Metaphysics of a Puppet Show

I think
I've figured
it out.

Pay them.

All the nations
in the world
can get in
on it.

The Third World
can be payed
for the thing
we already spend
so much on.

Do the numbers show,
we spend so much
on entertainment,
sometimes just
financing a movie
production, mostly
just enjoying it,
there's just
no longer an excuse
to say people
earn money
solely on the basis
of a hard day's
labor, on things
we need
to survive.

Pay them.
It doesn't
matter if they
entertain.
Stick a camera
in the Third World,
pretend they're
a reality show.

Pay them,
let them feed
themselves,
but let them be
and if the world
they have
has nothing,
then let's
not pretend
to give them things
anymore.

Just pay them.
They're in
a puppet show
just like
anyone else.

There's simply
no excuse
pretending we
can't carry
the load of humanity,
why we must take
ill-management
as the excuse.

We're
in the business
of management,
ourselves
and those around us.

So let's quit
dancing around it
and do it.

Charity is a thing
of the past,
certainly noble,
but completely
unnecessary.

Some people
will always be hogs,
but the rest of us
must do
what we must,
and let the show
continue.

Metaphysics of the Road

Being cut off
from the awareness
of history,
of context,
may be another
stumbling block
for man.

It's oblivion,
the art of being
oblivious,
the lack of a thing
which drives you
while you do not
know it, off the road.

Reconnecting,
knowing again
what we all know
but sometimes
choose to ignore
may be what saves us,
if we choose.

Knowing
is an art,
knowing
what there is
to know
and what you
may know
yourself,
about
yourself,
that is
the thing.

That is what
we should
advocate.

It is the spirit
of leaving
no child
behind.

Quit
making
excuses.

Metaphysics of Nick Callaghan, Danny Archer, and the Third World

There's something amiss
in the world, and sometimes
people pay attention to it.

Some people are living
just to survive.
Some people are living
as if there's no hope.
Some people are living
for that next meal,
just like your mother
always told you.

They're starving,
and I don't
understand why.

I get that their
governments, their
armies, are terrible
and all that.

I get that trouble
and need have been
in their way.

I don't understand
how even if we
make constant appeals
and adopt their babies
and just make a relief
for a day, it
continues.

What is it
that makes Ellah
forsake a continent?

Life began there, yes?
Must life persist
in misery
like a metaphor
to punish us all?

Their lives are our lives
and a reflection
and a distortion
and everything
that can go wrong
and nothing
that can go right.

Where is the culture?
Culture, as I
understand it,
is the way we
break through,
find our own reality,
and in that way,
lift ourselves up
from the things
we could not change.

I think if you want
to save a third world
(if they must be
removed, even
metaphorically,
and that first world found),
you help them find
themselves. They must be
reminded
they're human.

To be human
is to be divine,
the engine of creation,
which is the arts.

Ellah is a renaissance man,
he knows many trades,
made the wings,
calculated the smile.

Living like a refugee
can't be easy,
but you can sing
your blues away.

We must be at the point
now that if we can't join
politically, then we can
through the only
common language,
which is song,
which is story,
which is art.

I think if
there is
a New World,
it must be found
there,
the new Rome,
found in
the New Fade,
found in time.

We'll reach it.

Metaphysics of the Modern Pirate

I had been trying
to argue about
Bob Dylan and
his current state
of affairs,
and said he
made music
rather than songs
now.

There is,
in his case,
no real
distinction,
and let me
make this
perfectly clear:

Bob has always made music.

He made music
when he made songs
and music when
he made songs.
In his current phase,
as I discovered,
he became
Stevie Ray,
after the
other one
moved on,

but nothing
has really changed.
Bob is still Bob.

This is
the difference:

For most artists,
what you hear
are songs,
and on their
albums,
filler,
and as such,
the argument
about Internet
piracy
is probably
accurate
for modern music.

There is no
distinction
between
albums
and
tracks,
no new order,
just a
new order,
a personal radio player,
an iRadio,
if you wlll.

Bob, even when
he blew them away
in Newport,
strumming away electric,
was following his heart,
that's all he did,
followed the music,
followed the heart,
which knew best,
and not the people,
what the music wanted.

He started out in folk,
and made his way
to the blues.
He's the Blues Brother,
brother,
a friend to you and me,
but mostly
to music.
Those who don't dig it

can't hear.

But man,
you listen to
the music today,
and you hear
how bad it's
going to get,
that we're all
going to be
surfing the iRadio,
and you think,

well, that was
always
going to be
the future,
it's just
some idiots,
the wave
of the future,
the youth of America
and elsewhere,
channeling their powers
not for good,
but for their ease,
saying we don't have to pay it,

but not for
anything meaningful,
but for their own
selfish means,
for music,
for the tracks,
for the song,
for their own private radio,
the iRadio, the Ellah of culture.

