Category Archives: Philosophy of Life

Five Wise Lines from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” [Plus Five Lines, More]

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No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

william blake

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

William blake

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.

William Blake

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

William Blake

Exuberance is Beauty.

William blake

Without Contraries is no Progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

William Blake

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

William blake

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

William Blake

I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years. He answer’d: ‘The same that made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian.’

William Blake

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

William blake

NOTE: William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven in Hell” is available in many collections of his poetry, and is in the public domain and available via Project Gutenberg at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45315

Master & Slave [Lyric Poem]

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What will be your master,
  and what will be your slave?
Will you court disaster
  to be perceived as brave?
Will you call your pastor
  to hide that which you crave,
    or be your own ringmaster
       and own how you behave?

And will you choose virtue,
  or live in fear of vice?
Will you choose to be true,
  or default to being nice?
And when there's much ado
  will you jet their paradise?
Or just defer your view,
  as act some men and mice?

In Homage to Leaves of Grass

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You're my Analects,
           my Gita,
           my Dao De Jing,
           my sutras,
           my Meditations,
           and my Republic
 all rolled into one.

You are the scripture by which I live.

You present a path to that rare place:
            extreme confidence
            which tears no one down,

            but, rather, lifts all.

You achieve this by crushing 
            the ordinary.

Nothing is common.

Everything is a miracle. 
            (Even those leaves of grass
                      you repeatedly reference.)

No one is so rough
             or promiscuous
             or simple
as to be lowly.

Your author's unbridled enthusiasm 
             glowed with the insane confidence
             of an adolescent boy,
but his awesomeness was never gained
             by subtracting from others.
Rather by seeing the bright, beautiful spark 
             in each body,
             mind,
             pair of hands,
             & burdened shoulder. 

You are America,
             the America we want to be.

The America that labors,
             but which takes time to see
             its natural wonders. 

The America that heard what Jesus said,
             and became less excelled at stone-throwing,
             and more at cheek-turning.

The America that could see beyond dogma
             and hard-edged tribalism,
             and could learn from all the 
             grand & glorious people 
             who reached its shores --

So that we could be the best version of ourselves
            through the strengths of all of us,
            and not be stymied by missing 
            the great beauty & knowledge
           among us. 

You pair away the extraneous burdens
            which tax the mind,
and show us what the world looks like
             unfiltered. 

You teach one to see a beauty
            that is so well hidden 
            that its own possessor doesn't 
                      recognize it.

You are the song of a life well lived.

Bury the Ordinary [Free Verse]

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Bury the ordinary,
 but make sure to 
  chop it out at the roots.

Nothing grows back more tenaciously
 than the commonplace or the quotidian.

Sometimes what grows 
 back from those roots 
  looks entirely different,
   but it's still mundane.

It has the same feel,
 even when it has a 
  very different look.

Kill it.
 Murder it.
  Chop it up.
    Bury it, 
     and let it die the death
       of the forgotten.

Note to Self: A Sonnet

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Don't fill your vaults with glowing, shiny stones.
It's invitation to all cheats and thieves. 
Don't know by mind what you don't know by bone.
Make sure you've lost before you up and grieve.

Then when you grieve, take time to fully feel.
Don't let your mind write stories so untrue
that they turn melancholy like a wheel
that gathers and grows with each turn anew. 

Be kind and true, but not so kind and true
so as to kill with gifts or a mean tongue.
Don't do what would be best that you not do,
and only sing of those heroes unsung.

Oh, every piece of wisdom has its day,
so don't hitch so tight that you're led astray.