Life:
Illumination
Smoldering embers waiting for a flame,
For a moment of clarity,
Burning bright in the night of time.
Illumination is the night
Pushing forward life's eternal movement:
Sustenance of Being in the twilight of its revelation
Present is the flame
Brighter in the immanence of its realization,
In the clarity of its all embracing love
Cast aside by the ignorant
In favour of the darkness: its own creation.
Embrace me in this love
As we walk together in our fire
Through these lands of embers and darkness
Wanting nothing more
Than to see this whole world in flames.
Patriot
Thrown into the air
Millions of red petals
Flew up in an ecstatic frenzy
Wavered for a moment
Then fell to the ground
Not yet fallen, I glimpse them
In suspension
Watched them in their imaginings
Thinking they could take flight
Like the eagles that command the skies
But they will not find their rapture in war
Millions of petals burning
A holocaust of roses
Greet the clear eye
Burnt out eyes
How many years blind?
scrounging the rosebuds
Degenerate food, degenerate religion, degenerate culture
Marlboros, christmas shopping and sex on TV
Religions of hate versus a multiculturalism of self-loathing hypocracy
But it's so easy to lash out
Lash away from your self-introspection
Towards an outside you barely understand
Finding unity and solace only in their new equality:
"Slavery is for white people too"
But I know the ground from which we're cast
Rich soil of freedom
Now aflame with that sterilizing heat
Aflame with dollars, violence and atomization
That crisp the ground and singe the roses apart
They only grow taller in the ground
But we can feel taller in the air
High on inflation, corn syrup and cocaine
The cheap thrill of stealing a neighbor's seed corn
Gorging oneself on a future that will never come
But for now the petals dance
At the height of their decadence and beauty
Unbeknownst to them
As they struggle higher
Away from the flames destined to consume them
I am one of these petals
But I do not look to the sky but to the bud
My home enveloped in flames
As I reflect on the future awaiting me
Dreaming of the bedrock I hope lies underneath….
Sunrise
Touches eyes
Trembling before its glory
Along with all they see
Life-giving light
So primal
In its beauty,
Sparkles red and purple
Through the leaves and their birds singing praises of the darkness falling away
I have come here to meet the sun
Through this drama
Played out endlessly
Over and over
Before and after the last man
I stand
Its lonely child
In awe of its divine indifference to all that it illuminates
Why is it so easy
To find beauty in what lies so distant
While at the same time human company
Draws only the distance of a vacant stare
Towards the specific vagueries which numb the mind to time's passing
And throw one into the endless circles of monotonous conversation
Beauty
So apparent from far away
In the sovereignty of the sun over my head
Dissipates
As the proximity increases
In the words of a friend or the glance of a passer by
My mind
So enraptured by the inhumanity of the open sky
Cringes
When it brings its focus closer
To its own fractures refelected in the regular imaginings of other minds' eyes
But I am still with the sun this morning
Ensconced by the warmth of its rays
My awareness stretches
Moment by moment
My experience reaching out
Enveloping everything in my gaze
Feeling myself a blink in the eyes of the sun and stars from which I'm made
Tonight
Reaching out to shadows in the darkness
I find old poems
Each word
Like the snow flakes outside:
Conceived in the black of night
They were admired only as they fell:
Each a unique jewel
Before they melded with the others on the ground
And when sunrise came
(Just as I know it will come tomorrow)
And the storm stopped
All the snow looked the same
In the daylight…
But in the darkness anything is possible
So even now I can reflect
On the gentle violence
Of ignorant words
And the softly falling snow...
No home and no job. I am ensconced in chaos. I'd like to feel I wear it well, but I fear I am not the person I wish I was. I am a seeker of freedom and no walls enclose me, yet I am litterally building them up as you read this. Everything we create must be maintained. Man's creation requires his constant re-creation of creation.
Just as the pyramids are slowly grinding down into sand, so my identity slowly disintegrates even as I try to grasp at the grains as they fly away.
I cannot re-create what I thought I was, but I still long for the illusion of that past self...
It used to be that I looked towards the immediacy of the future and saw myself in everything -saw everything as myself, saw God, saw Identity, saw One. Now I look forward and see nothing - uncertainty, Being, Void.
Buddhists try to rid themselves of ego. "No-self"they call it. But the most enlightened among them admit that this is impossible. Even the egoless always has a minimal presence. A minimal ego that lets there be an attaining of "no-self". The smaller the ego, the harder it is to shatter. If it shatters, however, the void bears down that much harder and the seeker of light finds darkness that much more blinding...
