Whimsy

We

bulky atoms and void

who pine

eternally

who take care

and stock

hungry to affirm

the whole

We

squishy water pockets

riders

at a million miles an hour

hanging out

vulnerable

with wild eyes

thrown into

spinning stories

stitched with bruise

and other lessons

I wouldn't change a thing

Soap Box

Yesterday morning

I had a Thought

A damn good one

All warm and soft, vital and clear

The product of good sleep, perhaps

To the city I’d take it

To the wharf where the birds and the people feel grand

Where the sun peaks through the stomach

Where the nice parts of the self can breath

A place where we make our way

When we have nowhere to be, no one to please

Not compelled like the rats we often are

This, this is where I will share my Thought

Amongst the sounds and smells of peace

Of rebirth

I dress in my best

Feeling some extra sobriety

Secure composure                                

Evenness in balanced weight

Atop my body

Clothes I’m reluctant to abuse on the regular day

But this no regular day

With lunch tucked away

In the pack over my shoulder

I ride my old mountain bike through the suburb

And as I ride out through nosier streets

Passing endless shops and homes

Passing schools, warehouses, traffic

I carry myself with stolid dignity

Back straight, slow breathed politeness

As though taking center stage in some ritual

As though I am meeting old mentors

The wharf downtown arrives

As does the mighty noise of crowds and cars

I leave my bike unlocked in the rack

If someone needs it that badly

Then they can surely take it

What meets me shortens my stride

Soap boxes

Soap boxes to every person

Thousands and thousands of soap boxes

Of acidic thought sharers

Talking, screaming, humming into the void

Did I come too late?

Manifesto of the Lifestyle Experimenters

After the given materials of life begin to look themselves rather given and circumstantial, a search ensues: a search for fertile grounds, for a way of life that does not hang itself on the merely local, the merely familiar. With eyes toward this search, our hungry gaze looks out over its own history and it's species history. We earnestly sift through personal traumas and gifts, and scavenge the fruits of the intellectual generations. Here, some of us halt in our tracks, solemn, energized by the breadth of the systematic puzzles or the empirical beauties and tragedies of nature. Vitalized, they'll tell stories which back up their settlement: everything points to the solution of this problem, they say; everything follows laws which can be understood if only we would apply the correctly balanced efforts. For instance, one such settler would appraise themselves thus, "I'm lacking in assertion and my life has become a slavery because of this - and so the way out is to cultivate the powers of self-esteem." Or another would appraise that,  "The world would evolve with the advancement of education, with the eradication of this or that social hang-up." With this, a "battleground" has been facilitated. The search has revealed the fertile grounds we sought, has gone beyond the merely local and fertile.
A great majority at least nod at this approach - in fact, I would wager that all do, at minimum, nod at it. Nevertheless, a minority is not ultimately persuaded. They feel that the "battleground" is just another version of the given, the familiar, the circumstantial. Their suspicion is that the values by which the "battlegrounders" gravitate only goes skin deep: the world does not provide them, only human beings do, and only human beings within circumstantial ruts. From our minorities eyes, all values are experiments in lifestyle, can only be experiments in lifestyle. Building a life on a battle ground is fine, but the added qualification that it is the ground is, for this minority, a kind of shortsightedness or immaturity. They say to the premature settlers: "Look, you have forgotten that always and everywhere we humans are winging-it. We are organic, doing what we do with whatsoever equipment we have access to. Your problems are happenstance, your methods happenstance, and your vision happenstance. There are no ultimate, cosmos signifying obligations that demand to be responsibly met. The world issues no clues which are not first inferred and interpreted by us dying animals. Whatever values you participate in are values you have made up, or else they are values you have followed from the example or compulsion of others. Everything undertaken, however, is guesswork; in guesswork lies all the human possibilities. The approach of you, the battlegrounders, to wholeheartedly get behind some problem you deem central, then, is a strategy, particularly a strategy of coping with life. All there is can be summed up thus, unaccountable weirdness and unaccountable longing. Our movements, which follow, can only be experimental attempts to deal with the unaccountable."  

God's in the Crowd

I see it in some people

They’re veritable Gods

In a crowd of the second rate

An omnipotent grin

A sure footed step

Reveals the vitality at their disposal

Freezing

In our cramped igloos of late

Shivering anger is our only move

And yet it’s a weak anger like that paleness, falsesness

Of the freezing, melting walls

We shiver as our bed fellow chills us to the bone

The sleepy paths of their bare feet beneath the covers

An aggressive reminder of the involuntary

In our chemical dreams

Our teeth fall from our mouths

Out of the blue

Abrupt complexity floods the nerves

Triggers dimensions of commotion

Puzzles which demand ordering

A reminder of the impossibility of preparation

This life business is a trying stream

Obstacles are the rule not the exception

We watch over ourselves like clouds

But also feel ourselves from within

Feel the raw panicked wounded soldier

Elaborating plans from the emergent patterns

Sometimes hearing damage in our bunkers

Sometimes divining floating hope

Let us talk without our logic holes

Talk threw our hearts

For the only way to speak is like lovers

As though to our younger selves

In the heat of crisis

As though to a fellow way-farer

Mounting the same chilly climb

The hardest thing in the world is self-control

Why else would we suspect the rulers

Black Green Fever

Out on this scorched prairie

Where I haven’t seen another in months

Where I panic every night

Ungovernably scared that it’s all gone

A dried up dead-end

Where I don’t have enemies to blame

Where I’m the last word on all things

And since I’m the last word

As far as I can tell

It is my word that counts

An argument that stands

Only because I make it stand

And only because I am the last to speak

Angelic

Warm my speech

Brighten that secret resolve
Clean away the distraction of youth

With you

Not trapped up

Not the gloss of new clothes

Or the stalemate of compromise

I’ll make us food

Cut out the light

Turn high the wall heater

Stare into your eyes

Kiss your scars