HAIKU #8

There's beauty in you
Even when you can't see it
Trust that others can

HAIKU #7

Cheerful or evil
Laughter serves many masters
Be the cheerful kind

HAIKU #6

Life shapes us till death
The universe is a womb
We're not ourselves yet

HAIKU #5

To protect ourselves
We put ourselves in boxes
Then we suffocate

HAIKU #4

Say goodbye to lamps
In heaven we won't need lights
Our bodies will glow

HAIKU #3

It's good to suffer
Suffering builds character
I hope you suffer

HAIKU #2

When the body fails
The spirit escapes at last
Death or prison break?

HAIKU #1

Simple as can be
Drawn in the artist's image
We're God's stick figures

WE'RE ALL GREAT FRIENDS

Look at us, world!
We're all such a catch
We're all well-fed
Our outfits all match

Look at us, world!
We all have careers
We're all high-paid
We've passed all our peers

Look at us, world!
Surrounded by wealth
We're all high-class
We're all in good health

Look at us, world!
We're lavish and fit
We're all great friends
But you're all just shit

ROOMMATE

My new roommate refused to talk
Though I introduced myself nicely
He wouldn't extend either hand to shake mine
Or acknowledge me with eye contact

I asked which bedroom he'd prefer
But evidently he was neutral
I told him a dumb joke to see if he'd smile
He didn't react whatsoever

I broke into a song and dance
Yet still he ignored me completely
I started to poke him to see if he'd move
The problem was he wasn't breathing

Just then a stranger wandered in
And said, "You must be my new roommate"
It was in that moment that I realized
I'd been talking to an umbrella

POET

I write poems
It's what I do
Just little poems
How 'bout you?

I write poems
Most ev'ry day
A waste of time
People say

I write poems
I don't get paid
I won't make friends
Or get laid

I write poems
To calm my rage
And find meaning
In this cage

MASK

They made me wear a mask
They said it was a game
They said I could have anything
I could have wealth and fame

They made me wear a mask
They said they were my friends
They said I could go anywhere
To all the world's ends

They made me wear a mask
It wasn't all that fun
They said I'd get the hang of it
I could be anyone

They made me wear a mask
I said it was too tight
They said it would adjust to me
At least they thought it might

They made me wear a mask
I said it wasn't fair
They said I couldn't question it
They said I shouldn't care

They made me wear a mask
They said it was the rule
They said it was the protocol
A necessary tool

They made me wear a mask
They said it was my face
It hid my true identity
It didn't leave a trace

They made me wear a mask
They told me I was free
But still I can't remove the mask
They buried it with me

NEW BUS

Okay, ev'rybody
It's plain for you to see
We're on a brand-new hot-shit bus
It's hot-shit as can be

It's got the latest gadgets
HD screens galore
High-tech gizmos out the ass
All that shit and more

Comfy seats with leg room
Holders for your cup
Wait, we need a diff'rent bus
This one's all fucked up

I recently watched Iron Man 3 for the second time. In case you haven't seen it, it doesn't spoil anything to know that the central message of the movie is that we create our own demons. This is stated explicitly at the very beginning, I think in the opening line. Simply put, if you hurt someone they may wish to hurt you back. I'm bringing up the point not because it's from a movie I like, but because I think it's fundamentally true: Whether on a personal or societal level, we create our own demons.

Life is made up of all kinds of little competitions. We compete against each other constantly for jobs, money, sex, love, approval, attention, and relationships. In any competition there are winners and losers, and this much is fine. Competition is healthy and productive when the winners are gracious and the losers are good sports. The problem is that we live in what has increasingly become a bragging culture: We celebrate not only winners but show-offs. A lot of the time it seems like winning is desired only as a means to the end of bragging, of showing off, of proudly presenting oneself to the world as better-than.

In a lot of life's competitions, I am decidedly one of the losers. I say this not with emotion but as a dispassionate statement of fact. I happen to suffer from a variety of physical, medical, and psychological conditions that make it difficult and often impossible for me to compete with others either personally or professionally. The specifics of my situation are beside the point; what matters is that I know how it feels to be one of life's losers. And as such I have a lot of experience with the world of difference between when a good winner behaves graciously toward me and when a bad winner creates in me a demon.

