Confusion

The origin of confusion is contradiction.

Impulse

Impulse recurs in various guises.

The facts & the fantasy

The facts condemn the fantasy.
The fantasy gives context to the facts.

Live (James)

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?

Henry James, The Ambassadors

Every prophecy

Every prophecy is a parody.

Puzzle pieces (Pirsig)

The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.

Robert M. Pirsig

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Foolishness

Find the grandest thing you can, and let it guide your contemplation of foolishness.

Semantics

A slaughter is a skirmish with better weapons.

This sorry Scheme of Things (Khayyám)

Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

Omar Khayyám

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Face it

If you can't place it you can't face it.

Complex arrays (Puett & Gross-Loh)

Just as the world itself is fragmented, we are too. Instead of thinking of ourselves as single, unified selves who we are trying to discover through self-reflection, we could think of ourselves as complex arrays of emotions, dispositions, desires, and traits that often pull us in different and contradictory ways. When we do so, we become malleable. We avoid the danger of defining ourselves as frozen in a moment in time.

Michael Puett & Christine Gross-Loh,
The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life

Indulgence

The greatest indulgence is to indulge in satiety surrounded by stimulation.

Damage

What damages the human spirit more than marriage?

On poetry

Poetry:  Layered meaning in layered sound.

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Quiche

It is that humans (Confucius)

It is not that the Way broadens
humans; it is that humans
broaden the Way.

Confucius, the Analects

Worse (Knott)

All my life I had nothing
but worse than that,
I wouldn't share it.

Bill Knott, "Worse"

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Foolishness

Foolishness is not redeemed by bravery.

Untainted

Every religious comfort, every joy, has a secular equivalent untainted by falseness—or at least, by that falseness.

What you wish

What you wish to discover, you should imbue.

What you wish to imbue, you must discover.

Remember (Knott)

Remember the world has no experience at being you.

Bill Knott, from "Naomi Poem"

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The things

As you do the things you need to do
you become yourself.

This.

http://johnpavlovitz.com/2017/03/30/to-the-people-ive-lost-over-this-election/

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All

Opportunity is all.

New

New doesn't mean different.
Or does it?

The two histories

Never confuse history with recorded history.

Travelled all alone (cummings)

And if somebody hears
what I say—let him be pitiful:
because i've travelled all alone
through the forest of wonderful

e. e. cummings, from "Sonnets—Actualities"

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Chicken w/ red pepper sauce

Frictionless, Lingering, Advantage, Modus Operandi

The editors at The Legendary literary website have chosen to publish four of my poems ("Frictionless," "Lingering," "Advantage," and "Modus Operandi") in their next issue. I can't wait to see them go online!

Lingerpost

I missed the actual release day, but my poem "The Idyllic" has been published in Issue 10 (Winter 2017) of Lingerpost!

The next-to-the-last

Cherish the next-to-the-last,
for the last is saved for grief.