Category Archives: philosophy

May 30, 2022 · 2:39 pm

Armchair Complacency – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: Paris, May 1968, independent.co.uk

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Armchair Complacency

Why do I feel so alone in the world,
have all the revolutionaries retired,
how is it that armchairs are all the rage
and ideas have fallen to banal repetition?

Have all the revolutionaries retired,
it seems that all have surrendered
and ideas have fallen to banal repetition,
where exists the praxis of upheaval?

It seems that all have surrendered
to the algorithm of complacency,
where exists the praxis of upheaval,
how did we become chained to lies?

To the algorithm of complacency,
how is that armchairs are all the rage,
how did we become chained to lies,
why do I feel so alone in the world?


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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May 10, 2022 · 3:20 pm

Only Love Passes This Way Twice – Prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Merril is hosting Prosery (144 words) with an invitation to use a line from the poem ‘May Day” by Sara Teasdale: the line is – “For how can I be sure I shall see again The world on the first of May.”

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Sara Teasdale and May

Photo: the Hardy Inlet, Augusta.

“The thing about roads is that you happen upon them again.” Jill Santopolo

Only Love Passes This Way Twice

They say that a river doesn't pass twice, cannot be touched twice, only flows by once in its purest self, which is not its purest self, except for the sake of that moment in which it is truly one, never to be one in the same way again. Everything is emerging while yet everything is passing. This is, perhaps, well beyond our capacity to know, but yet it is in our capacity to feel.

And yet, this is always so difficult. For how can I be sure I shall see again the world on the first of May, when surely, like water, it shall not pass this way again? It will not be. In its purity it cannot be, as I cannot be but once. Unlike love, which is eternally, perpetually, proposing new ways to us, courting our attention as it continually passes by.



Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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April 23, 2022 · 3:41 pm

The Cost Of Leaving – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: found on pinterest.com

“If you don’t control your mind, someone else will.” John Allston 

The Cost Of Leaving

The cost of leaving the defined mundane reality,
that entrapment of manufactured truth comfort,
taking time to see how anaesthetised we are,
noticing how we are so easily formed in a bubble.

That entrapment of manufactured truth comfort
with out willing surrender to the thought police,
noticing how we are so easily formed in a bubble,
the discovery that there is life beyond the machine.

With our willing surrender to the thought police,
we join the herd of sameness, lowing compliance,
the discovery that there is life beyond the machine
is an emancipation, a spark of hope in the darkness.

We join the herd of sameness, lowing compliance,
taking time to see how anaesthetised we are,
is an emancipation, a spark of hope in the darkness,
the cost of leaving the defined mundane reality.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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April 18, 2022 · 1:54 pm

Beware Toxic Positivity – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Image: found at borgenmagazine.com

“The many sorrows of our recent history suggest that we humans have a learning disability.” Carl Sagan

Beware Toxic Positivity

I was thinking about extinction
and finding the whole problematic
is lost to us while ever we play with
life as an idea, a thought, a concept,
we dizzy in speculation as with deckchairs,
better to argue infinitum than engage with
the reality that looms before us,
our denial is obvious in our choices,
amusing ourselves to death in a world of 
ostriches with ideas of abstract fantasies,
real hope lies in action.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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April 17, 2022 · 2:26 pm

Freedom Is A Crime – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: image.freepik.com

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. it is your spirit, or it is nowhere.” Ursula K. Le Guin

Freedom Is A Crime

The reign of soft comfortable terror,
the reign of necessity is upon us,
everything defined by power is suddenly sacred,
democracy is consuming itself in a frenzy of 
suicide, all freedom is referenced to protecting
money, but never ours, only that which is taken 
from us because what is given was never actually
given in the first place.

Our institutions are proverbial frogs boiling,
they have duped us in their complicit duplicity
with the vanities of politics, so much is  now
don't, everything must be authorised, you shouldn't
behave that way, everyone must conform in order 
to perform life, the sheep bleat, but woe betide they 
should bark; to challenge, to dissent, is to know that 
paradox, ever old, that freedom is a crime.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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April 14, 2022 · 5:11 pm

The Remembrist – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Image: found on pinterest.com

“I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” Friedrich Nietzsche

The Remembrist 

I'm trying to remember the 
moment we lost connection,
begging the question, what 
are we the product of and, 
how ever did we outsource 
our lives, virtualising our
experiences?

Lately I've been trying to imagine 
myself in a different world, but 
the problem remains steadfast,
and all the while our lives are
missing, our faces false advertising.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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March 30, 2022 · 2:43 pm

Questioning The Moral – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Linda at dVerse is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write a poem, choosing one of twelve opening sentences. The sentence I have chosen is sentence 5. “No bondage is worse than the hope of happiness.” Carlos Fuentes ‘Diana the Goddess Who Hunts Alone’ Bloomsbury, 1995.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Opening Sentences

Photo: jooin.com

“All Limitations are self-imposed.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

Questioning The Moral

No bondage is worse than the hope of happiness,
whether it is an objectified and unworthy idolatry or
found only in the benign passion that undergirds,
according to the Sceptics warding off hedonism.

Whether it is an objectified and unworthy idolatry or
is it of the passive mind, or of the violent blood,
according to the Sceptics warding off hedonism,
that terror too grand for the likes of humanity.

Is it of the passive mind, or of the violent blood,
the deciding line of all broken moral compasses,
that terror too grand for the likes of humanity,
relegating all life to dribble about vice and virtue.

The deciding line of all broken moral compasses,
found only in the benign passion that undergirds,
relegating all life to dribble about vice and virtue,
no bondage is worse than the hope of happiness.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®



Note: on this occasion my inspiration is underpinned by the work of the the philosopher David Hume who believed that passions rather than rational though inspired happiness. Hume was known as a logical positivist. The work I reference indirectly in my thoughts is 'Essays Moral, Political, and Literary.'

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March 16, 2022 · 4:12 pm

Is The Hat? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Mish is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write about hats.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Leave Your Hat On

Photo: Marlene Dietrich – found on pinterest.com

“Life is like a new hat. You don’t know if it suits you if you keep trying it on in front of your own mirror.” Shirley McLaine

Is The Hat?

The hat sits lightly
its signature by the tilt
perhaps hats are true


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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December 6, 2021 · 3:14 pm

As If – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: pixabay.com

“Most people rust out due to lack of challenge.” Denis Waitley 

As If

Like Plato's bus, that rusted jalopy creaking along
the gray skies of future's neccessary critique
as the conspirators become disheartened by
the corrosion of reason, as if reason were itself.

The gray skies of future's necessary critique,
risking rebellion s reaction to the current crisis,
the corrosion of reason as if reason itself 
remotely capable of saving the past from the future.

Risking rebellion as reaction to the current crisis,
all those assumptions that paralyse our trust ,
remotely capable of saving the past from the future,
the inability to let go of our concrete delusions.

All those assumptions that paralyse our trust.
as the conspirators became  disheartened by
the inability to to let go of our concrete delusions,
like Plato's bus, that rusted jalopy creaking along.

Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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October 21, 2021 · 3:50 pm

Where Is This Eager Moment? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: pixabay.com

“Being out on the edge, with everything at risk, is where you learn to grow the most.” Jim Whittaker

Where Is This Eager Moment?

Talk to me about the fringe,
where is this eager moment,
this line, what is this mythical 
beast that curls at the edge of 
my consciousness like a griffin
with an either or approach to
questions of risk in a sure
world of safe lies, where the 
scale of illusion is an expensive 
stumble of false hope right in 
the middle of waiting for rebellion.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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