The Word

‘The logos. The logos. What is the power of the logos?’
These were the first words of the class term spoken by Professor Hunt. No one in the class responded to his question. Professor Hunt repositioned himself on the desk in the front of the classroom. He cocked his head slowly and scanned the room from behind his glasses but his eyes never touched anyone else’s eyes. His glance soared above and below faces and in the aisles they occasionally stopped before continuing onward. A few students shifted in their seats, keeping their eyes averted from Professor Hunts as well. Finally a hand shot up.
‘The logos is the word.’
‘That is correct,’ said Professor Hunt. He now repositioned his large arms which stretched from within his old green short sleeve shirt. His words were sounded from some passage between his throat and mouth; however, they seemed never to fully leave his mouth. They seemed to be lodged in a room of his voice box with only softened shouts being able to exit audibly for anyone else to hear. There appeared to be a duality in the words and actions of Professor Hunt, a division of his being.
‘Now what did the Greeks believe the power of the logos could do? How did they see the logos functioning?’ This last question ended with an accompaniment of Professor Hunts head nodding downward into a locked position. With his head down his whole body turned now with the scan like before. His eyes avoiding the eyes of his class again, and again there was some repositioning of the students; feet moving but unable to take the rest of their bodies elsewhere.
Again a hand shot up.
‘They believed that the word, or logos, had power.’
Professor Hunt smiled for the first time. ‘Correct.’ His smile was only a halfway smile. The age on his face, the lines and sagging of skin about his whole person wouldn’t permit him to smile fully. His teeth shone with a color of khaki and a faint purple outlined the edges of his teeth. This scarecrow smile would be pulled about by this duality of being but would not leave his face for the rest of the class. Degrees of his mouth opened and closed but again they tried to contain something from within him.
There was only one student within the class who dared to look at Professor Hunt. This one student observed Professor Hunt unable to reason within himself as to why he looked at this old man. Perhaps he reminded him of some action figure he had played with as a child. Professor Hunt had a solidness about his body but age had taken the vigor which might have once been about his physique.
‘The Greeks believed,’ Professor Hunt’s eyes shot to an aisle and stayed there, ‘they believed that the logos had power. They believed the word had a very great, awesome power.’ His smile widened but again was pulled back by degrees from the sagging lines of his face. ‘They actually thought words were small little particles.’ Hunt’s hand raised slowly and turned about as if cupping some invisible substance. ‘They believed that words transmitted these particles from one person to another and had the ability to work on another individual.’ Hunt’s fingers fell open and the imaginary substance fell through like a cloudless waterfall.
This one student still kept his eyes gripped about Professor Hunt. Maybe it was Professor Hunt’s ring which held his attention. It was a large silver ring that surrounded a jade stone with its size being little larger than an nickel. It reminded him of a mood ring on a very large scale. He thought it might change colors but knew such would be ridiculous. This jaded ring sat in the position of Professor Hunt’s wedding ring. Perhaps he was married to some Indian woman.
‘They believed the word was so powerful,’ again Professor Hunt’s smile wanted to burst through the boundaries set on his face, ‘that they believed it could actually control another human being.’ Professor Hunts hand closed rapidly forming a fist draped with the bedding of his skin pulled tightly about it.
The hand which had shot up on prior occasions came once more. Professor Hunt’s stare moved to just beside the boy who stared at him.
‘Aren’t we going to talk about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle?’
His smile subsided and then twisted, ‘Yes; we will get to them but we need to set the stage.’ He stood now and continued his stare to just beside the boy who stared back at him. Hunt’s stare passed through his glasses and focused on a small space beside and below the boy. ‘Rhetoric,’ he said, ‘is what?’ He folded his arms while his eyes did not move.
Few people shuffled in their seats now. There was a static silence. The hand and voice came once more.
‘It is the power of persuasion.’
Professor Hunt’s hips shifted but his feet never moved and neither did his arms or his
eyes. ‘Yes.’
His smile returned to accompany his cowboy stance which looked to lasso something that sat beside the boy. ‘Rhetoric can persuade people of things they had not wanted to be persuaded of or to. It can move them.’ He blinked. ‘It can change them.’ He blinked again. ‘Where do we see Rhetoric today?’ His words sat like a fog in the room, and yet there was nothing visibly different within the room. All was the same as before except for Professor Hunt’s focus, his eyes widened and then narrowed at that same particular spot by the boy. Now he did not blink.
The hand and then the voice came.
‘We see Rhetoric in everything from art, to music, news reels, commercials; everything is Rhetoric.’
‘Correct.’ His halfway smile subsided some, the boy saw, but his focus did not subside. ‘Rhetoric is in everything, a stance, a sigh, a rolling of the eyes,’ his eyes did not roll. ‘It’s all about us but the logos,’ a switch had been turned on in him and his halfway smile was on the rise, ‘the word is what I want to focus on.’ Brimming about his face now was the half smile covered in khaki teeth and stained by an outline of purple. He unfolded his old muscular arms and lifted his left arm to scratch at the top of his head, smoothing out his parted hair, his short thinning hair. The switch was turned once more and the smile subsided but the focus of his gaze was gaining on the spot by the boy.
The young man wondered what the professor was getting at, what his words meant and what he was staring at but he could not take his eyes from the professors.
The professor finally moved his legs. He walked from side to side in the front of the class but nothing else about him changed; his legs moved but nothing else. None of the students noticed this because their eyes were elsewhere and so were their thoughts; except for the young boy. He continued with a relentless pursuit of understanding the professors words.
‘The Logos, in the Christian account created the world right? God spoke and it was so. He said let there be light and there was…’ His hand again cupped upward, ‘light.’ He continued his walk back and forth, ‘God said let there be an earth and the heavens…’ He cupped with his other hand the air about him, ‘and there was creation.’ The professor stopped where he had started prior and his gaze returned passing through the students like flags of a downhill skier and stopped by the boy. His fingers opened and two misty clouds of light and nothingness fell towards the ground and landed like a miniature unicorn.
The professors scarecrow smile was summoned once more. The boy could see the glee the professor was getting out of every word and action. He had to resist the strong urge to smile himself and laugh. This nothingless unicorn of light and creation stamped its legs on the carpet of the classroom and assumed the spot where the professor stared. Professor Hunt nodded. ‘John said that in the beginning was the word. What he was saying was in the beginning was the logos. The logos and power are inseparable; they maintain one another.’ Professor hunt balled his hands of skin together and then opened them once more. Falling towards the ground came an invisible gnome who once he landed, brushed himself off and ran gingerly towards the unicorn.
Professor Hunt’s crooked halfway smile grew again with a glee druggies never know. The boy saw this all himself and wanted to smile, wanted to laugh, the glee was growing within him and the focus of before became pleasantness to him. He saw the invisible gnome petting the mane of the unicorn who breathed deeply.
The hand shot up and so too the voice.
‘I have a question about the syllabus and the books we need for this class.’
Both Professor Hunt and the boy turned to the girl asking the question and looked at her. Professor Hunt’s smile faded, the glee was gone; he cleared his throat and said, ‘All business. Today was my favorite day, it was the day dedicated to the logos; but if you want to talk about the course I can’t help that.’
Both looked back to the previous spot of focus and found the nothingless unicorn had disappeared and the invisible gnome had just finished digging a hole through the carpet and concrete. He stood erect now and pulled from within his tiny blue jacket a pistol and pointed it up at his head and as he pulled the trigger both the professor and the boy blinked.
And the term continued.

