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Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
no number of opinions will alleviate this apathy, promised, paradoxically: a pandora's box of pathology, which is why attempting dialectics is a farce, a cheap magic trick for a talk-show host in being "understanding", to attempt in mediating, and then scoffing it off, like some under baked crumpet / scone, and yes, it makes sense, pivoting on the possession of a conscience... it's not that some people appear to now possess it, but that they are comical in possessing, and comedy is always nuanced, an ambiguity surrounds their conscience... the binary opposite of comedy? the birth of the tragedy, a succumbing to madness, a suicide... every person possesses a conscience, as the universal law of unit, but comedy hides a person with a grieving conscience, making the person so callus as to make them donkeys, laughing stocks, spaghetti entangled liars... it's only a conscience triggered into a tragedy that reeks with redemptive qualities ascribed to a person, cf. the already mentioned carl sergeant and 'arvey 'ard on weinstein... in the spirit of the film split: rejoice! for those who have suffered are redeemed! rejoice! said the beast. the comedy is near impossible to avoid in post-script idiocy beaming the letters FAIL; the tragedy of conscience, at least we know some evil doers in death are redeemed with the only puritanical act to redeem conscience: the bride of honour.*

can an intelligent person make a slapstick
joke?
  or is it that,
   a dumb person cannot make an original
joke?

besides the point,
  a question is a question -
  and as most questions go -
it's not whether there's a correct
or wrong answer,
rather, whether there actually is
an answer to accomplish
that stated question.

i've noticed a resurgence of dialectical
inquiry, but i have decided to
avoid perfecting the art,
   other than in person,
on a park bench, rather than on
a page in pixel white...

  oh sure, i have a life beyond this
outlet,
and i rarely write a platonic dialogue
to reinforce my experiences,
i once enforced a question
upon a child in a supermarket:
do you think animals are unable
to see 3-dimensional objects
     in / on a 2-dimensional canvas?
he didn't answer, because his guardian
thought i was weird in my
presumption...
which was, however you imagine it:
casual, cordial, orientated
within the adequate use of time and space
for the question to be asked.

personally i find myself if a binary
realm of,
   which isn't exactly a left right divide -
as a "schizophrenic" i am marching
down the middle, and asking myself:
   there's only the middle to mind,
and the mind is the only thing worth
juggling, sure, but juggling
a thesis hemisphere and an antithesis
hemisphere becomes lost in
the schizophrenic-quadratic -
      right down the middle.

which is why i find modern attempts
at dialectics so odd...
i prescribed myself dialectical escapism,
simply because there are too
many opinions i'm simply not interested in.

people seem to have stored these opinions
for so long, they are choking at not
having talked about them...
  it's apparent in comedy...
among comics...
                    they simply say:
if we can't bypass the comedy and sit down
with a cold beer, we can't actually
take the opinion seriously,
  if we can't, at first, make a joke of it...
that's hard...
              that's near impossible to stage...
you can realise the complexity of
enabling a seriousness with a comic precursor
antics to "soften" the blow of
approach...
that is why i await the awaited for
dialectical artist, who must be much
older than i, frankly the age of socrates,
i can only fathom dialectical escapism,
    in that i can fathom an opinion,
but i can't fathom being endearing to it,
keeping it, nurturing it,
       maturing it,
                     making the animate
water into inanimate ice...
                       which leaves steam
   a categorical conundrum of categorisation...

in terms of the human mind,
i can only find comparison with Alcatraz...
i am forever attempting escape,
i know i will be aided by the snitch,
judas, death...
     but i have to be lodged into
a vocab that may aid me,
  or hinder me.

                   the human experience is
an Alcatraz because of the a priori principle -
what came before me: set the rules,
the winding corridors where
i'm not the Minotaur,
but the scared victim,
   or just the dumb-enough brick of
the labyrinth's wall.
or? the a posteriori principle -
           i impose my own graffiti on
the walls, and be the Minotaur of the long
wait of life, with death:
my morphine angel.
                              
         but i see no desire to engage in
dialectical endeavours,
            hence my choice in attempting
a purification of poetry,
against technique of schooling,
  in making poetry less and less
musically orientated, and returned to
its primordial genesis: of narrative.

  hence my dialectical escapism,
i really have not stable opinion,
or opinion i'd like to adhere to, to subsequently
hug a pillar of a Parthenon.
                
- believe me when i say that the english
language has no inclination of
orthography, since it uses no diacritical
distinctions...
  and yes... russian diacritics is ugly as
your waning babushka of "secrets"...
  - the beauty of existentialism?
            avoidance of the thesaurus,
mismatching words, ambiguity -
the phraseology of: for lack of a better word...
     fiddly parts, you know,
            **** it, you can't exactly
interrupt a waterfall, so why bother
   attempting to boil some water in a saucepan?

  the world once believed in the enterprise
of dialectics, but since the emergence
of a third party mediator,
       what sort of "dialogue's" worth of
the dialectical endeavour is there left?
once upon a time, in ancient,
the mediator of a dialogue was a park
bench, after that a stage for actors...
who asked these third party ponces,
  more to the point: who invited these
plebs into our private debate so they can
mere awe and sigh their saturday nights off?!
who the **** let these plebs in?!

       i'm a pleb, i can call them plebs,
do i ******* look like i work at 10 downing st.?!
plebs only understand pleb talk,
  rude, incoherent, mildly orientated
in journalism, and ever wishing for some
marquis de sade hard-ons.

i encourage dialectical escapism, frankly,
because,
          i 've found that i have a bare
minimum, laurel leaf worth of covering my
genitals aspiration to keep opinions...
    opinions have become spare change,
you loose them almost all the time,
they're the pennies from heaven,
some other lucky ****** might find them,
and then the resourcefulness of that poor
****** is imminent: spend it,
what's there to debate?

                    the only truth of opinion is
that one man keeps them,
and by keeping them, idealises them,
thus becoming an idealist,
  or that another man discards them
as easily as a ***** peacock,
and by doing the ***** peacock strut,
discarding them,
          becomes a chameleon,
a "non-conformist" (**** me that's
stretching the idealist antonym);
  
   if there's a truth: it's a bunch of lies -
and if there's a lie: it's the only truth -
because the rule of pluralism (borrowed from
heidegger states):

          one truth = many lies
           one lie = only one truth

(there is no pluralism of a truth,
       but there is a pluralism of a lie -
the genesis of a lie is?
             a continuum beginning
with the original temptation -
truth is "plural" but it is not
a continuum of precipitation,
but even if it is dismembered
it is a whole, already apparent,
           or rather: to be made apparent,
it does not require a preceding step
to provide a pro-ceding step...
   lies are obstructive,
truth never obstructs; truth rapes,
while lies groom)...

   unum verum = falsum multis
   falsum unum = solum verum unum selem.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2018
/my "insomnia" isn't exactly a problem, when rationalised via: a Freudian desert, namely, i sleep, but have not luxury to dream, which makes a sense of death all the more procreational for thinking's sake... insomnia like dementia... or rather... better the erosion of the thought aculty,  replaced by hallucinogenic inducement to counter the erosion of the dream mechanics... currently staged by boorish media, 24h reels of insomnia pusher outlets... so who gave ol' zuck the oyster tongue, greasy skin, and a wet, shrinking prune *****? comes a time when a boy gets to grow oop... chances are, if you're insomniac, you are not an escape artist, and you deem the escapism of bound to dreams, as yet another, sheikh dubai lamborghini promenade, riding it at an urban speed limit of 30mph... revving for the "fear factor" of... dancing with gingy 'arry... risqué... insomnia erodes dreams... all the better, in that perpetuation of a mummified blink... theatre's curtain falls... what sort of Freudian banana is there to speak about, when attempting to compensate the intellect, for a *******  Eiffel... notably... an individual's insomnia comes after, the media insomnia, bite sized 30 minute intervals on repeat for 24h hours... and in between, no  in-between programmes, that might allow journalistic digestion... a lack of dialectical exercise has created journalistic indigestion... most notable and in plain sight... when applying the pedantic counter dialectic observation, in the form of diacritical marks.

doubt is a luxury in the current zeitgeist,
to unravel doubt,
when compensating love,
as a chemistry of endomorphines...
doubt, is the equivalent
of an intellectuals synonym
of love... both are gambles,
uncertainties, both are:
wavering of the heart, pendulum
swings...
   doubt is a phobia-philia...
a love of fear, less strenuously:
an apprehension regarding
the fact that Zanzibar made it
into song lyrics, and is a place
that actually exists, in situ...
without any global mention
in culture mining...
for those starved from loving...
afraid of their own shadow
and loneliness,
cogitatio ex-et-qua claustrophobia...
don mclean's starry starry night...
as big as a *******
universe and as plebian
as the lost V in a thespian
and the lost F in: definite article...
FE VACUUM PINT... sorry... POINT?  
doubt is a luxury,
equivalent to love...
doubt is a thinking man's love...
in both instances the heart
is swayed...
     how quickly did the Narcissus
economics become
the semi-autistic solipsistic pillar
that undermined the shear
exhilirence of doubt = love,
post curiosity, posit trust,
posit: disembodiment...
posit... and the siamese dream factory
(no smashing pumpkins' cliché)...
nontheless...
doubt is a luxury,
a graphite find,
with synonym-covert findings
of the gem equivalent to:
a fear of the existence of
the unum anima...
     and the precipitation of
ghosts...
    in the case for the argument
for the existence of purgatory...
     nostalgia...
because being sedated by a general
anaesthetic... is not quiet tot...
but doubt is a luxury these days,
sometimes misunderstood as
nonchalance...
but rather the ease of having
opinions, for the sake of
everyday narratives,
not dialectically challenged...
doubt, is akin to love,
in that there's the wavering,
nonetheless a teasing carrot
hanging before:
the palms that became
the Roman lynch whips...
one man rode a donkey
and suddenly four horsemen took
to a gallop...
     doubt is a luxury...
given our times...
    notably because the existentialist
replaced doubt with denial...
and denial, has no luxury
of thought as genesis,
instigator, alpha precursor...
     denial is not a luxury,
it is an accepted norm...
               perhaps the subtleness
of love in the guise of doubt
as the antithesis of erratic pulverisation
not associated with thinking,
or rather: cogitatio per se, est
supra "quaestio" moralis, id est:
     narratio moralis...
doubt is a luxury,
in times, when man looks upon
man as a chimera of
a wolf, a fox, and a sheep / goat...
doubt is a luxury,
when denial becomes the norm;
          this doesn't even have to
invigorate the comic holocaust denials...
but the sort of denials,
that allow a small town to exist
and the globalist city-state
cannibalism to also, exist...
        a "denial" for the sake
of "myopia"...
          came the pseudo-Socrates...
and the dialectical-Elijah...
              Copernicus the genius,
thesaurus handy,
also the solipsist, and also
the cider brewer's concept of
autistism...
          mind you...
the thin line...
between atheism and autism...
an atheist arguing for the nonexistence
of god, countered
with an autistic- arguing
                for the existence of a self,
without being questioned
by the other's demand for an
existence of, the self.
doubt is a luxury...
denial is the new standard,
norm.
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2020
.i have come to realiße that... it's not so much what you write about... but the mere fact of writing... i can't imagine myself being subjected to something, like a narrative, or furthering a character study... i can be the object of whatever is whimsical enough to come into my head of its own accord - i want to forget forcing something to come into this puncture, this dam, this incision that i am coordinating... and it's not that i'm objecting to something, but i am not going to subject myself to - no more than a whim, of its own desires... with no attached: i think so too... it's not about what i write anymore: it's the fact that i write... if i'll be able to spew 3 thousand words tonight... i'll be content... because... i know that i have crossed the threshold of not being left "satisfied": nonetheless constipated by an instagram haiku... mind you... that's a very troubling hindsight note you have in there... wouldn't an object the size of the earth... in a vacuum of space... create its own winds to imitate movement? there is no wind on the moon... yes... and we're talking hindsight from 420BC... the moon landing happened in the 20th century... let's give it some times before that becomes an obvious hindsight too... do you feel movement - rotating - did the turkish dervishes help at all?

