Thursday, December 15, 2011

Yet Another Way To See The World


Life as I see it now
Slow dawns
Overwrought sunsets
Hosts of witnesses
Contracts to sign
Deep trust aside
All these faces
In such cool places
For me I wonder
Are they assigned to me?
I pinch my arm
And shake my head
Certain of but one thing
I did not dream you
My dreams are not that kind
Yet there is no real difference
Between you and a dream
For this too shall pass
And I will learn
Yet another way
To see the world

A Slow Boat To China


I am awake in the night
As is often the case
But tonight is some different
For tonight I am shipping

You see when Dad died in 2006
I went to China
And among other things
Saw the world’s second
Largest port

The trip was useful
I left some things
On the Li River
And a few more
On the Nan Jing Road

We taxied out over the harbor in Shanghai
Winding our way
Around that loopy view
Of enormous commerce

I cannot get back there
At least not tonight
But I need to send
A few things on big ships
To a big port of call

It takes fifteen seconds
To breathe each down
And fifteen seconds
To breathe each aboard

Thus far I have loaded
Sadness
Ego
Feelings of injustice done
Craving for revenge
Anger
A vague sense of inadequacy
Hatred
And threat to self-image

I stopped by here
To file my report
A bill of lading

Now I must repair
Back to the dock
And load a few more

With any good fortune
The Slow Boat to China
Will get them to land
Then I suppose truck
And then maybe
The Qinghai-Tibet Railroad
Will get them home

As if for consolation
My midnight Yogi Tea bag says:
“Wherever you go
Go with all your heart”

I had not thought
Of going somewhere
I will consider that
Once this shipment clears

Histrionics


Measured action, measured reaction 
Domains of the wise
So I thought as a young man

Uncle William Major was wise
Not maniacal as others I knew 

So it was a mild perturbation
When I first seemed a lesser man
Flying mad
So passionate
Threatening to rain a plague
on any who disagreed with me

Once Uncle William said of a man:
“That man is a little high strung”.

“High strung???!!!” 
Wise Uncle William said that of the man
Who ran off with a thirteen year-old girl
And returned married to her

What he called the man
Who beat her within an inch of her life
More than once
So bad she had to have shock treatments
To rid her of ensuing depression
If that’s what the wise man said
Who am I to argue?

The truth is
There are times to be passionate
For what you feel in your soul
Sure the wise may take the middle path
Deflect the darts of the silly
With the hard shield of reason
And without wiggling a finger
Or raising a voice…
But if you live long enough
Someday, something will happen
Requiring you to reach down for strength
To become a little animated
And with your sanity intact
Dance a little jig
Jack a little jaw
It may not be pretty
But that’s okay
Someday, something might require your histrionics. 
All the more reason
To remain reserved til then
As the impact of extremes
Depends on contrast

And when you are done
You can always
Wise up again

Pretension


There is good and bad in seeking to be what we are not.
How shall I know if it fits unless I try it on?
That’s presumption
Pretension is closer to hypocrisy than presumption. 
Each of us is blind to our own falsity. 
Forswearing exaggeration
Can lead to the ditch on the other side of the road,
self –abnegation.

We learn from the actions and consequences of others. 
Testing our perceptual accuracy.   
Superstitious reasoning can undercut social and private judgments.
        
We label some pretenders
Due to a mismatch between who they think they are, and who we see them to be.
This does not make us any more correct than them. 
Our audience is a powerful influence on our private interpretations
Should peer opinion be the final judge of who we are?
Some defer too much to the court of public opinion
Others are too slow to do so.

The audacious take chances for their own development. 
Risking indictable hubris. 
We are on trial internally and externally. 
If our inside judge is too lenient
We get harsh treatment from external judges
Assimilation is a match between these judges 

Why is this important? 
Our private reflections are our developmental ceiling. 
We can swing wildly between overconfidence and crises of self-esteem. 
The opposite of pretension is authenticity. 
Everyone would prefer to be fully authentic, never pretentious,
But greatness requires audacity
Hence the conundrum

Here is what I take:

Seek to please communities
Expecting the best from you
Not those calling you pretender

Perceiver in Training


If we all had to wear
Signs of truth

The lady in four-inch heels
And the flowered dress
Getting dancing lessons
At the gym
Too intense to watch
While I get
A Forty-year old
Allman Brothers Song
Through my headphones
On Pandora
I think…
Her sign might read
“Starting over” or
“Crying inside”

The young muscle man
With the shirt reading
“Your swagger sucks”
I don’t want to start
Down that hall of mirrors
With Greg Allman singing
“I’ve gone by the point of caring”
The young man’s sign is
Messed up

A picture of a mother
And Baby
With the same expression
“Life perfected”
I can’t allow myself
To think with the eyes
Of someone
Seeing the photo
A hundred years
From now

My sign says
I’m just a perceiver
In training

People, we need to talk


Penny – Ollie, we need to talk.
Ollie – Oh, ok, is something wrong?
Penny – No, I’m just saying, we are friends and friends should talk.
Ollie – Shoot.
Penny – Except, I don’t want to just talk, I want to really talk.
Ollie – Cool.
Penny – I want us to talk in lines of poetry.
Ollie – So, you don’t want to talk, you want us to write a Shakespearean play in real time.
Penny – Whatever, let me show you what I mean. I say: “We need to talk” and you say?
Ollie – Oh, ok, is something wrong?
Penny – No, that’s prose, when you speak in poetry every phrase has to pop.
Ollie – But not all my phrases pop. Sometimes they sizzle and some even fizzle.
Penny – There, you did it, that popped.
Ollie – Because it rhymed?
Penny – No, because it evoked the senses, made me think fresh thoughts, delighted my mind with good comparison, it popped.
Ollie – Ok, we can try it and see what happens.
Penny – So, here goes again: Ollie, we need to talk.
Ollie – How ‘bout I take that line and you take the second line, 'cause I can’t figure out how to make the next line pop.
Penny – Fair enough.
Ollie – Penny, we need to talk.
Penny – Fine, as long as we don’t rule out screaming.
Ollie – Or scheming?
Penny – Or rhyming
Ollie – Or just chiming.
Penny – Or miming.
Ollie – Sorry, but mimes don’t talk.
Penny – Oh, but they would if they could.
Ollie – Is that why they look so sad?
Penny – Yes, they have the weight of the world on their moves.
Ollie – So, talking is the lazy man’s mime?
Penny – Or woman.
Ollie – I am enjoying this, so far.
Penny – And that’s the main point, the pursuit of happiness can get pretty complicated without someone to talk to.
Ollie – Penny, we need to talk.
Penny – We’ve been over that.
Ollie – No, I mean, people need to talk.
Penny – Now that pops.

Happy Birthday, Tannie Bea


Let’s skip some path together
To recall the barn and Aunt May
Or eat rolly peas
In honor of the tilted floor
Or drive my car with the stick shift
And pretend it’s a bike mirror
Or you read while I play with your hair
If it rains we can sit on the porch

We will do what you like
It’s Sunday
And your birthday