POEM: And Love Comes, However Inconceivably

Posted on June 12, 2015 by

There I stood
I was in
That not so thin line
Between getting
More than I could ask for
And more than I bargained for
The distinction of gratitude
Or the convergence of thieves
Still born
Of one accord
I went to the free market
Fore sum
More
Faith, hope, and love
Only to find myself
A loan
The busyness of life
Having
Souled out
What I kneaded
Only awkwardly grasping
Elusive presence
Fore me
It was
I am
Mine too
In vest
Awe the wile
Selling my wears
In what too due
I will
Caste out
This ward robe
Such a flat attire
And commanding duds
As the spruce
Following suit
In the sparrow weigh
And a will scant due
Compared too
Trends figuring
Brighter than bright
Shining like a son
Without be getter
Unable to look
In the face of Goddess
And live
As kin udder boobs
Possessing womb to grow
Nor looking back
Staring into the abyss
Proffering doubt
Up front
That the hole is greater
Than the sum of the parts
Bought to you
Buy a hire power
A savor of experiences
Made passable
Of awe that is gratuitous
As invalid
Inexorably pro cure
As if
Dogmatically heel
Only to that witch is
But a wrestful silence
In the face
Of free dumb
And drawl conclusions
A cross the lyin’
Thinly veiled
And will
You bye it
When fair it out
A world without heir
Oar a descent living
As kin dread spirits
Ascertain as death
And more taxing
An undistinguished life
Seized
Except for inaugural bawls
And conclusive wimpers
Stand up!
Arise from your grave condition
And deathly accommodations
A veil your self
Of divine under standing
Aura new day dawns
Illiciting epiphanies
As learning on the everlasting alms
Faith found
Hope secured
And love comes
However inconceivably

Love cannot be stopped.  Love under-girds the beneficence of reality.  Love can be plausibly denied, just as God can be plausibly denied.  Focusing on other things, lesser things than love, may seem more productive in everyday life.  Of coarse, the busyness of life is often more repetitive than re-productive.  Love, as is God, is a gentleman, amongst other things, and heels in the presents of unimaginable patience.  A similar sentiment is sublimely expressed by Rumi, a beloved poet to millions, a beloved poet to One:

IT’S RIGGED

by Rumi (as translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

It’s rigged – everything, in your favor.
So there is nothing to worry about.

Is there some position you want,
some office, some acclaim, some award, some con, some lover,
maybe two, maybe three, maybe four — all at once,

maybe a relationship
with
God?

I know there is a goldmine in you, when you find it
the wonderment of the earth’s gifts will lay
aside as naturally as does
a child a
doll.

But, dear, how sweet you look to me kissing the unreal;
comfort, fulfill yourself in any way possible — do that until
you ache, until you ache,

then come to me
again.

 

 

.

Posted in Poems | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: Car Less

Posted on March 7, 2015 by

One moment I have a car
The next moment I don’t
The universe conspires
To nourish my feral body and sole
Not with the twisted steal of civilization
But as a carrot
In a field of vision
Meting its purpose at crunch time
And the growing realization
Consummated by that instant in sight
That know one was hurt
A mist the scarred land marks
Mother Earth will breathe a little easier now
As I will
Walk and bike her paved surface
In treating me to go deeper
Ever-seeking serendipitous lifts
In tangling with the care less
And the car less
I am
Feted to join
The bus people in the world

This poem is an ode to my car being totaled in a wreck yesterday when a woman turned her car in front of me as I was going through an intersection.  Gracefully, no one was hurt.  To make a long story short, my beloved car will unlikely be resurrected, and I am not really in a position to buy and maintain another car (even if I get some modest settlement for my beater car in this instance).  Over the last couple of years, I have contemplated the notion of living without owning a car.  I figured that this would become a reality at some point in the coming years.  Due to two seconds yesterday, this reality has manifest much sooner, without warning.  Like they say: if you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans!  Of course, I want to make God laugh.  Fortunately, God persistently has better plans for me than I can implement through my well-planned connivings.  I find these junctures in life as fascinating paradoxes of the worst possible timing and perfect timing.  As a die-hard metaphysical optimist, I am going to go with the perfect timing.  Yep, that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it!

So, I took the bus today.  This was the first time in a long time.  Most assuredly, this bus ride will be the first of many.  I asked the bus driver if he had a schedule for the 20/24 line and he said, with a seasoned blend of acceptance and resignation,”We haven’t had those schedules for months.”  I fully expect my busing experiences to be rife with poetic inspiration.  Look out, folks, my feral trajectory is coming to fruition, fraught with unworn deliciousness…

 

Posted in About Top Pun, Poems | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: A We Occupation

Posted on February 10, 2015 by

I get deeply cared away
Buy you being
On the same side as me
Conveniently not paying
A tension
To the under
Lying fact
That there is but
Won side
Which wee occupy

This short poem addresses a theme that underlies much of my poetry, that, in ultimate reality, we are one.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. so eloquently stated: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”  The ego, wed to its own independence, over and above interdependence, resists a shared destiny, routinely seeking to carve out its own apparent advantage over larger realities.  After experiencing one’s fair share of unpleasant events, and witnessing the sheer pervasiveness of such events in life, competing to rise above such a fray seems eminently natural — eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.  Only a deep humility and an unbound love for life can transform destruction of selves into self-realization.

Must life feed on life?  Of course, as one, what else could one feed upon?  As a literal example, our food comes from living beings.  Now, some meat-eaters employ this fact as a convenient rationalization that killing is normal, or at least a “necessary” evil, and lazily leap to a mode of thinking (and eating) where killing is of little consequence.  I see enlightenment of living beings gently resting on that thin line between eating and being eaten.  If life must feed on life, is there a way of feeding upon life that enhances life not diminish it?  I believe that life can get bigger or smaller, as a whole, and as a self within the whole.  How big or how small I’m not sure.  Nonetheless, that thin line, our consciousness, is where the expansion or contraction rests.  Is our consciousness, and conscientiousness, confined to our self, our family, our tribe, our species, our planet, or what?  Consciousness may very well be the heart of life itself.  In this case, increasing consciousness increases life and decreasing consciousness decreases life.

One construct of evil would be feeding on death, a level of (un)consciousness that does not recognize or share consciousness with other beings.  Evil consumes consciousness.  In a sense, what evil does share is unconsciousness or contracted consciousness.  Functioning with a shared unconsciousness reduces humans to mere billiard balls, a set, albeit complex set, of cause and effect relationships guided by causes (including others’ wills) outside our self.  In essence, “choosing” unconsciousness or declining to expand consciousness takes us out of the game (the game being enhancing consciousness, life).  Contracted consciousness is a set of relationships (a “contract”) created and maintained by our wills, consciously chosen.  It is these contracts that form the substance and style of our culture, ethical debates, and political fights.  Still, consciousness, and its creative existential force, the will, lies outside any particular set of relationships (material conditions) that can be chosen.  Expanding consciousness will necessarily run into this awareness, that any particular culture, set of social conditions, or ideology, cannot control our conscious free will.  The seemingly obvious exception to this is death, or more specifically, killing, presumably ending conscious free will.  Justified killing is included in most contracts among humans today.  What this often overlooks is that killing particular expressions of conscious free will does not eliminate conscious free will; most bluntly illustrated by the fact that this would require suicide (thus, the fascination of murder-suicide by existentialist writers).  No doubt, killing is a very blunt way of trying to reign in conscious free will.  Of course, many contracted belief systems include an afterlife, the survival of conscious free will.  If this is true, this radically alters the effectiveness of killing.  Unfortunately, sometimes the belief in an afterlife, rather than simply leading to bold living, serves in the rationalization of killing (e.g., “kill them all and let God sort them out”).

