Thomas Hobbes – 1588-1679*

“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal
rather than the victim.” -- Bertrand Russell

Hobbes marked down in his black book
the names of women who fornicate easily
for a shilling or two. He checked next to
their names if they smiled when they
were paid in coin of the realm. Of course,
I don’t know if this is true or not. Rumors
are plentiful in the diaries of jealous men
and women on the hook for mind escape,
sex, money, a good match, or any trinket
that has material value so we imagine.

There is no spiritual affinity in spatial
relations of long winded concepts
bound in books barely legible in an ancient
culture. Only the most precise cleric or
guardsmen cares about Robert’s Rules of
Order and disorder, and the Constitution
of the United States is fallible and can be
altered to fit paintings fashioned
into a sketch of mangled fingers
on glass by Klee complete with blood,
lost parts and a photograph of the sadist.

Klee was drunk in his studio, and every
thing he did made the world show up
at the Surrealist 500 at Daytona.

Order and disorder strike, as they will, as
a same sex couple who cannot decide on
what couch, where to put it, or why do you
drive so fast, I bet you don’t drive that way
when you are alone or with your "other" friend.

It was a long century later and a few years
and Hobbes was dead, and history didn’t
prove him wrong or right as there are too
many categories and knowledge cannot
be divided, summarized and kept in brown
paper bags with all the newspapers you
cannot throw out. In fact, you keep so many
pissed on pages of your past you can
barely walk, and the aisles fall down,
and if you wanted to find an article,
my goodness, you would have to dig
for a century in rubble to know how life,
history, art worked out. Actually, it doesn’t.

It presses too easy. It will prove nothing
wrong, for nothing matters, there is no
material of any intellectual value. Thoughts
do not have mass, or if there is some,
it is unmeasurable by current science.

Pleasure is the most abstract cartoon.
Is sex tangible? Can you reach out, make
every sensation into maps so when youn
return to that exact spot every time, the
sensations are idential. if you measure
the amount of sodium in water.

Nothing is tangible but Hobbes insisted
and the church broke and disorder
grew as a revival, then a party,
-- some one had scored
some weed and it would blow out
with speakers maxed and subwoofers
shaken the body like a sex toy vibrator
bought to ease tensions for medicinal
purposes only, and of course there
is no mention in the small print of the
physical origin of pain and anxiety.

Hobbes, my good man, so far ahead
of his times, Leviathan
would be a best seller today if OPRAH
and IMUS got on their band wagon
to hustle materialism like they do
sick kids and their maudlin desire
to help them for altruism present
like a placebo has material value
not even the steel car where you
ride to the horrors of some drive
through geek show with happy
partially tangible dwarfs purchased
at Bloomingdales on sale after Christmas.

The philosopher Hobbes spoke of life
as "brutish and short." He of course,
lived until 92 and was tutor to many
and considered a wise man who had
worth if not an income of 2000 pounds.

I watch the horizon for danger, when
I am the enemy. So many forces upend
the sorrow, and the loss of time and
all our foolish plans for the future do
have a chance, and yes, hope is not dead.

I realize you don’t believe that matter is
Not tangible and but a figment of our fancy.

You sit in your warm house, hold your chair,
kiss your spouse (maybe) and look out over
the luxury apartments or farms in Iowa
to find the dirt, corn husks, and manure.

You may even like the smell of pigs, mud
and horse shit stuck between your toes.



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** Thomas Hobbes was the author of Leviathan (1651) believed human nature as self-interested cooperation set the scale for political philosophy. As a realist, he would no doubt accept the strong central authority of the state provided the state did not interfere with matters that did no harm. Yes, it was the beginning of the social contract, which many had exposed before him, and more after until the political confusion of the present.


first draft 4/16/06