two poems

Elusive

I'm filled up.
Brimming with words,
fumbling,stumbling, tumbling words.
Being choked by strings,
line upon line of sentences
strung about by the prodding tickling ticking
hands of the past.
I stand before the merciless clock
inching, reaching, thrusting forward
a weakening wordy wilted bouquet
To satiate it,
To appease it, even for just the present
to have the past be passed and to calm the wordy whirlwind at last.
I just can't look away,
step back,
even as the letters sting my eyes
and beat firmly against my weakening ribs.
Shallow stares.
Framed moments.
Why can't
Why can't I
How can
How can I not
Properly describe?
There are so many words
yet they continue
fumbling,stumbling, tumbling
filling me up
but somehow
Elusive to usage.
--------------------------------------------------

love. deluded. unknown.

I fell in love there
Where moonlight bathes
in tumbling salty waters,
Where japanese maples
elegantly shower scarlet dreams,
Where teardrops illuminate;
glitter proudly as stars deeply rooted in hope.
Your delicate words beckon me closer,
Wispy,
Fluttering just before me,
as a calming, tantalizing wind,
Seeping through my unconscious.
You envelop me within an unbreakable,
a too fanciful
reverie

What?
What a pity.
Your words?
It's a shame,
Myself nor the moonlight can recall your name.

curving contemplation ramble

I'm..
searching,
pondering,
continually hoping,
for words to spring forth.
Words, letters, curved symbols,
entangled in the recesses of the mind.
Waiting for those similes,
those metaphors
of circular logic,
of blurred reasoning,
to create clarity
out of the muddled;
to confusingly twist
the confines,
the boundaries
of reality
into something that somehow flows into the realms of sense.

Patterns,
circles,
cycles.
waiting for something.
idling for nothing.

Endless arrays of thought,
entangled in deeply delving roots,
yet glorified somehow whilst floating
far above even the pillars of truth.

Like a lingering wind upon heated sun kissed skin
thoughts flow freely, unabashed, untamed
throughout the medley of noises, constraints and hindrances

Like the caress of your pen
lovingly scratching paper
leaving your mark
creating
manifesting
grasping onto a fine start.

Continually climbing that circles curve.
weaving
stumbling
around and around.
round, circular, cyclical;
attempting to perceive that bend,
that curve of the horizon.

A flash of sunlight,
the dawn,
an awakening,
the realization straight before me.

The words.
I know now.

Hands

Parched, I lie on the damp cement floor absorbing what little I can. My skin was turning as cold and gray as my cage. This is as good a time as any to tell all of my secrets. After all, death is a pretty damn good excuse to repent – if one would call it that. How many times can you write a word before its letters on the page appear foreign? How many times can you say it until it loses all meaning? I pray my youth has not set me up for an age of redundancy foreshadowing an epoch of beached meaning.

I have been so covered with filth and lies, and am now ready to redeem myself. The sins of our pasts would soon reveal themselves as old paint pushing through rust. Edges crisp and burnt would cut at the skin of whoever dared to touch. A look of amazement and scorn would bleed over the faces of those now injected with the truth. Oh yes, we will pay. A priceless fate for the ‘rich’ yields recognition of the worth of the ‘poor,’ and not to mention, a change in definition of terms.

With the sacrifice of our secrets, we shall be free. It has been too long since we have tasted the fruit of our own soil. Forbade to reap from the earth, ordained to us in exile, has kept us from renewal. For countless days we have been slaves to those no more superior to us than we allow them to believe. Our fate, our freedom, is not only in our minds. “Man” – the word itself provides more than just a clue as to where our future lies. It is in our hands.

From the waters we swam towards land until we inhaled with every breaststroke. On our hands and knees we crawled onto soil and smelled the earth for the first time. Made brave by fear and strong by a promise of possibility, we steadied ourselves to our feet. We looked down at our hands, faces furrowed with brandished curiosity and confusion. We were not afraid to look to the sky for the guidance to use these not-so-new tools. Unfortunately for our past, the duality of nature – our nature – has shown us that not one thing on this earth has a single purpose; that which is made for a single purpose will never have just one use.

Our souls are not as dense as our bodies. It is perhaps true that without its protective covering, a soul would feel all the senseless pain we are to endure at the strokes of our hands as they commit self-treachery and enslavement. However, penetration of certain obvious truths would not have had such a difficult journey reaching us had such an impenetrable accessory to life not deflected the assault. At youth, our armor is strongest. Formed from the earth, we stand statuesque and almost as tourists, we marvel at our own beauty. Then, we come to find that nature has many lessons. Each one eroding us until we lie draped at the feet of Time – the opaque curtain of our skin thinning, our dried and lackluster eyes peer through our wounds of truth, once again looking to the sky for help.

The strength in humility comes from knowledge. It is the knowledge that there will always be a step in front of you to take – to bring you forward, to take you higher – that will bring you peace. And with the peace of this knowledge, we can achieve anything.

