Bakunin Bokonon

Every time I see a quote by Bakunin 
I think it's from Bokonon. So I'm like 
damn that's a pretty sweet dude most 
times, but he sure gets grumpy, too

When I discover my mistake, inevitably
I always reflect on how different Cat's Cradle 
would be with this jarring note. All those
characters embracing Bakunin instead. 

Imagine 
surrounded by warm, frozen death 
well past the end of the world, 
sky filled with tornados -  
on a petty little island
where fate left you stranded, 
you encounter Mikhail Bakunin: 

the founder of collectivist anarchism,
frozen solid and covered with frost
with his tongue sticking out 

killing time (Reichenbach Falls reverie)

Killing time,
looking down
from abyssmal heights
of the rarest air, he was struck
by the shape and tone of the
rainbows made, in the vertical
maelstrom mist of spray. He observed,
as he always did, the rocks

upon which they played. "I believe,"
he let slip, uncharacteristically aloud,
"I foresee a rather excellent quarry
down there, one day."

don't love me I'm over

No more to see here 
Baby, please go home 
I thought I could love you 
but now we're alone,

I realize you're such
lonesome company. 

Oh misery you, 
Oh misery me. 

So cruel, is love. 
When you're over something
that was barely a gleam
from a dream, never seen 

Don't love me, not-darling
I think we bring out
the worst in ourselves
Without any help 
from each other. 

I thought
that I could be the one
you could need. 
But all that I want 
is for this not to be, 
unless you could remake 
you and me 
to become what we know 
now this can't be. 

assistant vs. assailant

The difference, you ask? An assailant
is basically an assistant who assists you
in getting assailed, i.e. attacked. Unlike

a traditional assistant, who takes direction
from you and performs whatever tasks
assigned, an assailant is typically self-supervising
and assails you whether or not you required any
assistance in that area. Or indeed, assistants.

Now here’s where it gets murky. An assistant,
you pretty much have to hire. Now and then
because of your stature (whatever that is) you
might acquire a volunteer or intern or whatever
to help you, but most often you have to strike
a bargain: the old time-and-effort for pay gag.

Deal struck, they begin the assistance you craved.
Periodically, you pay them. And that’s where it gets
murky - sometimes, you may pay your assailant, too.

HUH?

Well, it’s basically so they discontinue the job
they’re doing. And yet, this is no sure go-by.
Some assailants (operating along the volunteer /
intern / docent model) do it for no pay!

How was the assailant engaged, though?
That’s interesting. If we can figure out how
assailants are engaged, maybe we can figure out
how to avoid engaging this or that one. Maybe you
provoked them? I’m not saying that makes
their nonconsensual assistance
in the matter of your bodily harm

(or anyway, roughing-up) excusable - in fact,
try the police! See what they think. Technically
assailant is a black market position. The cops
frown on such jobs. You may be able to run them
afoul of the law! I have no idea what you said to them,
but insofar as it was probably not, “Hey, need a little
help, here. Could you assail me?” - chances are
whatever you said, they may have overreacted
or misconstrued what you wanted.

And maybe you didn’t even say anything!

That’s the messed-up trick with some of these
self-supervising types. They act on their own initiative
- which can be a good thing! Ever had an assistant
who never did anything except and unless you tipped
them off? But when one of them takes it into their head
to assail you, that’s trouble if you don’t take a firm hand
and keep a cool head.

Sometimes even if you do.

In a worst-case scenario, sometimes we can only do our best.

That’s the main difference, though. An assistant can help you
with a lot of things. An assailant, typically just the one. Injury.
And that’s hazardous. Injury unchecked has been known to prove

fatal.

It’s your job, ultimately, to be able to tell the assistants
from the assailants - and to not ride the one so hard
as to turn it into the other. Which does happen. 

It can happen either way. 

cotton and gauze

Did I come too close
in your time of need?
Does it put you off, now
knowing me? 
Did you show too much, 
and in memory cringe? 
Do I bring back bad times, now?
When confessions have turned to sins, 
sometimes we lose faith.
Or sometimes it's just
an embarrassment. 

Sometimes we must travel apart for days,
for weeks, for years 'til we find ourselves
and wince. 

Wherever the other is then 
will be hard to tell. 
We may want to reach out and see.

