Passion • Top Pun's Poetry, Funny Political Puns, Free Posters!

Free Anti SCHOOL SHOOTING POSTER: Prez Donald Trump – School as Public Hunting Area – Tweeting “Children are DEER to U.S. Most. DEER. Ever.”

Prez Donald Trump, Congressional Republicans, and assorted NRA buddies, have allowed open season on Americans across this great land for too long. As school children are hunted with assault rifles, the children may have to lead U.S. supposed grownups to stop the epidemic of mass shootings. I am deeply encouraged by the passion and skill that school children are bringing to the movement to end mass shootings and prevent schools from being battlegrounds or fortresses. May they be the generation that ends the scourge of mass shootings in America.

Please feel free to share this Anti SCHOOL SHOOTING POSTER: Prez Donald Trump – School as Public Hunting Area – Tweeting “Children are DEER to U.S. Most. DEER. Ever.”

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Tags: America, anti-Trump, Children, Donald Trump, Free Downloadable Posters, free poster, Free Posters, NRA, Passion, Prevention, Violence

POEM: Won Race

October 22nd, 2015 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

He ran his won race
Not around other men’s tracks
But in open fields
Into sunsets and sunrises
Never looking back
As no one affront
And know time
Where mostly losers must collect
Outside
The whiner’s circle
And still
Fodder time
Will only
Weather win place or show
Every champ yon door
Will not cry out
As sum hoarse race
Only to whinny
But one race
In riding a loan
And won for awe
Jockeying honor
In steed
Bye only crossing
The finish line
In unison
As a singular knows
Tide for thirst

This poem plays with the tensions between the importance of both our inner experience and compass and our collective outer experience. Self-knowledge and self-awareness are prerequisites for healthy functioning in the world. Otherwise we will be doomed to project our ignorance and misunderstanding onto others, confounding communication and degrading joint enterprises. We must know ourselves and trust our inner experience and instincts, if we are to live our own lives. This recognizes a radical aspect of our own inner subjective experience: that part of our lives is uniquely our own, both in terms of being only indirectly verifiable by others (what’s going on inside) and that our own agency gives us responsibility that cannot be pawned off on others. To some inescapable degree, we must run our own race. Recognizing this freedom and responsibility is the key to winning our own race: Not around other men’s tracks/But in open fields/Into sunsets and sunrises. If we gauge our own lives too much by others’ behavior and the various cascading situations in the world, we risk living lives as mere reaction formations of our environment. While this is a profoundly sad loss for ourselves, it also robs the world of the gift of another real live actor in the play of life. Of course, human life is an ensemble role; we share a collective stage and have intertwining stories. Life is not a horse race, with the inevitable winner and losers — though that may be part of the narrative we act out. In sharing both a collective stage and the power of each to contribute their own role to the play, life is pretty much guaranteed to be dramatic, perhaps somewhat chaotic, and hopefully interesting and fun. Human life begs both individual creative response-ability and a deeply collective attitude and respect for our shared enterprise. A wise ensemble of actors, recognizing the varied roles of protagonists and antagonists, gladly plays their role, not another’s. And as passions rise, the story unfolds. The story is not won by who is present in the last scene, but who are present at awe, wherever they peer. If there is a larger winning in life, it may very well be the solidarity of comrades sharing passions, but not necessarily playing the same roles: In unison/As a singular knows/Tide for thirst. As for that horse race: break a leg…

Tags: Attitude, Awareness, Awe, Environment, Experience, Freedom, Gift, Life, Loss, Passion, Play, Poems, Poetry, Power, Present, Radical, Respect, Responsibility, Risk, Self-Awareness, Solidarity, Time, Trust

POEM: Dream Catcher

October 12th, 2015 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

A daze work
Over
Come
Bye sleep
Sow few dream catchers
Sow many dreams
And that’s the catch

This poem is about work, vocation, passion, and burnout. This poem is mournful in that so many dreams go unrealized, uncaught. This poem is a hopeful invitation to pursue your dreams with more vigor, focus and intent. As the Bible so aptly points out, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” (Matthew 9:37) Work is often tiring, as being impelled to do stuff that is tiresome. Enough work and we burnout. Vocations, on the other hand, unleash passions and dreams. With excessive work we miss both sleep and dreaming with our eyes wide open. Vocations both generate dreams and actively invest time and life energy in pursuing said dreams. Still, having sufficient dreams is not generally the rate-limiting factor, unless we are totally burned out. Most often, paying dear attention to those dreams and befriending them with the freshest and best parts of us is what enables us to catch our dreams. May you organize your life in such a way that you are well-suited to catch your dreams.

Tags: Bible, Dream, Dreams, Hope, Jobs, Life, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Short Poems, Sleep, Time, Vocation, Work

POEM: A Blinding Faith

October 8th, 2015 Filed under: About Top Pun, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Hers was a blinding faith
Sow bright
That it often left her without peer
Few could fathom such countenance
As she left them smiles behind
A grate number are partial
To glean faint moonlight
Mirror dim reflections
Of their dreary world
Rather than stare into one such bright star
Of such undifferentiated light
In discriminate hope
From celestial furnaces
Most believe
Better to be leery
Anywhere near foreboding
Inclement whether
Shoes dropping
On roads paved with good intentions
Or easy devotion to cynical amasses
Having it made
In the shade
Or even to a void in certitude
More at home groping in the dark
Than by a blinding faith

