Musings & Meanderings

if i could have counted
the hugs and kisses would they
be more or less

I followed Matt’s post titled Should poetry be open source?

…to a post in which Dave Bonta thoughtfully discusses the issue of copyright versus open source in terms of his own writing

…and from within the comments on Dave’s post, I was led to and enraptured by the Poem Dancing category on Sharon Brogan’s poetry blog.

If there had been a current poem dance taking place I would have joined in, and very much hope to come across one in future.

I do believe that copyright protections still have a place, and will continue to, given the structure of the society we inhabit. I also believe in a future order in which our understanding of rights and responsibilities would be redefined in many ways. Open source is symbolic of a free internet, and a collaborative culture, where value is contributed, received and shared through means other than money. This ‘gift’ economy has grown to represent an entire sub culture, one in which free exchange greatly enhances value for all. Meanwhile, though, participants still require income in dollars to pay the rent, and most projects of any size require financial investment to achieve fruition. The frictions between open sharing and collaboration, private interests, and individual needs are many and, as we know, not easily resolved. I have come to understand that the demonstration of what can be accomplished with free is an important key to unlocking the rhythms and formulas of new orders and understandings.

A year ago I was wandering around here wondering, “Where is the public trust?”. Now my intent is to contribute to the evolution of new definitions of it.

Since today is my birthday, though, my pleasure is to release the following song fragment, which I wrote in response to the development zeitgeist, into the collaborative space…

i want fast
cars
purring like panthers
a nuclear power that sings in my veins

i want pure
lightning
unleashed by my fingertips
all destinations forever attained

the song
speeds
with a million hearts beating
unique synchronicity linking all planes

in our fast
cars

I’ve read that code is poetry. My own comprehension of code has advanced to the point where I can recognize some of it as elegant or beautiful, but the full understanding of it as poetry, well, so far I can only make this association through analogy. Becoming a parent or creating a successful business can be similar to both writing and experiencing poetry. Both are acts of creation and also, or therefore, more than a simple sum of our experiences, actions and selves.

Successful collaborative creation as greater than the sum of the individuals’ contributions… a defining element of the richest cultures?

Thoughts?
Poetry?

I intended to
until years lost all meaning
and never is now

in charred stubs of wood
spirits of searing fire smile
free to stain paper

the torn feather floats
it dreams of a lullaby
that weaves a new nest

©2007 VJIB

sculpted and scattered and molded in time slots
her mandates define her like olives in gin

from bathroom to beeper so snugly connected
she struts like a punctual guardsman
unsoiled

as he watches the march from his favorite corner
…an almost disorganized bundle of tweed…
from the nook where his ashes sag safe in their pipe bowl
he watches this dervish of womanly will

did he marry this clock? this unending rehearsal?

his privacy cramps with inertia’s greed
as her hands reach reflexively, smoothly, artistically
to snare straying objects or children or whims
and arrange them
like flowers, like notes in a symphony
singing to sundry, to tourist, to neighbors

indulgent or needy? he wonders as ever
and shrugs to his corner, his teetotaling haven,
replete with aloofness, asperity, brine,
and his puzzlement.

Locked in their maze of unquestioned denial
and sceptical sniping, he keeps her at bay.

She no longer expects him to learn how to soar
through her fantasies…
…waltz with her will.

She retreats, reconnoiters, attends to her flowers,
unable to set him, her husband, in place.
Like a hangnail he pulls at her channeled desires
untorn and unmendable
snagging the silk
of her soul
while she clashes her vistas against his inductions
in habit
in marriage
in alien trust.

©1999 VJI

one father gone
just one

one of millions in a city
overcrowded by family units
countless fathers not yet gone
just one

countless heads of soft brown hair
countless warm brown smiling eyes
eyes which made the world revolve
pain dissolve

countless gentle ready hands
in countless lands

and pride and hope and eager dreams
and discipline and worry
and countless sleeping children blessed
by naked kisses
no one misses
one

just one

©1975 VJI