Early Summer

With the absence of interaction
comes a lack of attraction
distraction to know
show as you go
eyes here now there
share?
What do you care?
Fair to dare
nope- receiving the glare
deceiving, nothing achieving



Professor

Your voice you lend to theory
you did not create
but tell as if authentic.
Capitalism sounds like a dirty word
while you promote the jungle.
Money can do more good than your voiced theory
I see there are some pigs in capitalism, true
but there are snouts which make me doubt in academia too.



05/09/10

Angers anker is found in the self
fighting the focus of the mirror
thinking its you, thinking its clear,
Judgment is due
Adieu to you
go now, be gone
wrong.
I am right
fight with my might
expletives accompany motives
nothing at all to hear
trenched in spitting out sneers



05/12/10
Goats

We don't want to hear from you
sip of the drink.
Don't want your religion
puff of the cigarette.
Don't need your books
pumping up the music.
I got my God
closing the door.

Who was it?
Some churchy-do-gooder.
what did they want?
Jesus.
You tell them he wasn't here?



05/06/10

Imagination what an incantation
the fluff of stuff
fair, moving on air, oh to dare
and a grand stand for something unplanned
moving about the mind, away from the grind, only to find
Snap-
Wuzzle, Buzzle, buzzle, guzzle, catcha, patcha- nah
ran over a branch; bad for the blade
cutting fields
consider the lilies of the field.



05/07/10
God

I speak to thee because I want to
I know thee as much as I know what thou art not
I see thee in all that is not around me
Deception, Narcissism, Theft, Covetousness,
No.
There is no show for y0ou to perform
not any information or discovery beyond your sight
What you want, what your desires, your heart-
is least known, understood, or felt by many.
Yes
You have endowed us with agency and ability
all of which we suppose to be our own
and with it we work destruction
with great swelling arrogance
Beyond,
What we least go to but claim as our own



05/04/10
Dumars

Idiot
He's so stupid
Can he hear himself?
Does he realize what he's saying?
Guys like that just drive me crazy
the problem is his pride
and its linked to what he's saying
like the scripture says,
out of the abundance of the heart
the mouth speaketh.
What's in his heart is pride
such an ignorant idiot

Summer

06/27/10

Stories, stories, stories

filled with others greater glories

placed on paper, screens, speeches and songs

of pricks and thorns of others wrongs

hands washed clean of what would be seen

done by others, how cruel, obscene, mean.

