Losers

Losers

Loss is a rotten apple swallowed whole,
Worms and seeds and all
In one swift and painful gulp.
It cannot be recalled,
Not one way or the other;
The poisons enter the blood
Too quickly to be purged.
There is no other choice
But to plod onwards,
Eat your fill and take
What nourishment you can,
Perhaps building up
With each bitter, fetid bite,
An immunity to the pain,
A dam against the tears,
A morbid acquired taste
For the drug of sweet suffering,
And a stubborn determination
To put one foot in front of the other
Again and again and again.
So we eat our fill and fall
In this endless orchard of fruit
That decays with our touch,
For the loss is all we are.


Image credit: Kulmalukko, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Lullabies of the Abyss

Lullabies of the Abyss

Now lead me down to the abyss’s edge
And plunge me down into the cold dark depths,
Then set my silent, chilling corpse adrift
With this quick tide that sweeps from life to death.

Into the womb of chaos I shall come,
The primal birthing place of all we fear,
To hear the whispers of a babbling tongue
And drink the secrets of eternal tears.

Amidst the ghosts and shadows in my head,
The fading dreams long lost behind my eyes,
I sink into my heart, beneath the dead,
Afloat upon the murmured lullabies.

Image credit: Kaplanoah, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Veganism, Purity, and Human Nature

Veganism, Purity, and Human Nature

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article on its website by Harold Fromm titled “Vegans and the Quest for Purity.” It was a poorly argued, logically flawed diatribe against vegans and veganism—which were criticized for being foolishly extremist, self-contradictory, impossible, and utterly valueless. The article touched off a large debate in the comments and on various other websites. In taking part in the discussion myself, I did a lot of thinking about issues that were raised, which speak to many of my core principles and, I think, also touch on some key questions of modern culture and human nature.

Whatever valid points Fromm might be making about purist veganism in his article, he is in fact writing in such a way to discredit ALL veganism—in contradistinction to “looser” (and so more acceptable) vegetarianism. What this essentially does is to put things in an all-or-nothing light, so that veganism in any form is cast as foolish and worthless. If we only think in ideal and absolutist terms, then yes, veganism becomes untenable. It would be impossible to draw absolute lines between what things could be eaten/used by us and what not, and it would sacrifice practical efficacy for unwavering rigidity.

But to portray any and all veganism as priggishly absolutist ignores the very real good that we can do by trying, as much as possible, to reduce the harm we cause for other beings through a vegan lifestyle. Why is this somehow foolish or worthy of ridicule? By adopting a vegan lifestyle, even without worrying about bacteria and insects but just the more obvious living creatures, vegans still do a great amount of good in the world (for animals, for the environment, for themselves...).

It makes me sad to have these efforts and intentions dismissed out of hand or mocked. I fear that Fromm may lead many people to disregard veganism completely rather than see what aspects of it actually are worthwhile and doable.

And yet, Fromm does actually get at a serious issue in criticizing self-righteous vegans who try to preach to the world and who cast critical judgment on anyone not as pure as themselves. But the root problem in this case is not veganism in the extreme, nor any particular “-ism.” The real problem is NOT one particular ideology or lifestyle choice…but the human tendency to get fundamental about our cherished beliefs. Be it religion, political ideology, racial identity, or even tastes in art, I cannot help but see a common underlying thread: Humans just love to get fanatical. The sad thing is that the minority of fanatics get noticed, while the majority of reasonable people in any “group” get lumped in with the extreme ends of their particular spectrum (e.g., “all Muslims are militant terrorists”).

The Crimes of Blindness

The Crimes of Blindness

Imagine, if you will, that you are standing in some sort of a packed cell with hundreds of others--some of them family members, some of them friends, and many of them strangers. They all, like you, are visibly trembling and unable to move, even losing control of their bladders or bowels.

You have lost track of time, but you must have been here a long while, because the place stinks--with urine, feces, sweat, and fear, forming an invisible fog that is still thick enough to choke you. You suffocate and fight to stay conscious, not knowing where you are or what is happening.

Suddenly, a door swings open, and blinding daylight floods the confining space. Huge dark figures, silhouettes of strange alien shapes, rush in and start grabbing others around you. Some great clashing sound screams into life, the sound of metal and motor engines deafening you as you cry out, one voice among many.

And then you feel yourself clutched by the leg, yanked forwards, and inverted. Dizzied, you try to orient yourself and gather your senses, but things are moving too quickly in this terrible place. Something cold and hard locks on to your ankle, and you are moving, swinging to and fro in the air as you go.

On either side of you, others in a similarly up-ended position form a long line, swaying in the air like clothes hung out to dry in the breeze. The ride is short and fast, through a crowd of those alien figures. You watch as one reaches up towards you quickly, and with a flashing swipe, you feel an icy sting on your throat.

You try to cry out at the pain, but strangely your lungs cannot take in air…and then the real terror starts. You squirm and writhe, the sting in your throat sharp still but dulling as everything starts to fade. Before your senses escape you, though, you feel the skin of your ankle rip open and pull away from the bone…and you slip through the clasping fixture, flopping to the hard, cold floor.

Laughter and angry grunts get louder as one of the alien figures approaches you. Yet again, you are grabbed (by the injured leg no less, the useless limb now throbbing from somewhere so far away), hoisted into the air…and then slammed repeatedly against the floor, over and over. You feel your skull and vertebrae crack; your ribs shatter and pierce your organs; your blood fills your throat and blurs your vision. And then, finally, it ends…blackness, silence, peace…

I hope you feel some horror at the image of human beings like yourself, and including yourself, enduring such unjust, senseless violation.

But how do you feel when I tell you that the victims are chickens, not people? For the scene I have described is not some torture chamber in a fantasy world, nor an account of brutality from the depths of some draconian prison, but just one of many scenarios in the very real, very frightful animal slaughterhouses to be found throughout the United States and many other countries.

And what if I tell you that my narrative is the G-rated version, lacking so much of the nauseating abuses that come before--such as confinement of anywhere from three to five (or more) birds in a tiny cage, in fetid air and disease-infested surroundings, with fighting and even cannibalism, and involving genetic manipulation and stunting of every single natural instinct (from stretching limbs to scratching the ground), and much more?

Perpetuity

Perpetuity

A crimson wave is breaking down
From shore to shore and pole to pole,
The blood of all our eons raining down
Upon our heads with drowning weight.

This ripple of a cosmic blast
Released from somewhere on the Earth,
The tragic triumph now achieved,
The monstrous birth of incapacity
And power blinded, driven mad with greed,
But trudging onwards over broken bones,
With every step approaching to the edge
Of its great shadow kingdom, built of dreams.

But as it teeters and begins to fall,
The empty human soul flings out a hand
In desperation for a solid hold:
Its fingers clutch and cling like claws
Onto the fabric of reality,
The weight of all the burdens it has borne,
Collected as the generations passed
And stored within its twisted genes.

The weight is far too great, and with a crash
The gauzy veil is split…then torn to shreds.
And as the stars collapse into the void,
They cluster, coalesce, and rush in waves
To fill the cosmos with a purging fire,
Extending outwards, far beyond the light,
Embracing everything to draw it in,
Consuming every shadow, scar, and stain.

With countless ages having passed again,
Their nights of darkness having found an end,
On some small planet lit by newborn stars,
A simple form will stir within the slime.

Image credit: NASA, public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The Greatest Show on Earth

Sorry this is so bleak and pessimistic...I guess I am in a mood.

The Greatest Show on Earth

"God was led infallibly by his wisdom and by his goodness to create the world through his power, and to give it the best possible form..."
-Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy


The curtain opens on a crowded stage,
A troupe of players draped in rags as fools,
Their faces twisted in distorted masks,
With bulging crotches or with parted skirts.
Yet wizened, age-bent, crippled by the years,
The centuries that they have lived and bred
Within a haze of pheromones and lust,
Though never draining their virility.

Now watch them stumble, drunken lechers all,
And weave across the stage, more crowded still,
As by the minute more and more walk on,
Crawl over, stand erect, and pound their chests.
And soon one trips and falls, a quadruped again,
Returning to the origins it never left.
Then others trip, making a roiling mass
Of limbs and genitalia, boiling pile of flesh,
Rising and extending in a self-spawned swirl
Of replication for the sweaty glee,
The hint and glimpse of immortality
Within the climax and the little death.

But underneath their beastly grunts and groans,
The sounds of screams and angry cries grow loud.
For here and there, the orgiastic waves
Are parted by the fists and flailing clubs
Of two, then three, then hundreds locked in war,
Their throats torn open by their battle cries--
The mass of flesh divided half and half:
Two parts, one whole: the ecstasy of blood.

And Death, a shady figure draped in bones and skins,
Is striding on to stand at center stage.
It gazes out, though lacking face or eyes,
Then turns its body, points to where the farce
Has entered into this, the final act.

For now two streams are spreading from the pile,
One red, one white, both draining life away.
Yet still the bodies pile higher, farther out,
The overflowing flesh collapsing on itself,
The forms devolving in their lust and war
And spilling over from the stage's edge.

The stage’s wood and metal groan beneath the weight,
The rafters shake and creak, the floor grows weak,
And flames break out behind the scenes:
The whole theater is about to fall
Upon the heads and humping, thumping forms
Now next to formless, shapeless shades like Death,
Amoebas swimming in the viscous streams...

Until the curtain falls, and silence reigns,
And everything is stillness once again.
The curtain quivers, but the troupe has gone...
There is no encore, for the show is done.


Image credit: Andreas Praefcke, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Cardinal

Cardinal

Red red red! O glory of life!
My veins and arteries flutter,
My heart drinks you and spits you out
Like some wine aged to perfection.
The tops of rainbows shine with you,
And roses blush at your sweet kiss.
The fires of stars, the face of Mars,
The core of this planet of ours
Burn and explode to show your ire
Through cosmic spaces, dark and cold.

O red, these reflections are dim,
Mere embers long buried in ash.
What of that spark that once went BANG!
And threw off the spectrum of light,
A particle hidden within
Each frenzied atom as it fled?
Fear not, rage not: your spark lives on,
Is tended and held like a gem.

When first, in that moment long gone,
The universe opened its eyes,
That sparkling shard took a shape
And spread two feathered wings to fly
With black-mask face and orange beak,
Bearing this treasure with a song.
So now, if the sun strikes the breast
Of this avatar in the air,
The past becomes present, alive,
And promises wonders to come.

It is time: gather ’round this crook
Of a blooming dogwood’s thin branch.
The wind watches, holding its breath,
The sun brightens, peeking through leaves.
For here in this nest an egg cracks:
First sign of a color reborn.

Image credit: U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, from Wikimedia Commons, under public domain.