Everybody’s dead.
Freddy Mercury, David Bowie,
the whole thing.
I’m still alive,
but I’m not famous.
And even if I was, I’d have nothing much to say.
Everybody’s dead,
Abraham Lincoln and John Brown,
Bob Marley and his black mom and white dad,
JFK, MLK, RFK,
everybody all dead.
I mean sure I’m not dead,
but again I’m not famous
haven’t done anything exceptional
will die soon enough anyway.
We can complain about the country, but she’s our best hope. So let’s work on her–because we want a good place to go where we can meet our friends and laugh about the old days.
BW/AMW
Neun und neunzig Luftballoons,
als ich jung war du warst da.
Bin nicht mehr unendlich jung,
kenne dich auch gar nicht mehr.
Die verschiedensten Jahren
gehen doch vorbei und so muss
man gestehen, dass irgendwann–
Aber wer kann es ueberhaupt
irgendwie sagen,
so schrecklich ist das Gedanken.
So jung war ich damals
im daher leigenden Gegend
wo unsere schoene Unschuld liegt–
wir die damals jung waren.
Was sollen wir jetzt machen?
Wir sind nicht was wir waren
wir sind nicht was wir wollten
wir sind etwas ganz anderes
etwas damals unversehbares.
Grenzen der Menschheit
Wenn der uralte,
Heilige Vater
Mit gelassener Hand
Aus rollenden Wolken
Segnende Blitze
Über die Erde sät,
Küß ich den letzten
Saum seines Kleides,
Kindliche Schauer
Treu in der Brust.
Denn mit Göttern
Soll sich nicht messen
Irgendein Mensch.
Hebt er sich aufwärts
Und berührt
Mit dem Scheitel die Sterne,
Nirgends haften dann
Die unsichern Sohlen,
Und mit ihm spielen
Wolken und Winde.
Steht er mit festen,
Markigen Knochen
Auf der wohlgegründeten
Dauernden Erde,
Reicht er nicht auf,
Nur mit der Eiche
Oder der Rebe
Sich zu vergleichen.
Was unterscheidet
Götter von Menschen?
Daß viel Wellen
Vor jenen wandeln,
Ein ewiger Strom:
Uns hebt die Welle,
Verschlingt die Welle.
Und wir versinken.
Ein kleiner Ring
Begrenzt unser Leben
Und viele Geschlechter
Reihen sich dauernd
An ihres Daseins
Unendliche Kette
The stress of spirit in childtime shame
Is hard to fathom when no longer young.
The heart would care, but the mind looks for blame
or some excuse to hurry and be done.
Enjoyed by men alive but dead to joy.
Past reason hunting lonesome boredom’s pause;
Past reason hated, and thereby unknown–
unreal because we’ve got our certain laws.
Some children say some suppress memories
too scary bad big looming wrong to hold.
Others scoff and say no they don’t so please
no more confusing the easily sold.
You go down within till you hit the place
that hits you back, you spasm body face.
So who knows? And whatcha gonna do
about a hurt once diffuse
unknown but wide
and now compact
angry wounded howl
you could carry in a purse.
Stole some lines:
Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,
Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
Shall I compare you to a summer wind?
You lag more coolly and more flatly back:
Sunlight balloons and bursts dry airs much thinned
by cloudless carefree months adrift on slack.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
yet holds us still in stillness sweet as flight;
but you I cannot find within these mines
where working day on night we slip the light.
The summer brings her air and fairly spreads
clear peaceful vigor over land and sea;
we eat alone our daily mushy breads
by candles not seen by you or by me.
So long as we can breathe our friendship lasts:
the cords snuck past our lazy ass,
and now, we will or nay, they keep us fast.
Only one thing’s left–
to drop it all,
go back to start
learn ourselves again.
Stole some lines from this one by shakespeare:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
The people, you see,–they’ve lost the ability to talk to each other, to think and feel together; and so they sink together. The shared discourse has become a mind so divided against itself that it cannot form a coherent thought, make a meaningful choice, go anywhere any good.
Trump and his attempt to pawn off lies insults innuendos (meaningless confusing empty rhetoric), lack of knowledge and thought, and fearmongering as legitimate conversation is a symptom and–unless we see the illness and work to heal ourselves–a serious exacerbation.