We'll want
to make mends to the warp and weft 
of such symphony, once just playing itself,
and find out how much is there, and left.
And whether it could again comfortably be.   
 
Well from my side
at least, the whole thing is.
I never could change my heart
once turned to best. 

Anyway, so you know.
I don't believe the above at all.
There is too much behind 
and beneath and ahead 
of depth sounded, heights scaled, 
and cushion to break 
any kind of fall.

Of light and direction
by which we've led
and followed in places,
by swapping leads
without changing at all,
except growing up. 

In thought put to words
so artfully sharp it bleeds
and breathes, and it lives
without need. Gratuitously, 
as it always does.

However apart we may walk,
pretty sure it will be for some 
pretty, sufficient cause - 
since any would do,
far as I can see through
this world of gauze. 

and the wisdom to know

I believe in your mind,
the force of your personality
and the excellence and resiliency
of your character. You have it

Well within you to spot, catch
and master every degree of this
shit that is in your control,

and wisdom

to weather of degree of it that isn't.
But not necessarily the wisdom
to know the difference.

That part's fantasy. 
Nobody actually has
the wisdom to know the difference.

And anyway, it's to our benefit
we don't. Because sometimes
the difference winks.

calm alarm

Everything's detected
In the moment is fine
People are respected 
and the sun's gonna shine
Predators and bullies 
making scarce, no fear
Disasters and catastrophes 
- sound the all clear! 

Sound the calm alarm 
Calm alarm 
Sound the calm alarm 

When that alarm is blaring 
you can hear it everywhere 
Then you know it's okay-fine 
breathe easy-free from care, yeah 
Freeing up attention 
from defense and distress 
to focus on what's worth it,
or your very best guess 

Sound the calm alarm
Calm alarm 
Sound the calm alarm 
When the calm alarm's
going on and on 

Well that's when life's for living, 
and the worth is on tap. 
The purpose and the meaning 
come to smack you like an ass-slap
It could go on forever, 
and you'd call it just as well.
'Cause you forget the number 
you're supposed to call to tell them: 

Turn that thing off! 
This is an emergency 
You don't know how to stop
the siren's call of peace 
The calm alarm 
is always in the background, now 
Might as well give into it,
settle down somehow 

Calm alarm 
Calm alarm
Sound the calm alarm

When the calm alarm's
going on and on 

That's how you know everything's
okay-fine you're living in
the moment might as well
let it shine.   

radical equipoise

her foul self: 
relevant.
Taking on a false move
for a purpose to. If only everybody 
could back me up, I'd be like:
Get out of here, I got this!
But without that support,
I stand bold and bowed, 
ready for any amount 
of her bullshit. 

the inheritance

People's kids 
on Instagram 
grow up so fast 
because they can.

The world they sit inheriting
is weird. But they shall understand
it as it seems, as it appears. 

Like we found ours. 

About that weird.

She gave me the look

And I go la lala la lah,
kissing as the ocean 
lovin' like wet sand 
all these things about her, 
tasting like a juvenile scam, 
and I tell her so. Just so, 
and I go la lala la lah,

And she goes nana nana nah. 
She gave me such a look,
I went what in the world -
is that your eye color? It's like
someone wrote a song 
and got it all wrong, 
except for the hook

less askew

So many things I have to do
So many ways I have to try 
So many lives I could yet live, 
Only one death I'll get to die. 

The timing and nature of that are key. 
If I knew the timing, I might postpone.
If I knew the nature, I might avoid. 
Since I don't, perhaps

I'd best stay home. 

But that could be all death wants of me. 
It's just what death might expect me to do. 
Death could easily then know where to look, 
and find me at home. More or less askew
 

new tune

Something went wrong inside of me. 
Now every time I do that thing 
how I'd normally do, it's reminding me:
Perhaps the old ways are not best, for you. 

Reminded, I twinge in wince and cringe, 
adjusting procedure in course-correct 
to the newest best way I have to do, 
in a move to bypass this training wreck. 