The sins of our past cloud the path in front of us until there is no path. We get to the point where we truly believe that there are no more steps to take. We think we have reached our pinnacle and from here, surely we must be able to look down on others. If you are one who thinks such things, you are in for a surprise, my friend. The ground beneath you - the very ground from whence you came - erodes with your body and thins in harmony with your skin. Your lungs will reject air with the same veracity with which we once struggled to our feet. From your knees you will plead with Time to take back her harsh sentence and forgive you all your wrongs. But it is not she who can grant forgiveness. Such things can only be earned with the very things given to us by God as Man. The good deeds we commit with our hands carry our souls closer to a peace turned myth. Our happiness lies in the proper use of such tools. After all, what use is a journey such as this if we are not to realize our good and true purpose?

Silhouettes

Another year gone by, reflected in the mirror of my past. It is not a dividing line that separates me from knowing how I was before, but a mirror of unimaginable proportions. All I can see of myself is from that point – seven years ago today – on. Sometimes I think it’d be easier just to accept that there was no me before then – that I have always been what I can see. Another part of me knows that the possibility of that being a lie is too great not to ask questions of myself. After all, much of him is in me. To deny my previous self is to deny his existence.

Contradictory to the actions of our pacifist idols, the problems found within oneself cannot be eradicated quietly. Like the wars of the past, the battle fought within is full of pain, death, and mourning, but also growth and renewal. However none of this comes about while sitting down. There may be moments when I am brought to my knees, but change only comes about when I am standing tall enough to see past the smoke and pieces of myself that I decide to destroy or let live. I stand in topsoil between the dead crops of my past and the lush garden of my future. Set in the distant horizon lies my goal silhouetted – who I want to be.

As our faith in a god wanes with the dimming twilight, our foundation sinks into darkness and we look not only up, but inward. We ask questions of ourselves that echo throughout human history. These questions are what make us, and are therefore the torture of our existence.

Chewed

The woman in the reflection knew life on a first name basis. They had dinner together, had slept together for fifty-odd years. But it was more than that. The affair had stood on the shoulders of her soul alone. She had borne more children to a father of emotion than she cared to remember, or even could remember. Ungrateful sons and daughters of introspection had taken her for everything she was worth. Her face was etched with the markings of every birth. With eyes closed, like every good mother, she bore the pain. Her short afro hair and Velcro shoelaces gave her counted control through avoidance. Five-hour-old gum kept her awake for now. Its flavor and color had long ago cooled but its purpose remained constant. I wondered what flavor and color she once was, if there was some of it still there hidden between wrinkles and teeth marks, if color could still exist in the dark. I wanted to tell her she was beautiful and then wondered when she had last heard those words spoken together and to her.

The train punctured the light of a platform and I was me again. Leaving the comfort of light, or entering the comfort of darkness (I forget which now), we ghosts picked up speed. We are beautiful, aren't we?

20/20 Hindsight

http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/enter-the-cybrids/index.html

Bad news, human race: your foresight is short-sighted. But the good news is that your hindsight remains 20/20!

I just want to say right off the bat that I am not against this type of research. I am a research scientist myself, and I believe the more we can learn about ourselves the better -- that is as long as it is for our betterment, a concept of which there are at least two parts, neither equally exclusive nor one more important than the other. On one side we have helping ourselves. This entails curing diseases, learning about ourselves and the world we live in, making a better quality of life, and the general righting of wrongs among other things. On the other side there exists a world containing oceans of complications deeper and darker than we could ever know. That is, until we procure the technology to reach such depths...

No, I am not against this research. The ability to culture cells that have the potential to save lives in this way is simply put, a way of finding a cure for a fallible biology which ails us. This is not bad or wrong albeit untraditional. We are used to 'curing' diseases and biological abnormalities through therapeutic medicine and the slaughter of seemingly parasitic diseases. But why not just replace damaged cells? Many of them cannot be recuperated. We have no need for dead or damaged cells which may aide in the creation or spread of disease, so why keep them? Why die when you can live?

I realize that that last question brings up controversy from pro-life advocates concerning stem cell research, which I'm not going to get into or try to convince you of one way or another. As far as I am aware, we are all pro-life and our differing opinions and perspectives are what makes us human.

The problem that I have with this article/opinion that I have made link to above is not an issue of protocol, research, or ethics. It just upsets me that in all of the efforts to convince people that this kind of unique and brilliant research has our best interests in mind and that in the end all will be OK, there is absolutely no attempt to convince us that there is true understanding of the risks and concern enough to act or speak accordingly. Some risks are mentioned, but they are "remote" and therefore discarded. However what I read is, 'Don't worry about it. You wouldn't understand anyway.' This is not always the case. Sometimes we do understand, and when we don't, sometimes we may even have the ability to. We are being told nothing that we do not already believe: this research has our best interest in mind and there will of course be risks. At a breaking point for even Ned Flanders he exclaims, "My family and I can't live in good intentions!" There is no substitute for good intentions, but there is for a bad outcome. Intentions must not just be good, but also calculated, well-rounded and contain a foresight as close to 20/20 as humanly possible. The latter of which is where I see us falling short of our abilities - abilities which are already designed to fall short of God's (or our respective imaginings of what is 'perfect'). So where does that leave us?

