If we were everything

If we were everything, there’d be no perspective, no contrast, no threshold across which awareness could move. Experience requires boundary, just as thought requires difference. To become is only possible when there is a not-yet—when we are not total, but partial, poised in relation to something else. One can only conclude that if there were a god, he would long to become human, craving the fragmentary, the contingent, the limited.

Self-examination

Self-examination is not merely navel-gazing, narcissism, or psychology—though it may certainly be those—it is, at its most serious and disciplined, cosmological inquiry carried out by the only instrument available:  the cosmos itself, rendered conscious in us.

On cliche

Cliché, deeply felt and clearly expressed, is not unworthy of attention.

Sometimes the best way

Sometimes the best way to honor tradition is by defying tradition—or ignoring it.

New poems

+30

The truth is

The truth is, there can be no truth in the mind of a sycophant, a parasite, or a scavenger.

So vulnerable to the unreal

We are so vulnerable to the unreal; in no time we begin to rate it real, conflate it with actual, treat it as threat.

All our philosophies

All our philosophies are based on trauma.

It is easier

It is easier to maintain than to build; even easier to forget to do, to neglect doing what is necessary to maintain.

New poems

+30

Your mind

It's not my words that are too abstract—it is your mind!

To...what?

As our shadows are to us, we are to...what?

The complications

The complications I have introduced are insignificant—or everything.

The future

The future is a funeral.

New poems

+30

You do not control

You do not control my dialect, my dialectic.

No authority

There is no authority without authenticity.

What if

What if truth is incompatible with coherence?

False syllogism (ChatGPT)

A dangerous false syllogism:

Premise 1: Marginalized voices have historically been excluded.

Premise 2: Inclusion is therefore necessary and just.

Unstated (and fallacious) Premise 3: Work produced from marginalized positions is inherently more valuable, authentic, or profound.

That last leap is not just logically invalid, it’s aesthetic poison, because it leads to moralized reading: judging a poem not by its internal structure, its philosophical precision, its emotional or conceptual complexity, but by the perceived virtue of the speaker’s position.

This isn’t just a disservice to literature; it’s a paternalism masquerading as justice. It implies that marginalized writers can’t be held to the same standards, or that their value lies in being seen rather than saying something difficult, original, or lasting. That’s not empowerment; that’s aesthetic condescension.

ChatGPT

Anticipation

Anticipation never accounts for aftermath.

New poems

+30

The greater hell

The greater hell is always the hell that cannot be modified.

Both lack

Noise is more like silence than speech: both lack a message.

So far

I am so far from what most poets are doing that I can't even see what they are trying to do a lot of the time.

Has the human ever

Has the human ever been happy where the human animal has not been satisfied?

New poems

+15

Always

What is is always also what it never is.

Worse

What is final is worse than what is bad.

Never

You will never make me confine myself to myself.

Look for life

Look for life everywhere but in the habits of life.

The story

Attachment leads to suffering is the story.
But attachment leads to suffering is not the whole story.

Invention

Invention always reduces to discovery.

On identity

Identity is unintelligible.

New poems

+30

Metaphor

Metaphor is an atrocity.

Remember

Remembering is the only knowing.

It is nothing

You are welcome to the world of What Is.
It is nothing to the universe of Can Be.

The strangest things in the world

The strangest things in the world are those that disagree with me.

People who don't look

People who don't look at the people looking at the future cannot understand today.

Don't wait

Don't wait for catastrophe to change your life.

Epigraph

My life is epigraph to my poems. Or my poems to my life—I can never remember which.

New poems

+30

How hard it is

How hard it is not to look into a mirror when you see one.

Poetry at its best

Poetry at its best should be defined by what it can do, not by what it’s expected to do.

More

I want to bring poetry more into the mind, the life of the reader.

Benefit more

We crave the present but often benefit more from the absent.

New poems

+30

A bigger threat

Stasis is a bigger threat than nihilism.

Today demands

Today demands that yesterday be recalibrated, recontextualized, not renounced, not repudiated.

The purpose of education

The purpose of education is to make dreamers think and thinkers dream.