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.

Family & Home

On a much smaller scale,
we've got the things
we know best: family & home.

It's funny how obsessive
people can get about
these things, counting
them almost as much
as status markers as
anything else they might
find themselves with.

They say family & home
are important, but deep down,
we all know what always,
inevitably comes first, and
it's a terrible thing to admit,
but it's always true: the self.

The self, even in sacrifice,
considers itself important,
even in a selfless act, and
if can just learn to admit that,
rather than deny and camouflage,
I think we'd be better off,
because then we could understand
how family & home, and then
everything else, fits in.

Because that's the progression,
a sense of the self, then
those most around us, our family,
and then the thing we keep
with us always, a sense of home,
no matter what form it takes.

Family & home,
never go without long
with a sense of our own.

Lost as a Model of Civilization

Firstly, I know
that in Lost
there can hardly
be said to be
any comprehensive
model for a
civilization, because
it seems everyone
belongs to a different
one, even when some
of them are grouped
together.

But, that's also
good to point out.

Hardly anyone is
ever going in the same
direction. Whether
as a country, a nation,
civilization, whatever
you want to call it.

Even people working
explicitly for the
same goals can find
themselves pulling
from opposite ends,
different sides,
or the same one but
with different destinations.

On Lost, you've
got dozens of characters
with an equal amount
of allegiances, and
somehow the dance they've
put together keeps
splitting and coming
together again, and it's
been that way from the start,
which is why I've been
so fascinated with it.

Lost isn't just
a great TV show or great
storytelling, but something
to seriously reflect on
as a reflection of our world,
which all great TV and storytelling
does, but this show a little
more, a little better.

The moment you think
you're comfortable,
something else happens
to start the whole
thing going again.

That's what civilization
is like, how we should
approach it, to find out
how we can do it better.

No every curve is
unexpected, so we should
probably think about
acting like it isn't.

But everything always
changes, links are
always broken and made,
so we always have
another chance
to get it right
the first time.

A Movie Index in Ten Films

I say,
if you can no longer call
the times you live in
contemporary, you've
got a problem.

You should always find
new things to be worth
experiencing.

***

Alexander (2004)
I don't know why
people don't like
this film. That's
all, because I
really don't get that.

The Dark Knight (2009)
Morality never came off
so realistically in so
fantastic a setting.

Munich (2005)
If you want to understand
our world today, you need
to develop an appreciation
for this film.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Today I'll call it a representation
of the American myth itself.

The Truman Show (1998)
My favorite film
from my favorite actor,
mugging as he always does,
because he doesn't realize
he's doing it for
someone else,
the tragicomic of our times.

Star Wars (1977)
Because I still can't
believe that George Lucas
came up with all that
and got away with it
right from the start.

Gladiator (2000)
The strength of man
embodied by a man's man.

Memento (2001)
The quintessential fable
for the games we play
on ourselves.

The Departed (2006)
The way we get organized
is a frightening spectacle.

Office Space (1999)
The way we allow ourselves
to be crushed by work
is even worse.

Notes from a Fan of the Boston Red Sox

Maybe sometimes it's
just the terms we use.

A "nation," say, rather
than a "country."

I know, "cult"
versus "religion."

A matter of perspective.

A nation seems a little
more fluid than a country,
a little less official.

A little more inclusive.

Red Sox Nation.

Loosely translated,
baseball fans who've
gravitated toward
a particular team,
with a certain sense
of themselves.

Used to be, obsessives
looking for that elusive
World Series win.

Well, now we've got
two modern victories,
two titles.

Champions and Nation.

I don't think it really
changes what the fans are
so much as how they
define themselves.

The team is still the same
and so are the fans.

Change happens.

The Red Sox Nation
is defined as much by
its love for Boston
as its antipathy
toward the...Yankees.

Yin and yang.

We consider ourselves
the opposite of New York.

I imagine other
baseball fans don't
see as much a difference,
but that's not really the point.

It's a classic rivalry.

Plenty of players have
put in time on both teams.

Johnny Damon, anyone?

Anyway, the Nation
is a way of life,
made up for a whole season,
but not the only way
these people are defined.

They're guided by good fun
and sportsmanship (by whatever
stripe it turns), a shared
devotion and passion,
but they come and they go
separately, united and alone
at the same time.

Bad things happen,
but there are always
good things to keep hold of,
and there is always,

always

hope.

Any good nation
would be as lucky
to live like that.