Both (Jahren)

We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable.

Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

Living alongside (Doctorow)

Life is not a ledger. Your sins can't be paid off through good deeds. Your good deeds are not cancelled by your sins. Your sins and your good deeds live alongside one another. They coexist in superposition.

Cory Doctorow

New poems

+15

This batch contains my 5000th poem!

On economics

Has anything ever allowed more harm to be done on less evidence with less consequence than economics?

They love not art (Wilde)

I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.

Oscar Wilde, from "On the Sale By Auction of Keats' Love Letters"

Habits

Habits accrue act by act.

I see it coming (Hicok)

Maybe the worst part of death is that I see it coming. To stay truly alive the whole time I’m alive gets harder as I go.

Bob Hicok

Most

Most people sell out for the possibility, not the promise.

Also, singing (Brecht)

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.

Bertolt Brecht

Our life (Shakespeare)

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.

William Shakespeare, As You Like It

On transcendence

There is no transcendence without an initial deviation.

On evil

Evil is uncertainty plus inevitability.

New poems

+15

Otoliths: A Magazine of Many E-Things

My poems "Redaction Comics #1," "Assertion," and "Wanna-Be" are now available at Otoliths.  Check out this Australian site's interesting mix of content!

On belief

Belief is a reflection of desire unfettered by probability.

In bliss (de Quevedo)

Su tumba fue su amada;
hermosa, sí, pero temprana y breve;
ciega y enamorada,
mucho al amor y poco al tiempo debe;
y pues en sus amores se deshace,
escríbase:  Aqui goza, donde yace.

Its tomb was its beloved;
lovely, yes, but fleetingly so;
blind and enamored,
much to love it owes, little to time;
and because it was by loving undone,
engrave:  it lies in bliss where it died.

Francisco de Quevedo, from "Túmulo de la mariposa"

New poems

+15

Chicken and Mushrooms

Made from this recipe (I added the potatoes).

Man on the moon

Comic by Tom Gauld.

Rapid aging

Stress is a killer.