The Cat Does Not Care

The cat does not care
    If I’m rich or if I'm poor
    If I’m famous or
    about ego or hubris or paradigms

The cat does not care
    Whether they say I’m arrogant or
    If that hurts or inspires me
        or both or neither

The cat does not care
    If I write the book or
    If I record the album or
    If the internet is working or not

The cat does not give two shits
    About my opinions on politics or religion
    or on race or sex
    or on the inevitable madness

The cat does not care
    If I believe myself to
    be inadequate in everything
    Paralyzed into inaction

The cat does not care
    About my annual or semi-annual
    Physician Dental Dividends Taxes
    Co-payments or if the housekeepers are legal

The cat does not care
    About my accomplishments
    Past Present Future
        at all ever

The cat could care less
    About my grand ideas or
    the shitty execution of these ideas or
    If these ideas ever actually execute

The cat does not care
    To be annoyed
    To be ignored
    To be fucking bothered

The cat does not care
    To be judged by inferiors
    for snuggling a full-grown human man
    in the bright light of day
   

[a boy and his cat]

The Number Twelve (beginning and end)

Today is the last day of the last transition
And as with each, the senses reset to factory defaults
Time is change
Change is time
data trends validating bold corporate forecasts

Sometimes you touch flames or allow yourself
a little jolt of actual electricity to
test the reflexes for reliability
    Like airbags you usually only get to know reliability
    when you absolutely need to know reliability

Weary I have groan with your ideas and notions
that only exist as breath and gesticulation
Potential and planning boiled off neglected as steam

Time is change
Change is time
Raising flags of armies and pledging allegiance

Release the hostages
Give up the ghosts
Retreat into fortresses build from the
Blood Sweat and Madness
of both your ancestors and your descendants

Neither marking what little time remains or pressing pause
We must make causes in order to claim effects
And as your king it is my sole responsibility
to allow you to blind-faith follow me into
places only I understand

The daylight wanes
The weather worsens
We are at our healthiest
We are at our happiest
This is the absolutely worst moment for complacency
The bets are off

Today is the last day of the last transition
Tomorrow we battle a war
Declared by Hubris Greed and Manifestations
    of internal struggles
War is upon us
And to the victors be there spoilage

Master Planned Community

A planned and carefully managed exclusivity
Everything equalized by circumstance
and manipulation

Rewards satisfying rewards
without baggage-and-sacrifice
    or guilt by obligation

Exploiting the potential of nuances
The willed customizations ranging from paradigm tectonics
to imperceptible and microscopic OCD-level tweaks

Influencing groups influencing Individuals influencing groups

this is the only life i have
–the only life i know
The resilience to my own failings is my greatest strength

Glacial momentum in a prescribed manner
is nonetheless actual progress
Patience is the attractive whirlpool now

It is the deliberateness and the intention
of our own agent provocateur selves
A planned and carefully managed obsolescence

BSD $5 Challenge 2

[slideshow]

[related] 

[video]

Cured

Maybe it starts with this - like this
on an island in the middle of nowhere I’ve ever been
alone to face judgement of the most frightening and accurate of critics
Mirror-mirror on the wall - I see you true I see you all

When the time arrives you will know
Forced into play and action
by circumstances and history and
camel’s last straws at end of ropes

Help
    a
        cry
            for

I suppose at some point I can declare "cured"
given the will and the effort expended
Checks And Balances
moving from good to great

I've lived in the dark places
I've lived in the sunshine
We do what we do and are who we are
the universe, the reflexes, and the instincts guide

Good days filled with promise and potential
Ambition is beautiful and refreshing

What sustains destroys
What destroys sustains
fuels for propulsion
following the original plan

The past
The present
The future

What have we created?
Who are we now?
Where does all this lead us?

Always floating freely
Never grounded in middlespaces
jumping from rooftop to rooftop
like in the dreams that

Not fame not fortune not accolade
Confidence is beautiful and refreshing

Archives

Leadership Seminar

Neither nature nor nurture
    perfect nor heroic
Yield to the Kings of Do
We finished before we begun
No managerial restrictions

Driven by intense Fear
    of    discovery
        ignorance
        neglect
        losing

Living in a particular manner
    specific to personal aesthetics
Self    -customized
    -actualized
    -perpetrated

Confidence in Better Ways
    un-compromised continuity
    walks walked
    stealthily    efficient
            effective

The difference is why
this is just who we are
all    potential
    knowing
    superior

Less inherited than appropriated
Accounts up to date
We take what we are offered
but we know to manipulate the offer
before it is tendered

Judgments

Content of character
Color of skin
Tips of icebergs
Promises believed and promises brokered

Of brothership’s union
unbroken bonds of silent vows
through lifetimes independently passing
like the leaves of autumn

Ships on seas
Satellites in orbits
and strangers on busy city streets

All of this falling somewhere between
Strikingly random occurrences and
The sun’s daily rise
Lives intersected tar-to-feather

