It Takes a Roomful of Morons (to Think They're Smart Enough)

Final note of the cycle
goes like this:

sometimes, the truth
of reality is simply
a reverse of what
people generally think.

Case in point:

Watchmen the movie
is genius,
Watchmen the graphic novel
is notable.

I dunno,
I was planning
a bigger finale,
but it sort of
fell by the wayside.

You've heard enough.

DEATH WILL NEVER CONQUER

Einstein was a Relative Genius

I'm about knock to an institution
of the the twentieth century.

(That's not how I was
going to word it this
morning. Oh well...)

Einstein oh Einstein,
what shall we do with thee?

Today I consider you
a brilliant mind trapped
in the times you lived in.

I guess I really don't
understand why I should
hold you in such high
esteem. I know about
your atomic bomb and that
theory of yours, but I'm
having trouble placing
whatever else you may
have achieved in your day.

Maybe there's more,
probably, but what I'm
really getting at is
that I've not really been
all that impressed with
your thinking outside
of science. You didn't
seem so smart then.

"Unlimited competition
leads to a waste of labor,
and to the crippling of
the social consciousness
and individuals" etc.

I don't know, maybe it was
your experience and maybe
it was that you really were
that darn smart, but I tend
to think of competition as
better than the opposite,
despite that a completely
unregulated system of
filtering new writers has
basically screwed me over
for the past ten years or so.

I think that individuals
being individuals
and contributing as individuals
can't possibly be a bad thing,
and it is our basic lack
of understanding that constantly
gets in our way.

Capitalism, democracy, a directed
sense of chaos, that's the thing
for me. Call me irresponsible,
but I think the individual
is always at the heart of
the best society. If you cannot
comprehend the one, you certainly
won't be able to grasp the many.

So, Einstein, you're not
so bright in my book.

A World Without Villains

Better than most, never good enough,
most of the time I'm the fool on the hill.

I don't want to be Superboy-Prime.

I don't want to grow up isolated
and completely unable to adjust.

I don't want to live in a world
without villains, because they
would need to be invented all the same.

But just imagine if it were true,
that we could always be the hero
of our own story,
and all you ever did was lead
an extraordinary life.

The Necessity of a New Language

I don't know whether an individual
or an era needs it, but what I'm
here to say today is, you've got
to learn your own language.

We get that when we're learning
language, learning to speak, but
somehow when people begin to be
taught it, they begin to
accept the fallacy that there are
forms to be kept and adhered to.

But I say, new language is not
only necessary, but it is
constantly inevitable, and therefore
ridiculous to try and prevent.

I try to write poems in my own language,
something that is relevant to me,
and therefore something doubly new
for my readers, because I have no
interest in aping what has come before,
maybe update, but never duplicate,
because that isn't my authentic voice,
but rather someone else's.

If I'm to think for myself,
or at least tell myself that I
am doing so, I might as well do it
do it with my own language, too.

The words I use, the phrases
I continually revert to, it's
all to establish a pattern,
a language, that will announce
that I am myself, that I have
discovered myself in the world.

All because I can't do so
without it.

An Artificial Crisis Is Not the Same As a Real One

Sorry, folks, but it's my belief
that as bad as it's been lately,
we were all but asking for it.

Every artificial economic boom,
which is to say all of them,
always ends the same way, in a
collapse.

So why are we so surprised
every time it happens?

Because the real artificial
catastrophe is the belief
that business can be run not on
good ideas or sound speculating,
but on the basis that you can
create progress without trying
to back it up in the real world.

That's it!

That's the real problem we continually face,
an undisciplined ambition to seek out
new fortunes and affect change simply
for the sake of fortune and change,
rather than any real need or ability
to properly channel it in real terms.

To say, "this has got to be done"
simply because that's the thought
that just popped in your head
is to ask for failure, a shell of
what you propose and the ghost of success
and then failure.

Didn't we nail Bush to the wall
because he thought he could claim
"success" in Iraq? Why can't we
make equations where they exist,
and not just when they're convenient?

(And besides, Bush claimed accomplishment
because he essentially did what his
father wouldn't, and despite what everyone
has said, he proved the mission true -
oh, and with some continued difficulty?
Who would have imagined that?!?)

Business is always a dicey proposition,
like being asked to kill your own
brother, or bring law to a savage land
you made that way and without backup,
living in a cave, making your own music.

