“What if,” I asked my humble self, “we change our position from made for to consumed for?”

Rather than define pornography as media created to evoke sexual response, invert the beast and consider pornography as media consumed to mentally pet the pubis?

Make the consumer responsible for defining what is and what is not pornography.

Make the consumer responsible, now there’s a thought.

If we consider all media capable of turning someone on qualifies as pornography, all media becomes pornography because, let’s face it kids, everything turns on someone. So now we know what is and what is not pornography. Everything is pornography and nothing is not. 

For the sake of compartmentalizing and finding a place to take a stand, I offer further divisions within the whole:  An Incremental Hierarchy of Pornography, grading the intensity of presentation from soup to nuts. So to speak.

The Incremental Hierarchy of Pornography.

We begin where consumers who cannot admit to libido go for groinal thawing. To provide context, consider this layer soft, soft, soft, soft soft-porn or S4 soft-porn. S4 covers same general ground as G-ratings in theaters and on TV. People do not restrain children from S4 soft-porn because to do so would admit to goings-on in the nether regions adults refuse to acknowledge. Most people would deny the pornographic effect of S4, but in doing so they lie to themselves and the rest of us.

S4 covers several acres of dirt. The I-Feel-Nothing crowd secretly squirm at the sight of beach volleyball and skin tight, strategically padded American football uniforms. Some sports offer more flights of pornographic fancy than others. How else can we explain the disproportionate Winter Olympic coverage dedicated to skating performances? And, of course, for those who like athletes in non-sport settings, let us not forget the ballet.

Advertisers saturate society with S4, using our reptilian response to sell us stuff we neither need nor really want.

S4 is the stuff of prime-time broadcast TV. Characters enjoy explicit sex lives, wake as lovers, but in a pattern that baffles, climb from between the sheets wearing clothes.

S4 pops up everywhere; advertising, news shows and the cubicle next door offer a quick fix.

In S4, the act is implied only. Or in the case of the cubicle, imagined only.

With S4 we lay a foundation for all that follows. Good because I already weary of writing this. On to incremental land. Each tier adds but a little. We are almost finished.

After S4 we have, you guessed it, S3. S3 roughly relates to PG-13 ratings. 

PG-13 deserves a bit of notice. Here we have a category of sexuality that should bore adults who have been there, done that. It is a category defined for and of most interest to hormone charged, masturbation obsessed adolescents. So good of us to let them know where to find it.

S3 adds nudity, sort of. Sort of because S3 limits nudity. S3 exposes skin but from the “Waist up only buster.”, and no female frontals. Breasts make an appearance, but arc from rib-cage to before the enhancement of aureole begins. Actresses move with adhesive skill, perpetually maintaing a barrier of linens, clothing and props between camera and flesh of intensified chroma. In S3, breasts have only beginnings, no ends.

S3 depicts the act but only under cover, cover usually in the form of sheet or counterpane.

In the pale between S3 and S2 lives a sub sub-genre of butt-no-nipple media. Obvious when encountered but to what purpose I fail to grok. Call it S2.5.

S2, roughly R-rated uncovers the nipple. That’s it. An entire category for thimbles of flesh displaying higher density of pigment. Woo hoo hey.

S2 depicts the act under cover, like S3, but with a bit less cover.

S1, or X-rated, exposes consumers to full frontal females and occasional penises. Not much more. S4 through S2 pretty much cover everything else.

S1 depicts the act but from a distance, partially covered or selectively off-camera.

Finally we arrive at soft-porn proper, a version of hard-core, XXX that avoids penetration and close ups of genitalia. Soft-porn is a rare beast found only on hotel movie channels. Soft-porn includes full-body, sexual activity with all traces of penetration removed in post-production.

Soft-porn depicts the act in naked  hilarity.

And then we have XXX. I assume most people refer to XXX when they use the label pornography. XXX shows everything soft-porn depicts plus explicit penetration at varied apertures and genitalia closeups.