They have
nothing better
to do? No
greater cause?
The Pirates of the Modern Age
steal music?

Tell me
another one.
Please, I need
a laugh, I know
how the culture
treats itself,
like an unworthy parent.

Bob, he does
what he does,
he makes music,
folk or blues
or whatever
you hear,
modern times,
right?
Maybe the album
becomes extinct,
maybe everyone
makes rainbows
and supports
themselves, make
their names,
by playing live,
by tapping back
into the reason
musc came about
in the first place,
and maybe someone
wants to remember
that performance,
the whole thing,
not just a song,
and so dives
into the Community Web
for that collection,
because there was
more than one song
worth keeping.

I don't know,
I'm a fossil,
a relic,
a luddite,
what have you,
I don't believe in
Ellah, I don't hear
the iRadio,
I'm not that selfish,
even though I'm
more isolated
than the culture
that is,
that does.
I never heard Bob
strike it in Newport,
but I think I understand
the man so many
consider our poet.

Yo ho ho, Mr. Tamberine,
go play the music for me,
all with a bottle of rum,
because there's the waters
we plow, the great
and raging sea.

Metaphysics of the New Fade

In the Age of the
Artificial God Ellah,
all things are
chameleon.

It's the extent
to which you are
that determines
how you succeed.

Dylan became timeless
because he knew
what to change;
Bowie, Madonna,
these artists
changed everything
but their understanding
of music. They had
other interests,
and no true love,
made spectacles
not of their music
but of themselves.
They never went
to Newport.

John started changing
before he truly needed,
changed to fit
his audience
and maybe sometimes
his moods,
a reflection
of what he
needed to be,
until what he
became
was more
important
than the music,
so someone shot him.
All fashions must die
to live

in time.

What killed
the Protest Age
was the Protest Age.
People wonder why
Iraq is not another
Vietnam.
It's because Vietnam
was never Vietnam.
It was what it had
to be.
The Protest Age
screwed
the Protest Age.
Now we sit in wonder
at what we've done,
and don't know
what to make of it.

How about this?
In all things are
the beginnings
of all things.
When we started
fucking about
in the region of Ellah,
we started the whole
ball rolling,
and I'm talking
just last century.
Let the Greeks
worry about
the Greeks,
their Spartans
and their Athens.
We placed a displaced people
in someone else's home,
and stirred about
a cold war
that erupted
over oil.
Tell me what
America has done,
tell me what
Americans do,
tell me what the world is
when the world isn't
any different than it was
yesterday.

The New Fade abides,
it bides its time
like the chameleon,
attempting the colors
that will make everything
right.

Dylan used to makes songs,
now he makes music,
and now I couldn't tell
you what he sings.

I would like to find out.

The Metaphysics of War

War is funny.

Every war is the direct result
of the war before it.

Chances are
if you don't
understand one,
you won't the other.

But I would hope
if you do one,
you do the other.

Except we've reached
a point where
we spent one war
laughing at another,
and the next
still mourning
the last,
while the granddaddy
remains idolized,
even though
it remains
the worst of all.

Maybe that's why.
We try and escape,
to pretend,
because we still
like doing that,
even as we mature,
a rock band in the 80s
being the last
to look fondly
on us,
just as we ended
a cold third war,
which in its silence
was the most deadly
of the last century,
undeclared
and fought everywhere,
after two "world wars."

Every war concerns the world,
but we can silence that, too.

George-22
is the real victim,
the joke,
the jester,
the last man in the room,
when everyone else
has fled.
He is the most alone
with the myths,
and if you could see him,
late at night,
you would see him cry.

The Metaphysics of Magic

Magic is what you get
when there's no other explanation.

Okay, wait:

Magic's what you get
when you don't want another
explanation.

Magic's the alternative,
magic is what you get
when you discover it
in your dreams.

Magic is a way
of seeing the world
that involves fantasy
and wishful thinking

and maybe broomsticks
and hot chicks
(on TV, at least).

Magic is a dirty word,
like comedy.
It can be black,
that magic
is completely different
from the normal kind.

Magic is the future,
is the past,
and is someone's
version of the present.

Magic is something you hide,
or you're burned at the stake,
sometimes just for fun,
if you feel like it.

Magic is belief
inverted,
a way of taking
religion and science
and mixing them together.

Magic is a warm gun.

Magic is a war
even the wise
don't understand.

Just say a wizard did it.

