Epistemological Poems from the ‘Deep State’

I confess I like the deep state and realize that many noble and ignoble Americans died for it. We underestimate the deep state at our own peril.

Furthermore, I’ve settled on the title for my new book: SCRATCHING THE PLASTIC, Deep State Poems.

Poem # 1—Most Poetry isn’t poetry.

Poem #2—Most Poetry isn’t poetry at all, it’s skirt steak sliced into pieces.

Poem #3—Poetry only exists in the strangest place, the only place it can exist.

Poem #4—Poetry ekes out a living while others are busy writing their memoirs.

Poem #5—Only the poet can make the real sound of the cipher, but only the deep state cipher can sit beneath the cipher tree.

Note: this is only a small sample size, for there are other poems in my new book.

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Bonus language NOT in my new book…

Ocean swimming is not in my new book. Though the water here in San Francisco is cold, I can’t get enough of ocean swimming. The ocean is always there to welcome me, always willing to extend its hand or to release a squadron of flying pelicans to look over me.

(Bonus Zen koan: what is the sound of two arms swimming?)

All art is an unrealized art project. Say you have the no.1 and you put it in a box, and then you put no. 2 in a circle, 3 in a rectangle, 4 in a semi-circle, 5 in parenthesis etc. but by the time you get to no.10 you have nowhere left to go. I am a staunch abstract existentialist.

What do Christians want, especially the evangelicals? Was Christ’s crucifixion really all that much different than a death row inmate walking to his execution?

It seems we’ve put all our false beliefs into plastic laundry bags that disintegrate in water warmed by climate change. Epistemology, a branch of philosophy, survives as “the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion”.