Poem: Fox Tale

 

Fox Tale

 

the yellow of the grasslands flexed:

a stretching gush of lions

speckled with manes of raspberry thorns.

they greeted the bay with a stark whip,

leaping into nowhere,

past a pure of azure and a few sparse ribs 

but no sun.

far from the lions,

spruce in spotty acres

might have been reaching up

proud and exhilarant

or convulsed by rage.

axes of wind, swung by

northeastern cold, had splintered

flanks of the evergreens

and tumbled them to the ground 

where

the cracked trunks attracted a fox,

rusty yet warm of tangerine,

a vibe as plush as it was sleek,

curving through a whirl of pounce

to pluck a squirm of gopher.

off then, quick as a flirt,

smudged by the terre-verte

of the madcap groves.

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

7/29/25 same day mods... all day .. mods

A look at Down East Maine before some of the significant global warming effects, when there were more spruce and few maples. 

Commentary: Israeli Rights groups finally call out the Gaza genocide

Today, the New York Times front-paged an article on the genocide taking place in Gaza.  The title is, "In a First, Leading Israeli Rights Groups Accuse Israel of Gaza Genocide."  .  The article is step toward global mobilization and moral awareness. It starts off: 

Two of Israel’s best-known human rights groups said Monday that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, adding fuel to a passionately fought international debate over whether the death and destruction there have crossed a moral red line.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-genocide-gaza-rights-groups.html

First of all, it is appalling that an "international debate" is taking place.  There's nothing to reasonably debate here.  Great evil is soul-stingingly evident in the malevolence being inflicted on the Gazans.  The presence of an international debate, in and of itself, shows that we live in barbaric times.

 It is never morally acceptable, and always utterly loathesome, to reduce the homeland of two million people to rubble, fence them into that rubble, and continue to bomb and starve them.  Hospitals gone.  Schools gone.  Fertile land gone.  Potable water gone.  Everything gone.  Via social media, the world watches scenes of starving people reaching through IDF fences, begging for scraps of food, reduced to dog-like instinct out of inflicted levels of extreme hunger.  This is never acceptable.  Never.  Again, no reasonable debate is possible here.  None.

What if the two million people reduced to homeless, fenced into the rubble of their homeland and starved to death weren't members of the same racial, ethnic or religious group?  Technically, it wouldn't then be genocide, but it would still be utterly unforgivable and ultimately wicked.  Again, there is no possible reasonable argument that treating two million people this way is morally acceptable.  Never.  None.  

We live in a primitive, dysfunctional time, far below the level of ethics technology we are capable of achieving as a species,   This is no excuse.  It is the opposite:  a catalyst to change and grow.  We have the brain plasiticity and the cultural plasticity to move forward, to someday, even fairly soon, achieve a non-barbaric and minimally decent civilization (1).

Anyone who is reasonably and morally aware--and we all can be educated to this level of perception, if given a chance--can see that this is genocide.  And it is very very very hard to watch.  It is loathsome, disgusting, reviling, abhorrent ... I could pile up futile words and it would never capture the horror of genocide.  Yes, it is hard to face.  But that is no excuse for putting one's head in the sand.

Humanity can move forward.  We have moved forward.  Even long ago, there was some incipient progress when, for instance, the Romans banned crucifixion.  In the 19th century, slavery was made illegal.  In the 20th century, women attained the right to vote.  All they needed was an opening in the rigid, enforced social mechanisms of ignorance- and fear-based governance.  

In general, there is a slow yet generally positive momentum observably in the trek of civilization, from the times of ancient Sumer to the present.  Much of the positive change has happened in the last two centuries.  

So, in conclusion, there is hope for us.  For humanity.  We don't have to be barbaric, cruel twisted versions of wolves.  We don't have to take the worst in nature and magnify it into heartless, rancorous malice.  

Knowing this, that we can improve and advance toward the Good, makes it even harder to watch what is going on now.  I try to remind myself of the wrenching strength it takes to be ethical, to fight for what is right.  To seek the Good.    It is painful to face the truth.  It takes courage and strength.  But it is, yes, an ultimately meaningful fight.  One can feel the Light of truth.  

I try to remember that not so long ago, about 160 years ago, not so distant in the scope of things, slavery was legal in the USA.  Brave abolitionists fought the good fight, despite the 'debates' that were taking place at the national level.  There is no reasonable argument that slavery is acceptable.  None.  And yet, still, 'debates' took place. 

We ended legal slavery.  This took thousands of years.  

There is hope.  

Not only that, honesty can feel wonderful.  Honestly makes life meaningful in the deepest way, by its very nature.  Honest is a gift and a virtue, but it can also be miserably painful, especially in these barbaric, primitive times where people 'debate' whether depriving, fencing, torturing and starving two million people is acceptable.  Over sixty thousand killed outright.  And many more wounded by bombs, guns and the inevitable riots and thuggery when food becomes scarce.

