doubt!
Help me expel what‘s needing subtraction!
Discipline, prudence, wisdom, contentment
can work to restore both body and brain,
while worship will lift locked heart from restraint—
its untethering from woe’s resentment.
I won‘t, without wisdom, taste truest Love,
yet Love holds true keys to wisdom above.

X
--
Mottling mind’s hazed subconscious sockets—
bedecked by ego’s restless crave for fill—
infections grow to permeate my will,
ladening, with dross, affection‘s pockets.
Foul seepage soon coagulates to plaque,
forces clefts which weaken my foundation,
foments psyche’s stormed disintegration
till half-light’s flushing falls to midnight‘s black.
Yet amid murk‘s rotting, rank confusion
with ev‘ry faculty succumbed to rift,
My Shepherd plucks me fiercely from the cliff,
tending thorn-torn blight with Love‘s ablution.
Healing, though, requires my surrender—
all cooperation I can lend 'her.'

XI
---
Jesus asked a question at Bethesda,
the pool by which an invalid was lain,
for thirty-eight lost years left in his pain—
twisted, timed, tormenting, teared siesta.
“Do you desire to be made well?” He asked.
“I’ve none to help me!” was the plaintive cry,
then Jesus spoke miraculous reply
that to get up and walk the man was tasked.
That’s not to say all healing will be found
within this present life of ills and woes,
but still I hear Christ probing through the throes
if I am truly willing to be sound.
Or would I rather lie on crippling bed,
an invalid of spirit, heart and head?

XII
----
Shuffling through some past miscalculations
surrounding toxic breakage of the vines
that ought secure the healthy bound’ry lines  
guarding interpersonal relations—
rememb‘ring my susceptibility
to ego-shuttled, codependent err‘rs
which strain to manage others‘ own affairs
and so invert responsibility—
I ponder if I‘ll ever grow to learn
proper seeds for sowing mutual trust
with vital tools for gently sanding rust
to help stave off a bondship‘s breaking-burn.
One thing I know, that trusting in the LORD
steers love‘s impetus to carry forward.

XIII
-------
“I’m not enough and yet too much,” I've read.
Succinctly that describes my current angst,
and I can‘t justify to war against
these arguments which whirl around my head.
I’ve been told, “You’re just a little intense,”
by many people, not just one or two,
and this they voice clangs manifestly true,
as gaping holes defect my bound‘ry fence.
Voluminous in content and in force,
bestowing as prized gifts what isn‘t sought
or wanted by those for whom gifts are brought,
I falter in my need to change set course.
And where it comes to giving what‘s desired,
real competence seems found to have expired.

XIV
-----
Someone wrote, “true soul mate is a mirror“—
like limelight they‘ll reveal your unseen faults.
Where no one else delights to search your vaults,
“soul mate“ renders time to be apt hearer.
It matters not, was said, that they don‘t stay,
so long as they‘re an agent for reform—
the one who makes you desp‘rate to transform
by breaking heart and making ego fray.
Danger lies in nuanced underpinnings.
I thought I‘d found my soul mate in abuse
and used “he needs my fuel“ as excuse
to take a twisted game to extra innings.
Here I’ll grant these crazed imaginations
were at core demonic machinations.

XV
-----
Casting down romantic schoolgirl notions
that sin-drenched bonds might fashion souls complete,
I drag bewitching grails to Jesus’ feet—
spurning now to drink past guile‘s potions.
As I linger longer in His presence,
I‘m freshly bathed from marring guilt and shame,
reminded I‘m made whole in Jesus‘ Name—
partaker in the fullness of His essence.
Identified eternally with Christ,
secured by His unfailing love through grace,
one day I‘ll walk perfected face-to-face
with Him from whom true life is all-sufficed.
And as I muse, I taste true heart‘s desire—
rekindling, renewed with holy fire.

XVI
-----
Attitude is prime, determinant hinge
on which the door of restoration swings—
deciding what response subconscious brings
and on which morsels mind should bestly binge.
Plenty is dependent on perspective.
Mountain, plain or valley alter sight 
and size by which is measured present, plight.
Simply switching lens can be corrective.
In Christ, Ephesians tells me, I‘ve been raised,
seated with Him in the heavenly realm—
positioned by the One who steers the helm
that Father, Son and Spirit would be praised!
Worship, like a rudder, sets the outlook
to keep me highly grounded in God‘s Book.

