Solstice Poem

Solstice Poem

Relishing the tiniest day,

the day the Sun

stops on the horizon,

before Earth

tilts back to light;

the day everything turns

around for another round—

this tiny day—

from where

a year is born.

Edit

Poet To Muse, 2015

I don’t know if it was correct,

saying to you

that I’m too wild

for polite society,

or if I was describing

something with shame

only because

I didn’t understand

it myself.

Maybe it’s because nobody seems

to know what a poet is anymore,

and all my attempts have gone

failingly, or maybe it’s that

no one understands

how fierce some can be

to put to words what’s true—

the people, love and fear, and all that’s blue.

Should I even be writing this?

It’s so difficult to tell, it’s hard

to believe when

the society you’re a part of

no longer acknowledges you exist;

but maybe there is genius

behind obscurity,

and living to fight another day

while accepting what’s happened

to our kind.

Regardless of all that,

I wanted you to know

how badly I need to see

your sweet being again.

Late Poem: Poet To Muse, 2015

Poet To Muse, 2015

I don’t know if it was correct,

saying to you

that I’m too wild

for polite society,

or if I was describing

something with shame

only because

I didn’t understand

it myself.

Maybe it’s because nobody seems

to know what a poet is anymore,

and all my attempts have gone

failingly, or maybe it’s that

no one understands

how fierce some can be

to put to words what’s true—

the people, love and hate, and all that’s blue.

Should I even be writing this?

It’s so difficult to tell, it’s hard

to believe when

the society you’re a part of

no longer acknowledges you exist;

but maybe there is genius

behind obscurity,

and living to fight another day

while accepting what’s happened

to our kind.

Regardless of all that,

I wanted you to know

how badly I need to see

your sweet being again.

Washington D.C, 1947/Paris, 2015—Living Life In Peace

Washington D.C, 1947/Paris, 2015—Living Life In Peace

Thinking of the thousands of lives which have

ended unnaturally over the past decade,

and now at this late date,

the dozens gunned down and blown up

in Paris.

The door has been closing

for over fifty years,

from that summer,

pen in hand of the elected politician,

power of the people vested.

Suddenly dozens of crows lift from a nearby tree,

a mini-cacophony in their cawing,

the Sun seen to flash off black wings

against the blue, even in the distance;

beauty so far removed

from the darkness across the ocean,

the other side of Earth

we’re never allowed to see clearly.

To some it looks like crazy men

killing out of vengeance for not believing

what they believe,

to others a diabolical regime,

unseen and hidden behind half-truths

of conventional wisdom and the great

unknowable outside the system.

Will we ever be free—

meaning all of us at once—

meaning living life in peace?

For all we can do,

we believe in that possibility—

living life in peace,

living life in peace,

living life in peace.

Late Poems

(untitled)

Once you’ve heard them,

some quotes just seem to bob

there in the background

of mindfulness,

like so much flotsam/jetsam,

like one from a many years-ago interview

of a famous artist who said

without a flinch—

we’re here to break each other’s hearts.

(untitled)

There is life and there are mistakes,

some more hurtful than others,

and certain ones such that someone,

or two or more,

cry, and can’t sleep;

the color of life gone, gone away,

the harrowing, hollow gray, gray, gray.

Only words can restore the hue

you were used to before the universe

enfolded and removed;

the words “What I remember happening,”

and “that’s why I said and did that,”

must be tracked to the last detail

in order to convert a mistake

into that thing

no longer worth an ache,

and remind us why

an emotion ill-expressed

is not the focus.

New technique w/homemade materials

Beach glass green and ancient pottery red end of summer so-called 2015 aloha aloha Aloha

Text for novel (or novella [as case may be])

It’s been contested that water/food are more important to humans than knowledge: that without it we wouldn’t be able to know anything because we’d be dead. But how do we get water into our system if we don’t first know what and where it is? People have died, not because water/food wasn’t available, but because they didn’t know how to get to it; and people have also died because they didn’t know what they were doing would kill them. Thus, clearly, knowledge is a matter of life and death; but so is water/food. So which comes first? It appears to be a chicken/egg thing, two logical premises that expose the paradoxical nature of existence.

