I Split Myself in Two

Posted on May 26, 2012 by contemplativemoorings

Hello, readers!

I have decided to begin a second blog here on WordPress called The Box Ajar. Contemplative Moorings shall remain my posting space for poetry, but I have wanted to do more prose writing and determined it better to have a separate space for those compositions. It seems that poetry and prose have radically different audiences in the blogosphere and I prefer to try to cultivate them uniquely. I don’t expect much crossover appeal, but for those of you who wish to partake in both blogs, follow the link below:

The Box Ajar on WordPress

And as always, thank you for reading

The Rare Illumination

Posted on May 25, 2012 by contemplativemoorings

Lights, parallel to something–
A roadway perhaps,
Nothing the dark cannot hide.

No, along comes an outline,
Drifts drifts drifts through the passage.
Time, the most miraculous emotion,
Watches over it.

The only shapes in the nighttime
Are fear and wonder.
I am terrified of what nears me and
What I may become.

Every curve of starlight,
Every rectangular moment unmoved,
New ideas of who we are emerge.

Lights, never wavering–
The only detail that need not be believed.

On Art

Posted on May 1, 2012 by contemplativemoorings

Art is a kind of innocence,
An experience without desire, for the elegance
of compostion; enigmatic enjoyment; precious
hidden and not hunted woodlands . . .

Over there. Logic. All around.
Purposeful fulfillment in its absurdity, tall,
ancient, a diamond of needles, a quiet
herder of undergrowth–vines . . .

Words manipulate, provoke, control, elaborate
on futiliy, insanity, rage; even silence;
I hear now, in the distance . . .

Let the birdsong spiral out of control,
reverberate across the ends, the means,
the terrors and last lamented gates we all
must someday pass through . . .
For the soul, expression.
To no end but
expression.

Anatomy of a Newspaper

Posted on April 21, 2012 by contemplativemoorings

Front Page
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people die on the front pages of newspapers, most of them above the fold. Newspapers rank third in worldwide deaths trailing only television news broadcasts and the internet. In addition, public anxiety about deaths in newspapers is at an all time high and potential solutions to this endemic are being hotly debated. Many advocates have spoken up on the issue offering ideas from censorship to the end of literacy, but they have understandably gained little traction. A bill introduced in the United States Senate even proposed disbanding the alphabet. Predictably, it went nowhere.

Little hope for an acceptable solution seems evident, though many smaller steps can be taken to minimize one’s risk of a newspaper-related death. “One obvious precaution is to stay away from newsstands,” related Dr. Eric von Onadon, a media psychologist from Prestigious University, “Also, if you come face-to-face with someone delivering newspapers, back away from them slowly and try not to make eye contact. As for children, whatever else you do, do not let them enter journalism school.”

“Oh,” he added, “and definitely don’t let your children play with the economy.”

Business Page
Today in trading, the [incomprehensible] was [jargon] in the [geekspeak] until later that day when [scat of abbreviations and nonsense]. Financial experts now predict [conjecture of dubious logical and mathematical accuracy] as soon as [expletive deleted] however [bibbity bibbity] lead to a loss of [something or other].

Chart Plus Minus Over Under Huh Dunno Money
GPLTD 1.60 3.300 2635 18.37 2?3 6e+22 $1.00
COOCO 3.74 7.563 1829 13.44 3!7 5e-16 $1.01
BOOYA 2.45 8.690 3481 23.67 5&0 3e+11 $1.03
WFLBT 7.01 2.368 8234 19.25 6^3 9e-81 $1.07
HOGFT 5.05 4.062 4391 12.64 1&1 12e-2 $1.11
SHHHH 0.99 9.909 9099 99.90 9’9 9e+99 $0.99

Local & International News
Aren’t people in your particular geographical area quite eccentric? Don’t the people in other regions of this vast globe behave in ways that are utterly incomprehensible? Aren’t human beings a puzzle? What does culture mean anyway?

Do not fret the answers, sir or ma’am! Revel in their strangeness yet do not mock! Whose fortune it was to not be you is surely foreign, as foreign as fortune itself may be. If only we knew the most fortunate fate, we would know all, and no foreign-ness would be. Oh treasure that is knowledge! Oh oneness without and within!

Editorial Page
To the Editor:
I do not agree with your opinion regarding the facts. Your implied assertions on academic speculation conflict with my inalienable right to determinism through notional zigzags. Now, before you accuse me of bias, let me state that I’ve been accused of worse things and have far better things to do than answer such accusations. And liberalism.
All the best,
Bob Loblaw.

Editor of this newspaper:
You are a fascist. And a communist. And possibly a tattle-tale. Therefore, I will only continue to read this newspaper under protest.
End all wars. Smaller goverment. Go green!
Jeffrey J. Jeffries.
noiamnotparanoid.blogspot.com

Sports Page
We got scores! We got stats!
We got all the news on men in hats!
We could analyze a rainfall
(if it struck or caught a ball!)
We got rugby results from Venice
and all injuries wrought in tennis!
We’ll put a thousand numbers in your brain
(cuz we’re about as subtle as a hurricane!)
Now how about a sucker bet?
We’ll make you feel like a winner yet!

Fashion Page
You’re wearing the wrong thing!
When Will You Understand?!
YOU’RE WEARING THE WRONG THING!!!

Advice Column
Dear Martha,
I’m having problems with my mother-in-law. She has no compunction about giving me unsolicited parenting advice. Finally after years of her meddling, I blew up at her and facetiously asked if she had “written the book on parenting”. To my surprise, she responded that she actually had written the book on parenting “thank you very much”. So, I demanded to see her “so-called book”, and she told me that she didn’t have a copy on her. Then, I asked her where I could get a copy, and she reluctantly told me that it was a “rare” book and only available in “Paraguay”. Therefore, my question is this: shouldn’t my wife and I at least conceive a child before people start telling me how to be a father?
Frustrated in Farmington.

