A prefectly broken soul,
is not easily attained,
mimicking our own imagined defects so perfectly.
So much energy goes into a completely shattered subconscience.
Breaks, small contusions, multiple fractures,
and nobody to offer diagnoses until after the damage is pretty fucking obvious.
Well done.
"Yeah. You're really fucked up at this point."
"Messed up your marriage, and twisted your poor lovely wife into pieces,
then you splayed out your weaknesses nearly exclusively to people who offered you nothing."
You know...ya get what you pay for.
Yee haw. (dead-pan silence)
It may seem ironic, but I'm pretty sure you fucked your mom and dad up at least a little.
Again, not your fault.
I know, you are a beautiful perfect soul,
it's not your responsibility,
but then nothing ever is really.
We're all victims of this incomprehensible dustbowl.
I simply can't magically take away the despondance,
you display so commonly constantly.
I can only help you rationalize where necessary.
Until you can move on.
If you want to function in the world,
you've just got to admit to a few things.
It takes work kid.
This is the required response.
In the end you have to come to some conslusion.
The proliferation of the articles, deeds, rememberances, and facts,
don't exclude you.
Believe me, we would all like them to.
They do not.
If some happenstance brick crushes into your skull unexpectedly,
you are excused from the program....
even if you threw it.
You're not the first one to do so.
We all bash in our skulls and deride our health for the sake of something promised by us...
though perhaps offered by another.
This is a natural response for children facing the mirror.
There is making ourselves look beautiful.
There is realizing we are interesting but not so attractive.
There is making a fist and promising anything for the fantasy.
There is the fiery anger before the understanding.
In the end hopefully...
is us.
Too old now to be loveable perhaps, but not too old to love ourself.
You have a broken interface.
Digging through the ashes.l
Comments
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This seems really nothing more than a rant, and not a very good one. I am not sure you have said anything fresh or new.
I lost steam reading it in stanza 4 (?) when you used fucked up again and about your parents.
for what it's worth poetry is ended to make people look at the ordinary in ways they haven't or couldn't or didn't think they could. -
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Thanks for pointing out the overuse of the phrase fucked up. Useful. I also get not being able to wade through a piece you find sorely disinteresting. I can only guess that your last suggestion means that the end of a poem should provide some insight to the reader...maybe not. It could mean poems are ended at a place and in such a way as to make the reader think. It's not a very clear statement. Whatever your intention, thanks for wasting the energy on my sub-rant quality work.
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I don't particularly care for the "poem" simply because it isn't particularly poetic... you know, the standard list of devices, etc.
I am intrigued with one of your responses below, however, and would like to take a little time dissecting some of the central points. I'll paste your arguments here and then put [my comments in square brackets.]
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Thank you for reading and commenting. I think the point that no right and wrong exist in all but the most sophomoric parables is quite important to the piece.
[What??? I wish you were kidding! Hammurabi, Solomon, Socrates, Aristotle, Confucious, Siddharta, Christ, Marcus Aurelius... these guys were all just pikers. Fortunately Neurosine the poet, standing head and shoulders above his primordial competition, (with a little help from his barstool apparently) comes along and turns philosophy on its head. Right and wrong only exist in sophmoric parables... yeah, right. It is REALLY astounding how easily you dismiss thousands of years worth of thought and contemplation by the men who established the very first building blocks of philosophical thought.]
I think it's also important to psychology. Right and wrong really fuck us up alot.
[I see it just the other way around. Right and wrong make convenient boundaries. If instead of a 70 mph speed limit you change the law to "Don't drive too fast," then one guy gets busted doing 85 by one cop and another passes by at 100 without a blink of an eye by another. It's hard running society in a black and white fashion... it's impossible with gray.]
They have a place, but more as practical survival mechanisms than holistic necessities.
[This is difficult to respond to without a definition of terms. I see holistic necessities AS practical survival mechanisms.]
They are fine until they no longer apply in our life...then they make our life confusing. We drag them along all the same. This happens all of the time in the life of just one human...
[No comment.]
I'm not positing proof of evolution here. (Really though I think that's already been done, wouldn't you say?)