This poem is an ode to faith. Faith is metaphysical optimism, the blood that beats through wholehearted living. Faith is only manifest in the mettle of life fully lived, put to the test. Such a way of life is akin to the scientific method, but its subject is subjectivity, metaphysics, a life lived to discover or confirm how metaphysical optimism can transform living. Bold testing is the natural course of faith. Where and how far can faith take us? Empirical skepticism, the fuel that powers the engine of science, is analogous to this bold testing. Yet, scientists, who are subjects themselves, often project their own hubris onto subjective matters, leveling “spirituality” for putting forth bold — unfortunately, sometimes bald — faith assumptions for good living. All the while, there is a nagging tendency to conveniently overlook that there is no such thing as an assumptionless philosophy, even by those subjects operating in scientific endeavors. Yep, as quantum physicists know awe to well, the experimenter changes the experimental results. In “real world” terms this is simply recognizing that what questions we ask determine the answers. We, subjects awe, deeply participate in whatever answers will come our way. I, for one, am much more fascinated by the questions of how we transform our lives through the science of living matters, than simply nailing down the science of dead matter, fixated on predictability and control. Of course, nailing down stuff plagues the human condition in both scientific and metaphysical endeavors. As Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” The question still remains: in which half of the creeds does faith live? This can only be tested and confirmed by personal discovery, in our living. While there is a lot of truth in the truism that misery loves company, I would venture to say that passionate optimism is far more attractive than life-sucking cynicism. This poem is intended to capture the reactions of living in the wake of bold metaphysical optimism, often through an irresistible pull to live fuller lives, and sometimes by shrinking into the seeming security of smaller certitudes. May you find yourself putting your deepest faith to the test, and in this mettle may you discover many bright and beautiful alloys along the way.

Tags: Awe, Beautiful, Change, Control, Cynical, Cynicism, Faith, Hate, Heart, Hope, Hubris, Life, Love, Metaphysics, Ode, Optimism, Passion, Philosophy, Physics, Poems, Poetry, Questions, Religious, Rumi, Science, Security, Skepticism, Spiritual, Spirituality, Subjectivity, Truth

POEM: Shown Up

October 5th, 2015 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

The last time
He punched
A time clock
It was time to stop
A feudal gesture
Accept that
It got him fired
Up to his passions
Eyes wide open
After halving it awe
And feeling dread
In the mirror mourning
Shuddered into pieces
Having watched
His life
Go bye
As hows divided
Against won self
But now
Happening upon him
To be
Re-billed every moment
A knew
Yet know longer
Buy
Sordid clock suckers
And boorish time machines
Transporting too distant years
Never wanting
Such promise
A-trophy
Re: tired
Too due much
As everything ails
In the passed
Having shown up
Today

This is perhaps an appropriate Monday poem for many of the wage slaves working out there. The first theme addresses one of my grate pet peeves in modern capitalistic culture of most daze experiencing the violence of an alarm clock to get out of bed, usually to work for someone else. The evil genius and efficiency of replacing a human taskmaster with an electronic device in which wee dutifully assure our appointed time as “shown up,” speaks the the successful internalization and colonization of our lives by bosses. Most spend most of their waking hours at a job, or jobs, that most would leave if they felt they could. Many would rather be sleeping. Some may find it difficult to find the difference between a-little-too droning-on working and a-little-too fitful sleeping. We sell ourselves wholesale, some might say prostitute ourselves, for the promise of what remains. This poems overall theme is about trading now for the future. This can be a dangerous busyness — sometimes as dangerous as living fully in the now! The strange paradox here is that the danger of seeking predictability and security in life is often the very thing that robs us of life; while a passion-driven now may bring a careening future routinely beyond prediction, such a future is a more lively and life-filled future than the promise of conventional wisdom’s financial security and touted freedom from uncertainty. The present is uncertainty, and the freedom this entails. Inasmuch as we recoil from uncertainty, we make ourselves vulnerable to the purveyors of branded futures, featuring proprietary properties, that are designed to convince you to sell today for tomorrow — or more commonly, a paycheck every two weeks. Granted, a few folks experience the serendipity of their passions now lining up with their various bosses (or co-conspirators). Still, the inescapable equation is that quality of life is directly tied to how often you show up for your own life, that is compared to pawning your life for money or a boss’ designs on your own. May your life be shown up by an incredible series of presents.

P.S. This is my 500th blog entry. I better watch it or I may be considered productive.

Tags: Awe, Busyness, Conventional Wisdom, Culture, Efficiency, Evil, Experience, Freedom, Future, Genius, Hate, Job, Jobs, Life, Modern, Money, Mourning, Ode, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Present, Proprietary, Security, Serendipity, Sleep, Success, Time, Violence, Wisdom, Work

POEM: Born With Two Black Eyes: Owed To New Be and Queens

September 29th, 2015 Filed under: About Top Pun, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

She was born with two black eyes
Living in a whirled
Wear her highest aspirations
Sore over the lowly color blind
As every color whited out
Yet she sails the sees of dark and light
As two dance freely
A bout just us
As real eyes
Realize
Real lies
And sojourn truth

This poem is a tribute to awe the positive power, beauty and wisdom that Black women birth into this world. De-spite all of the racism, sexism, classism, and other aspersions heaped upon them, they reveal truth responding to a dominant culture of lies. Even as often dealt three strikes from birth, their two Black eyes reveal a compassion honestly earned, unleashing a mother’s love and a sister’s devotion in a world sorely in need of them. I thank you! May every sacrifice you make return a hundred-fold.