An infant will die if uncared for because it doesn’t yet know how to survive. To reply that an infant needs water/food first, in order to live long enough to gain the knowledge to survive—and that therefore water/food is first and knowledge second—is to confuse the requirement for knowledge (time) with the importance of knowledge (context). In making that distinction we realize, whether it’s first-hand knowledge on how to survive or second-hand knowledge of a parent suppling it—knowledge always comes first. So it’s not a chicken/egg thing, knowledge is supreme. And to those who point to Einstein’s comment that imagination is more important than knowledge, again we ask, how could he have developed E = mc2 if he didn’t first know what energy, mass, and light were? How could Picasso have painted Guernica if he didn’t first know what paint, canvas, and war were? Imagination requires knowledge to do what it is meant to do—make sense of things. In other words, imagination requires knowledge, knowledge does not require imagination (See? Even Einstein can be wrong.)

To those who say love comes first, we must remember that one has to first know who and what to love. Many people have loved things when it was not in their interests to do so, a harm which can cost much joy and happiness, or in some cases even death. Again, knowledge is supreme to us hairless little beings.

But what of the position that it’s love which gives us the desire to live, and that without it no amount of knowledge would drive us forward? That we wouldn’t keep making babies, building the human bridge into the future, without love. In that sense, for those with heart, take heart, and happily, that love, not knowledge, is first in importance if you think human existence is important. Love is to knowledge what knowledge is to the imagination: one principle relies on the other, while the first principle relies on nothing to be itself, it simply is.

Finally, truth is derived from knowledge, and while deceit often wears the mask of truth, truth never the mask of deceit. Truth is what it presents itself as and can’t be anything but what it is. In that sense we might surmise that it is truth and only truth which escapes the paradoxical nature of existence. And if that’s true, then knowing it and acting in accordance with it, is what helps us escape the paradox of existence as humans while at the same time vetting us as genuinely human—if one believes humans should operate on truth rather than deceit.

Pacific Palisades, California, July 4, 2015

Late Poem

Pinches

A poet once said, that except for those of us free from desire
the rest of us are children: and so it made me giggle
when the little girl said, "He pinches me sometimes."
It was that she was so cute, her spirit so shrewd,
the combination of the two, that the brother
was moved to direct two fingers her way—
animal acknowledgement that the universe
had created something worth acknowledging,
something comforting,
something inspiring,
something worth fighting for.

Maybe it was she who was doing the pinching,
or at least an equal amount, and had only noted
his part—regardless, at its brightest the act of pinching
is an act of love, an evidence of it existing,
and yet another reminder of all that matters.

CloudsMay2015

Santa Monica offramp1

To All The Good Moms

Chapter One

    I don’t know if you need to hear this, but if you do, I hope you don’t hold it against me if I don’t tell it with humility. My teachers were vain. Back during their time it was a dishonor to the Sun, Earth, and universe to fail to be as brilliant and convincing as possible in a moment. My teachers were also the first to use the metaphor of visitors from another planet as a way of pulling focus on history and affairs of the world. Meaning, when attempting to see things as they are, they suggested looking at them as if you were a visitor from another planet, to lose the cultural and religious filters that often confuse things. The idea changed me, because when I began to look at the life I was living, as if from miles and miles above the face of the planet, I started to see things as a cartoon, I began to see civilization as a serialized installment of one event followed by the next. As I grew older, after looking at things for a couple of decades, I wanted to know the truth behind it. Even if existence was just a bunch of haphazard events bumbling into the future, various forces jousting for supremacy but none ever obtaining, I still wanted to know. Problem is, more I found out, more I tried to talk about it. I eventually found the truth—we’re not allowed to talk about the truth. A poet once said the ugliest thing about the truth is finding it, and another said that truth is so rare, it’s a delight to speak it. Maybe it’s that truth is a delight to the delightful and a horror to to the horrible, so part of me would persuade you to not listen any more and go away. On the other hand the Socrates metaphor comes to mind, the one where there are three types of people: those in the cave looking at shadows on the wall, those in the cave looking at the shapes which create the shadows, and those outside the cave looking at the world as it is. If a story can help someone live a life where they make the transition from being a cave-dweller to a non-cave-dweller, that would be a good thing, right? But maybe there are people better off living out life as a cave-dweller—I don’t know—you have to decide for yourself—but if you want to hear it, I’ll tell you.

