Poem: Bricks on Beach

 

Bricks on Beach

 

rolled like dough,

leavened by bubbly combers

and yeasty slaps of brine,

 

these scattered stashes 

of once-towered treasures

left over when prosperity caved.

 

sullen, pitted, wind-mocked,

not-so-modern now,

this plateau of the broken:

nuggets of castles, crushed idols,

eremites on weathered shards  

of barnacled piles.

a chartreuse crab

fat as a silver dollar

ambles over the stubs.

 

bladderwrack flogs them.

a pillory of gulls

swoops to berate.

ever so quiet,

a single pristine rectangle 

hides its rusty fame.

============================================

6/20/24 ...edits

4/8 took  out an adjective

1/1/23  more changes later in the day ... 

1/1/23  massive changes to the crap awful poem

Poem: Fallen Pine Needles

 

Fallen Pine Needles

 

they were born incomplete,

and when they fell,

it wasn’t like Lucifer at all.

 

if some God noticed,

it was only to ensure that each needle

comprised its own pinnacle,

 

never to be higher

or seek victory greater

than a clue among splinters,

 

a fragment from some benighted Basket,

some ominous Ark.

=================================

Still Here

 

Still Here

Six decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis, we had 2022.  It was a scary, pivotal year of comparable danger.  At stake was the fate of the world, determined by US elections.  If democracy had lost the vote, fascism would have risen, with the geopolitical balance teetering into darkness.

But the American people did not support the hate-cult worship of a tyrant.  Because of this, all of us, everywhere, have been given a gift this season, a certain hope:  that we are not necessarily doomed, that our better angels can prevail.

One prolific historian, speaking on a newscast (Jon Meacham, I believe), said that this is the most hopeful he has felt in six years.  The New York Times posted an article yesterday on the survival and surge of democracy:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/24/us/politics/democracy-voters-elections-2022.html

 

From the article:

 

Whatever their reasons for voting against candidates who parroted Mr. Trump’s election claims, Republicans who did so often spoke of a more general estrangement from a party that had broadly turned those claims into a loyalty test — and of their distaste for both the party’s indulgence of Mr. Trump and of a no-holds-barred brand of politics that they said favors winning at all costs.

 

I never thought fascism could rise in my country, much less on the shoulders of a flagrantly despicable man.  No wolf in sheep’s clothing, just an obvious egotist of avarice and prejudice.  Despite his sadistic lack of morality, or perhaps because of it, he seemed a political juggernaut, someone who possessed the ability to obsess others, someone with the dark charisma of a Hitler.  One third of the American populace bowed down.

What I’ve learned of fascism, during this ugly six-year trial, is that it is an old strategy:  warlords with truthless loyalty tests.  It is what Plato sought to refute when he challenged Thrasymachus.  He argued that reason should govern, not an egomaniac who had turned a portion of the people into fawning worshippers, and cowed the rest with readily used swords.

Can reason govern, without being subverted by a demagogic monster?  That is the big question facing humanity in the 21^st century.  It is tantamount to, “Will we survive?” 

The right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ based on the innate dignity of every person, is beautiful intellectual bedrock.  If such wisdom steers us, moving forward with honesty and integrity, a wonderful future awaits. 

Imagine robots that have been engineered with limitations, so that they have no capability to inflict hurt or harm.  Robots that promote happiness.  Contrast that with a different future, one where robots surveil and police us, robots that kill easily and swiftly, at the merciless whim of a paranoid warlord.

2022.  It was a huge test for democracy.  To quote Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “We are still here.”  He made this announcement in February, right after the Russian army, under the iron-grip of a tyrant, invaded Ukraine to annex and assimilate it.  

Just a few days ago, Zelenskyy gave an historic speech to the US Congress.  Democracy still struggles onward in Ukraine.  And for now, it struggles onward here, in the United States, as well.

=================================

 

Poem: Snow Melts Off Spruce

 

Snow Melts Off Spruce

 

Orphan Annie eyes

slip into grottos of one-armed bandits

who bob in wind;

silver coins, Charon's fare,

coruscant as they go,

not afraid to die like this,

to weep in fever,

sieved by the ribcage

of a silent forest.

=============================

Poem: St. Anthony's Fire

 

St Anthony’s Fire

 

a scream cuts through the dance,

begging the centrifugal fury to stop,

bellies braided into a jerk of snakes. 

and yet the danse macabre

yanks and twinges on,

until we are all as rotten as leaves

groping each others' dogeared yelps.

 

the holy fire lifts us,

bruised, clattered, lacerated, mangled, falling 

and we shriek as one sound,

locked in the torturous rigor mortis

 of our zealous conglomerate.