I call today's reality the Dilbert Effect
because Scott Adams is the voice
that rang out first about all the absurdities
we somehow imagined were increasingly
necessary, a return to peculiar institutions
which also, regularly failed despite
their perceptions. We've moved beyond
them, and we only need to catch up,
the lag effect of the New Fade, if you will.

I'll credit Obama that he sees true reform
where true reform is needed, when pressed to it,
and maybe he's better than the hype that
got him where he is today, but I'm sick
of all the voices that say he's right
for the sake of being right, that those
who work the opposite aisle are automatically
wrong because they're being vanquished
(and really, where would that leave us?),
but we must learn to temper ourselves
in politics as in business, as in economics,
must discover a way to form a true democracy.

I find no real motivation in the form
of an artificial crisis, but rather
in the understanding that in working
together for a common cause rather
than out of fear, we all stand to benefit.

***

In the fight for the environment, I see
an unfortunate parallel. Really, tell me
how we can possibly destroy the entire world
all by ourselves and somehow completely fail
to adjust to new conditions, when that is all
our history has ever told us about ourselves.

We seem to regard ourselves as a Third World,
unable to rise above the stupor of our
own impoverished lives, or our own hobbled
ecosystem, if you are to believe strictly
in the reports that daily inundate us.

But I rather believe against the Third World Theory,
that if a people cannot sustain themselves,
it has less to do with what they can do for
themselves than what is continually denied them,
and that would be an ability and means to
strike back the forces of oppression, as our
history always reminds us, and as such,
there is no crippling blow we cannot overcome,
but rather a state of fear that says so, and
that we must believe it in those terms rather
than in those that state, as we already know,
that no action fails to produce an equal
and opposite reaction; that once done, something
cannot be undone or result in something else,
and to believe that is somehow something
that we have agreed to.

I have had enough of fear.

I believe that we cannot accept
the things we should not accept,
and that this alone is what should
and indeed has always sustained us,
and that only the voices that insist
it can't have ever truly been
the oppressors and doom of us all.

But we can rise above.

We can always rise above.

The New Fade is working in our favor,
giving us the chance we are giving
ourselves to rise above, to let slip
the inky cloaks we assumed for ourselves,
the burial shrouds we will leave behind
for generations to come, whom we
might not recognize but will still
be our kin, the remnants of our age
perhaps some apocalypse they will
struggle to understand, but nothing
that will prevent their being.

Time changes all, takes away all,
gives back all, it is ever shifting.

But we cannot accept that
an end is anything but a beginning.

We do not have to say constantly
that the sky is falling.

Already a new age slouches forth,
waiting to be born.

Slaves to Sensation

I saw the title of this poem
in the men's room, written
on the toilet paper dispenser.

No one says this job is glamourous.

***

I sing the body electric,
the ways in which both
the male and female forms
are appealing, and of
the desire to make both
the point of life, an
erotic desire and notion
that sex is what defines
relationships and roles
in our society.

I sing the body electric,
of our capacity to rise
above such crude forms
while we also admire them,
but instead use our intellect
to relish what may be found
and admired in each other.

I speak of a bond we all share,
of what we can all appreciate
and fail to judge, because
the body as well as the mind
is precious.

I sing the body electric,
of an ability to see and
a need to touch, but how
that alone is not enough.

I speak of an ascension
above the sexual to when
you will not be able
to say "well, that person
is that" and dismiss
or condone them for it.

I sing the body electric
because of its will to
compete, of the mind's
chance to say, yes I will,
or no, that is a waste.

I sing the body electric
and the body elastic,
to fit all forms, whatever
you are comfortable with.

I used to quite enjoy
Jillian Michaels, until
she went and spoiled it,
made the mundane judgments
on diet that ideally would
have no basis on form,
only the judgment itself.

I sing the body electric
and the ability of the mind to see.

Poems Oughta Have Teeth

They should have a backbone,
they should pick a side,
they should make you think,
they should say something
besides painting some pretty picture.

I can't stand poems like that.

I want poets to be writing
because they found they had to,
because something was missing.

Poems oughta have teeth.

If you can read one
and forget it right after,
then you've got a problem.

Poems are an art, and
you can do many things
with them, but if you're
just messing around, I gotta say,
why bother?

To be relevant at all,
they shouldn't feel like
some waste of time.

They aren't just some hobby,
but a way of life, the very
window of a life.

No life really consists
of being a wallflower.