I'd like to apologise for the lack,
the words that don't quite...
so much stuff, stuffed in drawers,
in orifices, life a form of rampant porn,
I am - stuffed - with a decadent appetite,
I ate two steaks, fries, eight scoops of ice cream...
the waitress smiled but it was wasted
given the need to fill a void
these words don't do emptiness justice
just like capitalism can't
yet I speak, vomit into the ether,
and these words change the shape
of your thoughts, the very chemistry
electricity and occasional weight
you carry in your mind. call it
philosophy or science, never truth.
stuff, the very material of existence
consumes itself. I sleep it into dreams.
Welcome to The Tangled Branch! Join us.
stuffing
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Tracy Mitchell
- Posts: 3586
- Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 3:58 pm
Re: stuffing
“life a form of rampant porn”– If this is true, then I don’t understand either life or porn. But then it dawns on me that this assertion is not offered as true, but as stuff---the stuff of philosophy or science—just stuff, vomited into the ether, which changes my thoughts, the weight I carry in my mind.
Volumes of undifferentiated fats and sugar, change my body, the weight it carries, its very chemistry, electricity. The volume of stuff, quantity without quality, volume without truth, of course cannot fill a void, cannot fill the void, cannot even do emptiness justice.
And for this the Speaker feels compelled to apologise to the reader. But an apology is only legitimate if offered by an appropriate person. If not, it just adds to the volume of stuff. And that is not remedied by the guilt felt by the Speaker for a decadent appetite.
This is what I got from it.
Thanks for posting.
Cheers.
T
Volumes of undifferentiated fats and sugar, change my body, the weight it carries, its very chemistry, electricity. The volume of stuff, quantity without quality, volume without truth, of course cannot fill a void, cannot fill the void, cannot even do emptiness justice.
And for this the Speaker feels compelled to apologise to the reader. But an apology is only legitimate if offered by an appropriate person. If not, it just adds to the volume of stuff. And that is not remedied by the guilt felt by the Speaker for a decadent appetite.
This is what I got from it.
Thanks for posting.
Cheers.
T
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Tracy Mitchell
- Posts: 3586
- Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 3:58 pm
Re: stuffing
Forgot to say how much I enjoyed engaging with this, even if I got it all wrong. 
Re: stuffing
Hey Tracy
There is nothing wrong in what you say. It all began for me with a youtube interview in German with an Austrian philosophy professor who claimed, as they do, to have overthrown 2000 years of philosophical ideas. If I understood the gist, and who knows if that is possible, it revolved around the idea that when soemone tells us somethign complex, such as philosophical ideas, for example, then this produces entitrely new brain patterns that the brain has never had. Therefore, to tal about truth or facts of fixed sense of knowledge is soemwhat false, especially if you accept the premise that the world and its reality as such is actually a figment of our minds. We create it each and every moment. Et voila.
So, engagement is about right for this modestly written number.
Dave
There is nothing wrong in what you say. It all began for me with a youtube interview in German with an Austrian philosophy professor who claimed, as they do, to have overthrown 2000 years of philosophical ideas. If I understood the gist, and who knows if that is possible, it revolved around the idea that when soemone tells us somethign complex, such as philosophical ideas, for example, then this produces entitrely new brain patterns that the brain has never had. Therefore, to tal about truth or facts of fixed sense of knowledge is soemwhat false, especially if you accept the premise that the world and its reality as such is actually a figment of our minds. We create it each and every moment. Et voila.
So, engagement is about right for this modestly written number.
Dave
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Tracy Mitchell
- Posts: 3586
- Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 3:58 pm
Re: stuffing
Fascinating. A philosopher positing that a "truth" is only true to the extent of it being a recurring fixed brain-circuit event. Too bad there's no money in philosophy -- I could make that shit up every day of the week. 
I'm sorry -- is that too cynical?
T
I'm sorry -- is that too cynical?
T
Re: stuffing
Well, it's a good poem, good to read. I read the discussion above but prefer my initial take. I read it as personal, you speaking as a poet, posting and adding something to the reader's concept of the world.
The philosopher's angle seems like a thin and self-serving premise. We are curious creatures in a complex world and we are constantly presented with novelties that we accept, reject or ignore according to personal judgement, which in turn is nothing but an accumulation of prior learning experiences.
The philosopher's angle seems like a thin and self-serving premise. We are curious creatures in a complex world and we are constantly presented with novelties that we accept, reject or ignore according to personal judgement, which in turn is nothing but an accumulation of prior learning experiences.
Re: stuffing
Hey Mark
To simplfy communication I will tahnk you here for all the comments. As to continuing to post here, it is because this is my portic home and I like the people I ahev encountered here, not to mention the poetry. I have tried other sites but none of them appealed to me. I ahve not been writing much either over the last few months as happens if life does not strike me as poetic.
The recent poems are indeed a kind of internal response to the atmosphere around the western world - I think other areas of the world ahve always had other and probably more genuine issues to deal with. The Moses poem started as a response to the birth of my granddaughter and holding her in my arms but in the writing it did its own thing so I let it. Hamburg is one of thsoe towns in which people carry around and internal respect for privacy, which sadly they also apply in public so small talk is considered too banal to be useful, or even dishonest. Lastly, sure the philosophy was self-serving but I like the idea of the world and our understanding being reinvent moment by moment rather than the dull set of concrete beliefs that people seem to run around with.
Good to have you posting
Dave
To simplfy communication I will tahnk you here for all the comments. As to continuing to post here, it is because this is my portic home and I like the people I ahev encountered here, not to mention the poetry. I have tried other sites but none of them appealed to me. I ahve not been writing much either over the last few months as happens if life does not strike me as poetic.
The recent poems are indeed a kind of internal response to the atmosphere around the western world - I think other areas of the world ahve always had other and probably more genuine issues to deal with. The Moses poem started as a response to the birth of my granddaughter and holding her in my arms but in the writing it did its own thing so I let it. Hamburg is one of thsoe towns in which people carry around and internal respect for privacy, which sadly they also apply in public so small talk is considered too banal to be useful, or even dishonest. Lastly, sure the philosophy was self-serving but I like the idea of the world and our understanding being reinvent moment by moment rather than the dull set of concrete beliefs that people seem to run around with.
Good to have you posting
Dave