 

=================================

 anti-conformity poem, among other things, like nature's sheer cruelty

 

Poem: Right As It Gets

 

Right As It Gets

 

beneath a beautiful, blindfolded woman

cookie-cutter politicians 

gather votes by casting hate.

and yet to confront them is to suffer,

logic no defense.

which truth gets through

their hateful mindlock, one hell of a verbal wall?

will anything less than civil war do?

maybe the path is hidden 

somewhere in this torture-field of stupid, stubborn egos,

lying broken in some unlikely ditch?

no.

 

no one is going to find it,

the corpse of compromise lost.

the righteous politicians

are as right as it gets, always so right,

those firebranded fire-eaters,

those able stewards 

called to carry the divine torch 

through the very darkness they spread.

they are as right as it gets,

when their lies court lies

between and within hearts,

as right as it gets 

when they cultivate blame in dried-up gardens

brought about by a drought of compassion,

where they water the invidious soil

with the salt of their contempt,

and  their lickspittle ddrool.

======================================

6/20/24 ... mods . lots of mods

3/29 ... better poem now, more mods

3/24/23  ... major changes .. tried to take the confused POV out of the poem 

12/21 ... significant mods to the poem in the "stewards" stanza

Still grading papers... 

Lots of Grading

 I am grading lots and lots of papers, so can't get any poems up on this blog.  I work as an Adjunct Professor and am paid poverty-level wages.  By this, I mean, it is less than a living wage.  I have a PhD in my field, teach college students, and I make less than $15 an hour.  Right now, for instance, I am grading papers over eight hours a day, starting in the morning, ending around 10:00pm.  Then I start all over tomorrow.  It would take less time, if I limited my comments to the students.  But then I'm not doing the job I love with the quality of professorial engagement the students deserve.

I also don't get affordable healthcare from my employer, the University.  They want about $300 a month from me to pay for my own insurance.   The only medical insurance I have is catastrophic insurance through Obamacare.

The good news is that I find my job very meaningful.  I've also had time.  Time to write thousands of poems in my life.  And a novel.  And there is more planned.  This is my calling.  Even though I live in poverty now and it may get far worse.  

The USA needs to start treating its teachers better.   All teachers, except those at the very top, the tenured professors, are treated like dirt.  This when education is needed more than ever, as we move into a complex, tech-heavy, world-shaking future.

OWL

A victory for adjuncts at one university:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/13/new-school-adjuncts-strike-wages/

========================

Poem: What It Was Like

 

What It Was Like

 

light sockets stare,

minimalist zombies,

 

unfazed by the zeal of a flower.

 

leaves

dance, blush, scurry or mope.

 

walls languish,

as continuous as they are anodyne.

 

a poem, written in such a home, 

is just a séance

conducted on the altar of the fake.

 

fugues of inky phantoms

who pretend to remember

what it was like to bloom,

or to fly.

==============================================

6/21/24 ... "fake" replaces "slain"

4/8/23 ... chopped off half the poem and reworked the rest.  Completely different, new title, etc.

12/12  "an altar" replaces "the altar"

Poem: Ant Sting

 

 

Ant Sting

 

an irksome sockful of ants

swells my ankle to realize that 

mandibles are the forerunners of war.

 

i curse

 

the unsoothing graveyard of sun above,

and the crumbly switchbacks below,

 

unappeased by tender whiffs of sage,

or summery musks of rosemary.

 

yes, i curse both sun and earth,

 

and too the loathsome nettles,

those phacelia and longspur,

projecting from every niche.

 

as if the drained soil 

were nothing but a chuckle of cracks

daring seeds and insects

to call its scorn their home.

... 

 

seeds and insects, yes,

decillions and decillions of them,

accreted and attrited over eons and eons

to stir a slow pot,

 

thus the genesis.  thus humanity.

 

i am kin of the arid proboscis,

consigned to the desert,

jealous and bitter,

stung more than i sting.

 

i fret and pinch, knowing full well 

that we human stole primordial secrets,

grew them into cities.

=======================================

6/21/24 ... heavy mods

12/10 ... lots of modifications to the second half.  brutal. 

Poem: Field Day

 

Field Day

meek the blushed green sighs,

harebells and heathers,

and the flirty banter of sparrows:

 

hundreds of honeyed natural notes

dim to dusk, serene

in the deep sunken hum

of a sunset cello.

 

seeds of moonlight

dissolve into lambent cymbals

on a strummed pond,

 

to effloresce, 

to glissando,

 

when night swells to enact lacewings

purple of anticipation,

whirrs and chirrs of a soft timpani,

 

so jubilant,

so susurral,

 

and such untethered flourishes

nebulous of firefly.

======================================

6/21/ 24 ... flow fixes

4/19/24 ... mods

Scottish meadow theme ... I think ... 

