The Last Grasp for a Gasp
Deeply lost in the woods in the unsettling comfort of your grasp.
The misunderstood remain elusive, purposely so …
and, there but before ego, grace falls in serpentine gasps.
The window will turn seasons again in a few moments.
Stay tuned—the show is about to begin!
A cast of characters scatter the dreams, laid out like serpents.
Seance For An E-Ghost
Wherever your are … I hope you are rusting in peace …
Accommodating Commodes
Oh Accommodating Commodes…
My, how you have reconciled your fate.
Conditioned to forgive and forget
so that you may be visited again by bum dignitaries
and crowned with their indignities.
Where is your individuality?
– long ago flushed out and smothered
with the loose vowels of holy rhetoric
by those up on high …
Do you take heart in knowing that at the tail end of your existence
you will have dutifully served your function …
without cracking under the excretion of your karma?
What is this righteousness you feel
in extending a policy of laissez-faire to the derrière?
Perhaps you fancy yourself a grand pedal-stool of sorts …
a throne in the company of the elite …
… a noble, yet humble, reflecting pool to moonbeams?
Oh accommodating commodes …
Alas, there is no virtue in self-repression.
And in the end, … I must confess …
you are just full of crap.
“I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way.” – Tristan Tzara “Dada Manifesto 1918”
Thank you for reading this post. I’m not really sure why you did or what your expectations might be, but I sincerely thank you anyway. I feel it’s important to get that out of the way right from the start, before the confusion sets in. I may be a dadaist, but at the very least I’m also a humanist. Trust me, you can bank on that … just don’t bet the farm.
I tend to enter ‘dadaism’ on forms that request an entry for ‘religion’. Someone asked me the other day “what’s all this about dadaism?” I considered for a nanosecond how to respond before replying “oh you know, dadaismos … dada …” I received a curious albeit blank stare in return as I noticed the corners of his mouth begin to twitch ever so slightly. I SMiLEd and turned away, mouthing the words “have a narcissistic day”. My existence was justified.
Meanwhile, the aberrant logic of the times raged on all around me. In fact, it continues to do so to this day. I would tell you to ‘watch the 11 o’clock news’, but I don’t myself anymore and wouldn’t want to unintentionally to mislead you. Of course, it’s funny because I was breastfed on television, but I’ve weaned myself from it … and for the same reasons I don’t smoke; I refuse to be a slave.
And so I became a dadaist … and you can be one too, if you are inclined to take the plunger.
“I destroy the drawers of the brain, and those of social organisation: to sow demoralisation everywhere, and throw heaven’s hand into hell, hell’s eyes into heaven, to reinstate the fertile wheel of a universal circus in the Powers of reality, and the fantasy of every individual.”
Who can argue with the ‘big bang’ theory, except perhaps the creationists … or perhaps the creator? Such a discussion would most certainly use, as an analogy, the making of popcorn: a daring activity that is fraught with danger, not just of an ordinary household nature, but of that with planetary wide significance (i.e., ‘BOOM’).
When popping corn in the confines of a kitchen, it’s the random mix of organic and temporal variables that allow corn kernels to ‘pop’ one or a few at a time. However, it should go without saying that with the right alignment of variables, a single ‘super-pop’ might occur in which all kernels will simultaneously explode together.
Given such an event, it is quite possible, under the right cosmogonical circumstances, for such an explosion to actually rip a hole in the fabric of space and time, creating a mini-black hole, which if left unconstrained will turn us, and all manner of creation in this parsec of the universe, inside out.
Now, I don’t confess to be much of a physicist, but to some extent, you can’t get around certain laws of the related science. Most physicists understand that the study of physics, therefore, is not something that should be practiced at home, and is best left to facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where the art of popping corn can be studied in safety.
Pity would be no more
Tongue-tied and cross-fingered pretty much describes how I feel sometimes, especially when the obvious, is obviously not so obvious to the oblivious. There are some things that should just ‘go without saying’. Yet, when compelled to wag my tongue or bang out a few words on what might best described as a ‘duh’ no-brainer to me, I’m stumped and incredulously stupefied into a state of verbal impotence.
Since it’s always good advice not to ‘push too hard’ and risk a brain aneurysm, I’ve decided to share with you some simple observations I’ve made regarding the past week’s daily dander in my life. I’ll call them ‘interpersonal field notes on intrapersonal relations’. Make of them what you will and feel free to connect the dots. Associate freely at your own risk. At least they are better than droning on about ‘nothing to speak of’.
A Phoenix Imploding
Fanning the flames of a prodigy’s inferno, self-pity looks on as art burns.
Anger consumes reason.
Bitterness ignites the mind-set.
Consumed with the rage over jilted aspirations …
The eye stutters …
The tongue is blind …
Speaking in volumes of disdain, spitting dissension.
Wracked with spasmodic thoughts on unfinished words.
Impotent intentions char on slow burn.
Wisps of smoldering passions dissolve into ‘misforgivings’.
A primal scream of guttural inflammation belches forth raw talent.
“Such a waste” cries a vanishing muse …
Choking on bile …
Lashing out in all directions …
Twisting, jerking, shrieking, mourning the living and grieving over stillborn dreams.
A phoenix imploding.
Why so much anger?
The will to cause such pain.
Too busy blaming ancestral arsonists to reach for a glass of water.
Choosing instead to smother candescence with incendiary fury.
Burn that ‘self-loathing’ down …
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Suggested Viewing
Suggested Reading
“To ‘choose’ dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.”
We often ask ourselves who we are. We search. We find. We lose grasp of ourselves … and then we look some more. We develop a sense of our identity from patches of notions steeped in whimsical memories of long ago … or in razor-edged fragments of experience we have gained over the years. We assemble ourselves and then behold our grand psyche … or our refined psychosis. We really have no clue and eventually attack ourselves for our own ignorance.
I like t think that I used to know who I was, long ago … long before I could sense others. Long before they would reach out with their claws and talons to whisk me away far from myself … far from my nature … far from my true being. Poor me. Poor poor pitiful me.
What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations?
I lie in the living room, a song in my head. My guitar sits across the room, silently resonating a song from long ago. It yearns for something new. It beckons me to come and create something more than I can, at present. I stare at it with loving disdain, unmoving and unmoved.
Yes, yes, it often seems like the hardest thing to do is that which we know we ought to do but which requires effort: our labors of love so to speak. Due diligence suggests we apply some elbow grease and put our backs into the matter at hand. Conventional wisdom says nothing about waiting for the ‘perfect time’, however.
It comes to pass that we reach a point where we realize we need more, oh so much more, to sustain our passion, enhance our vision, nurture our idealism, and facilitate our expression. At this point, we begin to wrestle with the contention that it’s not enough for us to rest on our hollow laurels or innate talents. And so with reluctance, we knowingly resign ourselves to the reality that we need to transform ourselves in order to thrive. Yet, agreeing in principle is one thing … doing is another.
“Can you do addition?” the White Queen asked.
I ask you … is inconsistency the only thing consistent in your life? Is ambling through life with no real purpose seem to be the norm for you? Does getting through the day seem to be both a tall order and the order of the day?
Turbulent times, indeed! I’m reminded of the old Chinese toast that chimes, “May you live in interesting times”. Of course, the saying actually reflects a curse … but then I guess it’s all how you interpret it. Still, a devil’s advocate might suggest that going all ‘Pollyanna’ would most likely mean that something has gotten lost in the translation! Yes, it’s often hard to know what to believe and more importantly what to think.
Loitering Words 