Conjoining our consciousnesses seems best served by the most profound precept: love your enemies.  That which is not you — or more aptly put, that which you do not want to be you — must be both transcended and entered into.  Each of us and all of us are best served by manifesting the courage to confront and reconcile both our own inner dark side and the darkness manifest in others.  Back to the eat or be eaten metaphor, the question is begged: what if you were the pray.  The more gently profound precept, have compassion on all living beings, spurs us to walk in another’s shoes and no what it is like for shoeless souls laid bare to the world.  May we all be grounded, and laid to rest, with such compassionate and conscious living.  I deeply appreciate the Zen story of the man encountering another man somewhat boasting in tales about his great relationship and love of animals, to which he interjects, “A fish once saved my life.”  The boaster’s curiosity was peaked to hear such a tale.  To which he was told: “Once I was lost in the woods and perilously hungry.  I found a fish in the stream, and I ate him.”  This signature Zen approach is transcendentally funny and, not coincidentally, enlightening.   He deflated pomposity.  Lauded the fish which saved his life.  Plus, he outflanked even the most compassionate ideology, witnessing to the mystery of mysteries needed to instill life into any chosen ideology.  The Christian take on dietary ideologies is less clever but makes a similar point: “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.” (Matthew 15:11)

All great philosophies and the mysticism at the heart of all religions recognizes the irreducible, creative freedom present in humans.  The mystery of creation parallels the making of humans in God’s image as co-creators, romping around the created universe.  Creation focuses on the will, the power present in human consciousness, and presumably God’s consciousness.  However, consciousness is the prerequisite to experience itself, whereby meaning arises, even made possible. Consciousness gives rise to (the experience of) the other, the myriad of things, including our body and mind.  Consciousness, sometimes called “The third eye,” is the seat of all seeing, even able to see our mind from a vantage point other than the mind itself, the true “I.”  Consciousness enlivens existence with experience and we can meaningfully participate in the myriad of things (the created world) through our will.  I strongly suspect that the foundational importance of relationships, sharing, and creation spring out of the nature of God.  As I see it, God consciousness and will give rise (create) to the other so it can share the experience of an other.  Maybe God just got tired of self-consciousness (see my poem: An Answer to the Problem of Evil, which is much more playful than the weighty title might connote).  Giving/creating seems to be the foundational nature of sharing present in enlightened beings, which cements the centrality of relationships among others.  I am struck by the tripartite truth of consciousness of self, the palpable created reality in which we experience, and the irascibly creative will from which we add our own touches.  Granted, I may be touched.  Still, there is a spirit within me that will not rest until our created reality is won size fits awe.

 

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: You’re Ass It’s Monetized

Posted on January 26, 2015 by

Monetize
You’re ass
It’s
What
Civilized
People
Due

This is a good Monday poem, as millions return to jobs where their value as human beings takes a back seat to their value as moneymaking machines.  In our capitalistic culture, when monetization meets humanity, monetization wins far too often.  Apologists for capitalism, with scarce irony, claim that such monetization fuels civilization.  Well, if valuing capital over workers, money over people, is the foundation of civilization, then I oppose civilization.  I recognize that most capitalists don’t object to humanity, it definitely softens some of the harsh social consequences of profiteering.  Of course, when profiteering collides with humanity, which it inevitably will, the moral and humane choice or priority is to preserve and advance humanity, not profit.  The workings of money, often referred to with reverence as the “economy,” poses as that which all worthwhile seems to depend upon.  This is a lie.  This is inhumane at best, idolatry at worst.  Money is a tool.  People should not be tools.

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

PUCO Testimony – FirstEnergy Robbery of Ratepayers

Posted on January 16, 2015 by

Below is my testimony at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) hearing regarding the proposed corporate welfare for FirstEnergy.  There was an impressive show of force by the anti-nuclear and pro-environmental folks from the region.  There was a show of farce by the usual parade of brown-nosers whose employment is closely related to Davis-Besse nuclear plant operations.  Still, the greatest number of testifiers were opposed to the above-market rate hike to subsidize FirstEnergy’s uncompetitive and dangerous energy generation.  In an unusual move, PUCO literally made every testifier swear.  So, legally, this testimony is “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”  May PUCO deny FirstEnergy’s application to rip off ratepayers for private profit.

Testimony at PUCO Public Hearing
Re: First Energy Robbery of Ratepayers
January 15, 2015

My name is Dan Rutt. I am a citizen of Toledo and this great planet. I have a B.S. in biology. I have a masters degree in public health. I am a breather of polluted air from coal-fired electric generators. I share with you a planet that is threatened by global climate instability, due to pollution from carbon dioxide and co-called “natural” gas, more accurately described as methane. I live in the deathly shadow of Davis-Besse, the aging nuclear power plant with the worst safety record in the U.S., thanks to a couple of nuclear plants which have been wisely closed recently for safety and economic reasons. It’s Davis-Besse’s turn — hopefully to be decommissioned, not blow up. To you who live outside the region, welcome to Davis-Besse’s kill zone.

I will take my precious few minutes to plead with PUCO, charged with protecting public health and economic sanity. Do not allow the building of a pipeline from the First Energy corporate board room to the public purse. The boondoggle that is the Davis-Besse nuclear plant drives this issue. Davis-Besse is a poor investment economically, a perilous venture environmentally, and a catastrophic threat to human life along the Great Lakes. The federal government already indemnifies the nuclear industry from accountability for catastrophic events. PUCO should not further this lack of accountability by forcing the public to invest in nuclear plants. If anything we should disinvest from nuclear power.

First Energy has lobbied to prop up coal and nuclear, the way of the past. We need change, not infrastructure and rate plans which will lock us into an unsustainable future. Still worse, First Energy has lobbied to block the transition to renewable energy, the way of the future. If First Energy is allowed to pass on most or all of the risk of its increasingly risky ventures to the public — that is, ratepayers and biological entities susceptible to lethal radiation catastrophes — then I suspect that this could trigger a rush of entrepreneurial types wanting to PUCO all over Ohio.

The energy industry is quite adept at playing the hodgepodge of regulatory agencies for its own profit. They are experts at leveraging the narrowness of regulatory agencies’ perspectives and authority, which, given time limitations here, may be summed up as: “It’s not my job” and “I’m only doing my job.” Ironically, this may leave us with somebody’s job, even a so-called “good” job, but no livable world. If your work leads to the destruction of the planet, then it is not a good job. Job one must be protecting the planet. This includes accountability for those who would “invest” (sic) in the destruction of our planet for profit.

There is little doubt that we are being gamed. And if we don’t get wise to this, there are likely to be many losers, and few winners. I wonder if perhaps this issue might be better served by a change of venue. Perhaps we should add to the mix oversight by the Lottery Commission or Casino Control Commission; it might be more honest. Perhaps we could turn that ole Besse into a cash cow. Convert it from a white elephant into a casino. We could call it “Chernobyl on the Lake — an Eerie Adventure.” We could feature Russian Roulette. Unfortunately, we, the public, are already subject to a game of Russian Roulette, playing with nuclear catastrophe and the steamroller of climate instability. Free us from this deadly game. Help us pave the way to a new and sustainable future. Disapprove this proposed rate plan, the robbery of the many to enrich the few, and a dangerous course for all. Thank you.

