a brave new world has begun so I'm informed--

everything new everything different

and none of it sounding very good--

no--I'm not cranky grampa bitching about

some imagined lost golden age

of a youth that is the construct of all failed desires--

I just regret being in a world where humanity's insanity

has overtaken all spiritual values and has made

crazed egomaniacs believe they can control the universe--

being without instrumentality--

as if they could realize Blake's dictum: 'just think of it

and the thing's done'--metaphysically maybe--but not in flesh--

not in the earth--and not in the service of some sanctified

material world--but who hears what I have to say about this?

I'm not a circus clown--or media's social flavor of the month--

snooki--charlie sheen--who the hell are these automata--

does anyone with anything to say have to debase themselves in this way?

and if not--who'd listen anyway? it's so deep--so serious--so abstract--

take off the hairshirt--ignore the divine utterance--have a beer--

judge wet T-shirt contests--put some porn on the box and beat it--

we serious sufferers hurting on behalf of humanity were a bunch

of vain losers anyway--we weren't popular--we didn't kill ourselves

with yahoo rituals--

how can anyone of sensibility prevail against the whole weight

of the unexamined world?

so maybe I am cranky grampa after all--instead of crying for

the lost ways of an imperfectly remembered time though--

crying rather for the lost of any semblance of human order

when belief was the fortification of life and reason the way

to question all the brutal myths by which we live and die--

must calamity be our only wake-up call? do we need terrorism

and earthquakes and tsunamis to shake us to reality? (and then

only in so far as it affects us personally)

and why complain? who'll hear this with fresh ears

before it's their time to ponder these variables of life?

can we only appreciate life in the face of death

or only ever understand death is simply one aspect of life

and even at that--the very least of it?

Content (c) 2008-2011 Philip Milito.