“A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.”
Tag Archives: Humanity
Imagination
“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.”
~Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin (Photo credit: Wikipedia. Photo by “Hajor”, from Meet-the-author Q&A session; Bookworks bookstore, Albuquerque, NM, USA; July 2004.)
Soul Flight
Soul flight—
the northern wind
rasping in the dark
flitting like sunlit
Angels fell
on water
leaves the whirl
of broken night
clinging to stars.
Small favors: I didn’t put a Weeping Angel here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Like a river
Like a river
it’s all just one-way
around the bend, they say
just another lap down the whipple-waves
of human faces, frothing
for a pound of flesh
mermaids
with claws more like
singing out the sounds of life
the lurid lure into the deepest depths
humanity always spoils before
shorelines are an issue
no, ser not me
you’ll not drink the soul
but every protest comes half-hearted
the waves, once seen, always longed for
by child-mind, learned not learning
that the whispers really hide
men’s shapes.
The Walk
It’s never enough to walk the walk.
The walk springs heels
heels spring teeth
and the subtle lines–
grace and poise–
they sink their teeth into the eyes
spun in lies routinely filed
hook-line-sinker
for the heart:
flesh always leads astray.
On Civilization
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
~H.G. Wells, The Outline of History
“Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.”
~Mark Twain
And the wind shall say “Here were decent godless people;
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.”
~T.S. Eliot
At break of grey
A thousand lights swarm
with the break of grey *
like fireflies descent upon the warm
sanctuary of the hidden day.
No sight,
No light.
They will sway before they bend
a multitude consumed
before they mend
tragedies in twilight bloomed.
* Inspired by the oh so grey, and oh so dark, and oh so slushy morning today in Colorado. Hurrah for people forgetting how to drive in the two weeks since they last saw snow… Thankfully this, like all things, can get the poetic gears turning in this silly little head of mine, and expand beyond mere road-based frustrations. I would have gotten a picture to add…but I was a little busy trying not to die. Seemed important.
Ain’t no Poet
in a world
unfurled
where crime
is but a lime
tossed upon a dime,
there are no stars
save the bars,
no mission
save the fission
of mortality’s derision.
Ain’t no poet
without tears to show it.
Worldly Truths
Shadows of mountains
paint Divinity,
smooth flesh to mere
Humanity,
craft worlds
dirt and rock and ash
all might breathe, let know
there are little differences between
Souls.
I Name Thee
Sometimes trickle
sometimes flood,
time rolls
in excess
of perdition,
determinant roar
let know
the bounty
still bounds
come rain
or flame.
Blood’s key–
ruby interlay of souls
huddling warm
against beating
hearts, pains,
gaining leverage
in hope,
gold lighted
dawn, somewhere
another’s eyes.
Lover, I
name thee–
human spirit–
your touch
as everything
between shadows,
drink, feast,
soothing ash
into soil,
emerald blooming
with remembrance.
* Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you’ve enjoyed my humble contribution to the season, and I wish you all the very best, whether an American celebrating the holiday like myself, or those of you outside the country just going about another day on the march toward a new year.
