there's some believe in recipes -- for life, for love, for making friends -- and so they want a step-by-step to lead them, surely, to such ends as motivates their soul and heart, and so they wait, and never start.
there's some believe life's not that way: each story different, like each day, and that to live's to improvise (for knowledge does not make us wise) and that discovery's not knowing but, it's more like bending, flowing, inching, reaching, floor and ceiling, earth and sky and simply
This age is one with an abundance of anxiety and a shortage of respect.
Much of our anxiety comes from having more choices available to us than humans are wired to be able to handle. Our lack of respect seems to then come from how we narrow the choices available to us through willfully ignoring (or misunderstanding) others.
The library was that first place
That I could find most anything:
At age eleven, eyes gone wide,
At what new wonders it would bring --
We could but only take (of course)
A few things out on any day;
Although it seemed to hold the world,
To get it piece-wise was the way
That we could get it. Slowly, then,
The pictures would develop, as
We read, imagined, learned, and grew.
Like when I wanted to hear jazz:
The headphones on, one at a time,
I heard the songs I read about
And felt the imperfections of
The medium, but had no doubt
That what I heard was real, and true.
Connected then to history
By all the work it took to hear
Those things available to me
But gradually, laborious.
Right now, I could hear any song
That's ever been recorded, but
I listen less, and not for long,
For we're not limited to what
We've paid for, or we can check out:
The songs are all there for our ears
But where to start, or where about
Is overwhelming. We employ
Then social markers, to denote
The things we will consume instead:
The same way that we think, and vote.
There is an 'us', there is a 'them' --
This reasserts the borders that
We long to have; and so we live
An inch deep and a mile
Fat
Within our daily echelons, we may
Go wandering from where we really are:
For though love starts in fantasy,
It isn't meant to really end that way.
But all this isolation has begot
A whirl of nothings, dressed up as the world
That people fight and die for, everyday,
Not knowing that the cure contains
The rot
We raised our hands in a forest of words,
We stretched out our arms in a gesture of light;
We welcomed the dirt, and the bugs, and the birds,
And brought depth and width, along with the height.
As time tumbled forward, community rose,
And we all together were more than each one;
What we lacked in drama, we had in repose,
And stood not ashamed to be under the sun.
The soil of recrimination is poor,
And nothing can grow when we plant among blames:
But much is accomplished where modesty dwells
And lives in our actions, as well as our aims.
seems differing opinions
can shake our confidence;
and so we keep a distant gap
or hide behind a fence
we raise our kids in canyons, smugly,
still we are afflicted
with all the doubt that comes when we
are simply
contradicted
When you live, solely, in a world of words,
imagination loses its grounding,
and truth becomes ulcerous.
Words are things, but they are not the same
as the things they are meant to signify;
just as saying, "I will pay you back on time"
doesn't mean that we will.
So whatever we think we know strictly from words
should come with this caution:
hearsay is unreliable, as is readwrote.
Truth is not a monopoly; no mortal --
or group of mortals -- has
sufficient experience to own it,
no matter what they tell you.
the world is full of hatred
and people lined in rows
to tear apart all others
(and that's just how it goes)
and oh how great we think we are
(with such thoughts we are filled)
we're not like those subhumans
who we have lately killed
oh evil evil everywhere
to fight it's so inviting --
(we dreamt of beauty once and calm
but how is *that* exciting?)
the rage of those denying
that they have any part
of all our modern rancor
can kind of break the heart
the spiraling of violence
the echo coming back
the one more day of mourning
and then the
fade to black
