Dust

…other people.
They are
The city.

The city is
A person forest.

The city park
Bench
Marks
A person for est.

The city is
An (est)imation
Of
A nation.

People concentrate hard
When not
At parks.

The city washes blood
Red hands of
White collar crimes on
Blue collar backs.

The city
Evokes in me
The cliché,
Which is itself
A cliché
Now
To call
Something a
Cliché.

The city is
The common man –
Home from work,
Covered in filth,
Pours a drink,
Sits down to unwind:
Wound up
From drinking
At the filth
Of Work.
Work.
Work.*
Work.
Work. [1]

(*Driving to Wednesday work
Following a marineairforcearmynavy
Semper fidelis veteran:

I hate his truck,
And bumper labels
(adhesive fables),
And I think all American veterans
Are pathetic,
Because any child
Born under the sun
With a magnifying glass
Can burn ants.

I hate him as he
Leaves, turning
Left under
Leaves that
Left tombstones shadowed.

Living domestic partnerships
With drugstore flags,
The tombstones told tales
Of domestic abuse.

Realization shot,
And now
I hate myself
For hating him.

I hate people
That I barely know.

I hate myself
For writing poetry,
And for thinking
Poetry is art,
And for thinking I’m an artist
Because I say Poetry
Isn’t art,
And for thinking I’m making
An artistic statement
By saying I hate myself
For thinking I’m an artist
Based on my realization
Of thinking I’m an artist
For claiming poetry
Is not art
Ironically
In a poem,
And so on.

But I don’t hate hate.

Love
Is the (square) root
Of all hate.
Hate
Is the product of multiplying
Love against itself,
And fear is a factorial!)

^1. Sometimes I happen upon ideas within my head that I think are marvelous, and I instantly sit down to work these ideas out into art, or craftsmanship, or utility, or for no reason but compulsion. But as I get through the work, I realize that the whole idea was fleeting and broken into pieces not fully materialized.

The meat of the work comes out instantly, because it was given to me in insight, in epiphany, and the completion of the rest will rely on a substantial amount of personal energy and commitment. So now the work gets abandoned, neglected, and every return meets me with another layer of dust, until the idea is unrecognizable. I might come back and try to complete it, but it won’t measure up to my original vision.

I don’t know… these are no more than just pixels on a screen, right?

And oh ya: Sartre something or other, blah blah, because hell is…

Words of Wisdom

The things that almost happen

Don’t even make a dent in the earth.

It’s the things that are, is and be

That are is to be given any worth.

Certainty

Have you ever been so certain of something,
only to find that you were completely wrong?

It’s so liberating.

A weight of responsibility
lifts from your shoulders,
Because you make mistakes too.
You play the role of human in this production.

It’s even greater when you think you know something,
then you find out your wrong,
then you find out you were originally right in the first-place.

“Well am I really correct,
do I hold the truth of the situation,
or will my perceptions once again flip.
Now I can‘t rightfully know ANYTHING,
can I?”

This offers the greatest sense of emancipation
from the network of truth.
Weaved into web,
sticky network,
waiting to pull you in.

But upon realizing you’re not at all infallible,
your certainty gets pulled back and spread out,
the way the tide roles in and take a sand castle.

You become not only separate from the network of truth,
but you simultaneously become the network.
And knowing that you’re part of it,
allows you to rise above it; while at the same time questioning
if you really know that you’re part of it in the first place.

Epistemology – a philosophical branch closely tied to ontology that studies everything;
because everything is thought.
And the limits of thought define the boundaries of everything.

It is somewhat disheartening
to come to terms with the truth that all of these ideas thus presented
have already been thought about before.
None is wholly original.
It’s like, what use do I have writing this down when I could go read books on this topic.
Books that would map out my own ideas better than I ever could.

Not that the books know me better than I know me,
it’s that my ideas are not part of me. I don’t own the rights (I’ve yet to develop an original product).
They are part of the collective.
Thoughts and ideas are communal.
They rely on the existence of other people-generating-ideas to exist themselves.