[Proof? No! Consensus? Yes. But that's just the problem with modern science... it is becoming consensus driven and not proof driven. It is becoming watered down by a lack of absolutes that you seem to despise. ]
We define things from our perspectives and you have put forth a glorious example of that in your commentary. You've set up a straw man and knocked him down.
[No comment.]
God is not necessary, nor for that matter is an absolute by any stretch of the imagination. Unless you think there's one god. If you do...that's okay...but you're not thinking for anyone outside of yourself.
[Here's the problem with this line of thinking. As soon as objects were introduced into an otherwise empty universe, absolutes were born. 3 objects + 2 objects = 5 objects. Math is immutable. Everything is math driven. Beauty, for instance, is mathematical. Too large a quantity of flesh is seen as ugly and obese, while too small a quantity of flesh is gaunt and anorexic. Too many pimples, too much hair, not enough color, etc. can mar an otherwise beautiful person. Consequently, whether we know it or not, everything we see, think, hear and do is mathematcially driven within the confines of certain logical boundaries. There is, therefore, absolute truth, and God can be seen as a literal extension of that truth. In the Christian bible there are a few references to God as light, or as truth, etc. Christ, says "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. " I believe he's saying that the way to life is through truth. Not really a bad philosophy.]
You don't need god in an infinite universe.
[Infinite? Who says so? Big? Yes. Infinite? How could anyone ever know? We can only make cosmological estimates based on the amount of mass we can see, but we have such a limited perspective and some pretty stone-age instruments with which we're making a plethora of assumptions. Our best guesses are simply that... guesses.
Interestingly, your statement implies that if we are in a finite universe then there is a higher need for God, which to my way of thinking doesn't really make sense at all!]
Once you acknowledge the universe is infinite, god becomes a naieve invention.
[Your perspective only. I assume you postulate that an infinite universe would squeeze out any room for an infinite god? How does a godless universe begin? Where does it generate it's initial quantity of either mass or energy? Hey, at least I can point to a guy with white hair and glowing robes! All your scientific community can do is point to some imaginary number theory and curved-space scenarios which suggest the possibility that matter has always existed and is ricocheting about in a boundless bubble(!) and we happen to be specks in the middle of it. It is every bit as ludicrous as a guy with white hair and glowing robes, but less tangible.]
Humans have a limited toolbox from which to pull out analogies and metaphors, which allows them to survive.
[Add 'scientific instruments' to that list of limitations in the human toolbox!]
Our tools will grow and expand, and I think that as they do the lack of a need of a god will become more obviated, and eventually become a vestigial abstraction.
[If there is a God which exists on a parallel (perpendicular, tangental, etc.) dimension, who has conquered the laws of physics, who can create life sustaining bubbles called universes, then the need for SCIECE may become obviated. Or, aside from religion, if we should conquer the creation and disposal of matter, life and our living paradigms would change in so many ways.]
There was going to be more, but that'll suffice for the time. -
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...me
you
[me again]
...I think the point that no right and wrong exist in all but the most sophomoric parables is quite important to the piece.
What??? I wish you were kidding! Hammurabi, Solomon, Socrates, Aristotle, Confucious, Siddharta, Christ, Marcus Aurelius... these guys were all just pikers. Fortunately Neurosine the poet, standing head and shoulders above his primordial competition, (with a little help from his barstool apparently) comes along and turns philosophy on its head. Right and wrong only exist in sophmoric parables... yeah, right. It is REALLY astounding how easily you dismiss thousands of years worth of thought and contemplation by the men who established the very first building blocks of philosophical thought.
[Right and wrong are constantly changing variables. What's right for one person in one situation, may be wrong for another. A person might accept some wrong doing if it's in their best interest, or rally against it if it's easy to do so and isn't going to cost them anything. What the government and church tell you is right and wrong are quite often in their best interest. Mostly, when anyone is trying to sell you something as right and wrong, it's usually because they have an interest in your decision, not so much an interest in your enlightenment. I think the people you speak of were more interested in how to think, live, and further humanity than about spewing platitudes. My statement wasn't strictly correct, its intention was to put forth a point. I gather that my intended audience (the zealot posing as a filthy mouthed logician) got the intention.]
...Right and wrong really fuck us up alot.
