Here it is folks, my first one-line poem!\u00a0 Quite appropriately, this short poem is a poem about poems, as well as a poem dealing directly and simply with social and political philosophy.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, even this short poem contains a pun.<\/p>\n
Oddly, the phrase “take things literally” means taking something at its most obvious face value, without presuming or exploring any deeper or metaphorical meaning.\u00a0 I would take the phrase “take things literally” to mean something to do with literature and literature’s aspirations to communicate at levels much deeper and richer than considering language to be something that just matches a particular symbol with a particular thing like a rock or a box.<\/p>\n
I would submit that meaning itself is something that transcends particular things like a rock or a box.\u00a0 If literature is ever to rock, or if we are ever to think outside the box, we need to have a rich and robust appreciation for metaphors.\u00a0 In fact, we should rely on them.\u00a0 Anything less would not even qualifying as an aspiration.\u00a0 And we dare to wonder why we find it difficult to find inspiration in such an aspiration-free world. This is another version of a common theme that I deal with in my life and how I see the world, that there is much more to life than the scientific reductionist, materialistic world.\u00a0 This is a key factor in why I increasingly see the world as surreal.\u00a0 We are human beings, subjects not objects, that seem intent on reducing the world to things, such as rubble.\u00a0 It seems that the modus operandi of Western civilization is to take things literally, thus accounting for imperialism and capitalism. It seems that taking such a way of being to its logical and cruel conclusion is to conspire, as opposed to aspire, to the pirate motto of ”\u00a0 Take all that you can and give nothing back.” And worse yet, our co-conspirators are only of use to us in as much as they assist us in taking things literally.\u00a0 Therefore, we are literally at war with one another.\u00a0 Further, we are literally at war with our self, since the subjective realm is inaccessible or denied when we are held captive by taking things literally.\u00a0 Well, enough political philosophy, let’s get back to the poem.<\/p>\n
We all know what a thief is.\u00a0 A thief is a robber, someone who steals things.\u00a0 However, this short, one-line poem begs the question of what exactly is being stolen.\u00a0 With the above philosophical discourse on objects and subjects, I hope that you can guess that I am not wanting the reader to lock their doors for fear of their stuff being stolen.\u00a0 Rather, I’m hoping that the reader will open their mind, and better yet, their heart, to infinitely more important things that can be stolen from us, if we are not careful and paying attention.\u00a0 What could be infinitely more important than my stuff?!\u00a0 What I’m referring to is something that is qualitatively different than stuff, or things.\u00a0 Qualitatively different means that it cannot be substituted for.\u00a0 The most obvious and even trite example is “money can’t buy you love.”\u00a0 Money is clearly, and literally, the currency the modern Western civilization uses for virtually everything.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, this explains why neglect more important matters, matters of the soul.\u00a0 It qualifies as sheer vanity and insanity to engage in a commerce of the soul that attempts to exchange stuff for our humanity, the essence of what separates us from dirt, our soul if you will.\u00a0 Of course, I believe that people, human beings, are more than complicated dirt.\u00a0 If you believe that you are just complicated dirt, then there is much more remedial work that needs to be done for our minds and hearts to connect, to communicate.\u00a0 Of course, ironically, if we are just complicated dirt, a wild statistical outlier from most of the rest of the barren material that we can identify in the known universe, and we are\u00a0 just billiard balls in a mechanistic, cause-and-effect universe, then all that we do is fated, determined, a grand illusion of free will.\u00a0 If you’d like to go to even one more level of irony, I find myself compelled to believe this!\u00a0 Ah, the places such spiritual musings take you!<\/p>\n
There is one word in this eight-word poem that could easily be overlooked and its significance missed.\u00a0 That word is: often. Taking things literally is certainly not always a mistake.\u00a0 Usually when we say “rock” we mean a rock.\u00a0 Usually when we say “box” we mean a box.\u00a0 Now, I chose the word “often” to access what I think the reality is, that the deeper metaphorical meanings are ignored or even stolen from us with great regularity (know shit!).\u00a0 In speaking about subjectivity and objectivity, things and transcendence, dirt versus souls, and the like (and love), people often mistake me for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. More truthfully, in my own dyslexic fashion, it might be more apt to say, “throwing the bathwater out for the baby.”\u00a0 To be clear, for the literalists in the crowd, I am not opposed to bathwater.\u00a0 Bathwater is great!\u00a0 My underlying point is that babies are more important than bathwater.<\/p>\n
Okay, there is another word in this poem that probably needs to be mentioned for its significance.\u00a0 Note that I use the word “those” rather than the word “people”.\u00a0 This is intentionally meant to be ironic, since devoted literalists seem to be living in a world that denies the very fact that they are people.\u00a0 Hey, aren’t you glad that this is only an eight-word poem!<\/p>\n
Let me try to keep it simple.\u00a0 Here are some of the things that I think are qualitatively different from stuff, the barren building blocks of our material universe: compassion, hope, gratitude and mercy.\u00a0 Feel free to talk among yourselves.\u00a0 Let me know what you think. My hope for you, and my hope for us, is that the trials and tribulations of this billiard ball world will neither destroy nor defeat you, nor steal from you the most important matters in life, and that you will live wholeheartedly in that place infinitely greater than the mere stuff around us.\u00a0 May it be so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ONE-LINE POEM: Those who take things literally are often thieves. Here it is folks, my first one-line poem!\u00a0 Quite appropriately, this short poem is a poem about poems, as well as a poem dealing directly and simply with social and … Continue reading