Thoughts & Viruses

Thoughts, contagious like viruses
Can infect our vulnerable minds
Become tenacious obsessions
And erode our mental peace;
These thought-like viruses
Can infect individuals, groups
Entire nations, or the whole world
Changing how we think and behave.
01.31.14

Essence & Seen

In human affairs
What remains unspoken
Unwritten, and  unshown
Is the true, critical essence
Concealed behind the scene.
01.30.14

Love & Vacuum

Love
When it departs
Leaves a painful vacuum
Which if not filled by another love
Will echo in our souls for the rest of our lives.
01.29.14

Ideas & Life

Ideas are the offspring
Of mother and father ideas;
They are the begotten children
Of their times and places;
They can only come
When their times come;
They are the instruments of change
Which set the rhymes and rhythms of life.
01.28.14

Truth & Popularity

Truth sayers are not popular figures
Because humanity has an aversion
To crude, unembellished truths.
01.27.14

Reality & Magic

Because we are so constituted
To prefer magic and superstition
To the inclement vicissitudes of reality
We believe those who forcefully advocate
Simple solutions for our complex problems
Offer simple explanations for complex issues
And proclaim to see the unforeseeable future.
01.26.14

Power & Freedom

Corruption rises in proportion
To the power and freedom we attain;
In the powers and freedoms we all seek
Lurk the seeds of abuse and self destruction.
01.25.14

Forgetting & Forgiving

We forget favors others bestow on us
But not favors we bestow on others;
We forget insults we hurl at others
But not insults others hurl at us;
With nonchalant ease
We forgive our own mistakes
But labor and feel magnanimous
When we forgive the mistakes of others.
01.24.14

Hope & Faith

When we let go
With hope in the future
Letting go is sweet melancholy;
But, when we let go
With no future hopes
Letting go is bitter grief;
Holding on to hope
When we let go
Is faith.
01.23.14

Forgiving & Relief

Forgiving
Relieves the forgiver
More than it relieves the forgiven;
Not to forgive is to invite anger and hate
To become permanent residents
Of one’s vacant heart.
01.22.14

Nature & Grooming

Nature’s beauty
Is superior to human-made beauty
Except when it comes to grooming;
A well groomed person looks better
Than an ungroomed person.
01.21.10

Oblivion & Joy

Oblivion is nature’s gift, essential for joy;
Unless we forget all the world’s miseries
And humanity’s continuous sufferings
We would not be able to achieve joy.
01.20.13

Living & Struggling

Living the good life
Must be done in spite of
And not after troubles are over;
The art of living is the art of struggling.
01.19.14

Boredom & Passions

Boredom comes from the lack of passions;
A mind, which cultivates passions
Has no time to get bored.
01.18.14

Love & Peace

Love, a tense, laborious passion
And peace, a placid state
Seldom coexist;
But, regardless of cost
Youth prefers love’s turmoil
Age prefers the tranquility of peace
And to remain young, we need to retain
Love's youthful passions regardless of cost.
01.17.14

Joy & Grief

Joy takes away grief;
Inviting it into grief is a virtue;
Barring it to remain mired in grief
Is refusing to celebrate spring
After a long, bleak winter.
01.16.14

Complexity & Joy

Complexity diminishes joy
But does not diminish crime;
Still, as a society, we compete
In elaborating more complexities
But remain incapable of simplifying.
01.15.14

Corruption & Society

In advanced societies
Corruption is concealed
And considered shameful;
In primitive societies
It is a source of pride
And considered normal.
01.15.14

Youth & Age

Growing younger with age
Is our most important task;
Regardless of limits imposed
By our ever diminishing bodies
Our minds must be kept ablaze
With youthful fires and desires.
01.14.14

People & Play

Taking time to play
Makes us better people;
In all of us there is a child
Who wants to frolic and play
And should be encouraged to do so.
01.13.14

Pollution & Primitiveness

When in the not-so-far future
Our planet develops pollution asthma
Our planetary antipollution police
Will shutdown all polluting industries
And our suffering, future generations
Will refer to our smoggy centuries
As the ecologically primitive era.
01.12.14

Self & Selfless

Those who don’t talk about themselves
Nor promote their own opinions and ideas
When they have a captive audience
Are the ones worth listening to.
01.11.14

Photographs & Reality

Photographs
Taken when we’re ready
Always seem happier
Than our realities.
01.10.14

Denial & Trouble

With our planet
Exploding with troubles
We continue to falsely believe
That the troubles of others are not ours
And that our troubles are not those of others.
01.09.14

knowledge & Hubris

If knowledge
Does not teach us
How much we don’t know
It closes our minds with hubris.
01.08.14

Agreement & Dissonance

When we wait
For everyone to agree
We achieve nothing
But dissonance.
01.07.14

Hearts & Peace

Preparing our hearts
To seize coincidences
To dislike with difficulty
To doubt first impressions
To give without expectation
To trust with caution
To love with ease
To temper anger
To humor life
And to antidote hate
With deeper understanding
Are but means to inner peace.
01.06.14

Languages & Peoples

Languages are costumes we wear
Which unite and separate us;
They unite those who speak the same tongue
And separate those who don’t;
Even within the same language
Different uses differentiate groups;
How we speak and what we say
Announces where we came from
To what we wish to belong
And whom we wish to be.
01.05.14

Forgetting & Remembering

Forgetting the bad
Is just as important
As remembering the good;
How horrible life would be if we
Remembered the bad & forgot the good?
Forgetting should be guided by forgiveness
And remembering, by gratitude.
01.04.14

Memories & Childhood

Regardless of current age
When we’re with childhood friends
We reflexly become children;
Memories tether past to present.
01.03.14

New Years & New Loves

New years bring new loves;
The wealthiest among us will be
Those who at the end of the year
Will have amassed the most love.
01.02.14

Effects & Causes

Effects
Have causes;
The less important
Are the more visible
And the more important
Are the less visible.
01.01.14