    In getting to that point, getting to the realization that we’re not allowed to talk about the truth, naturally I had become a burden to everyone I knew. It had happened before, but this last time I was no longer in my twenties, not even my thirties, I was on track to be fifty. And so, no one returning phone calls, I refocused on art. At the time I had been using oil pastel and water color to create color-fields after the New York School of the 1950s and 60s. Colorfield art is where the entire canvas is nothing but fields of color and color combination. As far as the New York School painters were concerned the viewer was to stand close enough to the canvas that the entire field of vision was taken up with color. In my series I’d capture the space with lines of oil pastel and then paint gouache over it. After it dries, take a palette knife, scrape away the excess pastel, and with running water rinse away the gouache. It’s almost like developing a photo the way the vellum gives up pigment to reveal a pale hue of the original. Those that turn out good I started to sell out of coffee shops and art walks, and I got a few commissions here and there.

    Selling paintings was nice, but after awhile my attention shifted back to my writing. I grew up writing poetry, but as a writer I figured I should be able to say I had completed at least one novel. With all the political stuff I wanted to see if I could get it out there through a story. Anyone says writing a novel is not the most difficult thing a human can do doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Anyone ever tells you they’re working on a novel, be kind to them. I mean a literary novel, a book that tries to take the past and the present and combine it in a way that makes life relevant—that attempt to give meaning to us little monkeys who are sometimes warm, soft, and furry inside, and other times as cunning and deadly as all the teeth and claws that ever tore something apart. I was really struggling to finish mine, fully aware there are tens of millions of humans who have attempted to write a novel but gave up and never finished. I was losing steam, I needed inspiration, I needed a muse, someone beautiful and interested in the arts—maybe even doing things with life that were admirable—best case she was just as upset that we were both part of a civilization still dropping bombs on each other.

    The concept of a muse is a book unto itself and to me it’s a sacred alliance. Think if you turned on your mobile device and no music or movies were on it, or you went into town and there were no theaters, no galleries or museums to wander through. Life without art is incomprehensible, like Earth without oceans, but in order for art to exist it requires inspiration. Just like trees require water, art requires an artist who’s inspired. That’s when art can alter consciousness like it was meant to, when it can move an entire society one way or another. And the sacredness of inspiration isn’t only applied to the arts, but to the sciences too—meaning they’re two sides to the same coin because they’re both built on what’s presently known. And inspiration doesn’t have to be huge to be sacred either, even if it’s as small as the shift manager inspiring the cook to prepare a sandwich better. Someone who inspires someone else to excel, or inspires any thought, intention, or act creating a more beautiful world must be sacred because anything humans have ever considered sacred has been a part of this world, so any striving to make it better has to be sacred too. Unless you’d rather be a robot, then maybe the artist/muse thing isn’t that sacred. Then maybe we should be happy with art sponsored by money, not genuine inspiration based on truth of the moment. I don’t want to be a robot, I myself refuse to be a robot. I refuse to be told what to feel. I will feel what I’m feeling that moment I’m living and conscious. Feeling that way, naturally I don’t want fellow humans who live after me to be robots either. Robots can only do what they’re programmed to do. It’s the difference between being told what to feel, and actually feeling, and I want humans to feel freedom—which brings us to the ultimate question as a human: Do you believe we should be free, living in a free society, or do you believe a few should be free and the rest slaves? I’m getting ahead of myself, let me go back to the story about the muse.

Late Notes

Well, the caveat to beware battling monsters so that one does not become a monster themselves has reached its zenith I suppose. I know that the events since 2012 have gotten myself to this level on monsterdom. We recently had the 114th Congress initiate a rule to begin counting state applications for a convention, and with that, one might think other politically minded and/or socially conscious citizens would finally join the battle. There are groups calling for a convention, but of their own design, none calling for the one which adheres to the rule of law.

