Collective Madness

How to write Rainbow Warrior poetry

Collective Madness

Legend has it that when the primitive tribes in the remote mountains of southern China saw civilization rapidly spreading out over the vast open plains below, they couldn’t help but notice that, not only did their new neighbors have a million kids, but they were all organized along the same lines as any flock of chickens that they raised! It was the only way they could maintain order in their vast numbers and, to make matters worse, they were the equivalent of free range chickens, with few natural boundaries or defenses out on the open plains. They would treat each other like chickens as well, herding one another like so many flightless birds, surrounding their enemies and, finally, picking them off one at a time, just like shooting fish in a barrel. When droughts caused famine among the Mongol hordes to the north, they too would blanket the endless plains of mainland China on their horses, like a raging stampede, and proceed to herd and slaughter the Chinese peasants, as if they were merely herding their cattle back home.

Desperately exposed to an invading army of any size, the peasants eventually constructed enough walls to circumnavigate the globe 26 times, but all in vain. Necessity is the mother of invention, and they invented steel, gunpowder, and other advanced weapons centuries before the rest of the world, but nothing could stem the tide of the relentless power struggle that had overwhelmed the seven feuding kingdoms for control of mainland China. During the infamous “Warring States Period” this went on for four hundred years, and a grim new arms race emerged, as generation after generation of peasants throughout China, were forced to episodically starve themselves, in order to feed more babies, so they could be the first to surround their enemies.

Female infants were sometimes abandoned on the side of the road, because they could not fight, were not as strong in the fields and, in some places, could not even be given away for free, much less sold into slavery. Not only did everyone else ruthlessly exploit the peasants at every opportunity, but they were now forced to ruthlessly exploit themselves and their own children, as if they were nothing more than cattle. Some chose to abandon civilization altogether as a lost cause, and adopted the short and brutal lifestyle of mountain men instead. And, when their tribal brothers and sisters up in the mountains witnessed the horror of their plight, they took pity on them, and sent them their best jokes and poetry knowing that, sometimes, all the humble humor and beauty that life has to offer, can be the best medicine, and they had some of the most powerful medicine on the planet.

Castaways

It Was Another Dark And Stormy Night!

Sailing away, from wherever we are...

Beneath the clearest, of any blue sky!

Breathing deeply of the sparkling air!

Morning star's, a glimmer in our eyes.

Decks reaching up, to cup nimble feet!

Sails furling confidently on the breeze.

Gently rocking swaying, passing swell,

Memories clinging like mist in a dream.

Thoughts all meander like ocean waves;

Affable dolphins start to crowd the bow,

An albatross astern examining our wake;

The bell’s quiet blessings, grace the dawn.

Rising up yet again we turn into the wind!

The sun climbs high upon the open horizon!

Lively winds, give the faster dolphins chase!

Delicious spark of life, overflowing everyone!

As all hands on deck, cast their gazes forward!

Sudden spray over her bow, stinging our faces!

Reminding us all, we chart the unknown course,

Reminding us that we steer an unknown heading,

Reminding All Our Destiney Yet Awaits Our Fate.

Reminding us all once again what all hold dearest!

Sailing with the wind upon the greatest of oceans!

Our past is but a memory, as we live our dreams!

And mother nature is still pregnant to bursting!

Carrying on about her bright new beginnings,

Eternally merging, in her heavenly dreams!

Of Endless Sweeping Panoramic Visions!

The same unexplored Wonderland she graciously offers,

Unconditionally To All Masters Of The Open Sea!

Casting off metaphysical anchors; once again gliding into the light!

Claiming our birthright we rise to the occasion!

Affable calls... quietly ring out...

Arousing ancient memories of heroic adventures!

Unchained Prometheus, always full of surprises,

Anxiously Begs for the approval of all,

Surrendering to those who delight in their ignorance!

Outcasts and rejects, thrilled to soar free at last,

Content smiles spread, still rising on the wind.

Sails fluttering, in synchrony with the breeze,

Sensual embrace, reawakening the dreamers;

Silent revere of the perfect moment of grace,

Castaways become one with new horizons.

Castaways is a popular example of how Oneness Poetry can employ synergistic-normalization and the Mother of All to treat time as a continuum, and can even incorporate the passage of time itself as a central theme, and a quasi-character in its own rite. If you notice, the poem subtly confuses the issue of what is animate and inanimate, and it accomplishes this by relying on the same minimalist approach it uses for manipulating the temporal dynamics, that is, by emphasizing the vagueness and humble simplicity of their collective contents, to create a blurry montage effect, that dances like Fred Astaire. Starting out slow, speeding up and slowing down, with an almost choreographed cinematic effect. The first dozen lines give away the secret for how this works, by largely incorporating the most stereotypical prose imaginable, even starting out with a variation on the quintessential bad opening line in literature, “It was another dark and stormy night!”

My father’s a sailor and, truth be told, if you’ve seen one dolphin, one star, and one clear sky you’ve pretty much seen them all, making writing poetry for adults more challenging. While we might think of a dolphin as a beautiful animal, they commonly crowd the bows of ships, and my father will be the first to tell you, watching them is an easy way to make yourself sleepy. Castaways merely describes what, for a sailor, might be the start of just another typical day, making it difficult to appease both adults and young children. From the very first line, a small child might be entranced by the vague, sweeping, stereotypical prose, while an adult might be repulsed, and even be tempted to skip past it, and Castaways gets around this difficulty by accentuating the vagueness of each line and empowering them to collectively dance like Fred Astaire and, thus, remind the reader of why small children can find something as mundane, as a seagull eating garbage, so exciting.

Sailors and cowboys have a lot in common, with both jobs often being hazardous, requiring long hard hours, and long boring intervals, punctuated by nonstop fast paced action, with the reality of the life style more often being how to avoid falling asleep on watch or in the saddle, and how to avoid getting yourself killed. Both professions are also famous for their similar style of poetry, sometimes referred to as “Big Sky”, with spaghetti western soundtracks, the music of Sr. Paul McCartney, and the play “Oklahoma” being popular examples of similar wave dynamics, or wave mechanics, that can resemble quantum chromodynamics, trading the humble simplicity of each individual component for their greater collective dynamics. A wave is a wave is a wave, and the characters in a play like Oklahoma don’t require Shakespearean depths, and are often one dimensional caricatures that audiences demand knowing that, as much as anything else, the entire play hinges on a one dimensional character they may personally identify with, making the cast’s collective efforts always greater than any mere sum of their parts.

Crucially, the strength of the musical score itself can be described as an indispensable quasi-character in the play, that brings all the humble elements together in a more meaningful way, dramatically breathing life into them, precisely because they are so humble they can easily compliment one another in dramatic contexts. Modern music theory emphasizes the ability of the silences between the notes to convey a variety of different emotions, such as suspense, and although I personally add as many Shakespearean and Biblical quotes as I can to my poetry, for their indispensable salt-of-the-earth metaphors, this poem is a notable example of how to use them more sparingly if it accentuates the temporal dynamics, and the poem conveying more sweeping emotional panoramas. In most of my poems, I take a very direct approach, focusing on the humble and elegant simplicity of their combined temporal dynamics and vague bullshit logic, and just allow the words themselves to express their own thoughts and emotions as fully as possible.

Bruce Lee was popular with the ladies for his ballroom style dancing, but he had his own Taoist philosophy of “No Style” martial arts, and my collective ignorance approach to Oneness Poetry can be thought of as the “Bruce Lee School of Potty Humor”. The off-the-wall peek-a-boo yin-yangy push-me-pull-you-run-in-circles-scream-and-shout dynamics of Oneness Poetry are so humble to begin with, that they don’t express any specific style, other than incorporating a lot of infantile and incredibly vague salt-of-the-earth-metaphors, with our Rainbow Warrior poems incorporating everything from Shakespeare to pop music and potty mouth nursery rhymes that are still being reinvented by kids everywhere. Personally, I have two left feet myself and could not fight my way out of a wet paper bag to save my life but, once a linguist admired my poetry and asked for my advice about how to master the metaphors of language, and I suggested she take up singing.

When you learn to own the sounds that are coming out of your mouth, you learn how to free your words to speak for themselves and, as Taoists like to say, “Gravity becomes the source of lightness”. John Prine commented once that writing song lyrics is all about editing, and freeing our words often requires first learning to not be quite so attached to them. Beautiful words are honest words, that can defy unbalanced gravity itself, hanging in the air between us, while falling on your a*s is what makes reaching for the stars all that much more rewarding.

Some of the greatest comedians, like Tom Hanks and Will Smith, have also joined the ranks of the greatest actors, and comedy is widely acknowledged as among the hardest of the performing arts to master, that requires greater personal authenticity. Comedians such as Chevy Chase, for example, have become famous for something as simple as their ability to perform a pratfall. But, singing is one way to experience that for yourself, without having to become a professional comedian, an actor, or falling on your a*s repeatedly, and I sing most of the songs mentioned in my poetry as humbly and elegantly as I can, sort of Broadway Blues walk-in-the-park style that’s easy on the ears but, whatever works for you. That’s often the opposite of what people assume is required for comprehending complex metaphors, continuum physics, and developing nonlinear temporal dynamics that can dance like Fred Astaire, but is based on the fundamental Taoist principle of logic that “Crap is Simple and, Therefore, You’re the Problem Dummy!”

Humorously, although I enjoyed reading Gary Zukav’s “Dancing Wu Li Masters” enough to read it twice, I already knew all the physics in the book and merely enjoyed the lucid way he presented them. The only other thing his book suggested to me was that, in some ways, I was my own worst enemy, and it can be surprisingly helpful to find ways around that problem. That was the same advice my father constantly gave me growing up, as if I were Beaver Cleaver, but I needed to hear the words again when dad wasn’t around, which is how I got my Rainbow Warrior name. Typically being being anarchists with warped senses of humor, hippies won’t tolerate five “Bobs” among their ranks and will give you a unique name if you don’t pick one for yourself, but the name Wu Li has 80 different possible meanings depending on the inflection and context. As far as I’m concerned, it could mean you can call me anything, but don’t call me late for dinner. However, when people ask what my name means I tell them it means, “I clutch my ideas”, because that’s the message I got from Gary’s book was that, if I’m going to clutch my ideas, and act like Beaver Cleaver and sometimes be my own worst enemy, I might as well make them awesome ideas that I love to death and, of course, which aren’t quite so painful and self-defeating as some alternatives.

Taoists frequently choose names that poke fun at themselves and, to humorously paraphrase Bruce Lee, “You have to open your mind baby, learn how to feel the vibes, set aside your own biases, try to chill out and find the groove and, if you don’t feel the force Luke, then start working on that damned problem right now! Nip it in the bud, you hear me! Right this instant because, the real problem is that, You’re The Problem Baby! As Master Yoda said, “Try? There is no try! Do Or Do Not!” Its certainly not my damned choice to make! Others can only encourage you to rise to the occasion but, either you eventually manage to work that crap out on your own, or you’re up s**t creek! And, I suppose, you’ll just have to learn to take “no” for an answer from yourself a little more often than you anticipated, because the magic is simply not there anymore baby. However, if you happen to be persistent Grass Hopper, you’ll eventually realize that, ironically, you only become all that much more grateful to discover that the latest pie to hit you square in the chin, is the same damned pie that just hit you a hundred times before! Let me hear all you clowns say, “Thank you Master Wu Li, May I Please Have Another Pie-In-The-Face!”

All the wacky humor and temporal dynamics are so crucial to our Oneness Poems, because all our poems treat time the same way, as simultaneously a quasi-character that assumes different roles and a mathematical variable, or just more bullshit, with Castaways illustrating some of the more attractive and easier to follow temporal dynamics, making it a popular example. By treating time as somehow both illusory bullshit and a quasi-character that expresses rudimentary emotions, our poems can collectively conflate the identity of space and time, reality and illusion, in enough ways to intimidate a contortionist, and lend entirely new meaning to yoga. What I do is more along the lines of the algebra of nature, that’s not nearly as organic or pretty as something like calculus or the logic of the Vedic’s used in yoga, but instant karma requires everything in our poetry be equally organic and inorganic, and significantly humbler, less romantic, and more cartoonish, as a result.

Instant karma does the same thing in our poetry observed in both humble quanta and an abacus, which is to maddeningly conflate the identity of their input and output, past and future, reality and the dream. An abacus doesn’t have an “equals” or “enter” button, or any equivalent function, because merely entering the problem reveals the solution and, theoretically, a quantum computer can sometimes spit out the answers to problems before you finish entering them, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for anyone to prove it. All Oneness Poetry contains what I call, "Embedded Logic", which includes the overall shape of the poem, the use of larger fonts, and the use of strings of capitalized words that often express the skepticism of the Peanut Gallery. Merely by using a larger font, for example, you can add more meaning, conflating the identity of geometry and information and, combined with the yin-yang dynamics, they express the particle-wave duality of the poem as a multifractal equation.

Oneness Poetry and an abacus both express a humorous interpretation of John Lennon’s famous statement, “There are no problems, only solutions”, because an abacus never has a problem and, if you ever want to use an abacus, the sooner you figure that out for yourself the better. Likewise, nonlinear temporal dynamics are intrinsic to Oneness Poetry and leave the reader no choice, but to interpret everything for themselves. If you notice, even the first two lines of Castaways, “It was another dark and stormy night. Sailing away from wherever we are...”, innocently beg the question as to whether to interpret the poem literally or figuratively, thus, immediately prompting the reader to either interpret its incredibly vague meaning for themselves, or move on to the next lines, so that the poem can ever so slightly elucidate the meaning of the opening lines, by merely placing them in an incrementally broader and ever so slightly less vague context. And, as each line does so, they string the reader along, indirectly compelling the reader to slow down and pay more attention to each syllable and, being so vague, the lines can progressively focus the reader’s attention on punctuation too, as one of the few remaining ways of determining the cadence.

In other words, our poems sometimes speaks to us as if we were children, and they have to use simple words and talk slowly, and make sure they get our attention, while other poems express frenzied infantile sing-song dynamics like what you might hear on the Muppet Show. The quasi character that the temporal dynamics introduce is the Mother of All, or Great Void, who represents the four stages of life and the Four Seasons. Springtime is playful like a child, and a play like Oklahoma expresses the playful creative beauty of love as simultaneously representing youth, and spring tornadoes! And, thanks to the nonlinear temporal dynamics, Oneness Poems in general can be described as so incredibly vague, humble, and minimalistic that they don’t express any particular style whatsoever, other than incorporating a ton of salt-of-the-earth metaphors, and their heavy reliance on subtly encouraging the reader to supply their own interpretation of everything. Making it equally accurate to describe our poems as expressions of our collective ignorance, potty humor, mathematics, popular culture, or the Great Void and Mother of All. Of course, since we currently have only 200 or so out of 4,430 poems, its impossible to provide a decent representative sample of just how varied they become, but these first poems provide at least a vague impression due to their recursive logic revolving around what’s missing from this picture.

Which is also why our poems can express both humor and beauty in everything, with Castaways humorously being one of the three “Lost Poems” in “The Book That Can Never Be Written”, which are pornographic in Chinese. Part of the joke being that, even in English, the other two poems are much more erotic, and they follow Castaways, hinting at its secret dual identity, and an erotic interpretation of “Oneness”. All our poems play peek-a-boo with the reader in every way imaginable, with the rose shape of Castaways, its use of metaphors and cadence, never quite looking the same once you get the joke, but that’s the whole point, that anything can be viewed as simultaneously beautiful and a joke, and all that much more personally meaningful and endearing, as in a toddler falling adorably on their butt.

Even the shapes of these poems merely reflect their fractal mathematics and, thanks to their ability to express humor and beauty in everything, more than half the poems in this collection can be interpreted differently by children and adults. For example, a child might focus on the beauty and romance of Castaways and never be aware of its humor, because they have no idea what sex is and no way to more fully appreciate the greater context of the poem. Some of the phrases in our poetry are famous for being incredibly beautiful, yet equally funny, expressing entirely different meaning when read in specific contexts.

They prompt the conscious mind to examine its own subconscious in rudimentary emotional contexts, and the naive humor of the subconscious can be thought of as the innocent child of God within each of us. The old addage is that, “Children should be seen and not heard”, and the humor of small children is often taboo in competitive cultures, while the beauty of our poems speak directly to our dreams, and the adult that we wish to become. Humor can build resilience, with Bob Hope being famous for entertaining the troops, and his work is an example of how humor is often treated as a occupation and, at one time, Hope had 32 writers on his staff.

