Trick-or-treat

Resources

Resources are the best defense against fatalism.

New poems

+15

Meeting the swamp creature

Money

Money is so often a kind of violence because people are so often disposed to act violently.

Shadows & stairs

Beauty may be false

Beauty may be false,
but if it is, so is everything else.

View of a river

Beauty is the lie

Beauty is the lie that lies with the truth.

New poems

+15

Abstract woman

No ugly way to speak

Why is it that we can speak beautifully of ugliness but there is no ugly way to speak of beauty?

The hunt

The smoke & the wind

The smoke is troubled by the wind,
but the wind doesn't even notice the smoke.

Mountain village

You can be

You can be all, just not all at once.

Shell shock

We are that

We are that which rejects what we are.

New poems

+15

"Only This 2"

First Literary Review-East has accepted my short poem "Only This 2" and will be publishing it in their January 2024 issue.

Flower arrangement

Self-reflection

Most generous

God is our most generous extrapolation of ourselves.

Broken spirit

On time

Time is room for things to happen.

Playing with Midjourney again

I'll be posting another month or so's worth of the best/most interesting images I come up with.

Love is

Love is the most terrible wonderful thing that ever happens to a person.

Your worst enemy

Your worst enemy is not the one who tells lies about you, but the one who tells unbearable truths.

Nothing

Nothing is more desirable in the short term or less reliable in the long than people.

Humanity

Humanity is perception plus choice,
and very little else.

A different nowhere

How horrible if the nowhere we go to when we die were to prove a different nowhere than that everyone else went to.

New poems

+15

It may be easier to forgive

It may be easier to forgive our failure of assertion than our failure to assert.

On responsibility

Responsibility is always a choice.

If you love anything

If you love anything,
you will be held accountable.

And call it desire

We see affinity for inevitability and call it desire.

Recent

The memory may be distant
but the remembering is recent.

The antidote

Contingency is the antidote to prophecy.

On truth

Truth is provisional,
so the search for truth is recursive.

You don't see

No matter how much death you see,
you don't see death.

A flaw

A flaw will eventually fulfill its destiny.

A lens

I am a lens seeing through a lens.

New poems

+15

Poetry

Poetry isn't calculated from an equation. It is sampled from experience.

Poetry

Poetry articulates the unspeakable.

Every poem

Every poem must either contain a time machine
or be one.

Not enough

To do nothing wrong is not enough.
Do something right.

Poetry

Poetry is born of insufficiency.

Only ever

Nothing is as it seems.
And you will only ever know seems.

On history

History is a special kind of myth.

New poems

+15

So hard

Everyone misunderstands life.
How can it be so hard to grasp?

No tax

There should be no tax on tools.

Am I saying what I'm saying?

Am I saying what I'm saying?
Or am I saying what I'm saying
to make you think about what I'm saying?

A truth (Gibran)

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Worse even

Worse even than loss is poverty that prevents all gain.

Also better

Better to fear the answers without questions
than the questions without answers.

Constant

A constant is an instant misperceived of the infinite.

Better

It is better to be on the losing side of a war than the wrong side of a war.

On evil

Evil originates not in hell but on Earth (and finishes there, too).

New poems

+15

"In Absentia"

My poem "In Absentia" has been accepted for publication in the spring 2024 issue of The Sucarnochee Review.

On life

Life is matter that recombines until it is art.

The ignorant

Don't elevate the ignorant—educate them!

We invent pleasures

We invent pleasures like we can patent them for profit.