Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Philosophical Musings

The morals of philosophy 
Are not too hard to comprehend 
Until you try to certainly 
Assert it to some certain end.
All of a sudden there arise
A thousand little arguments
Each full of tiny hows and whys
For you to pen, each in its fence.
It's like a coastline, and its length:
So easy on a map to see
But measured closely, past the strength 
Of any true cartography.
The moment that you try to claim
A certainty, you lose your aim.

Monday, September 23, 2024

Barton

The cold equations lie to you. They lie
Not in themselves (the math is right, of course)
But in their will to power. Asking why
The cold equation rules -- is it by force? --
Reveals, or can reveal, a deep design
That someone's interest calculates and sets
To make the cold equation seem a sign
Of universal meaning. But who lets
The cold equation go on being cold?
If we all know the cold equation's flaws
Who benefits from our failing to fold
Our own protections round its jagged laws?
The cold equations are still true, still cool
But people chose to let equations rule.

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

fishes

I wish I were not scavenging my time 
Robbing Peter to pay Paul, and making
Each little word and every single rhyme 
A muscle torn, reused and ever-aching.
Imagine that the time ahead of me
Were smooth and open, free to fill at leisure:
Impossible the possibility
And endless the end-stopped, creative pleasure.
But it has not been so, will not be either;
I cannot count on time to while away.
I am a child teething without teether
Gnawing my knuckle bloody to allay
The pain of what is rising from below
And has no patience as it strives to grow.

Monday, May 6, 2024

test

My heels dig in so much the ground is broken
Beneath my shoes. I hate to lose. I will,
If asked for an opinion when awoken
Defend 'til I sleep, and even still
Grumble in dreams about how I am right.
My knee, once jerked, will not concede its place
To any; I am my opinion's knight
And fight for it 'gainst all foes I might face.
Yet even I, who hate to say I'm wrong,
Who close my ears and la la la along
When anyone corrects what I have said 
Will tell these presidents the way they've acted
Requires that their statements be retracted
Before some student protester lies dead.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

bubble

I hear you in the other room
Your voice reminds me of your smile
It chases off my after-gloom
As I remember in a while
You will come out and sit with me
As we companionably read
Beside the dog, and drink our tea.
I think of this with utter greed.
There is no joy I wish for more
No comfort higher, greater grace
Than listening to our dog snore
While looking at your smiling face
Nose deep inside an open book
All unaware each time I look.

Monday, January 8, 2024

O Beautiful

I never understood the waves before;
It always seemed a silly little song.
To speak of waves of grain? It must be wrong.
The water always seemed to me much more
Than any field could be. How could it store
The slightest sense of surge, to bear along
A boat, and break? A farm is strong,
But like a wall, not like a wave, I swore.
Yet here, as night casts shadows on the snow
The wheat (unwaving yet, as it must grow)
Reminds me of the ocean rippling free
No waves as yet, but still an energy
That my sea-sense already seems to know
And recognizes past solidity.

Friday, December 8, 2023

Chanukah

Flicker little flame
Build a little light
In God's holy name
Last throughout the night.
Help us to remember
Long and far away
How once in December
Light for but one day
Stretched itself to eight
'Til more oil was found
To re-dedicate
Holy, sacred ground.
Let us not now be
Those from whom we're free 

Sunday, July 23, 2023

Mire

I do not have the brain to be myself.
I grope towards me, but cannot seem to reach.
My soul sometimes seems put up on a shelf
Where from the box my insides slowly leach.
I want to think, but when I try I grind
Like gears too long un-oiled or unused.
There is an awful jamming in my mind
Where what was understanding is confused.
I used to leap from thought to thought with ease
Where now to say I plod would be too much;
A keyboard doesn't work with sticky keys
Nor do I think. I can't release the clutch
Enough to even settle in a gear.
Even reverse would be relief from here.

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Decorah

Decorum has it's time and place, it's true.
When equals speak to equals, or when power
Speaks down to those who it tells what to do
That is decorum's right and proper hour.
But when the weak speak out against the strong,
Those trodden down against the treading heel;
When commons makes its case against the crown
And those beneath resist the rolling wheel
Their words are theirs, and, if indecorous,
The content, not the setting, matters more.
There is no right to triumph without fuss;
Decorum's no excuse to crush the poor.
If you object to what they say, say why;
Don't hide behind decorum. It's a lie.

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Alberta

The sun is unprepared to burn 
In other's smoke. It turns too red
Too early; barely halfway through
The day, which seems at times the dusk
Already. But it takes its turn
Behind the forests, too soon dead,
Which we are breathing in, and grew
Only to make themselves a husk.
Our city is their living urn
And will continue, they have said,
To be so; this will be the new
Reality. We breath the musk
Of forests, but our lungs aren't clean
We breath in red, and never green.