dr_con Posted July 20, 2016 Share Posted July 20, 2016 The Only Thing Worth Doing is Impossible My poetry wasn’t good enough so I think taking comfort In Snyder’s words ‘Long ago I Stopped believing poetry could change anything’ Each revolution needs its scouts to look ahead to stand in the liminal wordless inbetweens carving Wittgensteinian markers no no no That isn’t right No one remembers wittgenstein snyder ginsberg blake yeats williams those who do don’t need to be reminded The Buddha was just a man inordinately afraid of Death and Old Age His great Doubt medicated by digital distractions now failing there is always chemical interventions The Great Revelations useless behind self created curtains all of us Suckers and Hucksters forever performing In this emerald blue circus See I say: Mixed metaphors language broken beyond repair The damage so deep I looked up antonym shaky useless garbage Inevitable growing up in a small town whose Brand whose fiery tattoo indicated who would be paid at the slaughterhouse: ‘Where life is worth living’ making it clear nowhere else is being a rebellious beast I would become a poet a poser a pedestrian a pedantic a potential without egress my morbidity a substrate for Zen for Voodoo for the godless arts as the chattel bray claiming they own themselves claiming they choose I moo we’re all domesticated mammals after all part of The food chain with pretenses of civility outside children learn to play tennis the trail of broken leaves and spoor now digital fabrications in unseasonal warm soon the Amazon will start burning the coral reverts to white calcium the bombs will start falling the night will blink out and we need poets and buddhas and orisha and lwa to do the impossible to become more than cartographer’s working for the king dividing the world into resources and hierarchies fooling the same said they are free within lines drawn by someone else Time to become the Land to be Divine marked only by yourself as an aside as far as I can tellthis is improbable since the harshest critic the one who owns the biggest nastiest cattle prod tends to be me and you. Quote thegateless.org Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Posted July 27, 2016 Share Posted July 27, 2016 Your poetry is good enough-- it prompts me to recall the perspective of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it every one you love, everyone you ever heard of, every human being whoever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there--- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoelJosol Posted July 28, 2016 Share Posted July 28, 2016 As I got pulled through the lines and swinging at every line, the mix of references and images to deliver the irony of the title, which rested on "me and you", is an enjoyable ride. The reflections made me recall the utter vanity echoed by Solomon in Ecclesiastes 'a striving after the wind'. Yet here we are still. Quote "Words are not things, and yet they are not non-things either." - Ann Lauterbach Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_con Posted July 29, 2016 Author Share Posted July 29, 2016 Thank You both! I appreciate your commenting on one of my throwaway poems;-) Only published because a visual artist I know sent me one of his Junk Paintings, which I loved so I sent this one out;-) many Thanks! Juris Quote thegateless.org Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David W. Parsley Posted August 7, 2016 Share Posted August 7, 2016 This one really works for me, doc. I don't know where else I could go to find Wittgenstein lumped in with Williams, nor either of them in with the pool that here includes Snyder, Ginsberg, and (heavens!) Blake. The natural place to go from there is Buddha, of course(!?). I would like a few decades to ruminate further on these connections, but through it all comes clearly singing a voice reminiscent of the Ecclesiastical Preacher, as noted by Joel, one of the earliest and most profound of those singers on our pale blue dot. Thanks for finding this particular journey worth doing, and sharing it here, even if it is impossible. - Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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