"Compulsory Hedonism, Elective Trauma"

My poem, "Compulsory Hedonism, Elective Trauma," has been accepted for publication in the fall 2023 issue of Valley Voices: A Literary Review. My first Mississippi publication!

New poems

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Never knowing (Reid)

It's amazing that relationships can form and last under the constraints of never fully knowing. Never knowing for sure what the other person is thinking. Never knowing for sure who a person is.

Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Nothing can claim

Nothing can claim to be ethical
if it requires you to spend money.

Life

Life will always be gratuitous.

Absurdity

Absurdity is usually an indicator of missing data.

Shuns

Society shuns the dissenter
more than the dissenter shuns society.

A thing

Knowledge is a provisional thing,
but belief is not a thing at all.

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Membership

We focus on membership, but without individuals there can be nothing to belong to.

On self

The greatest experts on "self" know so little of my self.

Every martyr

Every martyr is a failure.

Other men (Herbert)

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

Frank Herbert, Dune

People judge others

People judge others by what they know of themselves.

What, indeed?

What have you said
until you've been heard?

More myth

Myth without context is fantasy.
Myth within context is instruction.

Myth

Myth is didactic: it is meant to be
understood, not merely believed.

War (Pargin)

War is never about killing the enemy. War is about remaking the world to suit the whims of some powerful group over the whims of some other powerful group. The dead are just the sparks that fly from the metal as they grind it down.

Jason Pargin ("David Wong"), This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It

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To seek salvation

To seek salvation is to guarantee it will never be found.

The consensus

The consensus is that there is no consensus.

Sleep & waking

Sleep is sacred;
waking, a revelation.

Dumb things

Only people who did dumb things when they were young think that everyone does dumb things when they are young.

Decades

Give me decades of depression
over one moment of despair.

Never

Never trust someone who can't make you laugh. Never love someone who can't surprise you.

Like them

I always like them when they are rational,
I sometimes like them when they are irrational,
and I always dislike them when they are anti-rational.

Comparison

The small are reductive;
the great, expansive.

Advice

I like advice on how to avoid, diminish, or end suffering, rather than the advocacy of denial that there is suffering or, even worse, the pretense that suffering isn't suffering, pain isn't pain, and that everything would be fine if you would only decide that it is fine.

Consciousness

Consciousness is awareness of consequence.

No guarantee

Unhappiness is no guarantee of authenticity.

Truth is health

Truth is health. But health is not truth.

Sometimes I write

Sometimes I write until I find the line
that stops the poem.

When you feel

When you feel you can't grow, you try to reduce everything else.

A sign

A sign is a prophecy that we interpret for ourselves.

The purpose of war

The purpose of war (of so many things) is to provide one the opportunity to take a stand against it.

To continue

Sometimes quitting is the only way to continue.

Right-to-use

Right-to-use must be recognized as an entirely different thing than right-to-have.

The blind spot

Thinking is the blind spot of thinking.

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A kind of viral solipsism (Valente)

...it’s not even about making shareholders rich, it’s fundamentally about the yawning, salivating need to control and hurt. To express power not by what you can give, but by what you can take away. And deeper still, this strange compulsion of conservatism to force other humans to be just like you. To clone their particular set of neuroses and fears and revulsions and nostalgias and convictions and traumas so that they never have to experience anything but themselves, copied and pasted unto the end of time. A kind of viral solipsism that cannot bear the presence of anything other than its own undifferentiated self, propagating not by convincing or seduction or debate, but by the eradication of any other option.

(Source: https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start)

Catherynne M. Valente

Figuring out consciousness

Figuring out consciousness is like trying to take apart the engine of a car going down the road at 60 mph.

What I am

What I am is the communication between what I was and what I will become.

The most valuable knowledge

The most valuable knowledge is to discover what you have misunderstood.

The efficacy of outrage

The efficacy of outrage diminishes
if not observed on first provocation.

Government (Zappa)

Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.

Frank Zappa

Transactional

Humans are transactional even with themselves.

Caldo de Albóndigas

Money

Money can solve most everything,
but it can't solve the problem of money.

For every desire

For every desire there is a regret.
For every regret, three desires.

The only sin

The only sin that can be redeemed
is the sin that is finished.

Also progressive

Nothing is more progressive than to preserve and carry forward what is good, worthy, and appropriate of what has gone before.

I can never (Plath)

I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.

Sylvia Plath

Also

Curiosity also resurrects the cat.

Not obliged

One is not obliged to do
what one hasn't chosen to do.

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Also

To answer is also to ask.

Life's job

Life's job is to surprise us. Our job is to remain open to being surprised.

Significantly

Significance can always be sliced thinner.

Always

It is always inappropriate to respect a censor.

The law

To prioritize the law over truth or justice is to prioritize the needs of society over the needs of the individual.

Only the imaginable

Only the imaginable is intolerable.

We judge

We judge others' capacities and capabilities by our own limitations.

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Blamed

How we are blamed for our reactions to being the victims of injustice!

On madness

There is madness that is experienced, and there is madness that is diagnosed, madness that is embraced and madness that is mandated.

Change

We must change our reaction to change.

Distraction

Distraction is destruction.

The news

The "news" is more pornographic than what we point to as pornography.

Forever things

A poet should say forever things in a today way.

How peculiar (Percy)

What the novelist notices is not how awful the happenings are but how peculiar it is that people don't seem to notice how awful the happenings are.

Walker Percy, Signposts In A Strange Land

About poetry

What I like best about poetry is the precision. The rest of life tells you there's no such thing as perfection. Poetry says there's no such thing as almost right.