Karma's A Funny Thing

The thing about karma
is that you have no idea
how it happens.

It's one of life's great
mysteries,
something you can
accept on faith.

But for the believers,
it's got to be nice
to know that the jerk
who just offended you
is going to get it back
at some point,
even if they don't
realize it,
understand it,
or remember
what they did
to deserve it.

I guess karma
is the great leveler,
because no amount
of apparent success
will keep it
from finding you,
because it's just
one of those great
facts of nature.

Birds Are Quixotic, Too!

Birds.

Yeah, so I'm not
one of those people
who looks at nature
to learn esoteric
facts (fascinating
though they can
sometimes be),
but rather...
to look at nature.

I look at a bird
not to wish I
could fly quite
so independently
and free, but
to see the wonder
of it, the...
otherness of it,
to appreciate
that a bird is.

Sometimes, it seems
they're looking
at me, too.

Too Many Cooks

I don't understand how something
that's been done literally
for a thousand years
functions far worse
than moviemaking or any number
of sports.

I'm talking about the writing
profession.

Now, I would assume if
people were at all interested
in discovering new
and unexpected talent,
there would be the equivalent
of the team scout,
maybe exploring high schools,
colleges,
or god forbid some kind
of official writing guild,
where new writers, honest
writers, the ones who have
talent and are not just
enamored of something
they can't actually do
might be noticed.

But instead, it seems
as if everyone
wants to fall back
on the excuse
that publishing just
ain't as popular
as it used to be,

Bullcocks.

There are hundreds of thousands
of books published every year,
and I'm including poetry
in this, but somehow,
not even a comprehensive,
definitive, popular
public publication can
track all of it.

Word of mouth
is kind of beside
the point in this
kind of circumstance.

This is why most people
gravitate to popular fiction,
because it's the only thing
guaranteed to sell,
to look familiar
and not threatening,
because for most people,
it's just too hard to
find interesting things.

Why the hell
do we make it
so hard?

Books are old,
really, really old,
and we really
have to still
keep approaching them
this way?

That's kind of what's wrong
with our current culture
as a whole.

We literally don't understand
what we've got,
and yet the things
we complain about
are all ridiculously
more ephemeral,
mere phantoms
and bogeymen.

Dudes, we could
make things a lot easier,
and put more solid footing
beneath us
if we'd simply stop thinking
of everything as just
a way to make some profit,
and instead think of how,
and not as some charitable
notion, it affects
the greater good.

It's time to think
of community first,
the common good,
common sense.

Stop being so stupid!!!

Everyone's Got Something to Bitch (Except Me and My Monkey)

I actually lied
about me.

I bitch about
a lot of things.

It's the monkey
I'm not sure
about.

But according to
some studies I
just read about,
it's apparently worse
to vent anger than
(I guess) to suppress it.

I guess I'm sorry,
but I think it's probably
better to try and figure
out why people get angry
than to say it's not good
to be angry.

If the cause is something
people can actually
work on, isn't that better
than saying you shouldn't
be angry in the first place,
that it's mentally unhealthy
to express this feeling?

Give peace a chance
but rely on common sense.

We live with a lot of
fucked up people.

It's not always
going to be pretty.

1007 Florence

I do still wish the shoes were there
but the bear will have to do

Coyote, Trickster XII

I think I'm at my best
when I'm my most quixotic,
which might explain
a few things.

Coyote, Trickster XI

When I got into poetry,
back in college,
I wasn't much of a reader.

I wrote because I had
always been interesting
in writing poetry.

But then I got into reading it,
and then I seemed to stumble
into a whole community,
and for a while,
I completely understood
what most people mean these days
when they think of poetry.

But then a lot of that
went away.

When I graduated,
I tried to cling
to that community,
but it resisted
my best efforts.

I kept writing
but I struggled
to keep reading.

Recently,
I got back into
reading.

But I'm still waiting
for the community feel
to come back.