Overcast
white sun,
color-drained bay,
overcast cerement,
ribs of shade,
and the seagulls toss,
gone bits of stars
caught in old breath.
foam
flees a chant of waves,
sand the skin
of all that’s shed,
our lives
brief winks
in the play of the ocean,
raindrops like sex,
and the treasures we crave,
day in and out,
scuttle shiny as crabs
over black rocks.
philosphers are oars,
boats skulls,
buddha one fisherman,
jesus another,
and witches three.
======================
6/15/25 ... mods
Evil has a heavy cost. I don't mean people are evil, not unless they are soulless leaders, whose whole life revolves around crushing everyone and everything into capital to serve their devourous ego. I mean people get caught up in movements that are based on hate, fear and division, a trap of deceit requiring the acceptance of vast, vast lies, the sort of Big Lie that Hilter refers to in Mein Kampf.
We won't survive another wave of fascism. Or Stalinism. Both Hitler and Stalin committed genocide, killing millions of people. World War 2 saw nuclear weapons dropped. The country that dropped them, the USA, is now supplying Israel with weapons -- weapons being used to wage war to inflame the world, moving from Gaza to Lebanon and now into Iran. Israel is also using US weapons for ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza.
The evils of WWII are back. And the threat of WWIII. But too many people have been pulled into a spiraling orbit around a black hole of fear sold by demagogues. There is a way out of the pull, but I doubt we will find it. Which makes our descent all the more tragic.
The answer is simple, but the solution is impossible.
Light has come into the world, but the people preferred darkness, for their deeds were evil (John 3:19)
(The Bible is a great source book of wisdom, even when one is not Christian)
=======
Candleflame Candenza
blush and mango
into a griffin
and then azaleas,
a twist through boundless
gleams of zest,
pantomines of swoon
and lust speaking in tongues,
an inferno of gallops
riding a froth of constant birth.
what is this unleashed codex
which devours itself to fly?
what is this truth
of raved sermons from mad birds,
flutterous of rush
and fluent of vortex?
the leaps of this candle
embody a phoenix
which scrawls with its own suicidal quills
to birth cantos
immune to the paralysis of the clock--
phrases which loose a trample of fugues,
breadcrumbs of an ancestry of animal tracks,
feverish from a fusillade of quests.
what is this swordplay-like needlework
which stitches wounds
only to heal and rescue everything sensual?
what is this …
this…
this candle, this haven,
more than light,
rising up toward heaven
despite a sky of trapped iron;
for it has resurrected
the crumbling ash of death,
grown to dispel its stubborn seal,
ephemeral of aerial rush,
an echo of the first spark.
==================================
6/12 ... changed a word
6/11 ... mods
6/10 ... mods after posting
Glitch
a Tower of Babel rose
in shunts and loops,
squinched as it was,
noodle-tight in the dormitory
of a certain human brain and
its architectures
tended to refer to ‘voices’which,
if not outrightly stating,
suggested strongly that they--
whatever they were--
seemed stable enough,
representatives of the Id or the I or
the ego or whatever,
and yet still,
as they put it,
‘it all supervened on a wasp nest
of wrangling centers,’
a ‘cook’s-broth of impressarios’
in which no rational arbiter
swam, sank or floated in adjudication.
it followed, therefore,
so they explained,
that no one ‘in here,’
which is to say, the Tower,
thought things through wisely,
or blessed whatever action the ‘shells’
(another term they liked besides ‘voices’)
eventually decided to take.
in light of all this, this glitch
in the flow of my consciousness,
i concluded there were these, what were, in
effect,
byzantine labyrinthine machinations
going on in my head.
moreover and most critical,
their sly dance was the prestige of the trick--
that mysterious magic which
the doctors referred to as “self-determination.”
in the end
the doctors and legals
and philosophicals
who pranced in intellectual gaggles,
while deigning to scratch
the flat of the black square on top of their heads,
they said
that the voices and shells and ‘salads’ of the
Babble
were radically alert and fully functional--
a situation sure and eager, so they diagnosed,
to dangerously contrive.
=============
6/5/25 .. fixed typos
"Us vs World Revisited" by Daniel Carden Nemo
As as ethics instructor, I am always looking for powerful arguments to challenge my students (and myself). Often the best arguments come in the form of questions. These lead to a dialectic that plays out in the iniquisitive mind.
