
white blossoms
seen through still bare trees:
looks like fog, sans fog.

white blossoms
seen through still bare trees:
looks like fog, sans fog.
Yes. The manipulation. Attention merchants selling space in our heads to AI-powered rage bait creators for a magical misdirect on a scale never before seen. While people are pointing fingers of outrage, the last thin dime is being pried out of their pockets to fuel wildly depraved existences, and the robbed are left to wonder how the people they were pointing at — who they had their eyes on the entire time — managed to pull off a pickpocket.
#bamboozledbybillionaires

Sun-sparkles on the lake’s far end
look icy cool beneath blue skies,
but Winter shivers, I suspend,
because late Spring is telling lies.
in a flat, wide river:
something juts up
from the water --
far in the distance
for an instant,
i startle:
seeing it as an
extended arm...
like that Stevie Smith
poem, but i discover
it's neither waving,
nor drowning, but
merely protruding...
a dead limb
stuck in the river,
drag & pull balanced,
waiting to be
carried away.
If “legacy” is defined as something left behind that serves to keep one’s memory alive, then I don’t. I think that goal is futile, illusory, and a bit narcissistic. Even those who are “remembered” long after their deaths are not truly remembered. For example, the Alexander the Great who is remembered to this day likely bears little resemblance to the one who was flesh and blood. What we remember are products of imagination. [Which is fine, but then why tie them to people who lived as opposed to purely fictional ones?]
If I could leave behind some configuration of knowledge of the art of human living that would be helpful to anyone (without it being tied to my identity or memory) that would be a fine thing.
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning, I am surely far
different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your
ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become
your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would
be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this facade,
this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real
ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought, O dreamer, that is
may be all maya, illusion?