unobverse

Always a bridesmaid,
never a God. The left
doesn't know that the right
one is odd. Having always
believed
propaganda
reports, and taken it
all in the skirt or the shorts,

It's not too late to see
there is nothing between
right and wrong but opinion
and fact, and neither one

strong,
or sure,
even clean,  
but they're free.
So you might as well flip

out on me and back. The coin
in my pocket is tails,

but if you make the call?
Then we'll see.

definition

A soul
is the damage a body inflicts
on the spirit inhabiting it. What once
was so pure, perfect and featureless
has become as it grows mature,
and you grow into it, so much more
featureful - and less
pure: so how

does it fit?

Do you soar
above yourself, disdaining
this realm, or sink
beneath without care
or qualm, or just go

on and on, and on
and on

Snippets from the Diary of a Rogue Ad Man

When life gets you

down?

GO GATORADE. Gatorade
is like the tits on a nuclear squid.
You start sucking on that glowing
ambrosial nectar, suddenly it turns

your whole DNA crazy
like you're breathing underwater,
staining your bike shorts with black ink
and fighting crime. One time,

I got thrown out of a top advertising firm
for the boldest pitch I ever had the balls
to put over the plate. It went wild, but boy

did I turn a few heads on the way out
the door as I was escorted by an honor guard
of security's best and brightest! When I hit

the street,

I had a Snickers
to recoup my wits
and stoke the flames a bit. Packed with peanuts,
Snickers Is A Motherfucker®. Thus fortified

by that sweet hit of chocolate, caramel
and a peanut crunch, I eased on down the road
with a heart as heavy as all the skies above.
It's true,

I had suffered a setback.

But I didn't actually work for the firm
anyway, and technically
they hadn't even invited me inside.
So I counted it pretty light in the loss column

- while each of the heads that I'd turned
with my bold presentation was an undeniable win.

I was sure to have better luck at the next firm. My next stop

would not even know what hit it.

meditative

These times are so frightening for all of us
what with what's going on in the news
Oh, didn't you see? Better run,
look now. It's worse than

you even can think

trust me

"the final possibility"

Are you the helpless twig
before my powerful storm?
But I don't want that.
I want you mighty oak after.
Are you the gentle slave
of my every wish? But
I don't want that.
I want your mind: Modern.
Womanly. Implacable. Are you

every thing I want in a woman,
ever? I don't want that. You need
to challenge me. GROW UP, woman. Tell
culture and media and peer group
fuck off! Time for you to call
shots. Finally, what I want,
babe. Ace this! Moment is
yours. You got it you know it
for real you know. Thank me

by BLOWING MY MIND

what empathy is

Empathy is not
illusion.

It’s imagination. It’s not hard
to hear words like hooks,
tearing and caught in a voice
you love, to look into eyes
lit with rage and tears - it’s not hard

to imagine yourself in the same place.
You aren't,
but you are.

It’s hard not to be
Wishing you could be
there in the same place
they are, to help them fight,

to pull them out.

Aching with hopeless rage yourself,
that you can’t be! That you can’t help.
Not really help. Not help what’s wrong.

But you’re here, now. With them, at least.
At least you can grasp their arm, their hand

as you both hold on. You can pull for them,

even if you can’t
pull them out.

Pull on
Pull through
the best you can do,
which is pitiful to you.

You feel next to useless,
but you hold on
for whatever it can mean
to them right now,

to have you here,
when they're so much in need.

You can be here for them,
even if you can’t really join them
in the horrible place where they are.
It’s so hard not to be able to.

It isn't hard, empathy.

Just the hardest thing
in the world, maybe. You tell
yourself you’d gladly suffer yourself,
rather than see them go through this

with you helpless to help. And no probably,

it wouldn’t be "gladly" that you'd do it.
But given the choice, you really would choose.
To be there, if only you could.

Empathy is no illusion.

You’ve been through thirty-two flavors of hell
yourself, and it’s pretty damn faint

if you can’t imagine yourself now, where they are.
How it feels, what they’re going through. Especially when

they just told you

every bit of how it feels.

Especially when they made every word tell,
especially as you reel from the hits.
Empathy’s not illusion.

It’s just imagination.
It’s just a very small

amount
of imagination.

Not even a leap! Not when
you’ve been there yourself,
or places as bad. Not when
it’s someone you love.

It’s one small step.