I found an essay that contains a monsoon of ethical questions, all fruitful and conducive to a journey of ramifying insights. The essay is "Us vs World Revisited" by Daniel Carden Nemo, who is Editor-in-Chief of the Amsterdam Review:
https://www.amsterdamreview.org/world-revisited.html
The essay concerns our treatment of animals, which even today, in times of environmental crisis, is a largely unacknowledged atrocity. Our collective consciousness has advanced in many ways, say, in the last five hundred years, but the animals we exploit, torment, torture, displace and kill, directly or indirectly, in our selfish pursuits, remain halpless, unseen victims.
Even our acknowledgement of animal rights is fairly new on a cultural scale. Concerning human rights, we've made some important progress, battling it out with the forces of ignorance for hundreds or thousands of years. We've made slavery illegal and culturally abhorrent. Women can vote. Gay marriage is legal (in the USA, even, for now ...).
Just a few hundred years ago, slavery was debated. Chained, naked humans were paraded down public streets for auction. Brilliant progress has beeen made; but there is still a long way to go. Slavery still exists, albeit illegal. Misogyny is an ongoing problem and threat. The caste systems in India and the USA remain two monumental blights (Isabel Wilkerson, Caste).
But--as "Us vs World Revisited" brings out, if you read the keen questions in Nemo's essay--our continuing struggle with human rights is not a valid excuse to ignore the plight of animals. Indeed, it is all interconnected.
Nemo's essay, both incisive and eloquent, made me look at my own personal responsibility, and personal responsibility in general. I want to elaborate some on these issues.
Thomas Jefferson, a slave-owner, wrote "I fear for my country when I reflect that God is just." Jefferson knew that owning slaves was wrong. But he did it anyway. He took a Black slave as a sexual partner, starting when she was only 14 years old, which is rape for the age alone, even if he didn't use threat or coercion--then again, if one is enslaved, one is in a continuous state of coercion. The first President of the USA, George Washington, had dentures that were made of teeth pulled from Black slaves. We are grappling with this now in the USA (or, maybe I should say, attempting to grapple..). Similar issues concerning historically great figures occur in every geopolitical place.
We also have to look at our own hypocritical behavior--and grapple with it. I myself, full disclosure, was a vegetarian for over twenty years (after my first realization of the horror of our treatment of animals, in my mid-twenties). But, living in a small rural community, where options are quite limited--and being finanically challenged--and surrounded by others who are carnivores, I have slipped back to where I will eat meat, now and then, in social settings. I buy sausage a few times a year. There are also some health issues I have, which limit my diet choices. And yet ...
I have no good excuse. Even so, I want to say to all those persons--who are like me--that we can still be voices for what is right and--we can still perform good acts. Flawed though we are--and we should keep working on it--we are still in a position to promote the good. And we should. Human beings, in general, are flawed creatures, but we can't let our guilt and failures shut down our attempts to improve ourselves and the world.
Although it is probably disgusting to many advocates of animal rights to hear this, I will say, to people like me: if you cut back, at least, on your meat-eating, it is something good. It does not not absolve our continued participation. Future generations will be right to mock and damn us. Still, the world is a grey place, with many complex, ethical tangles--and no one is going to be perfect.
'No one is perfect' is often used as an excuse to do nothing. And I want to emphasize: that's not what I am doing here. I am wrestling with the question of personal responsibility, and finding myself wanting, as I think many people will. I think many of us, as I did for many years, grapple with being shut down from crippling guilt and outright even suicidal self-hatred.
I've written on this blog that human beings are very much like vampires and werewolves, the monsters we fascinate on in entertainment. We are born into a brutal world, where we have to devour life to survive. A world where fear of various kinds of pain can easily override reason and ethics. Again, though, we've made progress. Somehow we have stumbled across a span of thousands of years to discover a type of government called 'democracy,' which is far better than fascism and rulership by godkings.
All of us can make progress as individuals, though often, as in my case, dealing with my own issues, it is a brutal journey. And we should be proud of our courage to face our issues, and to find a candle in the dark, even if we stumble still. When I say "issues" I mean everything, such as the child abuse I suffered, for that is that is needed for honesty and to 'Know Thyself' and work toward compassion, including a look in the mirror.
