McCreesh's "The 2nd Coming, Part 2"...
And Good Luck Outrunning Our Primal Selves!
As can be reasonably assumed following SECOND COMING #1, I just don't see the value in being skull-locked into any brand of dogged, unyielding notion. At this point it would take an entire volley of warheads just to recalibrate the species and god only knows what to dig out the infected roots. Why believe in anything when believing means doing things unbelievable? Why believe in a god when believing means doing things ungodly? Why believe in justice when believing means doing things unjust? Why believe in humanity when believing means doing things that are abjectly inhuman? Better to place your unblinking faith in witchcraft, in voodoo, in genocide, in a final nuclear solution - this graveyard planet littered with only the shadows of its extinct blast-burned on building and boulder. Better the blade "quick and true" than to hear the tireless explanations; better the buckshot than entertain yet another ill-conceived filibuster of convenient intellection; better the rack than suffer case-by-case justifications for actions perpendicular to some quotidian philosopher's so-called personal compass; and better the crucifixion than the rhetorical longshot scenarios which condone hypocrisy and rationalize some phantom delineation between a proverbial inner "magnetic North" and an inner "true North" which the common rube uses to explain away any and all personal liability, excuses these humps use for their temporary dalliances from their otherwise "bedrock core beliefs" as if such extenuations plumb or hold up in the goddamned wash...
Horse.
Fucking.
Shit.
Convictions, rigidly held insist upon rules rigidly held: any room for interpretation is a chasm tailored for doubt - even a hairline fracture wherein seeps condensation, wherein it freezes then expands, melts, re-freezes, eventually breeches the hull. Hence, any belief - any TRUE BELIEF - is blind and cannot allow questions. Nor can it withstand them. They wilt flaccid to rudimentary examination. Any single allowance, any one semantic exception, any sniff that the world is not one of contrasting absolutes and the hypothesis is summarily rebuffed, the lords of ultimatum properly and riotously sacked. To say it another way: a black and white world must always disavow all greys, because the mere existence of any grey illegitimates all blacks and all whites.
So what does the color grey have to do with our primal selves? Only this: Let's quit pretending we're much more, as a species, than Pavlov's dogs, more than a grey, or that we're some sort of black or white. "What? Pavlov's dogs?" you say. I know, I know, pardon you while you scoff. "Man is sublimely evolved, the top of the food chain, supremely intelligent, a sentient being of the highest order," says you, "we're immune to such bestial wailings..." The works of Michelangelo and an honest mechanic or line cook not withstanding, I've seen grown men racing ride-on lawn mowers and other grown men recording this so even more grown men could telecast it for me, a grown man who sat watching the broadcast. This is precisely where we have put ourselves. Pardon me while I scoff back. We are all salivating at the knell of any and all manner of shiny goddamned bell. We're rats gone mad at the feeder bar. Higher functioning rats, perhaps, but rats all the same. Disagree? Then imagine the time-clocks we all punch as feeder bars, and imagine the generations of men that have powdered their knuckles punching them, all for a few meager moneypellets at the end of every other week or so.
Forget the circus of magnanimity, our main concern is of, for and about ourselves. Even our most altruistic philanthropy can be made to serve a primal need to either be hailed, appreciated, or envied. Rarely is it done with a pure heart. Our loins crave moist flesh, our innards meat, our bodies shelter, and our strangled spirits crave meaning. From these cravings - invention, innovation - all man-made and ridiculously imperfect. From all these cravings - conditioned, Pavlovian responses - we've indoctrinated ourselves to never be happy, to always want for more - what madness! We have engineered and manufactured every single ugly desire and ignorant lust, pounded it into each other's bent spines, we loll about in the stink of it like some fetid, putrid green pool. Our primal selves have forgotten how to be content, how to live simply and well, how to eat, drink and just be merry. We've forgotten how to be beautiful. And good luck outrunning our primal selves!
Abandoning just about everything we thought we knew & thought we wanted might be the only way back: lest the entire sky be wasted on us.
-- Hosho McCreesh
**posted for Hosho McCreesh by Christopher Cunningham**
As can be reasonably assumed following SECOND COMING #1, I just don't see the value in being skull-locked into any brand of dogged, unyielding notion. At this point it would take an entire volley of warheads just to recalibrate the species and god only knows what to dig out the infected roots. Why believe in anything when believing means doing things unbelievable? Why believe in a god when believing means doing things ungodly? Why believe in justice when believing means doing things unjust? Why believe in humanity when believing means doing things that are abjectly inhuman? Better to place your unblinking faith in witchcraft, in voodoo, in genocide, in a final nuclear solution - this graveyard planet littered with only the shadows of its extinct blast-burned on building and boulder. Better the blade "quick and true" than to hear the tireless explanations; better the buckshot than entertain yet another ill-conceived filibuster of convenient intellection; better the rack than suffer case-by-case justifications for actions perpendicular to some quotidian philosopher's so-called personal compass; and better the crucifixion than the rhetorical longshot scenarios which condone hypocrisy and rationalize some phantom delineation between a proverbial inner "magnetic North" and an inner "true North" which the common rube uses to explain away any and all personal liability, excuses these humps use for their temporary dalliances from their otherwise "bedrock core beliefs" as if such extenuations plumb or hold up in the goddamned wash...
Horse.
Fucking.
Shit.
Convictions, rigidly held insist upon rules rigidly held: any room for interpretation is a chasm tailored for doubt - even a hairline fracture wherein seeps condensation, wherein it freezes then expands, melts, re-freezes, eventually breeches the hull. Hence, any belief - any TRUE BELIEF - is blind and cannot allow questions. Nor can it withstand them. They wilt flaccid to rudimentary examination. Any single allowance, any one semantic exception, any sniff that the world is not one of contrasting absolutes and the hypothesis is summarily rebuffed, the lords of ultimatum properly and riotously sacked. To say it another way: a black and white world must always disavow all greys, because the mere existence of any grey illegitimates all blacks and all whites.
So what does the color grey have to do with our primal selves? Only this: Let's quit pretending we're much more, as a species, than Pavlov's dogs, more than a grey, or that we're some sort of black or white. "What? Pavlov's dogs?" you say. I know, I know, pardon you while you scoff. "Man is sublimely evolved, the top of the food chain, supremely intelligent, a sentient being of the highest order," says you, "we're immune to such bestial wailings..." The works of Michelangelo and an honest mechanic or line cook not withstanding, I've seen grown men racing ride-on lawn mowers and other grown men recording this so even more grown men could telecast it for me, a grown man who sat watching the broadcast. This is precisely where we have put ourselves. Pardon me while I scoff back. We are all salivating at the knell of any and all manner of shiny goddamned bell. We're rats gone mad at the feeder bar. Higher functioning rats, perhaps, but rats all the same. Disagree? Then imagine the time-clocks we all punch as feeder bars, and imagine the generations of men that have powdered their knuckles punching them, all for a few meager moneypellets at the end of every other week or so.
Forget the circus of magnanimity, our main concern is of, for and about ourselves. Even our most altruistic philanthropy can be made to serve a primal need to either be hailed, appreciated, or envied. Rarely is it done with a pure heart. Our loins crave moist flesh, our innards meat, our bodies shelter, and our strangled spirits crave meaning. From these cravings - invention, innovation - all man-made and ridiculously imperfect. From all these cravings - conditioned, Pavlovian responses - we've indoctrinated ourselves to never be happy, to always want for more - what madness! We have engineered and manufactured every single ugly desire and ignorant lust, pounded it into each other's bent spines, we loll about in the stink of it like some fetid, putrid green pool. Our primal selves have forgotten how to be content, how to live simply and well, how to eat, drink and just be merry. We've forgotten how to be beautiful. And good luck outrunning our primal selves!
Abandoning just about everything we thought we knew & thought we wanted might be the only way back: lest the entire sky be wasted on us.
-- Hosho McCreesh
**posted for Hosho McCreesh by Christopher Cunningham**
posted by christopher cunningham at 4:51 PM
15 Comments:
Fabulous post.
I'm a big fan of Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophies (her capitalist leanings notwithstanding). This post reminds me a lot of her idea of SELF.
A few Ayn Rand quotes that pertain:
"I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet." -- from Anthem
"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
"A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom."
"I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
Anyway, hell of post, Hosho!
H. this is hell of a post.
I find people miserable at
my work, myself included
at times. It seems like no
one has your back here, but
some are willing to stick
a knife in your back, just
to move up & keep you down.
"to live simply & well..."
that's something worth
pursuing...
Thanks fellas, glad the words landed for you.