the fine line between: competition and corporation,
otherwise known as a: very, very, naive poo'em...

by a definition alone:
it's not so much concerning whether this
would ever become a capitalism vs.
a communism "debate"...

after all - i'm ref. walking a tight-rope...

of the latter, verbatim:
'an association of individuals,
created by law or under authority of law,
having a continuous existence independent
of the existences of its members
and powers and liabilities distinct from
those of its members'...

can i just point out, foremost,
in an environment of competition laws can be bent...
to add to: the spectacle...
the athletics doping scandals:
it's within a spirit of competition...
the sprinters are not corporating for give
a spectacle... they are competing...
for the the spectacle...
ask me again the difference between...
what used to be a competitive event
done during leisure hours...
and what was a leisure event akin
to reading...
and ask me again: the difference between
taking part in the event of competing...
and watching a competition -
and what had to be involved to give
the spectacle its architecture...
i don't think it was so much competition
as it was corporation... never mind for now...

after all... how many times have laws
been bent when watching a football match?
the passing of law is hardly an objective
crux that so many "rational" and logic-"riddled"
people stress - can be made by one man...
sure... laws in vivo - science and what not...
these objective safety-nets...
that can lead to endless to-and-fro...
but i hardly think... man is capable of passing
objective laws: in vitro... notably in -
           in unum: omni...
unless that's a schizophrenic metaphor...
which is already a metaphor when
tested on a bilingual brain...

how many people did it take...
to pass: the earth rotates around the sun?

the heliocentric model...
genesis in the west from philolaus,
heraclides ponticus,
pythagoras (hindsight...
wouldn't an object moving in
a vacuum of space... create winds of
its own?)
aristarchus of samos,
then onto philolaus of croton -
anaxagoras; whoever was
debunked by ptolemy... then so many years...
until enough time passed...
before people could take the plunge and
be certain: for old time's sake with
copernicus - well the people have been sleeping
for long enough...
enough time has passed and we can pass...
this objective truth... that the heliocentric
model is true and that the pharaohs held
no authority as the sons of the sun
in the static geocentric model...
likes Xerxes ordering the sea to the be whipped
to calm down... and become a lake...
some pharaoh must have had a wild
idea telling a sand dune to stop moving
or seeing some mt. sinai said: shrink!
so instead be said: let's build us a... perfect pyramid...
a mountain that looks... geometric from
both afar and near!

or at least that's what Homer would have
said when visiting Giza: Δ'uh!

so a single man is somehow justified
in passing an objective truth?
unless the mob encores...
but what about the jury - a trial without a jury
is any trial at all...
murky ground if you ask me...
i don't expect man to pass...
judgement for a universal equilibrium...
but what i do expect is that:
he doesn't think he's capable of this: grandiosity!
clearly he's not... the objective reality
of falling... the subjective: i'm right as
allocated the status judge: therefore i'm standing still.

competition in a medical environment...
only in the realm of psychiatry...
and the mine-field of misdiagnosed misfortunes...
but i hardly think... competition is a catalyst
for getting surgery done...
corporation, yes...
among farmers? a rare treat....
a hobby pursuit for a selected fraction of
the crop... the dear-to-my-heart "g.m." tomato...
but all the other tomatoes... need to be harvested...
but this my pet-tomato... which needs to be:
THIS BIG! another matter...

sport and competition...
but work... and competition?
no wonder work and competition,
rather than corporation gives end results as...
who's wearing the most trendy sneakers?
who's social media account requires...
the most editing? who's child is the one with
the smartphone? etc. etc.

the bait of the poo'em is that it's naive:
but i think it is - so there's that to begin with...

i still can't fathom that "capitalism" was solely
promulgated on competition -
i'm still having to address the "model" as...
having to retain a "socialist" aspect akin to corporation
to get away with... what later became:
an all out economic "war" of competition...

naive utopian of me to somehow huddle
at the fireplace of corporation...
work - if so many people hate their work...
what would be the only gratifying
alleviation? and i'm pretty sure some places of work
are less about competition: and more about
corporation - as i write this...
the british national health service...
some people will compete by cutting corners...
competition will lead to doping scandals...
competition is... an Elisium for the few
and... a crab-bucket for the some...
call them the 10% cliff-hangers...

i've noticed it in poetry... slam poetics...
what not... this affair is already riddled with too many
****-up ****-wit window-lickers:
of which i am primo...
but i don't think it necessary to compete...
this was never about competition...
not every work is required to be
tinged with competition...
sometimes... it's just better to corporate...
do... undertakers compete?
do... postmen compete?
last time i heard: each is allocated his volume
of letters... it doesn't matter whether
he finishes his chores before the other postmen...
no postman is stupid enough
to take up someone else's allocated letters...
the first finishes his chores sooner...
the latter works overtime without pay...
it's a corporation of endeavours...
all the same... but there is no need to give these
postmen running orders when
they can walk the ******* mile...

competition within the realm of sport is one
thing... i guess a long time ago...
some people engaged in competition: sports...
to escape the general lagging begin plateau
of corporation... Rome wasn't build in
a single day... others dedicated themselves to
slouch and sloth of expanding the cranium
by reading a book...

the naive is still the bait...
is conscripting in an army...
about competition... or following orders and hierarchy
and therefore: not solely about corporation?
hierarchy you ask...
well... wouldn't that be something borrowed from
plutocracy / nepotism?
competition in an army environment...
what if you're in the royal guard
competing at what... shooting more blanks
into the sky expecting to shoot down the moon
at a wrestling-match fake
of staging of a state funeral?!
the cannons sounded... and that's all these
ever did... they were shooting with
empty wallnut shells! the wallnuts were
eaten by gunpowder gremlins long ago...
before the pomp & circumstance was shot
with: aenemic *****...

this is not a capitalism vs. a communism
debate... communism was riddled with nepotism...
come to think of it...
capitalism is not there yet...
but it's already there...
from what i've heard...
capitalism as this utopia ideal is not a meritocracy:
exceptions are made...
cicero was an exception of the roman empire
under nero...
exceptions and genetic freaks...
is this still a naive poem?

i can understand where competition works -
notably in what jobs it might work...
but most jobs require a stable work ethic
of corporation...
perhaps all self-employed entrepreneurs...
"perhaps" have no corporation in mind...
to a greater degree of orientating themselves...
in that corporation is: outside the bracket...
if everyone was suddenly...
self-employed... there would be no fear of...
the robotic onslought to come...
at least then... the microcosm would open...
and there would no longer be any employees...
just self-employed facets of...
"corporations in name only"...
which they already are...
corporations in name only...
given that... the corporations are no longer
competing with each other...
they have consolidated on a monopoly...
and since they are no longer competing with each
other... they have designated their former...
inter-competition into a hierarchal intra-competition
of "employees"...

can a bus driver, or a tube train operator compete?
by law... you can only drive a bus for 8 hours...
to operate a tube train... you can do X number of hours...
and these include breaks... necessary breaks...
can you find competition in these:
ultra-corporative environments? no!
capitalism might think it is necessary to scare everyone
into: the robots are coming! time to be self-employed
and compete! compete!
but some jobs are still: primed to corporation!

could i ever see undertakers competing?
in times of a spiked demand - during a plague...
what is healthy in sport -
is not necessarily healthy in a workplace -
after all... most people detest earning money -
it's a chore - mind you: do i enjoy writing poo'etry?
am i being paid for writing it?
no... i am "volunteering"... for the love of
the art... for ****'s sake... nothing more!
nothing less!

is this still a naive poo'em: yes... sorry...
i forgot to be caustic and there's no rhyme... my bad...
but this is not a capitalism vs. communism
tirade... from the yoke of the soviet union...
i learned from my mother that...
flues weren't really that prominent...
not until the 1970s...
by then it was a common theme...
biological warfare... while the crown-virus has
yet to claim a life outside of the mandarin
genetics: in the age of propaganda journalism:
you hear a "truth" one day...
three days later you're singing along to your
own "biased" / solipstic narrative...
after a while you have to adopt the "autism"
of solipsism: the world can only bite so much
out of you... you have to turn to standards of delusion
to match to their: from the many, one...

in sport, competition is the "zeitgeist":
it's not a metaphor, it's a misnomer...
but given the " " ditto brackets - i'm tired of looking
for the: "required" word... sometimes...

by the 5th definition of competition...
it's not as direct as corporation, competition
needs to borrow from an -ology...
again, verbatim: 'rivalry between two or more
persons or groups for an object desired in common,
usually resulting in a victor and
a loser but not necessarily involving
the destruction of the latter' -

what is untrue about this is that...
the destruction of the latter is paramount...
at least these days...
am i to believe that capitalism was not,
not ever, tinged with a belief in corporation...
that it was always, somehow, only about
competition?
what was communism born from?
when did the abolishment of serfdom happen
in russia? 1861...
the abolishment of slavery happened
in england in 1865... 4 years after...
but... but!
in russia? the slaves were thought of as...
people from within russia...
in england? the slaves? en route a trade from
one foreign place to another...
wow!
all slavery: either foreign, or domestic...
and to think that communism was a "failure"...
hard to imagine... truly hard to imagine...
given that... communism was born...
4 years prior to slavery in general was abolished...
of foreign to become "nationals"...
what does english he-he-history tell us about
native slaves? four years prior to the slaves
moved from africa to the cotton candy fields...
there were slaves that were not: ***** out of africa...