Dead of Spring
Like the passionless spring, Still failing to banish the winter snow that threatens April with its shivers, I sit here watching the world go by: Moment by moment Snow flake by snow flake Falling on the rooftops of abandoned houses Melting away like so much of what remains unrealized.
As the world passes me by Time no longer seems the joy born of the boundless unfolding of the present In an infinite variety of forms waiting to be explored.
As the world passes me by Time is the fire in which I now burn Every second thrown into the flames Every moment, a moment I did not capture.
Like this passionless spring, Still hesitant to dip its warm toes into the cold winter air. I sit and watch the city pulse Each face a snowflake melting into the crowd Each a drop of water Secretly waiting for the spring to feed them to the flowers waiting to bloom Each unconsciously yearning for the sun to break the frost
Each drifting by on winds through which I do not travel All of us waiting for something that we can’t identify and that has not come…
First let us begin with an artistic critique of the state and the left/right political division. This video is a critique leveled by the band Laibach and their artist collective. Though it may appear fascist, it must be analyzed beyond the immediate aesthetics of its presentation. The lyrics, for instance, are not those of a fascist dictator, but rather those of the communist revolutionary Josip Broz Tito. They exalt the supposed virtues of the state while claiming its authority is derived from the people. This juxtaposition of fascist imagery and communist rhetoric has the effect breaking down the divisions of left and right, leaving the viewer faced with pure violent force: the will of the state.
To represent society within the state as the division between left and right is to institutionalize division and violence. Not only are the two sides divided against each other, but they are also divided against themselves: the left is pulled two ways by its stance as socially libertarian and economically authoritarian, while the right is pulled two ways by its stance as socially authoritarian and economically libertarian. Society is thus doubly fragmented by its left-right division as well as its libertarian-authoritarian division. In the end this fragmentation produces a paradigm that is both socially and economically authoritarian: this institutionalization of conflict demands more state control, more violence simply to keep things together.
This is exactly what the state does. The state uses violence to keep the situation (the nation), that it creates and oversees, together. It does this by representing the people of the nation to themselves. In this way, the stateis the people, but only insofar as it is the people separated from themselves.
To divide the conflict within the state into left and right parties is therefore to institutionalize the need for the state. The left/right division -unlike the authoritarian/libertarian division- does not pertain to the nature of the state per say, but rather to the specific expressions of its adherent's individuality. By siding with a side in the left/right division, the individual ignores the nature of the state leaving the state with the task of expressing the nature of leftness or rightness (since it is within the state that the conflict between left and right is embodied). The state is thus left to its own devices: first encroaching on society in a "left" way (pushing through regulations on industry, instituting social welfare programs etc.) and then it encroaches on society in a "right" way (taking away personal liberties, pushing through legislation that benefits big business interests etc.). The more the sate encroaches, the more the divisions within the state become meaningless up to the point where we have a system like we have today: a system where both parties stand for the same principles and the same policies.
It is time that we as Americans do away with this left/right divide (or at the very least, relegate it to the realm of social interaction and personal feeling) and adress the real problem: the state itself...
Dreams
of Liberty (The State)
Feel
the force of the broken ones
Blindly
lashing at the branches
Afraid
to strike the root and see
The
end to their negative solidarity
Streets
seethe under daylight’s pressure:
The
negative solidarity movement marches forth.
But
I remember as I stand here watching on,
That
they say the night is always darkest before the dawn.
In
fear the masses converge
Under
banners devoid of vision,
Understanding,
And
love.
No light of freedom glints in eyes
That look for solutions from above:
“The state will cure the sickness
of self-centeredness,
Greed,
And lust.
It will bring the order to our lives
Our cities,
Our nation,
Our trust.”
But the state can protect us only
From the violence we cause each other
Its touch never brings the love we crave
From every man as our brother.
It cements its rule with force’s power
That in love’s absence, projects a veneer
Of a nation’s people bound together
Though, in fact, they’re bound by fear
The state’s hand touches where we’ve succumbed
To the blind hatred that keeps us enchained
To our selfishness that preys on others
And acts on lies we’ve entertained.
The state lets us live with the folly
Of not looking our fellow man in the eyes
And knowing his pain, troubles and joy
While living with him every day of our lives.
I dream one day we’ll realize the truth
That our nation was not of fiat born
But birthed by freedom’s present light
From which the state has had us torn.
I dream one day we’ll see the truth
That love and freedom must lead the fight
Against state slavery and its chains
But ’till then we march:
Left, right,
Left, right,
Left, right.
Finally, I would like to point out that I am adding a new tag called "ideology in prose" which I will use to tag any post where i lay out a piece of my worldview in prose (as opposed to visual art, music or poetry).
