Zombie or vampire?

 

 

Lostness   (98)

 

 

People often resent what they’re forced to do
so why should the poor love work?

 

Some call on social transformation
yet revolutions rarely
end oppression: merely change oppressors.

Now globalists prefer consumers rootless
differences defanged
as just diverse.
Nothing prompting dying for
or fighting.
Culture in vast fashion statements
varied clothes plus wide food choice.

Once traditions have been undercut
those mourning them may get disdained.

Perhaps reports
on communism’s death
were slightly overdone
since it also served by propping up
our bloated capital?

Old antagonists continue
toxic codependency: where
thesis and antithesis promote
stasis before synthesis.

Still certain rebels find their
opposition shuns contentment.
Dissidence becomes life’s purpose
intolerant at long set ways
and furious for progress.

 

Violence forms a spectacle
while serenity does not.
Hence millions scan the broadcast news
or enjoy combat games.

 

Recently my onscreen view showed
rioters busy looting shops
they dragged away new psychic bonds
as extra TV sets.

Clutching shiny product’s flesh with
addict’s raging neediness.

(Resembling films:
when zombies rush
in mobs
like savage proles
compared to smarter vampire
aristocrats.)

 

Then noticing
alone
among the glass-strewn streets:

a single bookstore
stayed untouched

and only there
might one feel
tempted…

(wisdom’s value transcends cash)

…but

though
peace of mind
could be worth stealing

I doubt
it would
result

from
theft.

 

 

 

(2011)

 

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Comments are very welcome!

My views remain small and it’s always nice to hear from readers.

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Woven shame

 

 

 

Lostness   (97)

 

 

How to love yourself?
Begin to feel worthy.

How to feel worthy?
Begin to love yourself.

 

I never fully opened up that loop…

But also knew
opinions
hid assumptions
ripe for questioning.
While firm views preferred no
undermining queries
over truth.

 

I mused:
computers, given will,
could be as hard to command
as cats?

Might gods escape all explanations
rather than supply them?

 

Did reason set the model wrong:
if few broke laws expecting Court
when impulse
undeterred by caution
raced along a reckless course?

 

However tough existence gets
some still affirm
so faith persists.

Though those like me found
any hunger
to believe
exceeded our capacity.

 

With modern comforts
misery sees less excuse
but stress churns on
in inner states of
spirit’s house arrest:

Where loneliness joins
dreading death and guilt
before my ancestors
(who preserved
their family line).

Unable to regain good health
or vital masculinity
the body I seem trapped inside
caged deeply woven shame.

 

Tired at pain, I turn
then gaze
toward that
black-framed pool
of silvered glass

As, once again,
this mirror
holds me captive…

Compelled yet
not attracted
by

the face

reflecting
there.

 

 

 

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(2011)

 

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Comments are very welcome!

My audience remains quite small, and it’s always nice to hear from readers.

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Chance wisdom

 

 

 

Lostness   (96)

 

 

Answers may seem diminished
by a taint
of retrospective obviousness.

What I need are fewer facts
yet greater power
to mould emotions
round the known:

a self controlling
my own moods.

Not faking superficial coolness

(useful once
for youth’s bold pose)

to cover ego’s hidden wanting
many people’s fond esteem
as fame
that honours
things achieved.

 

I look across our profit culture
loudly advertising greeds
where vice takes
alibis from virtue
with signs of bright seduction
feigning love.

While speed displaces patience
losing respect for old age
progress breeds swift irritation
at those deemed standing
in its way.

 

Some rushing flees
a darker side
from boredom’s emptiness.

Or noticing
sad memory binds us

(like cold chains
of tight regrets)

through
time’s dimension
shaped by loss.

 

These feelings
active
drove my seeking
after
chance wisdom
in libraries.

(Though my quest
with this topic
soon flopped.)

 

I’ve seen books
on techniques
to remember.

 

But can’t find
one

on how
to forget.

 

 

 

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(2010)

 

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Comments are very welcome!
My audience is quite small and things get really quiet on here most days, so it’s always nice to hear from people.

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I wish everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR!)

 

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Hyperhope

 

Lostness   (95)

 

 

We can try to heal our psychic wounds
magically: by love.

Though it may end badly…

 

External noise distracts me from my thought
so looking down the street
I see a drunk who’s veering toward strangers
demanding their response.

Delusive faith in popularity might
sense a peak while
near an actual trough.

Caricatured sociability repels
contacts made
intended to attract.

 

This amoral machine: the city
generates excess.
Surplus humans, countless objects.

Now I also class myself
among unneeded ones.

