Author Archives → Brian
we’re human beings
A rat race
is for rats. We’re not rats.
We’re human beings. Reject the insidious
pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties
to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence
in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of
self promotion and self advancement. This is how it
starts and, before you know where you are,
you’re a fully paid up member
of the rat pack. The price
is too high.
the moral fighting shape
We
have lost the
power even of imagining what
the ancient idealization of poverty could
have meant: the liberation from material attachments,
the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way
by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to
fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly—
the more athletic trim, in short,
the moral fighting
shape.
you could make this place beautiful
Life is short,
though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place
beautiful.
what you should know to be a poet
all you
can know about animals
as persons. the names of trees and flowers
and weeds. the names of stars and the movements
of planets and the moon. your own six senses,
with a watchful elegant mind. at least
one kind of traditional magic:
divination, astrology, the
book of changes,
the tarot;
dreams.
the illusory demons
and the illusory shining gods.
kiss the ass of the devil and eat shit;
fuck his horny barbed cock, fuck
the hag, and all the celestial
angels and maidens
perfum’d and
golden–
& then
love the human:
wives husbands and friends
children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum,
the weirdness of television and advertising.
work long, dry hours of dull work
swallowed and accepted and
lived with and finally
lovd. exhaustion,
hunger,
rest.
the wild
freedom of the dance, extasy
silent solitary illumination, entasy
real danger. gambles and
the edge of
death.