Worst sin

The worst sin is to convert
abundance into privation.

New poems

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Barbarity

Barbarity isn't even diminished
when barbarians are dismissed.

Pumpkin flower

New poems

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Brazilian-style milk buns

Made from this recipe.

The way to love (Chesterton)

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

G. K. Chesterton

Our lives

Our lives start in ignorance,
end in terror.

Morning glory

New poems

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Jalapeno beef

Made from this recipe.

The subversion

Program the subversion
to subvert the program.

Divisions & unions

All divisions are social,
all unions are transactional.

All poetry

All poetry is subversive.

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The long stretch of road (Wright)

Tell me, what is the long stretch of road for if not to sort out the reasons why we are here and why we do what we do, from why we are not in the other lane doing what others do.

C. D. Wright, Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil

On self

Self is other more than self.

The abundance (Keynes)

The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance, but it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.

John Maynard Keynes

Dissatisfaction

Dissatisfaction with the apparent compels us to study the incomprehensible.

On identity (Shriver)

Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived.... If we embrace narrow group-based identities too fiercely, we cling to the very cages in which others would seek to trap us. We pigeonhole ourselves. We limit our own notion of who we are, and in presenting ourselves as one of a membership, a representative of our type, an ambassador of an amalgam, we ask not to be seen.

Lionel Shriver

Again

That something can happen once is astounding. After it has, there's nothing easier than believing that it can (must?) again.

Eccentricities

Eccentricities in the course of your life are only detectable if you endeavor to approximate straight.

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On VR

Virtual reality is inherently and inevitably superior, because try as you might, you can only hurt yourself.

Grows (Stevens)

It is posed and it is posed.
But in nature it merely grows.

Wallace Stevens, from "Add This To Rhetoric"

Just try

You think it's difficult to separate people from their illusions of God, try disabusing them of their cherished belief that they are adding value to the world with their work.

On poetry

Poetry should be whatever poetry wants to be.

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As time goes by

Become old if you must, but never obsolete.

On government

Better to abandon government than to relinquish the rights government is meant to defend.

Saying it

To say something first is something special,
but to say it, to say it is essential.

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On death

How much more of a horror death would appear were it not familiar.

Watch

If we don't watch the watchers,
we become mere performers.

Popovers

Made from this recipe in a popover pan.

Sometimes we feel

Sometimes we feel, at least,
that we have to do the wrong thing
to appear to be doing the right thing.

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Seriously

Be serious playfully.

Three or four (Beckett)

Given three or four lives I might have accomplished something.

Samuel Beckett

The illusion of completion

Begin what you can begin and complete what seems to require the illusion of completion.

On equilibrium

What is often overlooked is that equilibrium is only achieved through suffering.