XVII
------
Why should I to the worship of false gods
surrender my outlook frivolously?
Idols grab first gaze notoriously,
rob joy as will‘s defenses yield heart‘s nods.
What then? Can I suppose I might steal back
a measure of exuberance through more
skewed genuflecting to gilt calf before—
itself beleaguered, plagued by woeful lack?
Now heed, wayfaring soul of mine, what‘s true:
Creation‘s bounty-goods will make you slave
and with sweet Siren‘s flutes your mind deprave
when to them you lend focus Christ is due.
Lay firm your eyes on Him—pure, restful bed,
cover, fuel, completer, Fountainhead.

XVIII
-------
Wandering down some cobbled, crowded street,
I‘m nowhere headed, rapt in mindless thought,  
and as I saunter south I happ‘ly spot
a friend long-lost but fiercely longed to meet.
Just up ahead, he’s mixed well in the throng
but might be caught if I push through and race!
Heartbeat quickens. Oh, to see his face,
this one with whom I’m sure I must belong!
Yet when I actually seize him and he turns,
I’m devastated, sunk. It isn’t him.
Then moping northbound—dazed, dejected whim—
I stumble on the One for whom heart burns!
How strange, as I had grappled, chased and shoved,
that I’d been running from the One I loved!

XIX
-----
He‘s reservoir for which parched spirit begs,
familial feast cast heart longs to attend,  
elixir fractured psyche craves, to mend,
secure foundation ‘neath soul‘s skittish legs.
Jesus is hearth fire, garden blooming,
joy‘s kiss that welcomes prodigals with tears,
arms’ tender brawn consoling weak ones‘ fears,
shelt‘ring lullaby as nightstorm‘s looming.
Who else can scatter stars, strew mountain snow,
to whet beloved‘s taste for pristine grace?
What other love’s like this, that He‘d embrace
excruciating death to grace bestow?
And best, most faithful lovers of this earth?—
dull pennies next to Christ‘s resplendent worth!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

VOLUME II:
(** — XXXII) [Edited in 9/27-29/21]

**
----
Closing the door on chaining obsessions
requires some short-circuiting of thought
previously allowed to flow uncaught
and forge ever-deepening depressions.
Pathways in my brain can be rerouted
by changing interactions with my world,
observing what’s most easily unfurled—
presently what’s to five senses suited.
‘Mindfulness’ can be a Christian practice
and doesn’t have to rest on Buddha’s shelf—
“awak’ning non-existence of the self”—
or from unseen, eternal things distract us.
True mindfulness is found in gratitude—
joyful, eucharisteo attitude.

XXI
-----
A biblical version of ‘mindfulness‘
is found in 1 Thessalonians 5,
revealing as God’s will that saints should strive
for ever-prayerful joy and thankfulness.
Pond‘rous gratitude staves off resentment,
greed and pride. As was taught to Timothy,
what‘s created and giv‘n by God should be
received in sacred thanks with contentment.
Creation reflects God‘s bounteous glory
and demonstrates His loving grace and care,
so in same grace and glory we can share
each time we recognize Him in our story.
Ten thousand tiny gifts write each day‘s page,
and he who welcomes most is most like sage.

XXII
------
In restoration, elasticity
of mind is a factor to celebrate.
So please don‘t ever underestimate
the wonders of neuroplasticity.
New brainpaths form and old channels falter,
depending on what choices I might make.
Fresh experience of which I partake
will physically help my brain to alter.
Here‘s one great hope I must now remember:
What’s hardwired today can still be displaced,
and thoughts might soon flow on paths greenly graced,
as I feast my soul’s eyes on brain’s Mender.
Bent mindfulness toward Giver and His gifts
best brings joy‘s healing for my mental rifts.