Again, it's a brutal world, though if we are privileged, we can unfortunately hide from it. We buy products in stores, everything--food, clothes, electronics, and so on--and are no doubt sometimes, or often, supporting horrific conditions and practices tucked away in 'undeveloped' countries.' Coca-Cola, for instance, has been linked to slave-like and terrified conditions for women and children in India:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000009363281/sugar-industry-exploitation-of-women.html
In a way, Christianity is right, we are all 'sinners.' But-- importantly--and to repeat myself--we can do good acts, nevertheless. And we should. And it feels right to do them.
It is okay to feel good, sometimes, even as a monster, if actions merit.
For emphasis: The ethical complexity, even ambiguity, of the world is not an excuse to do nothing.
Furthermore, those of us that take the painful journey of truth, looking at ourselves critically, are doing something courageous. It is even more courageous if we manage to change in the right direction and do good acts, helping others in the right direction as well.
Back to animals and their plight. Animals deserve far better from us. One of my favorite questions in Nemo's essay is:
Did you know ethical progress often means reexamining cultural habits? Traditions shape behavior but they can evolve.
This question is at the heart of the book I am myself writing about how humanity can move our ethos forward. Culture can evolve. We have the mental and cultural plasticity to do it. But we have to get out of what I call the 'ignorance vortex':
https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/05/draft-intro-of-my-book-better-angels.html
For thousands of years, the ignorance vortex has trapped us, which has included cycles of war and ceaseless macho patriarchy. But, to end with some hope, we've made progress, an incredible amount, just in my lifetime. When I was in my twenties (1980s), there was no such thing as 'cage free' eggs or other animal-empathic products. Progress has occurred. And, on an historical scale, going back to the beginnings of civilization, ten thousand years ago, the pace in our time has been accelerative and swift.
Let's hope we keep moving forward, out of the ignorance vortex, and don't get pulled back. If we do go back, succumb to atavism, we will meet our doom on the perverse road we take to avoid it, a fate instigated by what godkings have always brought us: war.
"In the nuclear age, the real enemy is war itself"--Denzel Washington, Crimson Tide
This is a pivotal time. We can't afford the godkings, and all the ignorance and cruelty they require, anymore. Godkings will bring not just what they always have--cruelty, savagery, oppression and suffering--but the end of civilization itself.
Cynics often bring up 'human nature.' If 'human nature' made war inevitable, then, by definition, nothing could be done. It's circular reasoning.
But human nature does not limit us. The evidence that we can improve already exists. The fact that women have the right to vote--that alone--shows a massive flexibility in our culture--based on reason and goodness and light. For millennia women's voices were silenced, let alone given equal standing in political decisions. But we changed. Culture changed after thousands of years of being stuck.
The cynical argument that human nature damns us is a pathetic, miserable canard.
We can do it, move foward. We can all be part of the movement toward the Good, even though we are, each of us, flawed. In this time, 20-21st century, forward movement has taken place faster than ever before.
It is, in a way, a race to the finish line of what our future will be, light or dark.
========================
6/13/25 ... mods
Impossible
verging on the essence
of whatever it was i was not expecting,
there came no abyss or light,
no consequence,
only apprehension.
behind lay billions
of permutations of the familiar
and countless attempts to dance.
it had been a creative, callous, brutal maze,
one whose keys, sharp yet hazy,
continued to tantalize and hide,
all of it orchestrated, this existence,
by death, birth, pleasure, pain
and much later
these extreme offspring
of my most expressive thoughts.
maybe i was now able to face
what i was
far better than before,
beyond the prisons and heavens,
these lenses,
of this world, this cosmos,
no matter the joy and despair
of imagination.
and so i waited,
until, suddenly, just then,
i realized it was impossible to wait.
=============================
6/16/25 ... "maze" replaces "frame"
Amorality, Immorality and Evil
In terms of the abrogation of human rights, immorality and
amorality are both forms of evil. It is sometimes
thought that amorality--a lack of preference for a certain direction, ‘going
with the tide of power’--is neutral, not evil.
But, say, if a government legalizes slavery, it doesn’t matter whether
it is done strictly for power purposes or not.