Whatever pain I feel is nothing, the puniest picayune, compared to what the people in Gaza are suffering.  I have to deal with my pain, and I try to do it in healthy, cathartic ways that keep me aware and active.  In this sense, my pain, and all my emotions, are front and center in my life.  Every day can be adventurous.

The only way to defeat Evil is Good.  Honesty is a great step.  A Pact with Honesty is hard and demanding.  And yet it enriches and lifts the soul, nurtures growth and wisdom.  The opposite of a Pact with the metaphorical Devil.

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

(1)  https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/05/draft-intro-of-my-book-better-angels.html

   

Poem: Overturn

 

Overturn

 

does it rain when

the night-flesh of the city seems to sweat?

small glistens of spells

in the streets?

 

for even a moment,

could the wet dissolve our dry?

and in so doing, overturn

what seems like centuries?

 

maybe our skulls

could still hold water.

a tongue to sprout in each lonely cavern,

giddy with the truth, playful

 

as a river. 

 

you’d think it was Eden,

this outburst of succulence,

humans seduced once more by the fruit,

yet better off for it,

 

no longer starved 

for the dances of empathy

which would brim our eyes,

as we leapt in remorse, breaking

into the freedom of joy.

 

might we then proclaim,

to no one god, an exultant

hallelujah?

 

but no one here, 

despite miles of peopled space, 

will celebrate something 

that has less-than-occurred.

 

the wind takes a drag

on sparse weeds in the cracks,

and the old dust

wrapped around gutters of trash, 

 

and i look up, just to pretend,

and, yes, the water that dared to speak

is gone.

 

 

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

Excerpt from NYT op-ed on Hungary/USA

 I Watched it Happen in Hungary, Now It's Happening Here

David Pressman, Ambassador to Hungary, 2022-2025

After years watching Hungary suffocate under the weight of its democratic collapse, I came to understand that the real danger of a strongman isn’t his tactics; it’s how others, especially those with power, justify their acquiescence.

Take the judiciary. I met leaders of Hungary’s sole independent judicial body in October 2022 to discuss their work. For months afterward, their faces (and mine) were plastered in the papers, branded as traitors and foreign agents, just because they had raised concerns about the rule of law in Hungary. The response from other powerful judges? Silence.

Or take the private sector. Since Mr. Orban became prime minister in 2010, the state has awarded billions in public contracts to his son-in-law and childhood friend, a former plumber named Lorinc Meszaros. What have Hungarian business leaders said? Nothing.

 Last year, when Mr. Orban’s close associates reportedly told a multinational retailer to give the prime minister’s family a cut of its business, did other multinational companies speak up? They did not.

 Hungarians with little power or privilege to lose would occasionally protest. But those with power remained reliably, pliably silent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/opinion/hungary-viktor-orban.html

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

Regarding the Poems

Most of the poems seem really bad, especially when I go back and look at older ones.  I can sometimes see what poems readers have 'clicked' and I have been editing those a great deal lately. Thank you for your patience! 

It is a dismal world right now.  Genocide is occurring, full screen on the global stage, courtesy of TikTok and Instagram.  Fascism is rising in the USA, under the malignant Trump.  He is attacking and degrading universities and cultural centers ("I love the poorly educated," he boasts), which is leading to the sad conclusion that humanity will do little to nothing to prevent global warming, and no doubt other environmental crises as well.  

Things are likely to get worse, and the situation is sliding fast.  It is a hard time in which to find purchase, in terms of direction or meaning.  The media pretends the evil things all around us, present to our immediate senses, are not occurring.  So does many a zealous citizen, a good portion of whom will viciously attack, if their ignorance is pointed out to them.

The New York Times Magazine just published a piece called "The Trouble With Wanting Men," by Jean Garnett.  She makes good points about how men have low emotional competence.  Most men have "normative male alexithymia" (can't identify let alone talk about what they're feeling).  Recent social awareness of sexism has apparently made men feel awkward at best, for they lack the skills to psychologically deal.  This awkwardness, again, at best, contributes to men wobbling and waffling on simple things, like verifying a date or whether they want to meet again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/magazine/men-heterofatalism-dating-relationships.html

   

The most-liked comments on this article were not positive.  Indeed, they viciously attacked the author.  For some reason, the New York Times chose some of these comments to be featured as a "Times Pick."  One of these is by "Incel Q Lonely," who simply attacks the author over her candid self-disclosures:

lol taking a guy home home on the first date after the legal ending of an open marriage.  Yup the problem is completely and totally with men

This kind of hateful, angry reply is ancient.  It ignores the arguments that are put forward--a complete lack of respect or philosophical skill--and uses a fallacy, formally called an ad hominen, to attack the author's character,.  What's more disturbing is that this comment got over 2500 likes.  More shocking, still, is that the New York Times decided to feature it.

If a Black person wrote a piece discussing how White people have trouble relating to Black people's needs, based on a lack of awareness, I doubt the Times would feature a comment that mocks the author, especially by someone whose screen name plays on a hate group.  

In case anyone doesn't know, "incel" is a word associated with a misogynous movement.

So ... what I'm saying ... is that human stupidity is utterly draining.  And it tends to hog center stage.  Given opportunity, it violently takes over, as we have seen with the fascist movement here in America. 

This kind of draining and stupid behavior, a full capitulation to violence and anger over reason, is something that anyone who wants to promote ethics, that is, the Good, has to face.  When I myself am frustrated and furious, I try to think what it must have been like to be an abolitionist.  Imagine protesting against slavery, only to have slavers mock and jeer you, beat you up, if they have a chance--or tell you things like, 'because of you, I'm going to go home and whip some N--."  

How awful evil is.  And how sad that we have to normalize it and deal with its barbs and cruelties, or worse.  Telling the truth shouldn't be so hard or perilous.  But it is.   

Note well:  By truth, I mean that which does not fly in the face of what is empirically verifiable.  Science should not be dismissed.  I am not, in seeking truth, pitching a religion.  I am talking about global warming.  I am talking about women being as human and capable as men.   It is also a truth that no religion is the best and only religion.  And that any religion that is against equality is going, not only against science, but the dignity and fairness at the core of human rights.

One can embrace god, and there's nothing wrong with that, not necessarily.  As well, it is natural for many of us to celebrate and feel awe for nature and the universe.  To dance in mystic abandon. To rhapsodize and express our awe in variegated personal ways, such as poetry.  But none of that is to necessarily choose a religion.  

Whatever the full complement of reasons for my fixation with poetry, part of why I write is to seek a release valve.  The beauty and depth of poetry provides a means to express painful emotions and moral outrage in a way that is, more or less, healthy.  

It's not quite that simple.  If writing a poem leaves me in tears or full of hate, I still have to deal with it, explore the why, and try not to freak out.  But the beauty, the reach, going deep in the soul, it is like an utterly honest conversation at the most intimate level.  It is soulmate-level stuff, but within yourself, your muses, your inspiration, however you frame it.  It could be god.  Or one of the gods.  It could be your spirit partner, who might be a witch.  Or not.   What is your spirituality?  Your passionate voice has its own unique expresison.

Subconscious forces--maybe I should call them spells--are at the helm when I write.  Where they take me, I can't fully know.  It's difficult, scary, dangerous, wonderful and exhilarating.  It can be sublime, this mutuality.  It can feel good.  And it is good to break out of the denialism of evil.

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

  

Poem: Actual

 

Actual 

 

please leave

whatever excuse at the tone,

and i will fly somehow like a shred

in a flutter over a mountain of trash

 

in search somewhere of that furious ant

we call ‘free time,’  and i will

hop on its back, despite the worries

in my brain being so much larger and

 

then your machine can prioritize my voice

like mine didn’t yours.  however,

if this is an emergency or

a brief bit of warmth,

 

you can evade my device by

taking a step back to count to

ten and do it until your shoulders relax 

and

 

you remember that i

decided the touch of another person,

you in fact, is all i want,

even if it is just a gaze,

 

or the actual hum of your throat.

 

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

7/22/25 mods

7/21/25 ... eds  ,,, changed poem title etc.

Poem: Cookbook

 

Cookbook

 

her mind was a poached

egg because she had never been

able to perfect a poached egg and

the problem had never let go stuck

in the cast iron of her thoughts.

 

the space behind her fixation

suffered heavily from

an oatmeal of mouthfuls

too thick to eat through all of them

and so earned a slap across the face--

 

or used to, specifically

that would be her father

but the man was a time-logged

logger of a corpse now somewhere

below the poached egg.

 

her mother still insisted the universe

was a cosmic egg and yet

all those light years could never

find peace from the self-serving

circular saw of sinful neighbors.

 

yes round and round the merry-go-

round of light years ever went never

able to get under a blanket in 

the dark curled away from the

cookbook of mirrors.

 

 

 

 

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

7/18/25 ... mods all day, off and on... 

I volunteered on a crisis hotline for over ten years, long ago.

Poem: Melt Down

 

Melt Down

 

joy loped and raged

up high and low.

tesseracts in the sky.

a shirivasta of dolphins.

 

there were answers.

but to say which angle

gleamed on what contour

was an impossible appendix.

 

hyacinth breathed

and swallowtails praised

the storms of blossoms

in my wept eyes.

 

curves of petal and

moon-stippled grass

shelved to trellis

as brave as the first touch

 

i ever felt.

and all those years of fear fear fear

dwindled like rain.

