Everyone else

If I settle for everyone else's language, am I not just everyone else?

New poems

+30

A towering wall of stupidity (Roy)

It feels a little like that moment before the tsunami in 2004. Remember how, in Thailand and Indonesia, the ocean drew back from the coastline? People ran out to marvel at the miles of pristine new beach that suddenly emerged, not realising that, far out at sea, a wall of water was building up and would come crashing over them. We’re in that moment now. A towering wall of stupidity is about to inundate us.

Arundhati Roy

A way of looking at things

There is a way of looking at things in which all action is interference.

Everyone must know

No one tells you how lonely it will be, though everyone must know.

Taste

When everything tastes of sugar, nothing is sweet.

On entropy

Entropy uses instability to reduce toward an inert state.

New poems

+15

The human trick

The human trick: chaining the improbable into the routine.

The last thing

In you was the last thing I quit believing.

How frequently

How frequently we conflate the thunder with the lightning.

The more

The more you regret, the more you erode.

Two or more

One word alone may not be a poem, but two or more words together always are.

If you believe

If you believe in purity you don't believe in poetry.

Good intentions (ChatGPT)

Perhaps the sharpest editorial question is: After reading this poem, what can I see, think, or experience that I couldn't before? If the only answer is I feel more strongly about what I already believed, something important may be missing.

And the irony is that a poem can have an entirely admirable message while offering very little as an artistic experience. Good intentions don't exempt a poem from aesthetic scrutiny.

ChatGPT

New poems

+30

More important than

More important than if you use this or you use that is what you aim to achieve by using them.

The terms

A poem should not always supply the terms of its reconciliation.

Abstractions

Abstractions are softer, gentler, kinder. And generally more honest.

I have been my own (Porchia)

I have been my own disciple and my own master. And I have been a good disciple but a bad master.

Antonio Porchia, Voices