Poetically Versatile

Beautiful fallen word.

She may be well known for her novels but Ursula K Le Guin actually started out writing poetry and never stopped.

If you have only read her science fiction and are unfamiliar with her poetry you should do yourself a favor and locate her poetry. Her writing is beautiful and she has a real talent for weaving words together and creating some alluring poems.

She was a versatile writer. Her work is hard to classify. What she did was write and not worry about where her work would be slotted. She wrote novels, poems, letters, and even translations. She was a truly gifted and versatile author.

The book pictured above is one of her collections of poetry. She had 11 volumes in total. She spent sixty years writing so there is plenty of material from Ursula K Le Guin.

She spilled magic onto the blank page. Check out her poetry if you are interested.

Until next time, good reading.

Dirge of the Common

Dirge of the Common

I am hiding in the light. I have weaved myself into the trappings of convention so I don’t have to be me. The crowd is where I obscure myself. It’s so much of the same. This is where I can really punish myself. True numbness is right here in the status quo. Dying inside doesn’t happen at any bottom, it takes place right among the common.

tf

Real Daymares

I was thinking about the everyday things that go on that actually have the ability to frighten. I don’t mean the stuff in our nightmares but the things that transpire during the day. The little things that take shape in culture and in politics and in economy instead of the usual scary suspects like monsters and murder and war. I was thinking about the normalization of lies. I was thinking about the manipulation of ideology. I was thinking about the dark little beliefs that are held in the mind that suddenly rise to the surface, get emboldened, and have the potential to threaten other people’s life and liberty. I was thinking about how too many people have a twisted perspective on freedom and reality and I wrote this short piece of writing.

Real Daymares

narrow myopic minds that just repeat and never think. intolerable people with rigid, inflexible beliefs. empty phrases, ad hominem attacks, and inconsistent hypocritical ideals that recirculate among a group. these are the things that terrify me when I am awake.

Until next time, good reading.

Operation Humble

I was thinking about how the ego limits and restricts our potential. I was thinking about how a fragile ego actually makes a person weak. I was thinking about how not enough people take the time for introspection and I wrote this.

 

Operation Humble

let it rise

reach inside

dig up

all the insecurities

all the weaknesses

cut yourself deep

with this introspection

excise and extract

that cancerous ego.

 

Hallucinations of Grandeur (Division)

I was thinking about the ugliness of identity politics. I was thinking about how some of the characteristics you despise in the other position are present in your position. I was thinking about how the “woke” side and the “MAGA” side both have their own groupthink, how they both wallow in their own hallucinations, and I wrote this.

 

Hallucinations of Grandeur (Division)

woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA          woke MAGA

 

tf

 

 

 

Oblivion

I was thinking about isolation. I was thinking about crowds and how people behave and think when in the group. I was thinking about how privileged and entitled Americans are. I was thinking about how the average American has more entertainment, resources, and information available to them at their fingertips than any of the richest people in history and yet they still get bored and complain. It is this sardonic view of things that lead me to come up with this piece I call Oblivion.

 

Oblivion

the madness of crowds

groups are so disheartening

it is in the masses

where i feel most alone

Mr Bierce,

i respect your footsteps

into oblivion

shadows my old friend,

here i come!

tf

 

The Contrarian

I was thinking about how people repeat what they hear. I was thinking about how people regurgitate word for word what they hear on their news. I was thinking about how quickly we adopt narratives that fit our worldview without thinking or checking such delivered information. I was thinking about how opposing forces are ripe with hypocrisy and pick and choose only the realities they are comfortable with and I wrote this piece.

 

The Contrarian

your pandering,

your insistence,

our rigidness to conclusions,

birthed a contrarian.

my existence

is to question

and not finalize knowledge.

your talking points

are ineffective here!

tf

 

 

New Year’s Hype Robs You

It is that time of year again when we look back on the year with nostalgia and hindsight, and we look forward to the upcoming year with aspirations and resolutions.

I have never been fond of doing either. I avoid most of the lists of the year’s best. Anytime we talk about the “best of” something we are committing an error in logic. “Best” is subjective yet we continually fool ourselves over this “best of” nonsense. You hear it all the time, “best coffee,” “best book,” “best restaurant,” “best phone,” “best president,” “best year,” and the one I find the most laughable “best doctor/lawyer.” Everyone seems to have the “best” doctor or lawyer. “Best” only means something if there is exhaustive comparison and contrast, which face it, most of us don’t do. This all reminds me of an episode of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit. It is called The Best from Season 3 and it examined our obsession with the “best of” everything and debunked the hype behind all of the fascination. So, nostalgia and hindsight and fascination with all that made up the year especially the year’s “best” is irrational drama that doesn’t do us much good.

Then there is our obsession with resolutions and dreams for the upcoming year. Again, most of us will never follow through and finish any such resolutions. They are a nice idea and that is all. If you need to wait until the New Year to start something then you are already behind. Why can’t you start today? Why does such an endeavor have to wait and begin on January 1st? Do something now. For more information backing up the ridiculousness of resolutions and motivation see Mel Robbins and her Why Motivation is Garbage.

You’re Never Going to Feel Like It

Sentiment for the past 365 days and blind hope for the next 365 days is a silly concept. It can be effective to look back and use the observations you notice in the past to make adjustments in order to help and improve future outcomes, but the way we do it as a culture around New Year’s time is really nothing more than mindless conformity as an effort to keep the status quo going. Question things. Think. You don’t have to be told what was good for the year. And, you don’t have to follow a line into the next calendar year. New Year’s hype just robs you of your own thought and ability to take advantage of opportunity now. Do your own evaluations and skip the resolutions and motivation and just do something now, today.

I wrote this simple, little poem in response to New Year’s resolutions and all that is the status quo during this time of year.

 

be meek,

be safe,

inside the bubble of the status quo

you’ll be alive

you’ll get by

but you’ll hardly be living.

 

Until next year, good reading.

 

 

Full of Words but Saying Nothing

“It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

That is a quote that comes to my mind more often than it should, especially the last few years. It is disheartening to see so many people abandon their ability and right to question and fall prey to gimmicky rhetoric. People ultimately believe what they want to believe. It is never about truth, it is about what you can get people to believe. Look at history and look around at things today and will see plenty of examples. In the book world there has been a rise of authors who are now seen as intellectuals and experts but in reality, are nothing more than literary Dr. Phils. They publish lengthy tomes filled with impressive language but who really are not saying anything at all. It is this type of author that inspired me to write this poem.

 

My dear grand theorist,

your verbosity

truly masks

an absence of profundity.

Confusion is the

result of your abstraction,

which deters

a proper vivisection

of your theory.

 

 

 

The Malevolence.

This is another piece I wrote while thinking about schadenfreude. I was trying to imagine the mindset of someone who takes pleasure in other people’s misfortune. I am calling it The Malevolence.

 

the future you imagine to be real soon

is all i can tread on

i am the virus to your dreams

i am wicked and cold

i am the axe

to your bridge into the future

i can’t help but ruin your hope

your fantasies, your desires, your essence

are mine to fold up and put away forever.

tf