10 Sunday Aug 2025
02 Wednesday Apr 2025
Posted in 2025, beliefs, Commentary, philosophy, poetry, religio
Tags
beliefs, Christianity, commentary, deep, geologic, hindu, islam, Judaism, Karthik, monotheism, mtk, poem, poetry, proem, religion, time
Human history lies in the shallows.
We walk out deeper because of our powerful ability to imagine, we wander into prehistory at our knees.
The strata of the eras ribbon up our torso through geologic time.
Neck-deep time.
Our head above the watery eons only because we cannot hold our breath for long and yet,
we plunge through space and time with automatons and can project the data into comprehension as never before.
I am so disappointed in the world’s religions who deny our expanding comprehension.
they are farcically wrong.
tolerance of their incorrectness
an ever-expanding river of bullshit
has led to racist factionalism that stands in the way of science and humanism.
I glance back at them all squabbling in the shallows like babies,
calling each other names and threatening wars
oblivious to the depths revealed by our observations
our science.
I do not long to explain the spiritual or wondrous inexplicable.
I only long for all the bullshit else to end, so we can continue to evolve into something beautiful, calm and sane.
And not to stampede down an apocalypse invented by false prophets leading religions for personal gain.
The Buddha implied as much 2568 years ago.
Love,
mtk
29 Sunday Dec 2024
05 Friday Jul 2024
Posted in 2024, essay, Letter From MTK, literature, religio, thoughts
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to endless night
from “Auguries of Innocence,” William Blake, 1806
Some people get to do whatever the fuck they want. That is just how life is. We see moments of fairness or justness or equality, but in truth there is little of that.
Most people are under the weight of existence, and some people get to do whatever they want.
I have met those people, been with them, in some cases inside of them. And then I have traveled alone and have emulated those who can do whatever the fuck they want for short periods of time, have enjoyed richly.
I achieve this by control of my desires and by moving more deliberately than others. I rarely sign up for things. I go off-season, off-hours, weekdays. I collaborate less and less. I control my expenses and take on no responsibilities.
Reading is good.
Read read read read read rare breed.
Being under the weight of existence is managed in innumerable ways to greater and lesser degrees of success by all people. But there are clear biases, prejudices and inequalities without reason – save corruption.
Religions are suspect. Governments are increasingly fascist – using technology and media to program and control societies rather than serve them.
Authoritarian oligarchies seek not to unite and improve the lot of all, but now instead to arm themselves for impending conflict.
Resources are dwindling. The globe itself now relies solely on us, humanity, and our management sensibility – the Anthropocene rolls onward.
Nature is exquisite in its mutability. The tumbling, sidelong evolution of everything explodes in all directions seeking paths that succeed, but the entirety is unknowable.
30 Friday Dec 2022
It’s near midnight here
soon to be the last day of the year
I’m killing time
my only perpetration of murder
unless you count the smashed roaches and other bugs
that my Dad and the Jains count
but I don’t
they sweep the ground in front of themselves
to avoid stepping on ants
Dad would say a prayer for bugs that hit his windshield
as he gripped the wheel two-handed on our doomed summer vacations
fools
accidents happen
they always will
and maybe
to you
tomorrow
and you won’t experience
one second
of the new year
or any of the ten
in the countdown to it
and when they sing
Auld Lang Syne
it’s you
they’ll be thinking of
murderer
– M.T. Karthik, Pondicherry, 12/30/2022
26 Friday May 2017
Posted in maturation, midlife, poetry, thoughts
nothing it’s never nothing how long ago’d that start?
I love you and the way we dared
nobody I mean nobody wanted us to
and when the baby came
about then
since then
it’s never nothing
but maybe earlier than that even
when I came to you that December and said it
straight eyes open to your face
let’s have the baby now
by then for sure
that summer when you loaded up the Ryder
with S. and left
it wasn’t nothing
so at least that long ago to me
it wasn’t til recently
like ten years ago
I accepted it was
for you
for me it hasn’t been nothing
in a long time
maybe it will never be nothing again
everyone should have nothing
at least for a little while
before we die
02 Monday Nov 2015
I have lost my way
It lies somewhere behind me
but none of us can go back again
Will I find my way once more or
will time run out?
I ask, paused
astride the path
watching the maddened crowd.
Run to the current
rate of flow
plunge
into seething humanity
24 Tuesday Apr 2012
Posted in poetry
Tags
To those about to light a toothpick,
the reverse end of an incense stick or
deliberating whether to forcibly divorce
a pair of chopsticks,
by lighting one on the gas stove,
in order to light a smoke
because you’ve no matches or lighter …
I salute you.
mtk 2012 Oakland
11 Sunday Nov 2007
Tags
answer, bear, china, crow, India, Iran, islam, Karthik, m.t., mtk, not, poem, problem, Russia, stone, tree, turkken, war, yemen
Iran is a Stone
Iran is a Stone
China is a Tree
India, a Crow
Russia, Bear
From Turkmen to Yemen
the sands are shifting
Sudamérica demuestra la dirección
Africa waits
Islam is not the problem
War is not the answer
23 Friday Mar 2007
Posted in Asia, India, poetry, Tamil Coast
If you keep making lefts
You go in a circle
If you keep making rights
you wind up where you began
If you just go straight ahead
you’ll wind up where your headed
but going straight ahead’s the fastest way to dead.
