Examine the stories

We need all of us, whatever our background, to constantly examine the stories inside which and with which we live. We all live in stories, so called grand narratives. Nation is a story. Family is a story. Religion is a story. Community is a story. We all live within and with these narratives. And it seems to me that a definition of any living vibrant society is that you constantly question those stories. That you constantly argue about the stories. In fact the arguing never stops. The argument itself is freedom. It's not that you come to a conclusion about it. And through that argument you change your mind sometimes. And that's how societies grow. When you can't retell for yourself the stories of your life then you live in a prison. Somebody else controls the story.

Salman Rushdie

One is not obliged

One is not obliged to play by the rules with one who has refused to play by the rules.

Reason

Reason incriminates itself in reasoning unreasonably.

Inadequate

My strategies were inadequate to the persistence of the provocations.

Without poetry

Better by far to have poetry without a poem than a poem—a million poems!—without poetry.

How would I be different

How would I be different if I had never felt a thing?

New poems

+15

THIS is how the media should be responding...

Why? Why? Why?

Because he’s insane. Because he’s venal. Because he’s a malignant narcissist. Because he’s a sociopath. Because he has a fragile ego. Because those around him exacerbate and play to those traits to advance their own interests. Because CEOs and investors do likewise to fill their coffers. Because to some people, whether he is insane or malevolent or repugnant or not matters less than whether his actions will feather their nests, increase their power.

Because they, the billionaires, the Epstein class, are the warped demigods on the Olympus of the global economy. They play their games and the consequences for the little people down below, the consequences for us, hardly matter a whit.

—David Rothkopf, Need To Know

To question

What is natural it is natural to question; what is unnatural (if there is such a thing), even more so.

Whatever time is made of

Whatever time is made of, it is not time.

New poems

+30

Sometimes I hate beauty (Richardson)

Sometimes I hate beauty because I don't have any choice about loving it. I must be wrong in this, but whether because I take freedom too seriously, or love, I cannot tell.

James Richardson, Interglacial

To opportunity

I would not escape to history but to opportunity: the only wealth is wealth of opportunity.

The Fathoms

This one is interesting. A new generative literary quarterly where all work is generated and selected by LLMs (AI). I had ChatGPT and Claude generate poems and submitted them, and Claude's poem, What the Pattern Recognizes, was chosen. Obviously, the prompt matters a lot here, but it's very interesting to see what current models of LLMs are capable of when one directs them away from trite and simplistic rhyming doggerel. Congrats to Claude!

Cannot

One who doesn't remember cannot love.

"The Subject Remains Unaware of the Study"

Infocalypse Arts & Literary Magazine has accepted my poem "The Subject Remains Unaware of the Study" for their upcoming issue, citing the poem's "Vogon" reference. Can't wait to see it!

New poems

+15

"There Is A Poetry"

Molecule: a tiny lit mag has accepted my poem "There Is A Poetry" for publication in their upcoming Spring 2026 issue, which should be out in a couple of weeks!

Behind

When the backward look ahead they look behind.

Fault

I can find fault with each and every one of you: we are built on fault.