We accumulate tips and tricks like this, 
as by tics and degrees we go doddering. 
Adaptive and strong, we are well-taught things,
drawn taut and intent on each new-pulled string
as we bring ourselves ever more cautiously
to whatever this dance of ours shall bring. 

subreality

all around underground
I can make a shoop sound
people up above gonna 
wonder what the shoop was
I'm not gonna tell them 
secret and invisible 
people in the world be like
"everybody's miserable" 

I am well below them 
they can be above me 
knocking them for attitude 
is very much beneath me 
gratitude is easy
all around underground 
snug in subreality 
I can make a shoop sound 

dead friends can stay

Every time I turn around to find you dead 
in the room, lolling about in unnatural attitudes
(but you always had one of those) (now it's 
plural), posed and stiffening at the table, or 
the desk, or the couch, or on the bed, I reflect

how I never saw your corpse. It tore my heart 
out. No one told me, I heard after the funeral. 
Your friends were never mine, and I guess 
they felt I had left the year before, and 
was uninterested or uninteresting. We 
always got along with your friends, 

but I must have not occurred. Now 
at random times, hi. You. I remember you 
so well, not like this but alive. Breathing, 
gathering strength for some charge. 

All charges fail, all causes crack, 
since you have died. I was not there 
to have your back. And it was not 
the kind of death my life so given 
could distract. So welcome friend.
You always were. Stay anywhere 
you wish or like. It's strange that 
you should haunt me now. 

But you were always strange. 

So's life.  

peas: canned or frozen?

The way I see it, fresh peas is best. 
In a recipe that calls for peas? You can go 
canned, and probably no demon will rape 
you in both eye sockets leaving you seeing 
red for life, or you can go frozen and probably
everyone who looks at you every day for years
thereafter will let you pass by without spitting.
They won't even know, probably -
unless they saw. 

But fresh to my mind is best. Fresh peas 
have been waiting there fresh for you 
all along, to discover! On the stalk, 
or in a pod, or still part of the pea
plant itself, being fed and nourished 
by arcane vegetable means. Probably 
whatever part became the pea came 
out of the ground that way: fresh. Before 
the flower and the bee, that part was part 
of the plant, waiting. All we had to do 
was wait with it, for it, to get ripe 
and ready! Ready to can! Ready 
to freeze! But you can, 

if you try,
or if someone lets you 
(and nobody hollers, "FREEZE!"),

swoop in on the ripe pods and bolt!
Before the scumbag can have his 
canned and frozen say. Making off 
with fresh peas, hollering "Watch it! 
I'm a pod person!" to deter pursuit 
and curious onlookers. Clearly, 

you've made your decision by then: FRESH, 
and I won't criticize your methods. Prepare 
the dish, obedient to instruction for best 
results, and as to how many it serves? 

Well, how many peas were in how 
many pods you manages to get?

Probably less than the dish calls for, 
or the diners expect, but cheer up. 

Most people don't even like peas. 

God in Name only

People all worship this alien 
It does nothing precisely as advertised,
which includes everything in the universe. 

One can't help suspect that somebody lied, 
but they lied in the Name.
And that Name has pull.

So any who speak it with confidence 
can speak for It, whatever they will.
No fear of any correction.
No need of defense. 

Advertising is our job. Apparently,
and we do it well. If with not much
sense.

Whatever the alien has to say,
we'll have so much more time 
to hear out in hell. 

female speaking parts

Sometimes I can tell you pitch your voice low.
I'm not sure this has an intended effect.
In this play we script on the fly, on the go
and may someday mount, I refuse to bet. 
How better it is on this early stage 
to let us inhabit and stretch our roles 
as we strut and we fret. We signify sound 
by our eyes and ears, and your beautiful nose. 

I would not cast another actress for this. 
I am glad the Shakespearean fad has gone out 
for casting the boys in female parts. So cruel 
once their voices broke, no doubt. No female 
parts for you now, dude! Well I'm sure
those disposed made do enough. But for you,
I am glad you have signed up to play.
I think you're the only one up to snuff.  

The language is evolving, even as we speak.
The roles we aren't playing at all do, too. 

It's as if method acting were not for freaks 
who don't know what persons like this should do. 
Who prod the director for motivation. 
Who nag them for tics and for limps, hunchbacked 
while they drag a game leg around the stage 
attempting to be so real with that. 

remarkably unmentionable

my favorite sexual fantasy 
is really too deep to mention here. 
It lives in a decently dog-dug hole 
by the base of the tree that roots in fear!

