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Page 43

It isn't just a matter of reaching readers,
but of reaching them with life, not death.
Hitler wrote MEIN KAMPF in furious spurts.
The result? A brief flare of black noise
followed by the long silence of Europe.

So there is the easy filling up of the page
with words that -- oh, but this is making
the sun go round the earth, awkward
for computation. But, of course,
it matters what we say, not because
pages full of words can instigate
burning books in heaps
and set the sources of words to erasing

each other, but because what am I
trying to do here? I'm trying to create
an effect on you (what else is any game
for?), and the greatest effect I can create
is to inspire you to create effects
on others, who, in turn, create creation
in others and so on ad infinitum.

I might also get you to blow up
the earth, our playing field, a big bang,
a dandy effect (won't Mom be surprised!),
leading to no game, no players, no effects,
no possibility of creation. Did I then
fill blankness? Is anyone there? (I mean
right now, is anyone there?)

Note: Ideas very familiar to me may be obscure enough to others to slip off the page unnoticed. The point is that we love to create effects, and, more basic than goodness or badness of effects, apparently, is a yearning to create BIG effects (on others, on oneself if one despairs of reaching others...), but the most evil effects we create impede future creation by self or others (for example, wiping out a city or a planet or a single person), so that, without otherwise broaching the subject of ethics, we can conceive of a positive creative act creating a bigger effect than a destructive act, even though no visible explosion results, since the creative act (if not overwhelming) inspires others to create, and their creations inspire yet others, and so forth, so that the total effect (if it can ever be totaled up) exceeds, accumulated over the millennia, the destructive effect of blowing up a planet.

Or so a poet who tries not to step on ants would probably prefer to believe.

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