I’m ground down in the Hurt like cigarette
in ash tray — broken over, splaying ash,
tobacco, paper white or splotched, and felt
(the filter). I’m a car forever crashed,
a promise I did not keep. Can’t even melt
completely: No, I linger like dried glue
from hot glue gun on craft-time table top.
I linger at the door, at all doors you
have ever lived behind. I just don’t stop.
I ring the bell. I knock. I call your name.
I say can you come out and play. I hop
to glimpse your window room. “Is it too lame
if I ask you to homecoming?”, the prom,
the Spring Fling, anything? I pace the lawn,
I smoke a cigarette and politely
walk down to the street where I smear it lightly
across asphalt made sacred by nearness
to you, my fragrant shelter. Little miss,
please watch me grind my hope out in the road
an inch from a curb that fronts your abode.
Oh, never mind! I seem to stay right here,
Expecting still your footsteps drawing near.

I seem to prefer sitting alone on the curb outside your home
to admitting you have chosen another way and I am here alone.
The Hurt was born before you.
It’s not your job to fix it.
The Hurt has torn me. But who
could should would lick this bit?,
so I might believe myself a man
while not feeling so very alone.

I’ll just go
Can’t help these mix-ups once they’ve happened.
But the fog’s so dense and grainy today,
a man could slip away,
could go start over
some place where he’s not
already gotten it all
mixed up.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copryight: AMW

I need to write myself all better please.
When love approaches my gut clenches up.
If certain shapes come looming over me,
I flinch as if attacked. I back-arch-jump
when prone, attempting travel down in the Hurt
that blares from gut out all through conscious space:
a swirling chaos: twisted, broken, alert
to panics never found — threats never placed.
No, not a threat: a wound, a betrayal
a smashed-in, shattered watch face: belly full
of Hurt that owns my body — folding sex
up, shoulders down to squish up; it wrecks
my smile.

I need to write myself all better please.
I’ve wasted many weekends hiding from
a pain I can’t explain. I smile “cheese”
since nobody has space for what would come
from honest conversation in this life.
I’m lonely sharing so little. A wife
would be nice.
A wife is the one
who has space to care.
I could splice
me onto her sun,
all my truth to share.

That’s the system we have here.
None but a wife can
put her hand on your tummy
and say you are safe now safe to say
that you feel what you feel
even if you don’t know why
even if you don’t mean to

I can’t write myself all better

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

I love you
I have since I met you
I want to tell you
in a way that is good

What is that way?
What is the way for me to say
that I love you since forever
and I wish since all my evers
that I could give you everything
that you need, be the one who brings
you the love that you need.

Just to let you know
once in this life
that you caught me
where I am delicate
and I didn’t wish
to free myself
to save my heart
to untangle my hopes
from your smile
because I love
your smile so much.

Trump’s Long Campaign to Steal the Presidency [A timeline by the Intelligencer]

Election Deniers in Attorney General Races [States United Democracy Center]

Liberal, Representative Democracy is a Spiritual Good

The individual human has no choice but to seek to grow in the Love that (supposing It exists) Knows we are all in this together and that alone has the ability to help one feel/think/act more aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, and joyfully-sharing. Growing in spiritual Love is the only direction that could possibly lead to more rather than less internal coherency (ie: meaningfulness to one’s self).

And groups of humans? Since individuals can only be meaningful to themselves insofar as they meaningfully engage with and follow the universal values (aware … joyfully-sharing) and the concomitant spiritual sense of the brother/sisterhood of all people, groups of humans can only work together meaningfully insofar as they together embrace, engage with, and abide by the universal values. From this it follows that we should seek to form and keep governments that help us together embrace, engage with, and abide by the universal values.

A well-functioning liberal representative democracy allows the people to serve as a final check on madness and corruption in government without spending all their time on the business of government.

The less insane / corrupt (these two evils feed into, exacerbate and eventually merge into one another) a government is, the easier it is to get and maintain power, prestige, and success while being true to the universal values; the more insane / corrupt a government, the harder it is to get and maintain power, prestige, and success while being true to the universal values.

Since goods like “power”, “prestige”, and “success” become more and more linked to goods like “my children have safe drinking water and food” as governments become more and more insane / corrupt, a well-functioning liberal representative democracy – open, honest, equal under the law, with free speech, and shared power and responsibility – is a spiritual good: the more you lose it, the more you force people to choose between their children and their truest, best selves; the more you gain it, the more people are free to be their truest selves alone and together, collaborating on neat and fun and wonderful works while staying true to the Love within that says we are all in this together and should treat one another well.

It is a spiritual duty to protect, nourish, and grow good government practices like openness, transparency, honesty and clarity in debate, equality under the law, freedom of speech and press, and fair elections.

