Blind and ridiculous, humanity forages into the future like a hungry beast whose organs vie in internecine war. Can any stomping ground, even one the size of a planet, suffice?
Robert McNamara, reflecting on his long un-illustrious career, especially during the insanity of the Vietnam War, stated as one of his eleven hard-learned lessons that, “Rationality won’t save us.”
His justification for this was a phenomenon called the “fog of war,” in which variables deteriorate into chaos under the onslaught of misery and violence.
And yet, is not the fog of war a mere corollary to a greater complexity: the fog of life?
If rationality won’t save us, what will? Cynics say we’re doomed, but there are other cradles of hope.
As we blunder into a long untrainable night, perhaps the most viable source of illumination we have is small yet doughty, a fragile candle called love. We must be supremely cautious, lest winds of fear extinguish it.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Headless Chickens and Mutton Merinos
Boy Falcon Heene is accidentally sent flying away in a silver balloon, which seems a garish reject from a 1950’s sci-fi. Dad Richard Heene calls a TV station before dialing 911 ...
Although the “boy in the balloon” is most certainly a hoax, the main issue is more telling, an ignored elephant on the coffee table of US culture: the conformist zeal of a corporate media akin to a barnyard of headless chickens, all running about with exorbitant idiocy, relentless in the search for catchy grains of pablum.
The public is enthralled by insipid sound bytes at the expense of a basic proclivity to think. “Panem et circenses,” or “bread and circuses,” the ancient lament of the poet Juvenal, remarking on the decline of Rome, is eerily appropriate. The good citizens of the US Empire, evoking life under Caesar, fixate like drooling five-year-olds on glitzed up gewgaws of news. Meanwhile the world around them decays. Morally, environmentally, and spiritually.
How has it come to pass that a dumbed-down public waits eagerly for the next morsel of blood and horror, or some doggerel of fairytale, herded like mutton merinos by a few powerful overlords who wag the sheep dogs?
“In this best of possible worlds ... all is for the best.”
Voltaire, from Candide
Although the “boy in the balloon” is most certainly a hoax, the main issue is more telling, an ignored elephant on the coffee table of US culture: the conformist zeal of a corporate media akin to a barnyard of headless chickens, all running about with exorbitant idiocy, relentless in the search for catchy grains of pablum.
The public is enthralled by insipid sound bytes at the expense of a basic proclivity to think. “Panem et circenses,” or “bread and circuses,” the ancient lament of the poet Juvenal, remarking on the decline of Rome, is eerily appropriate. The good citizens of the US Empire, evoking life under Caesar, fixate like drooling five-year-olds on glitzed up gewgaws of news. Meanwhile the world around them decays. Morally, environmentally, and spiritually.
How has it come to pass that a dumbed-down public waits eagerly for the next morsel of blood and horror, or some doggerel of fairytale, herded like mutton merinos by a few powerful overlords who wag the sheep dogs?
“In this best of possible worlds ... all is for the best.”
Voltaire, from Candide
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Acceptance by EDGE
HOOT!
I’m most proud and pleased to have a poem accepted for the 2010 edition of EDGE.
EDGE is run by a talented and dedicated group of writers who call themselves the Tahoe Writers Works. You can learn more about them here:
http://www.tahoewritersworks.com
I’ve been involved with the literary world for quite a while now, and honestly it's no cake walk to find topnotch writing groups; but the TWW team seems meticulous and ardent. They persevere in their quest for the finest. It looks like they have a lot of fun, too. I don’t know any of them personally and speak only from observation.
One of their EDGE editors recently christened a book press, Bona Fide Books, which is off to a good start with two special anthologies that have ethical significance as well as literary merit.
Check out: bonafidebooks.com.
If you have a well-honed manuscript and want a fresh discerning opinion, consider Bona Fide. Be sure your work is ready, though!
Another great writers group is Rooster Moans, and I will talk about them at length someday.
OWL
I’m most proud and pleased to have a poem accepted for the 2010 edition of EDGE.
EDGE is run by a talented and dedicated group of writers who call themselves the Tahoe Writers Works. You can learn more about them here:
http://www.tahoewritersworks.com
I’ve been involved with the literary world for quite a while now, and honestly it's no cake walk to find topnotch writing groups; but the TWW team seems meticulous and ardent. They persevere in their quest for the finest. It looks like they have a lot of fun, too. I don’t know any of them personally and speak only from observation.
One of their EDGE editors recently christened a book press, Bona Fide Books, which is off to a good start with two special anthologies that have ethical significance as well as literary merit.
Check out: bonafidebooks.com.