reperations who's who?!
why didn't capitalism bloom in russia...
why will it never bloom - oligarchs and...
currency of modern western capitalism:
nepotism...
who is jared kushner?
mr. cushions mr. cushtie...
mr. minted in: network baron...
slavery was abolished on the international scale
in england in 1865... four years after...
internal slavery was abolished in russia... 1861...
isn't that the sort of wow you were expecting?!
so when was slavery-slavery abolished
in england?
again... if internal slavery was abolished in russia...
4 years after slavery on an international
stage was abolished...
communism was a failure because: per se...
or... was communism supposed to be...
a short-cut attempt to catch up to capitalism?
was it a failure in catching up to capitalism?
in the 2008 financial clash...
where was Poland? recession free...
again... communism was a failure per se...
but... was it a failure in terms of catching up
to capitalism?
to me... it's still catching up...
when again... we're talking... freeing people...
only 4 years prior to people who would
otherwise still be... rummaging the romances
of Kenya and seeing no albino tourists sipping
brandy on their shores...
perhaps better for the whole load of us...

i ask, again, in my naive way...
that's the difference between competition and corporation?
not much...
a football team needs to compete with other football teams,
but it needs a corporative methodology behind it...
you can sometimes spot a maverick who wants
to be the solipsist in the team and become
nothing more than the top goal-scorcer -
then again: a kevin de bruyne and the number of assists...

if there was to be a level playing field...
everyone was to be self-employed...
what fear from robots?
competition on a ford's:
each man is a cog in the assembly line...
you can't compete... were you supposed to?
i thought that the only reason sport
was fun was to be compete and corporate...
it wasn't solely about competing:
not even in tennis are you ever competing...
unless you're serving a ****-ace...
competing but also corporating:
for the spectacle: with 19shot rallies...

to reiterate: this is a really naive poo'em...
is has to be!
- again... before capitalism became this hell-scape
spiral of: fear of robotics / a.i.:
let's just see if we get enough self-employed
people on board...
oh sure: the self-employed undertaker...
the self-employed bus-driver...
i'm sure there was, what's not called:
a "healthy spirit of competition" in work related
niches of existence...

i'm an alcoholic living among workaholics...
not a pretty sight... believe me...

i'm sure that capitalism... must have began
with: a "healthy spirit of corporation"...
that one henry ford would benefit more than
all the assembly line workers: fine...
the brains is allowed the conscious efforts
to move the eyes, close them,
use the jaw... bite... do magic with the tongue...
the liver has no knowledge of alcohol...
the heart isn't exactly aware of either veins
or arteries... fine... a henry ford cigar can get
away with thinking he's not adding
a chimney to the whole affair...
or a rhine-valley load of chimneys...
the stomach doesn't know what taste is...
sure as **** the small intestine knows
what it feels like to be a woman:
should it find itself unfortunate to have
a hitchhiker tapeworm attached to it... etc. etc.

but i imagine the capitalism had a sense of
corporation before...
it worked too many psychopathic sport analogies
into itself... precursor to the fear
or a.i. robbing people of their jobs?
testing people in a self-employed job market...
again: oh sure... the self-employed undertaker...
the self-employed busdriver!
perhaps a self-employed cabbie...
a self-employed surgeon?
how would that work?

        what's that? the cult leader... would not find
a job status match... in a corporate market of ideas?
then a ******* maverick he is...
esp. with such dates as: the brian jonestown
massacre hovering over his head!

perhaps i am naive is reiterating:
work implies corporation rather than competition,
in that work implies chores...
i've seen this in my father -
he doesn't underand household chores
on the basis on corporation -
he understands them on the basis of competition...
and he's to somehow... take pleasure
in the "free bread and circus"...
when the circus is not what it used to be?
once upon a time: the circus involved
men... who were footballers...
but they also did part-time metallurgy work...
they would clock in at a certain hour...
then be let off work to play a football match...
they weren't paid: professional:
disappropriate wages...
because their "work"... was over-inflated
by the gambling syndicate dicta...

there was a utopia in Poland...
it lasted for... roughly 30 years... from 1945
through to 1975... after that the herrings
didn't want to be pickled...
the baltic sea started to boil and the fish
strarted to froth at the mouth...
it's not a nostalgia segment: i was born in 1986...
this is mythology: curating the temporal
standards of modern journalism...
history: what time ago?
50 years? elvis was abducted by aliens...
n'esst ce pas?!

slam poetry competition with fellow:
poo'em eaters...
can i jut take the armchair with Horace?
i don't feel like competing...
what am i competing for?
volume... a new YA novel?
i will not ***** language...
even if it is a language i acquired:
and it's not a tattoo native first come first served
expression...
this is not a capitalism vs. communism
affair...

all the: towel in champions of capitalism
have made it clear:
start a traditional family, start a farm...
milk some goats...
pluck some eggs... living the dream:
brown fingers and all...
                       way way out from competition
in the workplace...
so... no need to corporate...
solo does it...
                                and if i'll be needing some
milk... i'll likewise claim: an autistic
pension and enough barren land to feed
goats organic glue and toilet paper that
magically morph into... a propaganda poster...

olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum:
once i was a stump of fig,
a wood without use... this is my best Horace:
thank you, goodnight...

what is to be competed for?
rather: what it to be retained, kept, status quo
enclosed... this pride for corporation?
competition in the workplace can only go as far...
not all professions can allow competition...
some will forever retain their base:
corporation...
to compete outside the realm of sport...
sport... those with enough awareness
of the body would pursue it...
those with a bit more brain in tow...
wouldn't... the ghost limb terms:
there's nothing of note
when it comes to competing with i.q. in
mind... or corporating...
there's this ancient feat of "solipsism" and
self-bettering... rather than running
the "expected" mile...
was capitalism always this:
chicken-shack-shackled into... wishing to squeeze
out drinking water... from pig ****?

again... this is not as easy give-away
that it's a capitalism versus communism base scrutiny...
all the eastern european laid-deeds have made it into
their chandelier filled land-allotement sights of
better ****** that gynocentrism...
i don't mind...
      yes... because among the bulgarian strip-party
i'm the ottoman janissary turned
well spoken sheikh... when morocco is given...
a fictional name... and i'm the Ali
that rubs Muhammad's lamp and
averts the... most ****** schism...
oh sure... Islam would be a pure religion...
and they would be allowed to complain about
porky-pies...
but... you see... how long did it take
for a schism to emerge between the orthodox grees
and tha catholic italians?
how long did the islamic schism take
to grovel and dig trenches?
not that much...
after all... Shia... Persians... Ali Woke-oh-Haram...
and the ****'ite... the ***** muslims...
the Saudi bin-Ladens...
well... that schism... didn't take that long...
some whisper about a schism in the monotheism
of the hebrews...
ha ha! i write ha ha... but even i have to laugh
out loud... a monotheism an inbreeding
of something more than genes...
fix the idea... and continue!

by now even i know that christianity has reached
a status of polytheism...
it's the same jesus... sure sure...
via no other than the orthodox,
the catholic, the protestant (calvinist, lutheran)
standards... or the baptists... or the jay-***-***-V-and-G
standards...
next thing you know: the vegans are
the gnostic monks!
because it has to be a joke at this point...
if christianity is a monotheism...
i'm mother theresa and that albanian
that stole george w. bush' mickey mouse's watch
on a state visit...
so to complete the holy trinity...
i'll be... alastair campbell... always for the giggles...

an alcoholic among workaholics...
who always had the satan's postbox concerning
the niqab... the same ones who were to be always
quoted: the beast from the east...
jesus is coming! look busy!

i mean... no need to look busy...
when the high a tide is making a comeback...
would you believe it?
if you saw the words... united kingdom...
england, scotland, wales... ireland...
that this was not moldova?
this is a language these are letters so arranged...
by an island-dwelling folk?
if you're the first, driver...
shotgun! who are we smuggling in the passenger
seats behind us?

imagine my surprise at the rereading,
with the typo: a missing (s) in letter()
and a missing (d) in arrange(d)...
i call them... the lost key of solomon...
or my own personal, hybrid,
hard-on...
oh god kept me with a phallus...
while giving all the angels a proper chopper
of the ol' wood... **** to stump...
i'm the one that wasn't circumcised!

and all i now have to sing about... is...
a forest of pines! a forest of pines!
pines pines pines! yippy caye!
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
poet, or philosopher, it doesn't really matter which is which, or whether the two are indistinguishable, notable in the former scenario, when someone has an eclectic bounty of interest is simply not love-scorned or love-nostalgic, love-idealistic, does it really matter? i was once called a philosopher: a teenage girl said in third person (as if she was a puppet and some-thing was moving her tongue): 'talk to this philosopher'... not in that sarcastic way that philosopher is an misnomer or an abused term of: self-gratifying grandeour, it was quiet genuine, but: imagine my shock... i had an ambition in life, it was to perform a service to thinking: without doing as much as hammering a nail into a plank of wood, that's the ambition of any thinking man: to borderline on telekinesis or telepathy... that was Hegel's modus operandi, his categorical imperative... after all: ego is a metaphysical tool, while thought is its metaphysical canvas... the mere suggestion that a copernican inversion can happen in physics "contra" metaphysics... it's already apparent, any word can behave like a hand touching the sacred object / subject of transfiguration and become something else, even a misnomer can find itself given solace to the user... for now i've forged a belief in the ultimate: away from the absolute in relation to omni in unum - one first has to learn to think, before having to learn to feel... mind you, i don't like the current nietzschean inversion of the cartesian equation: (ego) sum ergo (ego) cogito... esp. among the youtube political commentators, too many examples to give: i'm a classical liberal, i'm a progressive, i'm a liberterian... i don't really like seeing: i am, precede i think... i don't even like the origin-argument of this inversion: i exist for the sole purpose of thinking... after all: i think prior to being, since i can also daydream and not be what my thinking suspects as a possible truth-outcome... that's the nature of the freedom of thought: i don't have to be what i think, i can find thinking to be a pleasure, when the senses do not offer me any pleasure derivative, e.g. eating can sometimes be boring, chewing, chewing, *******... i eat because i need to live: i don't live to eat... i really have under-appreciated Hegel, i should really visit my grandparents for two months and read the phenomenology of the spirit: i'm trying to replicate the saying attributed to him (verbatim), but i doubt that i will, i don't have the patience to sift through all the quotes, but it goes along the lines of: beware oh wordly man, to not be a pawn in a thinking man's game... hence my suggestion of philosophy entering into the realms of telekinesis and telepathy: you get to see things play out and people express the origin story, of your own memetic generation of the original idea... how are poets finally alligned to philosophers? good thing that i studied chemistry at edinburgh university: we return to atoms, words are no longer enough, sure, they are, contrary to the statement...  (why did i under-appreciate Hegel? ah... had my head stuck up heidegger's and kant's *****...

  integration? great!
but i'll meet you halfway...
    i'll eat your fish & chips,
your englush breakfast,
  i won't sing your anthem: god save the queen,
****** anthem, too short,
but i will whistle through:
the british grenadiers' fife & drum...
like i might through la marseillaise...
i'll meet you halfway...
i'm not a former colony member,
commonwealth,
   i'm not some ****- paying bribes
to the british powers
to join in on a world cup of cricket...
this is what happens when immigration
turns sour...
they either lesrn the host tongue,
or they don't learn it...
or they can't distinguish the two:
speak polonaise at home,
speak the hosts' sprechen outside of it...

