The deep fault of the human race
is that there are no individuals any more.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
Pixels in the machine it seems
Articulating world schemes, twirled
Reality for those addicted to a screen,
Too timid into be seen in between ~
Inventions of mad men with intentions of perverting
Common sense, it’s so passé
Loving everything but Roget’s suggestions~
Even poems must have an ending!
Menageries of words saying nothing, galleries of pixel
Animations replacing animates en masse
Nothing leftover for the poor,
who don’t exist except
in old picture books.
Life is not a problem to be solved,
but a reality to be experienced.
~ Soren Kierkegaard
Is there a proper way to love
and to be loved?
My mother says yes, my sister says no,
my brother just shrugs and leaves the room.
He has things to do: wash the car, go shoot pool,
smoke a little weed out back.
His girlfriend says she doesn’t mind
as long as he pays the bills
he can go where he wants
and see who he wants to see.
Her mama cringes a little and says
as long as she is happy,
it’s not up to me.
My friend married a man thirty years older,
had a fling with a man thirty years younger,
now she is single and says she’s content
with her own company
although she does have
three dogs
and a cat.
Is there a proper way to love
and to be loved?
Do not ask me~
love is a mystery!
"Despair is generally defined as a loss of hope. In existentialism, it is more specifically a loss of hope in reaction to a breakdown in one or more of the defining qualities of one's self or identity." Søren Kierkegaard
St. Kilda is a World Heritage Site.
Birds persevere;
rock houses
empty
now.
Last
count topped
one million
resident birds.
Sheer numbers endanger other species.
Humans have not lived on St. Kilda for
nine long decades.
mind-boggling
man's choice -
move
Man
fought the
elements
two thousand years.
Wind, water, weather and wildlife won out.
April 27, 2023
Sponsor Constance La France
Contest Name Writing Challenge - Words with 'X' -
St. Kilda is a remote archipelago off the coast of Scotland.
The remaining 36 residents chose finally to leave
an environment which had become unsustainable. Imagine
their despair in leaving - displaced, adjusting to a new existence.
The abyss of nothingness
looms large in my consciousness
Churning each moment
belaying the time
From Nietzsche to Kierkegaard
their vacuum surrounds me
An active volcano
—whose lava is primed
(Dreamsleep: November, 2022)
He played in the hills that day,
And in the evening he heard the call to gather,
And he came running,
Eager that he might learn.
He listened to the older horses:
No horse is lucky till dead ...
A horse’s lot is tragedy ...
To stand always in the cold …
To almost be killed, driven to overwork …
And on evenings like this he learned
what caused the others to fear and dread,
while less and less did he understand himself.
Still every evening gathering
he would run back to learn
to prize his days in the hills little by little less and less.
(based on Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart, I learned about through Thomas Oden's Parables)
Yeats and I share the same sentiment:
Ageing is absurd.
But Yeats could not cope with it;
He called it a caricature.
But I not only know but also feel—
Old is gold!
I won’t be a Yeats!
Yeats thought of life as a tragedy
And continued to bemoan it.
But I would, after Buddha and Kierkegaard,
Think of life as absurd,
Which I should learn to cope with—by living,
I won’t be a Yeats!
God’s gift to me is this awareness:
I am a participant observer;
And can influence my own life
And change for the better;
And, in the process, may influence others.
And that makes me happy.
I won’t be a Yeats!
***
An 'honorable mention' in the Poetry Contest, "My Secret to Happiness,"
sponsored by Line Gauthier, October 18, 2017.
When I am in pain,
My ego would be the first to leave,
As rats would a sinking ship;
The greater the pain the faster it leaves!
My drives get ready to play a masochistic role.
All philosophers, Cosmologists,
Ontologists, Monists, Dualists, Pluralists,
Eschatologists, Epistemologists et al
Hastily retreat, like true fair-weather friends,
Except Kierkegaard and his lieutenants,
Edmund Husserl and Viktor Frankl: they
Stand by me; help me, first of all,
To see meaning in the situation
Where there is apparently none.
The pain starts mitigating.
The triumvirs prompt me to be positive
And do things that I can— in the circumstances,
Ignoring things I cannot possibly do or undo.
Then I find my other companions,
Knowledge, Reason, Experience, etc.,
Slowly joining hands and doing their bit.
Thank God, there is a Kierkegaard!
— Ram, R. V.
Published in The Creative Collective Anthology
Series 2, Graldine Taylor, Ed. Amazon, 2017
Is it a new phenomenon,
Known to the world
Through Beckett and Camus?
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean.
Oedipus, Bhartrhari, Buddha—all,
Over a period of intense suffering,
Learnt to cope with it,
Each resorting to a different praxis.
King Dasaratha perhaps thought
He knew—until a moment came,
When no knowledge,
No cut-and-dried theory,
No ready-made solution
Could possibly help.
He succumbed.
Kierkegaard could see.
Husserl could show.
Eliot could feel.
Frankl could cope with.
Christ had known.
— R. V. Ram
I’m finding Derrida de-structured
And Levinas‘ face makes me smile
Who would have conjectured
That one day I’d lecture
On thoughfulness and all its trials?
I prefer Kierkegaard to Sartre
Who sometimes makes me feel *****.
Who would have expected
That words would be texted
As men smoked cigarettes and drank beer?
Some people like reading Jane Austen
While others juggle with Wittgenstein.
Who would have discarded
The notes in the margins?
How sweetly these words recombine.
Munch liked to paint people screaming
his premonitions were extra strong
Who else would have expected
The human destruction
Europe gave to the world before long?
I too believe
Flowers have more purposes than the bringing of fruit
So that all of me is not known
Though dig to the bedrock of my root
And I have feared that I shall go away
Before the golden fleece
Of many colors set me laughing at sun, moon and stars
And ever walked between the morning and the evening
Avoiding Martha's doubt
And the tears
From the depth of veiled despair
It is not evening etherized here
But common dust
When every atom is built by faith
I am sick today
And was sick yesterday
And again they brought me
To the gate Beautiful
After he was swallowed in the clouds
Yet I did not wait like Lazarus
For I too
Can be sick unto death
With these two voyagers:
Goodness and mercy
On eagle's wings and loaded with sunshine
Piloting me.
"The function of Prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one
who prays".
Soren Kierkegaard
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