Ideology for a Hellenistic Renaissance

Sergeant to Enyalios,
the great god War,
I practise double labor.
With poetry, the lovees gift,
I serve the lady Muses.

- Archilochus, "1st Fragment"

Now I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings...

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

- Maya Angelou, "Caged Bird"

A Grievous Curse...

I never can carry a grudge.
It's blocked by that big chip on my shoulder.

- βέƦẙḽ Dṏṽ, "Bad Blood" (2014)

Breaking Symmetry

'Tis Opposites -- entice --
Deformed Men -- ponder Grace --
Bright fires -- the Blanketless --
The Lost -- Day's face --

The Blind -- esteem it be
Enough Estate -- to see --
The Captive -- strangles new --
For deeming -- Beggars -- play --

To lack -- enamor Thee --
Tho' the Divinity --
Be only
Me --

- Emily Dickinison

Really, What DOES it Mean?

...on both Clarifying and Blurring the Subject/Object Distinction
Is it possible to remove the Social-Symbolic-Cultural status quo from the Question and thereby Eliminate the Influence of Ideology? Or is it already "Baked-in" to every problem?

The Idealist

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

- H. L. Mencken

Strawberry Swing

Lays of Mystery, Imagination, and Humor Number 1

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls.

Faint odours of departed cheese,
Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,
Awoke the never ending sneeze.

Strange pictures decked the arras drear,
Strange characters of woe and fear,
The humbugs of the social sphere.

One showed a vain and noisy prig,
That shouted empty words and big
At him that nodded in a wig.

And one, a dotard grim and gray,
Who wasteth childhood's happy day
In work more profitless than play.

Whose icy breast no pity warms,
Whose little victims sit in swarms,
And slowly sob on lower forms.

And one, a green thyme-honoured Bank,
Where flowers are growing wild and rank,
Like weeds that fringe a poisoned tank.

All birds of evil omen there
Flood with rich Notes the tainted air,
The witless wanderer to snare.

The fatal Notes neglected fall,
No creature heeds the treacherous call,
For all those goodly Strawn Baits Pall.

The wandering phantom broke and fled,
Straightway I saw within my head
A vision of a ghostly bed,

Where lay two worn decrepit men,
The fictions of a lawyer's pen,
Who never more might breathe again.

The serving-man of Richard Roe
Wept, inarticulate with woe:
She wept, that waiting on John Doe.

"Oh rouse", I urged, "the waning sense
With tales of tangled evidence,
Of suit, demurrer, and defence. "

"Vain", she replied, "such mockeries:
For morbid fancies, such as these,
No suits can suit, no plea can please."

And bending o'er that man of straw,
She cried in grief and sudden awe,
Not inappropriately, "Law!"

The well-remembered voice he knew,
He smiled, he faintly muttered "Sue!"
(Her very name was legal too. )

The night was fled, the dawn was nigh:
A hurricane went raving by,
And swept the Vision from mine eye.

Vanished that dim and ghostly bed,
(The hangings, tape; the tape was red happy
'Tis o'er, and Doe and Roe are dead!

Oh, yet my spirit inly crawls,
What time it shudderingly recalls
That horrid dream of marble halls!

- Lewis Carroll, "The Palace of Humbug"

Flying Away

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

-Albert Einstein

Looking Back on Forward Thinking

Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Those who predict, don't have knowledge.

- Lao Tzu

:P

The Flower of the British Empire

Take some Picts, Celts and Silures
And let them settle,
Then overrun them with Roman conquerors.

Remove the Romans after approximately 400 years
Add lots of Norman French to some
Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings, then stir vigorously.

Mix some hot Chileans, cool Jamaicans, Dominicans,
Trinidadians and Bajans with some Ethiopians, Chinese,
Vietnamese and Sudanese.

Then take a blend of Somalians, Sri Lankans, Nigerians
And Pakistanis,
Combine with some Guyanese
And turn up the heat.

Sprinkle some fresh Indians, Malaysians, Bosnians,
Iraqis and Bangladeshis together with some
Afghans, Spanish, Turkish, Kurdish, Japanese
And Palestinians
Then add to the melting pot.

Leave the ingredients to simmer.

As they mix and blend allow their languages to flourish
Binding them together with English.

Allow time to be cool.

Add some unity, understanding, and respect for the future,
Serve with justice
And enjoy.

Note: All the ingredients are equally important. Treating one ingredient better than another will leave a bitter unpleasant taste.

Warning: An unequal spread of justice will damage the people and cause pain. Give justice and equality to all.

Benjamin Zephaniah, "The British"

Crew

SO happy were Columbia’s eight,
As near the goal they drew,
Each struggling hero all elate,
The cock-swain almost crew.

Edward Augustus Blount, Jr., "A Crew Poem"

Fantasmatic Mortification

The Inherent Hypocrisy of Relativism

When the Disempowered Take Power, Why Does the Left STOP Protesting Injustices Against the Recently Disempowered?
As the Greeks used to say, "Help your friends, punish your enemies!"

Draw me a Horizon

...and save me from perdition!---

I saw the horizon,
the horizon is factor x,
the horizon is what everything encloses,
the horizon divides earth, sea and sky,
the world is unthinkable without the horizon,
the horizon is a boundary where man cannot come,
the horizon exists between the visible and the invisible,
the horizon is not inside or outside the world,
the horizon of art is factor x.

In reality there is no horizon,
I cannot get near the horizon,
I try to push the horizon further away,
all and everything appears within the horizon,
behind every horizon there is another one,
everybody has his own horizon.

The horizons are within us,
Infinity overflows all horizons.

— Dr. Hugo Heyrman, "The Art of a Horizon"

Never Looking Back...

...so that I can remain "in love" eternally.

Zizek on Communism and the Neo-Liberal Left

Alma Matters

Oh, Stately, strife born Alma Mater
The sound flows softly at thy feet
And sunset strikes across its waters
As silver notes invoke retreat.
Now dim the paths and trees in darkness.
The stars above our way appoint.
We'll Sleep secure aboard 'til morning.
God steer thee well, Kings Point!"

The Kynic

“What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?”

---
“The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread.
When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”

― Bertolt Brecht, Selected Poems

Putting 2014 in the Rear View Mirror...