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!"