120. The World and Its Overdetermination
Folks, why can’t the world get any smarter?
Why are we still stuck with dumb fucks like Trump?
At this point, the question’s a non-starter
that leaves in the questioner’s throat a solid lump.
Too many reasons, and we know them all.
What Freud called “overdetermination.”
An intractable web. We’re in its thrall.
What Goethe’s Mephistopheles called tarnation!
Our world is a tangle of nexuses -
a bricolage of the Überbestimmt.
And there’s little our solar plexuses
can do to pull it apart and make it uncrimped.
Each of us feels it now within our gut.
The nexuses tighten into their solid nut.
121. The Gathering Place
—marking the twentieth anniversary of our move from Taipei to Honolulu—
Oahu is where I conduct my life…
and Honolulu, more specifically.
There’s four of us - me, our kids and my wife.
Like other “double transplants” typically,
we love the people “gathered” in this “place”
and are proud to add ourselves to the blend.
We live beside Diamond Head’s “Ewa face”
and wave up to hikers as they ascend.
A wonderful patch of humanity,
whose residents have come from everywhere.
Was it desperation or vanity
that made those bold Tahitians tarry here?
The remotest gathering place on Earth.
Then as now, great distance the price of so much worth.
122. Talkin’ 6-7 Armageddon Blues
The war’s begun. It’s not likely to cease.
Envision it! A moment to capture.
It will yield no millennium of peace
and no faux-Biblical sci-fi rapture.
Billions of tax dollars right down the drain.
And we Americans voted for this,
sanctioned it through our electoral brain,
as if wisdom would totally bore us.
Who’s to say this world will be forgiving
for queening our vulgar, butterscotch pawn.
The eldest of us are now reliving
urgencies six or seven decades gone,
inscribed in Dylan songs of ‘63:
“Let Me Die in My Footsteps.” “Talkin’ World War III.”
123. Sunday Morning Question
Ask yourself, “What do you want from this day?”
This question occurs to me more and more
on mornings I don’t have to go to work.
The reduced energy with which I play
here at the beginning of my fourth score
provides a challenge that I dare not shirk:
how neither to squander nor overspend
this precious, diminishing quantity
of get up and go on which I depend
to battle new ills that are haunting me,
to maintain my vibrancy in the whole,
to realize those self-expectations
I set when I was just a youthful mole,
oblivious to aging and its frustrations.
124. Another Poem Called Asshole (or, Haas Contra Richman)
“Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.”
-- Jonathan Richman
I’m pretty sure that Pablo Picasso…
even Picasso was called an asshole.
We’ve all been so yclept, from Ted Lasso
to Josef K. before the guards at the castle.
Life’s about recovering from screw-ups
and learning from our brief or prolonged shame.
History’s but a series of post-ops
dissecting the gross abuse of power and fame.
We should reserve this ugly epithet
for all those who are wretchedly toxic.
I know it’s easy to get mad at it -
this hubris that is nearly hypoxic,
sucking intelligence out of the air
so that all we’re inclined to do is curse and swear.
125. The Lower Vistas of Your Higher Mind
Certain heights are surmounted only once.
To scale them a second time would be wrong,
reducing our successes to mere stunts
or nostalgia for feats when we were young and strong.
There are other peaks on the horizon -
lower, maybe, and less dramatic, sure.
The perspective there may narrow, tighten
and dwindle, though you may find that’s a cure
for youthful caprices that ran amok
and often got you into hot water.
You’re simply older, not down on your luck.
There’s much to do besides crouch and totter
as you think of those hills you’ve left behind
and near the lower vistas of your higher mind.
126. Spring in My Step
Ah, to wake up to a spring in my step!
I know today will be filled with wonders.
A great night of sleep can renew that pep
I need to win friends and avoid blunders.
My choices: the long-term plan and the whim.
I’ll make substantial headway on them both -
a pair of chalices filled to the brim.
I’ll quaff them down in advance of the oath!
But this energy’s too precious to waste.
I’ll apportion it out with strict caution.
A major challenge with which we’re all faced:
to leave nothing for our final auction.
I’ll not drain these cups too slow or too fast.
Neither I nor the sun shall the other outlast!
127. Queen of the Diamond Head Courts
- captioning a photograph of my wife at said location -
My wife - the Queen of the Diamond Head courts.
She could teach you more than a thing or two
about tennis, football, and other sports.
And if you’re nice, maybe she’ll make for you
the tastiest shǔijiǎo on Oahu.
And good lord, can she ever teach Chinese!
Compared with her, I’m a gabbing yahoo
who stands in front of kids and shoots the breeze,
looks up at the clock and waits for the bell.
I love to brag about my better half.
Some of our students we share, which is swell.
She’d scold me if she knew how much they laugh
at comic pranks I play at her expense,
for which these fourteen lines are evidence.*
[*alternative line: “for which this sonnet begs her lenience!”]
Note: Haas’s real-world alter-ego and amanuensis Jones would like to take this opportunity to express his consternation at the poet’s feeble insinuation that either Haas or Jones engages in unprofessional conduct in his line of work.