So real you wish you didn't have
to take it.

But there's no way in hell
you won't.

people love "authenticity"

Why do people love "authenticity"?

Is it just
their whole lives through
they've always
heard the word applied so positively,
to some thing

that can't be otherwise
explained
itself? Some deep simplicity:

It is itself,

and true to some tradition of itselfness
it exemplifies,

others can't: others try.

This is the what
you'll have to find,
or you'll never know why
what you've learned
refers to

Modern Man (Theme Song)

Modern Man
can do any thing
with the strength of seven billion

and gathering,

With the understanding, in modern terms
that gender being cultural fiction and all,
or so we've learned
so we can see
that Modern Man is you
and me

AND
TIME IS NOW!
THE MOMENT OURS
DON'T KNOW WHAT'S NEXT?
YOU KNOW WE CAN!

IT'S FINALLY
IT HAD TO BE
HERE COMES THE DAY
IT'S MODERN MAN!

Modern Man's
got active blood
and etherwaves and satellites
It's learning exponentially
It's learning that

it's not enough

to get it right
by increments
takes guts and blood
and time and sense
and money spent

AND
TIME IS NOW!
THE MOMENT OURS
DON'T KNOW WHAT'S NEXT?
YOU KNOW WE CAN!

IT'S FINALLY
IT HAD TO BE
HERE COMES THE DAY
IT'S MODERN MAN!

We just found out the greatest news:
that we control the climate now!
Without our even trying to!
Or soon we will - now we've found out.

What we can change: We can control.
Now that we know - it just
takes knowing how.

And knowing how
has, by degrees, been
pretty much our specialty
- so easily! our knowing goes.

Check out our cars and phones,
and clothes!

AND
TIME IS NOW!
THE MOMENT OURS
DON'T KNOW WHAT'S NEXT?
YOU KNOW WE CAN!

IT'S FINALLY
IT HAD TO BE
HERE COMES THE DAY
IT'S MODERN MAN!

epic interlude with minor exposition

The mighty she-warrior sheathed in tight
and flowing dragonsilk, stood

jutting out like a rock
outcropping,

to overlook

nothing: the hugely-shifting

mountainous drifts of colored glass
sand,

so softly bright,

all that remained of the storied
land
of bottles,
long since upended,
their contents drained, and sheathed

her sword. A

scimitar, technically
surpassed in excellence
by no known blade, forged
in the heart of a lesser star
of a now-obscure reality
show, who had turned
blacksmith after all

his legendary royalty
checks dried up, and only

surrendered the sword
to her,
after much sly banter.

It seemed like ages ago

Now
Her sheaths
both of leather and dragonsilk
were stained by the blood
of her enemies' friends

it's the closest she's ever come

to revenge.

Looking out and down, dully
across the dunes, duly-glittering

as the moon slid up, and off of them like dew

She knows about
what she always knew:

She has not yet gone too far,
and she has yet
much too far

to go.

Before she's through

body anger

body anger,
lately.

The pain,
the falling apart
isn't great, but I can see

or imagine from all stories told
that it's going to be.

It's going to be great.

And oh, the rue and the irony then,
over all the times that I doubled
in tears, laughing at old people

doubled in pain, unable to do
what they'd always done, unable to use
what they'd always used, and unable to save
the smallest part of respect that they'd gained

in a lifetime of labors, trickling lost
down invisible drains. What fun,

after all
that has happened to me,
it will happen to me. I guess
It's deserved.
For making up lies

just a few lines up -
About how I laughed.

For whatever it's worth
I never enjoyed my youth,
not once, at such an expense
while it's flown half past

and now,
knowing I never again
may get the chance, I look at myself

and begin to laugh

humanity more than God itself"

"I love
humanity more than God itself"
I declared, satisfied
and pretty sure

I was saved

by ambiguity, there.
As I always seem to be.
I cannot tell a lie,
in some sense
- no matter how wet

the cherry sap

might drip from the ax
behind the next tree.

In defense of hypocrisy

People who cry "hypocrisy"
are the ones offended by the fact
that others don't even want to be
self-righteous - a game they all think
they're so good at. They say, they see

"First women say they hate being hit on
and then they flirt!" or

"First Dempublicans hate Repocrats
doing that - then they do it!"

As if all of them say it, or hate it,
or do it.

As if saying it's bad could make doing it
worse.

