a steady rain patters into puddles far below i close my eyes, listening for a pattern but it's chaotic - a random rhythm that tugs at my eyelids, lulling me into a dull state of mind
Wu Shih / “Nothing Special” [Free Verse]
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Category Archives: Free Verse
Purposeful Pauper [Free Verse]
a discard pile of lifelines - money & pseudo-money - technologies & redundancies some donated, some burnt, & some left to be found by the willing & the grateful he walked with a cloak, a staff, a satchel, & a bowl he walked until it hurt & kept walking until his prided died then took what was given & lived without what wasn't everything beyond food, water, & air became a burden while finding food, water, space, & the means of cleanliness became the sum of all endeavors the terror-bliss barrier took time to break down, but when it did... how free he was
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The Emotional Beast [Free Verse]
We laud our rational side - The Thinking Man - But we're emotional beasts to the core. To use that old [and disparately applied] chestnut: Of emotions, better master than servant. Poetry is a conduit to emotional savvy. That's part of the reason Plato urged poetic restraint; he found the emotional inferior to the rational, and thought most youngsters couldn't behave responsibly in the face of poetry's emotional power. It's also where Aristotle found virtue in poetry, its ability to induce catharsis. Could they both be right?
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In Praise of Diogenes the Cynic [Free Verse]
Owning only a cloak, staff, and satchel, he broke his bowl after seeing a child drink from cupped hands, feeling the dunce for being out-simplified by a mere child. When pirates, eager to sell him off, asked what skill he had, he said, "Governing men. "If you find someone interested in buying a master, I'm your man." He couldn't be driven away with a stick, much as the downright-dog, Antisthenes, tried. He was expert at adulterating the currency - literally and figuratively. When Alexander the Great offered him whatever he wished, A sunbathing Diogenes replied, "Stand out of my sunlight." I fear they don't make 'em like that anymore.
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The Immovable [Free Verse]
The Immovable, said to lasso evil & vanquish it with his flaming sword. And I have so many questions... -can one vanquish evil? -what material must a sword blade be made of to fatally wound something so conceptual? -why don't we see more vanquishing these days? [It seems to be an activity that's fallen out of favor.] where can one obtain a conceptual blade to vanquish a conceptual fault? i conclude that it's all made of mind.
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The Taoist [Free Verse]
In the pagoda garden, the philosopher stares into the inky darkness, contemplating its slow flow into the light, reflecting upon the light embedded in all darkness, light that he sees in a glint of moonlight on still waters.
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Fungi Mind [Free Verse]
From its perspective, we live in a vacant upside down underworld. It can't understand our terror over death and our obsession with life. Just thinking about it gives it nightmares, heebie-jeebies of being overrun by endless piles of creatures -- endless piles with endless needs. We may wrinkle a nose in disgust at its worldview, but it finds ours positively suffocating. But it forgives us our simple ways, we are just its food, after all.
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Streetcorner Socrates [Free Verse]
A streetcorner Socrates calls out those who grow forests of words -- not because he doesn't love the trees, but because they impede his view, making for perpetual dimness in a mind that craves light. The trick is not to clearcut, but to leave only that which enhances the view.
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Ruins in the Tall Grass [Free Verse]
Nature dresses up the detritus of our fallen civilizations. After all but the most resolute stonework has crumbled, cool faces of stone having sloughed off to leave rugged, pitted rock, all that stands testament to life is the tall grass that sways in the wind.
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Agents of Sanctification [Free Verse]
Some love attributing sacredness -- places beyond place, times beyond time, the infinite & the infinitesimal. But anything elevated to the sacred becomes a thing for which people will kill or die. Often, people don't make this reckoning until the dying 's done: -death for a sign -death for a symbol -death for a chunk of dead earth -death for a vaguely evaluated idea The agents of sanctification will kill us all.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 