The monster I’ve become wakes up to check email and Facebook for Article V notices, then attempts to battle the ignorance and/or deception. I remember that back in 2008, when I joined Facebook, I saw how it was set up and vowed to save it for friends and family and fun, not Article V—at that time I was only in my seventh year of fighting for a convention and knew more had to be fought. I didn’t know how many more, but I knew enough to leave Facebook for after we won a convention. But then, as I feared would happen, I waded into the quagmire of political postings including things that would appear condescending and/or delusional—things, words, to stoke my conviction in the face of so much ignorance and/or apathy. How do you be serious about the truth in a day and age of purposeful misinformation, and then playful the next, and all to an audience of many sensibilities? I’m not posting this so I don’t spend another thought wondering if I should have said something. What people do with information is their business, and in this day and age, where the information at hand is anti-status quo, what else should one expect? Ten years of being serious about something that appears so remote a possibility, and now, a peak of sunlight over the horizon and no one from the mainstream stepping forward to acknowledge it—naturally that would be cause for indignation and/or bitterness. I struggle with those feelings, but I think I’m more sad than anything. And not sad for myself but sad we as a species didn’t win our freedom—or—are so afraid of our freedom that we would leave things in the hands of corporate robot people.

Luckily my love of the Sun and Earth persists, though it would be nice to have a woman to share that beauty with, a friend to hold a discussion or conversation with, while walking along a mountainside, or paddling out into the ocean. But how can a woman respect something they can’t see?

Anyway, things will come to a head soon I hope—meaning that the Congress will be forced to acknowledge the situation—if only to twist it into more nonsense. At that point I will finally be able to leave the struggle in the past and salvage what I have left of my life as a writer and artist. Wish us luck at the Marrianne Williamson event, SisterGiant3. Senator Sanders will be there, who I hope to address. If there is a Q&A and I can get in a word, maybe that will be that moment collectively that Emerson talks about, where we had been staring something right in the face, finally see it, and be amazed we had never seen it up until then. That would be fantastic. Cheers.

Chapter One

    I wrote a novel. It almost killed me but I finally finished the thing. I grew up writing poetry, but as a writer I figured I should be able to say I had completed at least one. I had a publisher with an offer and bunch of free copies but I thought—after all that work, I’m going to sign away my baby for a few thousand bucks? It’s true what they say about completing a book, it is like giving birth, and you really do think on it like a parent does a child. That said, ironically or not, when finished I remember feeling like—I’m never doing something stupid like that again! Writing a novel can kill you. I mean a literary novel, a book that tries to take the past, combine it with what’s on the human horizon, and make life relevant here and now—that attempt to give meaning to us little monkeys who are sometimes warm, soft, and furry inside, and other times as cunning and deadly as all the teeth and claws that ever tore something apart. Anyone says writing a novel is not the most difficult thing a human can do doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Anyone ever tells you they’re working on a novel, be kind to them. And if you do write one, guess what? Even though it will have been the hardest thing you ever did, it might go unnoticed. 

Not long ago humanity was on the cusp between real books and e-books. Fortunately I finished mine somewhere in that period and had the option to go traditional or go future. I choose future, meaning I created my own publishing company, meaning I jumped through a couple of hoops for the federal government, meaning I was in complete control of all my works. Part of the decision was related to the fact that when I was in my twenties I used to sell advertising door to door in Los Angeles so I figured I could sell copies of whatever on the street, meaning I could walk around with a backpack half the day and make more than working for someone else—and all in cash—or food and beer. Which is what I ended up doing, walking around four or five hours, and trading the final books at a bar or restaurant. In fact, I drove from Santa Barbara to Montauk and back one summer on my own book tour. I had gotten lucky with the photo for the cover, it was an empty wave, huge perfection in green and golden hues. Also, the woman who did the interior design was a perfectionist, so the book came out really nice. When people would ask I’d tell them it was about a surfer coming of age in Malibu. It was easy to sell.