The other day I caught part of a story on the news about a married couple who had been randomly murdered, allegedly by another couple who wanted to know how it felt to murder someone. To my surprise, I found myself immediately identifying not with the victims but with the alleged murderers. Over the past few years I've repeatedly failed to achieve a variety of social and professional goals I'd set for myself, not because I've fallen short of any objective standard but rather because other people have been deemed better than me for no particular discernible reason. This has left me feeling frustrated, helpless, and confused to say the least. But alas, this much is life. However, several of the "winners" in this case have exhibited show-offish, elitist, self-promoting attitudes around both myself and others. Consequently, for the first time in my life, I've entertained fantasies about the potential satisfaction and dignity I could gain by murdering a fellow human being. Other people from the same winning group have by contrast been friendly, good-natured, supportive, and kind. For them I have wished and continue to wish only the best.

There are a few key differences, I think, between myself and most actual murderers. For starters, I'm able to clearly separate fantasy from reality. No matter how badly I feel like I want to kill or even seriously hurt someone, I'm not going to act on that impulse. This is mostly because of my values but also because I wouldn't want to potentially make my situation even worse by getting caught. Another difference is that I'm usually able to articulate my emotions, attribute them to a cause, and mentally separate the people who have hurt me from the ones who haven't. In my less emotionally articulate states, I know what it's like to momentarily lump all people into the crudely arranged categories of "self," "loved ones," or "other." In this foggy mindset I've fantasized about the feeling of power and control that would come from murdering even a stranger. The satisfaction here would derive not from taking specific revenge on an individual but from taking general revenge on society as a whole. I'm under the impression that this might be the mindset of a lot of murderers who prey upon victims they don't personally know.

So, if I had been raised with different values, if I didn't care or simply didn't have the foresight to think about getting caught, and if I lacked the mental and emotional capacity to differentiate between people who have hurt me and everyone else, it seems likely that I could not only be a murderer but an indiscriminate murderer of strangers as in the news story I saw. And although the individual is ultimately responsible for his own actions, the action in this case would stem not from myself alone but also from those around me who had shown off, ignored me, and treated me badly. If the winners behaved graciously, the loser would wish them the best.

It's when winners rub their success in losers' faces that the losers want to push back in whatever way they can. And I'm not talking about naturally sore losers. I'm talking about good losers like myself who would be happy for the winners' success if only the winners would behave graciously or with a certain level of modesty. These are the people who flaunt their wealth and wonder why they get robbed; the ones who flaunt their bodies and wonder why they get raped; the ones who flaunt their power and wonder why they get overthrown, murdered, terrorized, and destroyed.

Granted, most victims don't deserve what they get. But most criminals don't deserve what they've gotten. Like the rest of us, they've drawn general conclusions about the world based on the relatively few examples of it to which they've been directly exposed. Like anyone, they take that experience and do with it whatever they feel they rightfully or reasonably can. It comforts us to think that evil comes from some noticeably dark and far away place, but a lot of the time it comes from and is amplified by everyday acts of showiness, taunting, elitism, and pride. I'm not saying everyone is equally to blame, but a bragging culture of winners will inevitably produce a spiteful counterculture of losers. Whether on a personal or societal level, we create our own demons.

FINGER

I lost my finger today
I'm not sure exactly what happened
I was washing my hands and noticed it's gone
I had ten where now there are nine

I re-traced my steps all day
I thought I'd recover it surely
I'd been in just one room for nearly a week
The finger, it never appeared

I lost my whole hand today
Exactly when, I couldn't tell you
I was moments away from trimming my nails
But all I could do were my toes

I lost both my arms today
I probably wouldn't have noticed
I was going to brush my teeth before bed
Turns out you need arms to do that

I lost both my legs today
Although when and how, that escapes me
I'd started to make my way toward the shower
But ended up flat on my face

I lost my body today
I know now exactly what happened
The body in question was never my own
Without it I'm perfect and free

 

CHICKEN BROTH

I step into the club with chicken broth in my eye
I'm the only one here who isn't high
There's paint on my face and I'm dressed like a sprinter
Everyone here will starve come winter

I step into the club with chicken broth on my face
The only one here who's not a disgrace
There's string in their veins and sticks in their bones
Everyone here will die alone

I step into the club with chicken broth on my head
I'm the only one here who isn't dead
My paint has peeled off, my jersey is torn
The only one here who will ever be born

 

A lot of the time I want to give up on living. But if I look hard enough there's always a better choice, something worthwhile to do with my time. This time I wrote a short poem about how it feels to want to give up on living and surrender to my inner insanity. I call it "Goodbye, Reality." And before you ask, I've already begun optioning it to publishers as a pop-up children's book. Enjoy.

