Re: i hope you know i was joking

in the sheer concave terror

of outstretched mind

like a sky like a vector like a mirror

we invite to our door

all that we think it all becomes possible

the right and the wrong

the bliss and the bomb

the stutter and the song

 

 

Byron,

 

What we have created here since our first poems is beautiful. The problem

with powatree is that communication is limited to the higher, airy realms of

life, and when the winged words pause in their swooping they lose their

loft, and ordinary earthy words flow in to fill the vacuum. What is lost in

the vertical of deep space understanding is gained in the horizontal of how

are you and how is me. No problem there, even sadhus defecate.

 

Whether you know it or not, my friend of a thousand gripping images and a

mind the weight of Jupiter, you have been one of the main actors in this

summer’s production entitled, “Saving Andy from the Pit of Permanent

Malaise”. I have hinted at my renaissance since leaving my workplace

choked with conservatives last December and starting school in psychology

and joining the brother- and sisterhood of youth on campus full throttle

toward a new horizon like a tight end with the goal in sight but struggling

to throw off the vivs and the chags of my past who would drag me down and

claw out my eyes. They owed me over $15,000 in unpaid overtime compensation

and it took me till June 30- a full half year- to bring them to justice,

even then only receiving for three years by law. But I also received the

last installment of my freedom and have been chasing that goal line ever

since, the only tacklers my own created demons.

 

This is the time to clear the air and thank you for your part in the play.

I’ve written more poetry this year than the preceding six or so. And I

couldn’t give a flying fuck whether you agree with me or not. I’m not sure

if I agree with myself! I think it’s great that we’re each on our own

wavelength. What you say is true: we’re each from different stock and

might have to return to the throbbing corpuscles of Brahman to find a

sharing of the same vein. But we’re close enough thought wise that Hagbard

would acknowledge that communication is indeed occurring. I don’t know that

I’ll ever see Bill as more than a tie-dyed Republican, but I might come

around to liking the British, although I doubt it. Like you said, I’m a

Scot and the wounds run deep. But I agree, the French are out of the

question. As you said, you’re a techno-hippie and I love you for it. I

also love Joel for it but will probably always use my shovel to cultivate

goodwill here on Earth and never to terraform Mars. But as far as an

identity, I’m not sure. I’m partly a Siddha yogi, but not as intensely as I

used to be; I might be a Buddhist, for Gautama and I share the same

birthday; I’m only a liberal when the fascists start screaming for genocide;

I’m really kind of a cosmic hedonist, and I guess it’s there in space,

either inner or outer, where the techno-hippie and I the cosmic hedonist can

meet: “we’ll trade wild trips through the All-One like we trade poems and

we smoke”. But the horizon that I seek, so full of promise and fulfillment,

is also full of the suffering of others. There is a fire and the air is

thick with smoke and I cannot see the faces of agony only hear the moans of

lives gone awry. But I get a glimpse through the confusion of an empty

chair beside the flames, the seat of a shaman who can use the fire to purify

the hearts of humanity. Whether it is my destiny to fill that chair I don’t

know-my own smoke is still too thick through which to see.

 

As far as the current crisis, my poem was true to my feelings, but only the

tip of them. An event like this is tailor-made for the fanning of my

cultivated suspicion and distrust of my own government, or more accurately,

the institution called Corporate America that runs our government. Not only

do I, along with thousands of others, see the attack as a natural reaction

of non-Americans (whoever they might be) to our imperialistic/jingoistic

economic, military, and political meddling, but I think, as outlandish as it

may sound, it is within the realm of possibility that the truth of the

attack is even more insidious than somebody getting pissed off, but may be

the trump card of Corporate America/government in their game of domination

and control. Yes, I think that it is possible that the whole thing was

planned years ago as part of a conspiracy that, among other things, frames

the Muslims and specifically bin Laden in order to provide a pretense for a

Middle East takeover of oil supplies?, labor markets?, tighter surveillance

of us at home?, or who knows what other insane objectives that these aliens

might have in mind. I wasn’t kidding in my poem when I said that I felt

like Big Brother was in my living room that night. I think he’s in

everybody’s living room every night that we have our TVs on. I see TV as a

direct conduit into our homes and into our minds for the transmission of

government, corporate, religious, and other institutional propaganda. But

he had an especially palpable, frightening presence the night of the speech.

I could go on and on about how democracy took a hit last November in the

presidential election fraud in Florida, our history of overthrowing leftwing

governments to install and support rightwing dictatorships to serve our

agendas, etc. Honestly, I think that through the use of Occam’s Razor such

a backdrop for the Attack is improbable and it was simply Muslim

retaliation, but for some odd reason my mind isn’t capable of anything but

extreme thought. Perhaps someday I will perfect the art of moderation.

 

Poetry is dancing in the light of the moon. Keep on dancing, brother, dare

not stop and break the spell. We are simply resting to speak our minds, but

our hearts hunger for ethereal food. If the tartan intrudes, just see it as

dancing in a kilt. Wear your bow tie if you wish.

 

Love, Aldous Mack

 

P.S. Never doubt yourself. You may have roots in the Heimatkunde but you

are walking the skyroad of wisdom. Remember what Blake said, “The road of

excess leads to the palace of wisdom”, and “The fool who persists in his

folly becomes wise”. Rave On

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