As a poet it has always been women who inspired me most, even more than Earth, and while still in my thirties I fell madly in love with an actress. She starred in both film and on stage and after admiring her for some time I went to see her perform live in a play, hoping that if possible I’d be able to tell her afterwards what an inspiration she was. And I did, I told her she was my muse. She even agreed to sit before her matinee the next afternoon, to discuss ideas for a new play. The following year I went to see her again and found out she was planning on spending the rest of her life with someone else. I walked from the theater into Central Park and sat on a bench. I thought I was going to be able to handle it, telling myself everything happens for a reason, how I was a fool and how maybe it was embarrassing even that I sought her out in the first place. But I couldn’t help think about all that had lead up to the moment, that she really did inspire me to finish a novel and write my first plays. She really was my muse. Had I been inspired by other women before? Sure, but never like her, plus we were the same age. My mind flashed to the day of sitting outside the theatre when she told me how much she loved the stage and how she couldn’t live without it. The kind of actor, like a wild horse, in need of that fourth wall to range out into, to deliver ideas, to move people to laugh or cry with complete conviction in their own artistic vision. And she was Shakespearean too, she told me that playing Juliet at age twenty was one of her most cherished memories. I sat with all that going through my mind, and how at that moment she was there on the island, at an after-party somewhere else, with someone else. I’d never wake up with her, never walk hand in hand to rehearsals for the day. That was the life I was supposed to be living, and not only was it not happening, the thought of creating again was like thinking about how to pick up the Empire State building and move it somewhere else. I recalled stories and accounts of the artist/muse relationship and those who lost their muse and how that was the end of life as an artist, never wrote another word, never picked up the another brush, never played another note. One French playwright in particular, who had gotten farther than me—who had not only written plays for his muse, but also had her starring in them—when he finally found out it wasn’t going to happen, he just said, “I’m out of here,” and hung himself. I shuddered. If the loss of her was the loss of inspiration, would I be able to go on as a non-artist? Was this actually the beginning of the end? All the inspiration provided by her was suddenly ashes at my feet until grief and fear came in waves of thought and emotion and combined in a moment that I must have passed out because the next thing I know there are two/three people crouched down around me asking if I’m all right. My cheekbone and chin were both scraped and bleeding where I rolled off the bench and hit the bricks. The sacred alliance of artist/muse and there I was, the worst part of it. And yes, I did just use the word sacred. And no, it was not overwrought. Think about it, think if you turned on your device and no music or movies were on it, or you went into town and there were no theaters, no galleries or museums to wander through. Life without art is incomprehensible, like Earth without oceans, and in order for it to exist it requires inspiration. Just like trees and fruits require water, art requires an artist who’s inspired. That’s when art is Art with a capital A, when it alters consciousness like it was meant to. That’s when it can move an entire society one way or another. And the sacredness of inspiration isn’t only found in art, but science too, meaning they’re two sides to the same coin because they’re both built on what’s presently known to humankind. And inspiration doesn’t have to be huge to be sacred either, even if it’s as small as the shift manager inspiring the cook to prepare a sandwich better. Someone who inspires someone else to excel, or inspires any thought, intention, or act towards creating a more beautiful world must be sacred because anything we’ve ever considered sacred has been a part of this world, so any striving to make it more enjoyable or understandable has to be sacred too. Unless you’d rather be a robot instead of human, then maybe the artist/muse thing isn’t all that sacred. But I don’t want to be a robot, and I don’t want the humans who live after me to become robots either because robots aren’t free. Robots are incapable of liberty because robots can only do what they’re told. It’s the difference between being told what to feel, and actually feeling. I want humans to be humans and experience the feelings brought about by freedom. And there’s the ultimate question for us today: Do you believe we should be free? Or do you believe only a percentage of us should be free, and the rest slaves?

That night in New York City was not the last time I saw the actress, and because of that and other things, it makes me again feel like I should tell about it. Which on the one hand seems silly because no one really listens anymore, we’re firmly centered in an age where reasonable discourse based on fact is scarcely to be found.