GOODBYE, REALITY

Goodbye, life
I gave you a try
I'm too proud to live
Too stubborn to die

Goodbye, world
I'm sure you'll agree
I'm nothing to you
You're too big for me

Goodbye, hope
You comforting song
You've withered away
I held you too long

Goodbye, friends
I joined a new team
Goodbye, reality
Hello, my dream

 

In today's frantic world of texting, Wi-Fi, and dubstep, it can be nice to reconnect with our humanity by watching an old movie. I'm watching Scent of a Woman, and in a way it startles me that this is now an old movie. The tango scene still has the ability to move me to tears. And as much as I love some of his music, the same just can't be said for Skrillex. Sometimes I miss the simple romance of a slower-paced, less technological world.

Whoo-ah.

There's a technique for overcoming addiction called "What's Always True." The basic idea is that we fall back into addictive behavior when we feel lost, but there are certain things that are always true, things we can use to help anchor ourselves in a healthy place during our darkest, most directionless moments. One of the things that helps me is to imagine a future in which I've fallen in love and am about to get married. This helps me to identify which parts of my present self are the good parts, the parts that I want to hold onto and cherish, the parts that are really me. It also helps me to identify the parts of my present self that I don't want to carry with me into the future, the bad parts, the purposeless parts, the parts that I've picked up during the times when I've been lost and have strayed from my real self. If I focus on the version of myself that's good and that's real, it's relatively easy to let go of all the negative and useless things I don't really need. This also helps bring me closer to becoming the person I want to be, the person that I really am but that often gets buried beneath all the clutter which has gathered around me during the times when I've lost track of who I am. The bad parts of me, the parts that are confused, the parts that hurt -- these are the clutter. The good parts of me, the parts that are at peace, the parts that feel joy, the parts that want to help others, the parts that are fit to fill the roles of child, brother, husband, father, and friend -- these are who I am underneath and who I want to be through and through. This is the version of myself I can see in the future, being happy, useful, loving, and complete. This is What's Always True.

Life is time. Regardless of how long you're going to live, time is the only thing that separates each person from death. Time is currency. Regardless of your position in the world, each person spends 24 hours per day; no more, no less. In this respect we're all on an even playing field. Today's world is overwhelmingly complex, but time couldn't be more simple. All we have to do in this vast, complex world is find things we love and figure out how to spend our time wisely on these worthwhile things. And it's important to always have a series of contingency plans, so if one thing doesn't work out you always have worthwhile back-up things to do instead. If we can avoid unworthy distractions and stay focused with our eyes on the prize, life becomes simple, goal-oriented, and fun.

I just cleaned my apartment while listening to one of my favorite classic hip hop albums, Peaceful Journey by Heavy D & The Boyz. I used the actual CD and played it on an actual CD player. There was no computer involved; no Internet; no apps, playlists, or recommendations of similar artists I might enjoy. Just the music I know and love and was listening to intentionally in the moment. The experience was joyfully minimal and I felt unusually focused. I was free to do what I wanted with no unnecessary complications or distractions. Sometimes it can be ironically liberating to not have the world at your fingertips.

Last night I was watching Arsenio, and during the monologue he made fun of Bill Nye for looking awkward during a recent performance on Dancing With The Stars. Since in this instance Arsenio is a comedian doing his job, and since TV contestants presumably know that getting made fun of by comedians is part of their job, I think this sort of teasing is fine.

But then I got to thinking about the rest of us. In order to succeed at something, it's clear we must first attempt to do the thing. And if we attempted more things, we'd infinitely increase our likelihood of succeeding at those things. But a lot of the time we don't attempt things because we know there's a good chance we'll get made fun of if we look awkward or fail.

Imagine all the things you would attempt, and potentially succeed at, if you knew people wouldn't make fun of you but would instead show support. Imagine what we could all learn, share, and accomplish if a willingness to look awkward while trying something new was celebrated instead of used against us as ammunition for ridicule.