 

there was no hope to calm

this jambalaya of pang and furor

borne on the secrets, the lack-

of-fabric, in all aroused things.

 

i laughed to feel a somehow shy kiss

from within and around

the mysterious consequence

of so much melting.

 

 

 

 

 

 =============================

7/22/25 ... added an 's' to blossom

Quote: Omar Bartov (genocide scholar at Brown)

 

My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.

 

This is not just my conclusion. A growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide. So has Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, and Amnesty International. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/opinion/israel-gaza-holocaust-genocide-palestinians.html 

Poem: Sanctuary

 

Sanctuary

 

each patch of bark

the flank of a beast

which had lived before winchesters:

 

auroch and bison

stampeding up a loblolly

in a vast single herd.

 

i hugged tight

their revelrous snort and scent,

felt the pulse of their hooves

 

across my sternum,

 

my tears not enough

to loose their bellowing wanderlust,

consigned to the trunk of a pine--

 

exiled from those gone prairies

when peregrine vigor

ran muscled and wild.

 

this their sanctuary now, the tree,

where no primate of my greedy ilk

could roam.

 

 

 

 

 

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

7/14/25 ... changed a word

Poem: Almost Out

 

Almost Out

 

each breath a foresight

of shivers before an avalanche,

scared.

 

joy was the problem

 

and fear and fury

and how they invited flight,

while calm and smile and peace

were the enemy of containment,

 

for they could not.

 

and it was all going to come apart,

exposed in shock as a head of lettuce

which turned out to be

a numb, hiding, traumatized child--

and under the leafy green, frail shields

 

a mad mad wasp nest

 

and the masquerade of it all

this balancing act,

a seesaw of lungful angst

between the exhales and inhales and

avalanches and hurricanes and

 

this is what emotions were,

it seemed,

 

when they felt so right

and why everyone had to hide from them,

as if the heart had decided

justice could only erupt in bouts,

before it succumbed, once again,

to the fatalism of earth.

 

 

 

 

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

7/18 ... flipped word order... 

7/15/25 ... some mods

Poem: Keep It Up

 

Keep It Up

 

prouder than putty,

we break not bend into smiles,

primped yet grim

in herringbone and trench coat,

bobbing along

in our crowded currents,

sometimes eaten by trap doors

on the sides of cars,

or sucked into mouths

of giant marble facades.  but

we keep it up,

up and down the busy streets,

allotted our place to troll:

whale or swordfish,

eel, squid or shark,

halibuts, flounders, groupers, sunfish,

alewives and the multiplicitous minnows,

all fated to be digested in towers, 

each a morsel for a cube.

one by one, sometimes in gulps,

we get picked off, gone--

into the monstrous guts

of the machinations of the city.  but

we keep it up.

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

7/3/25... mods after posting... off and on all day

Genocide and 'Hunger Games' in Gaza

 

What is happening in Gaza is not fiction. It is not a horror movie. The “hunger games” are real and so is the genocide they are part of. That the world is allowing such dystopia to unfold is damning evidence of its own loss of humanity.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/6/29/in-gaza-the-israelis-are-staging-hunger-games 

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

When you point out evils like this to Americans, you get hit with non sequiturs like, "You're antisemitic, anti-Israel and pro-Hamas."  

None of these conclusions even remotely follow from condemnation of the ongoing barbarism and genocide in Gaza.  

When media frame it as, "You are either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine," which is a false bifurcation, the response is, "I am pro-humanity and dignity.  I am for all people to have rights.  I am anti-genocide."  

There is nothing about Gaza on the front page of, say, the Washington Post.  Prominent is an article on Republicans and tax cuts, and the Opinion pieces, which read:

pinions

Robert P. George and Cornel West

To save themselves, universities must cultivate civic friendship

Laura Rose O’Connor

Why some Canadians are choosing Trump over their country

Monica Hesse

What is a jury supposed to make of the Diddy trial?

1 hour ago

Will Leitch

The Dodgers are not the resistance, and that’s okay

1 hour ago

Ramesh Ponnuru

The Republican shell game on tax cuts

  

An unstaunchable glut of evil has drowned whatever figleaf of conscience America professed.

Poem: Floaters

 

Floaters

 

mouthy menageries,

they complain about the sun.

it’s not all that brilliant, after all,

only an intellectual sink

which sucks cool shadows away.

 

the sun, they mouth,

from their many puffed pulpits,

is a disciple of that chairman in 1984

who said,

 

we shall meet again in that place

where there is no darkness.

 

these dull clouds,

they hover herded,

clumps of neutered dreams;

cocoons woven

by caterpillars of duty.

 

they follow quick

the merest hint of wind,

obedient and derelict,

digested and complacent

as feces.