Tags: Awe, Beauty, Classism, Compassion, Culture, Love, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Power, Racism, Sacrifice, Sexism, Short Poems, Truth, Wisdom, Women

POEM: For Awe That Has Been Urned

September 28th, 2015 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

In her dreams
She is wanting
To be moved
By more than
Slumber too slumber
Mirrorly to a wake
Daze unending
With that annoying buzz
Thirst thing in the mourning
The pique of the day
The latest snooze
A stay of execution
From a commute
Never quiet arriving
In during
The same owe same owe
A mounting to nothing
Carrion on
From dead line to dead line
Only hopping
To meet your destiny
Long the weigh
Too the beat
Down
Of a humdrum
In exhaustible work lode
Sow being a ware
Only dealing
With sum strain
Of staff infection
A little off
And on and on and on
Without a brake
Wading
For some kind
Of savor
In any respect
Of a Jōb
Well
Done
Succeeded by rehash for dinner
A little bit like
Looser
For awe that has been urned
From dusk to dusk
And willing succor
For a weak end
And easing into won bunk
Affording seconds of fuel’s goaled
Mine razing
At the prospect
Too due it
Agin

This is a good Monday mourning poem for all of you enduring slave wagers. To me, work is simply doing that which you do not want to do, that which we do when we would rather be doing something else. The conventional wisdom is that there are inescapable compromises that must be made, such as selling large chunks of our life to finance the remains. Wee are part and parcel of this so-called American dream, which George Carlin so aptly observed, “It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it” — that is, if you can fit sleep into your schedule! Frankly, I can no longer afford to go to such conventions, though I’ll meet them half way with the whole whizzed ’em thing.

Having to wake up to an alarm strikes me as one of the great bastardizations of true awakening. If you get up and it is dark out, you might want to make a note of that, hopefully, plenty of notes, see notes!

If you are going to sell yourself, I would definitely hope that you get a good price. Still, there is a whirled of difference between getting a good price and a good prize. Selling your own passions, your own heart’s desires for someone else’s notion of productivity is perhaps the real idolness. Far too often, no one can even really identify the specific person whose notion of productivity is being served. Wherever it is, it’s the birthplace of “It’s not my job” and “I’m only doing my job” as workers serve nameless and unaccountable masters, and can’t help, but serve in their master’s apathetic and/or irrelevant image. The bulk of so-called work in capitalist cultures represents an immeasurable opportunity accost of passions passed and hearty lusts lost. Even awe that has been urned echoes in time off, weather having perpetual rehash as eve approaches or dread as eve withers a way in the dread of coming daze.

May you find work indistinguishable from play, an awakening without alarm, and find no idolness in site.

Tags: America, Awe, Compromise, Conventional Wisdom, Culture, Dream, Dreams, Heart, Hope, Image, Job, Life, Mourning, Passion, Play, Poems, Poetry, Political, Productivity, Respect, Sleep, Time, Wisdom, Work

POEM: Can She Be Eunuch?

September 23rd, 2015 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

She stated
No one else can do what I do
To witch
They rejoined
Realing in whore
Accept that you are a cog
You intractable wrench
Unfit for cloning round
And unstranded
She cut out
From the puppet tier
Knot to be
Am ployed
As if
She were eunuch

This poem is about breaking away from the artifice and inhumanity of the machine, aka, capitalism, which is designed to monetize you in any way possible. When someone discovers the passion of their unique role and contribution to the world, the machine pushes back as it has difficulty incorporating one’s soul eccentricities into it’s standardized system and dehumanized algorithms. Generous portions of creativity easily overwhelm “the way we have always done things” as well as distant, disconnected orders from big bosses. Creativity is so unnatural to the machine that it ultimately creates huge inefficiencies, even amidst its seeming devotion to efficiency. The machine typically finds it much more expedient to grind cows to hamburger than even milk them for all that they are worth. Workers’ humanity routinely suffers the analogous outcome. Creativity that cannot be easily plugged into the machine is ignored, discounted, or actively stifled. In this poem, the sheer stupidity and foolishness of a system that fails to adapt to the unfathomable creativity of the human spirit is represented by the rhetorical question that is the title: Can she be eunuch? Beside the overlayed meaning of the pun eunuch/unique, the definitional absurdity of a female being a eunuch (a castrated male) illustrates how the machine fundamentally misunderstands and misuses the very people it is alleged to serve. The machine is indiscriminate in its castration! Of coarse, such crudeness does serve some people, just not workers within the system. Even though a system well designed to incorporate human creativity and eccentricities could unleash incalculable efficiencies and productivity AND be well aligned with the desires and needs of each of those working within such a system, the capitalist system is not intended to produce the greatest good, particularly the common good, but instead is geared and cogged to produce material wealth for an elite few who pull the levers of so-called industry. Private profit at the expense of human potential and the common good is the only real order of the day in capitalism. The common good is reduced to foolhardiness as it is wide open to being robbed by the capitalistic princes of virtue, greed being the organizing principle of capitalism. Human attributes not easily monetized atrophy in capitalism. Turning humans into cogs for personal profit may very well be one of the better definitions of evil. Robbing others of their God-given creativity and eccentric passions for a few bucks and a cynical acceptance of a diminished humanity is a pathetic way of honoring the countless gifts humanity brings to the world. Courageous creativity, the bold commitment and determination to find a way to be who you were created to be, is the answer to the dehumanizing capitalistic machine. Reveling in the infinitely greater portion of life that is not easily monetized assures a home and hearth for your own humanity and all those who take the time to be present to such gifts. May you find your unique passions and the courage to boldly follow them in their many serendipitous consummations.