Everything is not the same. We have to demand accuracy, honesty, and accountability–yes, from the politicians and the media outlets, but most of all from us, from us citizenry who have the privilege and duty of serving as the final check and balance against madness and corruption. We’d rather play genius pundits, scolds, and misty-eyed patriots, while not particularly considering the possibilities and their ramifications. But that’s a mistake; that’s where we go wrong.
Hillary Clinton is a legitimate choice and Donald Trump isn’t. This isn’t just about politics; it is about the fundamental question of how we as a nation think and feel together. We have to value honesty and accuracy, otherwise we have no coherent standard by which to make decisions. To compare Clinton’s honesty to Trumps is absurd. Polifact’s analyzed statements: Hillary straight-up true 56%; Donald Trump straight-up true 10%. Hillary is a politician; Donald just says anything. I guess, sure, we’d like to see higher numbers for Hillary too, but then again this is measured by statements that someone thought to doubt. Maybe a better heuristic would be the “false” and “pants on fire” categories: Hillary false 27%; pof: 6%; Donald false 88%; pof: 47%. She sometimes stretches past a reliable account; he just spews inane empty dishonest nonsense all day long. Hillary is not perfect but no one is, especially in the US political realm that we whinylazy citizenry have created over the last several decades. It requires serious intellectual and emotional dishonesty to imagine that Trump is more trustworthy than Clinton, or even that their trustworthiness is similar. Hillary is on the whole trying to play within a reality where accuracy and logic and fairness count for something; Trump isn’t. And that reality where accuracy and logic and fairness count for something: that is the only reality where a democracy has a chance.
What do you want citizens of the United States? Do you want a functioning democracy? Or do you want to fuzzy-think and fuzzy-feel and fuzzy-talk this country into another failed state, something like the admirable Putin presides over: unfree to the point of being scary, financially lose-lose (as in the wealth is unequally distributed and not overall healthy).
OK yes obviously! We want presidential candidates to be very honest. But how do we get that? We get it by creating a society and a public discourse that rewards honesty. And how does that begin? By having the honesty to see that Trump’s path is egomania nonsense: the way down into the shambles; and that Clinton–if we do what we have to do anyway, which is pay attention to politics and work to create a political environment that rewards honesty, clear debate, and sound policies–could have a really good, hard-working, thoughtful, just, productive presidency.
…
And so he walks around in the cool late-September air, talking to himself while the unaccountable lurch and gnaw of medialand wanders to and fro above and through his timid tired head.
Yes there is, and the difference is this:
You can work with Hillary. You can help to create a grassroots support for sensible, helpful, win-win policies, and Hillary will be so happy to work with you to realize your dreams of a safer, sounder, more vibrant, more interesting, more productive, more beautiful, more decent United States of America We All Rise and Fall Together And There’s No Escaping This Country Because It is Too Damn Big and Strong So You Better Buckle Your Seatbelt And Get To Work To Help Her Be Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, which–since wisdom and goodness are two aspects of one locomotion–means Healthy, Wealthy, and Kind.
You cannot work with Donald. You can watch while he shows off, while he confuses bullying for strength and dishonest innuendos for valid insights, and–through an incompetence so great and so self-satisfied that, since it seeks a great power that it has no right to, has actually become straight up evil (yes–incompetence, if proud and willful enough, can shade all the way into just flat out evil!)–hurts the country, the world, you, me, all of us. And for what? Because you wanted to flub through your thought-process and pretend that a basically decent human being who wants to help and is skilled enough to–with the help of a citizenry that pays attention and demands civil and sane and honest and clear debate–help a complex nation was not worth choosing over a buffoon, an egomaniac, a man who doesn’t know how to help because he’s not really interested in helping.
Pull it together America. If this happens, each of us is the guilty one, because this is pathetic. We nod about how grand it was that other generations fought for freedom and then we nod along while someone act like dictators who squelch opposition and ignore rule of law and common decency are cool and need to be emulated. Who can live like this?