XXIII
-------
Realizations that some obsessions
are desires to vicariously ride
the mindfulness of others who don‘t hide
their own keener sensory possessions,
aptly are aiding to turn my focus
from curiosity to understand
their thoughts, which often‘s led my heart-demand—
want to consume their minds‘ crops like locusts.
What I‘ve perceived as love, concern to know,
empathy for others‘ worlds internal,
might be more escape from mine external—
attempts to hide from life‘s real, present show.
Avoidance wears all sorts of vibrant masks
to keep me blinded to here-moments‘ tasks.

XXIV
-------
Viewing secondhand eviscerations,
as others spill their innards on the page,
may seem the safest way to heart engage—
surrogated life participation.
Substituting others‘ honed perceptions
where I ought learn observance of my own
will keep childlike experience ungrown,
smother creativity’s conceptions.
Social media’s pitfalls lie therein,
along with greater dangers lurking large.
Despite its many goods, there’s needed charge
that gorging on a good thing leads to sin.
Shutting website windows is like trailhead,
opening mountain path to higher tread.

XXV
------
I‘m learning to sit with anxiety
raised by self-denial of habit’s fix,
mindful how my heart solicits tricks  
to alternate for true society.
Discomfort speaks in volumes to soul’s ear
like smoke alarm alerting to a fire.
It tells me, “Quick, investigate! Inquire!
Please find the source of inner burning fear!”
Nervousness as friend might offer insight
if I can hear and listen to its warning,
objectively without the shame-filled scorning
that tends to follow panic-stricken plight.
Practice putting tension in glass cage
to monitor its undercurrent’s rage.

XXVI
-------
It’s time to preach a sermon to myself,
for fears are overtaking me in waves;
and spirit must combat what habit craves—
flesh seeking consolation in false pelf.
Scrutinize what’s underneath such worry.
Do I believe the LORD is still in charge
of details of my life and world at large?
Look to Him. Don’t yield to anxious hurry.
Do I believe He’s with me and He’s good,
a faithful Shepherd tending to each need?
Then look to Him. Don’t drown in fretting’s greed.
Christ’s sheep don’t have to look elsewhere for food.
Each wait is opportunity to grow,
for God has holy riches to bestow.

XXVII
--------
God’s character and sovereign wisdom hem
my life, as His responsibility.
No wrong will steal my true identity,
whatever slips or schemes might spill from men.
Christ’s Ruler over all, but do I let
Him fully reign as Master in my heart?
Do I acknowledge I’m His work of art
and purpose for His hammers, chisels get?
Intimacy and glory are the friends
to which His sanctifying lessons point
and meld together as love’s dovetail joint
whenever I surrender to these ends.
Soul, set your hope on grace to be revealed.
Entrust to God strain’s mysteries still sealed.

XXVIII
---------
LORD, HELP! Why is my mind so distracted?
And why then, letting it be drawn away
for half an hour, am I now okay
to let my compulsions be retracted?
Give in to let go feels like solution,
but know it only deepens the desire
for later curiosity‘s inquire—
grants no satisfying resolution.
Those thirty minutes mindfulness was lost,
yet could it be empowered by the fall,
as I look closer inside to recall
that giving way to habit bears great cost?
I won‘t grow discouraged by the setback
but seek to further understand self‘s lack.

XXIX
-------
Low-pitched, humming anxiousness was sitting
all day inside my torso‘s cavity.
Mindful sensing lent no gravity
to coax the stubborn squatter through outwitting.
Head was tired from too little sleeping,
so frankly seemed to coast and just make do.
Soul felt no fresh excitement by woods‘ view
and lacked bright energy for much guard keeping.
One moral of this story is night‘s rest
must become priority for healing.
Otherwise this shaky default feeling
will grow into another panicked crest.
Though it‘s no excuse to say I‘m tired,
it‘s clear reformed sleep habits are required.

***
------
Changing what’s practical opens a door
to transforming what’s spiritual, mental
and emotionally experiential.
Habit alterations might well restore
enough equilibrium of body,
restfulness, clarity, reason and time
to give me needed aid to better climb
above oppressive moods, both low and haughty.
Early to bed, early to rise...”could be
one thing to make a world of difference
and welcome back some simple common sense,
to open up new space for setting free.
But for that discipline to take effect,
I’ll also have to curb the internet!

