A mongoose crosses the road. My mind makes it Rikki Tikki Tavi. Is there a cobra in the tall grass? Is this a heroic mongoose? The mongoose disappears from sight, and I'm left with no answers.
Mongoose Crossing [Free Verse]
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Category Archives: Free Verse
Music Appreciation [Free Verse]
Not by hearing or listening,
but by feeling the rhythm,
body / mind resonating to it,
being effortlessly attuned to it:
That is how the music transports one --
how it changes one's mind.
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The City Sees [Free Verse]
The city sees like Santa Claus.
Every misdeed is captured.
Every lost soul is whereabouts known --
known but not shared.
The city sees all,
but it does keep secrets...
sometimes.
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Spared the Human Curse [Free Verse]
Seven Sages were spared the sickness
of perceiving the possibility of perfection,
a "perception" of the patently impossible --
in truth, just dim and flimsy imaginings of mind,
and, so, they didn't mind the inevitable
flaws of the human world.
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Language Liquidity [Free Verse]
language is liquid;
meaning meanders.
in the long-run,
meanings are meaningless,
untethered and adrift
in an ocean of possibility.
[political words' meanings
don't drift, but tumble with
whiplash violence through
a desert of the possible.
But, predictably, the first variation
of a political word is the exact
opposite of its original meaning.]
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Reciprocal Gods [Free Verse]
Be my god
and I'll be yours,
and we can make
each other miracles.
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We Are Makers [Free Verse]
Are we Makers?
Yes. We are!
And damn good ones at that.
We can turn a planet
into plastic trinkets.
We can use every last morsel
to make stuff:
bright & shiny
or
loud & colorful.
We can even make ideas:
good or bad,
true or false,
but always 100% believable.
We're the ones who invented Evil.
Yes, that whole toxic notion
is brought to you by us.
And Left-Wing & Right-Wing...
It used to be just a bunch of people
trying their best to understand
and to get by.
But we built mental / conceptual corrals,
corrals good enough that we
could no longer recognize each other
as part of the same species.
We are Makers.
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Hit by a Hard Word [Free Verse]
How is being hit by a hard word different from being hit by a brick or a bat? To burn, the spark of a hard word must find some kindling inside the recipient, elsewise it can't ignite. If someone points at me and screams: "YOU ARE SUBPAR AT ALGEBRA!" I remain unwounded. [I'd like to say that it doesn't burn simply because it's true, but the truth or falsity of hard words is -- perhaps sadly -- not a major ignition factor. The kindling is a thing that sits inside one -- something that makes one care, probably a complex mélange of factors. The truth of hard words? That is an outside factor.] Even if I were to discover that, to the person who issued the insult, there is no greater disparagement than to cast aspersions upon a person's middle school-level mathematics competency, I would remain unwounded. If I were to feel any sort of way about uncovering that knowledge, it would be to feel sort of bad for the person who issued the taunt. Now, how to burnproof one's soul, that is the question?
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Scarecrow [Free Verse]
Scarecrow, n. - that which exists
solely to evoke fear.
There are so many scarecrows:
global - the end of the world
as we know it.
societal - the end of the tribe
as we know it.
individual - scarecrows of the soul.
Scarecrows lead us into the worst
versions of ourselves:
The one who's stressed, and mean
because of it.
The one who imagines conspiracy
around every corner.
The one who sees threat in every
change & in every difference.
The one who wants an orderly world
of people just like themselves -
familiar, cozy, and lacking surprises.
Scarecrows even march us off to war,
and war should be the scariest state
imaginable --
death doled out on a random basis.
War should be the scariest, but terrible certainties
spur less fear than any old uncertainty.
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Exit Wound [Free Verse]
What tears away in leaving,
when one has grown into:
- a person?
- a place?
Can one grow into someone
(or somewhere) such that
one is fused in a way that
won't allow separation
without leaving a sacrifice?
Maybe one can't help but be
webbed into some wider world,
and can't help but leave
pieces of oneself littering the Earth.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 