Poem: Unseasonal Xmas

 

Unseasonal Xmas

 

mutton clouds

wrap an eyeball of sun.

filet-white stare

which overlords the trapped sinews

of a meekening winter.

 

in the yard,

bleachers of half-flaxen stick figures,

icy, droopy, dirty,

heralds of translucent daze.

 

and the people 

bent in pews, offices, theaters, stores,

acquiescent in the humdrum,

suffering their unthoughtful poses,

their staid, forgettable gamuts.

 

it is, all of it, a blizzard of fallen wings.

a challenge match of sugarcoated angels,

laminate sundry ornaments

available at the dime store.

 

hope has been known to survive such fiascos,

half-starved and hurt,

braving one crevasse-like punchbowl, then the next,

amid the avalanches of fake smiles

and forced laughter.

=================================================

6/21/24 ... mods

1/6/23   "forced" replaces "fake"

12/4   switched positions of "false" and "fake" 

12/3   "ornaments" replaces "tchotchkes"

12/2 ... changed the prepositions in the "pews" stanza ... 

Poem: Granite

 

Granite

 

a crow,

with the aplomb

of a pachinko,

bumped its way through branches,

 

to wonder if any bird

had ever hit the jackpot,

if heaven could fly upward 

out of husk, quill and bone.

 

death, no doubt 

preferred to throng the ground.

from possum thighs

to ichneumon wings,

 and everything in-between,

 

not much granite

among the carcasses.

although stones goggled,

epoch after epoch,

while the decaying 

layered in their spots,

 

so many countless dead things

jockeying for position,

hobbled though they were,

by the downward gnaw of the deepening damp,

 

long disobliged, as they were, by wind,

sluggish with fate.

========================================

6/21/24 ... mods

"granite" = tombstones

Knee out, no $ for a doctor, pain.  Still I have it better than hundreds of millions of people, who unfairly and brutally suffer the worst on this vicious miracle of a planet.  I made it to 60, somehow, at least.  I'll keep going as long as I can.

"Life is so sorry a thing that death is a delightful refuge for the weary" -- Herodotus 

An Excerpt From My Novel

 

Although I’ve made big sacrifices to attain it, I am grateful for the time I’ve had to work on my novel.  The title is A Future of Angels.   

It’s an epic sci fi, which means it is quite long, about 650 pages.  And yet it is full of new ideas in philosophy, psychology, and science.  There are two worlds.  Two very different futures for humanity.  Nothing less than reality and self-identity are at stake.

I believe this book is worthy as a cultural conversation piece.  Why?  Because we live in a time when humanity could wipe itself out, or create a paradise on Earth.  As technology accelerates, the time approaches faster.

What it comes down to is this:  how we handle our increasing tech.  Not just military and power tech.  Just as important, more important, is our ethics tech.

One reason my novel is timely is that most people today don’t even realize that ethics is a technology, capable of advanced and lesser configurations and effects.

One of the two worlds in my novel suggests that paradise is possible.  The other shows that hell is possible.

I doubt this novel will ever be mass-published.  Publisher and agents don’t like to take chances on first-time novelists, especially with a major project. 

I will keep on trying, though, even as I sketch plans for my next novel.  Perseverance is my best chance.  This is a quest for me, my part in promoting the Good (a concept not owned by any single religion).

Below is an excerpt from chapter one, which takes place in a near-future setting. The protagonist reflects on a dystopic state of affairs:  most people are now accepting a specialized computer--called an Umb--as an implant in their brain.

I’m certain this is a choice we will face in the future, maybe not long from now.  In the novel, I explore this option in detail.  I also explore the idea of angels, and how we could make them real--or not.

And on and on.  I created two new worlds, with their own tech, mythologies, cultures and fates.

There’s also a great love story in the novel, and plenty of action, all written in a literary style.

If you know a fiction agent who might be interested, I’ll send them a query.  I need any connection or help I can get, as I continue my journey.

Feel free to contact me even years from now.  I don’t foresee a quick path out of the proverbial desert.

 

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

 

============

Excerpt from Chapter One of A Future of Angels

 

...

Most kids bought their first Umb at the age of fifteen, the legal minimum.  Back when she was in school, it had been sixteen.  She had decided to wait an extra year, and the delay cost her social status and friends.  Even so, she had considered staying a pureflesh.  No mindware.  Mentally free.  The modeling and acting gigs could pay well, at least for a while. 

A few years out of high school, though, most pureflesh slid down the social ladder.  The first step was sexware and porn shoots.  After that, you became a collar, a trophy, a sex pet.  Poverty wasn’t as alluring as selling your mental leash to the whims of a sadistic noble.

At age thirteen, barely an adolescent, she’d had offers of free sexware.  High quality mindlynx worth tens of thousands of dens.  The man who solicited her had committed two major crimes:  recruiting a minor for prostitution and enslavement by mindware.  She hadn’t gone for it, thankfully.  Even at that age, she could see the degradation and sin. 

Trajan took my freedom.

Even in adults who ‘choose’ the lifestyle, everyone could see the real price.  Sex pets sitting in the passenger seats of plush glide cars, offering coy glimpses of banded crotches under stroke skirts or clutch jeans.  But what those smooth, perched thighs really meant was that some Duke or Duchess could push a button and make another human being beg to cum.

I’m not a sex pet.  Just meat turned into a weapon.

... 

  

===========

Poem: Flanked

 Flanked

 

the sky swam,

flank of a shark,

darker toward the deepening night,

that grim Atlantic blue.

 

there were birches that had no leaves

who reached up like lymph nodes stored in jars,

and you could

 

almost taste the formaldehyde,

 

the kind that kept fond idols

immortal and bright enough

to float in outer space.

in fact,

 

without the moon,

and yet the inevitable frost,

the Sisters and the Crab loomed dog-bark crisp.

 

someone commented on the brute logic

of the nascent tumescence

in those skeletal, orbital shapes,

 

somewhat a comfort,

 more vast than Euclidian,

those fonts of joy,

more ‘in the eye,’

 

and yet they curved down,

all human concepts do,

into the choppy iron of the Atlantic,

toward the golden ambush

of the great Devourer.

============================

6/21/24 .. heavy mods

11/28 Flipped the prepositions in lines 16 and 17,  "of" "in"

Poem: Peacemaker

 

Peacemaker

 

six eyes turning,

wrath of fate,

staccato of gyre,

turning, turning,

 

that barking iron,

blue-bellied of steel, 

tongue of sulphur,

snarl of muzzle,

 

and the fangs shoot forth

to bite reap thresh gush,

a knee a throat a heart a breast,

spillage, a pillage of blood.

=================================

6/21/24 ... 

reference to Yeats .. turning gyre 

11/25 .... "out the muzzle" replaces "from the muzzle" "fangs shoot forth" replaces "fangs shoot out"

Poem: Wary Forest

Wary Forest

 

fins of shadow

slip under a boulder

near a poker face of snow.

this wary forest,

it must know something,

spruce lichened with odd smiles,

needles sensitive as goosebumps.

 

mice-like feet of wind

scurry through the treetops.

clouds equivocate

with their suspicious, mutable heads.

a hibernation of centipedes

tucked in coiled dens,

sentinel such frosty secrets,

and yet most of all

sunlight seems the sly butler,

winsome through the boughs,

cheerful almost,

too much sparkle in its face.

=================================

6/21/24 .. a few mods... "sly butler" .. the idiom of the guilty bulter 'the butler did it'

12/12/23 ... totally rewrote this poem again ... absolutely reconstructed.  still  doubt it is any good.  how can I tell when I can't even trust myself?

11/20 ultra-significant mods, including taking the first stanza and making it the fourth stanza.  (yep)

Poem: Uppity

 

Uppity

 

kind the purple sky,

if i fall up into its aerial cushions,

intoxicate the call of my heart

with ethereal grapes.

 

to be a frond on a slender cloud,

and undulate to hover,

so gently,

till peace holds sway,

 

able to ponder 

the wink of woke stars,

sip of their mysterious hopscotch,

as they ornament, loom and resolve 

the incipient night.

 

if i could ease worry

with magnificent noblesse,

as the silvering moon

in spite of its wounds,

 

and if i could walk

the liquid cobblestones it casts

across a pandemonium of ocean chasms.

 

wouldn’t it be marvelous, 

in the most holy yet god-free sense,

 

to walk over

 that great yawn of colossal fears,

and  arrive healed, unencumbered,

within a nest of dawn.

======================================

6/21/24 my goddess has shown me the way

11/29/23 ... fixed a typo ...

11/ 16 (later) ... "woke" replaces "igniting"

11/16   "fears" replaces "voids"  "ornament" replaces "dapple"  "purple sky" replaces "sky's purple."

Poem: Reflection

 

Reflection

 

i remember ice glinting 

one last time before it wept,

and dandelions melting into butter,

the green erecting sultry thrones,

and those zestful feudalisms of ants and bees;

sundry orchestrations,

vivid of April to serenade the blue.

 

you and i, we touched then

blooming into each other, supple of fingertips, 

caresses as narcotic as poppies,

the sun riding your back,

my hands on your hips,

a garden of sighs.

 

now songbirds nest mauve 

within a canyon of sleepy suns.

and the moons swing down,

ripe yet ethereal, nightly so elegant, 

imagining your breasts.