Who should tell of Calvary?

Christ alone, not you or me

His symbol becomes our cymbol

we hit upon within our hymnal

such is but pathetic

because its not authentic.

But Pontias Pilate is our brother

known better than any other

setting guilty free at shoutings fee

living with the we inside of me

to what degree is my life like thee?

I do not cast off Christ or His cross

only acknowledge my actions as dross

what He won I live in loss

my misjudgement is abundant

I find no fault in this man sounds redundant

06/26/10 - Break-Up

Time for you to know

this is the end of our show

go.

It was but a pilot

file it down in a diary

dial it up to a friend

send it out to someone else.

Well its due to your ratings

datings a deal

something you feel thats real

its the cast that needs a change

go on out to pasture, grange

oh do what you do

someday you'll laugh too.

Its not because you're fat

its not even about that

it just wouldn't last four seasons

and thats one of the big reasons

06/22/10

Indecisive voices no interest

dearest stranger it knows best

or better than those nearest

silent acceptance calls on cue

view the indecisive while I stew

about my brew of bitter judgements

senses are bland

not wanting to sit or stand

the worst is when there's two

who don't know what to do

06/10/10

Despair?

Where?

Barely believing but

fairly taking what?

A word here and there

to taste, to nibble, swallow

emaciated emotions, hollow

following ever so slow

time trudges for those who go

knowing theres gnawing bits

bellied fits, taking hits

second struggle stagnates;

sounds are forces of the fates

to find no fault in feeling-

do is to be dealing

with, without all

words, crumbs, stall

06/0910

With what light from my phone

I do lie all alone

and write of things not seen

nor heard or thought but in a dream

lay my head upon the pillow

allow this world to wilt and willow

out a tune to lure the moon

from clouds and mountains soon

I'll find forgetfulness

then my tongue will bless

the mourning's light

and wonder over every night.

Day Forgotten

Must go, oh no, take slow
pray first, don't curse, read verse
eat quick, shower sick, clothes slick
walk stairs, mind dares, conscience cares
hey there, comment where? look fare
class sit, something writ, eyes lit
her smile, think awhile, love denile
time lunch, sandwhich cruch, feelings hunch
professor now, time wow, assignment how?
Back home, not alone, talk phone
study some, tired numb, mind dumb
sleep on, quiet dawn, dreams gone

TRY

There is a cry in try
but perhaps the scariest of all
is the lie in try.
For after every high
gone bye there must
come questions to die-
or is it to fly?
Nothing is nigh in the
sigh to try
nor even in the dye
that will dry.
Aye to have summers sun
fry that which lies
beneath the sky;
while all around wonder why.
This is the call
to try- to care not
for the why
let go of my
idea, its aliby
now deny, sever
logics tie to progression
from infant, child, boy, guy.
No, its process pieced
like pi, parts are infinite
so too must voices
raise and wry
Only, Try, try, try

So-So

“So?”
“Sooo what?”
“So, you know?”
“So, I know what?”
“Sooo- oh come on; don’t be difficult.”
“I’m not being difficult.”
“You so are.”
“No. I’m ‘so’ not?”
“Whatev; I don’t even care.”
“Oh, so you’re gonna play that game.”
“I’m playing what game?”
“What game? Are you serious?”
“Are you serious?”
“So- I don’t want to talk about it- alright?”
“Alright.”
“Alright then.”
“Alright. We won’t talk about it.”
“No we won’t-”
“No, we won’t- not till you say so.”
“Not till, I say so.”

“So, when do you think you’ll say-”
“Look!”
“Hey, I’m just asking?”
“And I’m just telling.”
“So?”
“So, no is no, for now.”
“So….ok then.”

“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Well, what’s happening?”
“Well, maybe nothing’s happening.”
“Is nothing happening?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well you didn’t not say that either.”
“Well I’ll just say- no.”
“You’ll just say no?”
“I’ll just say nothing for now.”
“And so you’re not going to say anything because-”
“I’m not gonna say anything because; that’s right.”
“Because I’m not talking about what’s with me.”
“Because you wish I would talk about it.”
“So…”
“So.”

If one leaf fell

If one leaf fell what would be said?
How rare that leaf would be
But allow all to fall and no one cares
It happened last year and the year before
Next year it will happen again
Repetition makes ignorance speak sayings
Such as, ‘how beautiful, the colors changed.’