Tags: Absurdity, Acceptance, Art, Capitalism, Common Good, Courage, Creativity, Crude, Cynical, Dehumanizing, Efficiency, Elite, Evil, Female, Foolish, Gift, God, Greed, Heart, Humanity, Life, Meaning, Monetize, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Present, Productivity, Rage, Rhetoric, Soul, Stupid, Time, Virtue, Wealth, Work

POEM: Shame Old Story

September 16th, 2015 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

A little bit
Of shame
Goes along
Weigh
Too much
With blinders
Knot visible
In a sense
Lost
To over looking
As awe full as life is

This poem is about the overabundance of shame, a tail as owed as time that wags the dog. Shame is one of the all-time popular weighs of controlling others. Shame is a lazy substitute for inspiration. Inspiration comes with a whole lot of work, such as patience, integrity, passion, and compassion. Shame is a seductive shortcut that cheats us out of the beauty full results of worthy effort. In essence, shaming others is shaming ourselves. As they say: you can’t point your finger at someone else without pointing four fingers back at yourself. Relying on inspiration and example is a much better weigh. There is a tribe in Africa where anytime a member commits some offense, they surround them and pummel them with every good thing about them, a wellness practice very telling. Social psychology has well documented that focusing on building assets is more productive than focusing on deficits. The rhythms of the human soul seem to be much more in tune with inspiration and positive regard than shame, criticism, and punishment. In theological terms, this might be simply stated that good is stronger than evil. Traditional religion often betrays this belief by focusing on original sin rather than original blessing; that is, accenting our inherent falling short rather than our inherent goodness. May you readily see the goodness in yourself and others, and faithfully live out of our better portion.

Tags: Abundance, Awe, Beauty, Blessing, Compassion, Control, Evil, Faith, Inspiration, Integrity, Lazy, Life, Passion, Patience, Poems, Poetry, Psychology, Punishment, Religion, Soul, Time, Work

POEM: Constipated Destiny

August 24th, 2015 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

He knew knot
Exactly where
He was going
As fate would have it
Seized by easy convictions
Big house
Auto, pilot
And every won else’s
Re-guard
Of one self full
Filled
Buy in
And sell out
In humanity
A sure thing
The gold
In rule
A void
Apprehensions
Of vassal late
Making one’s self
The whore of certain knowledge
The john of dreams undared
Unfailing in his coarse
Fining himself
Scared to dearth
Of his constipated destiny meting

This poem deals with the vanity and danger of pursuing material success and cashing in on conventional wisdom. The good life is all too often pawned off as having fine possessions or relishing in status or celebrity. Possessions have a way of possessing us. In a world where so many have so little, fine possessions can be devilish. Status or celebrity has a way of simply highlighting our own emptiness or hypocrisy in a pressurized or scrutinized existence. Fine possessions and status are typically acquired through the successful use (and misuse) of conventional wisdom, or simply through unmerited privilege. Albeit, celebrity sometimes comes through more notorious means. Still, we all know where this leads: the well-worn hierarchies of winners and losers. In a constipated destiny, everyone knows their place. Predictability (sometimes better known as ‘security’) and fatalism serve as poor substitutes for true daring and bold hope. Well-worn rules (and rulers) of the game leave little but cheap thrills and expensive highs to assuage our stultified lives. The bulk of our lives are leased for weekends. Passionate vocations are bartered for passing vacations. Awe sold for certainty. Dreams pimped for fear of being a sucker, or worse. May you live a life where you are not scared to dearth, settling for mere material finery or tranquilizing status, a constipated destiny, or hellish blandness. May you follow your dreams in a way that literally scares the hell out of others!

Tags: Awe, Celebrity, Conventional Wisdom, Dream, Dreams, Evil, Fear, Hell, Hope, Humanity, Hypocrisy, Life, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Poor, Possessions, Privilege, Rules, Security, Status, Success, Vanity, Vocation, Wisdom

POEM: God’s Perish

August 17th, 2015 Filed under: About Top Pun, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings, Uncategorized Add Comment

I under stood
God’s might
And might not
And in awe probability
New
That I
Will only
Fooly see
Phase to phase
Until awe of creation
Come prized my parish

This poem is about dying to see the face of God. This takes two forms: dying when unable to see the face of God and dying if a mere mortal human were to see the face of God. The first form is the traditional form preached about and at others to point out their deficiencies and need for God. I find this form fraught with peril as pedantic and fixated on the lack of God’s presence, the very thing it seeks to dispel! As if God could successfully hide; fortunately, on this account, God is a total loser. God bursts forth from creation, if not well reflected in humans, then from nature. Still, God is a total loser because God cannot reveal God’s full face to humans without literally blowing out our mind and being as humans. There is a protective veil necessary to preserve and maintain human existence. I am far more intrigued with this second form of dying to see the face of God, the Oneness of awe, worthy of my worship. My deep faith is roughly matched with deep skepticism for authority. I want peace and reconciliation in this matter — perhaps even to the point of my matter exploding.

The Judaeo-Christian tradition of dying if one were to see the face of God originates in Exodus 12-23, when Moses is on Mount Sinai receiving the ten commandments from “I am,” the name God chose to reveal to Moses. This is how the conversation is retold (NIV translation):

Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”

The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”

And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”

In a conversation with one of my former pastors related to seeing the backside of God, I noted that this made perfect sense, that is, a carpenter son would have a plumber for a father. His irrepressible grin and laugh reflected the joy that is the infallible presence of God.