Authors: BW/AW
Editors: AW/BW
Copyright: AMW

I know it doesn’t seem like it
But I am saving the country
And the world
And everything

I know it seems like I’m flail-failing
But everything’s
going according to plan
Don’t worry about a thing

I know it seems implausible
but all this brinkmanship
it’s not even showmanship
it’s carefully orchestrated
wisdom

I’m holding everything in my mind
democracy, societies, peoples’ fool notions
I’m factoring it all in
and bringing it
to a happy
resolution

It doesn’t seem like it
but that’s just because
I’m not here to seem
like winner
I’m not even here
to win
I’m here to fix everything
and that’s
a different type of game

I have it all figured out
but not like you’d think
I have it all figured out
like a small child’s last
consideration
when, his village raided,
father slain and mother abducted,
he hurls his little toy tomahawk
and bangs a mighty warrior
in the calf,
which causes this 17 year old war-paint-faced kid to swing around
and send a thoughtless — later he thought upon it and winced in regret — axe
through the small Child’s head
I have it all figured out
like that blurry shock
when life freezes for a moment
and that moment lasts forever
until it’s gone forever

I have it all figured out
this holding to love
like your back presses
against the stone cliff
as you, arms stretched back and fingers desperately sinking into every half-inch ridge,
make your way along the facade.

I have it all figured out
but I can’t see
how my safety’s guaranteed
I can’t see how I’m a good idea
for you
who I love
who I need
to hold close,
even though,
or especially since,
you’re just a person,
and not Pure Love

I have it all figured out
but I can’t find
the point at which
the Hurt lets me alone
and I’m the man
I’m supposed
to be

I have it all figured out
How you sink your butt
down not just into the moment
but into the eternal
quiet
within all the bustling

It seems like I live to drink and fritter
but that’s not how it is
It seems like I’m defeated by a Hurt
in my gut that never lets me alone
but that’s a misunderstanding
It seems like I can’t do anything any good
but I can surely

I have it all figured out
I’m building a dirty bomb of Pure Love
and I’m sneaking it into the transporter beams
of the information age
You’ll see!

author: random alcoholic on the corner sipping something from a paper sack and ogling every passing woman in her sweatpants, hair in curlers, and otherwise not putting on a show for him
editor: leaf warbling in the wind and I think it’s gonna fall now
copyright: amw, but who cares?, what’s he protecting?, it’s like a little kid guarding his stack of pebbles

I don’t wanna let you down. I wanna
give you a good life, wanna marry you.
He said to her, who never said a yes.
I must our country save; democracy
should bloom anew under my poetry.
He said to them, who never read a word
of all he slathered their way.

Practicing a bend don’t break sanity
is risky business. You will talk with Jill
not present. You’ll pledge her a family
when she’s not listening. How lonesome will
you grow?, I do begin to wonder.
You’ll grow so lonesome and ponder so wide
in shallows muddied by your churning feet.
You’ll beg and barter God and flop beside
the hollow legged card table desk. Go Beat
a different drum! That’s well and good
but marry her who could and would pick you.
But what about Kierkegaard and his knight
of faith?
Yes, let me die down broken lonesome lost
if make
eternal configurations run right
and take
us together into the Light that’s tossed
against the shifting waves who roll up on
tan sand and spread flat fingers far beyond
the edges we thought we’d seen,
the pleasures we dreamed might mean
something

ugh you just make excuses to dodge it all, you once-wild-now-tired-eyed inbetweener!

author: mmm
editor: well
copyright:mw

Camus when young asks if meaninglessness
could warrant suicide. His answer: Nope:
Not physical nor spiritual self-death.
Instead: Embrace the human moment: Hopes
and fears distract: You need a meaning that
you understand; you lack this: hold there:
aware of lacking what you long to have.
Escapes to either “I’ve a meaning fair
and clear” or “No meaningful path or salve
is here desired” hide from where you’ve found
yourself, and you’ll not resolve a wound wound
all through by hiding from its origin.

But I am forty-five. At forty-six
Camus flies through the windshield, eighteen years
past when he wrote The Myth of Sisyphus.
Why people kill themselves? What poison steers?
Much hurt for little purpose: “I see only gray.
I’m lonely, hurting, pointless. I don’t care
if God exists, if Goodness matters. I can’t play
another day this game for me. Should share?
No doubt! But guilting off the ledge just works
only so long.
The patient monster’s shove works late, it lurks,
until a strong weakness comes along.”

Choose Suicide!
Because the Hurt is killing you without
a friend with space for whispers you would shout.
But then somebody is nice and maybe there’s a chance for a change
and you start to wonder what all that suicide was all about