=======================================

6/21/24  .. mods mods mods

11/14 stylistic mods ... mods, mods, mods... 

11/13 "to serenade blue" replaces "beneath the sky."

Poem: City Visit

 

City Visit

 

such taxidermy!

generous once of vigorous buffalo.

lissome once

of waist-high grass.

 

and yet now

the softest prairie flower tarred.  

roams of horses cold in stone.

schools of fish lost to glimmers

trickled onto a scale of coins.

 

the hardened, broadened trails

gutted of horn, hoof and heart.

lifeless of osprey.

eagle squeegeed for a sheen of windows.

 

and the rumbles of rubber and metal,

humungous to pollute, distort, and amplify

the snatched hum of bees.

 

gone.  all of it.

and yet prostituted still,

mashed into replicas and logos.

money the new blood. 

factories the fertile fields,

slicing exploited, caged flesh  

for mouths that pity no animal.

=============================

11/10 ... more changes... hoping to find coherence

11/9   ... lots of changes to original

Poem: Bitten

 

Bitten

 

the moon had been bitten,

down into a nimbus

on a stoic cloud.

 

it was almost an animal, then,

but no one wanted such scars,

and so the moon 

became succulent with wounds

to taunt such critics

and the hypocrties,

 

it

 

played hourglass

to the calculative schemes 

of the splenetic human rush.

it was something to be feared yet prayed,

chasing us as we overworked and underfed,

lost in our self-made riddles of delusion.

 

the moon

 

embraced the oceans

till they suckled its silky light;

and it became the sickle

of their heaving sparkling midnight harvests.

the moon,

some say 

it was the first stone employed as a tool,

before pestle, before weapon,

 

and that it was mistaken, once, as the eye of a great bird,

high over mountainous hearts,

where it somersaulted to stir hope with magic,

mixtures of ineradicable joy,

breaths of possibility.

==============================================

6/21/24 solsticed

11/13... changed the "sickle" phrase

11/10  more edits, hoping for excellence through neurotic fixation

11/6   ... "played" replaces "it was the".   Fixed typo in second-to-last stanza

Poem: Albatross

 

Albatross

 

the pain 

bent low, quiet and clandestine,

a thief, an ESP spoon, a supplicant's spine.

it skulked in the same old circle,

that cul de sac of critical neurons

stricken amid the collective blob;

that same old circuit,

which kept misfiring to ensure

the whole behaved badly,

heavy of heart.

a certain fuse

sparked more than the rest,

such a sweet, not-so-innocent misdeed.

it taunted, orbited, bright as false joy,

pure in revolve as a wedding ring;

and yet calamitous, 

destined to constrict;

so when the blob talked,

the words flung cruel,

birthing braids of hurt snakes--

snakes which struggled, wriggled,

cursives caught in torn pages of love.

they fizzled that way, latched together,

tangled till limp.

===============================================

6/23/24... 

10/31  "which" replaces  "that"

10/30 significant changes later in the day

Poem: Sees Venus, Brief

 

Sees Venus, Brief

 

the night didn’t breathe,

save for a shy peek

from an owlet's frisson,

 

and yet that one sensation,

stark in the cold silver-black,

swung a sigh 

 

off into faraway nebulas,

 

whirling so much glee

through those hunkering outposts of stars

they never thought to possess.

 

it were as if the lips of a desperate young romantic

 trembled

 and yet then broke free,

magical to sing,

and out of nowhere,  

 

to stir numb, repressed eons

so-long neglected and darkened, 

never before given a chance.

==================

10/30  ...  many changes 

Poem: The Door

 

The Door

 

the door was in fact a statement,

opening only to be left behind. 

to search its corners

was to imagine the knob of a curious face. 

 

clues in the grains of the wood 

alluded to a perch or theater stage;

and to the comings-and-goings 

of the many who had used the door,

swinging through their exits and entrances

to swish, saunter, stumble, sidle, skip.

 

the keyhole, though, was not quite right,

too tricky for an eye to take,

and yet somewhere, i knew,

far beyond the wall-like maze of knotholes

dwelled an unquenchable flower.

 

===================

6/23/24 revamp

11/29/23 ... lots more changes... running up against the limits of what I can be, despite what I want to be

10/30 more desperate fixes...

10/25  ... fixed typo in first sentence  ... "the contours" replaces "its contours" ... sound-flow & meaning mods to second to last sentence.

Poem: The City

 

The City

 

the city, 

that sweltering current of vogues and idols

cut out of flows of commotion

in anxious lives.

