Friday, July 9, 2021
The rise of Trump and the Golden Age of Stupidity
We’re often advised that ‘Making fun of Trump supporters will never bring them round to your point of view.’ MAGA cult members are regarded by sympathetc relatives as similar to alanon members. But can any amount of patient reasoning wean them from their insane attachment to Trump and the belief that stupid is the new smart? If so I haven’t found it. That’s why I advise ridicule therapy until the tiny part of their brains that register cognitive dissonance can be sparked into life by the glaring discrepancy between their delusions and the actual state of affairs.
Monday, October 14, 2019
The Secret Circus
Irony’s the most hardhearted of our crimes, our goat-footed laughter from the phallic stage. Man’s a quixotic beast, of predators not last or least. Eat the sheep and throw away the wool; it's good form to eat the wolf before it eats you. Adam and Eve were so naive it took a snake to set them free. History is someone else's theory. My story’s a mystery.
He rose from the dead, the incarnation. His two lips uttered truth inviolate to inseminate the whorld. Like Daniel in the lion's den he tried to stem the tide of sin, but his life was sold for merry gold. He fell upon the thorns of life, he bled.
I’m not of this world, I’m from that other world over there. I hold these truths to be self-evident: we rip what we sew; the meaning of life is death; solitude is good for the sole; many are cold, few are frozen; a poet is not without armor; no one can serve both God and mammal; act and you will receive; where your sweater is, there will your shirt be also.
Pieces of fleece glide softly by across the sky. If I were a child and licorice were free! Fowl is fare. Orpheus was a real inthellactual. The mills of the gods grind slowly, or not at all. The wind of the mind blows cool against the heat of the heart. Outer wealth is inversely proportional to inner worth. The way to multiply is to divide. Her heroes have shot her with Eros. The birds are much freer than we're. Hell is just another cheap motel.
The Overlord of the Underworld grew weary of the land he ruled and went upstairs to see the sun, chase the girls and have some fun. But when they saw him, off they ran, for no one likes to sleep with death. His hands are cold and he has bad breath.
People are too dopey for Utopia. They suffer from euphobia. We're all prisoners of our own ideas. Every stone has a story of its days in the quarry. Every clown is a clone of every other clown, so how can we tell the clowns from the clones? We wouldn't take to vice like fish to water were we not made of such putrescent matter. What does it mean to be a human bean? Ask any Pythagorean. Oh, there's a time for this and a time for that, a time for tit and a time for tat. Life is perfect; perfect chaos.
Mondayne, truthsday, runesday, thorsday, farraday, sapphoday, sundance, moondance, tunedance, weddingdance, thorndance, firedance, satyrdance, thunderstruck.
What are we? A mass of appetites; an animal charged with the task of domesticating itself; a self-assembling jigsaw puzzle forged in the athanor of stars for the abattoir of wars; made from moisture, sun and soil the way an oyster knits a pearl.
As I cavorted through a wood, I heard above the roaring of the wind, the sound of someone farting through a flute. Looking up at the sky’s banner, I beheld an angel dogfight overhead. “How unbecoming,” I mused; “armed cherubs hacking at each other’s wings!” Just ahead, at ground level, I observed a tribe of power-mad midgets forcing all non-midgets to kneel before them. They had constructed a mental prison to house the rebels and set a god to guard it.
If I could, and I can, construct a world, it would be patterned on a curd.
Either I’m out of focus or the world is. We’re blinded by looking. Thinking makes us stupid. If an aardvark is a specimen of God’s artwork, we all have reason to be concerned. I call as witness the eye in the sky. I swear I'll never see another sun, 'cause there's only one. Blessed are those foolish enough to be happy.
What people run toward is a sign of what they’re running away from. Best not to run at all. Let yourself catch yourself. Greet yourself, shake hands and get to know each other. We can't escape our brains. The only world I know is the one inside my mind. By refusing to leave my cage, I imprison the world. Einstein had his theories, I have mine.
Truth is psychological. It’s manufactured, not discovered. Its purpose is to lure us into depths. God likes to hide out underground. The one who thinks and what he thinks about are one. He's in the world and the world is in him. Thinking about the world is a roundabout way of thinking about himself. We’re two halves wanting to become one, to halve and to whole.
There are two worlds, inner and outer, that operate by different rules. Why worry what’s Caesar's, what’s God's, what’s outside, what’s inside, the real world versus the ideal world? We only need enough world in our words to make them make sense, enough empiricalness to eliminate the possibility the opposite of what we say is more true than what we say.
Clowns are essential to the successful conduct of affairs. Verse is subversive. The god of fun should be a faun, a satyr with a vibrator. If tears mar your carnival, thank Parsifal. Pain can be comforting. It reassures us life is real. The stick we’re beaten with is what we use to measure bliss. A clown that didn’t cry would be unworthy of the name and Paradise is such a lonely place.
So long, I’ve gone to soak inside my brain, boarded a bus to inner space. My psychic wholeness requires aloneness. I'm the only fish in my particular think tank. Who wouldn’t love a place where sheep may safely graze, where lambs’ blunt teeth crush juice from plain green grass? I’m a Chippewa! I don't snore, I snow. When I sleep, snow blankets everything, a mentholated mantelpiece. I darn each dream, I mend each rip and seam; I trip in every minefield of the mind and swim in every solipsistic stream.
