It matters not how much the wind may blow,
nor if the seas should rise up through the floor;
the anchor of my craft is sunk below,
and I am to this spot moored evermore.

Should this fierce season flail its storms at me
and seek to wrest my hold from this small spot,
to face the torrent is my destiny;
what comes, if good or bad, shall be my lot.

'Tis not an act of courage, or last stand,
but simply put, I've realized to run
is just as futile; what good are new plans
that rest on such foundations? I've begun

to realize the import of a place:
it rests not in its grand design or sport,
but rather in the nature of its space,
that finds in such small things such great import.

What if the ship is wretched loose from its chain,
its timber torn asunder in the fray?
Despite the great destruction, what remains
is greater than what's lost. And so, I stay.

27 AUG 2005

recast in iambic pentameter

Cast my future stars as void of course;
reduce to ash these ragged charts and maps,
and let the sails take from the restless wind
what strength they will. I will not feign I care
to know what line the sextant sight-glass proves,
nor where the ruling planets may align.

Let destiny release my wearied soul,
and through my worn and cambered heart, let flow
the cooler blood that marks a passion's end;
give to the angels of our nature's best
their just reward: from danger a respite,
and soft Elysian breeze to fan their wings.

Plot down no points, but wander free instead,
where the whole sea awaits; its fleeting touch
rests not upon a single shoreline's crest,
but skips carefree between each distant beach.
Give unto me naught but my decommission;
I care for no more of your revolution.

25 AUG 2005

Set my stars as void of course;
reduce to ash these charts and maps,
and let the sails take from the wind
what strength they will. I do not care
to know what line the sextant proves,
nor where the planets may align.

Let destiny release my soul,
and through my cambered heart, let flow
the cooler blood of passion's end;
give to the angels of our nature
just reward: respite from danger,
and soft breeze to fan their wings.

Plot no points, but instead, wander
where the whole sea waits; it lingers
not upon a single shoreline,
but would visit distant beaches.
Sign the writ of decommission;
find your own damn revolution.

25 AUG 2005

Watch the eyes: they reflect scars
that long since faded from the flesh
still mark the hard survivor's face
with phantom traces, and though less
pronounced with each new moment's span
can in some lights, and moods, reveal
the inner content of the heart
that needs no words to speak its pain.

Watch the eyes: in caverns not
so deep or treacherous, the lives
of countless treasure-seeking men
have been cut short, or been sold cheap,
their worth exchanged for one more breath,
a single ray of hopeful light,
the trickle of a hidden stream
to quench some secret, speechless thirst.

Watch the eyes: they can reveal
some lost agenda of the damned
that waits in infinite repose
for hapless fools to seek its depth,
and for an instant, finding bliss,
to think it some eternal shore
where ships with ancient tattered sails
find moorage from the wrathful storm.

Watch the eyes: their surface shines
with the mad heart's reflected wish,
and can reveal to those who look
what purpose drives the mind to live.

24 AUG 2005

It's been a busy week. I've lost a cat, a tooth and a pound or two in the heat.

It breaks my heart to think of you
out there in pain; I hope you, too,
likewise consider how I feel
in your attempts to keep it real.

I wonder, though, if broken hearts
are not in fact where real growth starts:
when pieces back to one are stitched
and back to front, are often switched

and bound with glue and tape and nails
that hold when weaker thread might fail
to make the paper thin, weak heart
more thick than it was at the start

and filled with spaces in between,
along the torn lines, not too clean
that each edge matches with the next
in perfect fit. And I reflect

that with my broken heart and yours,
each one survivor of strange cures,
we grow more strong with every break,
with every foolish, sad mistake

and end up better off, it seems,
let loose from small and tidy dreams
thanks to the scars and tissue formed
around our hearts to keep us warm.

22 AUG 2005

"The problem," he said, "with making life so easy, particularly for the young adult, is two-fold. First, a life of leisure without significant responsibility or strife is bound to result in an attitude of mere idolent malaise --- which of course is far from intense enough to serve as the impetus for any angst-ridden revolution or major shift in philosophy."

"Secondly, the parents of such youngsters, who must deal with the nebulously undefined childish and ultimately selfish agendas resulting from their offspring's lack of needful action, are likewise never taxed, insofar as their abilities to deal with REAL paradigm shifts are concerned. As a result, they become weak and flimsy shadows of their potential selves, and are woefully unequipped to counter the nefarious attacks of those unscrupulous individuals (and their attendant organizations, religions, governments and so on) who would shape the moral fiber of their children so that future generations will not even be aware, let alone care, that the world does not belong to them, or that they have been forced to in effect pay rent on their own bodies to afford the luxury of being alive with absolutely no free will whatsoever."

"What was once adolescence," he continued, "I therefore think would be better off termed 'addled essence.' It is at this critical stage that those in power first successfully attempt to convince people that they are in fact powerless, hopeless and witless --- by offering them courses in empowerment, positive thinking and entertainment."

