Life Outside the Tank

You say we don’t understand your experience.
So we ask.
And you say that it ain’t your job to educate us.
Which is true, but doesn’t help solve the issue.
And solving the issue’s not your job either,
But that don’t mean you aren’t allowed to try if you want.

Which is why there are your stories out there.
Stories we get to read if we find them.
But they aren’t everywhere.
They aren’t common enough that we see the nuance just by breathing.
Because it’s not your job to educate or to fix.
And because of the cheap-shooting, foul-mouthed,
Logical-only-when-it-suits minority.
Those unhappy few who spew hate at anyone who dares to
Not be a bitter little pill
And who deserve

To be treated like human beings.
Because that’s how it works.
If humanity, decency, and virtue are about more than my tribe’s gonna kill yours,
Then that’s how it works.
They don’t have a right to come to your forum and talk shit about your faith.
The don’t have a right to come to your post and make jokes about your mother.
But they do have the right to be treated like a human being.

Because Kant’s idea that we make the rules
So we treat you the way we want to treated
Has problems.
But if you turn it round:
Create some rule about treating others the way you don’t want to be treated?
The clue’s in the name: Tnak.
Because, that’s not just an idea that will tank society;
It’s muddled thinking too.

Because we all share one experience:
Someone smacks you round the head, you want to smack them back.

Haiku

Someone was kind enough to compliment my latest haiku, so I thought I’d spread the love:

Darkness becomes light

Forgiveness is only bliss

Comparatively



A Stick To Beat One’s Tongue

Poetry is hard to define, but one of the common guides for what is “good” poetry, is conformity to tradition: does this poem follow the forms of Latin verse? Does that poem fit the structure of Shakespearean sonnets? Does this tanka reference the season and have a metaphysical shift in the middle? And such fitting of a time-honoured pattern while retaining fluidity and voice would seem a satisfying goal. However, these verse-forms might have a structure built on sand.

The Friendship of Poets

Do I have friendships focused on poetry? Friendships where I bounce poems back and forth? They all are, or none of them are.

A Mask Creates Whitespace

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved the taste of words. Not synaesthecially, not the way I love the taste of a good meal, but the way words feel in the mouth and in the waiting to be spoken. Which isn’t why I started writing poetry.

Warning: Contains Language

Kiku Koibito invited me to share one of my older poems. Rather than merely cast it into the ephemera of social media, I thought I’d capture it here. Warning: might contain imagery, satire, and language.

Generation Why by Nicholas Gagnier

Defining a generation more by a feeling than by happenstance of age, Gagnier speaks to those who have grown into lives of comfort but not meaning. In an attack more melancholy than brutal – yet no less effective – he exposes both risk and solution without reducing individuals solely to their generation.

Cityscapes by Anthony Khayat (ed.), Sara Khayat (ed.), Gabby McCullough (ed.), and Willie Watt (ed.)

Revealing the immense power of individual perspective to turn even the most banal of experiences into a meaningful event, and then adding the counterpoint that this makes each person responsible for their life being banal, this collection suggests that the real cityscape might be the spaces between the buildings. Vibrant, emotive, meaningful, yet also fun, the works make full use of the human mind being both the first and ultimate white space.

The Small Things

As an example of the power of my words, I was washing my hands this morning when I heard Una meow loudly from somewhere else, so I meowed back where I was. Immediately, there was a pattering of paws and she rushed into the bathroom. Clearly, my Cat-tongue is improving.

I’m Antisocial, Coffee Never Lies: Part I by Mallory Smart

Mixing cats, coffee, and mellow commentary, Smart peels back the masks of social meaning that cover our choices to reveal that it might not matter why we enjoy things as much as whether we enjoy things.