Voi la, the Incremental Hierarchy of Pornography. Perhaps you may find it utile as you decide at what tiers you allow yourself to engage excitable media; to determine what tier marks the border which you refuse to cross.

The hierarchy does not, as the aficionado knows, cover all aspects of media consumed to stir linga and yoni. Sub-genres travel at the speed of thought to the far reaches of human imagination, going, indeed, where no man or woman have gone before. Most people remain unaware to what horizons this expanding universe reaches, and they should, in my humble opinion, be thankful to remain unaware. Without diving into the deep waters of the off-color pool, I give you three absurd, meretricious and imprudent words (so perhaps you may avoid them): Brazilian Fart Porn. It’s out there. It’s real. Someone, somewhere knows why. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

© 2012 Chrome Poet

This is a confession.

When writing, I seek playfulness, beauty and interest. In my poetry, I try to share the awe and wonder Universe inspires in my small Mind. Up or down, joy or despair, attraction or threat matters little. All tones and timbre reflect complexity, mystery and evoke reverence. Intuition and intellect wrap experience with mysterious ribbons of interpretation. All my relations to all the nouns dance like moonlit gossamer yarns lightly tugged by breezes. In prose, I attempt to catch more elusive but equally beautiful efforts of human spirit; patterns we create with symbols, logic and critical thought.

I must walk with the words written but not dominate. They are the stars and I am small, the universe huge. When I see first-person singular crop up, I know I’ve wandered from the path. I walk into the small room of IMeMine.

As I write the irritating series on pornography featured in my previous few posts, I feel lost in the IMe of Mine. Not just lost, but off the path, over the cliff into the raging torrent. Jammed against fallen trees of triviality, my foot wedged in river rock ambiguity, I flounder. I read no beauty, complexity or wonder in my pornography posts. 

In my defense, before writing, reviewing paragraphs in my head, the words fit together, make me laugh and give pleasure. On paper, not so much. They lose all charm.

I cannot blame the topic. Some pornography treats subjects beautifully. If we adhere to the dictionary definition, one could argue the pornography I find beautiful is not pornography but art. I cannot be certain. What level of artistic merit does a photograph of labia enveloping a penis require before it can cross-over to art?

Therein lies my obsession. When does explicit depiction become art? It never stops being explicit depiction. 

Who decides when it becomes art? 

Where do they go to decide?

When will they tell us what they have decided?

Making pornography more artistic, in my experience, fails to reduce the level of excitement felt by the audience. The opposite, in fact. Sexual works created without talent and care, created to display sex with no concern for lighting, composition, form, color or poetry, are less likely to excite. Harsh ugliness acts as a cold shower to the imagination. The more artistic the pornography, the more exciting. (except, I suspect, for fetishists who live for the harsh in art and pornography)

My sample audience was quite small but I did record a 100% agreement. Beautiful is more sexy.

I could go on for pages. Oops. Done that already. 

I apologize. I feel pressured against my better judgement, by some hidden neurosis, to continue writing the smut pages. At publication of each post I feel relief. I sigh “Now that is over I can get on with with nice writing.”

Next morning, I wake with pornography blocking the poetry. A wall that threatens to remain until I satisfactorily explain to myself where the line is drawn between pornography and art. I bore myself, and you too, until I know where pornography stops and art begins.

I cannot see this coming to a success ending.

Ah. Good. Now that is over I can get on with my own writing.

© 2012 Chrome Poet

Whiteboard diagram chasing the official definition of pornography

This diagram exemplifies why I hated dictionaries in school. Look up one word. Discover two words that feel unclear. Look up the fuzzy words and find definitions with more unclear words. You start to think you don’t know words you thought you knew. Eventually, you end up back at the beginning. Gah! Thirty minutes spent learning nothing except your vocabulary is smaller than you thought.

Essentially, the white board says pornography refers to works with the ambiguous qualities of obscene and no value as art.  As for what is and what is not considered obscene, I refer you to the initial post in this series. A Supreme Court judge fell back on I cannot tell you what it is but I know it when I see it.  This does not give us much to go on. As for artistic merit, no one can suggest what is and what is not art without inspiring heated battles of wit, citation and opinion destined to end in agreeing to not agree.