General Metaphysics

I believe that love
is the path of destruction.
I believe

that there are two kinds:
love with irony
and too much,
as someone said
in the film (The Film),
and that you can tell
by how rock and roll bands
have turned out since
their creation.

The Beatles started out
with irony
and quickly started
to love too much.
In ten years,
they were over,
and then splintered more,
down the crosshairs.
John and George
loved too much,
Ringo with irony.
It was with Paul
that the duel edges,
the whole contraption,
fell toward,
from the beginning,
and it is he
whose legacy
is most for debate.
Does he still sing now
because of irony
or because
he loves too much?
Answer such a question.
Who knows such things?

So it was in the 60s,
when music was most loved
in the culture,
but again, as with Paul,
no one knew quite which love
they possessed for it,
and it was this dilemma
that split the interest
for so long that by the present,
no album could contain it
any longer. Those who survive,
do they love too much
or with irony?

That's really the basic problem,
I believe, that too few people
know on which side they fall.
It is a basic communal
ambiguity.
Love too much?
Love with irony?
I believe that
many fall too much
and so they fall quickly,
as the theory goes,
either dying young
or losing interest,
like a child,
the TV Theory Syndrome.
Many also understand
what's so ironic
about the culture,
and they last, they persist,
they are the new conquerors,
and they wield a fiery vengeance
for a world that does not
understand them.
And the irony?
Those who love too much
are the same way.

If you form a basic
reconciliation,
if you were able to
determine
if it were even possible,
then you would
crack the egg,
solve the riddle
of humanity.

All major religions,
all major philosophies,
they understand only too much,
but never irony,
they have no place for it.
And if they do,
these dissenters are outcast.
Even athiests believe too much.
Maybe a comedian is the closest
to a bodhisatva we have,
jokes about nothing,
a great big b-movie.

Anyway,
who knows such things?

Metaphysics of Zen

after "Zen" by Kenlee from Urbis.com

Zen is a wonderful thing.
Zen is the thing you achieve
through that philosophy
some mistake as a religion.
You can understand, because
they're identified as a group,
those who follow it,
like a religion.
They even have monks.
Zen is not about
religion, or belief,
or practice. I think
even they get it wrong.
They're caught up in its
Hindu origins.
Zen is a way of life,
not a way out of life,
Zen is a Value,
and a Quality,
because it's so
hard to define,
easy to mistake
for the butcher boy
lying in wait.
Zen is,
it just is.
Zen is,
because
Zen is
Zen is
Zen is.

Z-en is
like the blue oose,
like the students
who think it's
okay to ignore
someone else's
tragedy,
oh can't you see?
Zen is.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics are details
that are hard to define.
You don't actually have to be
or have been crazy
to see them, but
it probably helps.
Crazy is a subjective
term, which the
originator of the
phrase I've been using
explains better
than I could,
because I suffer
from a lack of
diagnosis above
all else. I think
that's the best way
to go. I alone
am telling myself
that there's got to
be something wrong,
and that's probably a
good thing.
It's funny, because
when I hear people
chatter about things
being wrong, I figure
they're usually wrong,
because they aren't
seeing things clearly.
I have bad vision,
but I see just fine.
I chafe when
people around me
call themselves
acknowledged geniuses,
based on IQ tests,
and feel a compulsive
need to batter them
to prove otherwise,
even though my tests
have more to do with
personality. The
Metaphysics of Personality
describe how one's
intelligence can be
determined by how
they react to others,
whether they understand.
If you understand,
that's the key.
If you understand.
Most people couldn't
care less to. Most people
couldn't care less about it.
I understand, and I'm
hobbled by a periodic
black cloud around me,
so that I cannot always
show it. But I think
the eyes have it. The eyes,
the Metaphysics of Eyes,
that may be the most pure
of them all.
You either get it
or you don't.

Metaphysics of Value

If the Metaphysics of Quality
are jacked up,
then the Metaphysics of Value
are even moreso.
They simply cannot
be shared, and it's
that very Quality
that leads them
to become universal.
Quality is elusive,
Value is everywhere,
Value in the things
we place it, Value, as
a result, in our very hands,
the mutual hands of Value.
It's hard to talk about it
and not get caught up in it.
Value is the thing we don't
see, and the thing we
see everywhere. Quality
is intangible, Value tangible.
It's the thing we hate to
have, the thing that traps us,
and the thing we can't live
without. You can define
Value, but not Quality.
But it's still a Metaphysical
study. Because people
refuse to believe.

Metaphysics of Quality

There is just one problem
with the Metaphysics of Quality,
and that they are a little bit
insubstantial. It's not that
they're subjective, only that,
if you don't see it, they
can't be understood.
The Metaphysics of Quality
are like a mental illness.
They're jacked up.