Regarding the Poems

My current project is to edit the 2022 poems on this blog.  I've finished Decembrer through July '22, and am going to keep going back to January.   After that, I might get into the 2021 poems.  I've already edited through 2023 and there was a good deal of improvement.  Give the new versions a look!

I may not add new poems for a while, for the editing is quite taxing.  I am trying to get all my poems in as good shape as possible, for they are my legacy to the world.  I don't have much else to give, though I do continue to teach part-time, a job I love.  I also savor my time with my few friends, who I am lucky to know.  They are amazing people, who also do a lot for their communites.

Fascism may soon take over USA, thereby destabilizing the world.  If fascism takes over, I don't think I will last long. Hence, my focus on my legacy.

If history is a guide, fascism will lead to WW3.  That, in turn, probably means a nuclear launch and a good chance that civilization will be destroyed in fire, which is ironically Biblical.  

Some humans will probably survive and start the whole progress over again, hating, enslaving, fighting, and killing each other, while worshipping various gods that serve as a means of social regulation.  Tribes will turn into city-states, which become nation-states, and so on.    All of it plagued by war and ignorance under tyrants and despots who consider themselves messianic.  Women and people of the 'wrong' color or sexual or gender orientation will be brutally oppressed.  They will suffer, as they do now, but worse, from bullying, violence, harassment, cruelty and abuse.

Democracy could still win.  We can advance our ethics technology. However, the old might-makes-right strategy that centers on male dominance and aggression is quite effective at keeping people trapped in police states.   The essence of the stragteby is simple.  It can be summed in a phrase:   'I can beat you up, so shut up and obey.'

We humans are a blight on the Earth, unless we can rise up to a higher, more mature ethical level than a system where insecure males suppress their conscience and thump their chests.  I know the human race can do better.  We can reach the mountaintop. As individuals, many of us have evolved far beyond might-makes-right.  But others continue to embrace it and pratice it, often cloaked in false virtues.

As for my own meaning, ... my poems and novels are effectively my children.  I'll keep working on them to make them as good as possible--and hopefully some will be truly great.  But, if not, at least I tried to exercise my full passionate potential, the obsessive dedication of someone who wrote their first poem at age 16, and from there kept on going, fascinated by the beauty, power and magic of wordplay.

Everyday I find intense meaning in life .   All around us, conformity is eager to come apart.  Miracles crave to be seen.  They are everywhere, waiting to stoke awe, rapture and compassion.  They cost us nothing except honest attention.  Even the merest glance can turn out to be liberating.

Dictators want you to see ugliness and be trapped by it.  But, really, the beauty is right there.  All around.  Waiting for us.

Maybe this is the most important lesson that poetry has taught me.

Owl