[Note: I didn’t read this poem at the hearing, but included it in my written testimony]

Good Job
by Dan Rutt, alias “Top Pun” (it’s just, my pun name)

It was early Monday mourning
When the Davis-Besse nuclear plant
Finally ruptured
At the base of Lake Eerie
Weeping poison
From the once-great lakes
Now a watery grave for both sellers
And consumers
Of atomic drivel
For what human remains
The event became known
Simply as “The rupture”
Leaving sleepy millions
In its wake
Sucked into a glowing sky
For who knows watt
Feudal to press release
Fore their heavenly reword
A paradise rolled
Entranced buy snake eyes
In charge of all that meters
Relegating us to hoarse power
Silent partners
Dealt a roil flush
In a conniving casino
Pain only in skullduggery
Forging height reason
And absolute faith in stonewall
As a bet
A dark wager
Echoing in the empty halls
Of unions and congress
“Good job”

Posted in About Top Pun, Health, News, Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: What If Everybody Did That?

Posted on January 13, 2015 by

Such sophistry
Firmly on the bench
But
What if
Everybody did that
Judging propriety
Smudging property
An intolerable act
My conscience
He decreed
Must fall
Into line
With Kant
Where every reason
Reduced to rant
It’s the leash they can do
In such a fine whirled
Of ethical confinement
And duly deputized
Might be right
As I thought
With unparalleled infection
Of making love to my wife
Only to arrest my life
At the notion
What if
Every body did that
And the orgy in suing
As just us
Endures a courtly rendition
Sow evident
Out of the question
As signs everywhere
Of legal violation

This poem was inspired by my encounter this mourning with a Toledo Municipal Court judge.  I appeared in court to address putting address labels on light poles.  The labels called for justice for Danny Brown, a local man who has endured 32 years of legal violation, including 19 years in prison for a crime he did not commit [see Justice for Danny Brown].  Also not having committed that crime, I feel as a kindred spirit to Danny.  Putting labels on light poles incited a criminal mischief charge, a third degree misdemeanor.  I was definitely more guilty than Danny Brown for this crime.  I made a statement that whatever cost may be associated with label residue on poles, it pales in comparison to the outstanding injustice Danny brown endures.  In simply monetary terms, compensation for his wrongful imprisonment would be over $900,000.  Interest alone, at 3%, would be $27,000 each year.  However, since Lucas County Persecutor Julia Bates continues to hold Danny on a person of interest list, linking him to an “active” (sic) case, he cannot apply for due compensation.  Danny is living in this legal, yet immoral, limbo indefinitely.  I consider my stickering a simple act of civic responsibility, working for justice for Danny brown as a person of interest in this case.

In a stunningly predictable statement, the judge asked the rhetorical question, “What if everybody did what you did?”  My poem is one answer to this question.  I can sleep well at night meditating on the question: what if everybody took risks for one another in working to ensure justice for all?

The judge’s Kant do attitude, whether knowingly or unknowingly, is a reference to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s best known contribution, that of the moral imperative, of universalizing a proposition to see what would happen, and making a judgment informed by that perspective.  Of course, if everybody fined me for a low level misdemeanor, then I would be in financial ruin — hardly proportional to the so-called crime.  I am not mocking Kant so much as the poor application of such logic by the judge.  In any case, and there will probably be more, while the judge is firmly on the bench dispensing with justice, I’ll be in the streets addressing justice for Danny Brown.

P.S. the reference to “my wife” represents poetic license, not a marriage license.  My sweetheart of 17 years is still my official muse, though unofficial “wife.”

Posted in About Top Pun, News, Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: Insane Asylum Patience

Posted on January 9, 2015 by

Whose violence is worse
They argued
The insane asylum patience
Condemning barbarism
As the strongest barbarians
Write history
And write makes right
Or sow it might
As cartoonish caricatures
Capture humanities
A tension
Leaving those under
Lying causes
Uniformly camouflaged
Amid academic renditions
In citing violence
Abel to question
God and neighbor
And a religion that means
Peace
For know One
Con fronting
The insanity
Of necessary evil

This poem, universally condemning violence, was inspired in the wake of the murders of 12 cartoonists and journalists in France.  The perpetrators of this violence were apparently Islamic extremists, in contrast to other extremists such as those perpetrating violence in a secular, Christian, Hindu, or Jewish variety.  Violence is an evil to be rejected.  Violence should be rejected whether it is a lone assailant or with the official sponsorship of some nation-state or religious sect.  Still, there is a special place in hell reserved for those who sponsor hell-on-earth by heaping violence upon violence in some official capacity.  If you believe that violence is a moral imperative, or in some amoral way necessary, I would suggest exploring a bigger God or worldview.  Perpetrators of violence are self-fulfilling prophets.  If we don’t transcend the notion that violence is necessary, we will be rewarded with the perpetual struggle to dominate one another.  We are all recovering from the effects of violence.  This experience of hurt and loss feeds a reciprocal response with violence.  Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  This is a powerful law of both physics and metaphysics.  This law should not be taken flippantly; just look at the havoc perpetuating itself through the action of this law!  However, while this law has profound ramifications on human life, a palpable sign of the divine order of the created universe, humans are not bound only by this law.  Human free will, moral agency, can choose other options besides tit for tat.  Free will is a supernatural aspect of reality in the sense that it transcends mere physics; it adds stuff to the mix of nature and its rolling out of the cause and effect world.  As Gandhi so profoundly put forth, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  Of course, you don’t “have to” be nonviolent, just as you don’t “have to” be violent.  This may be the most profoundly beautiful aspects of human life, that each of us get to add our chosen reality to the mix of our shared reality.  And these choices will echo in eternity.

Posted in Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: Where The Win Blows

Posted on January 5, 2015 by

He axed me
What are your demands
Other than justice
Or saving life?
Claiming that
We must shed light
On just said
Shady distinctions
I mirrorly pronounced
That the win blows
And we no knot wear
Such goest
In this Ruth-less whirled
Whither fallowing
Long the weigh
In grave deliverance
Or
Idol metings
And hollowed turning
Led to goaled
As wee are ruled out
In is capable
Voiding this cryptic rout
Wear even
The wise crack
Quipping us
Beyond what said
As inevitable
Ran some
Never the less
A firm
I no people
Who are experts
In every thing for sail
Filling the echo chamber
With rounds and rounds
And shots for the hole shebang
Who wouldn’t know just us
If it
Peered before them
Un-less
Creating an impression
As passing wind
A harness for the people
Those political wins
Properly rigged
As canvassing
In every dialection
That exclusive rationale
Making everyone wont to yacht
Just saying
Utterly finished
With such stale heir
And wads of dollareds
For which the winds of change blow
Only wanting to go somewhere
Wear I can
Breathe
Just as
The win

This poem is about means and ends, and the dangerous complications of focusing so much on methods and techniques that the intended ends are no longer produced by the means.  For example, much ado about the Occupy movement focused on the perplexity about the apparent lack of specific demands.  Nevertheless, if you asked most any American what the movement was demanding, most of what they perceived was accurate.  Fix Wall Street; resist injustices with your whole body and soul — this might be one fair interpretation.  However, the distractive powers of the concrete are usually sufficient to keep one’s feet from hitting the concrete.  Getting caught up in the details can allow us to quiet effectively bend those details to our own privilege and self-interests.  If we keep our eyes on the prize, details will remain details, and how we get there becomes, well, details.  Still, even Wall Street, in its seeming Teflon vacancy, may appear immune to hanging the big picture upon.  You have to bring your own faith, they are sold out.  There is little argument that the Occupy movement has changed the political winds.  Who doesn’t immediately recognize and resonate with the framework of the 99% versus the 1%, and what justice demands?

