An atheist is just an existentialist with no style or artfulness.
Posted on September 1st, 2010 by admin
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An atheist is just an existentialist with no style or artfulness.
Posted on September 1st, 2010 by admin
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Those who seek to make crooked trees straight end up with broken, dead or destructive things: faith in life is of far greater importance than faith in dogma.
Posted on September 1st, 2010 by admin
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The dimensions of unconsciousness are much larger than those of consciousness.
Posted on September 1st, 2010 by admin
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Ragged clothes adorn the frame
That hunches over the cane, propped
Like a mass for which there is no longer use.
A crown at his feet is slandered with mud
And his contorted visage and dark eyes
Seem like the firsthand account of travesty and travail
Imparted as if by a mythical bard on the aged skin and bone.
Before him span the ruins
Of a once triumphant city on which the sun
Was wont to festoon transient sparkles and glimmers
As if kissing the edges and the contours of architectures
With love and ardor.
Memories like ghosts or possessing spirits
Animate his mind briefly as he recalls
The marble and the gold and the happy citizens,
Young, lithe, beautiful and strong, but
Just as the sun behind a rugged mass of storm clouds
Will impart no light to the destitute land below,
So his eyes and face remained set in their sorrow.
His gaze returned to his cold brain
The images of destruction: the broken buildings
Frozen in the chaos of their dissolution like ancient animals
Encased in ice and forever echoing in their poses
The howls of their deaths.
Bleak, imposing mountains rooted with naked
Tentacle trees surround him,
And a ceiling of dark and turbulent clouds
Prowl above as if chess pieces in some timeless
War in which the world was winning.
For many days he remained stationed there,
An anti-yogi meditating on Satan,
Until, saturated with the doomed past,
He turned his head downward in coincidence
With a ray of light that somehow infiltrated
And bypassed the storm fortifications.
He saw encased in that beam a small
And humble flower, like a delicate image
Of a glory contained in that star flesh and light spirit
That warms from beyond. His eyes as if attempting to mimic
That star, began to twinkle and he knew
That death was not the only victory.
A child walked away from a series of ruins.
Posted on August 30th, 2010 by admin
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There has been a significant amount of discussion lately concerning the proposed Islamic Center which is to be built two blocks from Ground Zero. The issue of its construction has sparked a conflagration of oppositionist sentiment. The argument against it seems to be based mainly on the notion that it is offensive to those who died in the 9/11 attacks. This, in my opinion, belies a misinformed and somewhat ignorant interpretation of the enemy that perpetrated those attacks. To be against the Center on the ground that it is offensive is tantamount to considering Islam the responsible agent behind the 9/11 attacks – this a logical consequence of considering the center offensive.
Though the comparison of al-Qaeda with the Ku Klux Klan and the corresponding imperative of separating each from the respective religions they claim, (or claimed) to represent has been stated numerous times in the media, I think it is important to reference it here as it relates to my assertion that a belief in the offensiveness of the Islamic center is derived from ignorance concerning the nature of Islam. The reason that most Americans have no problem in separating the Ku Klux Klan from the Christian religion in general is because the majority of Americans have been exposed to a more benign form of Christianity. Therefore, the average citizen can perceive quite clearly that the Ku Klux Klan’s interpretation of the Christian religion does not represent the Christian religion but is rather a radical interpretation maintained by a minuscule minority. Because the majority of Americans have had little exposure to the religion of Islam they suffer from a dearth of knowledge concerning its true nature and the type of behavior it can foster in the more moderate majority of its practitioners. As such they can easily recognize the difference between their neighborhood church and the Ku Klux Klan, but find it hard to discriminate between an Islamic center designed to educate and bridge cultures and the organization of Al Qaeda.
To be against the center is to hold, on however subtle a level, the religion of Islam responsible for the attacks of 9/11. If the opposition succeeds and is able to remove the center from the area, the next logical step is to ban Muslims from the general area. If an Islamic center is not acceptable, then how can an Islamic practitioner be acceptable? The principle informing the opposition has unforeseen and immensely undesirable consequences. Maybe it is just me, but the more I think about it, the harder I find it to see a legitimate reason for wanting the Center to be built somewhere else. If it is agreed that Islam is not responsible for 9/11, then what reason is there to be against the Center?
The first amendment guarantees the right to a free exercise of religion. The essence of America is the constitution: it is what America is. We are not defined by a single man or religion but by a body of laws guaranteeing representational government and a series of liberties that we have come to regard as sacrosanct. This Islamic center goes straight to this issue. To maintain the constitution, and therefore America itself, it is necessary to respect the first amendment and the rights it affords citizens of any creed or religion.
There is not only a moral and constitutional imperative to allow the construction of the Center, but also a strategic one. As 60 minutes reported some months ago, one of the primary recruiting tools of extremist terrorist groups around the world is the dissemination of a narrative in which the United States is portrayed as having, as a critical component of its foreign policy, the objective of eradicating Islam from the face of the planet, (one can see how this fabrication is able to gain traction, given the United States’ invasion of two Islamic countries within less than two years of each other). It is therefore in the best interest of the US to show that we are a nation defined by a constitution that does not discriminate between religions but guarantees every individual the right to practice religion as they see fit. The more the United States can illustrate to the world that it is tolerant of all religions and has absolutely no intention of denigrating or diminishing the religion of Islam, the more we reduce the potency of one of the more subtle and powerful weapons that various extremist organizations possess. Education and tolerance is here an effective military stratagem.
America suffered a heinous, terrible and unjustified attack on 9/11. It is important to remember that this attack was not perpetrated by a religion, but a by a small group of radicals determined to portray the US as an enemy of Islam. The more we hold the religion of Islam responsible for the attacks, the more credence we lend to the assertions of our enemies. An America that singles out and discriminates against Islam is an America involved in bolstering the proliferation of terrorism. It is an America both contradicting and fighting against itself.