I see it just the other way around. Right and wrong make convenient boundaries. If instead of a 70 mph speed limit you change the law to "Don't drive too fast," then one guy gets busted doing 85 by one cop and another passes by at 100 without a blink of an eye by another. It's hard running society in a black and white fashion... it's impossible with gray.
[It's wrong to kill, unless it's the right people, but you must not do it in the wrong fashion. Laws don't equate to right and wrong but usually are placed or dismissed for safety, or quite often corporate interests. We often suffer because we lack the ability to change some paradigm that worked for us in the past. My barstool being a prime example.]
...proof of evolution
Proof? No! Consensus? Yes. But that's just the problem with modern science... it is becoming consensus driven and not proof driven. It is becoming watered down by a lack of absolutes that you seem to despise.
[I think the prime tenants of evolution as a theory have been proven. It's quite a practical and applicable framework.]
...God is not necessary or absolute
Here's the problem with this line of thinking. As soon as objects were introduced into an otherwise empty universe, absolutes were born. 3 objects + 2 objects = 5 objects. Math is immutable. Everything is math driven. Beauty, for instance, is mathematical. Too large a quantity of flesh is seen as ugly and obese, while too small a quantity of flesh is gaunt and anorexic. Too many pimples, too much hair, not enough color, etc. can mar an otherwise beautiful person. Consequently, whether we know it or not, everything we see, think, hear and do is mathematcially driven within the confines of certain logical boundaries. There is, therefore, absolute truth, and God can be seen as a literal extension of that truth. In the Christian bible there are a few references to God as light, or as truth, etc. Christ, says "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. " I believe he's saying that the way to life is through truth. Not really a bad philosophy.
[Quantum mechanics are not immutable. The deeper universe is unphathomable. I posit that everything beautiful does not owe it's beauty to the golden mean.]
...You don't need god in an infinite universe
Infinite? Who says so? Big? Yes. Infinite? How could anyone ever know? We can only make cosmological estimates based on the amount of mass we can see, but we have such a limited perspective and some pretty stone-age instruments with which we're making a plethora of assumptions. Our best guesses are simply that... guesses.
Interestingly, your statement implies that if we are in a finite universe then there is a higher need for God, which to my way of thinking doesn't really make sense at all!
[Remember the straw man fallacy? I stated that you don't need god in an infinite universe. I did not say you need god in a finite universe. (Unless a god indeed existed in said fantasy cosmology. Let's also assume Bigfoot is necessary there.)
And yes, I'm assuming the universe is infinite until otherwise informed. So see, I am a man of faith after all. Or at least sometimes give my own intuition the benefit of the doubt.]
...Once you acknowledge the universe is infinite, god becomes a naieve invention.
Your perspective only. I assume you postulate that an infinite universe would squeeze out any room for an infinite god? How does a godless universe begin? Where does it generate it's initial quantity of either mass or energy? Hey, at least I can point to a guy with white hair and glowing robes! All your scientific community can do is point to some imaginary number theory and curved-space scenarios which suggest the possibility that matter has always existed and is ricocheting about in a boundless bubble(!) and we happen to be specks in the middle of it. It is every bit as ludicrous as a guy with white hair and glowing robes, but less tangible.
[In an infinite universe there is no initial...or final...you need definites for that. I'm an agnostic, not a scientest. I am also an armchair philosopher, but you don't call philosophy my philosophy. I think aliens are much more valid than god in most of his manifestations, a great deal more likely...perhaps the two are not even mutually exclusive...but there's no hard evidence of either. My belief system and little gestalt would not be shaken to the core to learn that aliens existed. Though my world view would certainly shift a little. No bubble...just eternal space and matter. It's considerably more valid and more likely than some glowing dripping mana anthropod controlling our destiny. It's within the realm of what I consider to be reality. I'm not suggesting that I know and understand it fully, quite the opposite. I strongly suggest that we are incapable of knowing even the tiniest iota of space. The process of trying to understand I think will bring us closer to it though.]
...Humans have a limited toolbox from which to pull out analogies and metaphors, which allows them to survive.
Add 'scientific instruments' to that list of limitations in the human toolbox!
[Consider them added.]
