Anywhere copies are made,
but copies aren't exact,
selection will take place.
Some erroneous copies will
be more beloved than others.
Some errors will propagate.
Some errors will die out.
Thus is language,
thus is chemistry,
and thus is life.
Raise chaos:
That's the job of intelligent life,
to make nice & orderly things
so they can crack and shatter
and eventually end up pulverized
to dust --
A fine, granular dust that will blow
across the universe.
First, the bowl must be made:
Some potter must shape and glaze
and fire it with care,
Turning sandwiches into art...
and waste heat --
entropy slow and fast.
All so someone can crack or chip it
(with ease and lack of intention,)
starting it on a path to being sand
grains a world away.
Eight thousand miles
from my childhood home,
I'm pulled into a nostalgic
reverie
by the scent of straw
and cow shit.
This place,
on the other side of the world,
looks nothing like where I
grew up,
but that smell...
I
In my room, the world is beyond my
understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or
four
hills and a cloud.
II
From my balcony, I survey the yellow air,
Reading where I have written,
"The spring is like a belle undressing."
III
The gold tree is blue,
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
The moon is in the folds of the cloak.
Right-side-up or upside-down?
The flooded country becomes
a mirror world.
I spin in float
on a coracle boat --
mind fuzzy,
orientation unclear.
I feel I could flip,
and not take a dip,
but be righted
upside-down,
in the world beyond.
If you stare at
stone dragons
long enough
their stone-chiseled
forms will start
to glide
in tracked loops.
A steady motion of the
sinuous segments
unbroken by cloud.
They move slowly
and steadily --
never breaking off
into a new course.
Some figure-eight,
Some circle,
but never do they
come off the wall.
Their movements never
menace.
translucent hibiscus:
keeps its secrets
in its folds;
anywhere petals
don't double over,
the light shines through.
hanging face down --
pistil dangling --
pockets emptied by
gravity.
the jungle beyond blurs.
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe -- I have tried it -- my own feet have
tried it well -- be not detain'd!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten,
and the book on the shelf unopen'd!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let
the money remain unearn'd!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of
the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the
lawyer plead in the court, and the judge
expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than
money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come
travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we
live?
Allons! through struggles and wars!
The goal that was named cannot be
countermanded.
Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation?
Nature?
Now understand me well -- it is provided in
the essence of things that from any
fruition of success, no matter what, shall
come forth something to make a greater
struggle necessary.
My call is the call of battle, I nourish active
rebellion,
He going with me must go well arm'd,
He going with me goes often with spare
diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions.
Dissolving mountains.
Craggy & rugged outside.
Stone pock-marked & pitted,
Deformed natural bonsai
growing out of the cliff.
Hollow on the inside.
Amorphous caves tunnel
under those rocky tops,
Smooth lumpy cave floors
and walls,
Rough & gritty stalactites
overhead.
How long does it take to dissolve
a mountain?
Tiger Riding for Beginners 