The pragmatism of the world usually carries the day.  Courageous idealism, breeding hope and sacrificial solidarity, carries generations.  For the pregnancy of ideals to be borne into the world, they need to be carried to term, long-term.  The political riggings of short-term wins offers tempting short-term relief and the lure of incremental change.  Still, the winds of change will carry any riggings as it will; the pragmatism of politicians will follow any political wind.  Such is God’s genius, that even the most conniving politician will eventually, even dutifully, follow the political winds. The purpose of the citizen is to be the wind.  The patience, passion, and wisdom necessary for the good life can never be nailed down by technocratic solutions.  Whether the most “civilized” political compromise or outright crucifixion, a vital human heart cannot be built or destroyed by the best and brightest minds machinations nor the most-well-trained minions.  The spirit enlivening humanity comes and goes freely as the win.  Our way of life is literally a way of life, not an end to be achieved.  In the inescapable and quite capable dynamism of life, the means and the ends are, in fact, the same.  Daily living in a courageous and just fashion, no matter how unfashionable, is the truest currency of democracy; the rest is derivative, that is, follows.

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: Not Buying Heaven or Hell

Posted on December 18, 2014 by

Being not tempted
Buy heaven or hell
I yearn my keep
From the love unearth

I like epic themes, such as heaven and hell.  Nonetheless, I find the carrot of heaven or the stick of hell to be a distraction from good living on earth.  Love strikes me as what melds the good life on earth.  Love is a good in itself, reflecting the grace of our Creator.  Love is the way.  Love puts hell in the refuse category, rejecting the cynical notion that redemption is a dead end street.  Hell implies that God gives up on us, and that God’s will can only overcome us with some sort of eternal prison.  More insidiously, hell accepts that human will is somehow supreme, even trumping God.  Death itself seems a more than adequate fail-safe for limiting any human’s will! If there is a heaven, it would prove consistent with God’s pattern of surprising me with good things, taking me beyond my limited intellect, experience, or even imagination.  My conception of how God operates is much more like a parent raising a young child, or in my more mature states, like a lover wooing me into even greater ways of being.  My siblings in this big, strange human family may behave badly at times, but we are still family and need to have each others back, and at least not kill each other!  Cain murdering Abel was all the more outrageous because they were brothers.  It is no different today — we are all brothers and sisters.  We should not forget such things.  This is not simply a metaphor.  Evolutionary biology indicates that all modern humans descended from a common ancestor on the continent of Africa.  Humanity would be better served to remember our African mother and know that we are one race, the human race. Love of family is our greatest inheritance. Let this love bring us together, not tear us apart.

Posted in Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: Metings, I’d Rather Do Without

Posted on December 16, 2014 by

I listen
To that which speaks
A bigger
In feeleds of dreams
Wanting more
Then words
Aloft from fences
Of unsatisfying breadth
And stealy calculation
Dis passionate mines
As inevitable ballbusters
Descending from bona fide guise
Even handed lines
Powerless as me pick-up
As I have not
There be little left
Of right
And wrong
Targeted means
As I am
Made to feel
That I have
Gone nuts
Sow detached
Over looking
My groan
Up cast
For what have wee
To sphere
On earth
Like broken vassals
What have I too loose
As a flea wagging doggedly
In treating me too stay
As a thorn in my pause
As if I was lyin’
Or some thing
Crying out
Give it arrest
Only wonting
Hang round
Like sum constellation price
For nebulous reasons
Orbit
The bull it points
Forsake of the cause
Professoring each reaction err he
As if
I am
Missing inaction
And it’s time
To grow a pare
Seceding where others have flailed
More than a head
Of their times
Boosting their future
For this is how
They roll
Off the curve
Into the streets
Overwhelming every buy way
And what have anew
Thorough fair for all
And rout in justice
As we due it owed school
Where truth metes feat
In tuition
Of life

I’m publishing this poem and blog post instead of going to a meeting.  I’m not big on meetings.  And I’m getting smaller with each passing day.  About the only meetings I go to are activists planning one thing or the other.  I tend to avoid even these meetings.  Unfortunately, I generally find them unsatisfying.  Fortunately, the outcomes of these meetings are not sorely changed without my presents. Over the last year or so, after the occasional meeting, I have quipped that I only go to a meeting once a season just to remind myself why I don’t go to meetings.  I have been to countless meetings in my life, as a recovering professional planner.  These activist meetings fare above the average level of meeting satisfaction — though that might not be setting the bar very high.  This situation is captured by another saying of mine: that isn’t beneath me; it’s behind me.

Of course, when I refer to meetings, I mean formal meetings.  I like meeting with people, just more informally.  I like planning, more like conspiring, for activist actions.  I’d rather meet and conspire with activists at actions or in social settings without any driving agenda.  Or, afterwards, just catch the gist of what may been accomplished, in a few moments.  Then, see how I might participate.  I find myself on a steady path of wanting to live more organically; that is, with a minimum of man-made organizational structures.  My bullshit meter has become quite powerful.  I find that formal meetings, by either design or effect, draw out our more base instincts of wanting power/influence and control over others.  This tendency enmeshed with what I view as an over-intellectualization of the issues at hand poisons my experience.  Of course, I am a recovering abstract intellectualist; and I deliberately practice avoiding taking that first proverbial drink of the ever-sought perfected ideology or strategy.  I feel that I have found some balance between my head and my heart.  I find most meetings stifling to my heart.  My deepest yearnings are for our broken hearts to pour into the streets for the healing of the world.  I suppose this is way too messy for the powers that be.  I have studied the ways of personal and social change for my whole adult life, and with increasing frequency my heart overturns my distinguished head.  I guess that am slowly gaining my anarchist credentials, which, of course, means not relying on credentials.  I am deeply intrigued in exploring collective action without relying on cumbersome formal power.  I am finding increasing peace on the margins of power, even the margins of activists’ power.  I strongly suspect that nurturing the ability to sustain peace even at the margins of formal power is, in fact, a form of informal power of which humans could use more.  May you be empowered to follow your dreams.

Posted in About Top Pun, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: A Wrench In The Machine

Posted on December 8, 2014 by

He was having one of those lives
Where he woke up
Only to find himself
A wrench in the machine
Threw and threw
Putting his whole life into question
What kind of tool are you?

This poem was triggered by a recent conversation with my lawyer about a pending criminal mischief charge (for stickering poles downtown Toledo in the criminal justice district with stickers reading “JUSTICE FOR DANNY BROWN .COM”). In this conversation, I used the metaphor of a wrench in the machine. There is a growing realization in my life that jail time is in my destiny. Eugene Debs, perhaps said it best in his statement to the judge prior to his sentencing for resistance, stating:

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. [see full speech here]

Quite a few years ago, I had a dream. In this dream, there was an image that has stuck with me: I was dancing effortlessly amidst the huge, moving cogs and gears of a giant machine. I was unhurt and at peace, even joyful. This image reminds me of the possibility of being at peace in the dance with the machine. Of course, this image does not include the pain and death of being ground up in the machine, a reality every moment. I believe that the best meshing of these two realities is to practice disciplines cultivating joyful dancing as we throw our whole beings into resistance of the machines of death and into the reawakening of the deadened souls who find necessity in siding with death.