Slavery is such a grossly evil condition that the choice to inflict
it damns the inflictor, regardless of motive.
Consider an immoral government, one that is virulently racist. Such rulership sees the world through a vizor of ignorance,
hatred and fear, decreeing in rank demagoguery that a certain group is inferior
and deserves slavery. Now, someone might
argue that such an immoral approach is more evil than a so-called netural government, one which does not believe a certain group
of people is innately inferior and yet which legalizes slavery anyway, for some
ruthless, machiavellian purpose.
However, in both cases, immoral and amoral, an atrocity is committed, condoned,
and enforced. In the immoral government,
the horrific crime is steeped in blind, vicious prejudice. In the amoral government, there is a cold,
callous calculation to enslave because it maximizes power. In both cases, there is unspeakable cruelty of
the most disgusting, unconscionable kind.
A distinction is often made between ‘neutral’
and 'evil.' This distinction collapses when the supposedly
neutral approach shatters human rights and inflicts utter misery, cruelty and condemnation.
Similarly, politicians will often say that they are not prejudice
themselves, but have to go along with prejudice policies for expediency. In the past, in antebellum times, this concerned
the legislation of slavery. Politicians claimed
they ‘had to’ endorse slavery, even though they themselves found it 'distasteful.'
Now, such people are just as evil in action as those with warped, broken minds who believe slavery to be
righteous. In both cases, there is unspeakable cruelty of the most disgusting, unconscionable kind.
I don’t have time to shift this discussion to focus on the ubiquitous racism that infects the United States
today. But what I said above about
slavery applies to those who would advance racism. Racism is a scourge, a great evil. The tactic today in the USA is to deny one is
racist while, at the same time, advancing a fully racist agenda. To praise a naked emperor's fancy clothes--to gaslight--has
always been a brutal political tool. It says 'I get to shape the narrative and reality' even though truth, fairness and justice say I am wrong.'
Whatever justification someone might give for promoting racist policies--such as denying that they are racist, or claiming they ‘have to’ go along, or outrightly saying a group is inferior--it all falls into the category of evil. The effects are the same, the infliction of an abominable scourge.
Claiming you are ‘neutral’ or ‘pragmatic’ does
not lessen your culpability when it comes to fundamental rights and freedoms. You are just as guilty, just as cruel and
heartless, just as vicious, as the outright racist.
===================
Seagull
i dig at my temples
to staunch the rooty pain,
quell its underworld
of urgent blue rills.
my clawful fingers meet the clear truth:
life is only bone,
a sugarcoated teapot
roiled by spat and fuss.
this skull of mine.
this sad/angry/blithe tilt-a-whirl
fickle with fancy
and numb pleasures.
this mountain range
cursed by the tectonics
of a single scrunched
thundering forehead.
i wander somehow
without method
until the wind lashes my ears
to rebuke the flesh.
high above,
a lone wingspan sheers to rise,
nimble across a sky of pulpits
gloomed by dark.
not an angel,
still the gull rides meek,
a genuflection of grace
among so many liturgies
proclaimed and shattered.
==========================
Commute
hulk of beetle and bee,
muscular of wheel
on a cooktop of tar,
cushy of yolk
under the hard zoom,
numbed, caged embryo
hostage to the machine,
engine louder than heart,
piston over rib.
which steers which?
where goes the grumble-rumble
of the dual flesh-iron beast?
where, year after year,
pylon after pylon,
post, road, sign and cross?
who carries who?
will it ever hatch,
this hearse-corpse-pallbearer ride?
==================================
Journey of Mist
shrouded
by the unseen pulse of the sun,
i could feel rather than see
swirls of skirts of half-seen dancers
merged below dashes of breath.
when they kissed
their mouths swelled to become orchids,
throats bared above milky thighs.
i wept into an angel’s hug,
wiped my tears on the melting wings.
the mist slickened to tremble.
it had soothed me, pleased me, carried me,
sleek as a siesta of invisible wine,
while it played oasis, confidante,
and stage.
‘why should you want more,’ it said,
‘this is the best of times.’
but morning
was already chasing such thoughtfulness off,
harsh with hungry purpose,
fierce to ride such brazen glints.
===============================
5/28/25 .. changed two words
5/25/25 ... lots of eds
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