Casa Bonita

How to explain
your excitement
over something
that is itself
derived from
excitement that
was exhibited by
a TV show (that
pretty much mocks
everything - South
Park)? That's
not hype or buzz,
Mr. King, just
a wacky little
contagion, one
you're happy to get.

It's a great place
to visit if you're
there for the fun
of it.

Strong Opinions Are Strongly Discouraged

If a cat were to be said to have all the curiosity in the world,
then it might be supposed that the typical leader has none.

WMD (Why so Mad, Dude?)

Truth be told,
I actually feel
proud that I
live in an age
where it can
at least be
argued that
war has been
turned into
something
that attempts
to correct
injustices,
rather than
support petty
land schemes
and bickering.

If America is
to have any
legacy at all,
it shall be this:

that it came
into the world
kicking and
screaming,
and kept on
doing so, without
resorting to
mere anarchy.

I think
on the whole,
we've got
a fairly good
record.

Why'd You Have To Call It "Green Zone" (Because That's My Favorite Color)?

I don't mean
to continue
harping on it,
because for
me, the Iraq War
stopped being an
issue when my
sister made her
successful tour,
and so did her
husband,
and then I saw
The Hurt Locker,
which went on
to win the Oscar.

I stopped caring
about other
people's opinions,
right around they
stopped being
able to affect
G's approval
ratings.

What could
possibly have
been the point
of continuing?

I knew what I
thought, and
that was it,
especially
when I learned
how impassioned
a man like
Christopher Hitchens
had been in defense
of the whole thing.

But then came
Green Zone,
a movie marketed
to lure Matt Damon's
Jason Bourne fans,
but was really
intended to
regurgitate
all the old
wounds the left
liked to pick at
for five years,
their ideas about
why they had
all the right
in the world
to protest the war,
how no WMDs
were ever found.

Throughout this film,
it's made clear that
even those, at least
from this perspective,
who were charged
with the search
at the start of the war,
the military, were
skeptical, or evasive,
or downright
posturing over lies,
never once suggesting
that these weapons,
no matter the bad
intelligence anyone
might have relied on,
had been free to
move wherever
they liked, for
months and years
(perhaps decades?).

...I don't want to
go over it again.

I want this chapter
to end, to leave it
for posterity and
perspective to
examine anew,
when we no longer
have agendas
(except the new ones
old politicians will make),
when history will
be a matter for
historians, and
not histrionics.

But as the title
suggests, my only
regret is that
the color green
must be impugned
in all of this.

Was that
really necessary?

What did this color do?

Leave the reference
alone and find
another metaphor,
perhaps in the valley
of Elah, where the fierce
god Ellah resides
and still, even
in this hour, abides.

Don't Blacklist Me For Disagreeing With You (or, How Awesome Can You Really Be?)

Y'know, I got to
thinking about
why I became
such a dismal
failure of a poet
when I had such
a great start,
and ended up
returning to
the same thought
I've had for a while:

They knew.

They knew straight
from the start
that even though
I seemed to be a
poet, I didn't think
the right way.

"The right way,"
in this instance,
meaning a particular
political view, which
even eight years,
even now, would mean
on the left end of
the spectrum.

What poets really love,
I've come to suspect,
is a ready sense of
community, so
for the two years
I spent being a
part of a community,
they were getting
ready to forget
I was ever there.

Not literally.

Jennifer Moxley,
she still remembers me,
at least, and I guess
favorably as much
as anything else.

But even then,
I didn't slide into
what the other kids
were doing. I didn't
jibe with their
thinking, what they
considered to be
their poetry scene.

It became really easy
to eject me, even
when I was clinging
to the last footholds
of that community.

They wanted me out.

I just didn't fit in
(anymore).

And since then?

I don't know,
maybe I'm just
cynical, but
I don't think
it's been too easy
trying to get
back in,
because
this time,
they know.

They know
I don't belong
in their community.

They don't want me,
no matter what
I could do
for them.

Ain't that swell?

Those Who Can't Capitalize

Those who can't capitalize
must point with their eyes.

Agenda

It strikes me that most
of the most irrational
people are pushing
an agenda they believe
is the most rational
thing in the world.

***

The reason I respect
J.J. Abrams so much
is that he seems to
gravitate toward ideas
that comment on the
nature of agendas.

On Alias, it was in
the world of spies, but
really about an
obsession with a
renaissance man called
Milo Rambaldi. Where
would everyone have been
if Arvin Sloane hadn't so
aggressively pursued
this agenda?

On Lost, we're learning
how everything pivots
around the conflict
between Jacob and the
Man in Black, and ho
if everyone weren't
so busy with their
own agendas, a lot of
things were be a lot
more simple.