 

all those scents of the lonely,

commingled with stress and sweat,

 

busy handsome pretty in twittery herds

thickening into panicky flesh,

 

supple yet reactive,

cheeks and brows compliant, 

interlaced as locks, 

surgical noses, lubricious lips,

and the rivers of offered jugulars

which the vendors always checked for throbs:

fascinations, revulsions,

hearts-on-fire lust.

 

the city.

it was a sorcery that savored false ingredients,

gulped down the rest.

 all of it a gargantuan puzzle,

every smooth profile a tired jigsaw hack job,

nicked by truth, dented by love,

fugitive from inevitable destiny.

 

the city,

the lucky were as schooled as minnows,

flashing false smiles to scatter,

 only to aggregate once more,

doomed, yet again,

to smother their unruly scars.

=====================================

A Brutal Time To Be Alive

 

A brutal time to be alive.  If fascism takes over the United States, the whole world trembles.  Aside from that, experts claim the nuclear threat is as bad, or worse, than the Cuban Missile Crisis, due to Putin’s wanton, tyrannical aggression in Ukraine.

Donald Trump, who would lead a fascist US, is cut from the same cloth as Putin.  A narcissistic sociopathic sadistic demagogue. 

I’ll let that sentence settle ...

Sociopaths are not automatically bad people, any more than the rest of us.  They are reckless, impulsive and transactional.  With proper guidance, which, admittedly, we lack in our general culture, they are functional members of society.

Trump, however, is what experts call a “malignant narcissist.” [1]  This is the most dangerous classification of personality disorders.  Trump also has a skill: he is a brilliant confidence man.  What this adds up to is a perfect storm:  a brutal dictatorship without limits on its descent into darkness and corruption.

Leaving that aside for a moment, consider this:  technology is growing more and more powerful.  This means that our future can be paradise or hell.  It depends on who is in charge. 

If the right people are in charge, they will see that ethics is one of the most important technologies to develop. 

Ethics--how to know what is right and initiate it--involves human psychology, worldview, and straight-up philosophy.  The Sims, a computer game, provides a crude analogy.  We can shape our societies to maximize human flourishing and the beauty of the planet.  How?  Set the level of ethics tech higher. 

Low ethics tech ==>  war & suffering

High ethics tech ==>  flourishing

Note that ethics is not simply a list of rules or commandments.   It is a synergy between the science of human psychology and ecosystem dynamics; plus an adaptive, nuanced philosophical approach.

On the other hand, what happens if a malignant narcissists is in charge?  Such a person will stop at nothing to get power and adulation.  No respect for human rights, future generations, or the planet itself.  This will favor totalitarian control.  Such control will be enforced by robotic surveillance systems, which are in the process of being enhanced in China.

So, at this juncture, human civilization has two paths.  One goes to flourishing and happiness.  Universal basic income, psychological health, benign robots doing the work we don’t want to do. 

A leader in such a society will be psychologically healthy and virtuous.

The other future is ruled by narcissism, greed, along with lack of conscience or virtue.  The result is enforcement of obedience through strict police controls that include torture and execution. 

Someone might argue that rulership by dictators can work--if they are benevolent and intelligent.

First of all, big IF!

What we are looking at, right now, is the rise of fascism.  Fascism is based on constructing an irrational cult of personality.  There will be racism, sexism and other oppressions.  Fascism, also, is rife with corruption.  Why?  Lack of respect for rule of law.  It’s all about might-makes-right.

One malignant personality is all it takes to start WWIII.  Look at Putin.  He is on the edge of destroying us all.

Trump may be worse even than Putin.  Trump has shown incredible incompetence.  An inability to adapt to the facts, or even grasp them.  Witness his hideous response to the pandemic.  It involved gaslighting, contradiction and cruelty  (e.g. knowing covid was dangerous while telling Americans it wasn't). 

He has also said things like, 'If we have nuclear weapons, we ought to use them.'

This is the time we live in.  

If we go too far in the dark direction, there won’t be any more chances.  WWIII isn’t going to be like WWII, horrifying though the latter was.  

Our level of death tech is much higher.  We are far more capable of wiping ourselves out.

 Meanwhile, our ethics tech remains pathetically stuck in the realm of despotism.

[1]  https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Case-Donald-Trump-Psychiatrists/dp/1250179459

==================

Poem: Deadly Nightshade

 

Deadly Nightshade

 

shadow creatures,

crooked as the claws of roots,

curl over withered bushes,

 

fey in their contort,

bleak pantomimes,

covert yet unearthed,

 

pleas from a buried heart

which defecated its hurt

through a ribcage long ago

 

and now 

no feel touch taste smell sound,

no sign language,

or  windy semaphore,

 

from these shadows that vine

through the still of rose thorns,

so quiet and uncertain

 

twisted in dusky composure.

======================================

6/23/24 ... revamp

This poem works with the image of sunset turning to dust casting shadows across strange shrubs

3/12 ... "twisted" replaces "twistical" ... "covert" replaces "surreptitious"

1/21/23 .... "twistical" replaces "meaningless"

The poems don't like you.  And they don't like me.  They use us to be heard.

Regarding the Poems

 Thank you for reading the poems!

Most of the poems that go up get edited during the first few days of their online life.  Often, I remark on the edits below the poem.

It's a very hard time to be alive for all of us. The US Empire is on the verge of going fascist, which would turn the whole world on its head.  It would mean WWIII.  Ethics is a technology.  And ethics needs to advance with other technologies.  If not, we will be stuck with narcissistic dictators, who cannot adapt rationally to a changing world, and who demand worship and fealty.    It is an ancient pattern, dictatorship by selfish warlords, and it always leads to war.

See my post:

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2022/01/ethics-is-technology-usa-is-leaning-in.html

Aside from that, there is futuristic advance.  The stretching 21st century will be as alien to us as the 20th century was to the people of the Victorian Era.  Humanity could have a fantastic future.  Better health.  Robots to help. Delights and ease.  Universal Basic Income.  Or the future could be hell.  It depends on our ethics.

We will be able to engineer angelic AI into existence.  Or AI that surveils, restricts and enslaves.   

It's all coming down.  Life on Earth, in a very real sense, is Purgatory.  We can craft a beautiful future.  Or an evil future.  It depends on who is in charge.  How leaders will use the powers that be at their disposal.

We often here from cynics that 'human nature' damns us.  

Well, no.  Many different cultures have existed, and they demonstrate that we are malleable .  A human can be predisposed (programmed, some would say) and situated in many ways.  We are not limited by evil.  We can seek the Good.  In fact, we have.  Women can now vote in many places--a HUGE change.

Ethical forces exist in the collective consciousness.  These forces struggle to be heard and to thrive.    

The best we can do, being the puny creatures we are, in this brutal universe, is to seek the Good.  The Good transcends any one religion.  

Yes, the nature of our universe saddles us with a cruel physics, a mean, vicious, unfair system of evolutionary selection.  And yet, it is a system we can control, one we can steer, through a combination of technology and intellect.

Fly Well In The Dark,

OWL

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

=============

Poem: Poet Issues

 

Poet Issues

 

it was an orgy

of the anti-fantastic,

a spill out an 8th story window,

ideas as limp and lukewarm

as breathless doves.

 

it was a waterfall of useless hurt,

sheaves that meant so much less

than one line from a famous writer.

 

it was an example of what it didn’t take

to be more than a crumpled curl

in the city’s ego-heaped, petty gutters.

 

no one cares cares cares

 

for  my days drunk or sober,

sex-filled or sterile,

cried in extremes

from the bleeding mouth of a pen;

no one cares

for this savage agony of stormy bliss

chewed in the pincers of tiny rhymes.

 

cockroaches of cliché

crawl up my leg,

swelled brown as sewage,

their feelers ticklish over my heart;

 

yet when i scream, trapped,

it is only a blah of boredom 

as i stand cordoned in the same lines.

 

worse, i know

 

because my audience is as callous as i am,

whining about wanting to be heard,

trying to manage half-losing battles,

as if that is what life is all about--

a brutal tedium of that.

=================================

8/14/24 light edits

10/11   "is" replaces "was" in the last stanza 

Poem: George On a Quarter

 

George On a Quarter

 

a wine rack of poetry, 

if splashed on your coin-borne face,

would trickle off silent lips, voided eyes,

the sleepwalking numb of the kafkaesque.

 

beautiful burgundy tears

of passions and persistent hopes,

such poems of loves and lovers

a true heart would intoxicate;

yet they fail to dent your silver mettle

so deeply incused, dishonest and cruel,

over links of chains to slaves

cursed to mine deep underground

or work your plantation.

 

why do we worship your saintly bust,

honed as it was on a die of sins?

 why such praise 

for a decapitated history,

hoarded and guarded

in self-righteous stacks of silver?

 

i touch you and you drink my warmth.

you curse me with your cold wafer.

your inedible eucharist.

 

i tossed you off a peer once,

as if to expel a vampire,

and i watched as your winks scrawled to fade,

leaving in their wake no prose.

==============================================

11/18  changes to decapitation sentence

10/29  "expel" replaces "repel"

10/7  many changes after the poem went up, a couple hours later.  Weird f**king poem about the bust of George Washington, which appears on the US twenty-five cent piece.

Poem: Some Conclusion

Some Conclusion

 

a bat in raspberry dusk

wrote a flurry of answers far too sane,

 

as its wings cartwheeled

 

to counter the measures

of every philosopher, orator or preacher--

 

a batty flourish of voracious cursives

that doomed their blood-sucking bravado.

