One burning moment --
taffy-stretched to the edge of reason:
stretched so broadly that one
can't fathom escape -
like Monkey on the Buddha's palm
One burning idea --
cloned, and then carved
to make infinite variants,
and painted infinite shades:
the dark tone of each
darker than the last
Burning ideas populating
the vast expanse of a
burning moment,
until the urge to escape
insists that one carve a hatch
into living tissue
But what is it that does
the stretching of the burning moment
&
the cloning of the burning idea?
Can't that stretcher and cloner
be wound back,
scaling all to proper proportions?
And can't it be done before
that terminal instant
is carved in jagged stone?
I
A young man set his ex-fiancé on fire.
(Or, so the story goes.
[He claims she self-immolated.])
She succumbed to third-degree burns...
but not right away.
She lived long enough to know
the agony of third-degree burns.
They'd met in college,
both studying to be engineers --
I mention that because
at the heart of the issue was caste.
It seems absurd enough
to murder a fiancé over
some imaginary mark of superiority,
but even more so when one considers
that they would have had the same qualification --
possibly similar jobs --
but for the boy's bigoted parents,
who insisted he call off the engagement,
and the boy, himself,
who took things that extra murderous mile.
So, it wasn't even about who the couple were,
it was about what their grandfathers
did for a living.
What a world.
II
The war is still burning.
Among the latest questions are:
Will Belarus be forced to join in the fighting?
&
If so, will having another set
of soldiers who are completely uninterested in the war --
other than as a trial to be survived, that is --
help or hurt Putin's position?
A related question is whether Putin
would rather watch the world burn
than to lose face?
What a world.
III
The Pandemic said, "Psyche!"
This means America will roll the odometer
on COVID deaths.
We had things almost back to normal,
and then the virus caught its breath,
got it's footing,...
whatever viruses do.
What a world.
***
I think I'll check the news, again,
maybe sometime next year.
The Midnight Circus
was not as it seemed.
It was bright colors:
motion-blurred.
It was the tinny monotony
of music box-style
tinkling tunes
&
organ tones.
One could even make
out the scent of fried foods
and cotton candy,
among the many other
[uncircus-like]
odors.
But there was also the story
a mind wrote to
dance sensory facts
into sensory fictions;
that was where the falsity lie.
If one opened one's eyes,
letting them focus:
there'd be sparking wires,
&
flames licking ever closer.
The shrill organ tones would
become screams.
The summer night's
humid heat would become
third degree burns.
The circus smells would
become dust and death
and acrid burnt combustibles.
So, he didn't open his eyes
to war or his impending demise,
but let his mind march
into that big musty, canvas tent,
surrendering to its irreality.
Running through the park,
in the light of the rising sun,
I pass through a band of cool air,
and a little later,
pass through a band
of warm, humid air.
And, I wonder whether
I'm having a stroke.
Isn't physics supposed
to push the warm air over
into the cold,
or pull the cold air over
into the warm,
or both,
and to keep doing so until
the air temperature
is an undifferentiated mass?
Had I stumbled into a
glitch in the Matrix?
Was the simulated weather
breaking down?
Why was thermodynamics
misbehaving?
I had so many questions,
but so few answers.
And so many miles to go.
One item per day
was abandoned
until living got hard.
But like Diogenes --
who gave up his cup
upon seeing a boy
slurping from cupped palms --
eventually, it all was gone.
Each item hand-weighed,
its weight against is usefulness,
and all were found expendable.
They told it slant,
but not all the truth,
and it rolled into the ears
of the willing
and into the minds
of the faithful.
And in those minds
it was built into
a swift machine,
one of great power --
if little reality.
But deaths never required
reality of motive,
only
reality of matter.
So, the wild stories
became wild ideas
that were the bane
of us all.
“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible”
Henry david thoreau, Walden
Too many people wish that the world consisted
of those who held the same views as they -
who loved what they loved,
who believed what they believed,
who would do what they would do.
I can't imagine a more boring world than that.
If there aren't those with different:
ideas,
desires,
beliefs,
and values,
then who will show me something new:
something that -- for good or for ill --
will change my world
and advance my understanding.
If truth be told,
I'd just as soon spend time
among the crazy sages who --
having rejected all programming --
will not be made prisoner to a train schedule,
let alone to a norm or convention or protocol.
The madmen who shaman one
out of all mental conventions.
But such as they are hand forged,
each vibrating at his or her own wavelength --
hard to see and
not easily found.
The secret is...
we're energy machines.
This wild ride we're on is all about
staying 98.6.
The meaning of life
might as well be 98.6.
You work to make rent
to be sheltered at 98.6.
You go to the store for groceries
to stoke the fires of 98.6.
You put on your coat or slippers
to keep yourself at 98.6.
You go to the beach
to warm to 98.6
&
then sweat to drop
back to 98.6.
You take medicines when you're too
far off the mark of 98.6.
You turn on the AC
to sleep at 98.6
&
kick off the covers
&
drag the covers back
&
adjust the AC...
all to sleep at 98.6.
You may wish to be a flash fire
of a million degrees,
but life leaves you at 98.6.
Some day you'll cool off
and your career as
Thermoregulatory Maintenance
Specialist
will be at an end
&
you'll be done with
the trouble of staying 98.6.
Mad scientists are terrifying.
Mad artists are reassuring
(par for that particular course.)
Mad mathematicians
seem harmless enough,
as long as he or she
stays in his or her lane:
the one with numbers
and angles
and sets.
Mad Saints are the most hated
& most beloved of lunatics.
They serve as necessary examples --
not there to forcibly deprogram one,
but to show that it's an option.
One has the choice to be free,
whether one has the will or desire to be -
that's an open question.
But those who sink the red pill
must learn that in those waters
thar be monsters.
(If only those of one's own making --
i.e. Nietzsche's abyss staring back.)
Voids can't gaze.
Only that which one crams
down its abyss-hole
can do the gazing.
I am the soulless voyager
cut loose from the dock
in a rudderless craft
Kicked this way and that
by angry winds that greet
all flat surfaces, and --
having met a surface --
pushes it away with maximum effort
Where will my ghost ship take to land?
After all,
every voyage must end --
be it purposeless or purposeful
A craft can only circle
(having been caught in the currents)
for so long before it's whipped
off into sand or rock or
some unlikely port
That's the great mystery,
the mystery by which life
is made worthy of living
one never knows whether
one will be tossed to a port or a rocky shoal,
a shoal whose rocks will rip open the ship,
like a deer dressed by a poor hunter,
being torn at jagged angles
so as to be unworthy
to be called a ship or boat or even
"thing that floats,"
becoming a rusty structure,
resting at an odd angle
near the shore
but maybe this ghost ship
will be tossed roughly against
the rubber bumpers of a dock,
coming to rest
such that what remains
can be offloaded
Tiger Riding for Beginners 