With Fringe, wouldn't
it be nice if Walter Bishop
had never crossed into
a parallel world, thereby
initiating a war, a private
agenda that has seen
legitimate science run
amok with agendas? But,
he was only trying to
save his son. Look where
that got him...

***

Agendas are such a funny
thing; they can warp everything
around them without anyone
even realizing it. Wouldn't
it be nice if everyone
wore a sign around their necks
explaining what exactly
their agenda was, so there
would be less confusion?

Propaganda/Propagandhi

As much as it sounds
bad to say so, but
I can't think of much
worse developments
in the past hundred
years than the peace
movement.

I don't mean to say
I am against peace;
far from it, naturally.

But I don't appreciate
how some people have
used the movement
to push forward
their own agendas.

This has been going
on at least since the 60s.

I was watching a
program on PBS
a few weeks back
concerning MLK's
early stance against
the Vietnam War,
which made his
final years perhaps
more troubling than
those he spent
advocating for equal rights.

I don't know what
got him onboard that
train so quickly, but
I do know that a lot
of the people who
opposed that war
did so out of a general
discontent, and not because
they thought anything
through about the war
itself. They seemed to
want to blame any number
of people, when they
never bothered to look
back far enough. You
wouldn't even be able
to blame Kennedy.

It was literally a product
of a response, and that's
pretty much it. Anything
else had nothing to do
with what all those people
were so upset about.

And yet those protests
gave birth to an entire
movement, which one
day took on G's response
to 9/11, and condemned
his war just as they had
condemned him
long before they had
any motivation, except
that they could.

They never stopped to
think that this war had
its own long shadow,
and when they thought
of anything at all, it
was only the things
that they knew would
set them off.

You can't tell me I'm
wrong, okay. I sat
patiently and listened
to all the arguments.

I knew what was
going on.

You can't find
peace by bringing
rancor.

What good does it
possibly do to spread
propaganda, set an
agenda, when all
you really want is
trouble, but only
on your terms?

That's what I
need to be
explained
to me.

This is how we're
going to make
the history books.

The Economics of Caste

The Economics of Caste
dictate that we are to
be subject to social levels
whether we admit it or not.

We call it the American Dream,
the ability for anyone to
become wildly successful,
if they're willing to do the work,
but the secret is that anyone
can put in the work.

The real trick is that hardly
anyone really gets to capitalize
on the Dream, because most
of us are busy being told
we can't enjoy the same
level of living that allows
some to take most things
for granted.

It's not about having
a satisfied mind,
money buying happiness,
any of that,
but rather the ability
to do what makes you happy,
and make that your living.

If we really believed in the
American dream, we could
all benefit.

It's when people
tell you no,
that's the problem.

April is definitely Poetry Month

I know this,
because I was
definitely wrong
a few years back,
when I declared it
for Putin, a month
early.

Technically, this one
belongs to Bush,
but we'll let him
lay low.

What to do with
Poetry Month? Now
would be a great time
to pretend you
care about poetry!

Now would be a great time
to dust off some of the
old classics, the schools,
the cliques and popular kids,
and once again forget why the
hell we care about poetry
in the first place.

Is it about the things
you can memorize, the names
you can rattle off,
or is it more the experience?

If it's the experience
for you, the sheer thrill
of a pulsating poem,
then you are probably
an idiot, because
that's not really what
we're going for.

We love poetry! We love
all the things we've always
loved, and the best way to
express it is to repeat it.

We love poetry! We love
all the things we've always
loved, and the best way to
express it is...

No, won't do that again.

Lamentations on Limitations

Maybe it's a problem
of my expectations,
but I seriously doubt
most people really are
incapable of doing the many
things they refuse to do
throughout the day.

It's not about accepting
limitations in others,
but rather acknowledging
that we as a society
have grown a little too
comfortable coddling
deficiencies.

Not everyone's a genius,
sure, but then, it doesn't
take a genius to know
or at least suspect that
your actions affect others
all the time.

Maybe it's the same as
believing that only some
people affect others,
that an unacknowledged life
is a worthless one.

I choose to believe that
every life affects
in some way some other life.

This is not about those
affected realizing how
or why. This is not
about ego, but about
basic causal reality.

For every action
there is an equal but
opposite reaction.

But you already knew that.

Philosophical Flim-Flam

So when I woke the sandman
I realized the truth
of the American Dream,
which had been strangled
by the controlling interests
of those attempting to forge
the New World, bound by a
vow to the Economics of Caste -
those able to settle & decide
and those who would have
to do the actual work.

When these trends blended, you
had myths like Pocahontas
and Abe Lincoln, or outcasts
like the John Adams who
struggled to keep us from the
inevitable road to Civil War.