...Our tools will grow and expand, and I think that as they do the lack of a need of a god will become more obviated, and eventually become a vestigial abstraction.
If there is a God which exists on a parallel (perpendicular, tangental, etc.) dimension, who has conquered the laws of physics, who can create life sustaining bubbles called universes, then the need for SCIECE may become obviated. Or, aside from religion, if we should conquer the creation and disposal of matter, life and our living paradigms would change in so many ways.
[again, no bubbles...just eternity in all directions, (in my limited worldview(oh the irony.)) If we do somehow become transcendential, science may be obviated. If god exists and manifests himself physically to us...we're going to poke him with our sticks. Pretty fucked up I know. But he obviously knew we were going to do it.]
Thanks for the conversation and for helping to sharpen my critical thinking skills. Ultimately draining but in all likelyhood worth while. Thanks for your opinion on the poem as well. I appreciate a frank comment inifinitely more than empty praise.
take care,
Neurosine
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Wow I think this is amazing! I don't even know if there is anything to say other then that. It is really well written, and just speaks to me. The message behind it is so true. Good job.
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This would be a lofty proposition no matter who chose to write it. The tension between the soul and those who believe they are trained to heal it and actually have little or no answers, There are probably dozens of avenues and angles of approach that one could use to address this dilemna, and you chose as usual to just take it head on like a truck driving through a brick wall and for that I applaud the raw frankness in your statements. Isn't amazing that we know when things are totally broken? We must have been high to not have diagnosed it sooner. Yet how do we know when something is broken, we must know what it is to be whole? How would we know what was whole and where would that paradigm have arisen from in the first place? There is a didactic tone in this write and I'm curious where that which is right and that which is wrong comes from to draw conclusions that affect the subject of the write. I notice that the patient nor the 'help' seem to ever reflect any attribution to a Maker. Without out that it would appear that both are fucking hypocrites. There would be no reason to be in this discussion without an absolute of some kind. Because if there are no absolutes from somewhere there is no need for counseling because the counselor and the couseled are neither one in any position to give advice or address affilction. You have presented a write that requires theology to sort out. I know you don't want to hear that but you can't fuck your parents if nothing is wrong and if something is wrong than someone set that standard that is so far above our menial thinking that it effects everything that we think and do. Your piece is a treatise for the existence not of just a God, but one who requires action and not just action. Without action pleasing the Author of behavior, weird derivations of personality and mentality will take place. This is definitely your finest write I have read as far as it deals with the failure of therapy and the struggle of those afflicted by mental illness. This all done by leaving the door wide open and a light shining through that none of these things could be true without God standing on the outside of that door to secure the possibilty of actions creating consequences. You really did all that in this little write. Congrats! RC
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Thank you for reading and commenting. I think the point that no right and wrong exist in all but the most sophomoric parables is quite important to the piece. I think it's also important to psychology. Right and wrong really fuck us up alot. They have a place, but more as practical survival mechanisms than holistic necessities. They are fine until they no longer apply in our life...then they make our life confusing. We drag them along all the same. This happens all of the time in the life of just one human...I'm not positing proof of evolution here. (Really though I think that's already been done, wouldn't you say?)
We define things from our perspectives and you have put forth a glorious example of that in your commentary. You've set up a straw man and knocked him down. God is not necessary, nor for that matter is an absolute by any stretch of the imagination. Unless you think there's one god. If you do...that's okay...but you're not thinking for anyone outside of yourself. You don't need god in an infinite universe. Once you acknowledge the universe is infinite, god becomes a naieve invention. Humans have a limited toolbox from which to pull out analogies and metaphors, which allows them to survive. Our tools will grow and expand, and I think that as they do the lack of a need of a god will become more obviated, and eventually become a vestigial abstraction. Your sardonicism fails. Your weak logic demonstrates your hypocricy more than it could ever hope to reveal mine. You're being deceiving, and it's blatantly obvious. Sort of funny,
and quite interesting.
Thank you for proving a point I never even tried to make.
Thank you for amusing me!
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I like the shrewdness.
Non-metaphorical and blunt.
You place words together very well.
Nicely done, and forget the bad reviews, your work is appreciated by at least me.
