Still don't understand (Hoagland)

I said, "Love me better or go to hell."
I said, "I will forgive when I am good and ready."
I said, "Rumors of my happiness have been greatly exaggerated."
I still don't understand why what I give and what I get back in return never seem to weigh the same.

Tony Hoagland, from "Misunderstandings"

Options

Control your behavior, don't deny your impulses.

O world! (Shakespeare)

World, world, O world!
But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,
Life would not yield to age.

William Shakespeare, from "King Lear"

Not yet (Girmay)

I am not ready to die yet.
I want to live longer knowing that wind
still moves a dead bird's feathers.
Wind doesn't move over & say That thing
can't fly. Don't go there. It's dead.
No, it just blows & blows lifting
what it can. I am not ready
to die yet. No.

Aracelis Girmay, from "I Am Not Ready To Die Yet"

Accountability

Sin together, atone alone.

Both (Jahren)

We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable.

Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

Living alongside (Doctorow)

Life is not a ledger. Your sins can't be paid off through good deeds. Your good deeds are not cancelled by your sins. Your sins and your good deeds live alongside one another. They coexist in superposition.

Cory Doctorow

New poems

+15

This batch contains my 5000th poem!

On economics

Has anything ever allowed more harm to be done on less evidence with less consequence than economics?

They love not art (Wilde)

I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.

Oscar Wilde, from "On the Sale By Auction of Keats' Love Letters"

Habits

Habits accrue act by act.

I see it coming (Hicok)

Maybe the worst part of death is that I see it coming. To stay truly alive the whole time I’m alive gets harder as I go.

Bob Hicok

Most

Most people sell out for the possibility, not the promise.

Also, singing (Brecht)

In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.

Bertolt Brecht

Our life (Shakespeare)

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.

William Shakespeare, As You Like It

On transcendence

There is no transcendence without an initial deviation.

On evil

Evil is uncertainty plus inevitability.