How to deal with the Hurt?
You can’t pretend it away.
Embrace it? Admit you hurt
and wish it would go away
but it doesn’t, it stays?
What are the two prongs of this Hurt?
The prongs of the Absurd were:
1) I need a meaning to life that I understand
2) I cannot right now find such a meaning or think of how I could find one
The resolution was to keep both prongs fully alive in you at all times and thus be fully yourself, fully in your own moment. And go from there: since you are only at an actionable starting point insofar as you are where you are. Enter and stay within the Absurd and let that fundamental crisis of your existence blossom. Maybe the Absurd is more than the sum total of its parts. The only way to find out is to enter it and not abandon it, not slink off into a fantasy about how you understand your meaning to life and/or don’t wish to.
What are the prongs of the Hurt?
It tears you apart with a visceral screaming pain gyrating out of my gut.
Can one speak of prongs?
The Hurt would not be a negative if you wished for it.
The loneliness, the isolation of not being able to share a big part of what you’re constantly experiencing.
The Hurt doesn’t seem to be a philosophical problem, but do we feel meaninglessness as a philosophical problem? Not really. So what’s the philosophical problem under the Hurt? The problem of evil? Something feels wrong in some deep way and we’re not OK with that?
I told Camus that we don’t need a meaning to life that we can intellectually understand; we need a meaning to life that our thought as a whole (ideas, feelings, and the Light shining through everything, including each conscious moment) can understand, care about, and follow–but not in a literal sense. What is literal understanding anyway? We move feelingly literal ideas about in accordance with felt logical rules: but who really understands either the action or content of their won thoughts? We don’t need literal understanding, we need poetic, whole-being understanding: our ideas and feelings need to gesture better and better to and from the Light, so that we more and more become the Light in motion. This is human meaning: an organization of feeling/thinking/acting around the Light that alone Knows what’s really going on and what really matters, and that alone Knows that and in what way it is True to say we are all in this together forever.
And so the Absurd is kind of a misunderstanding. I do need a meaning to life that I understand, but not in a literal way, rather as an ongoing self-critiquing and -correcting organization of feeling/thinking/acting around the spiritual center of Reality. But is that not what Camus found when he refused to abandon either prong and entered into the Absurd? Did he not find it infinitely spacious and yet still overflowing with Love?
But what’s to be done about the Hurt?
Because it’s not ideas and feelings so much as an ugly mangled screaming wound.
And what’s to be done about democracy and the brother/sisterhood of humankind?
Because it can’t be helped with an essay and/or meditation retreat, but requires all of us dancing together better and better.
HOW?

Author: AW/BW
Editor: BW/AW
Copyright: AMW

An artist creates a world to share
a fall-apart sketches his own fall-apart
and expects everyone to somehow help

not much space
for others
not much space
to accept
not much space
to listen
not much space
to care

why are we here,
slipping past
one another?

why is this real,
when daydreams
are just as good?

If you’re like me, you’d like to overflow with Pure Love for everyone, and know and do what’s best for everyone — so long as it didn’t cost you a nice happy safe home with an attractive mate and healthy offspring, supported by an interesting, fulfilling, and high-paying job with plenty of time for exercise, cooking balanced meals, chatting in coffee shops and wine bars, and otherwise taking it easy and living well.

If you’re like me, you’d like to be wise and good, but you’re really busy and selfish and it is hard to make time and space for spiritual practice.

If you’re like me, you’d like to organize your thinking, feeling, and acting better and better around the Love shining in and through all things that alone knows that and in what way it is True to say, “We are all in this together.” You would like more and more whole-being (ideas, feelings, and Soullight all interacting meaningfully, though of course not literally/1:1-ily/definitively with each other) insight into how things really are, what really matters, and how best to fit oneself into the flow of all things. You would like to feel/think/act more and more aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, kind, joyfully-sharing and gratefully-interconnected. You would like to grow in wisdom, but you’re afraid of losing nice things that you want and feel a great need to want, and you find it hard to make time for spiritual practice, and spiritual practice hurts you — it riles up the Hurt, which is always screaming in the pit of your gut, wailing on and swirling out with a shattered-watch-face kind of broken yowling that pulls your shoulders down, tucks your sex and knees up, and generally seeks to roll you into a little ball that grows smaller and smaller until it reaches a singularity and then pops out of existence.

Don’t worry! You’ve come to the right place! With our patented spiritual practice, you can gain supreme enlightenment painlessly and without any particular risk to your pettier desires.

I know! Meditation hurts. It is scary. It is lonely. Let’s put it to one side for a bit. If we feel strong enough for it later, we’ll take it up again. And if you feel strong enough for it now: by all means! But if not, let’s relax on it.

Ditto volunteering your time to help the poor and for other just causes. If such precise commitments to specific kindnesses seem too overwhelming and scary, forget them for the nonce.

For now, let’s just always notice that we each have a conscious space shining through us, and seek to see that conscious space in others. Let’s just look for the Love shining in and through our own conscious space, and let it explodes through everything and everyone, knitting us all together. In our daily lives. When we’re at work and otherwise spinning our wheels. Or when we are talking with friends and family. Or on the subway. Always just as a little game — yes, no pressure!, just a game! — played in the background: The game of feeling joyful love exploding through and ultimately being everything, feeling how that radiation of kind delight is all there really is, and how we are all children of that Light and thus brothers and sisters all.

You can walk down the street, seeking inward for the Pure Love shining through and most essentially being you and outward for that some Lovelight shining in everyone you pass. You can imagine some to get things started: imagine the core of Love as a line of joyful energy radiating through your center and through the center of everyone else: imagine you and people in your life or people who just happen to pass by shining from the centerline out with the joyful glow of a loving kindness so bright and persistent that it turns out to be everything that ever was and ever will be.

That’s all! No pressure! Just a fun game to relax the Hurt’s grasp and share a smile with the people that you meet when you’re moving through the world each day.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW