why love is not like poetry

the key advice to young poets is to show
and not to tell
but you told me how you loved me
and i believed you.






(x/p to the phlog)

the first in a series of meditative poems about skin

rubbing

while the gray wind swept by your sandy hair,
on the boardwalk, a man with a shabby cap
shaded you into my life.

it's incredible how life moves by in gradations
shades
are the darker bits of your face older? wiser?
your eyes searched me out from the surface of the page
and i don't remember if i liked your nose better
or if it was rounder or sharper
if your nostrils were wide or also sharp.

on the beach, the sea rubs away at the coast.
the memory of you becomes less distinct
but pervades

i was in the process of walking by,
it was a process finely tuned to process through,
when the hairs on the backs of my arms noticed
how the ley lines of the air, they bunched and jostled,
breathed in by you.
the man with the shabby hat smudged
your face into being.

when i reached out my finger and brushed your cheek,
it returned to my eye similarly smudged.
i left our fingerprint on every surface i could find.

1/4/08

(x/p to the phlog)

more poetry!

here's a poem i (think i) wrote in high school:

lost generation

We are no lost generation
rambling back home to wife or kids or bottle or job
with barbed wire lining our brains
and national anthems resounding in our heads
images of disintegration and madness do not
replay ad infinitum in our young and tender minds
images of friends ripped from this world like vacuums and abortions
or cut in half by machine gun fire
or mashed into the groung in a tire tread pattern
do not haunt our memories or dreams
We are not the Lost Generation

We are no Lost Generation
We have no Hemingway to expose and die for our sins
no one with the courage to plead utter confusion and desperation
to a world wanting answers
No one who can say little and do much.
...
Who feels the shock now of his shotgunned brains in the woods?
We have no Fitzgerald
to help us laugh at where we have gone
terribly
terribly wrong. He sees our empires built on wealth, constructed on sand,
and F. Scott rolls his eyes and hisses through his teeth
like the opening of missile silos.
We have no Ezra Pound to write about the mystery
We are not the lost generation

We are no Lost Generation
We have been breathing war’s odors since we were young
and we have not been betrayed by a world we never had
we are not staring at walls forever at walls forever
staring at walls
We know the intimacy, when screaming ends and waking begins

Death lines our coffee cups and cigarettes
our paints and our automobiles
our sports and entertainment
our dreams
our despairs
Death waits in every corner
and in every doorway . Death thrives in between
here
and
There
Death does not wait for us overseas
Death has encountered us, acculturated and docile
Death has played with our childhood friends
Death hums the same songs on the radio
Death watches our TV
Death enjoys our company. Death works for our boss.
Death would live among us:
His Found Generation.

~jss

(cross-posted to the phlog)

my place-winning kilmer poem!

the shape of my love
by Joshua Schwartz, GS '08

I would be a harp for you
that you may play your fingers across my strings
send shivering vibrations up my spine, an addictive fever
under the blankets of your warmth.

i would be sharp for you
like a knife, glittering ethereally in the night
like a brilliant question from the mouth of
a promising young student
or a delicious cheddar cheese
mmmmmm... cheddar
how is my love like a cheese?
well, cheddar cheese is hard... and pale yellow to orange,
and: after heating, the curd is cut into cubes
to drain the whey, then stacked and turned.

i would be a B-sharp for you
an impossible note, hovering over the staff...
of possibility.
why not just call me a middle C?
because i love you. that's why.

i would be a tarp for you
to keep you safe from the storm and the wet
to save you from catching a chill
and becoming ill
and while you sleep, i would look over you
while you sleep, all bundled up in your sleeping bag
while you sleep, i am watching you.
while you sleep.

i would be an Arp for you
an alsatian artist and poet who was cofounder of dadaism in zurich
noted for abstract organic sculptures...
and loving you all up on your body.

i would be a carp for you
a proud white fish
with scales gleaming like the rainbow
you could raise me in your bathtub, and
you could grind me up all sexy like
together
we could feed a hungry jewish family
because who doesn't think gefilte fish is hot?
no one doesn't think that. that's who.

