First Living Organism

Anyway, there is love and death and governance. With the birth of my sons, love was fulfilled. There is no romance left in love for me, women are another form of men. Perhaps their toes are painted rather than blood-encrusted, but blood runs from their bones, their eyes are friendly as camera lenses, muscles hungry. Death continues to be my every third thought, fittingly. Occasionally I feel strong, but when I don’t it’s death waiting. I think I know it’s a waste of time to imagine being dead, as if being dead were a form of living. It’s not, but last night I was reading about the efforts of astrobiologists to identify LUCA meaning Last Universal Common Ancestor and FLO, first living organism, and that gave me a calmer feeling. Bringing me to governance, how we manage together between birth and death. What can I say that hasn’t already been said by Aristotle and Plato, the Republicans and Democrats, Hamilton and Jefferson. To start, your daily discipline is a personal governance. There are many ways to know a person: by their god, by their fears and appetites, by how they spend their money or organize their time. Who is in authority, who is in command here? The one in authority is not necessarily our leader.


Patience

I live in a mountainous community about 140,000 strong. My irascible, aggressive temperament toward my fellow citizens has exiled or sidelined me to a peripheral almost insignificant role although when I arrived I was considered a problem solver, even a savior of the poor and the wealthy classes who feared for the future. Why mention this. He who knows patience knows peace. I have surely lost face often in my life. As a kid, lost most fights, as a man, chosen last to lead the squad or platoon. Only when every known leader had died did those in authority decide to use me. Someone must begin to write the federalist papers for the world. And, of course, it’s being done and heard. Books in print, blogs, debates. My vision is a world where you can fly from Madagascar to Mississippi and be greeted by a sign that says Welcome to our land. Go about your business, setting off no bombs, and fly home. Perhaps take a lover for one afternoon.


The Machine and the Season

The machine and the season are so far incompatible. The machine claims electrical problem. The house leaks from rain. The men who left the machine have started their own business. A new endeavor by which they will keep warm and purposeful. The junior partner, heavier, says the Grand Canyon’s not so grand. Jaded individual or one to set himself against the depths, abyss? Man’s systems. Man made the machine (and the town) from rocks mined next door. Some few men understand these invisible electrons moving the machine to perform. I still cannot imagine, i.e. my mind cannot move fast enough to know how so many particles can be sorted and split so quick to make words on a screen. My simplicity is terminal.


Saving Grace

Today it is fall, first day for long-sleeved shirts. The boys at school. I admonish Zach not to whine and complain about the work. Lately reading or practicing piano, prone to fits of frustration. To the point of claiming belly pain. Last night I dreamed I had pushed him to suicide. It is so important for a man to do no harm. This is what makes us crazy against Wolfowitz, willingness to **** to do good. Someone very sure of himself and shining, much wiser and more compassionate than me, has calculated for the world that more lives now for fewer later shall be sacrificed. The people he serves are cantankerous, disorderly, selfish and complaining. The same diverse, spoiled, unpatriotic revolutionaries as at the nation’s beginning. Their refusal to be more than the sum of themselves is their saving grace.


Politics

Politics can be an escape from the personal, the debates are of little interest to a man in hospice. Will the machines do their work? How will we make decisions together? Roger Johnson’s gravel pit must be killing his neighbors with the noise of boulders being pulverized to rock but Roger is certain his business is necessary for the public good. He knows he has a right to use his property as he sees fit. There is a noise ordinance, a state employee will travel out to measure the decibel level in your front yard as compared to the ambient noise level. There is a measurable amplitude beyond which the legislature has determined no citizen may be exposed or corporation go. It can be measured.


Measure for Measure

Measure for measure, all’s well that ends well during a midsummer night’s dream for the merry wives of Windsor. A million or more poets but only one Top Bard. How did he know so much about kings and fools and murderers? An Elizabethan and no Freedom of Information Act. Today it is fall. The legislature and president are at work and so are our machines. One by one and then in armies the leaves come down. It is not that someone must decide, we must decide how we will make decisions and where authority resides. What am I learning, sitting, watching the season turning? Content this morning to admire my sons’ photos, reread my own poems searching for the prize answer, and answer the phone. I seem to be alienating potential business partners with a take it or leave it comme-ci comme-ca attitude. All you can do, the best that can be done is to go to your daily discipline. Driving home or waking up at night I think I’m dying. Do the much-admired writers of our time die more content than that?


War All the Time

War all the time. I’ve been fond of saying what distinguishes America is its daily low intensity warfare. Endless but not fatal conflict. Chambers of commerce, municipal government, big corporations wrestle nearly naked and will lie as needed for what? I tire like an 80 year old man of the storm and worry. I remember my early years when I had no known skill to offer and elections occurred without my vote being solicited. I noticed no harm or good I did was noticed. Autumn was all mine, mine alone, I was alone in the world with autumn. My mind could not stand it. I cried out for comfort, someone to obey. I needed to grow up and know money.


The History That Surrounds Us

I’m not going anywhere, I chose to stay and hold my clod of soil in the landscape of community oh blah dah. I want like Shakespeare and other writers to discern the motivations of women, men, see through their lies to a humorous truth careless about success and able to explain why what happens today or on September 11th obtains. I was impressed by the critic who found that Shakespeare in Hamlet had tried to write about the thoughts of a man suspended between having decided to act and the act itself. Why bother he soliloquated why commit or submit to the great moment when mere men of bones and dust, disgusted with themselves and others are the actors of the moment, beheaders, rhymers, debtors. And, of course, the answer comes to one in the night like Chuang-tzu, or Lao, why not? The great moment is no greater than the small and the small no smaller than the great. You perform the history that surrounds you and go to your daily practice.


A Systems Guy

I’m something of a systems guy. I want the truth and death and worth to be independent of individual motives, paranoias, prejudice, peccadilloes, virginities, crucifixes, paradoxes, protons, protozoa or curses. I want pure human machinery, stainless steel, clear thinking, even handed, not a doubt that every doubt is wanted, needed, good to the last drop toward the ultimate ignition into outer space, colonization of diverse planets and immortality of the genome. Here’s what’s odd. While enduring ever more frequent panic attacks (and nudging toward survival and self-sufficiency my offspring) pounding and pinching my skin to stay sensate, maintain consciousness, I parabolate (always orbiting myself, eye on the tip of my *****) to another extreme, i.e. my belief mankind can escape the earth unlike Hamlet’s dad’s ghost. A system is a set of inputs–values, policies, objectives, procedures, data–organized and repeated to generate significant quantities of desired outcomes without redesigning the system for each individual outcome. I told John Russell from Amnesty International at Jack Shwartz’s daughter’s coming of age party about my plan to reorganize the U.N. so only the democracies can vote and no nation has a veto. He said the world’s not ready, with absolute certainty, knowledge and authority. I looked out the hotel window, this was shortly after 9/11, at dozens of American flags and a lone security guard. I’m always right I said to myself.

i can't even appreciate my own, it's like it's supposed to
be a lost finger, because upon reading poetry by women
i slide into young-adult delusional
associations with my own; it's women's poetry that's potent,
i know the giants homer and virgil made the narrative epic,
but i mean the snappiness, the snappy poetry of intelligence
that's like a dropped handkerchief picked up by a dog-collared
crow of sabbath with foolery, to escape the trade of alms
and last rites, that horrid trade of the briefest farewell
and all that coffin in autobiography: coffins for coffers;
rarely a poem about the liver or the pancreas, it's all from
the heart, but as honesty goes - i said it once already -
if all my poetry came from the heart - i couldn't -
it either comes from the liver or from my ****.
i guess that's how we'll survive, with the cleopatras and
catherines of this world, singing them lullabies
of our misappropriated "endowment." but what's eerie
about today is that the house is empty, a funeral is taking place,
a plumber has died... a plumber...  talk of 40 a day, beer
and dead before 60.
wife, tick.
children, tick.
grandchildren, tick.
but i can't understand this depth of things: the jews move eloquently
from border to border, picking up language after
language without really accenting the acquired tongue, as i did too,
but i don't understand why i would have to be seduced by
the accusation that i don't belong here, that i'm being too
audacious, too prickly and not funny - or why,
before all the troubles started the muslim preachers on edgware road
thought that i was german trying to convert me -
i don't know anymore, maybe i am, after all father said that
his grandfather had a wehrmacht dagger hidden in the cellar,
so the ageing is a bit perfect to dot dot dot the pieces together.
but what i mean is: well, after living here since one can remember,
but having the burden of acquiring a mother tongue
i sometimes feel like i'm in no man's land, i can't drop the mother
tongue, i'm using the acquired tongue more than the mother tongue
cognitively, but i read philosophy in the mother tongue
because i can't read philosophy in this acquired tongue;
i guess that's due to the overstrain done by darwinism in the english
tongue, i mean, there's a lot of good philosophy to
be read, but in english it's too much of a darwinistic
revocation - it's not like you could read sartre
talking about voyeurism through the keyhole
without imagining yourself a monkey,
it's the whole imagining the origin,
it's the whole: image - monkey - phonetic content - ooh ooh ooh.
it predates accounts of history, this whole take
from darwinism; i face the fact that darwinism
eroded much of history, it's like groundhog day,
that's why the media are so pulverising, so concentrated,
so seemingly omnipresent, 24h... the whole of
human history stopped! it's because when
humanity started to record **** happening
using phonetic symbols rather than pictures of antelopes
in caves, it started to record history,
but darwinism kinda erased that... so what's the
news now? oh right, skeletons, lookalike skeletons.
this isn't an argument against darwinism using theology,
just look at history, it stopped, we're living
in a 24h pre-recording awaiting various paranoias.

