Depression Is A Combat Zone

Where was I on
The Eleventh Hour
Of the Eleventh Day
Of the Eleventh Month?

In a waiting room.

This is who we are...

This is who we are...

Look down and you'll see it:

You're a little ragdoll

Hanging off of your eyeballs...

--- 12 Nov 2013

Every day without fail

Every day without fail
(It seems)
I fall asleep
When I wake up.

--- 23 Oct 2013

Obscenity In My Time

I open a favourite video of mine,
Just about an hour ago
(As of posting this),
And this ad comes up on Youtube...
About this product called
Poo-Piroueee, or something like that,
Which basically is a for-real
Scientifically-designed product
That covers the smell of your shit

Angel

Yesterday some kid,
Some kid,
Killed 26 people
In Connecticut.

I think of the damage
That our Technologized,
Materialistic,
New Atheist society
Has done to these souls.

These Loners...

Technology slows us down

Technology slows us down
Our humanness
Our who-we-are-ness.

When you tell a story,

Humour is

Humour is
Lightness in the face of darkness.

--- 30 April 2013

E-Sewage

We are now in the Barbaric Period of
The Global Electronic World.

Prior to this,
In my own youth,
We were in the Tribal Period of it.

Soon, we'll need to start talking
About Civilizing this:

Bitcoins

Traditional money derives its worth from a promise.
The good word of the party issuing it.
In this case the country.
It's just like a contract -
Another kind of piece of paper
That depends on the good word
And good faith of the parties signed to it.
If I make a promise to you,
And write it on a piece of paper,
You could transfer that piece of paper
To someone else,
IF they knew me and had faith that
I was good for it.

"Good word", "good faith", "promises", and so on,
Have no meaning to a computer.

Bitcoins only have worth insofar as they have encryption power.

Bitcoin turns money from a contract based on faith to a game based on technology.

--- 13 August 2013

Deeper, Shared and Vocal

Now when the comment offends, you just delete it.
Block the sender,
Ban their IP address.
Whatever.
You rearrange your worldmap to simply

Witch Hunters

Beware the Witch Hunters.

They think in circles.

And they too are legion.

--- 10 July 2013

Like Cyanide

The Quest of TechNumb People -
Of Technology and Numbers People -
Is to make themselves obsolete.

We dreamers

We dreamers
Must do battle with
The forces of darkness
For the soul of mankind.

But, here's the hitch:
We have no power.
Little to no influence.

All we can do is
Speak,
And hope to be heard.

--- 26 June 2013

The Naked Flame of Emotion

The Naked Flame of Emotion.

--- 23 June 2013

You, John Smith...!

You, John Smith...!
Yes, you.
We have detected you using
Many other aliases on our system.

Alias such as
John Smith Model Airplane Flier,
Smith, John, Expert Sniper, USMC,
John A Smith MBA,
Smith and Brothers Afterhouse Bored Housewives Plumbing,
And so on...

Each such alias
While maybe expanding your identity,
Creates inefficiency in our system.

From this point on,
Other aliases you have chosen,
You hereby declare null and void,
So that we may strip you to your barest self:
That naked one email address....
With all your different interests
Now lying within our various corrals of you...
So that we may own your every waking moment.

(And they said "don't be evil".)

--- 6 June 2013

Tonight while ranting and stewing

Tonight while ranting and stewing
About my Latest Ambitions,
I opened and heated a can of stew.
From one of these big name food chains.

I had forgotten that I still had
Half a Subway sandwich,
With fresh vegetables still inside.

I ate the sandwich
Then, I guess to finish a well-sated appetite,
Tasted the stew,
Kind of repulsive,
As I ate into a piece of flesh.

Then I heard something remind me
That this piece of flesh was that of one creature,
And poor stew or no,
Even if lost in the dehumanizing maze of
Identical food consumption unit, tinned,
Even if split up among that matrix,
It had once been a living thing
Sacrificed to feed us.

So I ate it.

And I wrote this.

--- 6 June 2013

Logging on to Dungeons & Dragons Online,

Logging on to Dungeons & Dragons Online,
For the very first time,
This is what I see...

"Maximize your
Strength,
Wisdom,
& More!

"Limited Time Release
Of +4 Stat Tomes
Now 20% Off!

"June 7 - 13"

What?

Is this what has befallen my game?,
Dungeons & Dragons?,
Is this It's fate:
Dime store mall "Virtual Experience"
Except now on the Internet...

Whereas what I remember was
Me and my friends
In high school,
Our imaginations exploding,
Our fellowship growing,
All because of this fun game you played -
That teased your imagination -
In a rec room
Or around a dining room table.

Now it's a shopping mall.

What a shame.

--- 6 June 2013

What do you think it's like to be Google?

What do you think it's like to be Google?
To be a company that began from
An interesting search algorithm
To being what it is now:
The Receptacle of the Internet
?

What does it feel like,
To see the Internet eating up memory
In front of you
As fast as you can shovel new memory cells in?

To see the Raging Storm of
Online Media,
Burn up banks upon banks of
Harddrives?
With all the power that those hardrives eat?

You might wonder if it's just like
Blake's Dark Satanic Mills...

--- 4 June 2013

Chicken Noodle Soup

I just now made
My first batch of
Chicken noodle soup.

Total Hell

If you likened our world now
Not even the "West"
But basically the whole world
Except the Insurgent Spaces
As Rome...

Sometimes I feel

Sometimes I feel
I do my best work
Just inside
The veil
Of the Abyss.

--- 13 Sept 2011

Human Slavery In Our Time

He can take your image for all time,
Your very face,
And cover it with his sperm,
And you will know that he put this
On the Internet,
Where it will live forever.

And then you will agree to this,
As documented by the
"Custodian of Records"
(Whatever that is)...

And that you do,
And that you know you must act well-
So that you really truly do
At least seem to
Agree to your own public defacement-
That you need to put on a good performance
Even there
Shows how deep his tentacles have reached
Into you.

And then,
To this he adds
That he seeks to make money
From those legion
Out there,
That he seeks to charge money
To his own compatriots
In this
Shows how far,
How deep the rot has gone.

I come from the game industry.
Do you know that the game industry
Used to be about making games.
Now it is about the wholesale
Enslavement of human attention...

The total pursuit for
Total control
Of every person's every waking moment.

--- 16 April 2013

My Functional Self

My Functional Self
Is a valued servant,
A special ops lieutenant, actually.
And has even saved my life on occasion,
But he's kind of overstepped his grounds.

I just have this feeling that
I'm about to reveal myself...

My Self Self.

--- 1 May 2013

Funny as this may sound

Funny as this may sound
I had my first online date today.

(I guess I had just done all my
Dating the old fashioned way before...
Plus on hiatus during my ten-year marriage...)

But what I am struggling with
Is the notion that
You can unmeet someone
After you've met them.

She told me she'd decline to see me,
I was okay with that.
Then when she left
She walked to the lobby (of the hotel)
And I instinctively followed.

You see, early in our meeting
(In the bar of the Gladstone)
I had talked shop
And went on on ideas,
And she talked about her business.
Then she declined me.
THEN we started to click...
When I showed her my Police hoodie,
From a concert I saw of them.
She started talking about Sting,
And then the ice melted.

But she had declined,
So she left,
And I instinctively followed,
As if she were a friend.

Because I felt she was.

But there was obviously something
I didn't get.
She started to look scared,
Quickly,
Then suggested I go to the washroom.
Well I had to anyway...
So I shook her hand and we parted.

But only then did I realize I must've scared her.
And it was depressing for hours afterward.

But what I wondered now is
How do we make sense of this?
Human relatedness
And community
Is built on meetings with others
And that relationship.
If we begin to see that relatedness
As mechanical and modular -
Thanks to this Internet age of ours -
If we begin to believe that
We can control relatedness like that -
Then we start to engage in a kind of
Strange insanity.
An idea that we can "unmeet" others.
We start to see humans through a
Very functional lense,
But in a stranger way:
No longer just functional as in
Doctor, baker, lawyer, soldier, what have you,
But functional now in
This closer sense.

You can't unmeet someone.
Once you've met them,
You have a relationship.
You have a community of some sort.
You might see them only months later,
But there it is.

Why fear it?

Ah... Maybe this is just
Sour grapes...

But I am still troubled though
By this mechanical vision...
This reduction of human beings
In relatedness
To mechanical parts we attach
Or detached
To or from ourselves
At whim.

--- 18 May 2013

Some Civilizations

Some civilizations
Were toppled by outside forces,
At the mercy of tyrannical men.
Some starved into the dust,
At the mercy of despairing men.
Still others were taken by the jungle,
Being "steered" by optimists waving
Happy pieces of paper,
As a defence
Against the impending.

--- 18 May 2013

What happens to a society

What happens to a society
That drifts at the mercy of
Its moods and desires?

Like a rudderless ship...

Sooner or later
A storm finds it,
And smashes it against
A craggy shoreline.

--- 17 May 2013

Beginning This

The masthead, above, contains a composite of two photographs. Both of High Park, both in the same area. The left was photographed during a forest fire - actually, a controlled burn being done in High Park, Toronto, across the street from where I lived at the time. To the right is the same area, later that summer: lush and green.

Fire belongs in nature.

Something that has taken us time to learn, and we've paid a price for pushing it away.

The idea that fire belongs here runs counter to our instincts. We immediately put out fire when we see it. Over the years, we've gotten quite expert in doing that, with armies of firefighters and equipment dedicated to putting fire out as quickly as possible wherever it crops up.

What we've learned about our natural ecosystems, however, is that they need fire. Some species of trees, for example, require fire to break open their seeds.

Without fire, not only do some plants have difficulty reproducing, but deadwood builds up. So much deadwood that when a fire does happen it can now destroy a forest - whereas if we had left the fire alone in the first place, it would basically burn low, to the ground, taking only the dry brush.

Indeed, the controlled burn above was being done to assist in the black oak stands in High Park, which are struggling.

Anyway, Fire Belongs is the name I've taken for this, my poetry and fiction blog.

My work, my writing, my personality, is like fire. Frightening to some. But, I feel at least, it belongs here. For a reason.