Power requires consent. Our consciousness of this helps free us to choose to better align with the forces of life than the forces of death. My unofficial motto is “Screw ’em,” as modeled by the character Col. William Ludlow, played by Anthony Hopkins, in the movie, Legends of the Fall. This may seem unduly negative, or even juvenile, to some; but, the impulse to withdraw consent from unjust authority is divine. While such rebellion may only be a first step, it is a necessary first step to confront the powers that be and to speak truth to power. Either way, without consent, aka complicity, humans cannot multiply their worldly power beyond their own, short, God-given reach. People do bad things, though having their reach limited to a relatively small human scale mitigates the worst of it. When living a human-scale existence we find our kin within grasp — a grasp of hands, minds and hearts. This is enough. To want more, is to trade our humanity for mere stuff. Consent and complicity is required for technologies of death to persist, whether they be armaments or corporations. Let us examine our lives for where they are forged as tools, not as artisans and creators made in the image of God, but as artifacts to be bought and sold. Let us withdraw our consent to such dehumanization and create a joyful dance in which all can freely participate. May you be joyful in your resistance.

Posted in Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: Making a Fuel of My Self

Posted on December 1, 2014 by

In the cold night
That darkest time
When dawns forgotten
My heart burns
With fear and pain
My home aflame
To an unaltarable offering
And fiery furnish
Of wanton change
Of hammering out or deal
For scanty respite
From that
I hate
Combusting
Up the world
With care less balms
And succors for bid
Sow overdo
And with such gall
I light
All things tinder
Overlooking the infernal warming
Of making a fuel of my self
In whatever eye wood do
Only just
In the mean time
Slamming on
The day brakes
I find myself
In the mourning
Executing catharsis
I come to
Grasping for breath
Only fearing what thou wilt due
I under stand
My shudders unbolted
Udderly apprehended
As in canned essence
Set free
Revealing my son ship
Brethren to awe
And cistern of tears
Still, don’t pine for me
For what
I have got
My ash kicked
By whatever might
Remain
As I urn my weigh
And when moan comes
My hearth is rekindled
Out shining
That which can never be
Holy defeated
Burnishing everything I knead

This poem is about both hope and the striking temptation of violence.  Violence begets violence.  Hate begets hate.  Likewise, love can overcome hate and violence.  Hope is embodied in nonviolent resistance to violence and injustice.  If we succumb to merely returning violence for violence, then we reinforce the cycle we supposedly resist.  If we don’t recognize and accept that at the deepest level of reality my enemy and I are one, then discord will be borne again…and again.  Violence is very hardy because it so predictably riles our most base instincts, the basic structure of our bodies and rudimentary psychology; that is, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Practicing the discipline of nonviolence is the way to break free from this self/other destructive chain of causal events.  Human will is transcendent, naturally rebellious, to this destructive lock-down of reactionary existence.  This inescapable rebellion against being trapped in seemingly perpetual violence is the birth of hope and the path of peace and justice for all.  An undefeatable aspect of human will always stands outside the seductive snare of merely reactionary behavior.  Choosing a higher path is possible.  As Gandhi so simply and boldly declared in word and deed, “Peace is possible.”  We can choose to dishonor this higher aspect of human existence by choosing to settle for reactionary participation in a seemingly inescapable chain of crap that nobody really wants but someone else “makes” me do, as if I am some soulless machine, voting in a rigged game.  This dishonors our true maker, mysterious and gracious.  Perpetrators, those who are most deeply embedded in the illusion that violence will give them the long end of the stick that is one humanity, erroneously believe that they possess some superior will in manipulating the machinations of the day to their advantage (at the expense of others).  Rather, their self-serving complicity with reactionary destructive violence is a denial of creative human will and hope for peace and justice for all.  To escape their own self-dehumanization they pompously attribute their apparent success in navigating the status quo of reactionary existence to a superior will, somehow free from others’ claims on them.  These so-called winners look to themselves apart, seeing themselves as self-made men — in a palpably peculiar insult to their mothers.  And as I like to say: if you are a self-made man, you have a fool for a maker.  Victims residing down the chain of injustice can mirror their perpetrators’ weighs by rattling the chain up or down, either giving the master curators of violence another specimen for their museum of humanity, or perhaps honing one’s hurt on someone even less able or willing to react commensurately.  The predictability of violence is captured in the insularity, unaccountability, and disconnect from humanity (their own and others’) that perpetrators of the powers that be experience in wanting mastery over their own lives.  The predictability of violence among victims is rooted in the reactionary reality that hurt people hurt people.  People tend to do what they know.  Can we know peace and justice, or at least cultivate its possibility?  While experiencing the hurt of violence and injustice can be a powerful impetus to respond unkind, it can also be a profound invitation to solidarity, empathizing, connecting and standing with others, each of who have experiences of hurt and injustice.  This is an aspect of God’s mysterious “preferential option for the poor” whereby reality is constructed in such a way that the poor have better access to their humanity than the rich.  As Brethren to awe/And cistern of tears we are better equipped to join together and bring peace and justice into the whirled.  May it be so.

Posted in Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: Nevermore Contrived

Posted on November 10, 2014 by

In the distant future
But not too distant
Man fashions
A machine
That does every thing
For us
For the trees
Imperceptible
To awe but sum
Living in passed tense
Eternal re-pose
Holding sway
In make believe lives
And unexamined lies
So bold over
Weather manner machine
Companied buy nerves of steel
No more tempting stripped ease
Fore incalculable futures
Re-buffed completely
In surging acts of sedation
Knot in any weigh
Quiet getting
What
We came for
Never more
Contrived

This poem is about the many falsehoods being sold as truth in the marketplace of ease and predictability.  Such calculating contrivances pawn the notion that two half-truths are of equal value as a singular truth.  While many such a fool’s formula are accompanied by beguiling animations, the lively hood they occupy is a barren busyness.  Life is not a package deal that can be souled by gimmicks and machinations, no matter how inventive.  There is no technology that can substitute for the disciplines of the heart.  There is no security system that can supplant the the counsel of courage.  There are no makeshift maneuvers that can unseat sacrifice.  There is no peril that does not shrink before wisdom.  There is no coercion that can do a way with liberty.  There is no worldly power or unequaled minions that can equal trust.  There is no status or celebrity that is the match of intimacy.  There is no brand identity, fan club or religion that can replace true solidarity.  There is no ploy that can stand-in for play.  There is no narcotic that can super seed hope and dreams.  There is no outsourcing of accountability.  Reality will have its weigh with you. We must throw our counterfeits into the forge of Mordor, as the hollowed ring of power leads us to false thresholds, revolving adores that steer us to idol pastures and perpetual cowing.