 

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

 

 

 

6/29/25 ... "duty" replaces "grey" .. fixed typo

Many people are born into the savagery of dictatorship.  It’s not their fault.  But the people of American, they are allowing their democracy to be transmogrified into totalitarian state, complete with masked squads of enforcers who make people disappear.  It is far and away the most pathetic and loathsome failure of morality to watch, firsthand, this annhilation of any elements of justice, fairness and equality.  This full victory of fear and  hate, under a narcissistic, tyrannical fist of might-makes-right.

Just one effect of this:  global warming will not be addressed, because the USA refuses to admit it's a problem.  Why?  The dictator Trump demands that it is not a problem, and demands that people agree with him to pass a loyalty test.  Trump is now keeping coal plants open that even the operators don't want to keep open anymore.  Why?  To mock the truth, science and anything they can do to challenge his power.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/climate/trump-coal-gas-plants-energy-emergency.html

I write the above thinking that I might well be disappeared myself, within a few years.  Why don't I leave, you ask? 

I'm 61 years old, have lived in a beautiful, peaceful natural spot for 25 years, don't have the financial resources and, given my introversion and lack of know-how, am bewildered about how I would even begin to, say, get into Canada.  I'd need a job offer, I believe, at the professional level, and that is not going to come easy for me.  Part of me, too, wants to remain here and fight to the bitter end.  I should start saving my poems on my blog into a separate thumb drive.  But I haven't yet... maybe part of me is still in denial, or has hope that Trump can be stopped. Maybe part of me fancies myself a a prophet, who is called by the forces of Goodness to do certain things.. and no more.

People tell me I'm overreacting.  I don't know.  I don't think so.

We all sit and watch the masked police arresting immigrants and disappearing them.  "First they came for ... "  ".. and then they came for me."

Poem: Night Solo

 

Night Solo

 

a boulder, whalish,

with mottled hide of unguessable deeps,

breaches the summit

to earn a vertigo of moonless perch.

 

with magic rare and clear

it can see for parsecs,

through a starlit glitter of spectral rain

which flirts forever down,

delicate yet coruscant.

 

down

down down down

and yet higher still,

immortal and diamond.

 

to the lichened eye

of the weathered, old rock

arrogance is nowhere.

ants and moths and the ensouled lights

of all other creatures in the stars

pulse natal and humble. 

 

the universe,

in this brief, lucky, lost moment,

offers the boulder the celestial glint

of its mysterious ear.

 

and the boulder, suffering

a nightly gnaw of ice and wind

rhapsodizes

from its perch of meek fissures,

singing forth, eerie yet jubiliant,

faint whistles and moans,

drawn from the secret corridors

of once elusive dreams.

 

 

 

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

I watch the descent

I watch the descent, write and protest, powerless, as Darkness closes its grip.  And we descend. 

[Comment from a WaPo article by “HerdingDog”]:

22 hours ago

If Harris had been elected, Health Care would be intact. The CDC, WHO and NATO would strong. Universities would not have lost research funding. Women would have choice. Inclusion would still be a priory. There would be no tariff war. Canadian/ US relations would be business as usual - literally. Government services would not have been dismantled and gutted for data. The people would not have been forced to spend 50Million on an asinine birthday display. Immigrants would not live in terror of masked Gestapo.

One moron would not have started WWIII.

 

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

 

 

[Excerpt from an article in The Guardian]:

 

Democrats were quick to point out that [Trump’s actions bombing Iran] were a clear violation of the constitution, which grants Congress the power to declare war on foreign countries. There was no evidence of an imminent threat to the US that might have provided grounds for Trump to act unilaterally …

But once again, Democrats find themselves shut out of power and shouting into the void … Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called for Trump’s impeachment.

Fat chance. Republicans, who control the majorities of both chambers, are willing accomplices in their own subjugation.  …  Do not expect Republicans to pull the emergency brake on a Trump train that might be hurtling towards world war three. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, and John Thune, the Senate majority leader, led a chorus of praise for the attack …

The Trump who threw a birthday parade and used the military like a prop invited ridicule. The Trump who deploys troops to the streets of Los Angeles and drops bombs on Iran is altogether more dangerous.

Exit the showman. Enter the strongman.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/23/trump-iran-strongman-analysis

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

Why am I posting this?  Simply a scream, hopefully cathartic.  It helps me to go on, to write.  To do good acts when and where I can.  Why?  For no purpose or end, except to do good, which yes, by definition, gives me meaning, even as evil takes over the world.

How do I define evil?  Facism, stalinism, hitlerism, totalitarianism--and key aspects of them, such as sexism, racism, homophobia, massive continuous hermetic deceit... and so on... an abusive realm full of hate and fear.  A place where people are so afraid they turn on each other to suvive and lick the feet of local officials who, in turn, lickspittle those up the chain, all the way to the dictator.

And, of course, war is evil.  War World III would be the ultimate victory for Evil.

