War, Drugs, And Aesthetics

The older I get the more I want calm to be what drives me.

Wars seems to be what drives the world forward,
and the 'peace dividends' they eventually give
are goods with no further use for creating the future.

It is less easily understood that wars are started by junkies
and modern jihadists follow the pattern of The Futurists
of a century ago. As adrenalin addicts driven by speed,
whilst filming the victims of their fetishistic killing means,
they seek the end of any consensus independent of them.
Thus it started in Fascist Italy and has now gone into Islam,
which is catching up with the most violent century in history.

Time outside of time, through some deed quietly achieved,
is the calmest way, and still creates the most valued of spaces.

Uneasy Respites From Fame

'Cocaine is God's way of saying
"You have too much money"'
-Elton John, post rehab circa 1987
though he had a long way to go
to discover safer addictions, like shopping.

After cocaine came crack cocaine-
the intense but brief high that matches
the adulation popular singers gain
from their public acclaim,
the balm that calms how the power of fame
feeds into feeling hollow and needy.

With crack the voice declines faster
than the money disappears,
and the acclaim of the press
morphs into a morbid prurience,
from which there is no return.