Dear Frustrated,
Your letter reminds me of the parable of the frog and the seagull. You see, there was once a frog who possessed a tongue that could stretch the length of a hockey stick. He thought this made him the most unique being in the universe as he was so unique among frogs. Then, he met a seagull who had a beak the length of a pool cue. “That’s a dumb looking nose you got there,” the frog snorted. And so, the seagull pecked him over and over again until he looked like swiss cheese.
Good luck with your mother-in-law!

And Lastly, The Weather
Did you know that somewhere, out there,
someone is enjoying much better weather than you?
Now you do!
Woohoo!
;-D

The Joy of Writing

Posted on April 15, 2012 by contemplativemoorings

You say that fiction isn’t true.
But I’m having more fun than you.

Beware!
Beware!

Of creation, at play.–
If you’ve got nothing peculiar to say.

Why We Are Resilient

Posted on April 8, 2012 by contemplativemoorings

How deceitful the promises of hateful minds
dealt out in uniform measure:
One for indifference.
Two for blind exercises of power.
Three for broken will and spirit.
And so on, sharper and sharper as each
piece resonates against the dominance,
grips our ideals in its tightening prison.

. . . from the heavy ground, the sound
crashing out of your oceanic fear, it once
coalesced around something powerful,
formed its droplets that fall now . . .

Release that counter-malice into the winds
of memory where all true power lies:
not in limbs or muscularity,
not in gnashing or thrusting,
but in who you love and hear you cry,
who lift you even now to say “enough”.

Deconstructing Poetry – Postscript

Posted on March 30, 2012 by contemplativemoorings

We revel in endings: discoveries, marriage,
raptures, death, and definitive answers.
But wherefore the questions?

We search for meaning everywhere, in everything.
Why? Because we have no meaning within us?
Nothing to contribute to the world?

Meaning is given. It’s an act of generosity, of contrition
against our terrible beginnings. We build up the world
then tear it back down; only in the third act, when
redemption is sought, does meaning become relevant.

What do you have to answer for (even if only imagined)?
What broken faith? Helpless fear?
Bewildered recklessness?
When will the doubtful ocean crash into an endless seeming
confluence of particulate ideas, settle into an everlong
beach lapped onto only by curiousity?

Answer . . . ?

Words.–Mere words.
If you must not fail, you will not fail.
No matter how the story goes,
For lie or truth
You stand giant amidst it all
A monument
Energy
Circling through unknowable clocks then upward:
Expression always has light-years to go.

Deconstructing Poetry, Part 2

Posted on March 25, 2012 by contemplativemoorings

Subsistence.
From the hunters and gatherers to the farmers and
ranchers to the factory workers and assorted wage
slaves, life has been a sacred thing, tho difficult to hold
onto. Cultivation often meant death and reproduction
even more so. No other icon inspired so much fear
yet equal joyousness.

Nobility.
Who envisioned war and its thousandfold bloodletting?
Who reaped the wealth of violence? What protectors
became murderers? Whose excess spawned revolt?
When the enemy walks among us–of us but not one
of us–we build our prison to keep the others at bay.

Altruism.
The soul has always existed for the powerless.
Charity. Family. Community. Pride.
These are what made us dangerous.
We rose up and demanded happiness.
We learned art and irony and criticism.
We would embrace this world and have it
embrace us too.
How did Power respond?
First came the myth of the conquering individual.
Dependence became a psychological sickness.
Sharing was overwhelmed by property rights.
Collective action became an evil conformity.
Even love was replaced by lust (and an
aggressive form of lust, to boot).

Insularity.
Words were born of a desire to manipulate others.
To lie. To defraud. To gossip and bully. However,
only in close-knit groups could words thus effect us.
As we distanced ourselves, built walls, created laws,
drew all manner of invisible but not imperceptible
lines, words lost their burning teeth, their bittersweet
fatalism and found themselves reborn in the
deceptively peaceful waters of empathy.

Poetry.
How else could we express our severed need for
tribal ritual, spiritual unity, or modest human touch?
Words themselves began to embody a kind of hope.
Somehow our bruised, battered, starved souls
developed a language. Somehow we began to speak
as if speech itself made us alive.

And no matter how often
our words were hurled back at us, poisoned,
we re-invented them, over
and over again.

Deconstructing Poetry, Part 1

Posted on March 20, 2012 by contemplativemoorings

A hole in my heart?
A hole in my soul?
A hole in my life?
A hole in my world?

Always, when a blank page sits in front of me, I see a hole,
a vivid nothing. I already know where it doesn’t lead. I easily
fathom its lack of motives. No, what draws me in everytime
is the prospect of the fall.

Freedom. Breathlessness.
Elevation withering away.
The rush of atmosphere.

How do I keep surviving this terrifying plunge? Well: I
stretch myself as I go, become as tall as the chasm is deep.
It’s an act of bravery to rise to the level of the risk. One
day I may open myself up and find that nothing emerges,
and I may perish inside my own artless void.

Yes, it is the wise man
who does not risk,
However it is the wiser
man who in preparation
makes the risk
inconsequential.

Prepare for that day. Know your nothing inside out.
Memorize the map of nowhere from whence nothing
came. Remember: it is the hole itself that mesmerizes
–even the largest gap is enveloped by more than it
could possibly contain– . . .

Contemplative Moorings

"Art is the Illusion that I follow into Sanity."