For as much as God does, God may seem to do little to nail down God’s intentions at the crossroads of our lives — humans seem much more intent on that! In surpassing logic, God proffers a taught a logical lessen: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” Grate! So God expects me to lead my life based on mercy and compassion coming out literally from God knows where?! Of course, there is also that whole ten commandments thing, written in stone no less! In the coarse of life, the Jews expanded this to 613 laws, establishing a firm foundation for eternal arguments. My whole point is this: it is never enough. As my one-line poem matriculates: I often find myself stuck in that awkward time between birth and death. This built in yearning to understand God and God’s creation drives both spiritual enterprises and scientific endeavors. Learning to live into this fundamental yearning, whether experienced as the mystical union with God or a unified scientific understanding, comprises much of wisdom: Until awe of creation / Come prized my parish.

Awe of this wrests in the shadow of an unwholly dissatisfaction. I am deeply intrigued by the profound dissatisfaction with spiritual enterprises, most commonly cited as religion, that live in this shadow. Ironically, in such a critique of religion, this perfectionism and idealism to which religion falls woefully short is precisely that which under-girds religion: the quest for a coherent whole which can bring with it the peace of heart and mind. This common quest is shattered by fundamentalism, weather buy religious legalists or militant atheists. I view such fundamentalism as the grate divide in life, not simply the speak easy surrounding theism.

I am fascinated by the contention often put forward by atheists, that God is a projection of human minds. There is much truth in this. Psychologically speaking, projection is superimposing the ego’s shadow, or incomplete understanding, onto that outside the ego, thereby purporting or inferring a distorted truth. More simply put: “We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.” Of course, this is neither proof nor reproof in the master debate over theism. This is true whether God’s perish or God’s parish. Nonetheless, projection is a powerful force and critical diagnosis each of us should make to move toward a more robust and healthy relationship with reality. The diagnosis of projection is a necessary but not sufficient condition, the hallmark of never-ending scientific discovery.

The deeper quest in is how do we best move through inevitable projection and, even more boldly, firmly center our self (ego) in a ground of being that will most reliably guide us to an expanding humanity and more accurate under standing of the deepest realities. I contend that the spiritual master Jesus best articulated this in the spiritual practice and commandment (a should) by instructing us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. I am unaware of any more powerful and reliable guide to an expanding humanity and more accurate under standing of the deepest realities, whether from a religious or an atheistic perspective. I cite my own experience and the experience of millions of others in testing out this hypothesis with scientific rigor and skin in the game much greater than most of the most articulate purveyors of scientific discovery. Most simply put, if you want to put the God hypothesis to the test and dare experience a glimpse of the awe mighty, this may very well be the closest we can get: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” This existential treat ease rests on authority emanating from scientific rigor applied to our whole life and God deeply roots for us to experience this phase to phase in hour life. In the face of a whirled of hurt, may your life reflect the mercy and compassion that comes from God knows wear.

Tags: Argument, Atheist, Authority, Awe, Christian, Compassion, Creation, Death, Enemies, Existential, Experience, Faith, Fundamentalism, God, Heart, Humanity, Idealism, Ironic, Jesus, Joy, Law, Learning, Life, Logic, Love, Mercy, Militant, Mind, Mystic, Mystical, Nature, Passion, Pastor, Perspective, Poems, Poetry, Power, Probability, Projection, Reality, Reconciliation, Religion, Religious, Skepticism, skin in the game, Spiritual, Success, Time, Truth, Wisdom, Worship

POEM: A Thoreau Reading — Owed To Awe That Sucks

August 13th, 2015 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Some say
That he sucked
The marrow from life
And resin ate
Down to my bones
Blood brothers
In what is
Not a race
To judge knot
In won slice of life
Or as-certain fine truth
From lowly metaphor
And in due coarse
Don’t wait
For meaning found
In dried bones

This poem is a tip of the hat to Henry David Thoreau and the value of raw experience and overflowing passions over disembodied philosophizing and moral asceticism. Thoreau’s famous mission statement for his life in the woods is recorded in his book, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods, as follows:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

Life is to be delved into, dived into, not dispassionately observed from the sidelines. The passions embodied in following our bliss are great teachers of both the extravagantly abundant and radically simple facets of life. The greater sin in life is to be bound to material and moral finery at the expense of an uncertain coarseness and careening zest for life. Mistakes will be made, but few greater than resignation or trepidation yielding that which is narrow rather than marrow. May you suck at life and on the marrow find life sturdier.

Tags: Awe, Experience, Facts, Life, Meaning, Moral, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Radical, Thoreau, Truth

POEM: Putting The Monet In Monetize

August 9th, 2015 Filed under: Health, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

The starving artist
Whose art couldn’t be made
Fast enough
Fore his dealer
Rejecting means
Except as accede
In awe but name groan
Poising as a plant
To the extant one can make cents
Putting the Monet in monetize

This poem goes out for awe of the artists successfully resist compromising their heart in order to achieve commercial success. Compromising our humanity to monetize our lives seems to be at the core of our capitalist culture. The stark choices between money and people often appear surreal due to the sheer omnipresence of selling out. When sickness becomes the norm, a healthy path seems insane. As Krishnamurti so aptly stated, “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Art serves a purpose far deeper than “making a living, ” by connecting and re-connecting us to our most primal and highest feelings and aspirations. Art can serve as an antidote to the societal sickness built on wanton conformity and shallow efficiency. Perhaps fortunately, art is often so undervalued that it serves as a ready vehicle for giving freely, de-linked from monetary ventures. Perhaps giving freely seems like an un-fiord-able luxury (perhaps privilege is a more apt word), but carving out spaces and places for that which cannot be bought is at the core of a healthy humanity, and hopefully not merely an afterthought. In perhaps the ultimate irony of artists and their art in a capitalistic culture, the most reliable way to increase the commercial value of your art is to die. Rather than the death by a thousand compromises suited to most modern jobs, artists may literally need to die to boost the commercial value of their work. The gods of supply and demand favor dead artists. Hopefully, artists will be better valued by their enlivening passion instilled in their art rather than the mortifyingly clammy calculus of the marketplace. Starve the beast, make art; and may you find it full, filling.