If you have a well-honed manuscript and want a fresh discerning opinion, consider Bona Fide. Be sure your work is ready, though!
Another great writers group is Rooster Moans, and I will talk about them at length someday.
OWL
Friday, October 16, 2009
Poem: Entropy
Here is one of my favorite poems from the thousands I’ve written (most of which are ludicrously poor). I’d guess that about 90% of poets have written a piece called “Entropy,” and I’m not one of the exceptions.
It was published in a great online zine , no longer active, called Lily Lit Review. However, the editor, Susan Culver, runs a blog called Poetry Friends (poetryfriends.blogspot.com), and is taking submissions. Send your very best. She has a discerning mind and only publishes the most evocative work, which is most rare and hard to come by.
I don’t know her personally, but I’d like to give her a big HOOT for doing so much for the poetry community for so many years. Go to Poetry Friends or Lily Lit Review and you’ll see what I mean.
Poesis est vinum daemonum.
OWL
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Entropy
they say my thoughts are losing heat,
that the effort to write
wastes the bulk of my soul.
long before brain cells die
i will have lost my skill
at forming impressions.
every poem
destroys a potential
to write many more—
it comes down
to inevitable failures
of heart engine and ache.
nor can i become again
what i was,
or collect the years of emotion
babbled away or cried—
they cannot be reforged
into sweeter karma,
or distilled into another
naïve seed.
It was published in a great online zine , no longer active, called Lily Lit Review. However, the editor, Susan Culver, runs a blog called Poetry Friends (poetryfriends.blogspot.com), and is taking submissions. Send your very best. She has a discerning mind and only publishes the most evocative work, which is most rare and hard to come by.
I don’t know her personally, but I’d like to give her a big HOOT for doing so much for the poetry community for so many years. Go to Poetry Friends or Lily Lit Review and you’ll see what I mean.
Poesis est vinum daemonum.
OWL
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Entropy
they say my thoughts are losing heat,
that the effort to write
wastes the bulk of my soul.
long before brain cells die
i will have lost my skill
at forming impressions.
every poem
destroys a potential
to write many more—
it comes down
to inevitable failures
of heart engine and ache.
nor can i become again
what i was,
or collect the years of emotion
babbled away or cried—
they cannot be reforged
into sweeter karma,
or distilled into another
naïve seed.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
A Scarlet Letter on the US War Chest
When China recently celebrated 60 years of Communist rule, the New York Times stepped up to the plate. The newspaper pointed out that the kitschy fanfare was geared to wow crowds, and concealed a heinous rise to power. (China Is Wordless on Traumas of Communists’ Rise, 10/2/09)
Mao’s troops starved 160,000 civilians to death in order to defeat the Nationalist garrison at Changchun, one of the victories “hailed” in Chinese history books. Some citizens of Changchun survived, just barely, by eating grass, corpse flesh and leather belts. This is just the tip of a gargantuan iceberg of horror:
“There were no solemn pauses for the lives lost during the Communist Party’s rise to power — not for the estimated tens of millions who died during the civil war, nor the millions of landlords, Nationalist sympathizers and other perceived enemies who were eradicated during Mao’s drive to consolidate power.”
To put this in perspective, the lives lost during all of WWII also number in the tens of millions.
Well and good it is it to point out such monstrous violence, even as the CCP attempts to bury it under martial pageantry and the sands of time. But if we in the US are so keen on righteousness, as we should be, then let’s own up. There’s a big red letter H on our chests: the bloody H of Hypocrisy. If we are going to hurl verbal stones at the East, we ought to throw some heavy duty boomerangs too.
When the 4th of July comes around, where--alongside the rockets, hoopla and sloganeering--are the “solemn pauses” to honor Native Americans? Where are the humble and heartfelt apologies for the slaughter that followed in the wake of Manifest Destiny?
What is the greatest genocide known? The annihilation of the peoples of the North and South American Continents, beginning in 1492 and continuing into the 1800’s when “Injun scalps” could be sold for cash and the last renegade Apaches were overwhelmed and cornered like scrappy wolves.
As soon as the threat was gone, Injun logos popped up on everything from tobacco products to sports jerseys. What’s worse, a callous CCP parade or the Buffalo Nickel, which proudly portrayed Native and bison, both of which the United States mercilessly sought to eradicate? These nasty nickels circulated for decades through the white man’s bustling cash registers.
And guess what? The Buffalo Nickel is back, obverse and reverse. It’s the official pure gold bullion coin of the US Treasury.
And hey, aren’t we still manufacturing and selling Tomahawk missiles?
