Reality can be a mother Halving given Cynicism wide berth Big brother Too hope A mist Crying incessantly And the crapping of won’s pants Entrapped Flanked by sterility and fertility Fenced buy utility and futility Until something Something all inspiring Ever knew But barely seed Shh It happens As springing from dis illusion And groan together From that exasperating brood In awe That kin be done And what might be A parent Or knot
This poem arose this day from the comment of a friend who did not see hope where I saw some, and yet he still hopes. As a poet, I often see humanity in an epic struggle between cynicism and hope. Hell is where hope is abandoned, to allude to Dante. Heaven is where hope flourishes. As John Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher and author, wrote famously in his play, No Exit, “Hell is other people.” Know argument here. Of course, I wholed to the other half of truth, as well: Heaven is other people. Solidarity trumps alienation. Hope is the better portion of reality, that mother that teaches us sow much. Those caught in the mine of this earth may argue quite rationally that hope is the leanest in the efface of the meanest. Still, hope strikes me as both the lightest and most profound portion in the efface of darkness. Life and death. Heaven and Hell. Hope and cynicism. Who dares dance in their mist? Many people at most times choose to fight over merely what they halve — that is given. Fortunately, we don’t have to live in most times. We only have to live in the present. Let hope be the present.
In Greek and Roman mythology, the Gordian knot was an extremely complicated knot tied by Gordius, the king of Phrygia in Asia Minor. Located in the city of Gordium, the knot came to symbolize a difficult problem that was almost impossible to solve.
According to legend, Gordius was a peasant who married the fertility goddess Cybele. When Gordius became king of Phrygia, he dedicated his chariot to Zeus and fastened it to a pole with the Gordian knot. Although the knot was supposedly impossible to unravel, an oracle predicted that it would be untied by the future king of Asia.
Many individuals came to Gordium to try to undo the knot, but they all failed. Then, according to tradition, the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great visited the city in 333 B . C . After searching unsuccessfully for the hidden ends of the Gordian knot, Alexander became impatient. In an unexpected move, he took out his sword and cut through the knot. Alexander then went on to conquer Asia, thus fulfilling the oracle’s prophecy. Alexander’s solution to the problem led to the saying, “cutting the Gordian knot,” which means solving a complicated problem through bold action.
May you live in the won reality where everything is knot as it seams.
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POEM: A Lousy Take on Lao-Tse A Lousy Take on Lao-Tse (Tao Te Ching 38)
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He did Not necessarily Believe In evil Though he found it Much easier To commit Than endure And hear in lies Won lessen As love is scored
This poem is a tribute to apologists for evil everywhere. The lesser of two evils rationalization is perhaps the all-time most popular moral shortcut. Unfortunately, when evil is embraced, morality is cut loose. The “necessity” defense is actually an abnegation of moral agency altogether, pretending that no choice exists. Of course, where there is no choice, there is no morality, or perhaps more conveniently, no immorality. So much for freedom marching on! For you can’t have freedom without its twin: responsibility, that bully big brother. Ultimately, one’s own responsibility is morphed out of existence into an other’s accountability. He “made me” do it. As we become an impersonal — and amoral — force for precious accountability, we polish a veneer of morality, all the wile avoiding personal responsibility for our own actions. Most simply put, we become mirrorly a consequence of evil, our moral agency be dammed! We become an effect of evil rather than a cause for good. Morality necessarily involves restraint, the project of limiting our choices, hopefully to good choices, among all possible choices. The key point is that it focuses on self-restraint, not other-restraint. This shift of focus on accountability of others, presumably punishing evil, is classical psychological projection of one’s own shadow, dark side, evil onto an other. No doubt, evil happens. No doubt, evil costs dearly. Projecting all responsibility onto others serves the convenient purpose of shifting the cost away from our own costly choices. No doubt, morality is costly — just as evil is. Enduring these costs is the stuff of a moral life. This is the price of true freedom. Evil runs over the good for evil ends, for its own sake. Good revels in the good for its own sake, and somewhat paradoxically, lifts up, invites true freedom for others’ sake as well Half of the moral life is the willingness to live into what we know to be good. Half of the moral life is enduring the inescapable effects of evil, what we no to be evil. Only God knows the half-life of evil. While it may be a truism that we do not get out of this life alive, we can live more than a half-life. May you live fully! Moral choices may be unclear. Moral choices may be extraordinarily difficult. Still, moral choices are always a choice. To deny this is the paltry heights of amorality and a brutal equivalency of evil with good.
