Some wit once avowed that
There are absolutely no absolutes
A statement closer than Jabberwocky to nonsense
Rhetorical inelegance aside

The philosopher has a harder time than the poet
For the philosopher takes pains to make
True statements and only true
The whole truth having been abandoned long ago

While the poet merrily putters
With language as with clay
Promiscuously welcoming those enemies of statement
Irony ambiguity repetition and metaphor

And those senseless but charming devices of sound
And the whole outrageous cult of device
Lines of text far short of the right-hand margin
The willful absence of punctuation

The poet aims not to state but to express
Although statements are welcome too
In you know that merry promiscuity thing
But expression is much harder than one ever bargained for

For expression does not lend itself
To means-ends calculation
And tackling expression as technical process
Sets up the itinerary to embarrassment or worse

But the how-to ain’t the half of it
It’s the of-what that gives one hell
Not because not enough or I can’t find it
But only the preeminence of one damned note

What feeling shall I express today
I hate being addressed in the imperative mood
I hate being scolded
I hate myself

Really
That’s the feeling I want to express
That’s the essence of beauty and truth
I hate

I intended those statements ironically
I intended those statements metaphorically
No
A part of me is speaking in earnest but only a part

And I have allowed the tyrants from my past
To hijack my blissful project
And little kids are dumb at least I was
They don’t understand the commands of tyrants

They believe the lie that it’s for your own good
And that the only good is obedience to command
And that they’re really only trying to scare you
Universal disclaimer for attempted murder

But most of all kids don’t understand
That the tyrants are sadly ignorant
Repeating what they themselves have learned
That the threat of pain sets the path to goodness

Tyrants in their world of pain believe themselves good
And they believe other humans to be naturally bad
The greed of infants
The faithlessness of infidels

Innate depravity an article of genius
To implant the tyrant in individual consciousness
Transcending space and time
Hell is the eternal threat of hell

Hence my recourse to the sickly confessional mode
The confessional the only hope
A hopeless hope when the only sin
Is to be born human

So to hell with hope
I want the truth
It is not a sin to be born human
Any more than to be born squirrel or jellyfish or chimpanzee

There’s nothing special good or bad
About any biological species
But about persons is something special
For persons can respond to reasons

And perhaps the primal response is to pain
Which gives us reason to steer clear
But why regard pain as primary
Just because no binary opposite conveniently appears

Or maybe binary opposites are a waste of time
The opposite of pain isn’t pleasure exactly
Perhaps the distinctness of pain just shows
A disturbance of the healthy primary state

Every person is good
And yes humans are prone to error
But no organism gives birth to itself
Thus the limit of human responsibility

And hence the mystery of self control
Which is not as mysterious as I’ve made it out to be
For everybody wants what’s good
Though our notion of good is grotesquely ungenerous

Me and mine
I want what’s good for me and mine
We say
As if we knew

Nevertheless
Though we might be unclear on the concept
Nobody doesn’t want
What’s good

And Oscar Wilde was surely right
To observe that only by giving in
Do we have even a prayer
Of ridding ourselves of temptation

And clearly we have believed
If only momentarily
In the goodness
Of that which tempted us

Which only goes to show
How poor we are
As judges
Of our own self-interest

And speaking only for myself
The character that aims to do the controlling
Is not myself liberally defined
Because I really am large and really do contain multitudes

No
Who issues controlling commands
Except the homuncular dictator
The implanted tyrant

And starting today
He for he is like me masculine
No longer gets to monopolize
These pages

He might have his say now and again
But a historical axiom states aright
That tyrants seize first
The organs of communication

It doesn’t require control
To go for what is good
Hard though it is to know what good might be
And ignorance is always infinite

Every person should study philosophy
This is not a command
But a moral obligation
For every person should understand the truth

Understand that particle of truth
Within the meager perceptual scope
And hear the voice of reason echo
From the infancy of understanding

The poet has a hard time too
I state as bravely as I can
To express the multitudinous self
And breach the rampart of cold command

Okay an off rhyme
When I didn’t require a rhyme at all
And I probably should have let it go
Sez who

I have believed that truthful expression
Would place me on a path toward creating beauty
And thus I vow to take up the challenge
From now to express my more complete self

Long ago I vowed to respect
The dignity of every person
The value of rational personhood
But too often I have tried to obey the tyrant

Too often I have bought into the tyrant’s lie
That because I had some little knowledge
Of my inner being and my motivations
I was somehow worth less than everybody else

And that
Lie of lies
The tyrant therefore possessed authority
To punish

Nobody deserves to suffer
And what is punishment
But the corrupt deliberate and aggravated
Imposition of suffering

And everybody suffers
Some much worse than I of course
But why oh why add to the suffering
That is of humans the natural lot

If by respect we mean to acknowledge
The dignity and worth of persons
Merely to recognize that inherent value
I demand much more than that now

For what is wanted is not a state of knowledge
Nor much less a statement of the state of knowledge
No periodic table of the values
What is wanted is an emotional posture

For we do not merely acknowledge
The value of value
We do not merely respect
The beautiful and the true

Rather we appreciate them
We feel not merely know their value
And even that is too feeble a word
When what I really mean is love

And agape I believe too high a bar for humans
And eros I reserve for the beloved
Maybe philos might designate a love for persons
That makes allowance for the all-too human

Thank you philosopher for helping me know a little
Though I trust not to relapse
Into that pollyanna nestled in this best of worlds
And I will strive to be philosophical

Some wit once called poetry
Language freed from what it has to say
Not nonsense but a view limited perhaps
To poetry of the decadence

Yet another wit once strongly implied
That it’s okay to be a decadent
So long as you admit that you’re a decadent
Which is a bit like being relatively absolute

Or the murderer with excellent manners
You gotta know right from wrong pretty much absolutely
And mere obedience will not get you there
You need understanding from true philosophy

Yes pretty much absolutely
One of those goofy formulations
For a philosophical matter of life and death
But you can live without poetry I guess

Poetry is an optional extra
After food from the earth
And a roof over the head
But no less important for that

Forgiveness is an emotional posture
Appreciation gratitude emotional postures
What lover of wisdom or of anything else
Would want to live without them