Hosho
I realize more and more each day (and it is about time at my age) that what you say is the absolute truth. We humans have lost ourselves to what society thinks we should be and what's worse, we have allowed it, craved it, pushed it on others, and, well, just plain lost ourselves in the process. Your post says it like it is and we should all stop and take a look at what's ahead for us if we don't claim ourselves once again.
mom c,
1st, I'm honored that the words spoke to you. Hearing that is a small but wonderous bit of redemption, it saves something from the roaring flames.
2nd, once again, thank you for raising a top notch human being & one of the best poets living & writing today.
3rd, I hope you find some more good words in FISSURES. It's my best collection of work so far.
As I said, truly an honor to finally chat, albeit breifly.
H.
Hosho,
Chris is his own person, not conforming to what his parents are and I for one am proud of what he has done and who he is - not sure we had much to do with that - we are the ones who have been lost in society (and trying to find ourselves now)and our kids were never like that - they did their own thing.
How can I get a copy of FISSURES? I'm glad to order it if you tell me how to go about that. Your work speaks to me in a deep way and I am ready to read more.
Keep up the great work!
DRATS! My computer was timing out and I could not finish what I was saying. Now, then, thanks for your kind words and I appreciate what you have to say about My Favorite Poet. I knew that if he spoke highly of someone then I would also like that person, and he speaks highly of you as well as the others that post here so it is my pleasure to communicate with you.
Oh dear, Hosho, am I going nuts or is FISSURES the book you sent Chris to give to me? I devoured that one so quickly, I did not even catch the title. Please excuse an old woman for being confused.
Ok, that's it from this old woman today.
mom:
you HAVE FISSURES. it's the black book with the cuts and the red vellum endpages.
you probably forgot the title.
DEEP SURFACE FISSURES REVEALING A FURIOUS MOLTEN CORE.
lemme know if you can't find it.
Yes, I thought so, I was confused. Sorry.
mom c--we're all lost in this society, and in this world--and we'll stay that way as long as we're afraid to chart our furthest inner-reaches, afraid to wander the breadth of ourselves, and illuminate even the darkest corners. It is the only way.
IT'S UP TO US...
...to decide what to carry,
what to do with it,
where to keep it, and
for how long.
We choose:
salvation
or
damnation.
The world is the world--
often ugly and false,
and we are just ourselves--
caught between the past and
whatever comes next.
It's up to us
to defend
our
heart.
What is revealed is the deep spiritual corruption of a society that values accumulation of wealth above all else; a society that equates identity with commodity fetish.
It does not represent all of humanity or the complete range of possibility -- it is diseased.
We have the values of the humanities developed in the Age of Reason. We have the dialectic materialism that allows us to question, to cut through delusion in a search for truth. We have the collective nature of herd animals that comes through in times of disaster but THIS rotten diseased corporate culture pushes a shallow and false competitive individualism that emphasises hedonistic alientation and a worship of violence and wealth.
Where do we go from here? How can we reclaim the better part of our nature and the best social ideal? How can we root out the rotteness that lurks within us and more importantly, how can we spread that to others?
Some of us do what we can in the creation of alternative culture; poetry, film, music . . . but we know we can't compete with the constant barrage of diseased culture that inundates us.
Is it hopeless? Are we a failed fluke of nature doomed by shortsightedness and gluttony to bury ourselves? I don't hink so but neither am I an optimist. I think there are possibilities for change and I see a growing consciousness -- at least a few candles in the night. We carry the vile along with the good and much must be abandoned in our conscious re-creation but it is possible and it begins here.
fucking great post PP. you nailed it. it is the sickening drive for THINGS not IDEA, for MORE not MORE INSIGHT, for SELFISH not SOUL. and I too am NO optimist, nor do I posess an overabundance of hope, but I do have SOME, and things like the GPP inspire me, mags like BCR, folks like Bill Roberts,Hosh, j.b, you inspire me.
and give me enough of a small sliver of hope stuck in my big toe that I can't walk the pessimistic walk, cannot do anything except limp and hobble along, each spark of pain reminding me:
"maybe..."
"Commodity fetish" WOW PP. Terrific turn of a phrase. There always seems so many reasons to quit...& so few to keep fighting. Anything, any little thing that helps, ACTUALLY SAVES THE WORLD...because without it, we all would've cashed in our chips long ago. Tough mags done with love. A hair-brained publishing scheme that doesn't rely on sales...a few people who write lines that RATTLE YOUR SKULLCAGE & shake out a few DIAMONDS out of your BRAINSOIL.
It is the role of the poet to shake things up, to make the reader think, and question to be truth-teller and prophet That's what it's about -- the rest is fluff.
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