It starts with curiosity and awe
and grows into respect and love
Mutually beneficial partnerships
A lifetime memoranda of understanding

Postcards from South of Here

Constitution Day

Creativity is my purgatory of compulsion
Always existing between and around
ideas project deadline and cash payout*
(*cash or fame or recognition or any of the
standard markers that quantify how success plays)
It is a powerful addiction
without treatment never satisfying**
**(not even that very first time)
and immune to interventions or guiding principle steps
loops circles cycles revolutions
Journeys from Point A to Point A again
Groundhog Days of making always
the very same things over and over again and again
never stopping like the mail
boomeranging near misses of targets
kinetic and imaginary and always self-manufactured
Ever-present fears drowned in vats
of desperation drowned in hubristic tomfoolery
Fraudulent as the newest wardrobe choices of emperors
Like trickle-down democracy and equality
evenly distributed despite lineage or account balances
The Constitution is a binding legal contract
Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat.

What is a Life

At its core and its essence
The problem The ailment The issue
the facilitator of thought and behavior
is a perverse and profound loneliness
however fickle and complexly conditional

Long left to neglect
Self-diagnosed and self-treated
the reasons to live or die for
Adrift we cling desperately to 
the slippery hull of a capsized dinghy

Resilience is a trait shared
among leaders and survivors
Beings built for the rigors
of roller coaster sciences
with all the wounds and none of the gore

A quality to this life
Motivations manufactured and feared
We all pursue different things
We all purse things differently
Success is a different stop for everyone

Very tall ladders climbed slowly over years
fatiguing and sometimes rewarding
But now our lives whoosh down steep chutes
Too quickly Too anticipatory Too frightening
and suddenly relevance is evaporated

The Faces of Strangers

It is ultimately essential
for an artist to exist entirely
–at important crossroads–
in deep spaces where the artist
is convinced finally and fully
Absolutely convinced this time
that no one cares anymore
about their precious gifts

No longer audiences
to pamper indulgences and whims
Humility-feigned egos left un-stroked
Vast and empty of contexts,
Attention diverted from contexts,
all lost in the clarity of self
The truth may stand a chance
when it's shouted into the faces of strangers

No one knows No one cares
how compulsions trigger
fads eras and delineation
Discrete and finite
Like the stars seen and not
always present in tiny corners
of active and historic cognition
Where we are hardly ever alone

What remains may hold a certain clarity
Of tone Of Spirit Of depth
vast distances reduced
intuitively enveloped warm and fuzzy
sometimes lost
sometimes forever
But no longer does the destination matter
when you’re already there

Camera

Of Must and Have (As Should or Could)

And blend urge and reflex
the feelings of must and have
what motivates
what differentiates
What drives us past our theories
and onto mountain peaks

Compulsions are those
things we cannot control
Prototypes are those
things we demonstrate
Ideas resolving as should or could
propelled instead just because

9/10/13

21 Cameras of #C&P

[you may click them, it's okay]

"I'm A Disgrace"*

Such turmoil today eating from the insides
An odd combination of opposites
propelling and paralyzing 
both ends in different directions

Being completely splattered over the walls
ceiling and floor
Six surfaces covered with everything
in uniform distribution

And being completely and perfectly
and safely at home centered
Balanced floating in peaceful comfort
Satisfaction enveloped warmly

A garden hose at full pressure
a text to dear friends to remember
that it's all just going to be okay
Adding caffeine to pyre

The questions arise about survival
the answers are ever-evident
Yes, survivors survive
and live to a million says the universe

When there is an absence of answers
Lowly time to probe meanings
Sometimes the best offense is
to retreat to familiar fortresses

*title borrowed from Eleanor Friedberger

Family Man 2013

[you may click them, it's okay]

[slideshow version]

The Nostalgia of the Season

The Day The Minotaur Died

The day the minotaur died
I had dreamed I had two book readings
scheduled for the same day
and there was stress and anxiety
about getting to these places on time

The first reading I was to follow
a black woman poet who
performed in that "slam poetry" style
where people snap their fingers
and yell stuff like "c'mon!"

I thought that I was wholly ill-prepared
to follow such an act but decided
that my work my life's work
could stand on its own and 
in stark contrast "c'mon!"

Keith Kroken hosted the second reading
at a chain bookstore
I remember wondering if Keith
remembered me from the
days long faded into the past

I looked at my written materials and thought
I could do better for these people
by telling better anecdotes or 
providing some emotional range
But I just read an excerpt from my book

Later I was pushing a book cart loaded
with all sorts of books through an office
hallway with Keith Kroken
Instead of carpeting the office floor was
covered with ankle-high grass and weeds

It was really difficult to move that book cart
I was pulling it through the office corridor
I looked back at Keith and noticed that
he had become Morgan Freeman
Then I woke up to a new day

On this same day I talked with a man called Zoom
about a man called Josh
and about the ethics of geriatric suicide
At about the very same time that day became
The day the minotaur died