Every one

Does every exercise of power constrain liberty?

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Does that matter (Desnos)

Everything is dark, everything is dead, alone, but does that matter
if you have for one moment, in the summer sun,
the illusion of love and abundance.

Robert Desnos, from "Dawn"

On books

I never gave myself to books.
But I took them, as many as I could.

Better?

Can it possibly be correct that it is better
to be better than to be correct?

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Is it your fate? (Desnos)

Is it your fate to be tricked by shadows?
Is it any better to be tricked by the flesh?
To lose blood from endless wounds
And offer death nothing more than a sad feast and poor hospitality?

Robert Desnos, from "Comrades"

On obligation

Obligations, like gratitude, are assumed, not compelled.

Two Thirds North

The 2016 edition of Two Thirds North is now online and available for purchase. It contains a slightly truncated version of my poem "Synaptic Mechanisms for Plasticity in the Neocortex." Looking forward to getting my hands on the hardcopy.

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In change

How much absolution there is,
or we see, in change.

This way or that (Desnos)

For a kiss I'll go back into slavery
but consciously
To live this way or that
both equally monotonous

Robert Desnos, from "Lovely as you are"

Aspect

We fixate on aspect.

Observation

Happy, generous women are a marvel and a joy.

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On tolerance

Tolerance, like generosity, neither is nor should be inexhaustible.

Toast

May the commitment of your friends exceed the complacency of everyone else.

Suggestion

Praise the aberrant; condemn the abhorrent.

On dream

Dream reveals what the deceit of identity conceals.

On dying

Dying happy isn't the same as happily dying.

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The song (Bronk)

Still, the singing was and is. Song
whether or not we sing. The song is sung.

William Bronk, from "Virgin and Child with Music and Numbers"

On politics

To ask how much politics might pervert technology is to ask how much human tendency might pervert politics.

Some are

Not all rhymes are obvious.
Some congruences are intuitive.

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No more (Hazzard)

I suppose that there will be no more desert islands. Only castaways.

Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire

Every glimpse

Every glimpse of the world contains uncountable masterpieces, as any honest aesthetic must acknowledge and any attentive observer must marvel at.

Most do

Most do their part
to impoverish a rich world.

Some and others

Some mold the form of the world;
others prefer to incant content.

On settling down

Having never acted up,
I felt no need to settle down.

Happens

Where nothing happens,
plenty happens.

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Unstuffed cabbage roll dish

From this recipe.

On infinity

Infinity is infamous.

Truthfulness (Hazzard)

Truthfulness was his last whole good, the thing he had not sheltered or kept small for safety.

Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire

Few

The world offers few butterflies
unencumbered by hungry caterpillars.

Danger (Hazzard)

There can be danger in supplying what people say they want: they may have got used to the inaccessibility of long desires, shaped their lives otherwise, even want the grievance of being thwarted.

Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire

Correction

Correction carves falsehood into fact.

Shape to a world (Bronk)

It is always hard like this, not having a world,
to imagine one, to go to the far edge
apart and imagine, to wall whether in
or out, to build a kind of cage for the sake
of feeling the bars around us, to give shape to a world.
And oh, it is always a world and not the world.

William Bronk, from "At Tikal"

Philosophical

What is more deeply philosophical
than a child's naive (but sincere) question?

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Improvisation

All civilization is improvised.

Different people (Nabokov)

If people remembered the same they would not be different people.

Vladimir Nabokov, Ada

Life as an agent

The universe only values life as an agent of change.

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The truth (Bronk)

The truth is all the numbers to be added but not, in the end, their sum.

William Bronk, from "The Bach Trombones at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania"

Oxymoron

What can life know of afterlife?

On art (Kreider)

Art is that which is done for the hell of it.

Tim Kreider

The defect

Humans carry the defect of life:
cure it.

Nothing (Paterson)

Will it all come to nothing, if nothing came to this?

Don Paterson, from "The Air"

New people

We will build new people
because none of us want to be
what we need from one another.

Moving (Bronk)

We move, and moving, feel the need to act.

William Bronk, from "The Rain of Small Occurrences"

Closer to zero

The finite is always closer to zero than to infinity.

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Incompleteness (Hazzard)

It is incompleteness that haunts us.

Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire

Indivisibility

Only the already divided can be indivisible.

What does it matter (Nabokov)

Who cares about all those stale myths, what does it matter—Jove or Jehovah, spire or cupola, mosques in Moscow, or bronzes and bonzes, and clerics, and relics, and deserts with bleached camel ribs? They are merely the dust and mirages of the communal mind.

Vladimir Nabokov, Ada

Interment

I shall bury my funeral
in my words.

Learned again (O'Daly)

What was learned is forgotten, so it can be learned again.

William O'Daly

On life

Life is like an RPG in which the descendents of the original players have forgotten it's a game.

Puppets (Gregory)

The only thing stupider than puppets talking to puppets is a puppet talking to itself.

Daryl Gregory, from "Second Person, Present Tense"

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