Dreaming of Grandpa

Can compassion ever be powerful enough to stop terrorists?

Our country and our world keep experiencing devastating and seemingly senseless acts of mass violence. Some of the violence is committed by people who are clearly mentally ill. But a shocking amount of mass violence is committed by rational people who know exactly what they are doing. My ideological heroes, like L.L. Zamenhof, Amon Hennacy, and Leo Tolstoy, were strong proponents of non-violence, even to the point of pacifism.

In my life as a middle class American (that is: incredibly wealthy compared to the world-wide norm), I've never really experienced the threat of violence, so perhaps I'm a little rosy-eyed and unrealistically idealistic. But it seems to me that our strongest weapon against violence is, and will always be, compassion.


Here's a poem that kind of addresses these issues. I wrote it after reading the article “Young Lives, Lost in the Fog of War” by Rod Nordland in the Sept. 15 2012 New York Times.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also credit the inspiration of the Flaming Lips, and their performance at the Oklahoma City Zoo, and Bart Budwig for a line I stole from one of his songs.

Easter Memories: a poem

Easter has always been one of my favorite holidays. It's an opportunity to see my extended family. The weather is usually nice. The trees are becoming green, and the early-season flowers are blooming. I also like it because I think it is less touched by commercialism than other holidays. People still give each other Easter gifts, but it's not taken to the ridiculous extremes of Christmas. And the gifts are mostly chocolate, which is much more welcome than yet another pair of socks, or some game I'll play twice and set on the shelf for the next 100 years. There's no Easter equivalent of Black Friday. People get together on Easter to enjoy each other and to enjoy nature, and that's really how every holiday should be.

As a child, the Easter morning church service was probably my favorite service of the year. The sanctuary, the clothes, the congregation, and the music were always so bright and cheerful. Even as I've gotten older and more cynical about organized religion, and no longer attend an Easter morning church service, I still feel a strong sense of nostalgia about Easter. As organized religion is becoming less popular with each generation in the US, I think my sentiment is one that increasing numbers of young people can probably relate to.


Here's a poem I wrote to try to capture that sentiment.

Valentine's Day poems

It's Valentine's Day! To celebrate, here are some "love poems" that I've written over the years. I'll start out with a serious one before quickly devolving into the absurd.

Poetry as a force of destruction

This is an essay about the limitations of poetry and the potential for the poetic process to destroy the information it intends to preserve. I think the ideas could also be applied to other forms of art. I wrote it in January of 2011, and revised it just now. I don't think this is by any means the last word on this subject (it's barely even the first word), and I welcome discussion.

By a train window (a translation by me of an Esperanto poem by Julio Baghy)

I like translating stuff from Esperanto. Here's a translation  (followed by the original) of a poem that I encountered in the book "Vojaĝo en Esperanto Lando" edited by Boris Kolker, which is a collection of a wide range of different kinds of writings. I got bored with that book and quit about 2/3 of the way through, but I liked the poetry. This isn't quite a literal translation, but it's pretty close (for better or worse).

Wikipedia (cat)

Here's a silly poem I wrote a few years ago. It comes with its own silly introduction. I think this is pretty much the apex of my poetical achievement, so if you're not a fan of it... well, it just goes downhill from here folks... Also, I'd love to see this turned into a music video, so if anyone with musical or artistic talent would like to collaborate on that, let me know and maybe we can make something really cool.

A poem in the style of Cid Corman

Although I've only read Livingdying, and a few scattered poems on the Internet, I really enjoy the poetry of Cid Corman (also see here, here, and perhaps even here). Here's a poem I wrote in an attempt to imitate his style: