Author: tiphane

Your Peaceful Existence

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Your peaceful existence Comes in a colorful package that you buy And you become diffident of The no-name brands denouncing The dominant point of view That war is good, out there. In your package Comes educational material Justifying the building of weapons Under a veil of good morals and principles. Even you can shoot and kill Under the veil. No child is left behind All pledge allegiance All are given the freedom To shoot and kill And peace becomes the enemy, Driven out of the classroom, Arrested, suppressed. You pledged never to challenge The official view. You pledged never to question How many are killed in your name. You pledged never to look Outside your peaceful existence. There is no money to be made in peace. Aspiring peace leaders withdraw, Threatened of becoming martyrs, Their words distorted to rekindle the war effort. War leaders continue to get Airports, buildings, and freeways named for themselves. They continue to call peace the enemy. So, you say, war must be good, And looking the other way You return …

Self-Portrait, revised

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Is this better? Self-Portrait Every morning, facing the mirror You feel like Dorian Gray who saw in his portrait The old, consumed man he was supposed to be. You have seen it before, The image you try to project, Blending in time, growth, and decay. Every morning you have a routine You perform magic And transform yourself into What you want to be. Every morning you select From a wardrobe blessed by fashion The clothes that you need To make you part of your world. Years spent making yourself up And today your mask presses Uncomfortably against your nature. The leaks in your mind Wet the plaster Of your mask, and it crumbles. You can’t find yourself in a magazine. The lost identity never was yours. Today, you start a new portrait Incorporating strange features from a night filled with dreams. You need to slow down, to let the colors blend Allow for experimentation. Paint Your true self, one trait at a time, Sometimes over another you tried and disliked. You call it, work in …

Poetry read at sl4db: Self-Portrait

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A new feature of my blog: the poems I wrote for Spotlight for Dust Bunnies Monday nights. Yes, they usually are first drafts (or first and a half, or even second). One day all the revisions will magically appear. Self-Portrait Every morning you face the mirror And feel like Dorian Gray when he saw his portrait: The old, consumed man he was supposed to be. Why is it a shock? You have seen it before. Every morning you have a routine You perform magic And transform yourself into What you want to be. You select from your wardrobe The clothes that will give you the confidence You need to face the world. You spent years making yourself up And today you want out of your mask. Your mind is leaking, And your mask crumbles like wet plaster. You can’t find yourself in a fashion magazine. You have lost an identity that never was yours. You start to paint a new portrait Incorporating strange features. You need to slow down You need to learn, and allow …

The Daily Grind

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In the cavernous food court Of their office building The men in gray find their daily food For the half hour, perhaps a whole hour They allow for lunch Between a phone call and the filling of a form Calculating precisely how long the path is to retirement. On plastic trays, they put hamburgers or ham sandwiches The occasional fries also A bottle, of juice, sliding dangerously Threatening to spill the whole tray If not caught by a spasm of hunched shoulders. From plastic chairs attached to plastic tables They occupy their tired minds With a strategic view of a TV on the wall Playing something they will soon forget. A man in black, the word SECURITY on his back, Walks by Making sure, in his silence They are happy and undisturbed. Oh, how they long for retirement As they adjust mentally their calculation Glancing at their watches Dreaming of doing what they want The enjoyment of the rest of their lives In the tranquility of a well-furnished living-room Free to choose from the day’s …

I wish you

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I wish you… A life of discovery and wonder In total peace with yourself and others Disregarding the voices of discord and war Welcoming the voices of joy and friendship Exercising your right to demand That such a life be accessible to all. May you be the instrument of peace on earth.

The Golden Gate is a Metaphor

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Work in progress, part of something I intend to call “A San Francisco Odyssey” The Golden Gate Is a Metaphor The visitors said, We have come to seek the Golden Gate To climb Lincoln Boulevard On rented Blazing Saddles Filling our lungs with eucalyptus, To brave the wind, the fog, and the foghorn, The real cyclists and the other tourists zigzagging around us As we take pictures Of boats sailing underneath Coming for the promised gold. For the bridge isn’t, as promised, Golden, it is the Gate that is An opening, a passage Allowing the gold seekers to come and go. Now of course, they fly over it The captain tells them “there it is, folks” And they twist their stiffened necks To see the bridge Perhaps to compare it with a postcard, or a Ghirardelli chocolate wrapping, A view they had before Of it next to a cable car and Alcatraz And if their view were really warped Next to palm trees and snow. How many photographs, and paintings, How many imprints on retinas, …

long sentences

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Although recently would you say, there hasn’t been anything great on TV, or for that matter on any kind of media, be it the radio, the newspapers including the tabloids, the magazines, and of course the Internet, there is no sign of anything negatively beginning like the dark ages as they had way back when nothing great was happening because they had more doers than thinkers and when that happened, the doers got armies together and purged the rest of the world of their thinkers since they would try to influence those who just waited for the news of what they were supposed to do, in a sense like today when people wait for the TV, that is whatever network they prefer to be told what to do on, and the TV somehow, one way or another, tells them, oh my, here’s something you should pay attention to, aren’t you nervous and excited, and shouldn’t your fearless leaders do something about whatever it is that you now feel is a priority or should be a …

Parents and Government

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Parents and GovernmentNow that the cat is out of the bag, privacy is a big issue for everyone. Someone may be listening to so many tiresome conversations that it’s amazing they would bother. With e-mails, snooping is much simpler, because you can feed all e-mail to a machine that analyses the contents and decides if it’s worth looking into (or keeping for later).What’s ridiculous with the current record-keeping and analysis, is that one could infer from looking at how many times you called a certain number that you are conducting business of interest, while, say, it could be an affair. They would arrest you, thinking it’s the latter, and since they can do that, they’ll keep you for a long time.They say it’s for your own good, and that otherwise they won’t catch the terrorists. Problem is, they’ve already shown that they could look the other way when they saw something suspicious. So now, even though they may not get anything from their domestic spying program, they could look the other way when someone serious …

Street Spirit

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Street SpiritAt Andronico’s in Berkeley tonight, I arrived on my bike, presented it to the door to see if the store was still open.  It was.  This man selling the “Street Spirit” shows me I could park it on one of the racks.  On my way out, I buy his sheet, and ask if he writes in it.  Puzzled by it, but made curious, he wonders if I would find out who would take his story, and I say he might want to ask whoever gave him the paper.Of course, I might have offered to write his story for him.  As I went home, I thought it would be a good idea to gather these people’s stories.  I also thought it could be another of those cool projects, to get the homeless a kind of occupation to write, to compose something…

Arthur and George

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Arthur and George, by Julian Barnes. Knopf, 2006.  ISBN 0-307-26310-X I was at Bookshop Santa Cruz – funny how a visit to towns like Santa Cruz end up at that bookstore – and this book on the New Fiction table just jumped at me and said, “buy me.”  It had, of course, the appeal of being hard bound, which I really like, and of having that round sticker on it that said “Autographed Copy.”  Yes, I remembered, this Julian Barnes was around, and I never paid attention.  I heard him on the radio, on KALW, but sometimes I hear the radio and don’t listen – or so I thought.  In a definite leap of faith, I bought the book – my friends and I had just discussed how I was frugal when I didn’t need to be. Arthur and George takes the reader through short episodes in the distinct lives of Arthur and George, entitled, “Arthur” and “George” until they are merged to “Arthur and George” in an episode that does not talk about either of them.  The expectation builds up: …