Poem: Twenty Percent

 

Twenty Percent

presentable people

whose attire trends stylish and shiny,

who flock through rituals

of paperwork and antihistamine.

social people

whose poise and cadence lubricates,

while eyes glance down at chests

but not really,

or flirtable butts mouths hands eyes feet legs

faces arms throats.

 

afficianados

of well-bred cat-poodles and fondues,

who banter through another workday,

then rush home all clickety to consume

an escherian rabbit hole 

of whack-a-mole peekaboo screens.

 

in the underbelly

of their electronic briefcases

maybe there lurks a nonrefundable

‘who-am-i-and where?

why so starved for time?’

 

or maybe not.

 

fussy people

who appraise croissants

and the nuances of coffee beans,

who crave the latest chic and surgical skins.

lucky people

who squat on porcelain

to steal a moment to ponder--

or simply not to think at all

about whatever else

is going to be.

 

 

 

 ===========

6/21.... changed last line.

 

society

kicking me in the head

gotta do things fast

tik tik tik tik tik tik tik tok

tok tok tok tok talk talk

talk talk talk talk

cannot be free to

find a moment where

i just feel

awe for the miracles

really just feel

not just act  

or watch

or copy

from that screen.

gotta write write write write

write write write write write.

for while it plays the game,

it is my only way.

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

 

Quote from an Interview with Marci Shore

 

“When John McCain chose Sarah Palin, I felt like she was a character right out of the 1930s.” The Republican vice-presidential candidate lived, Shore thought, “in a totally fictitious world … not constrained by empirical reality.” Someone like that, Shore believed, could really rile up a mob.

And then came Trump.

Once again, it was the lack of truthfulness that terrified her. “Without a distinction between truth and lies, there is no grounding for a distinction between good and evil,” she says. Lying is essential to totalitarianism; she understood that from her scholarly research. But while Hitler and Stalin’s lies were in the service of some vast “eschatological vision”, the post-truth dishonesty of a Trump or Putin struck her as different. The only relevant criterion for each man is whether this or that act is “advantageous or disadvantageous to him at any given moment. It’s pure, naked transaction.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/16/why-a-professor-of-fascism-left-the-us-the-lesson-of-1933-is-you-get-out 

Poem: Overcast

 

Overcast

 

white sun,

color-drained bay,

overcast cerement,

ribs of shade,

 

and the seagulls toss,

gone bits of stars

caught in old breath.

 

foam

flees a chant of waves,

sand the skin

of all that’s shed,

 

our lives

brief winks

in the play of the ocean,

raindrops like sex,

 

and the treasures we crave,

day in and out,

scuttle shiny as crabs

over slick black rocks.

 

philosphers are oars,

boats skulls,

buddha one fisherman,

jesus another,

and witches three.

 

 

 

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

6/16/25 ... added "slick"

6/15/25 ... mods

Short Essay: Heavy Cost

 Evil has a heavy cost.  I don't mean people are evil, not unless they are soulless leaders, whose whole life revolves around crushing everyone and everything into capital to serve their devourous ego.  I mean people get caught up in movements that are based on hate, fear and division, a trap of deceit requiring the acceptance of vast, vast lies, the sort of Big Lie that Hilter refers to in Mein Kampf.

We won't survive another wave of fascism. Or Stalinism.  Both Hitler and Stalin committed genocide, killing millions of people.  World War 2 saw nuclear weapons dropped.  The country that dropped them, the USA, is now supplying Israel with weapons -- weapons being used to wage war to inflame the world, moving from Gaza to Lebanon and now into Iran.  Israel is also using US weapons for ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza.

The evils of WWII are back.  And the threat of WWIII.  But too many people have been pulled into a spiral of fear around a black hole generated by the bottomless insecurity of demagogues.  There is a way out of the pull, but I doubt  we will find it.  Which makes our descent all the more tragic.

The answer is simple, but the solution is impossible.

Light has come into the world, but the people preferred darkness, for their deeds were evil (John 3:19)

(The Bible is a great source book of wisdom, even when one is not Christian)

=======

Poem: Candleflame Candenza

 

Candleflame Candenza

 

blush and mango

into a griffin

and then azaleas,

a twist through boundless

gleams of zest,

pantomines of swoon

and lust speaking in tongues,

an inferno of gallops

riding a froth of constant birth.

what is this unleashed codex

which devours itself to fly?

what is this truth

of raved sermons from mad birds,

flutterous of rush

and fluent of vortex?

 

the leaps of this candle

embody a phoenix

which scrawls with its own suicidal quills

to birth cantos

immune to the paralysis of the clock--

phrases which loose a trample of fugues,

breadcrumbs of an ancestry of animal tracks,

feverish from a fusillade of quests.

what is this swordplay-like needlework

which stitches wounds

only to heal and rescue everything sensual?

