"It Doesn't Matter"

I wonder about
the roach I found
drowned in a dog's
food bowl
I wonder if he was afraid
of the future
it doesn't matter now
the future is humble
like fungus
growing in the dark

but then
sunlight
waking light
I have seen what is
good in me
what in me just begins
fruiting in this light

I wonder if words know how
philosophies spring up
from feeling
how action itself
seems in a trance
and tongues
mothers of storm
cast far their hardy seeds
into the many winds
of difference

but then
a sharp tongue will
carve out many shapes
and become dull
then
let these words
be humble
let thought never
injure truth

I have learned
it does matter

blues blues,

a poet doesn't
think in words
he thinks in poetry
just as a vulture dreams
only through the taste
of things
why, I'm sure
the best of them never
thought a day
in their lives

Blake wasn't
a philosopher except
when his woman bled
from her deeper
eye and
felt her true age

Shelley drank
the saltwater of
his mind
and then he drowned
they burned him on
the beach
and he was ash
dry dry ash
and he no longer drank
anything

Rumi never
drank
he had wine
and no cups
he drank it all
and drank
nothing

he didn't think
and these spinning
freaks
they didn't drink
drinking's for thinking
men or men pretending
to think
drinking can slow
down the word
so that it may
be captured

but this is not
poetry
this is thinking
even Bukowski knew that
when he looks you in
the eye
and tells you why
why it's you
asking why

Kerouac was tragedy
a thinking man
and that's why
he's dead
other people have died for
better reasons

now we can only
drink in Kerouac
become drunk on pope
and dharma
and forlorn rags round
holy mirrors
pity him
pity what's left of
jazz in roaming
belltowers
pity like rain is
the pity of a valley
pity that it's just
shadows
cleaving meat
from bone

he's the reason why
I sleep
and eat the pulp of
you
and piss on
butterflies
and piss off
butterflies
and do even more
ordinary things
voluptuous
and plain

I don't write about
being human
much less try to
be one
I only get high and
so very
young
and plain
too plain to choose
to pour
to name revolutions that
arise
in dirty bathrooms
that humid hell
with no
mirrors

but I know why
Kerouac
asked why
it's so big in
here
and you lose it
whatever you thought
you had
you lose the score as soon
as you make it
while the king of
dreams
marches down on you
on elephants
that burrow into mineral
mind

and pull turnips from
your soft
white belly and
string the night with swaying
paper lanterns laughing
with cruelty in
the breeze

you think about people
suffering
and you drink
because you are not
a bodhisattva
your heart is too damn
big not to beg
for something
you want to heal but
you're too busy thinking
about it
too busy caring to do
anything
about it

you're a beast
poor beast
mouth full of blood
rosary streaming
from your
rear

you write about
pretty things
and they come back
to haunt you
or something less
clear
something worse

every time you write about
someone they're dying
in your
arms
you want to be a serpent
somewhere
under a moon
somewhere
just feeling your way
about it

but people want to believe
something
and they hurt each
other with
thought-desire
they crawl indignant from the
lion's mouth and beat
the everypagan
with the weight of
beauty
they bludgeon themselves
with it
just to hurt
others

Nietzsche himself could
have whipped
the horse's eyes
and who
would have cared?
we're all starving
artists
too mad for love and
standing in
its way
too brave to kiss
fear
atomic
old
fear

too wise to not think
about it
to drink with it
it's us
you know
we are the ones
we're waiting for
but we waited so long we
forget
we say we don't want to think
about it
and we think
about it

and we don't
stop
thinking
drinking
making children
dying in their arms
like it was always
supposed to
be

you could always whip
the poet's eyes
and have a
drink
on me

Mirror Neurons

From Adbusters:

Fourteen years ago neuroscientists introduced the world to a captivating new idea about the way our brains might work: they discovered the existence of specialized brain cells in the brains of macaque monkeys that are activated both when a monkey performs an intentional action (e.g. grabbing a banana) and when it sees another monkey performing that same action. They called these special brain cells mirror neurons since the monkeys mirrored in their own minds the actions of their neighbors. Scientists learned that at the brain level, monkey see was not so different from monkey do.

Even before researchers confirmed the existence of similar mirror neurons in human brains, which they did in 2007, the idea had worked its way into the zeitgeist and become a potent new way of seeing ourselves in relationship with each other. People have begun to wonder if mirror neurons could be responsible for language, culture, empathy and even morality. Where Darwinian survival of the fittest has heretofore imagined us as the strong pitted against the weak in a fatal struggle for food and sex, the mirror neuron suggests the importance of social strengths: that we are hardwired for empathy, that we are naturally interested not only in our own needs but also in the interests of others. As noted philosopher A.C. Grayling has said: “The essential point is that mirror neurons underwrite the ability to recognize what helps or distresses others, what they suffer and enjoy, what they need and what harms them.”

—Andrew Tuplin

This is yet another example of science showing us that we are social creatures, that selfishness does not make one "fitter" or more likely to survive. In primates, alphas who hoard all of the resources are set upon by the rest of the group. I saw an article recently saying that the most successful CEO's are those who are humble and not flashy. Or as the Tao sez, lead from behind.

Would it be safe to say that intelligence is largely a matter of understanding the interconnectedness of all things and being able to act as part of the whole?