I think that's it. Their self-righteousness

is a nasty, sarcastic, cynical pose. They believe

it is only believing its wrong
that can make an act wrong. As if

in a world without clothes, we would all
quite naturally become prudes.

As if it's a curse to be able to choose, if
we also say why we choose?

As if the worst is to even presume
we can know why we choose, or say why we do.

What offends them is that you can tell right from wrong,
at all. Not any amount of the wrong you do.

The sin is to tell.

The sin is to say that there's anything wrong to do.

Well I guess we're all sinners then. Big surprise?
Not so much. But we're better off able to tell, I judge.
And we're better for hearing the arguments, to decide

for ourselves,
in consequence,
which of them make sense.

We feel our way up by touch.

And sometimes judge poorly, do badly, do wrong.
Do the very damn thing that we knew all along,
and said as much: it is bad to do.
But at least,
to be able to know all along.
At least to accept
where we have gone wrong. And confess

to each other, come clean. Try again,
and tarnish anew.

Instead of complaining, in rich, dripping tones
at any who dares to suggest to you
there are things that can stain us at all,
or that we could amend, or atone
where we fall.

To say there are things we should try not to do.
It's offensive to them, to hear this
from you, or from anyone else
who they know is wrong.

Which is perfectly naturally, everyone.

You must practice perfection or not
preach at all! Say these bright Pharisees
of high dudgeon and moral appall.

The doctor whose practice consists in advice
took a hypocritical oath, since he smokes!
But he tells others not to smoke!

That's not right! That's not nice!

Yes, he knows it's not right.
So he tells you it's not, you dope.

Make up your mind, hypocrite,
imbecile:

Do you,
or do you not want a light?

At the end of your rope,
you can hang, or mope, or swing
as you please. You can say what is right
or is wrong, you can say why you choose. Yes,
even to me. For my part, I can tell you
what's right from wrong, myself.

We can both compare notes,

easily, in bottles or staves
and drink to intoxication, in time

to the music it makes
where we disagree.

For who are we, anyway?

To tell right from wrong?

You are you, of course.

I'm me. Who else?

If you don't mind my asking.

And if it's important, what matters most
to you, why wouldn't you tell?

Afraid, to be hung by your own decree?

Charge! Try, be acquitted
as best you can

of hypocrisy.

limits of conception

perhaps the worst conceivable thing
would be falling asleep in the light
of God's love, and waking to find
it had all been a dream.
I say perhaps
the worst conceivable
partly because who knows
what conceivable things one may
conceive at some later point,
to disturb one's peace, or
dreams, or waking serenity,
which one has never had
in the first place, and partly
because I'm not quite sure
it's conceivable at all. I mean,
going to sleep in the light
of God's love, and waking to find
it was all a dream? What the hell
does either part of that mean?
Perhaps it's a mistake
to think one can conceive it
at all. In which case
it could not be the worst
conceivable. Anyway, one feels
one could always do worse
than just what's real

usual sci-fi gloss

A lot of people fear me
because of how easily intimidated
they are. But when pressed
and pressed hard,
they admit:

the truth of it is,
I'm such a thoroughly
admirable and stainless
human being.

They just didn't want
to admit it at first

because it seemed wrong
to them some how,

that one guy

could have it all: brains,
minds, hearts, hands, STAVES,
CUPS AND SWORDS! It's like

I'm a walking Deck of Fortune,
sometimes, like Rick Deckard
at the start of Blade Runner, speaking
his easy patois to the noodle guy, everybody
after him 'cause he's always on the CASE - next
thing you know,

some huge origami gaffe is misconstrued
as a unicorn dream hint, and people start

saying the guy's a robot. But fuck that
no, he's not. he's
ALL MAN.

And I know what that's like,
as people will readily concede
when pressed.

consequitur

Consequences are immense. The only things

that hold us to.
Potentially, and make
us great, I guess. If we accept

they do.

Novel

There's nothing left of this life
I want to live, sometimes
except
there is more to experience. Even if
it's the same as was previous
in experience.
There are more
different people
to touch, I guess
to touch, with life
with light, with whatever

I have

to touch them with?

There is more of that.

There is more of it.

I am ready to go, you know
I have done enough, but

I can see there is probably more
to do.

It won't be new,
but to someone else,

it might be good
to do.

For them

And I never did give
a fuck
about something new.

Or did I? No,

oh well

Amen.