Hope is a funny thing
Made of air and irony
For when it’s all that’s left
You feel most hopeless
Like a thinning thread of faith
You’re about to abandon
Or the last drops of water
In the midst of the desert
It is life giving way to death
As the sun dips below horizon
as a boxer
i watched a lot of fights
and i noticed two ways to win
Beserker: come out swinging
seek to tear the world down
speed and rage and fear
were the weapons of choice;
you had maybe three rounds – max
Endure: the mat is your world
move, dance, dodge and, above all
be patient
this meant – go the distance
take it all the way to twelve
The beserkers fall apart in the end
while those that can endure,
they take the win at the bell
in a haze of blood, sweat and hell
and if you can be both?
a destroyer who goes the distance?
shit, those unicorns own the ring.
sometimes
the most lasting hammers
swung against authoritarian walls
are built of words and willpower
scrawled in spilled/shed red ink
and forged within prison halls
while the desparate and deluded believe
they are somehow safe from their blows;
but when the hand puts down the pen
another comes in to pick it up again
and scratch away at the mortar
until the entire structure falls
and freedom once again enthralls
My column in this week’s Winkler Morden Voice and Altona Rhineland Voice newspapers.
A short collection coming to you…
NOTE: press two magnets together
Similar pole to pole
They will repel one another
No matter how hard you push
They will forever remain apart
You cannot force a bond
However,
If one turns around
They come together
jesus christ write about something different!
i have no damn idea what you mean.
you fucking do know what i mean.
ok well, suppose i do, what do you have in mind?
ANYTHING…literally anything different and new!
well look, i see before me neat rows of black
small squares with letters displayed in stark white;
these things from which i can create worlds
set like teeth recessed in an elegant, ergonomic case;
and i must be careful to avoid their stinging bite.
so as i tap away with thoughts distracted
words spring up before me now with life once absent
just like i was previously, back in a time when i wasn’t;
is it possible that some distant, inaccessible thought
spends itself in endless tappings to create such as I?
I who sit here seeking to create new, unthought things
an unknown homage to an unknowable, capricious force;
but ever do i instead form copies and cheap replicas
of things i have shaped before, like degrading clones
an embarrassment of riches hidden in the cloud
how is that you think?
hey, it’s still shit but it’s different shit than before
well, there’s something in this i suppose.
Orpheus did go to hade’s hell
to find his beloved Eurydice
and sang the dead back to life
until he walked out again free
with less than he had before
and a heart heavy as iron ore
but still he’d go back for more
if given the choice to do so
despite the pain of endless loss;
this is the curse of a blazing love
that it shall burn you alive
that it shall forever drive
a burdensome passion.
Harnessing Chaos 