The Everything in the Everyday
living in a city
can be the ultimate
love / hate relationship —
for little else in life
can simultaneously give you energy
and sap you of it at the same time.
it is equal parts
splendor and squalor,
joyfulness and misery,
brotherhood and animus.
but in the light of a beautiful morning,
both sides of the city, in reflection,
seem to just represent
life
we wash away the dirt
but long to be in sand:
and yet, they might be synonyms.
it’s hard to understand —
but that is how we think,
and that is who we are:
where dirt is just a dirty word,
but sand gets good
P.R.
back here, how strange it is, the heart is sore,
as memories like lies, and sons of lies
touch cold bare feet onto a frozen floor
beneath a ghost they sought to idolize
how comforting – the fault was never owned:
there need be nothing learned or set away
or carried into bright and awkward day
from pedestals where they have lived, enthroned
and stories, like a hive, are built and set:
the never-happened, covering regret
encapsulates, and keeps the real world out,
so progress can be stopped, along with doubt.
the old clock ticks, and day soon swallows night,
and never-can-be-wrong is never right
A meditation on our role in the choices available to us
the world’s a store, and
we walk by products that are
arranged to catch our eyes;
our attention often fixed upon
objects not present, the
subjects of our current fixations –
and yet, if economics allow, we often
buy products that we know we may not
need or even want, merely from a sort of
habit of politeness; a feeling that
so much trouble was gone to for us, we
really should show some support –
bringing home these pointless objects, we
find ourselves leaving by-products, traces
of these and other half-optimal choices that
make up most of our days; the things we do, because
we must do something, and so we choose from among
the options available to us
if, of course, by “products” we are thinking of
things like relationship and career choices, this
only becomes more true – and more the
pity, since we frequently either don’t go to
enough stores to provide sufficient choice or
go to stores long after the right choice has been
purchased by someone else
As a teen,
classical music was
my greatest love,
my strongest passion —
But the business of it
was catty, and shallow, and
competitively spiteful:
all I cared about
was the music
So, I elected
to find another line of work,
choosing to continue to play music,
but not be in the grind of competitions
for scholarships, recital time, and so on
And, these days, if anything,
it has gotten worse.
The most beautiful, thoughtful
performances can be found on youtube,
where commenters savage the performers
with the type of criticism that makes you wonder
if almost anybody that listens to classical music
actually likes it
But then, i take a deep breath, and remember:
youtube comment-leavers do not represent all people,
they typically represent the worst type of people:
cowardly, petty, bitter, and unaccomplished, themselves
The wisest choice anyone can make
is to never read comments on youtube
So i listen to classical music,
and continue to explore and
learn to play various pieces:
exploring unknown repertoire,
and enjoying performances when i hear them
rather than criticizing them
I know the critical mindset:
it is simultaneously self-righteous about criticism
and unable to accept any aimed at them
But these are just shadows of joylessness,
and i can pass them by in silence
For the music is the thing,
And always was.
We will always have reactions to what we hear,
we just don’t need to spend so much time
convincing others to have the same one
Because that is monumentally
Foolish
The morning wakes upon the hill,
The moon awaits me in the glen;
I set out with a frozen will
To talk to you again.
The world is just a funeral fire,
A ceremony of remorse;
And still I’m climbing, ever higher,
Set upon this course —
I asked you for forgiveness once;
You set about it with good grace –
But you’ve been gone, and now your ghost
Moves softly through this place
Of missing leaves, and morning mist.
Mid echoes of intention,
I take the path that upward lies
Defying such convention
As would dictate a different course.
I knew you back when love was life;
And life was not enframed by death
And peace was not entombed in strife.
We can’t recapture innocence —
For once it’s gone, it’s gone for good,
And all our striving, in a sense,
Is just so much misunderstood
By others; and by (often) us.
How can it be the trees still know?
They lose their splendor; still, they stand.
And every single path will show
The wisdom of the rocks and trees,
The solemn beauty in the soil;
Where love is not some rash disease,
But more like liberty in toil –
To live, to grow: these are our days –
To strive to know as many ways
To scale the hills as we can find:
And integrate the body-mind
Into the whole ’twas meant to be.
Whether on mountainside or fen —
As morning wakes upon the hill,
And moon awaits us in
The glen
