Yet Can Heal (Mike's Wedding)

A foreigner - an outsider -
     onlooks
     the nice hooks
          of the current song.
An old man can understand
     dance phenomena
     and awe
          at his own memories.

He may not know where to stop or show,
     raise his hands
     or touch the sands.
But the foreigner - the outsider -
     can dance, can feel.
     And rhythm yet can heal.

THE BEAST

When a cloud resembles a ship,

    a dragon, a wisp

    on zephyr light,

it yet retains itself:

                floating water,

                compact tight.

Puny minds compare

                to what we know,

                to things we’ve seen

We are not wrong to do such things.

    We are not wrong

    to dream.

Our neurons fire, spires form

                and castles

                drift and shift,

crinkling grey matter,

                ‘neath our skulls, while

                we’re amiss.

But puny minds compare, and

                cannot reckon

                with what is –

THE BEAST, which runs the world, THE BEAST

                without which

    none can live.

His brain – all clouds of rain and mist,

                snugly fit, the

                planet ‘round.

Lightning peels – his neurons –

                full, ferociously

    abound.

Thunder, further deafening;

                our engulfed

                egos drown.

We are not wrong to lose ourselves;

    mere putty

    to the sound.

He gathers from the oceans deep -

                he brings them

                to the hills.

In bogs and marshes, fogs and haze;

                and us –

                proud of our mill!

As if such imitation might

                us beastly

    power bring,

but no two eyes will ever see

                our omnipresent

    beast.

He hovers, wise, omnipotent;

                he does not

    have a need…

…but balance. Fawn and fauna, his soul

    in every

    living thing.

When flood or drought pours or starves –

                balance

    is restored.

But people die, and plea the gods,

                "How? Why can

    this be, Lord?"

Throughout recorded history,

                there scarce has

                been reply

of why disasters natural

                bring death

                into our lives.

Perhaps THE BEAST knows better, yes

                and silence

                his reply.

We are not wrong to think such things.

                we are not wrong

                to die.

Sharpen

Forging the work of a master,

our words - like smithwork tonight.

From the recesses of our minds,

we choose those words best for conveying our love…

Yours all the hues of pink - glimmering, shimmers in the light outside.

Blinding bright.

Mine from the dark, stark ebony sifted from alkaline,

Electrified.

SPARKS! SPARKS!

we come together -

work of a welder, we

LIGHT! LIGHT!

the soul of each other, as

we meld together,

materials tethered,

stronger than ever.

We make us better,

yeah we make us better.

So,

don’t call it pointless. Don’t dull it down.

We’ll sharpen our edges – we’ll figure it out.

Sex, and the Balance

The most centered people have the fewest kids. Generally, they are not religious. During their 20s they are sexually active, but not with very many one-night stands (though if they started in their teens it’s possible). Because they are trying to stay balanced, centered, and true to themselves, they are looking for something more substantial in a relationship. They haven’t lied to themselves about what they want, nor believed the lies told them. By the time they meet that special person and choose to spend years and years of their life with, they have thought enough about relationships and kids to not want too man. Introspection through a centered life has led them this way. They’ve experienced sex before, and have learned how to integrate it into their life BEFORE getting married or tying any knot. This lets the relationship grow naturally, without presumptions or expectations or other outside barriers.

On the other hand, there are centered people from the other end. Generally, they are religious. During their 20s they generally abstain from sex out of principle for what they believe. They don’t hold out as long to get married because, well, sex drive is a strong beast. So they sometimes get married to abate it, sometimes not.  Those who marry after abstaining tend to have very strong relationships with their partners, though inexperienced in the world apart from each other. To me, they rarely seem as calm or centered when compared to centered people who don’t wait until marriage to have sex. I think that’s because they don’t spend as many years getting to know themselves and learning how to balance life’s many variables on their own as those in the previous paragraph.

So what’s the deal? The sex drive is strong, and to go through your 20s without having sex (in marriage or not) is essentially starving a part of your humanness. Those who carefully explore sex, philosophy, their own interests, and even religion in their 20s have a very serene aura to them (with or without someone in their life). Those who dismiss sex as hedonistic outside of marriage, from what I’ve seen, tend to lack centeredness, openness, and creativity. But hey, that’s just what I’ve seen. Sex takes you to another place, and it usually takes years to balance that in the ever-changing web of our lives.

On Cheating

PREFACE: I rarely write prose. Today is the exception.

In American schools, I never cheated. It wasn’t always because I was interested in the subject, but because I wanted to develop my brain by learning about different sectors. I learned to solve difficult problems in Physics, to write creatively and effectively in English and Journalism, to apply lessons from History, to learn the inner workings of Government and Economics. But the reason why I succeeded in school was because I wanted to learn all these things. After school ended, I was able to succeed in nearly everything I’ve done because I had learned how to learn. In college and after, I was elected director of multiple organizations and clubs. I was able to find the way to realize my dream of creating and touring music. I was able to graduate from a great school with a great GPA. Why? Because I had the ability to understand the details of what was going on in those organizations and clubs, because I learned how to properly search for the path to music, and because I knew how to understand the information from the courses I was taking in college. Now why is this? Because I have always challenged myself to understand what is going on. I never cheated in school, and it’s given me opportunity in life. I am satisfied with what I’ve done, and I know that I can do anything that I want to do. This is not because I’m some genius, or rich, or American, or a white male. This is because I made a commitment long ago to give everything I have to understanding what is presented to me.

If Ukrainian students are allowed to cheat from the very beginning, then after school when they enter the real world, they will always look for ways to cheat any system also. If they stay in Ukraine where corruption is the law of the land, then they can survive. But if they live any time abroad, they will learn that cheating a system is not socially acceptable;  they will see laws are enforced to prevent it. They will either adjust themselves to this new line of thought, or they will return to corrupt Ukraine.

We need Ukrainian teachers who have lived abroad and will not tolerate cheating. We need Ukrainian teachers who teach pupils how to learn and think for themselves to solve problems. We need to teach our pupils that the way to get rid of the corruption in Ukraine is absolutely, only in their hands. Cheating may get you good marks, but a generation of cheaters will prevent Ukraine from growing and maturing into a respectable member of the Global Community.

Dross

Don’t dwell

On or in the state we’re in  - it’s shared, but not

Parallel.

And please

Ignore

all of this candor if – somehow I’m telling you

how to live.

The truth is,

we have this

contentment to share it – together aware that though it’s

viewed with 2 sets of eyes

the difference won’t paralyze – don’t be afraid

don’t overthink.

Symbiosis

rocking/allowing each other

to recover! burn the dross down low! 

if it’s too heavy I’ll take the load.

I’m asking no more than to show

what you do to me.

Vincible

One doesn't simply 'create' art. Art manifests of its own timing, always an etch of those words that weren't said. The unsaid. The trains underneath a life punctiliously and continually kept open. They beckon the artist, and though it may seem he "can't help" but create, the artist's sole role is simply to stay open, subjugating his all to it all.

To both insanity and ecstasy, both addiction and worship are the artist privy, a consequence not of some selfish survival gene but of its opposite: exposure. By opening the inner self to everything, we experience anything. To subjugate oneself to life with all five senses and intuition, to best recreate without sacrificing any detail to that image - that is what we call art. Art is not creation, but recreation. To think is to lose. To classify is to lose. To speak is to lose. This is a precious secret.

And the person who has committed his perception, knowingly or not, in such a susceptible way is the person whose work resonates with people. And why shouldn't it? It's already truth, he just finds and resurrects it.

Somehow the artist knows that only the vincible places yield anything worthwhile. He maybe doesn't know that exactly, but he knows where to look.