 

in joyful vectors,

the bat ventured beyond light,

 

airy of origin or omega,

eluding astronomy’s guess.

 

no logician could fathom

such a loopy loom of legerdemain,

 

even as truth reigned incontrovertible

in the sky.

===================================

6/23/24

The title is in the style of, say, "That's some outfit you're wearing!"

Poem: Thanks Given

 

Thanks Given

 

ebb of mango in half moon

as a man between dusty walls

reclines the same way,

bedsheets rife with twisty blooms,

while his clock points

to coming hells

and unseen constellations. 

dishes tower

stoic in the condo's kitchen,

and cups and effete turkey bones

sunken in the sink

soggy with shred of flesh,

a carving knife stuck through.

=====================================

6/23/24 mods

11/17 .. removed "to be" after "dwell to long"

Poem: Resign

 

Resign

 

what could be more desperate

than a belt around the neck,

and the subzero of goodbyes,

and the failure, if someone cared.

 

it couldn’t just go on and on,

waiting for a slip,

and the unstoppable sense

that one is being sucked down,

swirled to drain away,

beneath a basin of daily rituals.

 

as if we even know what we are,

or why these roles, or the nature of the game. 

trite jangles on a gamut of nerves,

far more numerous than piano strings.

 

love,

it sprints at full thigh,

but must leap, more than once,

the monster’s ditch,

and hence it loses, one by one,

its petal-like toes.

 

far too much keeps going on,

below the cheap magnetic shells,

down here in the nucleus.

===================

3/13/23 ... "know" replaces "knew"  "are" replaces "were"

10/1/22    "the" replaces "a"  

Poem: Change of Clime

 

Change of Clime

 

a rattlesnake half dust

employs itself

as a lounge chair.

 

a few jays wilt

on electrical tethers.

no fusspot grackles

to gossip up the wires.

 

nothing blooms or flits.

sage plants beg for sauce.

heat whispers

but lizards have no ears.

 

above the crispy arroyo, 

rusty with pummeled cars,

a vulture mistakes itself

for a curdled roach.

the absurd meekness all,

even the humans tamed,

docile as eluvia 

prostrate under foothills

of simmering char.

============================

12/2/23  ... not a very accessible poem, some mods

10/1 "Clime" replaces "Climate"

9/25  massive changes

Poem: The Statement

 

The Statement

 

our time must be spent

hiding from the statement.

the statement is absurd and nude.

 

life is not nude.

layers protect who we are.

our layers define us

 

and must be fashionable.

 

don’t

 

think too much. 

others have worse problems than you.

stay quiet so they can fake it.

 

the past, you say?

the past is an unworn locket.

no one can open the locket and not be horrified 

by their own neglect.

don’t

 

try to be better.

are you ready to cry 

until the tears cleanse?

 

tears can scald 

as bad as battery acid.

 

tears are not cures.

truth is not a key.  

 

it won't get through.

 

==================

Poem: Psychic

 

Psychic

 

a song in a sigh, a key in a crow’s foot,

a dram on a tongue

while molecules spike the nose.

a nuzzle skirts a nipple

when fingertips strum a nape 

to sculpt the breath.

such frolic flocks my heart with frivolous haggles,

vulguar and mercurial

under

 

herringbone clouds and orbital Geminis

and all the other mysterious cog-pixies of our anti-clockwork universe.

so many mishmashes. 

who could assuage or offer naked assurance

to such flypapery sins of buzzy beggary?

nothing to do save sever the threads, go blank,

dispel the meddlesome, 

back to wanders irretrievable,

so jealous of time.

======================================

6/23/24 brutally chopped up and refigured

12/24/22 lots of mods ... sad... still not right

9/27 "such" replaces "their"

9/17 ... desperate continuous edits... 

9/16 ... more changes to this product of mania

9/16  ... changes continue to the original abomination ... 

9/16  major changes to original poem, tossing out whole sections ... gutting the rest ... absolutely awful poem to have posted ... might still be awful, can't really say, brain so muddled

Poem: Polar (triggering poem)

 

Polar

 

in a closet,

a place where the curled

reach up from a valley in a psalm,

 

hollow cloth hangs above,

those crucified angels of wool,

effigies of last defense.

 

no mediation for the curled,

here in anxiety’s womb,

this valley in a psalm,

 

so inky, this night,

where lack-of-movement

stalks movement,

where lack-of-movement prowls.

it alone stalks, until dawn,

when a thought might think

 the price of admission beyond the door

is the same as the door.

======================================

10/14/24 ... mods

Depression isolates.  But isolated time is time with the gods.