XXXI
-------
Every opportunity for worry
is greater opportunity to trust
that God behind the scenes is sanding rust
from parts of me where fear has made faith blurry.
Without unknowing-gusts to stir the pit
of nervousness inside my helplessness,
I might ne‘er seek my Shepherd‘s faithfulness
nor learn to wait on Him and with Him sit.
These are times of richest growing lessons
when I‘m reminded He is LORD, not me,
and that He works to draw in int‘macy
feeble souls to Him through stretching sessions.
Joy is knowing sure—head, heart and will—
He‘s ever whisp‘ring, “Child, come closer still.

XXXII
--------
Recapping basic steps to take thus far:
Find sleep (which may mean need for melatonin
to counteract my haywire serotonin),
and overuse of internet I‘ll bar.
Then with restfulness bring mindful thinking—
keen noticing that‘s graced with gratitude
and sets a stronger skyward attitude,
buoys me up against fret‘s downward sinking.
More important still is meditation
upon the word of God‘s indicatives
which lay foundations for imperatives
to follow as prescriptive medication.
Most crucial element preventing fall
is fix my eyes on Jesus through it all!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

VOLUME I
(I — XIX)

8/23/21— 9/8/21

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

VOLUME II
(** — XXXII)

9/22/21 — 9/29/21

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marieta Maglas Oct 2015
(Cruz and Pedra were talking in the bedroom. Cruz had started to recover and his wound began to heal.)


(Pedra said,)



'' Pedro uses the morality to achieve his immoral,
Hidden goals, but you provoke the people to become
Immoral, considering them to be hypocrites; '' ''don't quarrel!
Criticism is something you cannot avoid; they're just ****.


(Cruz continued,)



You're the one who breaks any spiritual barrier
To overcome some secret limitations; you like
This concept of master-slave morality; you're a harrier.
I'm an old man, and I don't like that, sometimes, you're ready to strike.



(Cruz continued,)



Carla is your antipode; '' ''Do I spy? Did you question Ivan
About passing such a barrier between two powerful
Countries to do business? '' ''Their run just means survivin'.
I admit that I'm very curious; '' ''You think it's wonderful! ''



(Cruz said while smiling,)



''I want to change everything around and do not know how.''
''If you were not so morose and introverted, maybe
You would succeed; '' ''I'm not an orator, but I'm still alive now.
I speak too briefly and concisely, but I love you, baby.''



(Pedra replied,)



'' You're a very good observer and you think objectively.''
''I consider that you've found my way of being in the world
And this is why our marriage works so well; you're effectively
My friend; our life didn't fall apart when the lies were hurled.''


(Pedra said,)


''We have an organized family, and even when
We are not together, we are a team; '' '' I understand
That you have learned from the power of Aphra Behn's pen,
But, when you are with me, your ideas lose command.''



(Pedra replied,)



'' Maya appreciates my knowledge about botany
And history; '' '' She's a lonely woman, an unlucky one.
Between some passengers, she created a dichotomy.''
''Did you ask her some odd questions as you had done with Ivan? ''



(Cruz replied,)



''Maya is a war survivor and she learns to overcome
The poverty; '' ''she's an introvert but friendly and humane.
Although old, she works well and fast while needing to become
A talented cook; she's healthy for her age; doesn't live in vain.''



(Cruz said,)



''She needs to manage her anxiety by trying to control
Her reality; she views this ability as a matter
Of survival; '' '' she appeals to the evil powers for her goal.
To make this force be an energy field she uses the water.



(Pedra continued,)



She's a widow and her brother, Naimah, is rather clumsy.
He's not strong enough to overcome the difficulties in life.''
''How to keep fear under control she likes to study
And she's a kind of quack using plants to cure this inner strife.''



(Pedra replied,)



''She had fled war and chose the water as the primordial
Element instead of accepting the fire; then, those forces
Followed her to set this ship on fire 'cause that danger was mortal.
She thinks that these elements feed on her chakras sources.''