 

what is this …

this…

 

this candle, this haven,

more than light,

rising up toward heaven

despite a sky of trapped iron;

for it has resurrected

the crumbling ash of death,

grown to dispel its stubborn seal,

ephemeral of aerial rush,

an echo of the first spark.

 

 

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

6/12 ... changed a word

6/11 ... mods

6/10 ... mods after posting 

Poem: Glitch

 

Glitch

 

a Tower of Babel rose

in shunts and loops,

squinched as it was,

noodle-tight in the dormitory

of a certain human brain and

 

its architectures

tended to refer to ‘voices’which,

if not outrightly stating,

suggested strongly that they--

whatever they were--

seemed stable enough,

representatives of the Id or the I or

the ego or whatever,

and yet still,

 

as they put it,

 

‘it all supervened on a wasp nest

of wrangling centers,’

a ‘cook’s-broth of impressarios’

in which no rational arbiter

swam, sank or floated in adjudication.

 

it followed, therefore,

so they explained,

that no one ‘in here,’

which is to say, the Tower,

thought things through wisely,

or blessed whatever action the ‘shells’

(another term they liked besides ‘voices’)

eventually decided to take.

 

in light of all this, this glitch

in the flow of my consciousness,

i concluded there were these, what were, in effect,

byzantine labyrinths

going on in my head.

moreover and most critical,

their sly dance was the prestige of the trick--

that mysterious magic which  

the doctors referred to as  “self-determination.”

 

in the end

 

the doctors and legals

and philosophicals

who pranced in intellectual gaggles,

while deigning to scratch

the flat of the black square on top of their heads,

they said

that the voices and shells and ‘salads’ of the Babble

were radically alert and fully functional--

a situation sure and eager, so they diagnosed,

to dangerously contrive.

 

 

 

 

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

6/16/25 ... shortened an awkward polysyallabic

6/5/25 .. fixed typos

Nemo's "Us vs World Revisited" : How we treat animals

"Us vs World Revisited" by Daniel Carden Nemo

 

As as ethics instructor, I am always looking for powerful arguments to challenge my students (and myself).  Often the best arguments come in the form of questions.  These lead to a dialectic that plays out in the iniquisitive mind.

I found an essay that contains a monsoon of ethical questions, all fruitful and conducive to a journey of ramifying insights.  The essay is "Us vs World Revisited" by Daniel Carden Nemo, who is Editor-in-Chief of the Amsterdam Review:

https://www.amsterdamreview.org/world-revisited.html 

The essay concerns our treatment of animals, which even today, in times of environmental crisis, is a largely unacknowledged atrocity.  Our collective consciousness has advanced in many ways, say, in the last five hundred years, but the animals we exploit, torment, torture, displace and kill, directly or indirectly, in our selfish pursuits, remain halpless, unseen victims.  

Even our acknowledgement of animal rights is fairly new on a cultural scale.  Concerning human rights, we've made some important progress, battling it out with the forces of ignorance for hundreds or thousands of years.  We've made slavery illegal and culturally abhorrent.  Women can vote.  Gay marriage is legal (in the USA, even, for now ...).  

Just a few hundred years ago, slavery was debated.  Chained, naked humans were paraded down public streets for auction.   Brilliant progress has beeen made; but there is still a long way to go.  Slavery still exists, albeit illegal.  Misogyny is an ongoing problem and threat. The caste systems in India and the USA remain two monumental blights (Isabel Wilkerson, Caste).   

But--as "Us vs World Revisited" brings out, if you read the keen questions in Nemo's essay--our continuing struggle with human rights is not a valid excuse to ignore the plight of animals.  Indeed, it is all interconnected.

Nemo's essay, both incisive and eloquent, made me look at my own personal responsibility, and personal responsibility in general.  I want to elaborate some on these issues. 

Thomas Jefferson, a slave-owner, wrote "I fear for my country when I reflect that God is just."  Jefferson knew that owning slaves was wrong.  But he did it anyway.  He took a Black slave as a sexual partner, starting when she was only 14 years old, which is rape for the age alone, even if he didn't use threat or coercion--then again, if one is enslaved, one is in a continuous state of coercion.  The first President of the USA, George Washington, had dentures that were made of teeth pulled from Black slaves.  We are grappling with this now in the USA (or, maybe I should say, attempting to grapple..).  Similar issues concerning historically great figures occur in every geopolitical place. 

We also have to look at our own hypocritical behavior--and grapple with it.  I myself, full disclosure, was a vegetarian for over twenty years (after my first realization of the horror of our treatment of animals, in my mid-twenties).  But, living in a small rural community, where options are quite limited--and being finanically challenged--and surrounded by others who are carnivores, I have slipped back to where I will eat meat, now and then, in social settings.  I buy sausage a few times a year.  There are also some health issues I have, which limit my diet choices.  And yet ...  

