Lacking an adequate sense

Lacking an adequate sense of destination,
or even direction, we opt for acceleration.

What is evil

What is evil is what chooses or approves harm.

Bonus

Bonus, not excess.

Nihilistic

An unseductive nihilism would not be nihilistic.

Somehow

Better with more, yet somehow
lessened by excess.

The engine for consciousness

The engine for consciousness is hallucination.

The best technologies

The best technologies simplify by complicating.

Hardened

What is culture but aesthetic hardened to habit?

Who would wake?

If we were held accountable each night for our mistakes of the day, who would wake?

I won't pretend

I won't pretend I am accountable
for the accidental.

New poems

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Can only (Abe)

He longs so much for freedom and action that he can only hate people.

Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes

We crave

We crave the vivid clarity of catastrophe.

The weakest expression

Spirituality is the weakest expression of aesthetics.

An artifact

The perception of coincidence is an artifact of a lack of information.

Getting away with it

You can get away with murder, but you can't get away with a logical fallacy.

On profit

Profit is not the only argument.

New poems

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The principles of cognition

To develop a program that can think,
we'll need a program that can derive
the principles of cognition.

Looks different

The world looks different in paragraphs
than in photographs.

"Rightful owner"

Is "rightful owner"
an oxymoron
or just a misnomer?

Instead of (Bernhard)

Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.

Thomas Bernhard, Correction

No reckoning

There can be no reckoning until everything everyone has done is known.

I love poetry because

I love poetry because I love truth. Language can do many things, but poetry must always be an expression of truth. What is bad in poetry is what is false.

With everything

To be as intimate with everything as everything will permit:  this is poetry.

The last thing

The last thing we should want to do is banish the unearned from our lives.

Without intent

Those who habitually act without intent
tend to assume that others are acting without intent.

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Implies

Distinction implies separation.

We favor

We favor result over effort
and effort over theory.

Much

To make everything fit,
much must be left out.

The next (Sturgeon)

Ask the next question.

Theodore Sturgeon

Incompatible

Free will is incompatible with divine omniscience or omnipotence. Therefore one or the other does not exist. (It is also quite possible that neither exists.)

Prelude

Expectation is prelude to disappointment.

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Our purpose

Our purpose is to change
enough that we can't revert.

Home

Home is a habit.

History

History is today tomorrow.

Once

Every word was once an epiphany.

Let us celebrate

Let us celebrate the birth of experience
as the ignorant celebrate innocence.

Pursuing

Pursuing rapture, we engender rupture.

A great pile (Thoreau)

We must heap up a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being.

Henry David Thoreau

I do not love

I do not love the brief.

Story

Everything is story.
But story is not everything.

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The contention

The contention is continuous;
the resolution, discrete.

Intolerable

For many, tolerating the intolerable is tolerable.

Death recruits us

Death recruits us from the first flicker of consciousness.

Neutral

So often the neutral are self-neutered.

Dominant

Disappointment is dominant.

My calculations

My calculations are poorly calibrated.

Accomplishment

Accomplishment excuses the unfortunate temperament.

Pattern

Pattern is the skeleton of process.

Listen

Listen to the advice of conscience once,
or to its recriminations ever after.

As rare

A paragon is as rare as a unicorn.

No nuance

There is no nuance in the reactionary.

No more

Love is no more desperate than other responses.

Regret

Regret, occasionally;
remorse, never.

Origin

Your origin determines your range
of possible destinations.

Kind of thing

When you long to become a different kind of thing, the kind of thing that you are inevitably becomes devalued.

The frivolous

The frivolous is the most serious.

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A poet

I can tolerate a poet without good ideas,
but not one without good words.

What we crave most

What we crave most is the illusion of significance.

What we call

"Individual" is what we call our multitude.

Often

Often the appropriate thing is to be inappropriate.

Potentially

What potential is to the imagination,
loss is to memory.

Study

Study the points where errors cluster.

The least of death

Those who know the least of death
are the dead.

Anecdote

An anecdote is not an antidote.

Duty

If we have a duty,
it is to find a better way.

What is better

What is better is what is more interesting.

With the net down

It is true that you can't play tennis with the net down. But there are so many other games.

The miracle

The miracle is that there was ever anything
to die.