I would be a Garp for you
the bastard son of a technical sergeant and a castrating mother
living a life of "lunacy and sorrow"
learning painfully from my sexual relationships
until you.
and the world according to me
would be one of our love.

but i would never LARP for you
because it's for nerds,
and i am one of the cool kids.

argh...

the more and more time i spend as an "independent individual" on my own, etc etc... the more i find myself making excuses for my less-than-virtuous behavior. it's kind of sad. more on that later.

also: my work ethic may be among the worst in the world, which is also kind of sad.

~invisible

actually, on second thought...

something else happened to me today that was interesting...

when i spoke up in class, in the middle of my comment, the professor helped me realize a loose part of my thinking. When i spoke up again to clarify/fix what i was saying, i did what i thought to be a humble gesture by deferring to the wisdom of the prof [how unamerican! ;-)] and apologized for my muddled words before...
after the class, when i went to the front to follow up my point with the professor, a gentleman in the class took me aside for a moment and told me (in the manner of helpful and friendly advice) never to apologize in public.
i do not mean to imply that the gentleman who spoke to me was a bad man or anything of the sort. i appreciated that he cared enough for my wellbeing to speak to me. perhaps he was right, but the statement simply took me aback. i tend to be a direct person who will put his ideas out in the open without shame (i hope!), but i am coming to realize more and more that not everyone does that with such casual manner. many people, when they speak, are afraid of admitting culpability or fault. personally, i think i do not have such a problem with that because to me, they are just words, just ideas, and i would rather look a fool that continue to believe falsehoods. also, there are always more ideas where those came from.
word is truth.
peace,
~invisible

Intentions

Well, folks, i have decided to start trying to post here on this blog fairly regularly, not that anyone's reading anymore...
whatever. come what may, there will be electronic evidence of my transitory conscious existence.

today i got in a lively debate with my buddhism professor, famed scholar of tibetan buddhism robert a f thurman, also known as uma's dad. he was discussing, in the class, the harmful effects religion has had on history and our lives and claimed that the goals of religion were often at odds with ethics. okay fine, no problem there. i, even as a religious person, need to recognize that bad things have happened because of it. however, he then tried to distinguish between "spirituality" and religion, and while they are most definitely not one and the same, i thought that it was incorrect to completely dichotomize them. he said that when figures arose in religion and represented authentic spirituality, they were killed/silenced. while that may be true, one cannot separate these figures from their religious contexts as much as one cannot separate them from their sociological and political ones. the fact is that these people came to noble conclusions through their religions. while religions have been known to harm, i believe those are instances when they are not being "spiritual" or, as i like to think of it, "Godly." in that way, though, spirituality is seen as a component, a function of religion, not its successor.

but i may just as well be wrong.

the dalai lama had a wonderful point, just as reinhold niebuhr did when confronted by a soulsick will herberg, disillusioned with marxism, desiring christianity: each religious individual has a responsibility to explore the depths of one's own religion first and foremost. it is their tradition. i also believe that religion is primarily an end to an end, that is the eschaton, or whatever you call it. but that's another post for another time.

and i may be wrong about that too. or everything.