With all my insecurities
Faults and failures
How could anyone love me?

With all my past mistakes
***** deeds and regrets
Why would someone care for me?

With all my angry shouts
Suspicions and paranoias
What is there to love about me?

With all these scars
Curves and stretch marks
Who could possibly want me?

With all these little dark thoughts
Depressive words and suicidal stanzas
Where is that one to love me?



*And finally set me free?

Help me understand. Help me come to a conclusion. Why I am the way I am.
Help me decipher my inner thoughts. Help me find a way to survive in this place.
Help me figure out what I mean. Help me realize what I need. Help me get through this.
Help me get out of here. Help me.

I cannot fight the war from the inside.
I cannot get my point across from behind enemy lines.
I cannot get around my mind.
Cannot decide a ******* thing for myself.
There are always a million other people
weighing in, screaming their opinions...
Whispering in serpent tongue
paranoias and red flags.
pointing out every little thing
that means nothing, really.
but in that moment
with a million voices
my world falls down.
my heart caves in.


I am not one person.
I understand if this is hard for you to grasp.
I understand if I am too much for you.
I am too much for a lot of people.
Nothing with me is easy,
Everything is a battle.
Inside and out.
between me and me
me and you
me and her
me and him
me and us
me and them.
Everything
is
a battle.

exhausting.

at the end of a typical day
I've gone through a dozen wars
a hundred second thoughts
a thousand put downs
a million arguments
just with my self.

I'm having just a little trouble
figuring myself out
hearing my voice above the others
thinking clearly.

I'm tired of listening.

Deep and tearing,throbbing feeling
That wrenches at my every being
Paranoias grasp and visions seeing
But no sound will I be freeing

Hold it in and act fine
Pretend I am yours and you are mine
Just have another glass of wine
In silence I will sit and pine

Finally, I was there, so close that I could almost touch you.
After so many years looking at you only by a computer screen and old paper pictures,
It feels like you are a creation of my mind.
How would you look in front of my eyes? Will you be different from my dreams?
Strangely, I’m not nervous.
The idea of that encounter be only an illusion was keeping my anxiety down.
That couldn’t be real, could be?

Suddenly, I see you.
Dressed all in black, your hair moving as you walk, smile on your face.
As you’re coming closer I start to forget who I am.
Is my body flying? Did I forget how to speak? Do I remember how to breathe?
I feel numb.
You’re finally in front of me and I can be sure now that you are real.
I see the sweat running down your neck and your green eyes shining with fire.
You don’t even look human, you are perfect.
You give your hand to us and I know that if I take it, my heart will stop.

But I can’t reach it…
It’s so close but, at the same time, it’s impossible to reach it.
I finally can see you but I also can finally realize that you are superior.
You’re so far away from me, an unbreakable barrier.
I still have fights to face, I’m full of monsters in my head, the paranoias that don’t allow me to have peace. I’m still looking for a place to call home, hoping that one day I can find my own light to shine.
But you...you are the light that can guide millions. You’re literally a star.
Your image, your soul, your heart and your existence feels superior to us all.

For so many times, you helped me to fight my fears and, sometimes, even fight against myself.
You were my teacher, my savior, my idol and my friend. My great example and my great influence.
I dreamed of making you feel my gratitude so you would feel there is someone in this world that you saved uncountable times.
But I can’t say this, you can’t listen to me, you are so close but also so farther...

At the end of the night, the magic is over, I can no longer see you.
Maybe I will never see you again, but it’s for sure that I will never reach you.
Did anything change in my heart? Do I admire you more or do I need to say goodbye to the hopes you gave to me?
I can’t remember which road I should take now.
But I know that when I fall asleep, what I will see it won’t be a dream anymore, but a memory.

She hates the way I say I'll do something and then prove myself wrong by doing nothing at all

She doesn't like how I can be so inconsistent in my approach to everything but it's my fault

She can't stand it when I sit back and let myself get tossed around by my need to answer paranoias call

Hope was delivered quickly, mercifully,
as the aseptic needle silently, expertly
pierced the anxious skin of my upper arm
bared to its untattooed, obese reality
and scarred deeply with forgotten badges
from islands and mountains and forests
and caves, with souvenirs and tokens
from clingy rattans, unforgiving wasps,
solicitous leeches, and hyperactive biting midges.

