On the divine

The only sign of the divine we have is relentless death.

On forgiveness

Most forgiveness is forgetting.

Final (?) thought on the soul

You don't have a soul,
you make one.

What is meaningful

What is not meaningful can be, not ignored, but skimmed over, unattended. The trick is in separating what is meaningful from what isn't.

Still more on the soul

Soul is nothing but breath
and, like breath, ends at death.

More on the soul

Remove humans from the world, look at the human-influenced, the human-made: that is the human soul.

On the soul

They invented the soul
because of the inadequacies of the self.

The poet

The poet must stop demanding silence
and learn to be heard within the noise.

Break time

The way to break time is to stage adjacency.

From poetry

Poetry didn't come from religion;
religion came, alas, from poetry.

The inevitable

In hell, or in heaven, when able,
one should condemn what's inevitable.

Birds fly

Birds fly not because they have a right to fly, but because they have wings.

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

The exoticist and the bigot

The exoticist and the bigot both
focus on difference rather than similarity,
but that doesn't make them the same.

Not enough

Vanquishing evil is noble, but it is not enough.

To consider

All the evidence suggests that we are better equipped to consider than to know.

On choice

Too many choices is only a problem because we aren't given time to choose them all.

History (Harari)

History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

The automobile

The automobile isolates, insulates us in a cell where we feel an almost unique sense of control, which we then misapply to other parts of the world, to life outside the car where we very rarely get to drive, to choose the temperature, the music, the angle of our support, where we oh-so-rarely get to hold the wheel and steer, though now we want to, need to, will embrace almost any illusion to pretend that we can, that we are.

New poems

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How much?

How much of our lives should we spend trying to justify our lives?

On poetry

Poetry:  What can't be said, said well.

Better things

There are better things to put in the void than prayers.

As little as anyone (Heti)

When I strip away my dreams, what I imagine to be my potential, all the things I haven't said, what I imagine I feel for other people in the absence of my expressing it, all the rules I've made for myself that I don't follow—I see that I've done as little as anyone else in this world to deserve the grand moniker I.

Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?

Useless

When love becomes ubiquitous, love becomes useless.

New poems

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Homo sapiens (Harari)

We assume that a large brain, the use of tools, superior learning abilities and complex social structures are huge advantages. It seems self-evident that these have made humankind the most powerful animal on earth. But humans enjoyed all of these advantages for a full 2 million years during which they remained weak and marginal creatures.

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

On poetry

Poetry—even a single poem—is larger than biography.

On poetry

Poetry points to the timeless in the time mess.

The illusion of the I

I'm more interested in the identity (identities) of poetry than in the poetry of identity, because I don't see much future in the illusion of the I.

My poetry

On alternate days I do didactic lyricism and lyric didacticism.

Seconds (Brautigan)

With so short a time to live and think
about stuff, I've spent just about
the right amount of time on this
          butterfly.

Richard Brautigan, "Seconds"

Choices

Choices are never entirely ours.

The Last Surprise (Brautigan)

The last surprise is when you come
gradually to realize that nothing
          surprises you any more.

Richard Brautigan, "The Last Surprise"

Didactic

"Didactic" is not a synonym for pedantic.

New poems

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Chickpea Fritters With Easy Tzatziki

Made following this recipe. Topped with regular and sweet paprika tzatziki sauces, goat cheese, plum tomato, and fresh parsley. Tasty!

On stopping

You never stop loving the people you fall in love with.

However, they often stop being those people.

The affection (Neruda)

To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses—that is something still greater and more beautiful, because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

Pablo Neruda

On tradition

Tradition is a bubble of history waiting to pop.

In times of crisis (O'Hara)

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again
      whom we love.

Frank O'Hara

The best plan

Persistence is the best plan.

These impulses (Hirsch)

These impulses are not necessarily in harmony with each other.

Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem

A belief

I believe more in the personal than the political.

Resemblance (Neuman)

The less love you put into things the more they resemble one another.

Andrés Neuman, Traveler of the Century

Different flavors

The hidden, the undiscovered, are delicious; the inaccessible is not to my taste.

Begun to think (Dobyns)

"I have begun to think...that one cannot help others at all." This from a man who once called friendship the highest virtue.

Stephen Dobyns, from "Cezanne's Seclusion"

One way

There will be just one way to write poetry when there is just one way to think, one way to see, one way to feel, one way to be.

Time, chewing (Dobyns)

But time is like a fat man at a banquet table—
he gobbles up the future and shits it into the past.
If we listen, we can even hear him chewing: days come,

days gone, days come, days gone. Who will save us?
We are lackluster virgins which the mustachioed world
ties to the train tracks of tomorrow's locomotive.

Stephen Dobyns, from "Inappropriate Gestures"

Needs & desires

Needs that we don't desire are debilitating.
Desires that we don't need are distractions.

Generally specific

There is as much specific in the general
as general in the specific.

New poems

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Viability

Viability is always valuable.

Misunderstanding

People who embrace religion have misunderstood the world.
If there is one thing people are good at, it is misunderstanding the world.

Poetry & problems

Can poetry solve problems poetry didn't create?

On poetry (Lee)

Poetry is something greater than us. You see, the whole universe is a poem! It has no rational meaning. It has no reason for being. Yet it is. All of the laws, all of the universe's laws, are poetic laws. None of them are logical; all of them defy understanding. All of them are great. Everything we say about a great poem is true about the universe. A poem is a little universe.

Li-Young Lee

The assumption

Assumption lets us function.

Whispering (Dobyns)

Even in deepest sleep the ears hear the voices
of their tempters whispering More and Not Enough.

Stephen Dobyns, from "Thoughts At Thirty Thousand Feet"

The one that doesn't

Always choose the one that doesn't make you choose.

This must thou eat (Emerson)

I dreamed that I floated at will in the great Ether, and I saw this world floating also not far off, but diminished to the size of an apple. Then an angel took it in his hand and brought it to me and said, "This must thou eat." And I ate the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

But almost

Man cannot live by word alone.

Dancing Song & The Wisdom of the Crowd

The Tulane Review has accepted two of my poems, "Dancing Song" and "The Wisdom of the Crowd," for their Fall 2015 issue. My first publication in the state I grew up in! Can't wait to see it.

On love

Better to love what you can't have
than to have what you can't love.

New poems

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Words

Words can do more than provoke pictures.

The starving poet

The starving poet lacks notice more than compensation.

The unnatural

Everything anyone calls unnatural
is as natural as flowers and rain.

If

If we only exist in our attention
we can only be a speck in infinity.