There’s more than one undiscovered country.
Hamlet’s is no place for old men to aim.
I urge a fight for foreign shores, bluntly.
Don’t let false gods go staking early claims.
They’ll have one sitting on the couch, glumly —
the fast-path shortcut to the pyre’s fierce flames.
If you can feel the breath expand your chest,
then pick up your pack, and start stepping West.
Under cottony clouds, my gaze fell upon the borehole by which slanted shafts of light found the ground. A divine spotlight that shone only on the liquid metal surface of a smooth flowing river at a point just before the rapids were reached. A closed-eyed kayaker might feel graced by the warm sunshine on his face. But only for the moment before being cast into a dim and turbulent transition from heaven to hell.
divine spotlight
a beam of sunlight burns
through gray clouds
Taken in January of 2019 in Vientiane, Laos.
Once mankind invented the building, we needed to see how huge one could be built — how broad & how tall. If there was a Babel Tower, it’s testament to the disaster written in such ambition. If there wasn’t, there is still plenty of crushed bone to be found in archeological sites that certify the same.
Once mankind invented evil, the compulsion to see what grand scales it could reach swelled, as well. It’s written in our history.
Nothing can be endlessly stacked without groaning under its own weight — not even evil.
What is this world: mountain, river, or mirage?
When one arrives at the mountain
one finds a fixed collection of matter.
Sure, it’s slowly changing its arrangement,
bits of grit erode off,
cracks develop, splitting rock from boulder,
but the long-and-short of it is that it’s a bunch of stuff.
When one arrives at the river one finds it exists
but is never the same arrangement of stuff.
With the pass of a second of time,
it’s completely rearranged itself.
If one could ever reach the slyly retreating mirage,
one would find that it was purely an illusion —
or, more precisely, you’d never find it because it’s not there.
Maybe it’s all three combined in some way
that my mind can’t comprehend.
Maybe it’s none of the above —
and, instead, is something outside my capacity to imagine.
Yes. That’s probably it.
The scream that shears souls off like tear-away suits. On the gasp, those souls are sucked inside that wide mouth. So hot does the heat grow that it glows like a flaming pumpkin. The monster’s got a bellyful of souls, fired into a forge of rage.
Wild-eyed and never a child — birthed into a blind fury. Sightless, those wide eyes — all expression no vision. Like the teeth that aren’t free to chew, but none-the-less seem fierce in form.
It looks the part of one who hates love, loves hate, but knows neither.
In ancient days, it came this way,
and now it’s living among us.
What’s more, it seems, it’s here to stay.
It’s sunk its flag and worn its ruts.
It built its mansion where once stood huts.
It’s cattle graze the fallow land,
but something about it stirs the guts.
And now the people want it banned.
They’ve called a meeting, made their stand,
and found a verse by which to curse
it to a life in the southlands —
Where live the shunned, loathed, and perverse.
Taken in the summer of 2011 in Szentendre, Hungary
Taken in Mysore in November of 2013.