A lot of people think it's a virtue to be open-minded. What it means to be open-minded is that you're willing to consider new ideas and take into account new information in an unprejudiced way. I agree that this is a virtue.

However, the word is often misused to mean an unconditional acceptance of everything. To think that anything is bad, wrong, or untrue in an absolute sense is therefore considered closed-minded, rigid, intolerant, and unacceptable.

But here we have a self-contradiction. To someone whom he considers closed-minded, this type of self-proclaimed open-minded person will essentially say, "I accept everything. You don't. I find that unacceptable." In other words, if he thinks it's wrong to be closed-minded, he himself is being closed-minded.

So the truth is that we're all closed-minded in this sense, just about different things. And that's fine, because being open-minded in this sense wouldn't be a virtue anyway. It couldn't be because it isn't logically possible unless virtue itself doesn't exist. If there is no right and wrong, then we can logically accept everything, including not accepting things, because nothing matters anyway. But if right and wrong have any real meaning, then accepting things for the sake of acceptance will get us nowhere.

The real virtue is in considering new things with an open mind and an open heart. And a natural result of considering things is that we gradually form theories and draw conclusions. Sometimes the most rational conclusion you can draw is that a certain thing is bad, wrong, or untrue in an absolute sense. And this doesn't make you closed-minded in the slightest unless you refuse to reconsider your position should new information or ideas present themselves.

In actuality, a person who seems closed-minded in the misused sense of the word may in fact be the most open-minded, and the most virtuous, of us all.

I think most interpersonal conflicts are based on misunderstanding. People are usually cool until someone, through misunderstanding, thinks someone else has said or done something uncool. Instead of assuming the best and trying to understand the other person, we too often assume the worst and, if anything, try to confront that person in a condescending and dismissive way. The typical outcome, of course, is that feelings get hurt, enemies are made, everybody feels self-righteous, and nobody learns anything. An unfortunately common and surprisingly inept state of affairs for a species that figured out how to go to the moon almost half a century ago.

Earlier I posted a short thought which I found amusing. A few minutes later I deleted the post for several reasons. Here's the original post, followed by a discussion of why I deleted it:

"You know those Mexican grocery stores that sell sexy little party dresses for girls? Well, I would like to see a Victoria's Secret with a full produce section."

When I wrote that, I was listening to a Mexican singer I like and thinking about certain aspects of Latin American culture which I find admirably festive and delightfully different from the Midwestern culture in which I've spent the majority of my life. When I've seen it in certain Mexican grocery stores, I've always loved what to me is a refreshingly oddball juxtaposition of women's clubwear and everyday food items. If this can happen in a grocery store, why not in a women's clothing store? In my opinion, the resulting image is silly if not hilarious, not to mention admirably festive and delightfully different.

However, based on what I feel is often an easily offended, overly-P.C. American social climate we have these days, there are certain words and phrases in my original post which I'm pretty sure would immediately cast me in an unflattering and misrepresentative light. The very appearance of "Mexican," "sexy little party dresses," and "Victoria's Secret" might very probably establish me, however inaccurately, as a racist, sexist pervert. In this particular case, a racist, sexist pervert with an inexplicable grocery fetish.

But that type of negative perception would have nothing at all to do with the intention or the spirit of my original thought. I think this is probably true of a lot of thoughts which, when expressed, are almost automatically construed as offensive or hateful by others. Sometimes a racist pervert is a racist pervert. But other times it's simply an appreciator of differences in culture and gender who thinks it would be funny to sell fruit and vegetables in a clothing store.

I'm a Christian but I don't go to church. Mostly because I think church is boring. And let's be honest: if you think of church as a concert or a show, church IS boring. But that's where I've been wrong. Church isn't a show--it's a hospital. A spiritual hospital for the soul. And if a person is sick or injured, what sense does it make to say, "I'm not going to the hospital because it's BORING"? Of course, that's not to say all churches are good or right for all people. Hospitals and doctors can be bad; so can churches and clergy. But both things can be good too. This weekend I'm going to start looking for a good church.

I've always been a good person, but I've also been tormented and lost. Over the past few years, and with God's help, my demons have begun losing their hold on me. Not unlike an astronaut whose mission is finished, I'm finally coming back to the world. This is maybe my favorite song:

JUNKIE XL (Feat. ROBERT SMITH) - Perfect Blue Sky