Imagine if you will a mind without an axe to grind, a disembodied brain blithely bobbing in a bowl of brine; one that can separate the fruit of truth from error’s rind; filet a syllogistic fish with dexterous twist of mental wrist and wrest an iridescent pearl from an oyster’s dismal prison-shell. I'm not ambitious for riches or recherché dishes. That trash makes me nauseous. Give me a quiet corner of the sky to nest in, the crook of a persimmon tree where I can sup with some marsupial and probe the mystery of symmetry.
A poet’s a metaphysician, a therapist who uses words to treat existential angst and paranoia--the fear of all that goes on behind our backs--by talking openly about topics many are reluctant to discuss and by making unusual observations; for example that flames are raindrops in reverse or that God is just the ego personified as it would like to be: all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere at once, infusing everything with its presence; the dream-phallus filling the vagina of empty space. We erect a stairway to nowhere and encourage others to follow through a door that reminds them of someplace they've never been but might like to. We lull our subjects into passivity with the pleasant delusion that words can get us what we want, that we can speak happiness into being.
Moe: If life ain't great, don't shake your fist at fate, create. Making what time delights in laying waste is a death-defying feat.
Joe: But how can I write when reality keeps infringing on my fantasy? I'm too busy trying to orchestrate the complex libretto of my life. There's no time for leisurely unfolding, the cadence of petals on soft grass; no time to wax poetic over the waning moon.
I'm an inventor, building a better book, trying to bind reality between two covers, the world between two slices of bread. I want my neighbor to love me as I love myself. I'm in a race against fate with one flat tire and a tattered road map. Rhythm is my arithmetic. I'm trying to kill death by giving an immortal performance. I want to be a prism, reflecting a ray from God's own lantern, but I'm too drowsy to operate the heavy machinery of the mind. I want to touch the sublimity of Michelangelo without all the scaffolding, remember the future the way an ember remembers the flame, but I can't work the stage machinery of thought, its ropes and pulleys. If reason is the rope that rings the bell of truth, I'm too light to start it swinging and Quasimodo's out to lunch. I want to read the blueprint of the universe, but my eyes are the wrong color and however big my telescope may be, there's still some stars I'll never see.
Analysis leads to paralysis. I don't know whether to go back to Paradise or forward into Heaven. Maybe I should smoke some leaves of grass, free myself from the labyrinth of language, but I lost the key. The carousel won't stop to let me off. The future's a pristine wilderness, the past a wasteland of regrets. I follow the scent of desire the way a wolf trails a wounded elk. We're like barnacles, clinging to this rock by means of incredible suction. We want to siphon the marrow out of life, store up its pungent, musky secretions, then discharge ourselves into the atmosphere in a dazzling display to ecstatic applause, engulfing the crowd in an aphrodisiac cloud.
He rose from the dead, the incarnation. His two lips uttered truth inviolate to inseminate the whorld. Like Daniel in the lion's den he tried to stem the tide of sin, but his life was sold for merry gold. He fell upon the thorns of life, he bled.
I’m not of this world, I’m from that other world over there. I hold these truths to be self-evident: we rip what we sew; the meaning of life is death; solitude is good for the sole; many are cold, few are frozen; a poet is not without armor; no one can serve both God and mammal; act and you will receive; where your sweater is, there will your shirt be also.
Pieces of fleece glide softly by across the sky. If I were a child and licorice were free! Fowl is fare. Orpheus was a real inthellactual. The mills of the gods grind slowly, or not at all. The wind of the mind blows cool against the heat of the heart. Outer wealth is inversely proportional to inner worth. The way to multiply is to divide. Her heroes have shot her with Eros. The birds are much freer than we're. Hell is just another cheap motel.
The Overlord of the Underworld grew weary of the land he ruled and went upstairs to see the sun, chase the girls and have some fun. But when they saw him, off they ran, for no one likes to sleep with death. His hands are cold and he has bad breath.
People are too dopey for Utopia. They suffer from euphobia. We're all prisoners of our own ideas. Every stone has a story of its days in the quarry. Every clown is a clone of every other clown, so how can we tell the clowns from the clones? We wouldn't take to vice like fish to water were we not made of such putrescent matter. What does it mean to be a human bean? Ask any Pythagorean. Oh, there's a time for this and a time for that, a time for tit and a time for tat. Life is perfect; perfect chaos.
Mondayne, truthsday, runesday, thorsday, farraday, sapphoday, sundance, moondance, tunedance, weddingdance, thorndance, firedance, satyrdance, thunderstruck.
What are we? A mass of appetites; an animal charged with the task of domesticating itself; a self-assembling jigsaw puzzle forged in the athanor of stars for the abattoir of wars; made from moisture, sun and soil the way an oyster knits a pearl.