Tags: Art, Awe, Choices, Commercial, Compromise, Culture, Death, Efficiency, God, Heart, Hope, Humanity, Irony, Job, Jobs, Market, Modern, Monetize, Money, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Privilege, Quotes, Society, Success, Surreal, Work

POEM: A Re-View of a Plunk Rock Band, Tossing Watery Graves

July 17th, 2015 Filed under: About Top Pun, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

I want it awe
Yet what do you no
What measures
Must we take
From emanate ripples
He helled the earth in his hand
Of what intimated
Of know consequence
A dinky mount
To sky ward heavin’
Hoping only to rock the whirled
Impelled to sea
In escapable gravity
Never in visioning
That there is
None boulder
In his pond-erous
And Sisyphean weigh
Casting all he once held dear
As flippin’ grovel
Into an unbroken mirror
As just
Hanging in
Con centric circles
Learning too a bridge lessen
As a bait
Waving less and less
To say good buy
As their reach is their largesse
Only to leave us
With an eerie qualm
And little
If any thing
To take
To the bank
Shoring up any pausible hope
Un-availed by the human I
Wither or not
As poetry
Reduced to pros
As awe things reckon
As precisely quota’d
A praising every angle
Bent on wane
Every thing
That is
Having fits
The scale
Leaving us
The lit-less
And immeasurable whoppers
The won with abacuses and slyed rule
Counting upon the inevitable apple
Fallen from trees on shore
Given too fruity beaches
With nothing
Better to do
A Newtonian uni-verse
As if
Dispatching
A lagoon squad
In sum kind of egression analysis
In a bounty us pool of data
Free from water
Fishing
In err
With out-land-ish loch
On learning
Of fall-ibility
Grounded in certitude
Agitated a bout
Tsunamis of certainty
And faintest freedom
Fueled agin
Too buy too
An arc
Reliant up on
Being largely stoned
And heading south
All the faster
To murky depths
Still
In this abyssal life
Wear there is
Every thing but
Life re-sides
In a soul place
For awe
As be-wilder-ed
Knot mirrorly a void
A stones throw aweigh
As be guiled
Cursory-ing like a sailor
Skimming the mirror surface
A mist watery solutions
Crying out
Over an abyss
All armed a bout
Drowning in what
We are trying
Too divine
What you can count on
Ripple™
In hitting one’s bottom
Throne down a well
As per cent
100 proof
Making a wish
Of scientific rigor
Sow rarefied
As iron out
Of awe that is mist
Worshipping statutes
That no copper can enforce
Nailing the truth to dead wood
Caskets and buckets
Lowered
Hung out too dry
Bailing out
Awe that is well
A tempting
Sow perverse
Amiss under stood
Plunk rock band
Billowing out
In con sequential
To sum
So poor tending
The easily fluttered
And shirking
That beneath us
Or sow a peer
Do be us
As it may seam
Take me littoral
And fathom deeply
The coast of freedom
Fore who knows
More of that which swells
Those who lead
Unfetid lives
Learning their keep
In this
Life unearth
Or those who undertake
Properly measured lives
In a dogma eat dogma whirled
Vainly exacting an incalculable prize
On each and every won
For in
The sweet by and by
It is
Better to be
Taken in
Than taking out
Rulers
And measuring cups
In the see of life

This poem goes out to my friend, Toby, who in a conversation a couple of evenings ago inspired and quasi-commissioned a poem (and blog entry) around the metaphor of fathoming the ripples from a stone being thrown in a body of water. In our conversation this was about measuring the effects of our actions, specifically social justice actions, as to the effect they have on the world and its inhabitants. The hope was to better harness this knowledge in order to parlay it into more effective actions.

This poem tackles a familiar theme of mine: how a fixation on scientific-reductionistic methods weigh too often rob us of access to deeper meanings. So, here goes:

Most of my life, my working assumption has been that if other folks just knew what I knew that they would act congruently with me. I don’t put much stock in this assumption anymore. Hell, much of the time, I don’t even act congruently with the knowledge with which I have been blessed. I have spent many moments and years projecting my sense of rationality onto others. I have spent many moments and years projecting my favored modes of rationalization onto others. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that reality is deeply ordered and that this order is accessible, even more so than we usually think. I am still cursed with the double-edged sword of an abundance of right opinion. Still, I have come to more deeply appreciate that we act more out of our emotional sensibilities, which are profoundly molded by our self-interest, whether that interest is privileged or disenfranchised. I view our emotional sensibilities and the sum total in our life of our various privileges and disenfranchisements as the primary drivers of our actions, over and above our routine thinkings. In fact, motivational and behavioral research shows that the primary causal direction of changed attitudes is from behavior, not knowledge. In other words, our attitudes change more from changing behaviors than changing knowledge. This is caught up in a matrix of cognitive dissonance, where we have a powerful need to make sense of our lives as it is at any given moment, and rationalizations supporting any given status quo are favored. Changing what we do, voluntarily or involuntarily, shifts our attitudes much more robustly than even large changes in knowledge. This undergirds the suggestion of “fake it til you make it,” recognizing the power of cognitive dissonance to drive our attitudes and thinking to match our behavior. While this may seem inauthentic to some degree, simply compare it to the endemic hypocrisies represented by vastly incongruous knowledge and beliefs with our behavior. This also gives a tip of the hat to the classical liberal paradigm of the importance of environmental conditions. Our own personal collections of privileges and disenfranchisements, either personally or socially, are weigh more important to making sense of our behavior than cataloging, or even changing, our knowledge and beliefs. In sum, knowledge is routinely over-weighed in behavior change and social change.