***

Well, John Henry was born
with big hands. John Henry
had a strong back. John Henry
knew how to swing a hammer
and so John Henry took on
the entire railroad line.

Why'd he do it? Participate
in a contest that left him dead?

I think he was trying
to make a point, and in the process
became the first martyr to the cause.

***

I don't have much use
for philosophies that talk
about man as if he were a theory,
because man lives in the real world,
and needs ideas that are actually
relevant to the way he lives.

He doesn't need someone talking
about why someone does something,
but rather why he ought to do it,
a good enough reason to rise
and rise again, until lambs
become lions, because we all
need to fight; it's the law
of the jungle, fight for your right
or be left behind.

Call me a flim-flam man,
unable to support anything
well enough to make a difference,
and so in that way I'm just like
everyone else after all,
bustling along and passing the time,
pretending like I am going
to move the world by the sweat
of my brow and the fret beneath it.

Say you want a revolution?
Well, don't you know,
we don't want to change the world.

The Self in the Community

The idea anyone should have
when formulating their thoughts
is to be okay with accepting
and adapting when necessary.

I am not a Buddhist, but there
has always been something
about it that's interested me.

It's their idea of balance,

and why I'm not a Buddhist is
because they seem to believe
you must live by a code
of self-denial, to the point
where you free yourself
by disassociating yourself,
as if the world is intrinsically
a bad place.

I've always considered that
to be pretty ridiculous,
and this is coming from
someone who thinks people
in general care very little
for people in general.

Instead of self-denial,
I advocate an initiative
that promotes self-awareness.

The difference is that
self-denial takes control
away, believes control itself
is impossible within the idea
of balance, whereas self-awareness
is all about knowing your
limitations and your potential,
about the things you can
and the things you should do.

It's about the self in the community.

The self in the community
is a person who doesn't accept
that the more we progress, the more
we ought to isolate ourselves
from each other, which is a distinct
product of the New Fade, technology
and innovation that allows us
to do things our own way and
at our own time, which like the idea
of balance is not itself a bad thing,
but if the only things we care
about are doing things our own way
and at our own time, we relegate the idea
of others to a far more alien concept
than it truly has any right to be.

Cogito ergo sum:

I think there I am
the only person
I know truly exists.

I don't know the Latin,
but I would rather argue
that I think therefore
I have an obligation
as much to myself
as others,
sort of "turn the other cheek,"
which is ironic because Christianity
is as messed up as Buddhism
when it comes to understanding
and accepting that one person
is not alone in the world,
that there always is
and should always be
a community that at some
basic level
we are all a part of.

The self in the community
strikes a balance that
accepts self-awareness as the ability
to recognize what we can do for
ourselves, and what we ought
to be doing for others.

This is not charity.
This is not communism.

This is an understanding that
we owe it to ourselves
to be there, to be available,
to do good deeds not because
we think we will be rewarded,
but because the right thing to do
is the right thing to do.

It is not morality,
it is solidarity,
a cult with secrets
anyone can share,
a joke you didn't see coming
but do not resent because of it.

But that we cannot easily accept
this is a true tale of modern woe,
that romance does not always make us go.

Modern Woe

I've got a problem
and I don't know
what to do.

I've paint'd myself
a color and I'm
afraid it's blue.

All along I've been
told potential
is what I've got.

But what I really
want, I've discover'd
can never be taught.

So I'm trying to
write a poem
and rhyming it to be noticed

when what I would
really prefer
is to be, damnit, kiss'd!

Okay, so enough of that.

It's the potential that
bugs me, the idea of
potential, that this
is what we've got.

I think our problem
is that we're always told
"Be better than yourself."

I say, what we should
be hearing is
"Be as good as yourself."

That's the idea of
potential, not
a prospect of possibilities,
but to take what comes
naturally to yourself,
work with that,
and then make it work.

That's what you
should be doing.

That's what people
should allow you to do.

That's what happens,
when people succeed,
it's not about
opportunity,
it's about potential.

Those who succeed,
it's not that they
create opportunities
for themselves, it's
that they fulfill
their potential.

Maybe the problem is
whether or not
it's noticed.

I can't talk about that.

I believe things are
always happening
that people don't notice,
that history ain't about
those who succeed
but those who are noticed.

Maybe that's the ego trip,
what Hindus and Buddhists
call trapped in existence,
our own personal
existential
purgatory.

But that's it.

I don't believe in
Heaven
and I don't believe in
Hell.

I believe we get
what we deserve,
and it has nothing
to do with anyone else.

It's free will
and it's destiny

our potential,

and that's the tale
of modern woe,

that thing that
makes it all go.