From a Poet

February 8th, 2014 The urge that takes us and tells us to move on, pick things up, fall back, sleep silently, act loudly, must be followed before it is defeated in the mind.  Our logic and our reason have no use for it even though it is an expression of the same source and its foundation lies in what the exterior world makes us conscious of.  There is much negation involved of course; for every one of the elaborate urges that come over us, there is but a fraction that awaken the mind with the realization that something has been truly set forth.  Therefore it is not necessary to wait, to pick and choose, but merely to remain aware of the endless flow of perception present within us until there is something that undeniably goes beyond it.  It is in these instances that we see reality, that the whole weight of our burden is released, and instead of fatigue, vigour transports us a thousand miles inside the depth of a moment, and there lying within, awaits the realm of poetry. Dou

February 4th, 2014 It is in our nature to fashion understanding after intellect; from the first breath of consciousness it has been said that man is the thinking animal and whether we agree or not, the tradition with which our thoughts move is to place one object up against another, or one thought or memory up against another, and proceed through reasoning or logic to come up with a strategy that will invariably prove or not prove that one is better or worse than the other.  We place upon the scale of importance efficiency and fact, and hold with words those ideas and matters of thought that have not yet been fully understood.  To speak, or more generally, to use the senses, is our way to enlighten understanding, whereupon it is only those things that are left unsaid, or that have yet been revealed, that the intellect truly understands.  By the concept and definition of a word, we give boundary, by which is meant exclusion, so that the objective reality that we come to take as tru

January 24th, 2014 Arranging our lives into a schedule and setting goals for them is a pleasing venture in itself; our efforts are never so precise and our discipline never so honourable as when we have something to point to, turning our every day activities into an improvement of the self.  Ben Franklin set aside one day a week for study and personal improvement, and advised others to do the same; Coleridge offered three hours a day as fitting to the battle against time; but when we burn up the hours and carve into our days these affairs, the magic disappears; the struggle we once thought honourable now seems vain and doubt leaks into the mind.  Should we make a new schedule and set a new goal it would be just as pleasing, but there is always the lone question that asks us if we are cut out for that sort of life.  Apart from turning us on to patterns and appearances, the mind is far from logical in its understanding, so why then do we try to frame it?  There was a profound sage

January 20th, 2014 Where does error exist?  When I look back upon the time I spend helplessly involved in myself, or with the cares and appeal of appearance, I find there still remains a deeper motivation to uphold that which I have been made aware of rather than clarify the reasons for which I have become used to it.  The ambiguity of reality is based upon a logic undeniably self-evident and uncontrollably suggestive to any situation wherein opinion exists: the way the world works is the way we work and the view is less extensive than we believe; what someone thinks of me I become, and what I of them they in time fulfill, but each are mutual and neither ahead nor behind, above or below, the other, and change is almost impossible. Douglas Thornton

January 19th, 2014 That I have been insensible to my surroundings would concern me more if I did not overlook them with the sort of scrutiny similar to one who is in a position to let them go.  This mature reservation to be impressed by those things I was inept to rely upon, and take for word what had not been experienced, nor submitted to any critical evaluation, has brought forth a realization, that over some point in these last few months, my life has changed, and I am no longer the one I used to know.  Should I search no more and be content with this truth, though for most it would hardly be satisfactory, would nonetheless be a reason to stay on guard against the discriminations of my recent and melancholic error of loving poetry too much. For I cannot help but see this as being much deplored, and forever in the wrong, until that moment the result coincides with the perfect expression of our reality, and all of our shortcomings and all of our insensitivities become a quick