Pushed by magmatic desperation, something
imposed by elected incompetence, fudged
as a destiny of an unfortunate nation,
I toed the line of the long queue, hiding
my rhinitis-ruled nostrils and mustached
mouth from the many dreaded arms
of SARS-CoV-2, uneasily shielding
my embarrassed face from sneezed aerosols.

Aging paranoias of undignifiedly drowning
in one’s own phlegm unconsciously fuel
the tired and greying servant. Respite is not
as appeals for help to ease the burdens
of mountains of debt, and so sadly, yet
the beloved, alone, succumbs to death.

We’re all hostages - and the ransoms demanded
by this protein-coated tyrant are costly,
unjustly. Incarcerated by our fears of being
caught within the nets of this pirate at the sea
of our existence, we are, I am, grasping at all
but the last strands of a rotting rope – hope,
diminishing, flickering hope of salvation
from pathogenic damnation. Come messiah!

Likened to Christmas Stars shining bright,
the sages of Science illuminated our dark night
And through the ***** of a hypodermic needle,
Hope was delivered quickly,
mercifully,
compassionately . . .

I don’t feel bipolar or schizophrenic-like

in any way today. Look alive, Jess.

This may not be good.

Or maybe I do. Teju Cole says

“We are our habits in sum.”

I think we are our occupations

and preoccupations and I feel

dizzy, numb, now that I am 30 years

old, sitting on a park bench and stuck

just inhaling the last of a smoke

I lit way back when I was 20, waiting,

almost 21, before I broke my brain

and the earth was one sorrow lighter.

Good morning.

How do you do?

Fine.

What do you do?

I clean my house, play pretend and mostly

try to keep conversations inside of

my head or else I hide inside a corner of a coffee house

and write them down until-

What time is it? 52 minutes

of 7:10 and I used to have

a car and a longer leash

and I still got arrested

#1481882

without one. I think

I have done all the things

and looked inside of or fallen down all

the holes like Alice

EAT ME.

DRINK ME.

#01971

I can’t remember anything but I can

remember, that for some reason

I sprayed my coat with

vinegar- a very random

conversation piece indeed. I even fall

into other people’s tiny

talking points across

the room. Shut the **** up,

please. I am trying desperately

to keep it quiet in here.

I don’t care about your group

texts or, ( or by whose standards?)-

your own public

shame. I used to have a

phone too and I don’t miss it-

yes.

Like a gloved hand

with no fingers and too

many holes

trying to make-up my mind.

3.141592

I mean, I empathize

with Emily but there is

a kind of shelter outside

that exists nowhere else,

a break from the Nazis

and life coaches and paranoias

and music you think you

have in my head. Jumbled, jumbled

more wrecked I am without

my Chi-Yin. I miss him terribly

4 minutes of 7:10. I hope he is

sleeping fine now, without me; he

too, finding his final form

in dreams and I- not

wanting to be on the cusp

of escaping, trying to piece together

what exactly is a puzzle

and what isn’t: still

deciduous, unformed

and undecided.



-Jesse Haydn

She fell in love too, and a lasting one. But it was different. Because it wasn’t a person that she fell in love with. She fell in love with cities and towns, oceans and waves and rivers, sunrises and sunsets, rain and sunshine. The rainbow they brought.  She ached for adventure and desired nothing but happiness. She wore her heart on her sleeve, and never regretted it. She lived life to the fullest and cherished everything that the universe had to offer. Because one day, all she had to look back on was the memories.

Even when the memories pinch your heart. Because the pain of all your experience is what makes you the person you are now. And without your experience you are an empty page, a blank notebook, a missing lyric. What makes you brave is your willingness to live through your terrible life and hold your head up high the next day. So don't live life in fear. Because you are stronger now, after all the crap has happened, than you ever were back before it started.

Believe me. Beauty is the face of who cried and now smiles, beauty is the scar on your knee since you fell when you were a kid, beauty is the circles when love doesn’t let you sleep, beauty is the expression on the face when the alarm rings in the morning, it’s the melted makeup when you have a shower, it’s the laughter when you make a joke you’re the only one who can understand, beauty is meeting his gaze and stopping understanding, beauty is your gaze when you see him, it’s when you cry for all you paranoias, beauty is the lines marked by time. Beauty is what we feel in the inside which also shows outside us. Beauty is the marks the life leaves on us, all the kicks and the caresses the memories leave us. Beauty is letting yourself live.

You’ll find yourself when you are supposed to. In the wrong or in the right place. In this space or in the next. Today or tomorrow. There will always be things happening to you. And they will always be changing you. And all at once, the search will be beautiful.

Remember, the making of a butterfly is one to remember. But we all pay attention to it’s beauty.

So darling, don’t waste your life in the same boring town, go explore, travel and fall in love with the world. The Earth is beautiful and so are you