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: Succor Punch: Owed to Water

Posted on November 7, 2014 by

Water is
Liquid liveliness
On the surface
So abundant
Yet its unique
Properties for gotten
Pre-sumptuously owin’
The establishment
Of hour get-up and go
Taken
For granite
In difference to animating schemas
And listless graces
Making passable
Setting in motion
The commencement of
Every unfinished sentience
In ungraduated wisdom
Wading fore
A singularly strange sappiness
Perfectly suited too
The fluidity of life
A veritable firmament
Unearth
Melting arts
Unequalled
In the eyes sickle
Of all that is mined
And how to trust awe that won thaw
And whose falter
A mist
Viscous rumors
Holding heat
And reflecting lightly
Upon a painful temp
Such is life
Nigh and lo
Knot becoming
More dense
When faced with extreme code
Mysteriously arising
Unfathom-ably
Too lie on the surface
An enigmatic float
In a provocative parade
Of ineluctable chemistry
Dis solving orthodoxy
Putting a damper on bottom-feeding doctrines
And brown-nosing pax
Getting over simplifications
For what we moist dew
To reach
The molting point
A decidedly impossible sublimation
From solid to ethereal
Buy passing juicy rationalizations
To eternal quest in
So wet behind the years
De-man-ing an evolution
From unsurvivable fits
And try cycles
Spoke like a child
Turning around
Agin and agin
In a dizzying dis play
A baby threw out
With the bathwater
To except that
God reigns
On the just and unjust
As many will refuse
To fall
For such
A succor punch
A luscious liquidity
In which offed times
Wee can’t seam to a fiord

This poem is an ode to water.  Water is one of the most familiar substances on earth, covering approximately 3/4 of the earth’s surface.  Yet, water, one of the most chemically simple compounds, behaves very strangely, differently than predicted from its chemical structure.  Water doesn’t behave like other fluids; in fact, compared to similarly sized molecules, water should be a gas at room temperature.  Water, unlike most liquids, gets less dense when it freezes, causing it to float.  Water is sometimes referred to as the universal solvent because such a wide variety of compounds are able to dissolve in it and it is the most common chemical solvent on the planet.  The presence of these and other mysterious characteristics of water make life possible on earth.

As a scientist and a poet, I find water is a powerful metaphor for the mysteries and nature of life.  How is it that such a common, even mundane, substance incarnate such an incalculably improbable set of chemical characteristics that makes life possible?  Through science, humans have made incredible discoveries about how our universe works.  Still, scientists must stand silent in answering how life originated, or why life exists.  Life exists; this we know.  Answering why life exists transcends science.  Scientist are often like fish in a sea of meaning who are not simply blind to meaning but must willfully and ideologically ignore its claim on them; this is popularly called being objective.

In Buddhist tradition, creation stories are not considered that important because they consider how we got into our problems as much less important than how we get out of them.  This seems to be a very practical approach, if perhaps a little incurious.  Scientists share this practicality.  Nonetheless, nothing is even a problem unless we are functioning in a world infused with meaning.  Where does meaning come from?  This strikes me as essentially the same question as where does life come from.  Buddhism incorporates meaning into its practices based on the direct observation of mind, where there is thousands of years of agreed upon coherency forming the tradition, of which participants are invited to confirm for themselves.  While many of the truths of Buddhism have been confirmed by science, the defining truths related to meaning can only be confirmed (or denied) though direct personal experience.  Such “facts” lie outside the purview of science.

Science helps us accurately define the if-then conditions of the world — if this happens, then that will follow.  Strangely though, as fish in a sea of ifs, scientist cannot or will not see that the defining nature of humans rests in choosing one course of action over another, which resides in a world of meaning, something/somewhere transcendent of the causal chain of events that science works to describe.  If remains an eternal hypothesis which science cannot test.  Scientists can study Buddhists, but they can’t study Buddhism with science — at least not the reductionistic science favored in Western cultures.  The practicality shared by Buddhism and science is a commitment to rigorous observation.  Buddhism points its rigorous observation to inner as well as outer life.  Science limits itself to the outer world; the inner world is off-limits.  The inner world of meaning and choice is willfully ignored, sometimes simply assumed to be irrelevant, or worse yet, denied to even exist.  The inner world may be mysterious and elusive, but its secrets are definitely much less likely to experienced if one isn’t even looking there.

Philosophical ponderings and panderings aside, contentions between religion and science, physics and metaphysics, lie in misunderstandings in each respective realm of inquiry.  We are served by scientific literacy and its delineation of many useful facts.  We are served by fluency in our inner life and exploring the humanity of others.  And still, the realm of meaning begs our attention and intention: who, or what, shall you serve?

 

 

 

 

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: In What Seams Faultless

Posted on November 6, 2014 by

At certain moments
I am left
In a world
Beyond
That which is
My own
Speechless
In what seams faultless
Only to be
Hereafter
Unleashed
After awe
Unforked tongue
Speaking freely
To anyone who can
Here
Experiencing such presence
Unfrayed of whoever’s might
Raze doubts
Without distinction
Of those naked to the world
And wholly close off
To any conception
Of consummate being
Unfucked
And irreproducible
Sow what
They attest
Ribbing such hipness
I deal
With it
As holy inconceivable
Awe that is receivable
Soully redeemable
Oar simply unspeakable

This poem is an ode to the wondrous nature of life and the blessed certainty of certain experiences that expose us to truths that cannot be accessed by the mere triangulation of facts.  Also, this poem is a tribute to the conundrum faced by poets and prophets everywhere where the most deeply experienced truths leave us speechless and yet call us out to speak freely about that beyond that which can be bought.  The gossamer armor of poets and prophets is easily pierced by those prone to cynical pokings.  Cynics and sadists get perverse pleasure in crying out, “I don’t buy it.”  To which poets and prophets can only respond “exactly.”  Skepticism is so much more easily packaged and neatly priced — for those who proffer such things — than the freely given intimacy of a singular truth.

I find myself drawn to the phrase, “I was struck,” as a way to describe this immediate and direct experience of truth, free of the “means” inherent in the commerce of daily life.  Being struck implies something palpable, perhaps even enough to get the attention of someone who usually requires getting hit on a bit to get them to pay attention.  Still, the shared truth is more wooing than getting hit upon.  The unspeakable force of this truth is manifest simply by paying attention.  The palpability is more akin to breathing or a heart beating, the present necessity of life finding its way into the world but neglected, taken for granite in a more concrete whirled.  The familiarity of this world of steal leaves us petrified and orphaned in a world parently without much forbearance.  The ostensibly passive voice of “being struck” intimates another actor, another subject, tendering an offer so tender that its import counters boarders difficult to cross.  The nourishment is present to those who can fiord to see.  Nonetheless, in loo of moral fiber, many constipating skeptics promptly pooh-pooh any such experience; and to their wonderment are unimpressed by what remains.  Mean wile, scorn points at the quiet telling, at what is dumb founded.  The inescapable forest of logic is stumped. The prize paid is too ironically fined that missing peace in their puzzlement.  Re-covering truth is a threadbare undertaking.  Aww, to be borne again!  Awe natural is the only propriety birth day suits.  Veracity is no wear to be found.  Perhaps the best we can do is to strike a pose and hope that there is more to come than leaving them in stitches.  There is sow much more than making an offer, that one scant refuse.

