February 5, 2010

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

"if you do not know others and do not

know yourself, you will be imperiled

in every single battle."

Sun Tzu

The Art of War

"It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home."  Carl T. Rowan

serpent, why 

do you sleep with your

mouth open?

you're chasing

my dreams away

robert d. wilson 

©2010 

Christ Jesus said we must love ourselves before we can love others. That's a tall order for those coming home from a war, or living in a war every day whether gang members in urban cities or those in designated war zones.  That's a tall order for those who are born with deformities, who aren't pretty: the obese, the acne-scarred, homosexuals, visually ugly, dwarves, midgets, and those who suffer from diseases like HIV/Aids, cancer, and mental disorders.

I remember a popular homecoming princess at my high school in the late sixties watching some athletes and bullies throwing pennies at her chubby, feminine looking freshman brother in the main hallway, making him dance with threats of beating him up.  Her sister sadly stood in the crowd and watched . . . doing nothing.

I remember a tenant at an apartment building who was semi-mentally functional, the ones young people and ignorant adults called "tards." He told me once, "I know I'm retarded but I hate it when people make fun of me."  One day while substitute teaching at a high school I saw some teenage boys making a Downs Syndrome female student dance. I put a stop to that and took the guys to the principal.  Know what the principal said. "Oh well. boys will be boys," and they were sent back to class.

"Prejudices are the chains forged by ignorance to keep men apart."  The Countess of Blessington

I remember all too well watching a terribly obese girl at the middle (junior high) school I attended and watching her sadness and hurt as boys openly taunted her. Things like this happen too much: the ugly girl at school, the hair-lip student, the smallest boy, the flattest girl, the kids wearing Walmart specials that look alike; an ugly world out there.  The cause of this meanness is usually learned from primary male and female adult role models at home, the need to impress a group, and a poor self image.  Why does a person need to knock another person if she is secure in herself?  Why do people use others as mirrors?  Why do girls and guys compare the competition? Why the need for a popular, set the dress trends grouping in our schools?  Who the hell are they anyway? Gods?  Neo-gods, demigods, faux gods, stone idols, most who end up nowhere when they get older and their good looks begin to wrinkle and their bellies sag? 

Franklin Thomas  said it well when he wrote: 

"One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings."

she's on her

own, weined from the

milk i fed

her at noon when egrets

eat their shadows

kapi at dawn . . . 

waking up the lazy 

man in me

the guard at

starbucks eats rice in

the back room . . . 

a musician 

without a gig

where will the

wind take me next week?

strong kapi

i sleep in,

unaware of time . . . 

the saws,

women washing laundry 

in bath water

the dreams you

paint on summer nights . . . 

moonless

stars to the

guard at starbucks?

the moon to

workers living

in tin shanties?

only in the

admissions office . . . 

spring air

spring night . . . 

writing poetry

at starbucks

in the company of

men without pockets

a four hour

admissions exam . . . 

late spring

where's her

husband, the mother

crossing the

highway with a cart

full of syllables?

under the

billboard, weathered girls

washing spring

she's on her

own, weened from the

milk i feed

her at noon when egrets

eat their shadows

high noon . . . 

a teaspoon of ulam

over rice

waiting for

the dentist without

glasses . . . 

a passerby

threading clouds

autumn sun . . . 

he watches school mates

eat lunch

afternoon

voices fall like leafs,

the wind'll rake

later, when madness has

no walls to spray paint

riding his

motorbike, a family

swathing spring

waking up . . . 

an illusion

picasso

painted to

destroy the truth

unbathed girls

chasing motorbikes . . . 

at dusk

nothing's

forever, like

the wind, 

dependent upon

what is and isn't

two winds . . . 

one on the outside,

one inside

traveling . . . 

a spring morning

belching smoke

into the hearts

of young children

sunrise . . . 

did your shadow just

walk through me?

what to eat

when spring is old

and children

call out for a world

they'll never see?

tired, but

thoughts of winter?

sleepless fish

i long for

the softness of

firm breasts . . . 

the thought of you

nurturing spring

that old man

sitting in the store . . . 

is it me?

going back

inside the dragon's

mouth . . . 

the heat of a

thousand dreams

tea leafs . . . 

they didn't warn you

of your death

she loves snakes,

anacondas!

squeezing, firm,

slowly, into the

valley of no time

your limbs

won't let me go . . . 

shooting stars!

an old woman

with her granddaughter,

scavenging

bags of garbage with

out tomorrows

why are you

up downloading games

before dawn?

sitting on

plastic chairs, they

remember

emelda marcos

toying with the stars

come summer!

nipa huts and

carabao

did you think

of poems to compose

in the womb . . . 

waiting for time

without sensations?

humid night . . . 

will the book she reads,

grow rice?

will my dream

finally end,

and coral

see the sun like

it did be before?

three more days

til wonderland . . . 

and diapers

austere?

without your breath,

the dragon

will sing to me

dark lullabies

children wrap

leafs around rice . . . 

cricket song

in bed

playing games on her

ipod . . . 

a world without 

salted eggs and jeepneys

bedspacers . . . 

hawking quail eggs

in late spring

as always,

your smile cracking

bamboo . . . 

a paper turtle

void of light

will i hear
yellow roses sing . . . 
at night?

is it hope

sending your daughter

to school

carving paper

dragons from blossoms?

                                                                                                                                                                      

those

attending dreams you

dreamt as a child

a thousand

trikes tracing dusk

in the time

it takes to flatten

a young girl's hope

will autumn
for her, be the stillness
of a dream?

i don't doubt

your love, the silence

of fish scales

praying for jewelers

with steady hands




that soil,
it it worth their words?
Come summer!




robert d. wilson
©2010

January 30, 2010

          LIFE . . .

     when the sun

    sets, will cicada

     follow?

   robert d. wilson

   ©2010

the egg

seller polishes 

the stars . . . 

what to him is

a river's laughter?

robert d. wilson

©2010

There's good and bad everywhere.  Why does the bad standout instead of the good?  Why do we oftentimes allow memories from the past shape our now?  We can't go back into time and change a thing.  We can't travel into the future because the future isn't here yet .  All we have is the now. When I was young, I was accused of taking life to seriously.  I still do.  Some people call me the question man because I hunger for knowledge.  My father once told me that the only foolish question is the question not asked. Wrote Albert Einstein: "The important thing is to not stop questioning."  And who the hell decides which question is worth answering or asking? Who is the lord of words and propriety; a shop keeper, bank manager, college professor, or street vendor?  The popular kids in high school don't make the rules anymore.  The world's too full of people deciding what others should think, do, and speak.  People in power, dictators with poor self images, successful monied people with problems they keep secret from the public, and most importantly, the media which are owned by the aforementioned. People here in the Philippines are brainwashed into thinking that there is no poverty in the U.S. and no graft. The opposite is true, of course, but the media hides it.  The media in the Philippines airs sit coms on television that portray Filipinos as living in fancy homes and eating whatever they want. All over the world we are told to do this, think that, eat what is claimed to be healthy, who to blame for a government's failures, etc.  The media conditions people the way those who own the media want them to think and act.  We live in a world of haves and have nots and many of those who have want us to be robots at their bidding; drones questioning nothing, acting PROPER, and without dreams.


Posited Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Knowledge is limited.  Imagination circles the world."


Pablo Picasso once said, "Everything you can imagine is real."

The father of Cubism, as a courageous young man, rebelled against conformity and in doing so, changed the art world.

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

Where are the imaginative? The media makes money, not art.  I was told as a teenager that Picasso and other modern artists were crackpots who lacked talent.  I never was good at the clone thing and took a liking to artists like Edvard Keinholtz, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, and frequently drove to the museum of modern art in Los Angeles where I grew up and spent hours studying their works and the works of others.   Because I was well read and studied, I was aware of things we never learned in school.  I learned that society was being fed lies (the cause of the Sixitie's social revolution?). I learned that a lot of public school textbooks told lies, and when I took to reading non-assigned college textbooks, I began a journey to know the truth.  Those in power don't want us to know the truth.  They want us ignorant. Columbus discovered America, my foot! He never set foot on American soil. Instead he discovered Hispanola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic); and the U.S. post office and other government agencies celebrate Columbus Day.  Good old Columbus, he brought disease to an island that killed off half of its inhabitants and enslaved many, thinking of them as heathens.  THINK, IMAGINE, QUESTION, BE YOU . . . not someone else's version of you. Explore the world around you, don't compare yourselves with others, and don't be afraid to take chances.  Society isn't your master.  The media isn't your father or mother.  Art is subjective. Choices are subjective, globally and regionally. In the late sixities, Marshall McLuhan told us that"The media isn't the message, it's the massage." 



"The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life.  It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted.
Everything is changing: you, your family, your education, your neighborhood, your job, your government, your relation to "the others. And they're changing dramatically."

The Medium is The Massage, Marshall McLuhan


An evocative poem McLuhan wrote at the time:


"the wheel
is an extension of the foot
the book
is an extension of the eye
clothing, an extension of the skin,
electric circuitry,
an extension of
the
central
nervous
system"

The Medium is The Massage, Marshall McLuhan p 31-40

your limbs 
won't let me go . . . 
shooting stars!

as always,

your smile cracking

bamboo . . . 

a paper turtle

void of light

staring at 

still water , i see

the sun swim

he sleeps in

again like a baby

without care . . . 

worker ants empty

the grasshopper's shell

playful sun . . . 

he peeks at me through

the window

when the rain

stops, the buzz of

drills and saws . . . 

worker ants want

to please their queen

ate waits for

the bus, not the sun . . .

a child's cry

laborers

eat french fries, sit

blank eyed . . . 

descending into

the depths of hell

with the rain,

insufficient funds

. . . leafs

they leave

early to ride the bus

to manila . . . 

unruly hair, none

of them smiling

egrets. . . 

the dull gray sky

of late spring

once again,

our impulsiveness

with money

takes us through an abyss . . . 

made in china

wind, you sweep

our area swiftly . . . 

impatient?

with rain

and heavy traffic,

weathered men

hawking what's left

of their spirits

white buddha . . . 

sits on his throne 

between stars

white buddha,

can she continue

her battle

against the tide . . . 

her mirror shattered?

press me

between pages . . . 

autumn moon

teach me wind,

to be thorough in

the morning . . . 

swiftly sweeping

and bouncing song

unbathed, she

sits on pew alone . . .

stained glass 

the egg

seller polishes 

the stars . . . 

what to him is

a river's laughter?

my ears . . . 

is spring building

a nest?

she's using

you to prop up

dreams . . .

a cartoon with 

wordless captions

why a baby?

the wind chasing leafs

i can't rake

even at the 

pier, your only hope 

is to walk 

into the mackerel's 

mouth, carrying christmas lights

inside the

snail's shell, one too

many dreams?

is it true,

aswan, too many people

think you're an

old woman's legend,

to hear night click?

slick rainbow . . . 

hiding a seagull's

death cry




while i wait,
will the sun turn
over . . . 
service the man
going out the door?




mother's
ashes on the desk . . . 
summer breeze




until the 
sun sends me home, 
will you sail
with me through the clouds
and touch the moon?




where have
you been, day moon?
dragonflies!




blossoms come
to me at night
as angels . . . 
whispering psalms
i won't remember




long legs . . . 
are you weaving a
web for me?




robert d. wilson
©2010

"The artist is the person who invents the means to bridge between biological inheritance and the environments created by technological innovation."


"The poet, the artist, the sleuth, whoever sharpens our perception tends to antisocial; rarely 'well adjusted,' he cannot go along with currents and trends."
"... Their power to see environments as they really are."


The Medium is The Massage, Marshall McLuhan