Why cast out the splinter in your neighbor’s eye, but not the log in your own?
Mao’s troops starved 160,000 civilians to death in order to defeat the Nationalist garrison at Changchun, one of the victories “hailed” in Chinese history books. Some citizens of Changchun survived, just barely, by eating grass, corpse flesh and leather belts. This is just the tip of a gargantuan iceberg of horror:
“There were no solemn pauses for the lives lost during the Communist Party’s rise to power — not for the estimated tens of millions who died during the civil war, nor the millions of landlords, Nationalist sympathizers and other perceived enemies who were eradicated during Mao’s drive to consolidate power.”
To put this in perspective, the lives lost during all of WWII also number in the tens of millions.
Well and good it is it to point out such monstrous violence, even as the CCP attempts to bury it under martial pageantry and the sands of time. But if we in the US are so keen on righteousness, as we should be, then let’s own up. There’s a big red letter H on our chests: the bloody H of Hypocrisy. If we are going to hurl verbal stones at the East, we ought to throw some heavy duty boomerangs too.
When the 4th of July comes around, where--alongside the rockets, hoopla and sloganeering--are the “solemn pauses” to honor Native Americans? Where are the humble and heartfelt apologies for the slaughter that followed in the wake of Manifest Destiny?
What is the greatest genocide known? The annihilation of the peoples of the North and South American Continents, beginning in 1492 and continuing into the 1800’s when “Injun scalps” could be sold for cash and the last renegade Apaches were overwhelmed and cornered like scrappy wolves.
As soon as the threat was gone, Injun logos popped up on everything from tobacco products to sports jerseys. What’s worse, a callous CCP parade or the Buffalo Nickel, which proudly portrayed Native and bison, both of which the United States mercilessly sought to eradicate? These nasty nickels circulated for decades through the white man’s bustling cash registers.
And guess what? The Buffalo Nickel is back, obverse and reverse. It’s the official pure gold bullion coin of the US Treasury.
And hey, aren’t we still manufacturing and selling Tomahawk missiles?
Why cast out the splinter in your neighbor’s eye, but not the log in your own?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Conscience as Rose
When you consider that it took plants untold millions of years to evolve the beauty of flowers, the sad state of human moral development becomes tinged with hope. We can find comfort in the words of William H. Murdy:
"In large measure, our personalities are determined by a collective consciousness which we can contribute to and which is itself evolving."
Just as plants turned part of themselves into flowers, we might someday make our collective consciousness truly beautiful. Not only that, if Murdy is right, you and I can contribute to the change.
Every word and deed trembles through the strands of civilization.
"In large measure, our personalities are determined by a collective consciousness which we can contribute to and which is itself evolving."
Just as plants turned part of themselves into flowers, we might someday make our collective consciousness truly beautiful. Not only that, if Murdy is right, you and I can contribute to the change.
Every word and deed trembles through the strands of civilization.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Today Show Bootlicks Limbaugh
On the news today Rush Limbaugh, given free reign by the Today Show to spew his crude lowbrow attacks. He is expert at appealing to the carbuncled anger in bigots. He slyly fondles their repressed fury and bids it rise. His rhetoric shows uneducated white males how to express racism and sexism under the radar. How to make their voices brim with hate yet hide the Kristallnacht in their hearts.
Fear of gays, blacks, women, and even the very notion of equality, what would Limbaugh be if these did not palsy a large mass of the US population? He would be what he is now: A power-obsessed purveyor of despicable tendencies. An epitome of the hurdles we must overcome to achieve peace and reason. That he has so much clout, and whips up so much furor, gives all of us who worry about the specter of fascism something tangible to decry.
Fear of gays, blacks, women, and even the very notion of equality, what would Limbaugh be if these did not palsy a large mass of the US population? He would be what he is now: A power-obsessed purveyor of despicable tendencies. An epitome of the hurdles we must overcome to achieve peace and reason. That he has so much clout, and whips up so much furor, gives all of us who worry about the specter of fascism something tangible to decry.
Monday, October 12, 2009
As the euphoria of acceptance descends into the neurotic mediocrity of self-doubt, the poet confronts a stark realization: that moods are puppet strings, and the essence of consciousness is to be jerked around.
One must ask, then, as many have, from Sappho and Hypatia to Nietzsche and Skinner, what devious and multifaceted entity holds the reins?
One must ask, then, as many have, from Sappho and Hypatia to Nietzsche and Skinner, what devious and multifaceted entity holds the reins?
