Things (Britto)

A thing is enough for itself
but not for one who thinks, resists
a world crammed with objects...

Paulo Henriques Britto, from "In Praise of Evil"

Absence

The universe is suffused with absence.
Everywhere lacks everything
except for the little it contains.

All lessons

All lessons are always on offer:
we choose those we are ready for.

Change

If it cannot change,
it can't exist.

Infidelity

Infidelity is impossible
if your commitment encompasses
a sufficiently-inclusive perimeter.

Backyard clouds

New, innovative thoughts (Hock)

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.

Dee Hock

On absurdity

Absurdity teases,
it never sates.

Wanting (Stone)

Wanting and dissatisfaction
are the main ingredients
of happiness.
To want is to believe
there is something worth getting.
Whereas getting only shows
how worthless the thing is.
And this is why destruction
is so useful.
It gets rid of what was wanted
and so makes room
for more to be wanted.

Ruth Stone, from "Wanting"

Redemption

If you love something,
you are in the conversation
for redemption.

The names (Stone)

My lips whispered over the names of things
in the meadows, in the orchard, in the woods
where I sometimes stood for long moments
listening to some bird telling me of the strangeness of myself...

Ruth Stone, from "Before the Blight"

Futility

Futility is the most formidable author of suffering.

Tell me why (Pollitt)

...tell me, why is loss real
even when love was not?

Katha Pollitt, from "The Heron in the Marsh"

Children of error

We are the children of error
every bit as much as the descendents of discovery.

The plan (Stone)

I said to myself, do you have a plan?
And the answer was always, no, I have no plan.
Then I would say to myself, you must think of one.
But what happened went on, chaotic with necessary pain.

Ruth Stone, from "The Plan"

Sated

Another word for sated
is invalidated.

3 quotes (McKenna)

We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it’s worth.

Personal empowerment means deconditioning yourself from the values and the programs of the society and putting your own values and programs in place.

The real tension is not between matter and spirit, or time and space, the real tension is between information and nonsense.

Terence McKenna

Bonded

A bond is both a connection and a restraint.

Our understandings (Locke)

We have our understandings no less different than our palates; and he that thinks the same truth shall be equally relished by every one in the same dress, may as well hope to feast every one with the same sort of cookery: the meat may be the same, and the nourishment good, yet every one not be able to receive it with that seasoning; and it must be dressed another way, if you will have it go down with some, even of strong constitutions.

John Locke

Precedence

Precedence doesn't guarantee primacy.

The Chaffey Review

Two of my poems, "Between a Gap and a Lapse" and "Lusus Indorum" have now been published in Volume 10 of The Chaffey Review.

On dreaming

Our dreams are vague, ephemeral, transient. But that is a limitation of our mechanism. Someday we will design descendants manufactured with greater capacities sufficient to dream (for surely they will still dream) in detail comparable to that of our waking experience. Perhaps someone already has. Perhaps we are that dream.

Something icy (Sheck)

Why do we try to know one another? I don't mean to be coy. Only that we lived in the same house, ate the same breakfasts, walked the same walks, were mostly frank with one another, and still there's something icy and impersonal in us and between us, between anyone.

Laurie Sheck, A Monster's Notes

Omnipotence

Omnipotence must either be trusted completely (an impossibility) or always doubted. How much productive exchange can occur within a relationship undermined by doubt? Greater than zero, which may be enough.

New poems

+12

Liberty

Label everything,
forbid nothing.

Better: Culture & Lit

Better: Culture & Lit has accepted my poem "Dissensus" for publication in their next issue!

Milton Charles Rush, 1941 - 2013

My father died yesterday after a long fight with cancer and other health issues. He turned 72 on August 1st.

              Dependencies
                        — for Milton Charles Rush, 1941-2013

The edge leads to the angle.
The angle distorts the edge.
Distortion is dependent upon perception.
Boundaries can't be calculated without a volume
(but may not need to be).
Position is meaningless for any one thing.
There is neither origin nor destination.
Perception is dependent upon distortion.
Volume can't be calculated without a boundary
(but may not need to be).
Existence is position for any one thing.
The void is infinite,
yet it has grown again.

The law

The law seeks to protect the present from the future
by wrapping both in chains.

That's for sure

Not everything worth contemplating
is worth implementing.

On hindsight

Hindsight is reductive,
producing a simplified synopsis
of what was.

How (Pollitt)

How did
I move so far away
just living day by day...

Katha Pollitt, from "A Chinese Bowl"

On beauty

Beauty is finite,
but it replenishes.

All this capability (Johnson)

It's too bad, but the way American people are, now that they have all this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they'll probably just piss it all away.

Lyndon B. Johnson

The familiar

Even those of us who long and lust for novelty
relish the comfort of the familiar.

The storm

We love the storm and we love the shelter.
But we love the storm more.

Huzzah!

Blessed be the pleasuregivers.

Better

Seek better, not best;
best is a twisted jest.

Pirene's Fountain

Pirene's Fountain has accepted my poem "'Scoundrels'" and will be publishing it in their next issue!

Voices (Sheck)

Isn't any voice largely mute and partial, even those that speak openly and plainly...

Laurie Sheck, A Monster's Notes

On death

Death should only come
when we begin to live without surprise.

Asylum (McLane)

One seeks asylum because one finds oneself a refugee, endangered:  one is attempting to flee violence. To flee intimacy, its violence; the self, its violence; the body, its violence; the family, its violence; money, its violence; race, its violence; the state, its violence.

Maureen N. McLane, My Poets

Consequence

It is consequence that inhibits excess.

New poems

+12

A match

We are a match,
not a torch.

My allegiance

I have no allegiance to anything that I am
but rather to everything that I am.

The economy

The economy should respond to our needs, not determine them.

How? (McLane)

How shall I know if I know myself if all I know is that I do not know?

Maureen N. McLane, My Poets

What it really wants

Information wants to be ubiquitous.

The conditioners and the conditioned (Mumford)

The most deadly criticism one could make of modern civilization is that apart from its man-made crises and catastrophes, is not humanly interesting. ...In the end, such a civilization can produce only a mass man: incapable of spontaneous, self-directed activities: at best patient, docile, disciplined to monotonous work to an almost pathetic degree. ...Ultimately such a society produces only two groups of men: the conditioners and the conditioned, the active and passive barbarians.

Lewis Mumford

Isn't it obvious?

The Zombie Apocalypse happened a long time ago.

A good man and a great man (Cargill)

Do you know the difference between a good man and a great man? A good man looks around at his brothers, sees their ignorance, finds himself horrified by it, and sets out to educate them. A great man instead finds himself elated by realizing that his brothers will never know any better, using it to his advantage to forge an army of the ignorant, fighting to leave the world a better place. Ignorance is the only one truly unstoppable force in this world. And the only difference between a despot and a founding father is that the founding father convinces you that everything he does was your idea to begin with and that he was acting at your behest all along. Yes, people are sheep. Big deal. You need to stop trying to educate the sheep and instead just steer the herd.

C. Robert Cargill, Dreams and Shadows

On poetry

Poetry is a plea for someone to read me closely.