"They are like the young elephant, who when relatively weak and small is attached, via a lightweight chain and metal hoop around their leg, to a stake in the ground. At that young age, no matter how they try, they cannot free themselves. After a time, they give up trying. As a result, even when they are fully grown and could easily pull out the stake and/or break the chain simply by lifting their enormous foot a matter of inches, they can be controlled, and do not attempt to escape, when tethered in this fashion."

The smell of the sick-house lingers
where the medicines are mixed;
even fresh washed clothes and fingers
tend to keep the reek of it.

The taste of food is changed,
its scent turned sour and stale,
reducing appetites to nil
and turning faces pale.

Continued deathwatch, so it seems;
each act, each meal observed,
a constant examination, hoping
for improvement's curve.

A day's reprieve, perhaps a week
of seeming health and vigor;
and then, relapse. The problems
only seem to grow or linger.

What quality of life is this,
just watching for some sign
that she is half of what she was,
not weary and resigned

to constant medication
and injections, week by week?
Would she consent to letting go,
if she could only speak?

10 AUG 2005

Some further thoughts on goal setting as it relates to self-improvement:

Most of the self-help programs out there (at least, the ones that charge a substantial fee and consist of more than a single volume book) assume that the reason you are seeking out their assistance is that you feel unproductive. Of course, for most that unproductivity is measured in terms of accumulated monetary wealth, dissatisfaction with your career or job path (of course, the corollary assumption is that any job that does not lead to the accumulation of personal monetary wealth cannot be satisfactory), a lack of friendships (and therefore a lack of networking by which to accumulate monetary wealth), or a separation from "normal" behavoir that is proven to result in, with the right sort of guidances, the accumulation of monetary wealth.

Self-help programs, in short, seem to focus on ONE thing: getting what you want. Of course, the more complex the program, the more difficult it is to actually define what you want --- as a result, the failure to achieve it can always be blamed on your inability to accurate define it.

While the focus is on that one thing, the method for achieving that focus always contains another key element: TIME. Not only are you focusing on getting what you want, but you're focusing on getting it NOW. Centerpointe Technologies, for example, uses as their selling point that you are able to achieving a deeper state of meditation than Buddhist monks. Bear in mind that most Buddhist monks who achieve the level of concentration and mental states we're talking about here have been meditating for 20 or 30 years, and in fact, that state of meditation is the purpose for their lives, in a sense. The key to meditation as a spiritual pastime is not just the state of "Nirvana" that you reach, however. The key to meditation is what you learn about yourself by spending 20 to 30 years thinking about it. It is this missing link, the span of time required to actually "build character" so to speak, that is missing from accelerated learning, or quick-time self-improvement programs. The fact of the matter is that until you've spent 20 to 30 years thinking about what your goals are, why you picked those goals, and why you require goals at all, the goals that you set to achieve in a super-accelerated meditation program are NOT going to be all that useful --- because without that time under your belt, you're not going to really have an appreciation for those goals if and when you achieve them.

Live a happy and productive life according to a standard you have inherited and probably only somewhat understand. That's the goal of many self-help programs. What they don't tell you is that by circumventing the time-span process, by short-cutting the mountain path, you're bypassing the difficult and necessary process of figuring out your own standards. Of not setting goals, or achieving victories on someone else's playing field, but in fact taking the time to change the game itself.

Using a time-honored motivational mantra, like, "See the good in everything," doesn't work unless you first realize that there is bad in everything too --- that there is a necessary balance between black and white, up and down, right and left, on and off. Hyping your circuits so you are ON all the time is not the answer. Using 15% of your brain, rather than 10%, is only useful if you think about things that people using only 10% don't think of. And learning what that five percent is, requires more than just accelerating your own agenda. It requires looking, as Kurt Godel might have said, at the agenda that is not contained in the set of all agendas. At the goals that not only represent your personal ambitions, selfish desires and private fantasies, but that force you to transcend the personal, selfish and private to understand that whatever CAN happen, DOES happen.

So I wonder. Doesn't having the ability to meditate more effectively than a Buddhist monk imply that I should be acting as if I were a monk-plus? Doesn't gaining more intelligence, insight, serenity, personal power, etc. imply that there must be more than myself that must benefit from this increase?

What about the maxim "From whom much is given, much is expected?" I have NEVER seen a self-help or personal improvement program that said by increasing your self-value, you increase your obligation to the universe.

Since the age of twelve, I have been exposed to the field of self-improvement. My father collected and read books on the subject --- Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking and a slew of countless others. He also became interested in, and actually became a distributor for, the motivational self-improvement products offered by Paul J. Meyer's Success Motivation Institute, and our house became a storehouse of multi-tape collections such as Blueprint for Success, The Dynamics of Personal Leadership and so on. This was in the late 1970s, so it preceding Tony Robbins as far as I know.

I of course being a directionless teenager (in the estimable opinion of my father, anyway), was instructed to read these materials and listen to endless hours of cassette recordings. My father's speech became peppered with the buzz-words and slogans of this way of thinking --- having a PMA or positive mental attitude, developing a POA or plan of action, and remembering quotes like if you are not making the progress you feel you should be making, or feel you are capable of making, it is simply because your goals are not clearly defined. I could go on. My dad was big on goal-setting. Never mind that at 14 or 15 I neither had the tools, experience or authority to exercise what was necessary to achieve my so-called goals --- one of which was to avoid motivational instruction altogether.

Over the years, I have supplemented these books of my father's with some of the same songs, but different verses, from other quarters. I'm OK, You're OK, The Games People Play, Neuropsychology, The Road Less Traveled. My mother has offered to buy each of the kids one or another of the Tony Robbins courses. I myself have worked with the Centerpointe Holosync series, Learning Strategies Genius Code offering, Michael Gelb's How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and countless other tomes on creativity, motivation, mental acuity and so forth. The way that some people approach diets, and physical exercise programs, I have followed the strengthening of the mind and the interior world.

But I find myself often at a strange place. The place of hereness. Where there is no need to establish goals, or to plan excessively for the future. It is a world of possibilities, perhaps, but also one in which possibilities are not something to be achieved, anticipated or even engendered, but rather simply to be experienced.

And of course, my success with most of the above referenced materials is something short of stunning. Because, to quote Mr. Meyer again, "my goals are not clearly defined." Yes, I suppose I'd like to make more money. But for what, exactly? Yes, I'd like to have more free time. To spend doing what? Yes, I'd like to be able to learn faster, retain more information, absorb using more of my sensate capacities, reach a deeper level of understanding. But why? To baffle 'em with bullshit at the next cocktail party? To solve all the world's problems? To "win friends and influence people," or in other words, gain the ability to sell something they don't need to people who can't afford to buy it?

I wonder.

At the bookstore yesterday
two young punks with their parents
came in as I was going out;
they were festooned with spiky hair,
spiked bracelets and Doc Martens,
and t-shirts both bleached clean and pressed,
brand new, although the bold design
I'd seen -- in fact, I'd worn myself
some twenty years before.
I didn't have the heart to stop
and tell these kids something I'm sure
they would have heard with disbelief:
that I had heard of Minor Threat ---
in fact, I'd hung out with Ian M;
a past member of Iron Cross
had been my roommate for a while;
the guys from All still had my Kustom amp;
and I'd lived, for a couple months,
on Henry Rollins' furniture.
Hell, I'd even toyed with the notion
of playing in East Bay Ray's new band,
after the Kennedys expired.

When I was a punk, Bauhaus
was still more than a t-shirt collection.

But these guys didn't want to hear that,
I know.

Nobody wants to think their revolution
is recycled.

4 AUG 2005

Six years, the longest I have ever been
in one spot without moving out and on,
and still this place does not possess my bones
the way it would if I had come of age,
or taken my first steps, read my first book,
lost my virginity or first paycheck,
under these spreading, great magnolia trees,
through hurricanes and floods and summer's heat.
My ties are severed to those memories;
there is no real connection back to where
the formative in me began to set,
to where grandparent's porch-swings gently rocked,
or drifted snow blew up against the house
so high it blocked the window of my second story room.
There is no chain between me and the land;
what sacred space I ever found is gone.
And even when I visit, after years and miles away,
only their ghosts, if that, remain as shadows.
As always, disconnected from my peers,
whose constant habitations in one sphere
I wished to share, but never had the chance,
the sense of place in me is hollowed out.
At home, but homeless, my spirit abides
in pieces cast among my former selves;
How long before I call this city "mine",
and recognize its rhythm as my own?

2 AUG 2005

Summer's bent and turned to gray,
his heat begins to wend;
in these dog days of decline
his smolder finds its end.

Now the lad with darkened locks,
his heart born full of ice,
begins again to wax in strength
and plot the sacrifice

of the green and winsome king
whose fires consume and warm;
in the shadows, winter brews
its months of snow and storm.

From the fields, sun's regent walks
among the first-born sheaves;
in their surrender lies his bounty.
Soon, the turning leaves

will announce his kingship ended,
and that fateful siege
when his lance will be unmended
and a new crowned liege

will ascend the season's throne
to lull the world to sleep
through the gray and bitter months,
when the sun must creep

at a distance, as the world
lies fallow until spring,
and the Sun will claim once more
its green and leafy King.

Summer's step is not so sure
past each year's Lammas eve;
mere months mark the lifespan
of the king. But do not grieve:

in the womb of winter's deep,
the cold new king will sow
the sunlight spark that will in time
defeat again the snow.

01 AUG 2005