note to all people immortal

Just think:

After the earth explodes,

you will still be here, floating silently

through the emptiness of space,

like some lonely, intergalactic blowfish,

for the rest of eternity.

A sort of Battle of Hastings

A man walked past me today,
as I sat reading in the window of a coffee shop.
He wore a black metal mesh wastebasket atop his head,
seemingly determined to look like a Norman knight.
Soon, I was imagining cadres of knights, storming
up the streets, swords flailing, scabbards dusty,
rusting chain-mail clink-clinking over the pavement,
darting through passing traffic as they
engage in duels upon horses and on foot, swinging
mighty blades in graceful arcs down upon the neck
of some sworn enemy they've pinned down on the hood of
a Toyota Celica. Sweat drips from the foreheads
of squires as they drag broadswords, shields,
morningstars, javelins, crossbows, sheathes of arrows,
maces and battle-axes up the sidewalk,
hunched over, pausing and gasping pathetically
for breath at each corner, unsure which of the other
squires to trust, and which to stab,
so exhausted they come cautiously to truces
amidst the dread of the looming safe-crossing signal...

Nonetheless, this does not answer the central question:
Why would this man walk about with a wastebasket on his head?
To incite questions? To incite a furor over art?
No. I will not wonder. I will not dignify his smutty arrogance
with even a thought.

A few frivolous beheadings

The lawn flamingoes have been acting peculiarly.
In fact, I was recently informed of their plotting an uprising.
Not to worry, I squelched their plans with some nasty rumors
and a few frivolous beheadings.
Still, it had me worried, and I wondered
at the private avalanches of pressure
which must come from the day-to-day
responsibilities of being a lawn flamingo.
All those sugar afternoons and scotch-drunk evenings.
I plopped down on the grass and locked eyes with Roderigo,
one whose betrayal had hurt me most, I think, of all.
I tried to tell him I was sorry,
to console him for all his deep-rooted angers.

He but stared back, and after a moment, declared
"We were nothing to begin with, no home, or birth.
Just dust, dust and bitter irony."

The hollowness of his voice struck me like a knife.

Sea Goats

My friend Ethel rang me and shouted into my ear
"Get down to the docks! There's something you have to see!"
And sure enough, moored to the dock
was a gigantic ship made entirely of paper,

bowers, davits, capstans, bumpkins, the whole shebang was paper. 

"Aren't they afraid of waterlogging?" I asked the man
standing next to me, who was staring up at the crow's nest
with what I'd guess is a mixture of awe and terror,
"No," he said-- his face was littered with the craters and crevasses
of time's abuses,
"Just hungry sea lions who gnaw at the rudder.
'The billygoats of the high seas,' they call them."
"Oh," I said. "I've never heard that before."
"Yeah, they'll chow down almost anything."
"Yeah, I getcha," I said.
Ethel pointed out a myriad of tiny paper boats
drifting over the baby wakes crashing onshore,
lost in the current, helpless to anything,
and further on, barely specks,
we watched as little paper tugboats
slowly hauled away the few years we had left.

Suburban Elegy

Tonight my father smiled warmly,

bent down in the driveway. Said

"Watch out. There's a slug here.

Be careful not to step on him." 

And for a moment

I almost forgot

that yesterday

a bomb in Kabul,

filled with all those 

blinking metal contraptions

which paid for our home,

exploded

killing several children

playing in the street.

Introductions and Reveries

With no small degree of trepidation, I'm beginning my first foray into the world of blogging. This being  done in small part to a dear friend of mine who has been studying, among the vast array of things his mind ponders, the seemingly endless ways in which the internet can be used to harness the world we live in. 

But by my own admission, I'm a bit sluggish, and more than a bit churlish, at the thought of changing my old habits. It takes much deliberation and more than a reasonable share of doubt before I act, before I myself able to throw my full weight behind anything. I also wear the badge of 'luddite' perhaps more proudly than I ought. Perhaps it's the soft comfort a book provides me that a flickering screen seems unable to do.

At any rate, my goal with this blog is to give myself a space to write, let thoughts prosper and, naturally, to engage in the shameless self-aggrandizement that comes with with having my own soapbox. (In particular, bits of poetry, and social commentary which at times come screaming out of me with a furor I can barely comprehend.) My interests are somewhat eclectic, but lately, I find myself drawn to questions of finding meaning in an increasingly isolating world, finding one's right place and work, and the ways in which the work we do in the world can be used for the betterment of all people. I find myself particularly drawn to the question of the role of art, and its functions and worth in a society which seems determined to follow a maxim laid out by the CEO of IKEA: "An idea without a pricetag is meaningless." Joy.

That sounds hopelessly pretentious. How about I write about that stuff, but I'll include nifty pictures too? Sound good? Yes? Good.