The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: logic

  • Moon of the Normal

    Along line where words follow
    one by one each distanced and obscure
    like items of trash along highway
    stuck in weeds between ditch
    and fence lift shifting cars passing
    sailing into wind of logic

    or like grocery carts out of line
    and place scattered about full
    of claptrap and flapdoodle
    unexpected foundation
    for absurding suburban
    where shopping rigs

    get garaged for night
    like pigs asleep in makeshift
    huts with conquistadors
    while in city in loose
    deduce gathered around
    poles trees once lived

    covered in plastic people
    under new moon of normal
    dining al fresco in fresh
    air of improvised jail
    things will never be same
    way things have always been.

  • Precepts

    The faster you go, the more time you waste.

    The quicker to dicker, the sooner to yearn.

    To talk is to argue.

    To identify is to accuse.

    Music is buried in the piano.

    To hold a grudge is to jackhammer water.

    If you’ve read one poem, you’ve read them all.

    Art is not art.

    We always have enough for now.

  • 2 + 2 = 5

    That two plus two equals four
    used to be true, but no more,
    not necessarily, and out the door
    our core of being washed ashore.

    Dostoevsky came close to avoid
    the obvious and said to make five
    you need at least four things,
    the fifth the wit of leadership.

    For the true leader takes 2 fish
    and 2 loaves of bread and convinces
    the constituency they’ve been fed
    the truth, the whole truth, nothing but,

    for what is right might be wrong,
    we hear from the physicists,
    who wander far afield from logic,
    language, and Mother Earth.

    So, if you happen to have two
    apples and two hammers, you
    are missing six of something.
    You are a long ways from home.

    “I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but, if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing, too.”

    “Notes from Underground,” Dostoevsky, 1864.