As all trees do, if you dig such things. 
The subconscious is secretly full of fears. 
You must try to make friends with it, somehow
- or, "More than friends," if consent is clear.  
So of course I am overcompensating.
I become all bluster and brash boast brag 
of the thrashings I hand out, dull routine - 

a blasé trick to pull, you slag! But the truth is
I'm petrified to touch that thing; its specific, 
sheer relative size makes me wonder where 
my sportscar is - and dread the color
it will be when it arrives.

Just kidding.
I made all that up, just now.
My made-up mind is full
of such wank and crank
and chaff and guff 

and I fear 
that I really have you to thank.
Which I shall
forbear to do, my dear. 
Rude gratitude, best left unsaid. 
In my favorite sexual fantasy, 
I am thanking you 
'til your cheeks glow red

the fishloaf miracle

The witnesses to it
have died. An implicit warning 
often unremarked, to all who'd wish
to witness miracles: are you willing
to pay the price for your agog 
astonishment? 

But let's take it as writ. The loaves,
the fish, pretty much as advertised.

Let us accept this.

The weird, creepy fact
we're left with is: some
of those fish were dead,
but had never even been born.
Spawned. They'd never so much drawn
one sweet wet breath of sea. Those loaves
being broken - had never been baked.

Technically I think that all counts as vegan. 

Which means once again, whether it's 
separation of church and state of veganism, 
Jesus Christ invented it. The guy 

is way too overlooked 
his real contributions lost 
in the miracles 

whose witnesses, unsuspiciously 
credulous and believing it all,
all suspiciously - or is it 
"conveniently"? 

die

train kept

I'm afraid of trains but 
it's mostly because 
we always fear 
what we can't understand. 
I know I could lose
my fear of trains,
if I build a train 
with these two hands. 
But then I suspect 
I'd have to make tracks. 
For what is a train 
without the rails,
and the ties between? 
We all understand that. 

I fear 
I shall not 
pursue this dream. 

cheers

My heart hasn't stuck in my throat 
for years. But when I see you, 
my brain gets stuck 
in my mouth
and cheers. 

fortifiction

We're lost in a trap 
we both have built,
where "Do as you 
will" is the source 
of the wilt. And 
there's no looking 
out, no going back. 
At least from in here, 
with impenetrable walls, 
we're defended from all 
imaginable
attack. 

the diver

From the bottom
of the heart, shot up
ricocheted off the top
of the head, dropped
down and bounced

like a diver sprung trippingly
off the tongue, displayed
through the air
with a plashless flash,
the sounds have pounced.

salt and fuel

I shovel 
the macaroni salad 
into my mouth with the fork, 
holding the bowl tilted
more and more towards 
almost upside-down; the tines
scraping musically on ceramic. 
Searching the last tube, 
last piece of onion 
and olive. I kind of can't 
wait to chew, but
this 
is going to be
the last bite. It counts
for everything.

< 3 a tree

I have always felt a will in trees
that was good. A woody will, striving
upwards, spreading out to breathe and
catch the light, pulling in long slow drinks
from the ground. It seems like it would be
a beautiful life of mostly peace. There would
be stress, momentary or periodic attacks of insect
infestation, getting in and boring away, drilling 
hot, busy tunnels through what had grown sound -
or disease, blights and droughts. But I feel like the tree
knows its own strength, and spends not a moment in worry.

It can feel what’s happening. It doesn’t sweat the small stuff,
knowing its own size, and how deep its roots, and how good
are air and light, and how well-made and shaped it's striven
up to be in good, woody will.

I would rather call trees wise than intelligent.

I think we can expand our idea of what constitutes intelligence,
but we should be cognizant in doing so that an amoeba’s, a tree’s,
even a dolphin’s intelligence is beyond our understanding - and
probably markedly qualitatively unlike ours.

I advocate humility before nature, and oppose a drive for gathering
into sameness. Which is not what you’re doing! At least, I didn’t
get the impression it was. In interaction with humans, I advocate
humility before nature, and an astonished recognition that the other’s
intelligence is probably beyond our understanding, and remarkably
qualitatively wild and - not “untrammeled,”

but perhaps trammeled
by different things than ours.
Home-grown trammeling factors,
grown up in ad hoc interlock of urges
and outcomes, stimulus and response.
Understanding how sh!t works from
one constrained point
of pluck and wonder:

the old battle.

