paradise

Liberation

Free wanderers of the spirit, you astronauts in the lost space of indecision, all of us that have noticed and condemned the irrationality of our age, yes, you passionate survivor that in the mist of these nonsensical years battle through the current of conformity in search of a justification, a raison d’être, a simple satisfaction that will overshadow the ever-lasting presence of frustration.
We are the inheritors of a struggle that has pervaded all of history. Our efforts so essential in the field of human potential must never come to an end. In these complex societies that require even more complex solutions to cure the collective madness, our perseverance must not wane. Even if most attempts to heal the wound of civilization have failed throughout history, the spirit of the rebel will live on as a child of that irrepressible force that commands human existence: an energy that will ask of us to emancipate man from his self-imposed shackles.
Our mistrust in human conventions, ideologies, and reforms should not stop our search for an immediate liberation, a source of enlightenment, a spring of contentment. In peeling off all boundaries we still have a chance of finding a secret treasure in nature, beauty, art, brotherhood, work, love, poetry, even in the darkness of suffering or the maniacal passion of a philosopher, somewhere within these and all inspiring things we may stumble across a beautiful sensation of peace, a harmonious agreement with what is most essential in life.
But what is the most essential?
This each wondering mind must seek but I am sure that with sufficient honesty and perseverance we can find that basic need and satisfy it sanely. Then we may watch our torments wither away and vanish as our reality elevates itself into a more exciting and promising realm.
Allow this vision to settle in:
Long, unanimous cries and shouts into the open sky, not from another fascist’s Holocaust but from an inexplicable mad ecstasy, the long-awaited contact with pure joy.

The oppression of language (two poems)

 

 

 

 

The following two poems explore the human need to express everything we experience and the impossibility of absolute correspondence between lived experience and our descriptions.  I wonder why we cannot contain the purity of experience in ourselves without exchanging it for the artificial-reality of words and symbols. Wouldn’t it be better to leave the flux to itself while we join in its silent (nonverbal) dance in an ahistorical frenzy? For what are our conversations but a miniature-history of the world and our lives? Must mankind be forever trapped in the webs of a descriptive situation? What’s the need to define place, time, mood, thoughts, hopes and expectations?

 

 

Is life too great for anyone to bear alone that we must reduce its intensity and infinity to the limited bounds and finiteness of language? 

 

If we cease to communicate (purge) life could we die from an overdose of life itself?

 

 

 

 

 

These are the dry leaves of the 21st century
Falling upon our feet that coil
A path as snakes on a dune of sand

These are the subway noises
Under the surface of our routine
Where are our shouts of ecstasy?

These are the ripples of passion
Unborn embrace of earthly bliss
We are one catastrophe away from paradise

These are the memoirs of all power-lines
Showering us with light of illusion
Approaching twilight for today’s relics 

These are the end-products of pleasure
Fascination with the wonders of plastic
And a what-for question left unanswered

 These are the dry days of the 21st century

 

 

 

 

 Fetch me nature’s product in a plastic bag
While this blue-eyed kid stares at me
As I dance to the melody of pure purposelessness 

 Talk to me about an Asian photograph
While this train takes me to your hometown
As I write lines of life’s ineffability

Promise me there is a higher plan
While I grow old with laughter
As I adjust my twisted underwear

Abandon me for taking the trivial for the profound
While the grass is still wet outside
As I swear life’s grandeur is best unexpressed