The lost.

 

Life and suffering.
Buddha was right to link them.

But if his methods do not work for us
at transforming pain
once such practice stalls
there dawns that fear of
sinking through despair.

 

Picking up my pen I wrote:

Nihilism from the intellect
atrophy of will.

Illness ruins everything.

And yet…

Beyond eccentric hyperhope
on virtual cyber-heaven

Or biology’s hormonal drugs
where passion’s lust has cured distaste
in other bodies

Perhaps
after all
a point is reached
when

with our actions
or our words

We shall still
enjoy
to fight against

an indifferent
world

 

and fail.

 

 

 

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(2010)

 

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Comments are very welcome!

It’s so nice to hear if someone finds a post worthwhile.

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Worshipping beauty

 

 

 

 

 

Lostness   (94)

 

 

Art worships the injustice of beauty.

 

In my case, from afar.

Since any work was summoned forth
through ugliness
which I’ve been forced
lifelong
to endure.

Where much creating
could not faintly compensate
on lacking nature’s charms.

Stuck feeling like some freak
who wears a masking shame
I’d rather hide from
what is loved.

 

Genes have no concept of fairness.
That’s more a cry for those
condemned by disadvantages.

Such I craved to overcome:

escaping my unwanted self
in fantasy utopias

(envisioned glinting their
transcendency
while drifting toward sleep).

 

When young I found
a woman’s spell
also intimidates
revealing an unfitness
thus
fearing my unworthiness
had proved it true.

Inexperience was weakening
subverting brief romance.

Then muscled hunks soon
brushed aside a poet.

 

 

Seeing now
but decades late a
pattern made:
her gaze transfixing
sensing insecurity
once doubt’s erosion showed
before two stark incisive eyes.

The stronger an attraction was
the deeper my unease.

 

 

And so repeated
disappointments
chilled
this wasted heart

which beat
lone time

across these
empty years.

 

 

 

 

(2010)

 

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My audience is quite small, and I love to hear if anyone finds a post worthwhile.
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Kinder conquest

 

 

 

 

Lostness   (93)

 

 

While hate, in others, looks extreme
we often see good reason for our own.

 

Vice is too rewarding
to be entirely left behind.

Hence anger could well clasp offence
as focus of an inner stress.

Scant evidence which vindicates
can bring a short relief.

 

Yet, should want
plus sensed entitlement
become deserving rights
these soon inflame
at nagging faults
with sad reality.

Heaping more frustrations over
still fermenting rage.

 

Suffering need not make us nicer.
Victims might grow merciless in
victory, when pride demands
great recompense.

 

Once armed
a doctrine gains
self-serving force.
Where bias blinds
less crimes seem unforgivable
if targeting
correct disfavoured groups.

Vengeful movements used to work
at hiding guilty secrets
newer versions, missing shame
show pictures
post event.

 

After harmful acting out
an understanding may be sought
and so one hears excuses sound
in softer hearts
like codependent abusees
appease bad-tempered bullying
holding back from bolder speech
they tiptoe round to keep
a peace that rarely lasts
for long.

 

Later
conflict starts again.

Best maintain patience, anyway

just hoping, somehow
kindness, caring,
empathy

will spread worldwide

and conquer all.

 

Admittedly
it’s hard to find

an empire won
by love.

 

 

 

 

(2010)

 

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(Am very ill and low at present: finding it hard to keep this going.
Viral attack is further impeding concentration. Hope my writing makes sense?
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Resumed voyaging

 

 

 

Lostness   (92)

 

 

 

For almost three years I couldn’t write a line.

Life in chaos
mind submerged
by darkness
agitation, stress, anxieties.

Forced from home a second time.

 

But two months after moving out
I opened my old notebook at an empty page
and put down 2010’s first entry…

 

“Imagining others are as incapable of faith as oneself.
A nihilistic hubris?”

 

 

Then came:

“Apocalyptic fantasy: nourishing resentful spirits.
Solipsists who’d take whole worlds along
on last goodbyes.
Oblivion universalised.”

 

 

Too unwell for upbeat, still
the next part read:

“Certain states rely upon denial;
of incompatibilities, suppressed hostilities,
psychic energies: sublimated or expressed,
attracting and repelling, asymmetric animus
from sides most triggered, nursing ardent hatreds
in the name of love.

So sexed-up cultures may offend
traditions wedded to austerity,
with tolerance seeming weaker
when neutrality proves impotent
against fiercer cries.

Though even optimism,
grown dogmatic,
might repress us
alleging our own good.

While those lacking ideology, perhaps
retreat through irony, plus sneers.