Posted in Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

ELECTION POEM: We De-serve More Than One Date a Year

Posted on November 4, 2014 by

Even with
The sorry lack
He in the capitol arena
He refuse
To beg for change
As riddled with ballots
From a stone throne
Presumed in a sense
As the free mark it
To mock a difference
In hour damn nation
Weather staying qualm
Or carrying on
As beheading
The wrong direction
Right
That’s going to work
Like pulling jobs
Out of a hat
Railroaded
And Rand over
Take
You’re choice
Taking liberties
Wear ever
Whatever
Left
Dying
With boots on
Won’s neck
And arms flailing
In the heir
Violins playing
US again
And masses cry
Weight
For some guardian angle
Following-lite
30 seconds and never the goaled
Promising silver ballots
For the monster knock off of your choice
The leaser of two evils
Billed on platforms not worth one read assent
Rhetorical quests in
Skirting half the populace
Out flanking the body politic
And the only deliverance
Is backwards male junk
Ridden on drossy stationary
Acceding Stepford lives
Androids answering robo calls
Buy passing any hire power
Rebutting humanity
Like sum tally whacker
Awl to govern us
Violating our hides
Out ranking privates
Another poll taken
As nations pawned
And questions razed
From the dread
The answer
Lies
Before us
And incite us
The time is now
To re-wind
These vane choices
Truly bearing
As wee
Vote with our feat
And in-F-able arts
De-serving
More than one date a year
Arrest of our daze
Courting flaccid elections
Feudal proposals
And tickets beyond won’s means
Soully to forge more candid dates
And over power
Our faux
Never miss lead

It’s election day!  This election poem captures the perennially popular cynicism concerning politics, particularly electoral politics, and issues a call for a more encompassing path to redress our collective grievances and embody our shared hopes.  In short, this entails year-round civic engagement where citizens vote regularly by putting some skin in the game and pouring their hearts into public life.  This sort of direct democracy leads by representing ourselves boldly and honestly to one another, backed up by whatever integrity we have in our lives.  We get the democracy we deserve.  Or, in this case, we get the democracy we de-serve.  We stop serving power structures and start serving one another.   This saps the top-down power so fraught with abuse and alluring to those more interested in governing others than governing themselves.  There is no patchwork of half-truths that can stand without the consent of the governed.  Elections are largely contrived of narrow choices pandering to the powers that be and offering mere styles of the status quo.  If we settle for a democracy that only works a day or two a year, and barely that, then we should adjust our expectations commensurately.  Though this is not the only choice: hemmed and hawed candidates or non-participation, not voting.  Whether you vote or not — and I think you should make such a modest investment of time — the body politic is not formed in a day or two.  What we do the rest of our days is decisive.  Work, shop, consume, die may be one way to go, but what price do we pay for our “free” time.  Free people live and give freely.  Free people are the freedom the want to see in the world; they are not waiting for license from others.  I like the saying: activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.  I occupy this planet first, am a member of the human race second, and a citizen of a particular political jurisdiction/shopping zone thirdly.  If we unabashedly order our lives according to our deepest values and priorities, the sheer existential force of our lives will champion our planet, give rise to a cherished humanity, and even create a firewall against bullshit politics mistaken for a fertile common-wealth.  Of course, like they say, freedom isn’t free.  Being change in the world will exact a price.  And while you may only get what you pay for, there are untolled pleasant surprises along the way.  The only real question is how much are you willing to pay, and how much are you willing to play?

Posted in Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: The Taoist Dowager

Posted on November 3, 2014 by

The Taoist dowager
Bends gently to that before her
Inclined to bless
Those below
Indivisible
To the high and mighty
Wholly touched
Braille beyond the see
Maid of tender harmonies
Composed
Of one, a chord
The maladies of life joyfully singing
Farming the music of our years
Covered by perfect lines
Of what may be
Momentarily forgotten
Only later recalled
By progeny
And prodigy
And even those
Occupying there posterity
Like some kind of bum
Or a baggy lady
Udderly fool of it
From cradle to grave
Fully pampered
Content
To cede generations
For a moment
For hour
A muse meant
This consummate ode lady
Siren from beyond hear
A thirst only quenched
By water on the rocks
Having strung out
Countless improbable moments
A mist
An impossible life
Beyond contemplation
Not getting bent
On 100% proof
With a taste that smacks of grace
A singular savor
Unpalletable to sum
Treated like a fragrant
Bye others
Having
Perfected that groovy hide
From a rash
Of uncommon sense
Fore hers
Such an inconceivable vehicle
As chary it
Like the wind borne
In quiet the mine
A sentience unabridged
Having awe ready arrived
A slow motion ninja
Only to be
In what will be
Carried away
In eternity

This poem emanated from the title phrase, Taoist dowager, that emerged from one of my many ruminations.  As is often the case, a phrase that is too good to pass up grows into a complete poem.  I am drawn to Taoist philosophy and Eastern thought in that it seems to quite reliably offer balance to Western modes of thought and being.  The dowager metaphor is apropos in that it is typically a feminine sensibility that is the antidote to afford balance to dominant and domineering Western male culture.  Plus, wisdom is often rightly associated with increasing age and experience, not the least of which is experiencing and reflecting on the vulnerability inherent in senescence.  Buddhists make a practice of meditating on their own inevitable death, not as popular a practice among the young and seemingly invulnerable.  Nonetheless, Taoism claims the ever-present and eternal as accessible in the now, a certain holy equality, a pathless path, perpetually wooing us with enlightenment experiences that cannot be grasped but hold the key to living in harmony with reality and all living beings.  The folly of every age is to try to reduce such knowledge and wisdom to some type of elixir that can be bought, or more to the point, sold.  Even after being taken countless times, the allure of the latest snake oil quite reliably rouses our more base instincts.  The basest instinct blocking our experience of the Tao, the Way, is to take, for our self to acquire something from an other.

Clearly, in the Way of things, things come our way.  However, being given, to receive something, and taking, claiming something as one’s own private possession, are opposite perspectives.  Being given, receiving, is an attitude of gratitude and selflessness.  Taking is an attitude of greed and selfishness.  Now, Taoism is lauded for its mastery of complimentariness, the understanding that opposites interpenetrate each other and are only conceivable in contrast to one another; e.g., you can’t conceive of light without dark, or tall without short.  There is little doubt that a deep appreciation for the complimentary nature of reality is a powerful tool to keep us honest and on track in perceiving and aligning our life with reality.  Still, there are clues within each opposite to their relationship to the Whole, the Tao.  Its conceivable to me that people could live in perfect harmony, without contradiction, with an attitude of gratitude. It is inconceivable to me that people can live as greedy takers without contradictory and irreconcilable selves.  In the mysterious light of the Whole, gratitude is more consonant with reality.  Further, taking, claiming something as one’s own private possession, without any claim upon it from elsewhere is simply self-assertion.

There seems to be a consensus among philosophers and theologians of all stripes and perspectives that human beings cannot be the ground of their own being.  On one end of the spectrum this was most famously articulated by John Paul Sartre in his book, nay tome, Being and Nothingness, which built the intellectual foundation of modern existentialism.  On the other end of the spectrum, most human beings throughout human history have claimed life to be a gift from God (or gods).  Sartre and some others are content to contend that human freedom is condemned to naked self-assertions, however well-clothed in rationalizations.  God-seeking humans have sought a source of life, a ground for their being, a giver who is also a subject, not a happenstance collection of stardust within a serendipitously profoundly ordered universe.  The harshest and most minimalist existentialists settle for an existence where subjects cannot truly meet, or, if taken most strictly, cannot even be confident that other subjects even exist.  Such a bizarre assertion is welcomed by God skeptics who cannot fathom a Subject, but the corollary laughable denial of other human subjects’ existence is kept conveniently and shamefully out of public consciousness.  Taoists and many philosophers of consciousness posit something akin to a Consciousness that all consciousnesses partake in, a whole in which each part is inescapably in relationship with, even if well-clothed in ignorance and plausible deniability.  Christians speak of being made in the image of God.  Taoists, perhaps the least literal in their claims, allude to a dynamic Whole that informs our being of the Way.

A beloved metaphor often employed by Taoists is water, with all of its life-giving and unusual properties yet part of daily, seemingly-mundane experience.  The one who lives fluidly like water moves easily around that which is hardened.  Yet water, given time (an equally mysterious aspect of life), wears down mountains [see patience as the mother of all virtues!].  This poem gives a tip of the hat to this water metaphor with the lines: A thirst only quenched/By water on the rocks.  Thirst cannot even be conceived without quenching — unless perhaps you have the brutally masochistic tendencies of an orthodox atheist existentialist who braves permanent and absolute alienation (from even one’s self).  The line, Siren from beyond hear, intimates the dangerous half of thirst.  The water on the rocks alludes to the sober attention needed to recognize that water and ice (on the rocks) are fundamentally the same stuff, just in a different form.  Having strung out/Countless improbable moments/A mist/An impossible life/Beyond contemplation.  When faced with conundrums and uncertainties, there is a common tendency to hear beguiling Sirens and throw ourselves against the rocks.  Sober minds recognize this as A mist/An impossible life/Beyond contemplation/Not getting bent/On 100% proof.  In embodying an attitude of gratitude and selflessness connected to the One, one can quiet the mine/A sentience unabridged/Having awe ready arrived/A slow motion ninja/Only to be/In what will be/Carried away
In eternity.  May it be so.

 

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: Democracy – as seen on TV

Posted on October 31, 2014 by

Wherever I land
In the electoral whirled
Politicians ceremoniously execute
The will of the people
In doctored fashion
Yet an other sort of capitol punishment
Delegated to the coroner
Turning voting off
In a Pyrrhic victory
So hollowed by those bored of elections
As a so low survivor
Left to re-collect
In suing came pain
Promises unfulfilled
A small prize to pay
For virtual democracy
Only calling to mine
Survivor
As democracy
In reality
Only on TV

Here is a poem for election time. While citizens have been cynical about politicians for eons, politicians are digging new versions of low at record rates. For decades, America has had one of the lowest rates of voting of any so-called advanced democracies. This poem does take its titular metaphor from the television age and the more recent reality (sic) television. Run-of-the-mill electoral politics is so bad, like “reality” TV, that most of it is not even worth watching, a palpable waste of one’s precious life. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not against voting. For most non-voting citizens, voting oneself off the island is hardly a very productive way of bringing about participatory democracy. In the pantheon of inane activities competing for our attention, and often winning, voting is still worthy of the modest effort required. Still, I doubt that electoral politics is anywhere sufficient to save the planet or humanity. Most of electoral politics is reactionary, cynically triangulating competing interests without much internal compass. Though politicians are regularly without distinguishable rudders, they can be quite adept at blowing whichever way the wind blows — everything is for sail! So, if not too disgusting, do yourself a flavor and vote for a politician closest to your taste. But don’t let voting get in the way of creating the winds of change necessary to redeem electoral politics. Participatory democracy requires ongoing civic engagement. The quality of our democracy will be directly rooted in the degree by which we are the change we want to see in the world, how we treat our neighbors (friends, strangers, and enemies) and how well we speak truth to power, translating our own lives into vital and vibrant community. May it be so.

Posted in Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: Nothing New Under The Sun

Posted on October 27, 2014 by

There is nothing new under the sun
Though in the shadows
The same old same old
Is more mournfully familiar
Settling for reality-lite
Too at home with night
Groping with eyes open
Instead of lightly touched
Even with eyes closed seeing
Age-old must
And vexing knot
A bout
Bitter medicine as won’s savor
Know silence
Too be heard
Where the sun don’t shine
As passing vapor
In stubborn renouncing
Not eye
And such fancy
Still too much
To be taken
In completely
The spell overcast
Eclipsing the census
Of awe that counts
More than won could
Ever bask for

This poem weaves the themes of our everyday blindness to deeper realities, the mystical third eye, and gratitude.  Things are not always as they appear.  Things are more than they appear.  Those who round reality down to mere appearance settle for a more finite and uninspiring perspective on reality.  If it isn’t obvious that life is blisteringly miraculous in the sunshine occupying roughly half of our earthly existence, then there is a deeper, ever-present way of seeing that enlightens awe of reality, more than one could ever bask for.  Sadly, many prefer to manage dwelling in the even more roughly half of our earthly existence, darkness, despite its propensity for inducing fear and despair.  This poem plays with these two interwoven aspects of reality, dark and light, mere appearance and meaning full experience.  These dual, and dueling, aspects of reality are not contradictory; rather, they are different levels of reality, one including yet transcending the other.  The prosaic and miraculous are only divorced if our perspective is committed to irreconcilable differences.  The oneness of reality eternally woos us if wowing us is too transparent for our mode of perception.  Nonetheless, the lure of the manageability of the world of mere appearances is powerful, to those limiting themselves to such parochial power.  Unfortunately, those limiting themselves to the scarcity and paucity of the world of mere appearances will feel compelled to compete, even brutally, for control over this lesser realm.  Security and freedom become mortal enemies and even the asleep don’t sleep well.  Those suffering such blindness and obsession insist upon their powerful incites.  The ensuing fetish with control and manipulation extract a brutal price from anyone actually exercising freedom.  More liberal-minded manipulators will insist that you have all kinds of rights but they will get nervous if you actually exercise them!

My experience informs me that peace and freedom can exist together if gratitude is the uniting reality. This gratitude-powered peace is both an internal peace and external peace.  Gratitude-powered people are the least dangerous people in the world; that is, except to those whose job is to convince others of their lack, especially if linked to selling you a product, service, or idea that will make them gain money or status.  If gratitude unites your world view, then you could say that gratitude is your religion, a religion of “Thank God for thanks!”  As you might guess, my worldview is profoundly influenced by grace, a recognition and respect for undeserved gain that overturns a barren capitalistic view that at best can offer a fair and equal exchange, where generosity is a foolish inefficiency and the bounty of life is jacked up to yield the highest price possibly bearable by humanity (or by “the market” if “humanity” doesn’t compute).  The bounty of life becomes fodder of our folly, as “Wanted — dead or alive,” runs roughshod over life itself.  I strongly suspect that the consuming disease of controlling others is a failure to answer the question of how much is enough.  At the heart of this disease is fear and inescapable greed.  I believe that a responsible freedom, a freedom that is informed by gratitude, can operate amidst fear and greed without distorting its own nature and consonance with life, that comes from who knows where, but, as a dyslexic and a mystic, I find naturally super!

Posted in Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

POEM: The History of Civilization

Posted on October 26, 2014 by

They lived in the period of civilization
A properly punctuated death sentience
That no’s know end

This poem is a reflection on the deathly aspects of so-called civilization, its facade of propriety, and penchant for denial.  The members of most any civilization view their civilization as the pinnacle civilization, at least when compared to other competing civilizations — even to the point of war to prove their superiority.  There is typically present an overwhelming hubris that their civilization will continue indefinitely, which is a serious misreading of actual history.  Only through a selective lack of awareness, typically fostered by societal elites benefiting from the status quo, can such a myth be perpetuated to its inevitable demise.  American exceptionalism is perhaps the perfect exemplar of such a self-serving ideal.  What more dangerous ideology and destructive mythology is there than an entire nation built on the notion that it’s rules apply to others but can be “excepted” for oneself when convenient.  The rule of law devolves simply into rule.  Such an Achilles heel is especially tragic because Achilles is so strong, seemingly invincible.  Still, as any such civilization has its period, so shall its sentence come to an end.

Posted in Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment