The
Human Condition
When
life converges into a point
of meaning,
that is the human
condition;
and when the meaning
has
been absorbed by our life within,
we go
on living until life converges
into
another point of meaning. And
when
we have absorbed enough
meaning
to know the inherent purpose
of our
being, we choose the life we
live
free of the divine imperative
of
the human condition.
Composed
in Georgian Bay, Ontario
Thursday,
June 27, 2024
Hoist By His Own Petard
Those
Goddamn chickens
just
keep coming back to roost;
so why
did they not see it?
Why would
they let the president
of the
United States go on stage
and do
a public debate and make
a
fool of himself with the former
president
of the United States? Or
maybe
they did see it, and very
cleverly
led the president to believe
that
he would get away with it;
but he
didn`t. And hoist by his own
petard,
the party can now replace
him with
a more suitable candidate
for
the election in November.
Composed
in Georgian Bay, Ontario
Friday,
June 28, 2024
Will It Never End?
It’s
so easy to fall into despair— “black-ass,”
the
great suicidal author called it before
blasting
his head off with his favorite shotgun;
all we
have to do is think we’re not “there”
yet,
and everything we still hope for is beyond
our reach,
or we’re too infirm or old to get “there.”
If
it’s not one thing, it’s always another; an endless
crop
of new, and old, very old and tired desires
made
fresh by an incessant longing for more
of
the same; will it never end?
Composed
in Georgian Bay, Ontario
Sunday,
June 16, 2024
Wounded
by Wonder
Restless,
I couldn’t sleep and got out of bed
and
browsed YouTube, not looking for anything
in
particular, when I spotted a 2-part documentary
on Dirk
Bogarde, an actor who had piqued my interest
for years,
not for the roles that he played, which
were
often dark and sinister, but for who Dirk Bogarde
was,
the man who played those roles, like Thomas
Mann’s
Gustav von Aschenbach’s in Luchino Visconti’s
iconic
movie Death in Venice who became erotically
transfixed
by the young Polish boy Tadzio who pierced
Aschenbach’s
heart with such wonder that it wounded
him immortally;
and then, for reasons known only to
the
gods of literature, I landed upon an old interview
with
“the world’s most eminent literary critic,” Yale
professor
emeritus Harold Bloom, who, asked by Paul
Holdengraber,
“What do you mean when you say
‘immortal
wound’?” after professor Bloom had revealed
that
Walt Witman’s poem “The Sleepers” had given
him
an immortal wound, Bloom replied—oh wonder
of
wonders!
— “Well, if a poem pierces you enough
in heart
and intellect so that you never really get over it,
it
qualifies as an immortal wound. Shakespear, or rather,
his
Hamlet, speaks of wonder-wounded hearers; and, you
know,
any poet who wounds you by wonder has given
you,
probably, an immortal wound,” as young Tadzio
had immortally
wounded Aschenbach in the great Italian
director’s
Death in Venice, and only by the illuminating
grace
of coincidence did it become clear to me that Gustov
von Aschenbach’s
death in Venice, as the beautiful Polish
boy played
in the water, was the tragic death of Aschenbach’s
ego self
that was trapped in the transient now of his mortal
body;
and, in wonder, I composed my poem for posterity’s
sake,
and then went back to bed.
Composed
in Georgian Bay, Ontario
Saturday,
June 15, 2024
Clever
People
There’s
a personality type
that
I have never liked,
but I
never knew why.
Something
about them
always
made my skin crawl;
but no
one else saw it.
Was
it me? Did I see what
wasn’t
there? But how could
I
deny what I felt?
Year
after year, I studied
their
behavior, and one thing
became
clear to me:
How
clever they were. No
matter
what they did, they
always
succeeded.
Natural
intelligence? Yes.
Hard
work? Definitely. So why
did they
get under my skin?
Year
after year, I experienced
their
behavior, and I finally saw
that
they were takers, not givers.
That’s
why I have never liked
clever
people; they’re the wrong
half
of the equation.
Composed
in Georgian Bay, Ontario
Monday,
June 10, 2024
The Big Question
Our
modern-day truth seeker
looks
online for a quick answer
to
the big question of our life—
what
happens to us when we die?
But
AI cannot provide an answer
to the
divine mystery of life, only
more
data on the expanding body
of inert
knowledge that grows
exponentially
with every new
algorithm;
and not until they get
down
and dirty in the trenches
of
daily living, shouldering the
responsibility
for every decision,
will
today’s seeker be made ready
by
life to receive the answer to what
happens
when we die and cross
over
to the Other Side.
Composed
in Georgian Bay, Ontario
Saturday,
April 11, 2024
By
the Grace of God
I
used to think it was inconsolably bleak,
a
desperate situation with no exit whatsoever,
a
way out of our never-ending recurrence
condemned
by our own blind volition;
but
one day, thanks to divine synchronicity,
I
connected the dots of two acausal events
reading
the weekend paper and opened a new
vista
of understanding the unresolvable nature
of our
paradoxical life, the being and non-being
of
who we are and who we are not, and I saw
that
we become whole and complete living
from
one life to the next growing in the natural
enantiodromiac
dynamic of becoming our true self
as
we freely serve life with loving kindness
until
we have grown large enough to pass
through
the narrow gate of joyful reconciliation
with
our merciful Creator.
Composed
in Georgian Bay, Ontario
Sunday,
May 19, 2024