Posted on August 24th, 2010 by admin
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There is a horror – it’s alive -
Concealed behind all knowing eyes –
A tiger stalking in the trees,
A jungle prowler stealthily
Emitting low toned growls that are
Like visions from the dark afar,
Like winds that carry in their hands
The riches mined from hellish lands –
A predator that knows the art
Of menacing the human heart
Of waiting in his dark abode
Evincing but the fiery glow
Of two stark eyes that never sleep,
Like windows to the forest’s deep,
Undying, dark and ancient soul:
The binding law without parole,
The hungry night ablaze with storms,
With lightning’s spears and thunder’s roars:
The crazed, unflinching chaos that
Reduces the proud world to ash.
The tiger lives in every breast,
A wild form: inhuman crest
Of that which seeks indifferently
All glowing light - to feast on beams!
Posted on May 18th, 2010 by admin
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?
Lawn mower mowing
Across the Street
Instruments! Instruments! Instruments!
Doings
A man at the helm,
A man at the man;
What causes?
What moves?
What drives?
Women live in my head:
Distillations, essences,
Prismatic
Projections,
Charms that will
Like a sun
The ocean’s mighty pulse.
Where is the intersection
Of spirit and matter?
How did we, as humans,
Climb out of the dross?
What is this hubris
Of ego and
Free will?
Why is there this fire
That can transfigure
And redeem
And liberate eternally?
-
The Ladder
The body is a ladder.
Nothing else.
I want to climb
Higher and higher.
What is life
But chance, opportunity,
Flakes of consciousness,
Snow storms of desire:
The blizzard of the self.
I want only
This ladder -
To go higher
And higher
Than ever before.
-
Tornado
Come tornado, come.
You are a chaos,
A vortex, a hunger
Without stomach,
A mouth with no self.
You move and cull
And crack and break.
You turn a world to ash.
An ephemerality,
A flower without substance,
A rage that pulses latently
Through the world –
There is a beauty
In your wild song,
A remembrance, a shadow
Of my home.
Can I hate you,
Tornado? -
You blind fury
You crazy and
Temporary cancer
To that which life
Has formed:
Human houses and cities,
Bird’s nests, trees, plants –
There is no reason,
Just a path
Of destruction,
A footprint
Of something old and
Eternal.
What is this world?
The storm stricken multitudes
May cry to the heavens –
The place where any good
God
Naturally has to live, for
He could not be here
In what is, no,
The peace of sky blue
Pretty perfection
Is the abode of the Lord.
Oh damned man!
Oh human consciousness,
To be born, a self
In a selfless forge,
A theatre of powers,
A combat stricken universe
Of life, death,
Storm, sea, space, time.
There is a hallelujah
Some sages have found,
A brightness, a sun
A human path
Away from pain
And primal war
Called love,
The vapors that propel,
The home forgotten.
Posted on May 16th, 2010 by admin
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What was it that propelled
My ancestors
To Drive, Drive
Their wind drawn chariots
Across the deep, blue violent chasm,
The storm hungry sea?
What caused the flocks
Of humans to fly
In great migrating droves:
Wave after wave of egoistic
Flesh falling like promethean comets
On these American shores
What was it but the desire,
A personally distilled impersonality,
To improve –
The selfishness of souls
Whose bones lie scattered under
The tulip spilling ground
Of this glowing continent.
It was freedom and fortune,
Dreams that spread like fire
Through European brain cells,
Calling from a fabled shore:
Enticement strong enough to tempt
The unforgiving ocean.
They came for life
For gratification
Of hope,
For realization,
For escape;
They came and built
And didn’t stop but still
Continued westward
Like a tide,
Implacable, a hungry flood
Of house builders
And city crafters –
Phenotypes of Man
They came and built and thrived and grew,
The countless souls
That had no thoughts beyond
Their ken
But yet produced my life:
A spark sheared into being,
A thing which is and is not.
Posted on May 12th, 2010 by admin
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The world is a fantastically energized, writhing mass of fucking, eating, dying, and being born - with a most uncanny capacity for contemplation.
-
The hunger, oh the hunger,
It animates all forms.
All life possesses hunger –
It drives the wild storm
-
Of plant consuming Earth
Of beast consuming plant
Of beast consuming beast
Of Earth consuming all.
-
The world’s a great abode
Where hungers interplay,
Where Wills compete with Wills
To taste another day.
-
What is it that I am?
A world embodied soul,
A rider on a steed,
An organ of the whole
-
Organic based machine
Where bodies are effects
That carry in their cores
A fire that reflects
-
That flame of primal source:
The furnace wherefrom life
Derives its motive force,
Propelling Darwin’s strife –
-
I am a form of flesh
That wants from other flesh
To sate its appetite
Or else to intermesh
-
In potent, ancient sex:
The garden where the fruit
Of naked ecstasy
Is magically induced.
-
Thus I exist upon
The universal strains,
The currents of both sex
And hunger to remain.
-
My body isn’t mine.
It is a brazen car;
It’s pulled by nature’s force:
The animals that are.
-
And if I contemplate
And briefly find respite
In realms of airy forms,
In temporary flight,
-
It soon must be snuffed out
By fleshes gravity
For even birds that fly
Require ground’s reprieve.
-
The mighty hand of Earth
Is where all life returns:
It granted every birth
And permanently yearns.
Posted on May 10th, 2010 by admin
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There is a vase
Unerringly shaped
Continuity of glass
Balanced realization yet
A crack
A slender line of chaos
Is somehow written there -
The water
Drop by drop
Is lost -
And that makes all the difference
Posted on April 30th, 2010 by admin
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