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Honestly, I'm such a chump, I'm just happy to know people are reading my work. If they comment, good or bad, I find promise in the fact that it was worth expending energy on. Even if they tell me it wasn't worth expending the energy. Oh delicious irony!
Thank you for the compliment. A few of those are nice as well.
take care,
Neurosine -
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if this were true than by featuring your work you are only soliciting some form of human interaction?
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I'm expressing myself on a internet forum. If I was trying to avoid any sort of interaction, this would be a massive fail. Really, I like getting feedback on my writing. I'm certainly not in it for the money. But thank you for placing doubt on the validity of my chumpishness.
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Sorry...
...clicked by mistake, so have 3 bananas as part-recompense.
I'm a freeversehater and cannot and will not comment on it.
I did read it, and found lots of typos and errors, but as to the content, I'll leave that to others more qualified than I to comment.
Regards,
Robin.
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Thank you for your frankfurterness.
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This is very unforgiving, and it lends the poem a very raw and powerful tone. You have bold thoughts and sentiments, and you convey them in a simple, no-bullshit manner. Mostly poetry needs to be at least a little flowery to work out well, but you've mastered the ascetic verse, something very difficult to do. I love the acidic connotations of your word choice in this poem, too. The modern, everyday vernacular is also wielded skillfully. Well done!
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Thanks for reading and for the comment. I like incomprehensible beautiful pieces, but most often, I don't write the poetry I'd like to. I just tend to lay things out. I think it's the most fair way of going about it. I don't know if it makes for good poetry, but my intention is to communicate, and I hope others get something out of it.
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Do I like this?
Well not sure like is the word, it reads like some beat generation stream of consciousness (hope that's spelled right), I imagine it as performance poetry - with the poet dressed in black spitting out these words in the dark. Do I like this, no but I am affected by it. I do like the allusion to Larkin in line 13, nicely worked. I read your profile and I can see the Arkansas, but not the Australian in this. Maybe that's somewhere else - maybe you like cricket? or gambling?
I'm going to say that this is good writing, nicely anarchic, but controlled if that is not too paradoxical.
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I'm not Australian, I just live here. The Larkin allusion is completely coincidental. I have very little formal training and am not well read in poetry. I just write a great deal of it. I do appreciate you giving me the benefit of the doubt on being clever. I enjoyed your characterization of the poetry. Thank you for reading and leaving a thoughtful comment.
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Larkin
This is the Larkin poem I referred to, I think you can see what I meant! I find that reading the great poets, their use of words, their control of language image and rhythm and ideas really helps to develop your own. I still remember reading John Donne at School - its all on the internet, you should look at his work - and Keats - and Allen Ginsburg for that matter. You have a talent, not an easy style but a definite talent.
Not sure how you can feel that 'nigger' and 'fag' are not powerful - as a poet, you know the power of language - and these words, like few others carry with them the history of slavery, discrimination, racism and homophobia. As words they have become more ugly with the passage of time.
Best wishes
Michael
Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
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Cool. Thanks for the insight and the compliment. *on words* fag, nigger, dike...are filled with negativity. I lived in a black neighborhood and got referred to as Nigger by black people I knew. I liked it. It wasn't an insult, it was just like saying hey man. If anything it was a token of acceptance. I think we need to take the power out of these words by owning them and retooling them. They only have the power we give them. I've got to stand by that concept. I've also had gay friends who often referred to themselves as fags, but never me...maybe they didn't like me. I did get referred to in the feminine maybe once or twice...but after the initial culture shock, I thought nothing of it.
No dyke dike(sp?) has called me sister. And for that I will ever be microscopically unfullfilled. Most lesbians I've encountered are very practical in their speech though. Calling a spade a spade if you will.
Point being; when a red neck calls you a nigger, you say "Yeah man. What's up?"
It's not a bad reflection of you, but of them.
You're okay. They're fucked up.
When you take on board that negativity, you're doing just what they want, and succumbing to exactly what they want to inspire within you.
Hate.
I think if people adopted this idealogy it would obviate this fact more easily than arguing and ultimately getting pissed off and finally giving the insult creedence by acting on the negativity will ever accomplish.
You're not ignoring anything.
You're commanding yourself, and setting an example for others.
I think it's a valid point.
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