Nightfall

When the rolling waves do come in

So do my steps fall back into infinity

This moonless night befalls me

The only light—the glimmer of my tired eyes

The ribbons have frayed

The papers burned away

The fragments pierced together

Crystals—

Time has pressured them as they lay

So I thought that can only be the way

But alas

This last puzzle?

A meaning trapped in paradox

———————————————

Midnight

No questions nor answers tell

The moment of its trigger relinquish

No tears nor silent scream

Register when the bell tolls

Of gears and cogs

This heart of issue

Rolling around

Can emotion ever be divined?

Toy nor prison

This last maze of mind

Attempt is failure

But failure never tried

No entrance nor exit

But victims all the same

What shall I make of this

Am I even sane?

Does the threads of my tapestry

Begin or ever end?

Do the patterns of this flat painting

Ever storybook the frame?

———————————————

Late

Each rounded layer cracking

In the edges of this black stone

Do the waters cry through

Summons of the past fading away

All blank canvases now

To tell no more of you

No traveler will find me

No weary hero will see me

No specter of the future

Shall haunt me

It’s just me now

No stars to guide

The whispers of the gardens

No longer sound as sweet

The monsters of my childhood

No more than anger seethe

What trails that I walk

Now have me as lead

Lonely frontiers

I understand you now

So too does the silence speak to me

———————————————

Asleep

These last years shift the seconds of dreams

No edge nor boundary

The brushstrokes blend

These bitter hues

Turning back time

To where I began

Meant running toward

Frail eternity’s land

Struck—

The hymn codas once again

But the notes carry no heavenly repose

My own voice carry the lows

The lonely and final repeat

Weaving these impossible measures

For some grander symphony I will never know

Stepping in time to this mad waltz

I thought I was doomed

To this

To me

Suffering fate’s loom

———————————————

Dawn break

But fate and faith are a duo

Light and life within

Darkness divided

The rays come true and through

It’s just me now

No stars to guide

It’s just me now

The dawn burning eye

Never will I know the truth of this

Even as the puzzle falls apart

Beneath it lies another mystery

Layers of perpetuity

But as I sing the memories of the past

The future so faithfully comes forth

The Harmony of the End?

No—

Of Tomorrow

Not for me nor for you

Of the days of all of us

———————————————

Mourning

Acceptance of the laughing tragedy

Are smiles so bitter

Sweetness in lieu

But once began

Even with no end

Do the kinder words

Come falling through

Paradox me this

In the deeper waters

An answer in riddle

So shallow but so simple

But all the more true

Even as the silt did rise

The waters never did forget

Of the darkened stone

Do fall apart and drag away

Did the clearer rivers flow

For another today

A bygone conclusion

A solution so absurdly obvious

For happiness, for peace, for serenity

For me and for you

All of us

Humming within

———————————————

Zenith

The story shifted

The narratives transforming

The past ever so gentle

The present writing

The futures of blue

Where the sun shines

My brighter eyes

Goodbye nevermore

As the stone rolls away the waves

I do say

Hello to another form of you

Even when all is lost

We never do lose

The permanent junctions of

Crossroads formed

Where others came to you

And you to them

Where the path taken

Is a thread woven

Perhaps gold and green tomorrow

But never without its true hue

Our histories speak

Of the words of the present

Showers of wisdom

Brought colors of yore

For Hope

Of wings and feathers

Aeternus Deus

From me

From all of us

I’ll never forget

My promise to you.

When I opened the door to the night

The darkness rolled in and enveloped me

Outside, while the trees swayed and the wind yawned

A thousand pieces of stars came showering down

For each fractal cutting into the night air

Fire captured and floated in spheres

Rainbows caught in the moment,

Shining down—these ethereal creatures

A last good bye to the visionary

A sweet night befallen

Once upon a worldly time

She came into being

She sat at the bottom of the world

And saw nothing but the sun at noon

The sunshine told her that she could

One day embrace a better world

So she climbed and she climbed

And one day she saw the world

For the first time

For a while the sun did shine

And she danced on the plains

She yelled for joy

And sang the praises of the world

And one day

The mirror broke

A thousand pieces shattered before her

And she was back at the bottom as before

For an eternity she mourned her loss

And for an eternity she cried

Only after a flood of tears built up

Did she finally climb out again

But the mirror was broken

Things would never be the same

So she pieced together what was left

And said goodbye to the sun

She sits on the plains at night

Breathing in and out

And embraced the quiet moon instead

One look at post-modern thinking

One more drink of beer for the day

They might argue for subjective truth

But what blasphemy they do say

One look at atheism today

One more hand to the head

How can anyone, let alone millions be like so

His atheism saw God as nature led.

One look at reality as conceived

The amount of shock on his face

How can there not be natural order

In this human race?

One look at learning and development

Besides the unheralded progression

Of learning for the popular masses

Surely, you must be joking of such regression.

One look at truth and epistemology,

Oh boy, he looks like he might cry

How can anyone know through senses

Only reason can prevail—oh my my!

One look at what some people want,

A destruction of the line between church and state

No—this is where I shall make my stand!

No intersection because that is what I hate!

One more look and I don’t think he’ll still stand

The modern world is just too much

And Spinoza is no fan

Poor Spinoza, dug from his grave

Says goodbye and jumps right back in

“There is no retribution enough to be saved!”

And out he goes—there are no more debates for him to win.

When I drop a ball from a building, its acceleration would be around 9.8 ms^2. Is that an objective fact or subjective? Most people would say objective. I wonder what the opposing side would say. If reality is truly subjective, how could it be that gravity is different for everyone? Well—maybe there are some subjective elements that influence this fact’s existence. After all, the existence of this fact is based on a body of people, who are subjective, being specifically interested in the acceleration due to Earth’s gravitational pull. Bodies of scientists have continually updated the information we have found with substantial arguments and disagreements over time. Even though the fact itself may not be subjective, the surrounding culture and entities that study it and build off from it are, indeed, subjective.

This subjectivity is more prominent in the social sciences more so than the traditional “hard” sciences. It’s hard to disagree about the acceleration due to gravity, but it’s much harder to say there is one objective social reality. If someone experiences racism everyday as a black man, that is a different experience than a white man. Their sense of reality in social life would be quite different. The black man would feel degraded and threatened by the racism he faces while a white man may not even consider the possibility of being mistaken for a criminal and shot down.

Reality as subjective or objective depends on what subject area you wish to enquire about. Differences in social reality often come about due to structural inequities. While one may taken for granted being able to freely run down a dark street at night, another would consider it a death threat. Other information like the facts about gravity are less debated, but the true mysteries lies in between fields or the meta-level questions of science. Who gets to define what life constitutes? How are things categorized and why? What constitutes enough evidence for something to be considered true? All of these questions challenge us to think deeper about facts. There is more to the world than pure positivism.

The age old question of whether we truly have free will is a question that has many implications for criminal justice. If we are to fall into the deep hole that no one has free will, then what then of consequences? Every lawyer will just defend their client as having acted because of the collective past experiences of their life.

If free will does exist, how much can we ascribe to free will and voluntary decision making compared to decision making influenced by our environments or past? Can someone in a psychotic break be responsible for believing in delusions and sabotaging relationships? Can we see that those growing up in poverty are more likely to struggle financially because of their circumstances?

Regardless of what the neuroscience says about free will, the lack of existence of free will or the presence of free will both have an influence on criminal justice. They bring into question who can be held responsible if at all for their behaviors.

There is, however, an interesting result of how one thinks about consequences based on where one stands on this spectrum. For those who ascribe circumstantial evidence that excuses an individual, these people are probably more likely to think big picture. A person’s actions are moulded by others. It takes a village to raise a child so why not a village held responsible when a child does something abhorrent? What about all the other people in their life that could have intervened but did not?

This perspective can be more empathetic and understanding in certain cases, but it is also difficult to balance. On the extreme end, the consequences can be dire. If a lot of people are responsible, what are their consequences? It would be difficult to ascribe responsibility in an almost arbitrary manner. There would be many arguments going at once regarding who should face consequence and how. It would enlarge the bureaucracy and also prevent a fast and speedy trial as they are bogged down by the extraneous details.

It would, also, be considered deeply unfavorable by the general population and pose threats to privacy. Who is to say a neighbor is somehow responsible for a murder in the next house over when they did not know anything about it? They would need to invade privacy to “keep watch” like a guard to prevent negative consequences happening to them.

On the other hand, if one is very anti-deterministic, it might make one very harsh and leaning towards punishment. Why give anyone any leeway for their behavior when they should have known better? Doing wrong when one doesn’t need to says everything about the character of the offender. They would need to be locked up for possessing lesser than ideal character and continually tracked until the deficit is fixed. This perspective also has racist undertones as different races were once considered morally inferior. To feed into a punitive system would create a cycle of arrests and serve punishments that don’t deter crime but are given out as a consequence of not being “good” enough.

