Meaning

The concept of meaning is meaningless.

Directions (Moss)

Directions only work if you know where you're going.

Robert Moss, from "If You Spill A Dragon"

Euphemism

Euphemism emerges from the mouth of the hypocrite.

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On tradition

Tradition is just the habits and practices of those who preceded you.

On progress

The fact that much of what people term "progress" is not should not deter one from what is.

It should be

It should be impossible for death to come
until you say "I have lived enough."

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One thing

One thing I dislike about death
is that there is no poetry in it.

How many

How many of our thoughts
are recycled from garbage?

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Each of us is alone in the world (Maugham)

Each one of us is alone in the world.  He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain.  We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.  We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual.  The brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you the umbrella of the gardener’s aunt is in the house.

W. Somerset Maugham

The first death

The first death occurs when the child is taught that all this is not for them.

Inevitable afterwards

The fact that everything is inevitable afterwards confuses so many people about what is possible.

So much

I have so much to understand,
and therefore I have so much to say.

One thing

We say one thing
in as many ways as we can.

Desolation

Desolation is almost certain.

In poetry

What I admire in good poetry is usually the concrete.

What I love in great poetry is usually the abstract.

More important

Honesty is more important than clarity,
accuracy more important than consistency.

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Quotes on happiness (Camus)

"We don't have time to be ourselves.  We only have time to be happy."

"What I'm sure of is that you can't be happy without money.  That's all.  I don't like superficiality and I don't like romanticism.  I like to be conscious.  And what I've noticed is that there's a kind of spiritual snobbism in certain 'superior beings' who think that money isn't necessary for happiness."

"Of course my life is ruined.  But I was right in those days:  everything for happiness, against the world which surrounds us with its violence and its stupidity."

"Don't think I'm saying that money makes happiness.  I only mean that for a certain class of beings happiness is possible, provided they have time, and that having money is a way of being free of money."

Albert Camus, A Happy Death

Anomalous

Every data point is anomalous in some analyses.

What if the truths

What if the truths have been known forever,
but they are so unpalatable that few will acknowledge them?

The two things

The two things standing between us and "utopia" are entropy and humanity.

Obvious

Most truth is hidden in something that, at first, sounds obvious.

Almost every time

I will chose aphorism over anecdote
almost every time.

Most poems

I don't like most poems, but many have some good words, and a few have some good poetry.

So many

So many poets who don't like words...

The most creative act

The most creative act is to ask.

On belief

Belief is cheap cognition.

A cacophony

I am a cacophony seeking euphony.

Of self

How much of self is representation of self?

To communicate

We keep finding new ways to communicate, but nothing new to say.

Dreams of the infinite

The mortal dreams of the infinite while the infinite isn't even aware of the mortal.

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So much

The moment is so much easier than the duration.

May you find

May you find coherence in chaos and clarity in confusion (but not too much).

Possible

It is possible to increase clarity by stepping away from clarity, but not to increase truth by stepping away from truth.

The assumption

Writers are egoists, that assume a reader. Poets are worse:  they assume a competent reader.

On collage

What some call collage, I see as cognitive assembly of coherence from components that mimics (and utilizes) how the brain works in all things.  It is an important (but not the only) technique of my poetry-making.

From less

In making more from less, we become more.

The coherence

The coherence one finds correlates with the markers of meaningfulness one has learned.

A narrative corrective

The lower the fidelity with which we perceive,
the greater a narrative corrective we conceive.

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is enjambment.

Trajectory

My newest book of poetry, Trajectory, is now out!  This book continues in the vein of my chapbook, The Animal Commitments, containing short poems of 9 lines or less—but with more than three times as many! Those wishing to purchase a copy may do so at Amazon.

Utopia

Utopia is a world of fewer and better people.

Love's lesson

Love's lesson is nihilism.

On desire

Desire is irreducible.

A poet

In the end, I became a poet, not a scientist, because inconsistency seemed more consistent with humanity.

The human engine

Confabulation is the human engine.

Live

Live in constant protest of death.

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To try too hard

To try too hard is one way of not trying hard enough.