My Third Aphorism: An upbuilding tautology?

A question that arises for philosophers is whether ought implies can. It can hardly seem worth remarking in such a philosophical context, since the premises obviously contain so much more than (or at least exactly as much as) the conclusion, what I will remark here: If you ought to do it and you can do it, well, then, you damn well ought to do it.

Long, Lazy Lists

read me no more bedtime stories

through which I may achieve noesis

of the variegated strands of psychosis,

this your tender attempt

to list me drowsy.

lover, list me drowsy no more

for as in summertime I despised

rows of bodily diseases, put winter-wise

I become a hypochondriac

of the soul, yours, mine.

When I Grow Young

In a land where the people grew younger instead of older, would the steady, contented lovers question each other thusly: Will you still love me if my beard grows wispy and I begin writing my thoughts in a secret journal? Will you still love me if I become unreliably tossed about by wild passions?

Deep Thoughts, With Your Own Poetaster

Here's my first stab in a new genre: the aphorism.

When we consider the question of whether virtue can be taught, this mirrors a question that we consider less often: Is a true seduction possible?

A Cursing Poem

I'll be bound like the Fenris wolf

since you, be bound like you.

I'll be chopped into three firm bits

since you, be chopped in two.

I'll find solace in a brothy soup

if you find hope in stew.

I'll gulp from mouth of the gutters

since you sip drops of dew.

I won't finish the whole damn puzzle

if you don't have a clue.

When it bounces off me like I am rubber

may it stick to you like glue!

I said 'glue', you clueless two bit stewed dew sipper!

The Cold Snap

world, where is your hats?

may we all grow grimmer

and slimmer and harder

as our ears become colder,

the flecked sky grayer.

they tossed them in the air weeks ago!

says the world.

well, then, when they all come down

may the hat of another

plop on the head of each

to each's warm, fat delight.

Scattered Thunderstorms

He watches me
like he watches the weather.
Will I tend myself
as I would a garden?

What is Simple

The simple present is not so simple,

the simple past less so.

With the simple present we can say

not simply what is done now, once,

but what is carried out habitually.

O, sing the praises of the simple present

and the eternity contained therein!

Magnify its capacity to express the unity of what is,

what was and what is to come!

We break bread together.

We have broken it, we break it,

and we go on breaking it without end.

If the simple present simply expressed

what is done once, would death lose its sting?

I eat a crabcake. I die.

So that the magnificence of the simple present

lies not in taking away the sting of death

but in giving us a tense with which to

voice our perplexity over it?

O, the paradox of the simple past!

What could contain more nostalgia than this tense,

able to express the end of an eternity?

It is able to express what was done habitually,

a happiness kept and known over and over,

a bliss that could be an ecstasy of routine.

It can express

a time ended, a lost life.

Its status as a tense suggests that this brokenness

is inescapable, enshrined in language.

That's the restaurant where we met up

after he got off work and where we ate pancakes.

That is the bed where we sweat and slept.

We sat in my wigwam on Tuesday afternoons.

In the evenings we jogged and wondered about where

we might holiday and what we might have for dinner.

Enoch walked with God 300 years before he was not

because he was taken by God.

Our ways are segmented ways, ways like worms.

A Plague of the Discarded

Why is there this trash on the wind?

In amongst the seagulls, the kites, the airplanes, the lady bugs

are napkins, newsprint, takeout menus, maxipads.

The wind blows across Lake Michigan

sweeping, equally, leaves and kleenex.

How are we subject to this plague

of the discarded?

We've all seen American Beauty

and we all know that scene

with the soaring, hovering, dipping

plastic bag. Yes, I know it was

a bad movie, but such a bad scene?

I mentioned it once, musingly, to a man

who never became my lover

before he never became that.

'That is America,' he said, 'a beautiful piece of trash

caught up by the wind.'

Had he spoken the cold, deep obvious

or the friendly false? I was young then.

That must be why I couldn't tell.

My own material culture, my history of the body

are different these days; still, from my sofa

where I watch the water and spy with terror the swarm of

white and whipping trash, the spectacle of air swimming grandeur,

I cannot fathom the cause, the speed, the elegance, the multitude,

the final resting place

of all this debris.