Of course, one can imagine a non-punitive system that is predated on free will, but it would still look away at systemic injustices and the big picture that influence one’s behavior. Would anyone dare say that a hungry man is not understandable to steal if they have no other way to eat? Even if the consequences are lenient, it misses out on the larger issues. The bigger question is: why is this person going hungry in the first place?

It is clear to me that taking the extremes of either side lead to short-sided thinking. It would be better to balance opinions on a case-by-case basis and not resort to extremes to solve the issue. The middle, however, is always murky and some people fall further to the right or to the left of the spectrum. Which is a better worldview largely depends on how people understand crime. Is crime largely motivated by past experiences or due to a character flaw? It is the position of the author that it is better to lean more towards past experiences as a large motivator for crime rather than a character deficit as the adage, better to let five guilty people go free than to imprison one innocent, is a similar logic to how I see it. It’s better to be lenient but fair with consequences and not ruin a life if the crime is largely redeemable. This means that the person shows remorse and genuine desire to own up their crimes. Those who show no remorse and no desire to atone are those who I believe it is better to be less lenient on as they pose an ever present danger of reoffending.

Soft drops of sunlight come flying from above

White gems of evening showers

Each dying piece of the living

Flying free in the wind

A faux winter twice bound

Sakura falling

Life is a miracle, regardless of spiritual or religious beliefs. It baffles me how two cells can merge and eventually create a human life. As the cells divide and create more cells, each of them different and serving different roles that will eventually turn into the heart or the liver, I am caught off guard just how complex and beautiful that nature’s ever flowing river of creations just ended up becoming capable of creating life from so little. Bursting at the seams of these cells are the codes for an unique human being. Everything unfolds from them. Seeing the division only makes the awe even more visible.

Life is the product of biological soups that came together in just the right way and in just the right time. Evolutionary pressures took the original imprints and improvised thousands of different life forms in the process.

Death, on the other hand, reveals the limits of evolutionary miracles. For the religious or the spiritual, life goes on in the form of ethereal beings or souls that depart from the dead physical body. I know not what will happen to us when we take our last breathes. The only thing I know is that our bodies will one day return to the primordial soup of atoms and molecules, ready to be created into something new. Our skin, our hearts, our bones, our hair—all of it returns to the world from once it came from. In another life, we become other creatures or even a part of the very soil that cradles life. We become, once again, a part of the great exchange of resources. We become, through pieces decayed, a part of the whole that has existed since Time began.

Whether souls exist or not does not take away from the difficulties of goodbyes in our very human world, but I like to remember that we are already a part of something greater even as we exist right now. Everyday, our internal world exchanges with the world around us. Those who move on never truly leave us as they become apart of the wind, the water, and even a part of a new life form eventually. We’re always connected to each other in this way and our existence leaves a permanent imprint of ripples onto the surface of life that echoes forever and deep into the unknowns. No matter what happens, we are already a part of this world, engaged with each other in a multitude of possible forms. That is the beauty of life that is painted in stark contrast to the mysteries of the end.

Fruits of all shapes and sizes are evolutionary products meant to be eaten. The seeds of the fruits become spread out as the animal digests and releases the seeds in their bowel movements. As animals are constantly moving, the release of seeds in new areas affords a lucky chance of growing in newer fertile lands, or if the seeds are unlikely, they might just end up in a sewage system.

Some fruits and vegetables are not meant to be eaten, but nature finds a way. The burn of spicy peppers may have been a deterrent, but it soon became a cultivated classic in human farms.

Other foods are seeds themselves that are eaten. They may have not originally been meant for digestion and was meant for passing down new plants, but again humans have used engineering and tools to harvest and eat such seeds.

Liquids, like milk, are specifically meant for consumption by the young, but cow milk has been turned into a dietary staple of many tables. It’s purpose is nourishment, but it is important beyond that of just feeding the young.

Meats, on the other hand, does not seem to suggest a ”want” to be eaten. As it is harvested through living creatures, it is unlikely meat would wish its own death.

Different foods can be seen as “wanting” to be eaten in that they were evolutionary cultivated for consumption, but whether or not food wants to be eaten like how humans wants to indulge in sensory pleasures like a beautiful dish of steamed fish or a hearty soup, is still in the air. If one believes all objects have a will and consciousness, then our next goal would be to find a way to communicate with food to interview their “wanting” to be eaten. I would be delighted to see such attempts to be posted in a weekly food digest magazine.