Yogi Berra was a great guy according to everyone who knew him, but a sex symbol he was not, thanks in part to his earthy sense of humor. In Asia, people commonly post quotes from Oneness Poems in prominent places, very much the same way you might hang a mirror or a sign, sometimes as a humorous tongue-in-cheek way to prompt people to be quiet, or to clean up after themselves or whatever. Our poems rely on the humble simplicity and vagueness of their contents to encourage people to be more humble in general, and to develop a gentle sense of humor, along the same lines of Winnie the Pooh, Yogi Berra, Kermit the Frog, Socrates, and Yoda of Star Wars, encouraging us all to be humbler and more honest, but including much more complex adult humor as well, such as the existentialist humor of Stephen Wright.

The more authentic and honest anyone becomes, the more gentle, spontaneous, and creative their sense of humor can become, and the more authentically they can express themselves, and share more of themselves with others. Hence, the reason older adults sometimes nurture their childhood memories and feelings, in order to reclaim their personal intimacy and authenticity, and make the most of their golden years. Once again, what’s missing from this picture proves crucial, especially when it’s our own pointless personal bullshit, and we can treat our poems the same way, by merely focusing on their symmetry, logic, and temporal dynamics, allowing vague words that incorporate commonly used phrases, popular quotes, and song lyrics to speak for themselves. While it might sound like I’m exaggerating about letting my words speak for themselves, there is no other way to write this kind of poetry, as anyone who has ever tried has quickly discovered for themselves. Try as you might, its flat out impossible to make our bullshit poems say anything they just don’t. Our poems can also treat the arrow of time itself as somehow simultaneously real and illusory bullshit that we just make up, and what’s missing from this picture becomes a whole lot more compelling, once you realize that what’s missing can substitute for anything, anything at all that the picture might normally contain, including not least of all, the arrow of time...

Even if you never earn a living doing it, like Chevy Chase, learning how to bounce right back up again is part of what makes reaching for the stars all that much more noble and heroic, and just plain fun, with a recent study concluding that, although everyone requires some ambition, those who also cultivate contentment tend to fare better in the long run. My personal “Philosophy of Collective Ignorance” leverages this humble Truth for all its worth and, to paraphrase Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, “I shall fight my words no more forever!” This is what I consider my own ignorant, “No-Class-No-Style-No-Brainer” philosophy from the school of hard knocks, that for any philosophy to be worth a crap, you must first embrace your own words for all that they might have to offer. Find the words that speak to you personally, and make them your own, by setting them free, and see if they come back to you. Do that, and you may learn to be still and to truly appreciate silence as golden, not to mention, earn the respect of big and little kids everywhere.

Our collective ignorance speaks for itself, and our poems don’t require me to either defend them or even give my own ignorant opinions, so please feel perfectly free to ignore or criticize anything I write, just call me an idiot if you like, and please feel free to criticize anything anybody else writes on the subject, because nobody I know is willing to claim they’re responsible for the bullshit! Ironically, its a huge load off my mind that my own, “Bullshit Philosophy of Collective Ignorance” doesn’t even require my own stupid opinions and can be written by a computer program that has no clue as to what the hell its writing. Set your opinions free, set your words free, set your heart free and, without ever leaving home, you can know the entire world, while your mind will always be free to roam the universe, or to listen intently to the heart of the person in front of you. When we allow our words to speak for themselves, we just accept them for more of whatever they have to offer, and accept whatever words others might prefer to use, without necessarily becoming attached to them ourselves. In much the same way we do whenever we become poetry in motion, by simply accepting more of who we are, what we are doing, and all that we might have to offer the world, becoming self-actualized in the moment, or having a senior moment, or whatever the case turns out to be.

Kids ask me about black holes and the mysterious Great Void all the time, which resemble the monsters in their closet, and they’re typically disappointed when I tell them they need to work on their sense of humor. They would disown me altogether if I told them the whole truth, that mother nature resembles a magical three year old messing with your head, and bullshit logic rules the universe! Even I refused to believe it myself for fifty years, because part of living in a magical universe, is nothing can be magical if it isn’t a surprise and doesn’t express novelty in just about every way imaginable. Up ahead at the sign post, its the Mother of All, the collective unconscious, the Twilight Zone that emerges from the Great Void, where our own ignorance and stupidity can sometimes turn out to be both a blessing and a curse!