The apex of all Creation – or a sign of the Apocalypse?

Probably neither. But I’d prefer to engineer something more realistic.  With much less orange.

I wrote the final poem first on a snowy spring break trip to Maine during my last year of college.  I couldn’t tell you where the lines came from but once I had committed them to paper, I knew the poem could be even better.  So I printed out the poem, cut out the lines, and put the cut out lines in a hat. I then rearranged the poem line by line as I removed them from that hat and in a few months I had eeked out 32 more poems that have since survived several hard drives, a couple wars of aggression, and a hare-brained scheme to move to Vermont.

Here’s the final poem:

XXXIII.

Towards the root notes
Of New England climbs and dives
Unfolded during the volume
White thighs complete
With nervous twittering
Where’s Montana
Divvied up among ossified lookers-on
And the elaborate equation
Under an undulating Bronx
“What’s wrong with you?”
Vibrating in quick audacity
Where’s the one thing that I bought
No more shakiness
Through the thistles
Of an inaudible barre chord
“Just off Main St.” in Penebscot, Maine
Under the chandelier light
And not even wearing a brassiere
I can hear everything there
“Everything is wrong”
Weighted the consonants incorrectly
From the vowel shop by the harbor?
Where’s Wyoming?
Pushing glass back into the dirt
Into new English signs
With you and more importantly
I climb and dive

Is something wrong with this picture?

My only concern regarding a society liberated from the force of government would be the ongoing aggregation of corporate power in the face of depleted natural resources. 

I’m beginning to realize and fear that this reality is a part of the human condition and will continue to be a challenge to any system or non-system.

Voting is childish.  All belief in all government is anti-human.  Government  places superhuman powers to those who aspire to power – namely sociopaths, charlatans, and hoodwinks whose only goals in life are the accumulation of power over others.  It is quite unfortunate yet strangely amusing that the average Consumer enjoys being led over a cliff by the pro-torture crowd but it’s important to keep voting in the Big Daddy types to make us feel good about ordering McDonald’s from 12 mpg Suburbans, hating Muslims, Voting, and Moving Forward.  The President’s made it abundantly clear that we’re definitely not gonna be doing any Looking Back.  So clear, one could call it transparent.

It’s OK to hate your job,just pay into the pyramid and shut up.  It’s OK to blame the politicians but don’t forget to Vote.  It’s OK to invade nations, just turn off the lights before you go out. You’re encouraged to contribute, but don’t expect a tax deduction.  Don’t explain your case, just pay the fine. It’s OK to talk, just don’t let thinking interfere with your work.

Blood and oil mix all too well

The US government is openly admitting to the mass murder of 77,000 Iraqis.  We all know the actual number is at least 10x this amount.  Murder through collective action is still murder.  When will we wake up to who we are and reclaim our future?

“The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”  - Hunter S. Thompson

The most well-received words I've ever strung together

Do I need to expend this precious bandwidth to badmouth the BP Deepwater Horizon atrocity some more?  Do I need to worry about technological advancement speeding past the painstaking pace of institutional gridlock?  Do I need to speak out about American war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all over the world?

Yes…unfortunately I do.  If enough of us were speaking out than perhaps I could retire to nights of apathy like so many of my countrymen.   Perhaps if enough of us cared to take the lead,  upgrade to solar, invest in meaningful education,  and ‘be the change’ rather than just sharing articles on Facebook about how everything is the same, and the same sucks, we’d all be in a better place.  The status quo of my country is choking the Earth, stripping citizens of their rights, and increasing militarism and hegemony around the world.  And I refuse to take part.  I don’t know how to not take part yet, but I know what I see on a daily basis is failure from the institutions so many still naively trust.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote,

Violence can only be maintained by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

Does this blog need to detail the 30,000-65,000 barrels of lies pouring from the mouths of British Petroleum and the White House on a daily basis?  Does THE BRAKE LIGHTS TOLL-FREE HELPLINE need to clarify its position on this physical manifestation of greed?  There aren’t enough cages or concrete for some people!  The world being built around the rest of us is designed for obedience to a monolithic system that doesn’t pause to reflect when surging forward.  ”We’re not looking back,” our President says.  ”We’re moving forward!”

Mountaintop removal, regional ecocides like the one in the Gulf of Mexico, and industrial farming using Nazi-designed slaughterhouses are some immediate images that come to mind when considering the avarice of consumption.

I found this book by Bill Knott in South Carolina some years ago.  The following lines always wowed me:

To look at things in a new slant is fine
But it’s more fun
To jump into the slant and disappear forever

Not worried about Twitter feeds

I want to go to Mongolia.  Living in a yurt, falconing the green plains under crystal blue skies, not worrying about traffic, no Manhattan Projects, no population, just Life.   It’s not Facebook that makes people like you.  Twitter isn’t making the world more fascinating.

Leaving Philadelphia was a wise decision. You can only glue so many experiences together in one locale with the same folks before the pastiche gets blurred to black.  When that happens, the world gets dark.  Cops and ambulances, sirens and violence.  Freeways filled with Hummers with OBX oval  stickers.  If you want to change the human world, you must first leave it behind.

I talk through you & filter subjects
Little sunsets flare out from your wings
Our words burn out
Pondering surface tension
Kicking eggs into oxygen
A new fragmented experience
They talk through you -  abrasive notions
Your wings fold back
Having no home
Gravity guides freefall
Reason can be a string of logical ideas
Or a person perched above an oyster’s pearl

Walkman

My poems mosey wayward
Order a double whiskey
Dousing flames with petrodollars
A canon of words
Feuds with the jukebox
I spur
When the poems start stumbling
Preferring a Walkman to talking

Musical Notes

Everyone says they have the best sex
Like they’ve planned a grand opera
Speaking in symphonies
Are little crumpled up musical notes
Lying beneath your crumpled up clothes
Waiting to be used – incompletely decomposed

The Culture of Make-Believe – Derrick Jensen

Exploring the manifestations of social hatred (from lynchings to the Holocaust to Iraq and beyond) from a deep ecology-minded perspective, Derrick Jensen condemns the current System in a fast-paced narrative.  It is critical to understand the deeper, questionable machinations that control social patterns and impact the well-being of ourselves and our planet.  This book also explores the problem of an apathetic populace and the corporate domination of every sector of life as humanity stumbles onwards towards its great cosmic destiny.

Free Cell -Anselm Berrigan Anselm Berrigan’s free radical poetry chops your hands off mid-line, drops the book into your lap, and caresses you with disquiet indie pop allusions and echoes of ubiquitous advertising absurdities as it cheers on that last ill-intentioned pint before the crestfallen exit from the pub on a Monday night while ambitiously and unambiguously telling you it might not be OK, but I wouldn’t know anyway.  This small tome, published by City Lights Press, features three poems worthy of multiple sittings.  All of Anselm Berrigan’s work is highly recommended; Integrity & Dramatic Life and Some Notes on My Programming are essential must-haves.

Free Cell at City Lights Press

The Last Man (series) This comic book series imagines a future where half of the population immediately drops dead…leaving only women behind the wheel of Spaceship Earth.  There remains, however, one man and his male pet monkey to save/perpetuate the world as they knew it.  Israeli spies, Amazon women, mad scientists, government agents, and women, many women, comprise some of the cast of this engaging graphic novel adventure.