128. Spirited Throwaways
(or, Merely the Bard)
Don’t shun apparent lightweights. For often
the best poems are spirited throwaways.
A jest or prank won’t slacken or soften
the kernel sooth in a true poet’s lays.
You may suspect I’m making an excuse
for something silly I’m about to write.
Not unless something funny comes to mind!
Laughter exposes our naked caboose
by pulling our pants down when we’re uptight
with attempts to mean big…or so I find.
This poem pulled my pants down, in point of fact.
It had its laugh taking me quite off guard.
I told it to grow up and show some tact.
It snapped back, “But I’m the poem! You’re merely the bard.”
129. Creativity and Tedium
Creativity is an energy
that glides by in an elusive pocket,
easily unnoticed. You better be
ready to slide it onto your docket
of things that you’ll need to get done today,
along with all of those mundane items
that have more to do with work than with play
or with just about anything that enlightens.
Often the need arises to block it
out so you can get that other stuff done,
though it wants to blast off in a rocket
as tedia arise once more to snuff the sun.
This pocket I’ve snatched…today I’ll empty it out.
I’ll put some chores on hold, some others to rout.
130. This Book Has Aspirations All Its Own
This book has a lot to do with random
thoughts that enter my head from time to time -
words, phrases, and sentences in tandem
with sound effects like consonance and rhyme.
I’ve said before, you learn to listen in
and trundle the phonological loop -
cacophony, blather, and dissonance
with beauty and reason in one fell swoop.
This book sets its sights on the whole, the all,
while honoring the fragments and the dross.
The discards hope they’ll get their curtain call.
“They’ll get to sweep the floor!” says me, their boss.
This book has aspirations all its own.
I’m only the scribe. The author in me has flown!
131. The Possible and the Ideal
The possible can obstruct the ideal,
and often it’s a matter of patience.
When folks are busy inventing the wheel,
they’ll gladly discard the hoop skirt in its nascence.
Similarly, we’ve got to toss aside
those sudden genius strokes that came to naught.
We’re loath to dispense with them out of pride
and like to believe that they fell to us unsought.
Some of the merely possible can do
and may attain to the ideal with age.
But rotten concoctions like Fu Manchu?
That one the author should have stricken from the page!
In truth, the ideal begins in the possible.
Both are indispensable, and that’s my gospel!
132. Adults as Actors out on Loan
“Like a dog without a bone, an actor out on loan…”
—The Doors
I often feel as if I‘m still a child;
it’s just I’ve changed my implements of play.
My innocence has never been defiled;
temptation’s never led me far astray.
I lose my temper now and then, it’s true;
I curse and throw my sonnets to the ground.
But bouts like this between are far and few,
and I make sure that no one is around
at moments when I mutter and self-loathe
and shout at deity, “God, pity me!”
I always take great pains to fully clothe
such foibles so they don’t get rid of me!
I sometimes think, “Why Haas, how tall you’ve grown!”
Adults are just bad actors out on loan.
133. Grander Than Cosmic Elision
Life seems like a veil that won’t be lifted,
although we always try to shake it off
to reveal another we’ve been gifted,
like characters in a play by Chekhov,
where nothing much happens besides waiting
for something a little bigger than death,
so that we’re reduced to idle prating
and dispensing CO2 with our breath.
Where Chekhov’s characters never succeed,
we manage at least to scratch the surface
of that livelier life we envision,
in which we satisfy a deeper need,
a purer desire, a higher purpose -
a life that is grander than cosmic elision.
134. The Grandmasters of Making
We work with the remainders of the day -
the leftovers, the throwaways, the scraps.
The stuff of song and dance and rhythmic play
that keeps us entertained between our naps.
We always hope to generate the new,
although that quite depends on the remains.
Sometimes it’s stuff with which we can’t make do;
sometimes it cannot justify our pains.
We never know until we make our start.
You take that odd remark, I’ll take the dawn.
Some bits of it will rise, some not, to art;
some other bits may feed tomorrow’s spawn.
We’ve generated both - some duds, some aces,
grandmasters of what the Greeks called poiesis.
135. Fishing for a Common Sign
We’re limited by our signifiers,
although their use may be unlimited,
or nearly so. They contract our desires
that would otherwise be inhibited
as they would lack channels for articulation.
A given language can’t say everything,
though seemingly endless variation
of what it can say without tarrying
on the lower partials and building blocks
too closely is well within its purview.
And each language you speak has dams and locks
to regulate your desires so they don’t hurt you.
And if the one you speak is not like mine,
we’ll fish through the sounds we make for a common sign!
136. Lumpentrumpetariat
Man, did I blow it. I bet all my cash
that Donald Trump would not attack Iran!
Now, my inside trader’s having a bash
on the false information he fed me. The con!
I took his word…but Jesus! I’m the dupe -
two decades worth of earnings down the drain.
I doubt there’s a way for me to recoup
my losses as he recedes on his gravy train.
The Fuck Around Find Out Phenomenon
in its endgame will bring down everyone,
including Trump, JD Iscariot,
and those of us much less richly endowed.
But until that day, I’m still deeply proud
to belong to the Lumpentrumpetariat!
[Next: Ninth Junana (Sonnets 137-153)]
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