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Lunar Sacrilege and Sociopathic Science
The problem with NASA bombing the moon is what it reveals as much as what it commits. Yes, punching Diana and sending a plume of dust six miles high is callous and wanton. Yes, it is aggressive, violent and demeaning. Yes, it is absurd. Yes, it indicts patriarchal logic as a dumb arrogant beast with too much power too soon in the continuation of human development.
But also, importantly, it demonstrates that science, as currently practiced, is sociopathic.
By this I mean that science distances itself from conscience, claiming some highbrow impunity from guilt. Scientists just rushed ahead to create the atom bomb—in the name of Science.
If we blow our species to megaton hell, a lion’s share of blame goes back to that gleeful fraternity of stupid geniuses involved in the Manhattan Project. Stupid because they didn’t consider right and wrong—except for a belated Einstein, whose wise plea to the President was ignored.
And now scientists are as headlong as addicts to dissect and rework the genetic codes of life. And just like infantile addicts they are reckless and heedless. They are scrambling as fast they can to gain prestige, accolade and contract, delving into scary realms like hybrid cloning, deadlier nerve gases, incurable anthraxes, and the perfection of sentient death-dealing robots, including drones that fly hundreds of miles to slay.
A recent segment of 60 Minutes featured slaphappy MIT profs bragging about how they could use MRI’s to read people’s thoughts.
What is the ethic of the ladder-climbing scientists? They have none, except some sterile conception of Truth. They claim loyalty to facts severed from values, and hence exile themselves from the passions that give live meaning and quality. In other words, they are trying their best not to be human. To ignore the tens of thousands of years of common sense built into our minds.
Yes, they bomb the moon and chuckle inside, feeling so superior and special, while wearing clinical faces outside.
Without ethics, scientists are sociopaths. Unprincipled scientists have the maturity of horny pimpled kids schlepping into 9th Grade.
Our prefects in white lab coats need to wake up and realize that the truth of numbers cannot be separated from the truth of life. Their obsession with their false god Truth is going to destroy us, if they don’t grow up, and if we don’t grow up with them.
But also, importantly, it demonstrates that science, as currently practiced, is sociopathic.
By this I mean that science distances itself from conscience, claiming some highbrow impunity from guilt. Scientists just rushed ahead to create the atom bomb—in the name of Science.
If we blow our species to megaton hell, a lion’s share of blame goes back to that gleeful fraternity of stupid geniuses involved in the Manhattan Project. Stupid because they didn’t consider right and wrong—except for a belated Einstein, whose wise plea to the President was ignored.
And now scientists are as headlong as addicts to dissect and rework the genetic codes of life. And just like infantile addicts they are reckless and heedless. They are scrambling as fast they can to gain prestige, accolade and contract, delving into scary realms like hybrid cloning, deadlier nerve gases, incurable anthraxes, and the perfection of sentient death-dealing robots, including drones that fly hundreds of miles to slay.
A recent segment of 60 Minutes featured slaphappy MIT profs bragging about how they could use MRI’s to read people’s thoughts.
What is the ethic of the ladder-climbing scientists? They have none, except some sterile conception of Truth. They claim loyalty to facts severed from values, and hence exile themselves from the passions that give live meaning and quality. In other words, they are trying their best not to be human. To ignore the tens of thousands of years of common sense built into our minds.
Yes, they bomb the moon and chuckle inside, feeling so superior and special, while wearing clinical faces outside.
Without ethics, scientists are sociopaths. Unprincipled scientists have the maturity of horny pimpled kids schlepping into 9th Grade.
Our prefects in white lab coats need to wake up and realize that the truth of numbers cannot be separated from the truth of life. Their obsession with their false god Truth is going to destroy us, if they don’t grow up, and if we don’t grow up with them.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Mannequin Envy Acceptance
I just received a professional and kind acceptance from Patrick Carrington, the editor at Mannequin Envy. This deserves a Great Horned
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!
Patrick Carrington, by the way, is an amazing poet. I don't say this as a friend or even an acquaintance of his, for I am not. I wouldn't know him from Jane Austen (Well, I guess I could deduce his identity in that case).
I've simply seen his poetry around the web. I don't know how he runs an extraordinary journal and also writes superb poems at a prodigious pace.
And he sure knows how to make my month.
HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!
Patrick Carrington, by the way, is an amazing poet. I don't say this as a friend or even an acquaintance of his, for I am not. I wouldn't know him from Jane Austen (Well, I guess I could deduce his identity in that case).
I've simply seen his poetry around the web. I don't know how he runs an extraordinary journal and also writes superb poems at a prodigious pace.
And he sure knows how to make my month.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
