Regarding the Poems

 

My poems have often focused on conformity and the horrors behind the mask.  Recently, they have been especially dark.  Before saying more on this, I want to point out that quite a few of my poems rhapsodize on the beauty and miracle of existence.  My nature poems often do this, and also pieces like “Broom” or poems that fascinate on motion, such as the play of wind or water.  But there is another dimension to human existence and that is the ethical. 

Could it revolve around a simple yet painful premise: that to speak the truth is to suffer?  For most all of human civilization, including today, this has been the case.  Oppressed groups have been forced--through social norms backed by sheer threat of violence--to go along with systems that keep them down.  Consider the history of women.  When President Biden pulled our troops out of Afghanistan, he effectively condemned the women and girls there to a modern day slavery that hails back to a time, not so long ago, when that was the global norm.  Civilization is perhaps ten thousand years old and for most of it, women and other dominated peoples and groups have had to shut up and agree to their inferior roles.  

This has been the way of things.  To speak the truth is to suffer.  Donald Trump attempts to impose the Big Lie as a loyalty test for membership in his fascist, fanatic hierarchy, where physical strength and threat, not reason or virtue, determines the way of things.  Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, justifying it with a web of lies while committing war crimes.  We see this pattern in China, or wherever one person, almost always a male, attains singular control of a whole country, not because he is wisest, but because he has cultivated his nationalist cult of followers who will physical and mentally punish anyone who speaks up.   

The human body can feel and sense wondrous things to achieve great bliss.  But it can suffer proportionately.  Such is the ‘wonderful’ existence we are all born into.  Such is the difficulty of the choice to speak the truth. 

It is a hard, impossible, unfair choice.  Maybe this is why existentialists say life is absurd. Do you risk giving up the simple yet magnificent pleasures, miracles and marvels of basic existence, fed to us by our senses and thoughts--to do something so bold as to speak the truth?

Perhaps it feels wonderful to embrace and speak the truth.  I know, in my case, it has been.  It is a priceless state of being.  Those who do not gain it, which they could simply by opening their mouths, lose a gift so beautiful in its own unique way.  To be able to speak the truth in a society of lies, this is the essence of a virtuous freedom. 

It could be said of this universe, this world, that it is not a Good place, nor is it an Evil place.  But we humans, through our collective choices, can steer it either way.  How much will you be part of steering toward the Good?  Or toward the Evil?    

Perhaps this is where I am at:

Michel de Montaigne - "I speak the truth not so much as I want, but as much as I dare."

We all have to choose.  If our head isn’t already plunged deep in the sand, which is capitulation to ignorance and darkness, the choice already made, we can see that there is a battle between fascism and democracy taking place.  Democracy is human rights and the Golden Rule.  Democracy brought advances in the USA for women, Black people and LGBTQ.  We had a Black President.  We currently have a Black female Vice President. 

What is fascism?  Fascism is tyranny under the disordered mind of a malignant narcissist.  In the USA, fascism will be patriarchal, heteronormative, and White supremacist.  It will be expecially virulent given that the South, which was defeated in the Civil War that it fought to keep its slaves, has never lost its vast racism and never lost a root of hatred for its conqueror:  the United States.

Again, the war between Israel and Hamas, even at this early stage, can be linked to the chaos and racism stoked in Israel by its hard right-wing leader Netanyahu.  He is a typical demagogue who sows hate and fear to advance his own might and form a zealous cult. 

So, yes, my poems are dark.  Why?  Because fascism could soon take over the world.  Trump in America.  Putin in Russia.  Xi in China.  Modi in India.  And so on.  If this happens, it will be the same old warlord-ism, going back to the realm of ancient Sumer.  The prime example today is North Korea.  the people worship Kim Jong Un as a god. If they dare speak the truth, their whole family could be incarcerated in a ‘re-education’ camp.

War is Peace.  Freedom is Slavery.  Ignorance is Truth.  George Orwell’s book 1984 got it right.  It can get to the point where the control of the dictator is so great that any lack of conformity--or simply perceived lack--can get anyone tortured.  Of course, at that point, torture could be inflicted for any arbitrary issue, say for simply being Black.

Our current weapons are too mighty for us to survive World War Three.  That is where warlord-ism will take us, as it always has, into war.   This is a battle between Good and Evil.  What's at stake is civilization.  Let’s not forget that Hitler was a fascist, and that Trump is now parroting Hitler’s words, saying that immigrants “are poisoning the blood of our country.” 

To speak the truth is to suffer.  It has always been this way.  And our bodies and minds can suffer greatly.  But if we don’t speak up, we go down.  This is the horrible conundrum.  This is the awful, unfair, impossible task before each of us. 

At some point we all have to choose to bow down--to accept the breaking of our will, heart and soul--or instead we choose a higher love, an agape.  The Golden Rule and human rights are, ultimately, expressions of a fundamental compassion.

Yes, I excoriate conformity in my poems, the kind of conformity that leads deeper and deeper into the belittlement of the human spirit.  Conformity out of fear is the worship of the bully.  In these dark times, this is especially the case.

Should you choose death over conformity to fascism?  What about me, would I choose death?  I don’t know.  I am terrified of death or pain.  And that terror will be used by a police state to break me.  I am far from perfect.  I see too much and know too little.  I can hope that I would die choosing the Good.  If it comes to that, I pray I will choose the Good, and not keep my head down.

But, right now, it hasn’t come to that.  Right now, we still have some freedom of speech in the USA.  We can save democracy for our republic, and carry it forward into the future as the flag of human progress. It's quite possible.  

But if we don’t stand up, the Trump-types will wreak horror and ignorance on the world.  Then they will destroy it. 

 ===============================