A Singular Reality and An Unforgiving Paradox
The soul is given to pressure,
in some ways inevitably so even,
and lose a portion of its integrity in the balance.
The cost of building a home, maintaining it,
repairing it, the superficial obstacles
of hiring a mechanic, of negotiating
for a better cellphone plan.
Most dearly, the soul, the individual,
bargains with its very self for
a small share of a popular culture.
in this case: America after 1900,
give or take.
The faiths were quite divided and
simplified by that juncture, but
not the churches.
Churches were hardly more than private clubs
at the time I'm writing of: personalized
shrines of one's faith to that faith, that
taller organization of lesser stones.
And by the end of the 1960s -- not a day later --
the inferno where Commitment was harshly challenged
by Reality set any reliable trace backwards to its
original roots into the cruel ashes and hopeless anger
of that obvious, tortured defeat.
Then the Crack Epidemic. Then AIDS. Then the 1990s.
When I study the poor killing the poor, the disenfranchised
exploiting the disenfranchised, any of us cheating any
of us as though it were some hopscotch tournament
of neutered singers and ugly clowns, my heart wonders
when this grotesque parody of itself will finally die.
Despite our beauty, so much our lives are unnecessary.
****
kinda like you made the ending before I started? kind
of like you knew you'd be going in circles so
you're just going in circles
to prove yourself right,
hopelessly, senselessly right?
****
Quiet roulette
ReplyDelete~
The whiskey-drinking lady
had given a considerable effort
of thought to the gains inherited
from rediscovering semi-lost things.
How they double their value
in the vacancy of the what was,
how time does peculiar things
in its otherwise normal passage.
Submariner physics, complete
with a math of the untold:
those amorphous, liquid
truths and realities of nomadic souls.
And wandering out from
her alleged sobriety
the lady took up
a familiar pen.
Raw ground and the
recently invented rhythms
temporarily estranged
from their default states
and the archeology of
the self chased between
lines drawn in ink, in blood,
in the confusion of its own
chronology and structure
and beautiful impermanence
of its treacherous yet
adoring livelihood:
It provides an unlikely shelter
among the settlements
whether they are
established or beyond knowing.
And she thought of a brother's
silence, the words he left for her
to cast light in the recesses
and provide shape for a love
that calls for gunpowder.
****
ReplyDelete[Lateral prefrontal cortex] [Medial Prefrontal Cortex]
3(a) wants, goals,
sex, status, goods, needs
!/sense of direction,
amount, degree,
in/accuracy of 2--seat of spontaneous, arbitrary will
(*) 3(c)
4
3(b)
1. seat of sensation
(*) limbic system registers cues, estimates environment
2. selects task category, presentation thereof
3. searches internal vocabulary;
--selects 1: at leisure or
2.w/o consideration
*/4. composes in/direct strategy to complete desired task.
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an amateur physician's guide to interpreting the woefully superficial, inexperienced young person of today (2025 model)
idea for a new hustle
ReplyDelete~
in my ten or so years of on-again
off-again homelessness, I have
attempted most of the standard methods
of generating an income
short of selling my fluids or orifices.
(although I did get a fast $20 once
for taking an STD test in California!)
this morning, taking a usual walk in
a random direction I had an idea
for an alternative panhandling.
I can't play the guitar, or any other instruments
for that matter, but, at least on a fantasy-dependent
level, I thought poetry could adequately serve
as a substitution.
I thought I could ask another homeless person I know,
who's actually responsible enough to
have a regular sort of employer,
if maybe she'd be interested in reading
some
of my poems at a worthwhile intersection
while I held a medium-sized sign
indicating we weren't in it exclusively
for the love of the game.
imagine my words in the voice
of a stoic girl, tight pronunciation
and flawlessly black short hair
while the vehicle-secured pedestrians
pretend to check their phones
or dial-around for a new radio station.
...of course, I'll continue to drag my hands
through the public and the residential waste bins,
past the restaurant trash of sparkling new maggots
and the surprise clusters of dry dollars
of the practically clever & humanely poor.
it is as foolish to underestimate the importance of
money
as it is foolish to overestimate
the importance of money, and
wise people tune an unmistakably keen
discretion, as though a want for music
possessed more power than armies.
****