I do not necessarily consider myself to be very religious, but rather more spiritual in nature. However I mean it both literally and as a figure of speech when I say that I pray that I am not alone in my fear of our power. It is not a fear that causes me to run at the first sign of new technology or ability. It is an awed fear. It is one which I believe we should all have and acts as cement blocks on our feet. It is the fear we should exercise for ourselves in as much as we are to attribute our capabilities to that of a god-like status. I would also like to note the irony that goes along with the blind support of ourselves as gods (or creators of the unique and unforeseen, if you wish to tone it down a bit): I am assuming (and yes, I'm aware of what assuming does) that the majority of supporters of things such as stem cell research are atheists, agnostics, and apathetics. Many who fall into these categories might think that evolution is the be-all end-all, while others may see human creation as the deplorable mistake of a fallible being. Are we not fallible? We cannot know where our ability to create will take us.

As such an intelligent species we are capable of so much. The amount and extent of which we are capable of, both good and bad, is sometimes overwhelming to me. We are amazing in our own respect and for the most part have prospered as a result. With such abilities backing research so experimental in nature, it would be nice to know that as our knowledge, abilities, and as a result, our power increases, that our level of responsibility also increases to a degree that allows little to be left desired. I want to know that a scientist is not simply attaching his/her name to something because they intend it to work (of course they do), but that they are also willing to attach their name to whatever outcome. Such is the risk of experimental power. If a credible researcher is not comfortable putting their name on or cannot live with the possibility of being responsible for creating a new strain of disease now transferable from animal to human, one which is no longer dormant within humans or is unique to anything we have ever seen before, then I am not so sure it is worth doing. I want to know that a list with two columns titled 'Pros' and 'Cons' has been created. I want to really see that there is no way the pros will not outweigh the cons. I just want to know that these kinds of questions are being thought about asked face-to-face with our demons and not from behind a glittering shroud of good intentions.

Many accidental creations have drastically changed the world we live in. Things like saccharin (artificial sweetener), microwaves, the curation method for rubber (so it can be formed into different shapes such as car tires), pace makers, and penicillin (to name just a few) were all accidental. However, many changes have occurred or come about throughout our history and evolution that lend these things to questioning. For example the existence of certain diseases cannot be pinpointed to a certain event or human action and we are therefore left ultimately blameless (It is interesting to note that as we creep into the historical period on our time line that we seek out those at fault for such diseases (e.g., syphilis). To what goal I am unsure, but it can't be anything good.). Did other hominins or even prehistoric populations of humans experience asthma, COPD, depression or suicidality among many other diseases? Why do the rates of these diseases and many others that at one point did not exist increase? Are their cures or respective therapies without risk? No, of course not, but these risks are typically treatable in the event that they occur and it is generally accepted among the scientific and medical community that the benefits of treatment far outweigh the risks.

Other human creations were not as accidental, but their uses and outcomes can be viewed as such (e.g., the atom bomb). These creations are single events in history. They inhabit a place and time and they share their fame along with the example they set with the names of their creators - some of the most brilliant people in history. I do not believe that the chance of human endogenous retroviruses waking up upon "finding themselves in a new cellular surrounding" is a remote possibility, nor do I think we can play its possible occurrence off as something which can be easily "monitored." How could possibly know such a thing? We know where HIV/AIDS came from and we have no idea where cancer came from. Both of these diseases were 'accidental,' have a huge impact on how we perceive our quality of life, and neither is 100% curable in the traditional sense of the word. Are these researchers willing to put there name on a new disease that could have a similar or unforeseen impact?

On a more scientific note, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of the nonhuman donor is not/cannot be fully removed. It is correct that cells containing mtDNA "play several crucial roles in the cell, and faulty mitochondria are linked to a large number of human diseases. Worse, mitochondria exist in many copies." mtDNA was an accidental (the type of accident beyond our control) contribution to humans from a bacterium and is now passed down maternally (through the mother) from generation to generation. The reason that mtDNA is linked to large numbers of human diseases is its ability to replicate and therefore have more of a chance than nuclear DNA to undergo mutations. These mutations can in fact lead to disease, but could also be the key catalyst of many of our important adaptations and evolutionary changes. "But more than that, the fact that it’s possible at all to put one creature’s DNA into another creature’s cell and have the two work together at all is amazing — and another sign of the common evolutionary heritage of ourselves and the other beings on the planet." We got the amazing part. Now all we have to do is remember that whatever we create will have the same evolutionary heritage as well, but possibly a new or different ability to adapt.