My view is that plumbing the nature of our own privilege and disenfranchisement is a much firmer foundation upon which to build a life-affirming world. This self-knowledge can generate powerful insights into others and is a prerequisite to empathy. Reflecting on both grace (unmerited privilege) and unjust relationships (disenfranchisement) can leverage the attitudinal changes necessary for a better world for all. Mustering the courage to let go of unmerited privilege when it perpetuates unjust relationships, and change our behavior accordingly, even if it feels uncomfortable and scary, will align our lives at a deeper level of comfort and peace. Knowledge will follow. Knowledge will catch up to our passions. Life-affirming knowledge is wisdom. All other knowledge is unnecessary clutter, actually confounding the manifestation of wisdom. Where a whole heart rules, all is well. Living in won’s head can foster a perversely dangerous idealism, disconnected from the world of the living. If this strikes you as in any weigh anti-intellectual, you may want to delve into my blog — I speak from experience.

May you find a weigh in life that lifts up both yourself and others.

Tags: Abundance, Abyss, Attitude, Awe, Blessed, Change, Cognitive Dissonance, Courage, Disenfranchised, Dogma, Empathy, Environmental, Experience, Freedom, Grace, Heart, Hell, Hope, Idealism, Intellect, Justice, Learning, Liberal, Life, Meaning, Nature, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Poor, Power, Present, Privilege, Rationalization, Reality, Relationships, Rules, Scientific Reductionism, Social Justice, Soul, Status, Status Quo, Time, Truth, Wisdom, Worship

POEM: Where The Win Blows

January 5th, 2015 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Tags: Argument, Change, Compromise, Courage, Democracy, Faith, Genius, God, Heart, Hope, Humanity, Idealism, Ideals, Justice, Life, Mind, Occupy Wall Street, Passion, Patience, Poems, Poetry, Political, Privilege, Solidarity, Soul, Wall Street, Wisdom

POEM: Metings, I’d Rather Do Without

December 16th, 2014 Filed under: About Top Pun, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

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.

Tags: Balance, Change, Control, Dreams, Experience, Future, Healing, Heart, Ideology, Intellect, Justice, Life, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Power, Powers that be, Time, Truth

POEM: In Possibility Incarnate

October 24th, 2014 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Alex created
A work of art
And
Another
Each infinitely improbable
In possibility incarnate
Bound only
By certain desire
One in many

This poem is a mini-manifesto on art and the artistic process; hopefully, inducing some inspiration and incarnating some guidance. Surly, art can be enhanced by rarefied skills. Still, art at its core is a work of heart. Art is democratic in a sense; anyone willing to dance with desire and possibility can cast a vote. Art is abundantly fair in that you can vote early and often in this existential dance called life. Ultimately, the whole of our life is our work of art. Of course, critics also abound. Those who can’t do, teach; those who can’t teach, criticize. We all have areas of our lives where doing, leading by example, being the change we want to see in the world, devolves into mere teaching. Further, we all have areas of our lives where teaching devolves into mere criticizing. Some don’t even have the passion or self-awareness to even choose what they do, and instead of living, their life is lived for them by the forces surrounding them. The freedom in creating art is bound by certain desire. As certainly, our desires and passions are unique, not identical to any other. In expressing our unique selves and perspectives, art is both intensely personal and inescapably social, an expression of our experience as one in many. Some claim that all art is about God. I think this means that all art is an expression of our experience as one in many and our relationship with the whole, the One, of which some call God. Of course, many artists are reluctant to speak of God directly, often for very different reasons. Some view the One as unspeakably beautiful and speaking falls short, even more so than our tentative art or lives. Some view any formal relationship with God, often referred to as religion, as a source of unspeakable horrors. I suspect that the views on this are as diverse as the art and artists daring to ponder such stuff. Neither this poem, nor my rantings, are intended to serve as some ultimate guide to political correctness, though my life inescapably expresses a particular perspective. While this poem is not overtly political — a little unusual for my poems — I tend to view artists as inherently political, mostly because artists make lousy slaves.

On a different note, some may wonder if the names I use in my poems are based on real people. Sometimes they are; usually they are not. I tend to select androgynous names, both as a way of avoiding sexist complications and as another way to pack two meanings in one. Authors often write about what they know. As a man, I often simply write from a male perspective; thus, I more often choose male characters. Of course, sometimes I choose a character’s gender in a way that challenges dominant gender definitions and stereotypical views of masculinity and femininity.