 

Truth has a tendency
to arrive too late.”

 

 

Such thoughts were hardly pleasant
and remained unshared.

Yet at least my pen had
resumed
voyaging

by leaving marks
which traced ideas

across
this fresh

white space.

 

 

 

 

(2010)

 

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It gets so quiet on my site, with such a tiny audience.

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Struck by deja poo

 

 

 

Lostness   (90)

 

 

 

My body jumps as a mailshot lands
quite loudly on the hallway floor

“Giving you what you want!’

Proclaims its headline.

The leaflet shows alcohol plus discount meats
not health and friends or inner peace.

A non-drinking vegetarian: I was unimpressed
at bold assumption’s impudence.

This occurred while sat upon the lavatory
struck by deja poo

sudden feelings I’d already been before.

 

Concentration scattered
I returned to the main room
there my notebook still lay open
and a recent entry asked:

“Sensing their power over us, might we expect
latent unconscious resentment
against our beloved?”

 

(Posed hypothetically.
Since I endure life within a love-free zone.)

 

 

---

 

 

Continuing, I read three more…

 

“Those peeved at the insults of judgement
may prefer other people unraised.”

 

“Reducing unhappiness seems more viable
than pressured positivity.”

 

“If what we are results from what we’ve been,
why exactly were we that?
Is identity dependant on ungrasped knowledge
of the past?”

 

 

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Being prey to disconnected thoughts
written down for respite
leading nowhere

I mutter “Cogito ergo bum”
in vague frustration

hungry now
so heading kitchenward

avoiding all involvement with the mirror:

that getting drawn
by visual faults too
clearly sighted
from
a critic’s eye.

 

Because my face
remained one problem

mind alone had
always
failed

to solve.

 

 

 

 

(2007)

 

 

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( anxiety / art / beauty / depression / drawing / life / lostness/ love / mental health / philosophy / poetry / thoughts / writing )

 

“Before you die!”

 

 

Lostness   (89)

 

 

That passion to be known
which rages in obscurity

among those craving fame
while long oppressed
by wounding insignificance.

 

Once people felt constraint
from often being seen.

Now cities spread a stressful
anonymity
where visual culture gives
non-appearance taints of
nothingness.

 

Should we embrace our humble fate
not take demanding ego’s prompt at
vainly chasing special praise?

 

Though some lone individuals
lacking faith in what’s beyond
think dying ends their only world.

An apocalypse for one.

 

 

Religion’s wake spawns techie dreams
transcending weak humanity
envisioning uploaded minds.

So hoping vaster data’s grace
permits becoming animate as
ghosts in new machines.

Yet aspirations to spectrality derive
from basic dread of
darkness, fathomless.

 

Older souls might here bemoan the
rotten luck at getting born, perhaps,
in final generations facing
total voids
outside much chance
for virtual
immortality.

 

 

Then I read these (numbered):

“…things to do before you die!”

A current media cliche
tempting us to overrate experience.

As if death’s dire severity were
offset with a well-ticked list
and items added on could
compensate our missing
an eternity or
memories from
what we did.

But instead
my brain
stayed haunted
by

the monster

of extinction.

 

 

 

(2006)

 

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(anxiety / art / beauty / culture / death / depression / drawing / lostness / mental health / philosophy / poem / poetry / thoughts )

 

 

 

 

Quiet force

 

 

 

Lostness   (88)

 

 

Beliefs are like a gravity
which shapes our thinking space.

 

Once taught a thing was moral
one felt better doing it.

So is habit truly ethical
or good taste just preferred bias?

 

Suppose ideas could rank along
a gradient of credulity
according to extreme content
and how much theory each require.

Atheists should have few demands
for doctrine
taking lives to be as
mundane as they seem.

 

While an attribution spiral
might account for certain myths
where nature’s motions
given agency
were reified with spirit.

 

Later, lauding openness
hints at virtue
in naivety.

Suggestions all
“create their own reality”: perhaps abused
by those who seek
to dull the pain
compassion spikes
observing others suffering.

Dismissal shields a
greater guilt

(hence some
scorning “love’s illusion”
on exclusion from such realms).

 

Truths abandoned
soon clear ways for
more self-serving
types of faith.

Though still our
charitable lies
maintain the gift
to blunt a crueller
honesty.

 

 

But

these thoughts got interrupted

as a slight
yet fragrant breeze
through my open window
blew
new smells
resembling freshly laundered
air.

 

 

And thus I caught
its first faint sign

 

that quiet force

 

of spring.

 

 

 

(2006)

 

 

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