(Cruz replied,)



''The water quenches the fire, and when the water is dangerous,
There is no escape; '' ''Carla told me that Maya talked to her dead.
She's afraid of exorcisms; '' ''she cannot endanger us.''
''To bring Maya to Allah, Geraldine has a wise head.''



(Cruz replied,)



'' Geraldine has been pregnant while needing help; she seems to be
A fighter, but in reality, she's peaceful, frail and helpless.
You are a totally different person; '' ''no loss is known in me.
To help Surak after abandoning her kids was useless.''



(Cruz replied,)



'' Maybe her children are strong, but her nephew needs help.''
'' Maybe she needs purity to get her protective energy
While entering the unknown; '' ''stop turning my brain to kelp!
It's intuition. If I wasn't in that gun-room, we would die.''



(Cruz began to tell her about the person who had saved him from death.)



(To be continued…)



Poem by Marieta Maglas
Odysseus Nov 2015
There is a fair bit of you in every garden of my life.
Truly, that is nothing extraordinary, you should know it as objectively as I do.

Nevertheless, there is something I’d like to clarify:

When I say "in every garden”,
it is not only in relation to this of now,
this of waiting for you, of hoorah! i found you!, and ******! i lost you!,
and found again, and hopefully stops there.

Nor in regard of you suddenly telling me "I’m going to cry”,
then with a discrete lump in my throat "well go ahead”.
And then a graceful invisible rainfall arrives to assist us,
perhaps the reason the sun rises unhesitatingly right after.

I’m not just referring either
at the day-to-day fluctuation of the stock in our little decisive complicities,
or that I could or believe I can turn my deficiencies to victories,
or of you to bestow upon me the tenderest gift of your most recent despair.

No.
The situation is more serious.
When I state “in every garden” I mean to say that in addition to that sweet cataclysm,
you are also rewriting my childhood,
that age when one utters "grown up” and solemn phrases,
and the solemn grown ups celebrates them,
and conversely, you think of it irrelevant.

What I mean to say is,
you are reassembling my adolescence,
that time when I was an old man full of insecurities,
and contrarily, you know how to extract from there,
my germ of joy and consciously spread it.

What I mean to say is,
you are stirring my youth,
that vain vessel no one took hold of, that proud shade no one got close to,
and you on the other hand knows very well how to shake it
until the autumn leaves start falling
till there is nothing but the flesh of my triumphless truth.

What I mean to say is,
you are grasping my maturity,
that mixture of stupor and experience,
this unknown horizon of fear and certainty,
this relentless faith on my questionable strength.

As you can see, it is serious,
extremely more serious.
Because with these or different words,
I mean to say you are not only,
the dearest girl you are,
but also the splendid and cautious* women that I love and have loved.

Because thanks to you E, I have understood,
(you’d say it was about time, and with reason),
that love, is a beautiful and generous bay, that lightens and darkens as life goes by,
a bay where ships arrive and break away,
they arrive with blossoms and presages,
and they part with krakens and storm clouds.
A beautiful and generous bay where ships set down and then leave,

But E, you, please don’t leave.
Yue Wang Yitkbel Aug 2019
We often remark collectively

The curious quickness and languidness

Of supposed objectively measured time



Yet

Never truly resolving how could

Fixed increments differ

So significantly and equally

To different close observers



Perhaps it is thus:

That spacetime is a gravitationally

Wrinkled fabric

Measured with a rigid rule

A linear distance

With unseen folds and faults

Unaccounted for in the straight line

That like mountains and valleys

Unable to cross directly in flight

For the haplessly wingless of us

We must climb over and fall through

Therefore adding to the voyage

Time closer to the truth



And mountains and valleys endless

There must have been for us both

To climb over and fall through

In that indivisible fleeting moment

When my eyes first met yours



And mountains and valleys endless

There must still be for us both

In every indivisible fleeting moment-

Again and again, forevermore-

Whenever my eyes meet yours



For such is our love's 'DENSITY'

For such is our love's gravity

They must all be the ceaseless ripples

From our two ever embracing

Neutron star souls
Dates of this poem:
Version 1: January 19, 2019
Version 2: May 11, 2019

— The End —