Everyday
I open my eyes,
born to a dead mother.
I shower and ask:
"Brush whatnow when?"
I answer with action:
"In order for clean to make any sense,
dirty must first exist
In mirrors,
time reserves the right to itself.
Time is dirt,
which is not
Clean is immortal and human
Transcendence
is clarity,
a reckoning with nothing of any importance
beyond its reckless elimination
in vain.”
I pass the toilet as I exit.
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2 comments:
Michael - i always admire the ideas in your poems and your blunt dependence on the verb to be (maybe because I feel so uncomfortable using them myself).
I'm not sure this is criticism or compliment (probably depends on whether you value ideas or ideals more) but there's something very responsible and complete about your poems.
Josh - thanks for the feedback, I take both remarks as compliments.
I think the difference between ideas and ideals isn't so clear-cut; in Western philosophy they're used virtually interchangeably, so I would say that whether a poem being responsible and complete is good or bad is just a matter of preference.
In effect, as far as I can see it, ideals in the usual sense are concerned with superiority and perfection in its virtual unattainability (Platonism), while ideas are closer to the absolute actuality of what is, or Being. In light of this, to me, having an idea (which to me an ideal is a mere instantiation of) is far more interesting than having an ideal. "Truth is beauty" to me does not herald aesthetics and ideals; rather it heralds truth, or ideas in themselves, as being the ground of beauty (which is probably the opposite of how Keats meant it). Truth not as the transcendent experience of beauty, but as clarity in lieu of intersubjectivity (hence responsibility?).
Sanctity relies on the unspoken remaining unspoken. If there's one thing the thousands of pages I've read in my life has told me is that this has very little to do with our brazen little minds.
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