May you find wide-open love stronger than shadowy hate in your life.
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I am
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Too my feat
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The defense department denies killing civilians The state department denies human rights abuses by trade partners The department of energy denies that nuclear power is anything but safe The criminal justice system denies institutional racism The department of departments denies that it exists There is no news here An anonymous spokesman representing an undisclosed list of clients Could neither confirm nor deny their uselessness Beholden to flights of fancy Carry on Pink elephants trampling conspiracy theorists Straw men unable to eat crow Permitting no one to fly straight Barring exceptional pork The fun is over A barrel Of monkeys denying evolution Where GOP is a measle-y typo Read “take things literally” A premeditated shot in the dark Where there is no higher power Emanating from the chamber of commerce Pinko pachyderms never herd from Any rarer would be bloody Hell, the stakes are high Raised by vampires Unable to reflect on their own Fratricide from dawn to dust Sucking out the life Granting only that They feel our payin’ Attention Exacting compensation for every notice Dispatching captives with unmanned missives Droning on In their priest-like duties Until the masses are free Like a cancer An endless growth Of pulp fiction And mind-numbing doublespeak As we press release From labor camps Yet another Birth of a nation And its following deportments: REDACTED Censors monitoring your every move So your posterity is theirs And the war on terror Only coming to an end When know more Freedom to deny
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Hither too
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POEM: A We Occupation I get deeply cared away
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POEM: Answering The Call He was called
Into the warden's office
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In the big house
Next to the judges chamber
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POEM: Sound of One Hand Clapping What is the sound of one hand clapping?
For many, it is a slap of the forehead in exasperation
For some, it is a slap in the face of the asker
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Cameras, cameras everywhere Yet what do they survey? Eyes, eyes everywhere Yet few can see the way
Big brother is here. Whether it is surveillance cameras, web or cell tracking, financial transactions or legal documents, you are being watched. Watched as a potential consumer, your ultimate value. Watched as a potential criminal, threatening polite consumer culture. Live truly free. Hopefully, you will be truly seen.
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Force Attracts Men of Low Morality Force Always Attracts Men of Low Morality--PEACE QUOTE BUTTON
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Some days I feel like I’m on A slow boat To China Then it hits me More like Being water boarded In America
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I am finally uploaded a new batch of Occupy Wall Street designs. This batch of 125 political designs is mostly Occupy Wall Street designs, but there are also a large series of “stop socialism” designs, a large series of Fox news parodies, and a new line of designs: vegetarian. I still have hundreds of other designs made that I still need to upload, so stay tuned.
The designs below are linked to button products, but each of these designs is available in all of Top Pun’s products such as T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, magnets, key chains, sticker sheets, posters, and caps.
If you like what you see, you can check out all of my political designs, which also include more Occupy Wall Street related designs.
Gandhi Quote: First Ignore, Then Laugh, Fight, Win – POLITICAL BUTTON
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Hell is where hope is abandoned, to allude to Dante. Heaven is where hope flourishes. 
As John Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher and author, wrote famously in his play, No Exit, “Hell is other people.” Know argument here. Of course, I wholed to the other half of truth, as well: Heaven is other people. Solidarity trumps alienation. Hope is the better portion of reality, that mother that teaches us sow much. Those caught in the mine of this earth may argue quite rationally that hope is the leanest in the efface of the meanest. Still, hope strikes me as both the lightest and most profound portion in the efface of darkness. Life and death. Heaven and Hell. Hope and cynicism. 
Who dares dance in their mist? Many people at most times choose to fight over merely what they halve — that is given. Fortunately, we don’t have to live in most times. We only have to live in the present. Let hope be the present.Alexander then went on to conquer Asia, thus fulfilling the oracle’s prophecy. Alexander’s solution to the problem led to the saying, “cutting the Gordian knot,” which means solving a complicated problem through bold action.