   if the ******* aren't suspect:
by not being bilingual...
the arab beatles... jihadi john...
          ringo star h'ahmed...
  george ali...
                paul mecca rashid...
oh i'll settle for integration...
but don't you ******* think i'll give
up my mother tongue
for "c.c.t.v." close-ups back home,
home being my private lodge...
like ******* will...
  i'll speak your tongue in public...
but i'm not ******* former commonwealth
****- riddled with a need to play
cricket, "forget" my tongue in order
to compensate for olives
              and sun-burnt bananas!

a former colony ****-**** is about
to dictate the rules for fellow
europeans, on the tram-ride from
Birmingham to Nottingham?
seriously?
        but of course the englishman
will favor the former colony pet bush-monkey
from sri lanka...
since the brit can't really dictate
to a fellow european his superiority
complex... which he can...
with a petted copper skinned
toy-ting...
who brought 'im a korma curry!
nice one, ol' laddy...
        right on the plonker...
                 i'm not finished!
                        i'm just getting started!

gehirnablassen:

perfectly respected immigration,
given that so many english girls just love
the attention their **** minders,
sexually abused,
not really making it as nurses
or... ahem... karaoke superstars
worth the while of britain's got talent
or voice of britain,
or...whatever the ****** show was
that gave birth to one direction...

so a.... brain-drain? good immigration?
the best!

i can sit awhile by myself and count...
1. the sparrows,
2. the swallow,
3. the starlings,
   4. the crows,
5. the magpies,
6. the pigeons,
7. the woodland pigeons
(fatter, with dog collars),
8. kestrels
  (one is enough to begin
the count)...
9. the blackbirds....
10. seagulls... seagulls?! 25 miles from
romford to southend! seagulls?!
this far in-land?! fair enough...
11. a robin...
                   12. goldfinch...
i just sit and watch these birds
in my garden, i sometimes spot
a darting frog in the garden,
i'm more english than the english...
i actually enjoy owning a garden...
the "english" surrounding me
exemplify a bbq. as a luxury parade...
what's so luxury about marinating
some meat, and then grilling it?!
please! enlightend me!

    gehirnablassen...
                   brain-drain immigration,
the type asiatic tiger-mums brag about
at child olympics...
   for the required rubric stature...
******* mothers, basically...

1. χaron χaos - cha-cha-cha       khaos
2. theaetetus - so / ma   letters / syllables:
     graphemes: sz phi theta
      compound syllables (caron s) - Na (sodium)
3. music choice...
       brain damage perturbator ft. noir deco
    virga iesse floruit, gradual of eleanor of
britanny...
4. pride / stubborness (not equal to) honour,
tolerating islam is not the same
as respceting islam...
   german 19th century fascination
with islam...
     θought and φilosophy...
   greek in warsaw, giving him directions,
talks: sounds so much like spanish...
5. england a nation of singletons,
idiosyncracy... social pressures in poland
and even in h'america missing in england
to marry...

1.

chamaleon tongue,                    shape shifter,
bez akcentu w piśmie - więciej akcentu poza pismem
(trainspotting scottish), welsh, cockney,
east london altogether, pakistani english, etc.
e.g. rather, or raver, i.e. not rayver
(someone who parties at night on ecstasy pill)
but ra'ver, like verging on a new discovery,
it's not even the = ~v but is actually v...
english is a chamaleon tongue, you say 'nostic
when you write gnostic, i say diagnostic,
therefore say gnostic, you say 'nome, i say gnome,
as cf. with diagnostic;
then there's the case of the per se:
you say chamaleon - no kappa there apperent, eh?
but there's chappie, chap, chuckles,
no kappa in a millionth chance
to also say nough'ledge for knowledge,
a bit like that gnome of yours...
as i said before: a language without
a written insertion of stressors / distinctions
will produce a massive array of diacritical
stressors / distinctions outside the written format,
but it will also become as complex as to
allow adults with learning difficulties e.g. dyslexia,
and that horrid internet slang of shortcuts:
i ate my 8 when i was late for my disco date
with the cha cha cha melon.

p.s. if there's a hay patch at the beginning, the nasal flute
will ask larry 'the lynx' saxophone to hark it out with rasp
gritting of phlegm... but if it's somewhere else down
the piccadilly line... it will act like a nudist spy and resonate
less than expected; probably mingling with f, i think.
1.

When I
was young
I listened to
Billy the Kid

I galloped
across the
living room floor
giddy upping
in an ecstatic
square dance
with my beloved
America

excitedly
enraptured
boundlessly
enthralled
in youthful
zeal
ebulliently  
yodeling
hymns
whistling
reveries to
America’s
heroic prairie
songs

a precocious
kinder beaming  
moved and illumined
by the broiling fanfare
of trilling trumpets

to uphold the promise
I pledged allegiance
to diligent  work
galloping onward
on ponies of
reverent faith
respectful duty
playful engagement
and guardianship

2.

expectation
never fell short
of resounding
supranaturalistic
optimism

energising
the sweep of
a nation’s
self evident
exceptionalism

our democratic
vista stirred
and steeped

a nation of
wheelwrights
building
wagon trains
to traverse
stratified latitudes
with sturdy ladders
erected with common
sense sensibility
of hands to work
and hearts to God

earthen
yeoman
dancing in
wheat fields
threshing sheaves
of prosperity
their exertions
elevating
families
raising
a glorious chorus,
a peeling crescendo
of horns of plenty
splayed across
landscapes of
an ennobled
nation
placing fruits
of labor upon
ascendent
alters to
to receive
the anointing
of abundance

the lighted grace
of infinite possibilities
shines for a grueling
world listening to the
clamouring drumbeats
sounding in the hearts
of all grace anointed
republicans


3.  

No lullabies
no quiet moonlit nights
we ardently
dance on keys
boasting soul
filled dexterity
the quick self
assuredness
extemporaneously
jazz tapping
across bold
hidden rondos
grasping
transcendence
squarely set
in the minds eye
of unbroken resolve
our cool countenance
an unassailable
righteous destination

any
spare sweeping
plaintive introspection
lends space to
affirm
an
affirmation
beginning
with the individual
unum to e pluribus

solitary dancers
incorporated into
fully enfranchised
troopers

the gyrations
the rhythms and steps
of individuated melodies
join to form a harmonious whole
a beautifully woven consensus

this democratic symphony
perfected in an intelligent
choreography of
separate people
sojourning  
toward
a mutually
constructed
shared destiny

aspirational desires
call forth generations
of spirits boldly engaging
the challenges upholding
the rights and privilege
of all citizens
the celebratory harvest
of a new nations
natural law


4.

As a man
I cruise
along
Main Street
in a joyless
joy ride
gliding by
disassembled
factories
moldering schools
defunct governments

surveying the
demolished ruins
of cities,
the decrepit
wrecking ball
of history
is busy,
rolling through
towns
not worthy
of cast iron
destruction
forged in
foreign kilns

we built palaces
to democracy
in the tiniest hamlets
dotting the granges
wholly assimilated
into a national congress
of freemen

today our
congress
is scattered
dialog seeking
resolution is considered
betrayal to holy
partisanship...

selfish insistence
masquerades as
high ideals

portraiture
of obstinance
is a grotesque
reflection
of virtue

we have
reduced
the peoples
house

to a battlefield
for tribes…..

once freemen
now captives….

soulless ghosts
wandering lost
inside grand
rotundas...

mocked
by murals
and inert
granite statuary
howling
expiration dates
of timeless
psalms

sojourning
the trail of tears
drinking from bowls
of anguish

our only
respite
the silent
ruins we
find impossible
to leave

fear fills our bellies
rust stains our hearts
abiding acrimony
ain’t easily brushed
from dust laden cloths

the deconstruction
of dead cities, mark
expired civilizations
centuries in the making
hammered by the blows
of the mightiest blacksmiths
with precision and deft craft


5.

the spareness of
Martha Graham's set
frame black shadows
of fortitude

it always starts
with the individual

then surely
sure footedness
measured footsteps
boldly dance about
the lily pads
of the keyboard
a resounding ballet
the arms wave
like swaying stalks of wheat
but hurry to respond
opportunity knocks
conditions change
the group awaits
to be joined

my pirouette
remains my solitary mark
on the weaving spindles
crafting the mosaic
of a complex American
complexion

the possibility
the promise
laid before us
wheat fields
of democracy
tilled planted
attended

the wondrous yields of
an Appalachian Spring
the promise
hectare of grace
apportioned to all
citizens

the promise
harvest of liberty
freedom
of opportunity
all anointed
freemen
conferred an
amazing grace

civil discourse
was once spoken
we can learn the
lost languages again
sitting on the porch
with neighbors
sipping ice tea
sharing thoughts on
hot summer evenings
caring too care

but scoundrels
became heroes
we fetishized
idiosyncrasies
of insisted
entitlement

we ******
the whole by
exalting the part

we dare not condemn them
lest we condemn ourselves




6.

the west was once woolly wild
I hear the sweeping sound
of my youth rustle again
the dramatic symphony
of a brilliant people
filled with courage
undeterred optimism
claiming a continent
manifesting a new
Pax Americana
a century
of immigrants  

coming to integrate
coming to assimilate
coming to believe in the promise
coming to make a new promise

I came to hear Copland
when I was young

when America was young
when promises were made
and sworn by a brilliant
fanfare of trumpets

when America was young
Copland composed
when America was young
a promise was made

come forth brothers
come forth sisters
come claim
the promise
of a simple gift


Aaron Copland:
Billy The Kid

11/29/11
Oakland
jbm
Spenser Bennett Jul 2016
Ring Freedom like cold metal
Around my wrists.
Jewels of the white, red, and blue
Sparkle in the lights
Beneath our impossible stars and stripes.

Paint my prison bars
In the blood of your sacred
Innocence.
Did Destiny manifest itself in your heart?
Did she blind you to the suffering of those who walked before?

Lady Liberty bring me peace.
Adrift in this American ocean; red and thick. It tastes of iron. It smells of blood.
Do you see those bony broken backs that have built you?
Do you dare look them in the eye?

How are we to believe those lofty words
hoisted upon our souls?
Life, Liberty, Happiness, Equality
Were surely written with pure intent.
Have we enslaved the poor, the broken, the citizens of our own continent?

Speak like you know how to scream.
Speak like you ache to be free.
Just speak.
We will not be led by blind indifference.
Love will seize our hearts and make them whole.
Speak. Speak. Speak words of hope.
For what fear do we have of the rope?

E Plurbus Unum holds our lives for ransom.
Burn down this shamed house of greed.
See the light of a nation freed.
Hear those bells ring out aginst the silent auction of captivity like the hearts of We the People.
Breeze-Mist Nov 2016
Harken now to the fighter's call
From demigod warriors to the petitioners at the mall
We band together and rise when they divide and fall
E Pluribus, Unum: we rise above it all
kiera Feb 2018
i was borne of one heart
two sides, but cor unum
i was blessed with a sweet pairing before me
a gentle winds at my birth whispering
go forth and take us with you
my breaths are an ode
and my fears reflect an earthly greatness
a mountain range behind and before me
do not forget the love that made you..
so vast
while i, an open crater
must drink to fill parched canyons
that echo my name


i cannot wait for rain
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
Is mystery dependent on me thinking of mystery?
It is a safe bet.
For when what is central is knowledge, then I can only become aware of mystery if upon something new or unknown.
Thus, mystery is not knowledge, but the lack of it.
Mystery is ignorance.
Thus, my meditation is rather reflection on ignorance,
As if I'm trying to better describe ignorance, or find a way out of ignorance with only the experiential.
I think of mostly consciousness and the universe here, in terms of my and humanity's ignorance of them.
Not only am I limited by my own understanding but also the understanding of others, however much they are even more intelligent than me.
I see others working on problems that have proven to not solve the mystery, the mystery being ignorance.
The only thing that could solve it is omniscience.
Then it follows that what I'm really trying to solve is omniscience.
"Infinite cognition" as the Buddha put it.
Even if a person could have omniscience, it would be colored by how they can make sense of reality.
Knowledge would take the form of what is most familiar.
Thus, when wondering about a question as to what is pi, they may say about 3.14.
The answer conditioned on how people and the omniscient one would have the capacity to hear.
Maybe this seems more like intuition.
But omniscience would denote the person as a speaker, yet only allowable to speak as what was conducive for everyone's best.
This is how Baha'is look at Manifestations of God: only allowed to share a certain amount at a time.
Just as the Son said "I have many things to share with you, but you cannot hear them now".
Still their capacity would be limited to what they themselves were interested in.
For one who is marginalized and oppressed or even thronged by multitudes, often has no willingness to delve deeply into subject matter, it causing some to stray from a correct path.
Since fractal systems work strongest in more diverse settings, it would seem that the very thing that makes it strong also makes its capacity to hear weak.
Omniscience therefore, if given to only a few, has a limited range of effect.
But even this limited range would change the entire system.
As Baha'u'llah calls His followers "the leaven" and the Son calls His followers "the salt".
"Many are called but few are chosen" seems derogatory in a world where "ye are all the leaves of one tree".

World consciousness almost arose to love tonight, but the lover ensared it in his anger once again.
If I close my ears to them, will it go away?
If they close my ears to me, will I go away?
Strength in the diversity of parts.
Strength really meaning pain.
E Pluribus Unum.
"Meditate down"
Geno Cattouse Nov 2012
Standing barefoot in the broiling sun
Sitting by the rivers edge
kneeling at the alter
Humming a tune at the precipice.
wondering aloud  at the crossroads.
Thinking of the days gone by.
Never to return.
America what lies in store for you now.

The sun will surely rise.
But will you.Will you acclimate to the brutality to come.
Fitfully you will sleep and regret will haunt your dreams.

Will you know the cause of your demise, The wolf will stalk and grin.
Your fortitude will falter as strength becomes a commodity.
How far to the bottom,and then.

The fall is not painful but the sudden stop is brutal.


The wind will surely blow
Your thread-worn garments will flap and flutter in the wind
You see comfort has departed. Take care America.
Reckless Rome.
SE Reimer Aug 2016
~

in the seasonal divisions of life,
is one equation most oblique;
the only ’rithmetic i know,
where sum of two in equal parts,
as one and one makes two a whole;
yet even more is this unique,
for ’tis the after-math and struggle,
the dance of life that matters most;
the after-candles, songs and marches,
the after-promises and vows,
after-gifts and floral arches,
after-dancing, cake, and toasts;
when gritty feet meet dusty road,
where those content to sit, jump out,
and those who chose the work, dig in,
here is where the after-math begins.

where spoken word and actions,
the blend of individualities,
smelting of their personalities,
when lovely couple’s faces,
no longer picture-perfect,
where smiles frozen turn to icy stares;
when agreement turns to disagreement,
and enchantment, disenchantment;
when to each the other is,
persona non grata...
a most unwelcome sum;
persona incognito...
hidden truth to everyone;
persona invisibilia...
game of hide and seek;
persona silentium...
"you can’t make me speak!"

yet all of this could just as easily be,
the sum of two,
grateful hearts in equal parts,
the beat of two in rhythm thrum,
march in time upon one drum;
where stumbling toes find eager feet;
back-handed words are gently turned, to
two-hands-to-back, a press,
on tiptoe, a softened kiss;
where hard-pressed, unkind learnings
are equal matched with kind forgivings.

e pluribus unum...
building block for nation,
works beautiful for couples, too!
’tis the only one i know,
defies the odds to work,
defines how two can grow,
turns tear-filled words to fireworks,
makes winning out of winters cold;
turns wincing into cinching,
knots that is, joined and tightly tied,
before two hearts have grown too old;
this then here, the after math,
a two-cords-tied-as-one accord,
blending melody with harmony,
production of a music-making,
ovation-worthy, heartbeat song;
a two-in-one, two-for-one,
two-as-one with rich reward;
sum of love for lifetime lasts,
perfect kind of after-math!

~

*post script.

a wedding this week came and went, but left this minder in its wake, hard beating in this mind as my body woke, begging for words in ink, pleading to be let out.  in marriage, my own is far from perfection, as am i, yet as close to heaven as i have known here on earth. do believe that i know that it cannot be just one; but takes two hearts, two wanting, two hoping, and two forgiving, to make one that lasts!
she is by far the more so in ours.
K Balachandran Oct 2015
Hanna to me is the  BEGINNING of an evolution,
She finds me the END(of her fervent seeking for long)
Many worlds (we knew) existed between us until then,
Willingly crunch to make a perfect ONE from the debris.
Ken Pepiton Jun 2019
each day is new.
each life is measured re-ified or ified,
--- but 1.0 can't think past named things and their uses.
--- 2.0 must have an intuition of good begetting
that includes 1.0 gnosis of aim in an immediate way.

Oh. Here's a map.
Like Disneyland as a mall...
or DC with the alu-mini-um pyramid on top.

A schema instantiation, says the blithering flow
charting our course to
sapins sapiens augmentatious
It's obvious,
the children shall all be 2.0 in 1.0 mechanical material;

the tree of knowledge was all inclusive.
hence, the POV development circuits
are cross sired-wired dialecticalishit

seen innerish, not clearly but
seen, men as trees sorta thing.
not blind
but not visionary in a professional
TED talk worth
attending to after eight straight.

The time on earth is variable.
The cost/value of a duration is perimental,
be
coming here
being still
unborn in silken wombs
--- chirp

there are ground squirrels in California
which chirp
incessant chirp chirp chirp with

enough variety in volume tone and frequency,
to make old Morse Code five-letter code groups
come rattling through the radioman's head.

killit.
no, focus, do some meditatishit mind over world,
silken swaddles to moth or...

squeeking wheel gits the grease.
grease it, no, go to the squirrel and trigger its
cog that has no
cognition save intuition. Click.

look it in the cute little squirrel eye.
see it see you, say to it, shut up.

it don't blink. it don't shut up.
bold rodent,
I AM MAN. I shout, it squeeks,
gnoshit,
no cognitive over ride of intuition to fear the man,
is thinkable.
It is a squirrel.

It don't mean nothin'. A curse o' apophrenia on ye.

Bubbles in bubbles, foaming Being
Thoughts resolve to gearish
imaginations
cogs and gears and wheels whirling through some
filtering of needless data informing points
big
number
dimensional, scale and distance, durational
direct
measure in systems
for value and balance,
with no true vacuum, but the idea,

the null-set. Where never happens and nothing is.

We twist hard here.
The torque is what jects
the ob at the sub, via a
mechanical cam-shaft, pusher-puller-twister system
mit ein trigger, which we
click.
Think.
Who is writing my part in the book of life?
I asked me, you are not here, but
in my mind I hear replies more wise than I was
inclined
to imagine
a common man of common gifts can be for
believing
magic has always been
what magi know how to do for goodness sake.
Magi. Heros.
Not a no knack common man, wombed or un.

Peace nullifes any reason War-corroded minds can
calculate,
the numbers prove it all. Count the stars.
Use your augmented eyes, search your global memory,

run the numbers, nullify time with eternity,
subtract the works of darkness,
(don't delve into the details, you can imagine hell some other time)

----
A Valis idea, stuck between my chew-eschew-awarea
P.K. ****, trips, bags, and scenes
as became the cliche'.

Let 'em imagine any thing, define the terms and force
agreement for access.

Insider wannabe, do you agree, come and see? Or
do you dare to challenge

the common sense of all man kind as represented in Christ
of Nicea and Abeka Books, from Pensacola, Florida,

Whoa, rock the box, make bubbles cavitate the prop,

spinnin wheels like the Bismark's final bow.

--- i'm un comfortable and I don't know why.
--- a feeling
--- those are mocked as meaningless, by apathetic slobs.
--- so easy being a ***, ethos pathos logos, ***
--- comic relief
--- in mortal moments of turmoil and confusion as things are stirred.

All that could be shaken, was shaken.
All that could be strained, was strained.
All that mercurial messages could mean, was meant.

We lie in wait, wishing cogs and cogitate was as symbiotic
a thought as we thought while thinking

earlier
Art is artificial intelligence. Imagine that. A.I.

Demiurge, my cultural osmosis of vocalizings,
left me thinkin' a demi urge
is a little urge, a diminutive urgekin,

urging me to be
creative, let that lil' light shine, Marjoe

these being public displays at the edges of some of the bubbles,

bubs, some kid just shook my bottle

to pretend the wine was moving of itself, making turmoil

careful as in accurate art-iculation, this is not realist materialist
gasping
grasping for
dignity, stalwort, courage, responsibility

we are yet legions, industrial models
used to build swords with motors,
when we come to America, we join the unem.
We, the people's industrial war complex, merge
with the abandonded gods Neil Gaimon pointed out,
formin a loose unity of spirits, engines and factories and artisans

self-defined, an unum from many, on a national scale,

Da deme demotic da-emonic conspiracy of steam, incorporated
with dwarven knackeristics of old,
fur usin' Hermes as a river to call gold to our rule maker,
food bringer, h'laf weard, Lord of the loaf.

Listen,

illiterate heathen, my Grandma said we'd be if we did not know the story
after hearing it told three times.
Third time's the charm.

We were weighing your worth,
got hooked on a breeze from the broom sweeping this
pile of parts and pieces of what you imagined being worth

that's not much more worth than one in eight millions of millions,
of you kind, unless you earned admitance to the inside

externalization of imagination
pro-ject that on next---
stop. Imagine all that
and guess... ob or sub... its your roll.

I'm the door, says the door. I have no key, it says to me,
come and see,

the progress regress con tro tra la la la

That rascal who just wondered by on Youtube

com a part mentalized, an urge to count the cost

ungrateful and thanksgiving
curse and bless
sweet and bitter from one fount, that ought not be, but
it is possible, all things are,
it can be evil, but
on
discovery
such a curse is not worse than miss fitting a taken point,

we ethos pathos logos ourselves, we say, my domain,
bad
poetry can have good ideas in it. Ah, I see.

Humble your self under the mighty hand of that which has been
given the joystick,

eh, what if a lie is running your ranking order?
careful articulation?

Jackson Pollack step up, this carefulness of art,
answer that for me.

Ah, the hero, around whom thy sun wraps, what haps ever after,

you get old and the world changes against your wish.

do you believe in God.
I do, the one Jesus believed in,

by my leave, my letting a true thing be

happily, after a life of seeking for another path.

The earth is round.

Are there ideas that cost, in the use?
Is there an ancient of days account
of idle words

verbs given for acts, as seen done, from an earthling POV
idle verbs that call no act
lest the cost come clear, daemonitic tech that seems magic,
blessing cursing and claiming to heal, all
mere art... the ability to be like Jesus, that knack

there was a wise man, as he was sweeping his way one day,
his daemon, who had the assignment,
reported finding meaning
in being filled
to over flowing, have you boasted that? Never?

Did you ever shed a tear for another's pain?

You know, pathos, commonality of us all, or you know
not
and the sufficiency of evil is calling you to be the inner hero,
making room for truth
in a heart fed lies from the womb.

After all is said and done. Believe the truth makes free
upon the point of knowing the story.

Love is a verb I seldom use. I dared redeem it for future use.
It cost me dear reader.
there are verbs we abuse at a terrible price. Paid. Not by me.

Show's over, Radioman morphed to Grandpa and Oliver
watching the real world turn beneath the sun,
relative to an earthling POV. The day's sufficiency of evil all swept away.
Seeking worth whiles while marveling muses from the global brain. The walls between a common man on earth today and the hightest reaches of Academe daemonium of pan,  Is nullified, nullified ask any question and you can find all anyone ever knew about it.
Robert C Howard Jan 2022
It happened in a flash.
winding down a Rocky Mountain road,
a trio of travelers,
basking in snow-draped vistas
pulled off for a photo or two.

Their tires locked into a snow bank
and after a few futile wheel spins,
the undeniable truth sank in;
they were stuck!

In moments, the slamming of car doors
echoed across the valley,
an ad hoc community of a dozen Neighbors
formed, converged and began to dig.

After a half hour of elbow grease
amid vapor clouded exhalations
and cries of,
      “straighten the wheel,”
      “slow on the gas” and
      “let’s push together now”
the car eased onto the center of the road.

No one called "meeting adjourned"
but as quickly as it formed,
our ad hoc community
dissolved into the greater band
of good folks working together
for our mutual benefit.

E pluribus unum!
After struggling during the pandemic for a new poetry I think I have found it. This poem will be the first and title of a new poetry book designed to foster unity and healing in whatever small way I can help this happen.
Desolated in the rhymes of my mind
Isolated by the thoughts left behind
Many wayward dreams fill my head like a book
Rip them out at the seams, not worth another look
It's time to forget the past
Finally move forward, at last

Consecrated in the folds of my dreams
Decimated by the tears and the screams
So much disappointment lodging in my brain
Am I human, and if so, am I insane?
It's time indeed, it's overdue
Gotta live for me and forget about you

Impacted by memories buried deep
Infatuated with thoughts, losing sleep
The time has come, to look ahead once more
Staying sober of you, not like before
I'm through with the history
Ready for a grander destiny

Deep damage from all your savior faire
Detente, forced by the au contraire
Perhaps this vessel sprang a leak
Clean up your mess, I ain't your freak
Dot your vowels and cross your "T"s
The time has come for your release

Imaginary thoughts of you, now gone in the wind
Revolutionary ideas, now ready to begin
Picking up your missing pieces, shattered around
Never lying to myself again, you brought me down
I fell, it's just the ugly truth
Never again will I fall for someone like you

Time has come and gone for us
No more unum, just e pleribus
Many moments and many tears
Seems like a waste of some good years
Time to part and heave a sigh
Time to say that last goodbye
Well...  That's like three collabs now with the genius known as Quin :)
spysgrandson Aug 2016
you were born in Denver
during a white out blizzard

like all round babes,
you had no clue, what was in store for you
you couldn't have known...

you would be
the last nickel to ***** through
a five-cent coin phone box,
in El Paso, Texas

or that you would sleep
for a year in a piggy bank,
of a boy named Felipe, who would die
of white blood cancer, before
he could spend you

and who would have thought
you would be in the linty pocket
of a serial murderer named Ray, when
he was captured in Santa Fe, a sunny day
on the ancient square, stalking
his next victim

a jailer used you that very night
with a twin of yours he found in
another picked pocket, of a drunk drifter,
to buy a Hershey's bar, from a machine
that would have taken a dime as well

your face began to show the fingered
signs of age by the time the choppers found sky  
above the Saigon Embassy, where you had spent
an aching April night in the Ambassador's pants

when you turned a half century, you were tossed
into a gallon jug, e pluribus unum, no more special
than others a third your vintage

I finally met you today, only because chance landed you on
the top of the heap, waiting to be saved from further folly
Hail to our Christian Nation!
bright light in a dark new world
all nations must become like us
our grand flag we gallantly unfurl

life, liberty and property
a God given natural right
America's rapturous exceptionalism
our birthright and celestial light

for Jesus came not in peace
he brandishes a sharp sword
the Prince of Peace a warrior
its the written holy word

the blessed founding fathers
moved by exalted holy spirit
manifests a divine constitution
with legal slaves for pious despots

forever we must remain vigilant
sentinels of freedom on the watch
poised to launch global drone strikes
righteous retribution is on the march

for we are a Christian nation
bespeaking prophecies of fear
gun sights our holy crosses
a good clean rifle always near

private property a sacred icon
acquisition of more things divine
what's yours is your gladness
but don’t ever covet what's mine

cause I got me a big six shooter
and a Bushmaster just to be sure
if a robber comes a knockin
I’ll drop him at the door

a nation rife with criminals
thieves steal, **** and rob
we pack em off to prisons
in cells forever to rot

cause rehabilitation is too costly
a perps resurrection is no sure bet
criminals are just animals anyway
something we shan’t ever forget

we prefer jails to public schoolin
spare the rod and spoil the man
schools teach secular humanism
blasphemes God’s creation plan

the idle takers are on welfare
make the hard working man poor
God helps those who help themselves
may His grace anoint me with more

when government overreaches
we got 2nd Amendment solutions
Wayne LaPierre a visionary prophet
markets a rise against the Union

we the people alone are righteous
America is one nation under God
Buddha, Allah and blue Krishna
false deities all Baal ‘s frauds

Oh holy of holies E Pluribus Unum
is a God in whom we most trust
our hearts forever invested
for our gold never turns to rust

whoa to jihadists and terrorists
who hate our American dream
mighty God will strike you down
Crusaders will smash your schemes

to all the Godless apostates
may you tremble with fear
Our God will surely smite you
you shall shed bitter tears

so onward Christian soldiers
as our boots troop on to heaven
may providence bless our Canaan
doing the will of the glorious Sovereign

Music Selection:  
Onward Christian Soldiers

Oakland
2/4/13
Ken Pepiton Jan 2019
The son of Jung, Achilles

(This is after and during a second or third time through
Jung, by Anthony Stevens, via Hoopla brought to me by LAPL)

libraries with online audiobooks,
isn't that closer to perfect? Imagine
knowing CG Jung's dad was Achilles Jung,
epic, knowing that
back when only real, material-real, rich folk,

(they could not have known, but we can, on a smart phone)

of any sort of the many there were in the co-fusion's aftermath

much of the world may agree with things once hidden in tomes
being eaten by mindless worms, now

no known thing is secret, by right

truth makes free and it's a system.

dynamic
free true free true free

We ident-ify it or id

what ever I and d


these ids (letter i and letter d as a pre
fix identifying us, u'n'me but only I am re-alified,
set to iseate

(is-e-ate is individuation for an idea, this or that, which may be verbalized
prior to re-alization)

t' be for a while, as long as you wish, t'
be fixed ideas in the minds of all

minds culturally touched
by this particular
point of
been
as
in been there done that.

Time is nothing at all
like mortals think
ing no no nothing is re

alone is rare. For us, my pieces of the unum,

we are here as ever.
ever is our role.

guides are made
however, we have noticed a scarcity of read writers
aware of pin points of light expanding

on the walls of his nursery window, nur turer, real mmmmm

screen
really must we be limited forever is ly lying as in

acting positive while being negative and being

entangled
in your self for ever, never for now,

you don't know how.

do you?
ex
per
ienced, per se, are ye?

be yond. yes. be

yond. practice makes perfect, bact to the top

erie canalic real

tote that veil, hide that barge
camptown lasies sang some songs

wrong, as did the ******* minstrels
and gamblers and bedroll
cowboys and hobos
and plain bums,
like us.

You were curious. Does yellow mean anything
to you?
Murrillo, with y's for ll, maybe? ¿ se?

--- un told stories ---

none remain, in re al ity, if we agree

nothing is ever impossible, even
for sapiens sapiens, how much
more, the us in the unum

previously pluribus,
scatter-brained,
that is.
id est, at its best. Muse.

Homeostatic balance,
hot to cool, cold to warm

round and round
twisted in the middle
by Van Allen's belt, or Orion's?

I never asked. I could,
right now I COULD WISH SO BAD THA I'D

not notice allcaps from the teenage wasteland,
(mea culpa, I bury all my misses there, take one, free)
as I,
the grown up number two, I mean,
I was saying I could stop this flow, interefer, dam it

I could ask Google and follow ath
the real thing either real or
otherwise, yet

wise, still.

How well will we be? Should we not

agree, un agree disperse the mob?

become a one, with a mind
we may share, at will,

reason, count, measure, make, see, seek how, find how, learn how

now,
why are you a ware of me while I am
ware of you.

An unread, unspoken spell. What the hell, right?
What the chaos, entropy, dis
integrate
wash away, mud to dust to twisting spirtis seen dancing

dust, this highest part of the dust of the earth,
time will tell, the physician must heal himself.

---
the art of letting things
haps
hap
pen, pen or ready-writer mode,
we can do this, but we must

be leaving the ality re all o'this reality.

And it has been fun, un done
fun is never the final goal.

be yond that. Search okeh. It was
intentended in tension-ality

to be the key we
as u me mist

when we
lied about being
experienced in the comunicito, (wee ity bity)
do you know of
the transfiguration, I was asked that

southside of Sunset at Laurel Canyon, by
that TV kung fu cowboy guy's dad,
Carradine, the old man,
from scary movies,
circa 1960.

that was fun. it happened. nobody noticed,
but me and the elder Carradine.

Real, as best as my memory just
ifies me right there,
that day, there
is where

this point was proven to be
memorable, a point
of a pin, 'pon whose head
merry messengers make nothing of
darkness, shadow, thin light.

Member be, re member
we see you saw
re all ity-ness is fun, if you find time to do it.

Typical assumptions of a man born in his time
and so
cial class. Social, is that a joke?

Follow me, don't be ignorant of a fine refined use,
right use of ordinariable words which have
born the burden of the ages

patiently, awaiting meaning,
on your scale,
the me as sure of the other in the unem,
the measure of a man, any
old man, still standing

under all the knowing Eve ever knows,
hope and time and all this took.
The price of knowing,
is the knowing, learning is easy

At home by right of being, we are such
beings, in a word, two if you reason there is
measurable ratio twixt
iiii in and am out, yamiyam ah yeh

we do. Allatimenolie, my will. The inside
the numinosity of being

me and you in the midst of all we may imagine real,

no, hell, yesses, hell is still a joke you never want to play.
ax Mr. Boo, he was my guide in Bangkok

read the reports, they are more,
nevermind, let's not let the

lie live here. the the right man thinking this thought
at this time, right

Each magi's knowing is the only knowing he can share,
without playing I pious fraud and naming it
legion, re
legion ligated to ob la dee and dah?

Joke, jest, foolish jest. Not my best but better'n
never imagi-ing  bein' good at all.
Good for nothing but
being possible
ly
good to the sense-if-ative troglodytes

with one lit window on reality. It's funny. POV. Seriously

lighten up
you putin me

beyond your grasp… winsome, alas
If it makes you feel, good, y' know. 's all I got, fer now.
Munda cor meum ac ***** mea, omnipotens Deus.

For my heart has ached with the pain
of separation from You. My lips have
spoken words that have caused others
to be in turmoil.

Perevangelica dicta deleantur nostra delicta.

For only in the Gospel will my answers be,
through the Christ, the Redeemer, my
redemption from this life of multiple lies.

Credo in unum Deum.

For both Scripture and Tradition tell
me this is how He exists. Our common
Lord who will wash clean the heart.

In spiritu humilitatis et in animo
contrito suscipiamur a te, Domine:
et sic fiat sacrificium nostrum in
conspectu tuo hodie, ut placeat
tibi, Domine Deus.

Let everything within me live up
to the words I pray. May every
promise, to you, Good Lord, be
everything to me.

For only in the Father,
only in the Son,
only in the holy Spirit,
is found the truth I have so
deeply been trying to reclaim.
Kyle Janisch Nov 2015
E. Pluribus Unum
“Out of many. One”
But if we are one in many
How come Uncle Sam is the only one with a gun?
Held to our heads, making us obey
Telling us lies
Telling us it’s going to be ok
As long as we listen to everything he has to say
“Come to America where everyone can stay”
“See the Statue of Liberty?”
“She says that it is okay”
“Unless you’re black, women, or gay”
“If you aren’t white or male there will be special rules for you to obey”
This is the secret code all Americans are forced to obey
We must stop living it
Stop enforcing it
We will not obey
E. Pluribus Unum
“Out of many. One”
We no longer listen to Uncle Sam
And we’re coming for his gun
Wes Noneya Feb 2017
Satietatem potare dulci nectare tua desiderium ego
Ad nos transeat, usque mane
Nostra corpora convol
Corpora nostra lusibus
Sol ortus, Sitis commoratur

Amorem vivere devora tua suavita
Vitae caelestis
Nostra ad et aut angelus diaboli
Quod viget, vitae singulis nobis,
Retorta peccatorum gaudium de salute nos

Corpora *** carnis luxuriam
Tenebrae concupiscentiis saginatus
Dolorem voluptatem servus
Impium impium fames
Sanctus diversitas peccatorum

Ita et nos, in manus nostras et amore peccatorum nos
Nos ad unum corpus est cor

Translation Latin to English

I drink my fill of sweet nectar of your desire
To pass to us until morning
Our bodies roll
Our bodies dance
The sun rises, thirst lingers

Love, live, eat your sweetness
heavenly life
Our call to the devil or an angel
That is active, the life of each of us,
Twisted sins, the joy of our salvation

Bodies with carnal lust
Dark desires fed
Pain and pleasure slave
wicked, wicked hunger
Holy diversity of sins

Even so we, in our hands, and the love of our sins
We are one body and heart

~Wes Noneya

My Latin isn't the best but I gave it a go. I like both versions.
RJ Days Nov 2016
must recognize our Form
in the mirror,
see our Face, and make our reflection
as we kiss it, though it regularly sickens
Us.

I

We are still Us, though
that probably means little if it ever did;

We have been amended beyond recognition
from centuries of lobbing
off limbs, appendages, stitching clauses
like bandages then forgetting about them
if we ever shower,
disfiguring the pale torso of our Body
politic, naked and middling before posterity
grotesque genitalia dangling
hopelessly, and useless
between marble columns
unable to unite in congress assembled
erasing pluribus unum;

We're our Legs, buckling under obscene weight
now cloture’s invoked, the question ordered
on history with yays and nays,
discourse long reduced to the nuances
of blusterfuck;

We're our Buttocks, passing gas
bills, denying a snowball’s chance of
melting in frozen hell or on house floor,
and our Brain, lobotomized
better half yearning “Yes, we Can…
…ada” beckoning the coasts, blue dots
on blue dot ever browning;

We're our Fists, clenching gavels
while advising Mother Earth to **** up
because even without her consent,
reality’s adjourned;

II

We're our Skin—yes, our Skin—, thin-
ly veiling contempt insufficiently concealed
by layers of spray tan and unmarred
by blood sweat tears of our foremothers
and our Brow, not sweating more perfect
when it's so easy to turn and follow storybook greatness,
when our Fingers, callused from tweeting
Little Bits of *****,
which though once again retitled
and re-released, remains a classic,
completely unrevised;

We're our Ears, nostalgic for the crack of doom
and we're our Tiny Hands, unable to help themselves
from popping a Tic-Tac and grabbing
onto those titillating, dusty buttons
on the hydrogen jukebox;

We're our Eyes, heavy
as a defeated queen
with makeup running, blessing us
all for this operant foray into madness,
ever observing how our Arms, which
(torches now extinguished)
flail in confusion amid incalculable darkness
still hoist our pitchforks low and
our Tongue still grievously petitions
for more deplorable words amid
hallucinations of victimhood;

We're our *****, *******
on progress, except
which—failing to rise to the occasion—
nonetheless manages
to flop over and strike once more: a dis-
chord in common defense of
fragile white male privilege
always showing, never growing,
general welfare and tranquility flushed down
the toiletbowl of history
hoping those old turds never
resurface, still ignoring the stench of injustice
and the chipping of gilded porcelain;

We’re our Lips–which neither Broadway hits nor
newspaper clips nor high minded pleas alarmed,
and with Dr. Franklin’s warning notwithstanding–
We are our Lips on treacherous steps which will be
all executive power herein vesting;

III

We're our Palms, grasping rope amid air
saturated in deathly vespers, which tugs
down-up toward unearned heavens;

We’re our *****, pretending to be
our Mouths which chide & otherize, while
our Shins expose their cuts to ****,
bullet-holes welcoming the swift infections
in what dank sewage now pours from open
Overton windows, broken along with
any pretense of civility; ultimately,
the only thing we could shatter;

We’re our Holes, shamefully enjoying
the prodding and poking caresses
of anarchy, be-
moaning un-
Equal Protection law & order bestows,
depriving life, liberty, property
when our Hearts, weary of
the long hard due process, supremely
malign centuries’ holdings;

We’re our Immunity, sovereign it be
fighting all insults foreign and domestic
and our Voices rising in lamentation
for what we’ve lost and what we’ve barely kept;

We’re even our Hair, unkempt, distracting us
from enduring corruption of our Blood;

We’re our *****, too. No, never mind.
We never had any. But She did,
and class despite the strength
of glass;

IV

We’re all that still, and our Souls'
politic too, fractured much asking
what Un-
ited States we’re in;
September 17, 1787 – November 8, 2016. Not a bad run, I guess.
Victor D López Jan 2019
We humans are one,
In endless varieties,
Rejoice in that fact.
Mike Essig Jun 2016
False flags and panic. Fear the other. Hate.
Be a Patriot. Act. As you are told.
When the people are frightened, they obey.
These are the times that few men try. At all.
No one can own you unless you want them to.
Gun in hand worth ten senators. Boom.
Gay Straight Male Female Black White Muslim Jew.
Exactly the opposite of E Puribus Unum.
Stir and stir, yet the *** does not melt.
Too many soups only antagonize the cook.
The fires of discord sizzle and fry.
Dare not to think, just buy and buy.
Kurt Philip Behm Jun 2023
Too many good thoughts
so many bad poems
The bridge to forever
exacting its toll
Too many to count
just one to remember
As beauty releases
—redeeming the soul

(The New Room: June, 2023)
The Noose Dec 2013
Ut me demergat in hoc esse
Mea conscientia de in quod ibi est, nulla alternative ut vita sed ibi sunt alternative vitaes habet me sperans maybe unum die ibi numquid fomentum de hoc desolatio.
Hope

As I drown in this existence my consciousness of the fact that there is no alternative to life but there are alternative lives keeps me hoping, maybe one day there will be alleviation of this desolation.
Nolan Davis Sep 2015
Constantly in pursuit,
Evil at it's root,
Others follow suit,
Because E Pluribus Unum

Blinded by the signs,
Polluted in their minds,
Stacked up in their binds
To gloat for what they've done.

The chase for evermore,
Terrified of being poor,
Striving for the highest score,
Without having any fun.

Consumed by absolute greed,
Green is the color they bleed,
It's all they want, crave, and need.
In their death, it's the smoking gun...
Lexie Mar 2019
Will my body forgive me
For the market I hold in her temple
Sins for a denarius
A farthing for a night under her tapestries
When you could be watching stars
Stars shine the same whether you clutch a ticket or a match
They love to be the last thing burning out at night
I am not close to their light
Burning seems of little consequence to me
Look upon the stars
Find them more patient than I in stamina
I more soluble in my regrets

The sun begins pulling cloud tears back from the earth
Agels whisper the innocence of the world into the atmosphere
The stratosphere knows nothing of our regrets
She does not see fingers crossed behind our backs
Knowing nothing of pennies given for promises
Promises given for free
Plastic coins for a lover
Nothing in my pockets for me

Hold your secrets under my skin
Knowing you let the night carry you away
You can take it back
These are the dreams in the desert
In the sun, under the mountains
Those who journey on foot
Knowing that knocking on doors means being turned away

My desire to cling to you
Is the cold that pushes you away
You are the oranges in the snow
A cold citrus kiss
I know your real name
With no courage to spit it out
These hands are clenched
No room for promises here
Between your fingers and skin
You grip regret so tight
One truth that will not abandon you
Biting not the hand that feeds
Go hungry
When a morsel is a memory
Dreams a feast to you
Regret devours all but bones

Anger has chosen your words for today
She is your strong horse
You will not bare the weight of the reins
A bit does not taste much of metal
When there is blood on your hands
Your prayer today
You have hope tomorrow, to hope for tomorrow
Time is a feather, fool
You give her flight for the price of falling
These coins in my pockets are for you
To make my steps lighter
A copper face is nothing
When you have seen the writing on the walls

e pluribus unum

they call me legion


How many hands will you give me
How many dealt
To count my sins on my fingers

misertus est enim stulti

stultus est misericordia sicut vilis ut eius precibus

When the walls speak will you listen
Translation for italicized sections
1. Out of one, many.
2. They call me legion for we are many. Demon cast out of a man speaking to Jesus. (Mark 5:9)
3. Pity is for fools.
4. A fool's mercy is as cheap as his prayers.
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2021
What Walt Whitman Knew About Democracy


For the great American poet, the peculiar qualities of grass suggested a way to resolve the tension between the individual and the group.


When Walt Whitman began conceiving his great volume of poetry, “Leaves of Grass,” in the 1850s, American democracy was in serious danger over the issue of slavery. As we celebrate National Poetry Month this month, the problems facing our democracy are different, but Whitman still has a great deal to teach us about democratic life, because he saw that we are perpetually in danger of succumbing to two antidemocratic forces. The first is hatred between Americans, which Whitman saw erupt into civil war in 1861.

The second danger lies in the hunger for kings. The European literature and culture that preceded Whitman and surrounded him when he wrote “Leaves of Grass” was largely what he called “feudal”: It revolved around the elect, the special, the few. Whitman understood human fascination with kings and aristocrats, and he sometimes tried to debunk it. But mostly he asked his readers to shift their interest away from feudalism to the beauties of democracy and the challenge of sustaining and expanding it.

Whitman offers one metaphor for the grass after another, and one feels that he could go on forever.

This challenge is what inspired him to find his central poetic image for democracy, the grass: “A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands.” Whitman says that he can’t and won’t offer a literal answer to the question. Instead he spins into an astonishing array of “guesses.” The grass “is the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven”; it’s “the handkerchief of the Lord…Bearing the owner’s name somewhere in the corners, that we may see and remark and say Whose?”

To Whitman, “the grass is itself a child…the produced babe of the vegetation.” “Tenderly will I use you, curling grass,” he writes. “It may be that you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps / And here you are the mothers’ laps.” He offers one metaphor for the grass after another, and one feels that he could go on forever.



But mainly Whitman’s grass signifies American equality: “I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,/And it means,/Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,/Growing among black folks as among white,/Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,/I give them the same, I receive them the same.” Whatever our race and origin, whatever our station in life, we’re all blades of grass. But by joining together we become part of a resplendent field of green, stretching gloriously on every side.

Whitman found a magnificent metaphor for democratic America and its people. Like snowflakes, no two grass blades are alike. Each one has its own being, a certain kind of chlorophyll-based individuality. Yet step back and you’ll see that the blades are all more like each other than not. Americans, too, are at least as much alike as we are different, and probably more so. America is where we can be ourselves and yet share deep kinship with our neighbors.

And who are our neighbors? Kanuck, Congressman, Tuckahoe, Cuff—Canadian, legislator, Virginia planter, Black man, all of the teeming blades of grass that we see around us. When you stand back far enough, you can’t see any of the individual blades, but look closer and there they are—vibrant and unique, no two alike. We say “e pluribus unum,” from many one. But who could have envisioned what that would look like and how it would feel before Whitman came along?


MORE IN IDEAS


The grass is Whitman’s answer to the problem that bedeviled his contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson: how to resolve the tension between the individual and the group. Emerson is sometimes hopeful that the two can cohere. When you speak your deep and true thoughts, no matter how controversial, he believed that in time the mass of men and women will come around to you. Each will say, ‘this is my music, this is myself,” Emerson says in “The American Scholar.” But mostly he is skeptical, believing that society is almost inevitably the enemy of genius and individuality.

Whitman’s image of the grass suggests that the one and the many can merge, and that discovery allows him to imagine a world without significant hierarchy. Can any one blade of grass be all that much more important than any other? When you make the grass the national flag, as it were, you get to love and appreciate all the people who surround you. You become part of a community of equals. You can feel at home.

We can look at those we pass and say not ‘That is another’ but ‘That too is me. That too I am.’

In “Leaves of Grass,” soon after he offers his master metaphor Whitman rises up to view American democracy from overhead. The poem’s famous catalogues of people doing what they do every day are quite simple: “On the piazza walk five friendly matrons with twined arms;/ The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,/The Missourian crosses the plains, toting his wares and his cattle,/The fare-collector goes through the train—he gives notice by the jingling of loose change.”

This is your family, these are your sisters and brothers, Whitman effectively says. In general, we walk the streets with a sense of isolation. But if we can move away from our addictions to hierarchy and exclusive individuality, and embrace Whitman’s trope of the grass, our experience of day-to-day life can be different. We can look at those we pass and say not “That is another” but “That too is me. That too I am.” Or so Whitman hopes.

Of course, the benefits that Whitman promises do not come for free, or simply by reading his poem. We’ve got to meet his vision halfway, by being amiable, friendly, humane and nonhierarchical. This repudiation of hierarchy is not so easy; it’s not clear that even Whitman himself pulls it off. Isn’t he trying to be a great poet, the first truly American bard? But his effort matters. He knew that democracy is always vulnerable, that the best hope for human happiness could disappear from the earth. But Whitman would not let that happen without a fight.

—Mr. Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. This essay is adapted from his new book “Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy,” published this week by Harvard University Press.

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the April 17, 2021, print edition as 'What Whitman Knew About Democracy.'
spysgrandson Aug 2014
I confess
though thousands years have passed
since some barefoot soul called you
a god, I can't even recall the ennobled appellation
they gave you...Ra?

to those who carved on cool cave walls
your burning legacy was a  glimpse of gold infinity
to me, a wearer of shoes and master of plastic tools,
you are but a spec in the night, e pluribus unum,
a paltry 90 million miles from my spinning rock  

proudly proclaiming your *******  
you sear skins and sins of your followers
who supplicate to your filtered rays
while blithely ignoring, you number our days  
and will fizzle out like a sparkler, one finite July eve
who called you divine?
one of a handful of things I tried to write a week or two ago--just had to put something on the page whether I liked it or not
Kurt Philip Behm Sep 2022
The past and the future
fold into the present
Conceptually vacant
twice empty refrains
No before and no after
perpetually frozen
The ice of indenture
—this moment contains

(Dreamsleep: September, 2022)
(alternately titled random axe of violence)

I calculated an average
of ~10.16.... deaths per year
of mass school shootings since Columbine,
a morbid benchmark where,

iGen / Gen Z 1995 - 2012 bore significant hit,
now students require armed guards to learn - veer
really within purportedly "safe places",
which statistics tracks a unilinear

trend, and justifiably causing
absolute zero reassurance
countering alarmist state of mind dust tear
ability to accept rationale

dismissing greater probability
prevails lightening will strike loved ones,
nonetheless share
ring understandable expressing

rightful salient concerns with school board
quotidian possibility son(s) and/or daughter(s) rare
lee remain mum at every opportunity,
how second amendment does not square

with democratic e pluribus unum firmament,
lieutenant management,
quintessential reverent tenets
pointing trigger finger of accountability

at lax gun purchasing rare
lee does emotional uproar demanding
immediate controls, limitations, restrictions,
et cetera on firearms scare

the bejesus from stalwart National Rifle Association,
whence spokesperson doth prepare
convincing rebuttal (lock, stock at barrel) overbear
ring lee outgun legitimate

parental concerns, now near
daily occurrence hardly cause a flinch glossed
inducing similar reactions as
sports home team defeated, sans mere

slightly raised eyebrows while headline news
when another tragedy gets tacked
unto the 122 students killed since Columbine
took  innocent lives 19 plus years ago

which ** hum sacrifice of youth or teachers bare
lee induce ripple despite an increasing number
of spent bullets fallout inflicting
more than 208,000 vulnerable
impressionable psyches sorrows need a lifetime to air!
spysgrandson Sep 2015
I see the barrel at the temple
feel the nickel sized circle on the skin
hear the loud last report
after the trigger pulled

daily, this scene scrolls in the head
a secret, e pluribus unum,  one
no other players read
in their scripts

I don't write theirs, only
mine, and they have their own
clandestine plans, their own
scenes at the edge of the
abyss

sometimes, I see them
fall, screaming, or silent
until they land among the other
bones

I don't know, I will never
see that place with my eyes
for I lack the courage to jump
or squeeze the trigger

no
I will find a way to sleep
and never wake up, let others wonder what lines
I read in my final hours hiding from the sun,
or why I chose pills and potions
instead of the gun
Far moost o' me
     three score minus one year
tethered upon terra firmae where
planet Earth doth veer

(spins upon the global axis
     (tilted 23.5 degrees from the plane
     of its orbit around the sun),
terrestrial genesis (perhaps accompanied

     for Pete's sake by Gabriel
     blowing his horn) in all honesty unclear
boot more oven concern
     points to thermonuclear

and/or subnuclear
war, particularly at forefront
     of thine primate noggin
actively hypothesizing

     theoretical armageddon,
     when non plus ultra gravitates
     with e pluribus unum necessitating
     each individual to bend over

     and kiss his/her rear
goodbye unless total merciless queer
hue loss atomic fallout immediately
     incinerates e'en

     the moost savvy profiteer,
which aforementioned prognostication
     arose from overbear
ring hazy, hot and humid

     dangerous heat spell near
lee approximating insufferable
     temperature nearing triple digits
     (along Eastern Seaboard

     of United baked States
makes this human,
     an immediate convert to climate control
(though he happened tubby already)

     basking, glorifying, and luxuriating
     within delightful 60º Fahrenheit mere
really expressing gratitude for such
     creature comfort donning my

     stretched out birthday suit,
     (yet thee moost comfortable leisurewear
then thrift store "special bag
     mountain of clothes

     as mooch as Yukon sales,"
     no matter mine ill mannered
     mirrored reflection doth jeer
at such a sorry sight, and/or

     laugh reading interlinear
monologue colloquy,
     which message gleaned between lines,
and should this poem be red aloud,

     thy ******* passion linkedin
     with humming HVAC, ye would hear
courtesy hove cochlear
(hollow tube in the inner ear)
sensitive to deafening sounds...so beware!

— The End —