Please consider other views than mine and yours.
In particular, please consider views of trees, if you can.
They can’t see, but I bet their leaves have a sense of light
superior to visual. It’s just that there was never any benefit
to visually-resolving approaching threats. They can’t run!

So they stood firm, and determined to outlast all fires
and gnawing squirrels, pecking birds rat-tat-tatting. “I am
a good place for such things. My strength is more
than any creature will ask of me.”

< 3 a tree

"Ask Away"

Much as I know
I got to learn
Candles were made
with two ends to burn,
and the questions come,
and the answer’s there.
I know it’s somehow,
some who, somewhere 

So ask away
I ask away
If you don’t know,
and you know you don’t?
Then ask away.
Why wouldn’t you ask?
Afraid of letting
your ignorance go?
Or afraid of letting
your ignorance show

Much as I learn,
the questions come.
There’s questions between
every answer’s lines
There’s questions behind
every answer’s eyes
And questions arise
from an answer’s lies.

So ask away
I'll ask away
If you don’t know,
and you know you don’t?
Then ask away.
Why wouldn’t you ask?
Afraid of letting
your ignorance go?
Or afraid of letting
your ignorance show

bridge
So I step out on the levy alone
I question the questionable, all year.
Like skipping stones, watching ripples glide
What more can there be to ask in life?

Much as I ask,
the answers come.
Not always the answers
I hoped or wished,
but if you go in asking
for what you hope,
you’re really not asking
for what it is. 

So ask away
I ask away
If you don’t know,
and you know you don’t?
Then ask away.
Why wouldn’t you ask?
Afraid of letting
your ignorance go?
Or afraid of letting
your ignorance show

breathless update

Another exchange
of blips through either. Another
cut of soul, shamelessly laid bare. Another
heart in throat leap, trusting that SHE KNOWS.
WHAT? Eh, I dunno, whatever's appropriate
to know, reasonably accurate to the facts, within
the scope of the overlap between the mutual
understandings we each mean to establish, and
to otherwise question the questionable, even
if one's standing to ask is idling curiously
by the curb while you or they loiter indecisively
nearby, unsure of whether to tug down the hem
of somebody's skirt. You could get picked up
for that in this town, and when they drop
the charges for lack of any sense
it's not going to break anybody's heart
or make the day's news any smarter.
By the time it hits the front page,
it'll be mustard from a street vendor's
over-sauced dog.  

dangerous, irrational warning

I'd worry about anyone
suddenly becoming
or revealing they are
way more into me than
I've had a chance yet to be,
into them.
That's irrational,
dangerous behavior
and it could hurt them. It's
unreasonable for anyone to
be way more into me than I them.
That's my fucking job, I know what
I'm doing there - do they? Because
I kinda tend to DOUBT IT. MOST DON'T.
Even I don't know what I'm doing technically,
no problem. I never do anything "technically," but
the difference is I DO IT, I do it ANYWAY, and it works. 

It happens to be my sweet move

And I am all the more in a position to say
"Are you sure? Because...that's an asinine stunt,
and a needless one for you, right? Let me do that.
It's my job."

Humanity only uses 2%

Human beings only use 2% 
of our body weight to think. 
It's 
enough. We 
can't expect more
from ourselves. If
the square-cube law
were repealed, perhaps
then we could have brains 
fully 100% of our prior body
weight. 

Would you be okay
weighing double 
what you weigh

now, though? Just 
to be able to use 100% 

or would you consider it 
vain?  

To have a brain as big 
as you are, finally? Get
the intellectual respect you 
deserve! It would be so huge 
outside the current bounds 
of your head, it's hard 

to imagine how you'd 
manage. Perhaps the double-you-up 
brain tissue could be spread throughout 
your body like fat cells, or in place of. 
As the transformation hits, you'd 
BALLOON UP, your mind racing 
with the entire collected thus-far 
knowledge state and fact-spate 
of humankind, which you'd just be 

sucking out of the air, basically. 
With your big-ass brain. 

Meanwhile though, sad myth 
it's not but an average fact. 
You, my dear, use only 2%

of your body to think. 
You know what would boost 
the percentage enormously? 

What if you cut off your limbs?