I can’t build a house without the supplies provided to me by other people;
And the underline structure of each house will be loosely based off houses before it
and is not wholly original.
Similarly, I can’t build an idea
without the language/supplies/ideas provided to me by other people.

True independence can only be achieved upon death,
but even then
one relies on the bacteria and worms to facilitate the next step,
which is decomposition.

No one is independent, but we’re all individual.

Everyone is a snowflake,
with our own intricate pattern,
similar yet unique to the others around it,
and we’re falling into one big mound of snow.
The universe is snow.
Everything in the universe is a fluttering flake,
temporarily suspended in the fall to oblivion.

Yet, it’s only a matter of time before I find all this to be untrue.

Weather or Not

This could be a poem, or an essay, or maybe just stream-of-consciousness psychobabble, but most importantly it is words that have been collected in order to communicate a particular message. Yet, don’t focus so much on the words, but focus more on my body language in the telling of them.

Weather or Not

We collect in pockets of binary energy

Grouped like spots on a cow.

Energy dictated by weather

Wound

Around

Words.

Climate conformation – a secular happening

We are to the climate (and other things, like culture, habits, beliefs… But the topic of today is climate, so we shall not digress) as puddles are to conforming the curves of the earth.

Winter weakens willingness to work.

Summer sets a synergistic stage of situations summoned by the sun.

Simultaneously: Melancholy Maine rain

And

Burning Texas rage.

So maybe the blame should be put,

When one does not ‘behave’,

Not on the cast of characters

But on that which sets the stage:

(summary)

Which is environment. We have focused on climate, but this is all really about environment, and as Marshall McLuhan says, “Environments are invisible. Their ground-rules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns elude easy perception.”

Environments are as multifaceted as the organisms that must live in them, and both co-depend on each other for meaning. To break it down simply: if someone appears to be acting a son-of-a-bitch, maybe there are other environmental phenomena factoring into their behavior; or even clouding your perception of their actions…

I’m at the Comma Splice

I started this poem yesterday and finished it this morning. It’s about finishing college and preparing to enter the working world. It goes something like this:

I’m at the comma splice in

Life’s

Run-on-sentence:

Falling from textbooks and chalk,

Crawling toward goodlooks and talk,

Through society’s leatherdark parking lot,

A field of tar,

I yield in car,

Checking dashboard digital

Every five,

Awaiting the ‘open for business,’

Ready for 10,000 tomorrows

Of cell phones

Erupting 7 o’clock seizures

On my magazine massacred bedside,

I fear the predictably punctual

With open arms.

 

Melting Perspective

Melting Perspective

First things first: If you have an eclectic taste for music, follow this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0yhbvxT6TE. They’re called Piccola Orchestra Gagarin, and I have trouble describing their style. They are sort of experimental chamber music… only not really… but kind of. When you’re done, as a suggestion, listen to Herbie Hancock’s key solo at the end of “Sly”. His notes rattle off like a ballerina falling down the stairs, only to be brought back to her feet and then hurtled by these powerful Oriental sounding chords at the end.

Second things second: I pulled the title of my blog, “cognifeeder,” from a poem I wrote a while ago, and I thought that I should post it. The poem has to do with how words feed our brain by creating concepts, concepts create things, and the qualities of these things are completely dependent on the control of our words. Here is that poem:

This Poem Exists

Everything exists,

In some way,

On some level.

Chair, desk,

Right, left,

Writings, words,

Scribbled, slurred,

The bizarre, the odd,

And even the gods.

 

Everything.

 

Well then,

What is a chair

Or a god?

:

A chair provides comfort

After too much walking.

A god provides comfort

After too much talking.

THEYEXISTBECAUSEWEDOTHEYEXISTBECAUSEWEDOTHEYEXISTBECAUSEWEDOTHEYEXISTBECAUSEWE

They are but chronometers,

Glass geared cognifeeders,

Hung on bent nails,

High above a hard,

Unforgiving ground.