As I cavorted through a wood, I heard above the roaring of the wind, the sound of someone farting through a flute. Looking up at the sky’s banner, I beheld an angel dogfight overhead. “How unbecoming,” I mused; “armed cherubs hacking at each other’s wings!” Just ahead, at ground level, I observed a tribe of power-mad midgets forcing all non-midgets to kneel before them. They had constructed a mental prison to house the rebels and set a god to guard it.
If I could, and I can, construct a world, it would be patterned on a curd.
Either I’m out of focus or the world is. We’re blinded by looking. Thinking makes us stupid. If an aardvark is a specimen of God’s artwork, we all have reason to be concerned. I call as witness the eye in the sky. I swear I'll never see another sun, 'cause there's only one. Blessed are those foolish enough to be happy.
What people run toward is a sign of what they’re running away from. Best not to run at all. Let yourself catch yourself. Greet yourself, shake hands and get to know each other. We can't escape our brains. The only world I know is the one inside my mind. By refusing to leave my cage, I imprison the world. Einstein had his theories, I have mine.
Truth is psychological. It’s manufactured, not discovered. Its purpose is to lure us into depths. God likes to hide out underground. The one who thinks and what he thinks about are one. He's in the world and the world is in him. Thinking about the world is a roundabout way of thinking about himself. We’re two halves wanting to become one, to halve and to whole.
There are two worlds, inner and outer, that operate by different rules. Why worry what’s Caesar's, what’s God's, what’s outside, what’s inside, the real world versus the ideal world? We only need enough world in our words to make them make sense, enough empiricalness to eliminate the possibility the opposite of what we say is more true than what we say.
Clowns are essential to the successful conduct of affairs. Verse is subversive. The god of fun should be a faun, a satyr with a vibrator. If tears mar your carnival, thank Parsifal. Pain can be comforting. It reassures us life is real. The stick we’re beaten with is what we use to measure bliss. A clown that didn’t cry would be unworthy of the name and Paradise is such a lonely place.
So long, I’ve gone to soak inside my brain, boarded a bus to inner space. My psychic wholeness requires aloneness. I'm the only fish in my particular think tank. Who wouldn’t love a place where sheep may safely graze, where lambs’ blunt teeth crush juice from plain green grass? I’m a Chippewa! I don't snore, I snow. When I sleep, snow blankets everything, a mentholated mantelpiece. I darn each dream, I mend each rip and seam; I trip in every minefield of the mind and swim in every solipsistic stream.
Imagine if you will a mind without an axe to grind, a disembodied brain blithely bobbing in a bowl of brine; one that can separate the fruit of truth from error’s rind; filet a syllogistic fish with dexterous twist of mental wrist and wrest an iridescent pearl from an oyster’s dismal prison-shell. I'm not ambitious for riches or recherché dishes. That trash makes me nauseous. Give me a quiet corner of the sky to nest in, the crook of a persimmon tree where I can sup with some marsupial and probe the mystery of symmetry.
A poet’s a metaphysician, a therapist who uses words to treat existential angst and paranoia--the fear of all that goes on behind our backs--by talking openly about topics many are reluctant to discuss and by making unusual observations; for example that flames are raindrops in reverse or that God is just the ego personified as it would like to be: all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere at once, infusing everything with its presence; the dream-phallus filling the vagina of empty space. We erect a stairway to nowhere and encourage others to follow through a door that reminds them of someplace they've never been but might like to. We lull our subjects into passivity with the pleasant delusion that words can get us what we want, that we can speak happiness into being.
Moe: If life ain't great, don't shake your fist at fate, create. Making what time delights in laying waste is a death-defying feat.
Joe: But how can I write when reality keeps infringing on my fantasy? I'm too busy trying to orchestrate the complex libretto of my life. There's no time for leisurely unfolding, the cadence of petals on soft grass; no time to wax poetic over the waning moon.
I'm an inventor, building a better book, trying to bind reality between two covers, the world between two slices of bread. I want my neighbor to love me as I love myself. I'm in a race against fate with one flat tire and a tattered road map. Rhythm is my arithmetic. I'm trying to kill death by giving an immortal performance. I want to be a prism, reflecting a ray from God's own lantern, but I'm too drowsy to operate the heavy machinery of the mind. I want to touch the sublimity of Michelangelo without all the scaffolding, remember the future the way an ember remembers the flame, but I can't work the stage machinery of thought, its ropes and pulleys. If reason is the rope that rings the bell of truth, I'm too light to start it swinging and Quasimodo's out to lunch. I want to read the blueprint of the universe, but my eyes are the wrong color and however big my telescope may be, there's still some stars I'll never see.
Analysis leads to paralysis. I don't know whether to go back to Paradise or forward into Heaven. Maybe I should smoke some leaves of grass, free myself from the labyrinth of language, but I lost the key. The carousel won't stop to let me off. The future's a pristine wilderness, the past a wasteland of regrets. I follow the scent of desire the way a wolf trails a wounded elk. We're like barnacles, clinging to this rock by means of incredible suction. We want to siphon the marrow out of life, store up its pungent, musky secretions, then discharge ourselves into the atmosphere in a dazzling display to ecstatic applause, engulfing the crowd in an aphrodisiac cloud.
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