I have no good excuse.  Even so, I want to say to all those persons--who are like me--that we can still be voices for what is right and--we can still perform good acts. Flawed though we are--and we should keep working on it--we are still in a position to promote the good.  And we should.   Human beings, in general, are flawed creatures, but we can't let our guilt and failures shut down our attempts to improve ourselves and the world.

Although it is probably disgusting to many advocates of animal rights to hear this, I will say, to people like me:  if you cut back, at least, on your meat-eating, it is something good.  It does not not absolve our continued participation.  Future generations will be right to mock and damn us.  Still, the world is a grey place, with many complex, ethical tangles--and no one is going to be perfect.    

'No one is perfect' is often used as an excuse to do nothing.  And I want to emphasize: that's not what I am doing here.  I am wrestling with the question of personal responsibility, and finding myself wanting, as I think many people will.  I think many of us, as I did for many years, grapple with being shut down from crippling guilt and outright even suicidal self-hatred.  

I've written on this blog that human beings are very much like vampires and werewolves, the monsters we fascinate on in entertainment.   We are born into a brutal world, where we have to devour life to survive.  A world where fear of various kinds of pain can easily override reason and ethics.  Again, though, we've made progress.  Somehow we have stumbled across a span of thousands of years to discover a type of government called 'democracy,' which is far better than fascism and rulership by godkings.

All of us can make progress as individuals, though often, as in my case, dealing with my own issues, it is a brutal journey.  And we should be proud of our courage to face our issues, and to find a candle in the dark, even if we stumble still.  When I say "issues" I mean everything, such as the child abuse I suffered, for that is that is needed for honesty and to 'Know Thyself' and work toward compassion, including a look in the mirror.

Again, it's a brutal world, though if we are privileged, we can unfortunately hide from it.  We buy products in stores, everything--food, clothes, electronics, and so on--and are no doubt sometimes, or often, supporting horrific conditions and practices tucked away in 'undeveloped' countries.'  Coca-Cola, for instance, has been linked to slave-like and terrified conditions for women and children in India:

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000009363281/sugar-industry-exploitation-of-women.html

In a way, Christianity is right, we are all 'sinners.'  But-- importantly--and to repeat myself--we can do good acts, nevertheless.  And we should.  And it feels right to do them.  

It is okay to feel good, sometimes, even as a monster, if actions merit.

For emphasis:  The ethical complexity, even ambiguity, of the world is not an excuse to do nothing.

Furthermore, those of us that take the painful journey of truth, looking at ourselves critically, are doing something courageous.  It is even more courageous if we manage to change in the right direction and do good acts, helping others in the right direction as well.

Back to animals and their plight.  Animals deserve far better from us.  One of my favorite questions in Nemo's essay is:

Did you know ethical progress often means reexamining cultural habits? Traditions shape behavior but they can evolve.

This question is at the heart of the book I am myself writing about how humanity can move our ethos forward.  Culture can evolve.  We have the mental and cultural plasticity to do it.  But we have to get out of what I call the 'ignorance vortex':

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/05/draft-intro-of-my-book-better-angels.html 

For thousands of years, the ignorance vortex has trapped us, which has included cycles of war and ceaseless macho patriarchy.  But, to end with some hope, we've made progress, an incredible amount, just in my lifetime.  When I was in my twenties (1980s), there was no such thing as 'cage free' eggs or other animal-empathic products.  Progress has occurred.  And, on an historical scale, going back to the beginnings of civilization, ten thousand years ago, the pace in our time has been accelerative and swift.  

Let's hope we keep moving forward, out of the ignorance vortex, and don't get pulled back.  If we do go back, succumb to atavism, we will meet our doom on the perverse road we take to avoid it, a fate instigated by what godkings have always brought us: war.

"In the nuclear age, the real enemy is war itself"--Denzel Washington, Crimson Tide

This is a pivotal time.  We can't afford the godkings, and all the ignorance and cruelty they require, anymore.  Godkings will bring not just what they always have--cruelty, savagery, oppression and suffering--but the end of civilization itself.   

Cynics often bring up 'human nature.'  If 'human nature' made war inevitable, then, by definition,  nothing could be done.  It's circular reasoning.

But human nature does not limit us.  The evidence that we can improve already exists.  The fact that women have the right to vote--that alone--shows a massive flexibility in our culture--based on reason and goodness and light.  For millennia women's voices were silenced, let alone given equal standing in political decisions.  But we changed.  Culture changed after thousands of years of being stuck.

The cynical argument that human nature damns us is a pathetic, miserable canard.

We can do it, move foward.  We can all be part of the movement toward the Good, even though we are, each of us, flawed.   In this time, 20-21st century, forward movement has taken place faster than ever before.  

It is, in a way, a race to the finish line of what our future will be, light or dark. 

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

6/13/25 ... mods