peace,
~invisible

my non-award winning kilmer poem from this year

Canadia
Canadia, I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
Canadia, eleventeen dollars and seventy twenty cents, January 17, or whatever heathen calendar you use there
I can't stand all your moose(s)
Canadia, when will you give up the delusion of your sovereignty?
Go fuck yourself with your hockey stick
I don't feel warm. Don't bother me.
I won't write my poem 'til I'm in my right mind.
Canadia, when will you be civilized?
When will you take off your flannel?
When will you look at yourself through the mocking eyes of everyone else?
When will you be worthy of your twelve citizens?
Canadia, why are your libraries full of books?
Canadia, when will you send your Mounties to Iraq?
I'm sick of your inexplicable existence.
When can I go to the black market and buy what I need with my real money
Canadia, after all, it is you and the Dutch who are weird, not the normal world.
Your moose are too much for me.
You made me want to be a hockey star.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
McGill is in Montreal, but I don't think anyone goes there, it's deserted.
Are you being serious, or are you some cosmic practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
Canadia, stop pushing, I know what I'm doing.
Canadia, the pine needles aren't falling (that's why they call them "evergreens!")
I haven't read a newspaper in months, do you even have a written alphabet?
Canadia, I feel sentimental about the moose.
Canadia, I used to be dyslexic as a kid, and I'm not rosy.
I drink maple syrup every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and try to make sense of your existence.
When I go to Montreal I get laid but never in English.
My mind is made up; there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me listening to Alanis Morisette.
Canadia, it's them bad mooses.
Them mooses, them mooses, and them maple syrups. And them mooses.
The mooses want to eat us alive. The mooses are power mad.
Canadia, I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel-eh?

This is my philosophy!

The only thing i know is that i know nothing...
maybe.

i'm back bitches!!!!!

peace,
~invisible

getting in touch with your inner snob

oh man, i'll tell you. do you want to hear? i have some thing freakin important for like the world or something. this is quantum, man, esoteric secrets granted to only a select few. this knowledge could shake the foundation of the world. this could end world hunger and war and stuff. yeah??? yeah. i mean DO it, man! i mean: take it it's yours. there is no need to shame this out of me. this was created for you... this could change the world... if they could take it. i mean no one can think like YOU, now can they? not everone can be special. not everyone can understand things that are special.

takeittakeittakeittakeittakeittakeittakeit.

like this.

snobbishness begins concurretly with the genesis of history. in the biblical (quick side note, the word "judeo-christian" is such a fallacy and used by people who can't separate text from context) creation story, God, gives the entire garden of eden to his humans, adam and eve. however, the tree of knowledge/tree of life were not to be touched or sampled. the right to special privileges is born. from then on, we establish cities with their classes and their ruling powers and caste systems. also, especially in the hellenistic times, elite relgious movements claiming ultimate truth are founded, holding special appeal to it members for their salvation. and this trend continues all the way down through history, highlighting in the colonial movements and feeling its first twinges of threat in the advent of the american revolution, arguably the first instance of "post-colonialism." the classless society has been imagined, although a serious consideration must be payed to the advent of the printing press as well, disseminating knowledge to others than the elite. america does indeed adopt the media and it ends up both helping and harming the snobbish cause.
in the democracy, ideally, all have te same rights and privileges. yeah right. capitalism takes care of that, as do deep seeded racial fictions. money creates the new class of the supposed meritocracy, those who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps etc. however, the mass media, with its mind numbing pablum creating powers and exutation of mediocrity, DOES have its positive results of widely disseminating information. and: as unfair as it was, the snob-system DID make people feel quite special and different from others. even the untouchables, as abused as they were, had special bonds that could be connected to no one else. our supposed democracy and freedom atomizes us, separates us from our peers. and if everything is open to everyone, then what makes social interaction effervescent and unexpexted? if everyone reads the same magazines and listens to the same polkas, then how do we learn from each other? how do we differetiate from each other????? oh no.
so: snobbishness does indeed have its value. it's fun to know something cool when no one else does! it's also fun to spread the love to only those you deem to be able to handle it. it's like discovering something about someone/the world that no one else knows or has even known. treasure. snobbishness is why we have gradients of friendship, to claim rights to intimate knowledge of people who should ideally belong to the world. after all, we can't belong to anyone can we? well, if i grok you, then i have something special no one else does, so... there is part of you in me, that is in no one else.
i know this may sound cynical on the surface, but the story is told with a disarming grin and an offering of secret candy to you, the worthy recipinets of my esoteric wisdom. don't tell your friends. just wink knowingly and leave quietly, secretly inscribing your name in the earth, on the sky.

peace,
~josh