I don’t know what to say any more. Trump is the opposite of what you need for a functioning democracy. Democracy requires that the society value honesty, fairness, clarity, decency. Trump’s movement is the debauched makebelieve that those things don’t exist–just say any ridiculous thing and I dunno I heard it I’m just saying–, or that no one has them anyway–hey, we’re all slimeballs here, I’m just the best one so I’ll slime the world and you’ll get all the goo my little lappheasants. That is not true: No one does honesty, fairness, clarity, and decency perfectly–they are things-of-degrees. But Hillary has so much more of them than Trump does. Why? Mostly because she at least believes in them and values them. Also, win-win is not only possible, it is the only way forward. Trump’s mix of bluster and bully only works for cheating a little short-time gain here and there–fine for scam artist, but quick collapse for a nation.
I’m so depressed by this. We’ve lost the ability to enjoy one another. Our entertainment is not wholesome. Are debates don’t try to find a plausible assessment and a workable path. We just loudmouth, cluck, and blame the politicians. It’s disgusting. It is corrupt–that’s what it is. It is easier to be heard if you say something corrosive, something stupid, something mean, than if you say something helpful, possible, wise, just, kind. Corruption is when it is easier to do evil than to do good. Our discourse is corrupt. I can’t even stand it anymore. And yet here is where we must make our stand; we must push this discourse towards honesty, decency, clarity, kindness, towards accuracy and workable win-win sustainable plans. Sulking about how rotten everything is just helps the rot to grow. Hmph.
And the price we pay.
American pride.
And the price we exact.
American pride
because we’re kinder than
the Nazis
the Ottomans
the British Empire even.
And we apologize for our errors
right our wrongs
start over again
Don’t we?
The rebels who have no causes
do no good.
The rebels with causes
spill the beans
fart the world
spit it out.
Who’ll take me home?
I’m thinking of a girl.
That’s all the further
I ever really get.
Who’ll stop my pain?
that’s all the more
my political aspirations
extend.
Who
loves
me?
And rubs me right.
That’s all the conversation
I ever come up with.
And it bores me.
So I ask for something deeper
from the forces that be
beyond the slosh and enclose
of some dark seawater
on the corner
of an old cement dock.
But I guess I’m lying again.
Got to stop lying all the time.
Fuck
fuck
fu
well
Jesus was a sailor
when he walked across the water
Jesus was a hero
when he turned a handful
of tired fish
into a feast
for the thousands.
Jesu was a king when
God called him one.
And now the friends and the followers
walk through the narrow tan salted passageways
brown crumpling bricks on all sides
and underfoot the smooth
gray worn hard cobblestones.
Who’s fault is it?
You think your son should be allowed
to travel
to see the wider world
which he’s anyway
sought
and taken the time
to fill out the paper work.
America
America
where next?
It would be better
for us
if it was
better for you.
But what’s better for you,
mighty ship of state?
You know I can’t leave what I’ve known
your people
your places
your ideas
your myths
and the sentiments that tear them down.
Come on
help me
help us
to really find
a newer world.
AMW
Missing an old friend
who I let drown on the side of the lake.
Could’a jumped in; coulda braved the cold,
probably would’a made it,
didn’t try.
Missing an old friend
who I spent on trinkets.
Could’a stopped.
Could’a turned it around.
Didn’t bother.
Missing you so much.
Wishing there was some way
to talk to you
and make it OK again
as it once was
before it left itself
got out of hand
turned the handle
sorry
sorry
and sorry
but who cares?
I talk to the edges
I call out the sides
I look into the nooks
I realize the nuances.
We’ll not talk again.
Jesus got a raw deal
and Moses should’ve known better.
Buddha could’ve talked sweeter
and Joan might’ve arched
with more finesse.
I can’t tell the way
I can’t steal the light
I can’t hear the night.
Who will
anyway
now that we’ve found her.
All these pretty beads
of water
reflecting the various
shapes
a cactus
a stone
a Christmas wreath.
You know I love that shit
and I gobble it
with or without
the Pope’s sayso.
You know I follow
those cliffs
bayous
bellybuttons
ringlets
with or without
some kind of
something tight.
You know I kill it
every night
by myself
in the dark
without a spark
always without
and never with
nothing
you know
I do it.
BW/AMW