MTK, Pudducherri, Tamil Nadu, India March 23, 2007
21 Wednesday Jan 1998
I’m shivering –
can’t hold myself tightly enough and there’s no one else to hold me.
It’s cold.
It snowed last night on the spring equinox.
It only snowed once in New York this past winter –
that day, three full moons back, when I returned from Boston
to spend my first night in Brooklyn.
It fell in drifting, tiny, crisp, wispy flakes
that melted when they struck the concrete
and the earth of the city
mean
while it was snowing
in drifts up and down the east coast
shutting down whole swaths of automated New England
killing electricity for thousands
killing several who were inadequately housed.
My first night in Brooklyn was cold.
I fashioned a bed from a piece of sheetrock laid across cement cinderblocks,
and covered it in some of my warmest clothes.
My overcoat was a blanket.
I lit some candles.
there was no heat, no bath, and no electricity.
there was a toilet and a sink that gave no warm water
and I watched it snow and considered the english language
There is no snow where I am from.
Never.
There, it is either wet or dry and usually it is too hot to be outside for long.
Now, I have traveled far from where I am from
and have seen many things and kinds of things.
I have, along the way, learned new words.
I have heard english-speaking people say, in amazement:
“the Inuit have more than 30 words for snow.”
and that day in Brooklyn I wondered how
english could have snow for millennia
and yet have only one word
for the many different kinds of falling white
I’ve seen –
the cold, browzy, white haze at great heights
the soft, gentle quiet of an empty field
tiny flakes and slippery ice
hard rains of sleeting shards.
english has been arrogant.
It just feathered that day.
It was just a little feathering down.
a feathering of
19 Sunday Oct 1997
Posted in poetry
17 Friday Jan 1997
Posted in Coastal Cali, poetry, S.F.
January 17th, 1997ce 3:45 pm
Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California
At two o’clock p.m. on 17th January, 1997ce, I ended an experiment in documentation, exactly two years and two days from the experiment’s beginning.
I put an end to two years of work during which I spent the vast majority of my time – averaging five to seven hours a day – doing nothing but writing. The conclusion of the experiment occurred as a result of the act of putting the only existing copy of the novel I had written over the two year period into a black cardboard box and delivering it to Chronicle Books, a publisher of some size in San Francisco, at exactly two o’clock on that sunny Friday.
Then I went to the beach.
I consider the experiment in chronicling and documentation to have ended at that time. I do not intend to revisit or change one word of the texts of the resulting documents which include the novel, many stories, poetry and a number of other notations and entries.
The following is the first entry in my journal which I wrote on Ocean Beach after ending the experiment:
You are a novelist and you have just ended your first novel. The process in which you participate has borne a fruit. And now, it is time to take the fruits of your labor to market.
What will the market bear?
How does your fruit compare.
to other fruits available.
Is it sweet? Is it bitter?
Does it slake the thirst?
Does it feel cold and delicious
going down like a plum?
Is it dry and grounding, requiring
delicate effort like a banana?
or more delicate still
unseeding a pomegranate
What is the going rate for
fresh, ripe, delicious fruits
on the market which compare
to yours
Shall you ask more or less?
This is your position and
you feel you may be definitive
and yet you are afraid because
you have never sown & harvested
these seeds (brought them
to ripen) before.
Your fruit sits next to you
like a prize tomato and
just picked, plucked, fallen
and all you can think of is
how to better farm the seeds next time.
How to hoe the rows.
How to plant the seeds.
When?
And you realize there is no time. You are beat. The last harvest cost you everything and you are tired and hopeful for success @ the marketplace and you do not know what to do except to try to maybe relax … and take a break.
But even resting is duro … hard … difficult
This is an alone time. And you notice your surroundings. Sounds are amplified. The women talking at the table next to yours, the ocean, birds, music, poetry, … ART
painting
ALL MADE
BIG!
31 Tuesday Dec 1996
27 Wednesday Nov 1996
10 Sunday Nov 1996
01 Friday Nov 1996
I’ve come
many times
mindlessly
in the fall
when autumn has fallen
into its “n”
and october
breathed its last “errrrr”
into the lush warmth
of my woman’s insides
and it often
arrives
with
a rusty leaf
a golden crispy crackle of yellowing green
that burns well in winterous weather
in my minds stoven pipes
coming into the world
melancholic
as
november
31 Thursday Oct 1996
The story telling is the important part
The story is the being is the telling. The telling is the being is the story. The story is the telling is the being. The being is the story is the telling. The telling is the story is the being …
the being is the telling is the story.
Not The End.
mtk, SF, 1996
23 Wednesday Oct 1996
imagine if I were to collect every single word I wrote and saved over the last fifteen years and bound them into one very fat, long book.
I have dozens of stories, poems, journal entries, drawings, notations, thoughts,
words.
Suppose I were to collect all of this and then Bind it.
I could see an ordering using language (words are lies)
of my life.
of my lie(f).
17 Thursday Oct 1996
16 Wednesday Oct 1996
12 Saturday Oct 1996
28 Saturday Sep 1996
23 Monday Sep 1996
22 Sunday Sep 1996
Posted in poetry
01 Sunday Sep 1996
07 Wednesday Aug 1996
28 Sunday Jul 1996
04 Saturday May 1996
12 Tuesday Mar 1996
MTK The Writist 