Tags: Art, Awareness, Beautiful, Change, Character, Existential, Experience, Freedom, Gender, God, Heart, Inspiration, Life, Manifesto, masculinity, Meaning, Passion, Perspective, Poems, Poetry, Political, Possibility, Religion, Self-Awareness, Work

POEM: His Hole Life

October 13th, 2014 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

His hole life
He refused to get carried away
Keeping his emotions in check
A promissory note
Just enough to cover his pallbearers

A noteworthy life, one that is lived wholeheartedly, is not without passion. Life: it’s all in the risk. The point of life is not to arrive safely in your grave. As Helen Keller so aptly declared, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.” A life reserved is a life lost. We must loose our life in order to gain it! In my first short story as an adult (yet to be published) a character is recounted (after his disappearance and murder) as saying “he suspected that God had little interest in us being saved, and is infinitely more interested in us being gloriously well spent.” In the movie Steel Magnolias, the character Shelby says that “I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.” Her mother is giving her grief as she is newly pregnant and terminal. There is always room for another baby in the world; it’s the adults that make it crowded. In this life, may we all be newly pregnant, for we are all surely terminal. As we are all present in this awkward period between birth and death, may our soul be bared before our body buried.

Tags: Character, Death, God, Heart, Life, Murder, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Present, Risk, Short Poems, Soul, Time

POEM: As I Poor Myself

August 14th, 2014 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

As I poor myself
Out into the streets
A pasture for the people
At ease with just us
Weather soon becoming
A torrent of change
Oar that which trickles our fancy
A tributary to humanity
That no’s know bounds
And has no interest in banks

This poem is about that which makes us human, which can run still and deep or as a raging river. Much of life is somewhere in-between, yet hopefully that which reflects our passions and fancies.

This poem also weaves this being human into community. We cannot be fully human alone. Or better said, we are more fully human in community. This may take the form of joining hands and hearts in working for justice or simply enjoying the company of others. Such accompaniment breeds further humanity.

Since being human tasks us with the never-ending paradox of needing to be more than human, we face an eternal question of choosing growth or decay, participating consciously in the unfolding of life or feudally try to hold onto what is passing by. Humanity is furthered when its members are self-transcendent and when humanity transcends itself. This perpetual opportunity and call for growth seeds a certain rebellion into any status quo. There are always frontiers to cross, new lessons to learn, and new experiences to take in. The most vital moments in life cannot be banked, and this poem concludes simply with a bank shot. The true currency of life is not money, status, or power, but courage, hope, and kindness. And life is never so exacting that there is not change left over…

Tags: Change, Community, Courage, Experience, Heart, Hope, Humanity, Joy, Justice, Kindness, Life, Money, Passion, Poor, Power, Rage, Rebellion, Status, Status Quo, Transcendent

POEM: My Brand of Value

June 9th, 2014 Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

My brand value
Has plummeted recently
So says sum consultant
As some seer into my pristine hide
Speaking a bout
Clashing symbols
In the mark it place
Some limbic game how logo
Soliciting every thing
That can be taut
As I must be
Scarred for good
Pimping my horrors
To a void
Tear attacks
Or fiscal fits
In a world lackeying so much
I’ll pass
Perhaps in tact
Or knot out live
Still
Forever chaste
Know thanks
I do believe
I’ll steer clear
Of dis figure or dat figure
And risk being
De-filed

In order to sell ourselves for a high price, we need to pay homage to our brand. We often need to distort and simplify our deepest passions and interests so others can easily recognize our “value,” that is as such value may be determined at any given time and culture. In the marketplace of our modern world, this typically means configuring our lives to maximally monetize ourselves. Reducing our lives to money is a dangerous undertaking for our humanity. This poem takes issue with the assumption that we should spend much of our life trying to sell ourselves. What exactly would be a good balance? Perhaps 15% slave, 15% whore, and 70% free range human would be a good compromise. After meeting our basic physical needs, it strikes me that we should be devoting ourselves to the things that money can’t buy. Even meeting our basic human needs can be much more human than often offered by modern, so-called civilization. In fact, if we can trade, have mutual aid associations, grow some of our own food, build or repair our own stuff, we can loosen the grip that the moneychangers have over life, trading currency for the gloriously ineffable now. Humans are not machines to be ever more standardized, even in the most complex and beauteous contraptions. Rather than leveraging the seductive, money-making enterprise of simplifying and reducing humans to means to some financialized end, we should develop human relationships that harness the curiosity and appreciation of the unfathomably deep eccentricity and beauty of every human being. Then, we can move from boredom and cynicism to enthusiasm and bounteous hopes. This glorious movement from the bowels of an uncaring machine to a feral existence may be messy, even pricey. Nonetheless, the value of living undomesticated lives is boundless, offering more than any mechanized existence, no matter how tamed, how well-trained, or how profitable. Branding is not for the benefit of cattle or humans, and it is painful and scarring to boot! Branding is for the ease of those who want to own and trade you and every commodifiable aspect of your existence, rather than taking the glorious time and robust effort to see you fully for who you truly are, worthy of avoiding all mean ends, and courageous enough to face being de-filed.

Tags: Balance, Beauty, Compromise, Courage, Culture, Curiosity, Cynicism, Food, Hope, Humanity, Life, Market, Modern, Monetize, Money, Passion, Poems, Poetry, Relationships, Risk, Time

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POEM: Dream Catcher

POEM: A Blinding Faith

POEM: Shown Up

POEM: Born With Two Black Eyes: Owed To New Be and Queens

POEM: For Awe That Has Been Urned

POEM: Can She Be Eunuch?

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POEM: God’s Perish

POEM: A Thoreau Reading — Owed To Awe That Sucks

POEM: Putting The Monet In Monetize

POEM: Where The Win Blows

POEM: Metings, I’d Rather Do Without

POEM: In Possibility Incarnate

POEM: His Hole Life

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