Dictionaries do not gives us a definition of pornography we can use to explain pornography to someone who has never heard of pornography. If a visitor from outer-space demands “Explain the dividing line between pornography and not-pornography.” we cannot accurately answer. I know it when I see it does not help a Stranger in a Strange Land grok the dysfunctional obsession with nudity and sex we label pornography.

As for artistic merit, what could be more subjective? Why do people consider photographs of women in corsets pornography but label Botticelli’s Birth of Venus art? Do either offend morality? Whose if they do? Are either depraved or indecent? Does a woman in a corset provide more and better masturbation fodder for thirteen year-olds than Venus on the half-shell?

Speaking of thirteen year-olds. Do we consider waking up pornography? If memory serves, it takes little more than waking to excite a thirteen year-old

Dictionaries do not define pornography in a way that allows us to know it when we see it. This leaves me no choice but to define pornography for all of us. I hate it when this happens.

To be continued …. (maybe)

2012 Chrome Poet

Art and literature we call pornography today, existed long before Victoria, Albert and the Empire upon which the sun never set. Artistic treatments of explicit acts have been found among ancient cave paintings. Writers wrote erotica on clay tablets before the Egyptians painted hieroglyphics on tombs. Artistic interpretations of the human form and activity antedate Victorians but the Victorians made it dirty. They took a greek literary term meaning writings about harlots to label subject matter they deemed obscene and invented modern pornography.

Prior to condemning erotica, Victorian aristocrats and and nouveau-riche industrialists filled galleries and libraries with the stuff. To protect investments, pornography priced beyond the reach of the man on the street retained its status as art and being art, remained and remains social acceptable.

You can check my facts at Wikipedia tomorrow. Today Wikipedia are blacked out in protest of SOPA and PITA, bills that threaten to bring Victorian censorship to the Internet.

2012 Chrome Poet

It seemed a good idea at the time.

Pornography permeates our media. Has done since the Victorians invented pornography.

Controversy surrounds pornography. Some consider it a destroyer of youth. Others a bulwark of free press.

Not one person can define, clearly, where pornography begins and art ends. Facing that question, the highest court in the land retreated behind nonsense.

“I shall not … attempt … to define … [pornography] … perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it …” 

Thanks Potter. “I know it when I see it.” No ambiguity there. Helps a lot.

Ignoring the explicit intent of libidinous arousal, pornography becomes a genre that, weighed intellectually or as literature, evokes every emotion.

Certainly those who hate sex in general, same sex sex and nudity feel outrage and anger to see what they hate plainly depicted in print and on the screen.

Tragedy must fill those who love sex when, as they consistently do, pornographers overtly weld sex to violence.

When, again common, pornography depicts women in poses and roles suggesting they are no more than receptacles for the desires of men, advocates of sexual equality must feel sadness that the neurosis continues.

Yet those easily moved to laughter see that, beneath the arousal and passion, sexual activity in pornography, as in life, amuses with comedy akin to slapstick: How does she, from that position, manage to look into the camera?

Given the richness of the topic, why have years passed, empty waters flowing beneath an incomplete bridge, since the idea for an article or seven emerged? Fear and loathing. Fear that writing about pornography exposes the hidden attitudes, at once outside social nicety and conservative. Loathing the topic deserves more words and cognition than a lazy writer feels comfortable committing to. 

Finally, the research. Unwritten, the articles justify seeking, studying and annotating pornographic works. All in the name of good journalism. To publish cancels the reason, transforms what was yesterday a noble pursuit of knowledge into just another old perv staring at delicious body parts.

Enjoy the sacrifice. The research shall be missed.

(to be continued – maybe)

© 2012 Chrome Poet

A line floats beyond grasp;

at tongue’s tip but too far from lips

or pen to save.

It scurries to shadows,

like diseased vermin;

hides behind inconvenient walls,

close but out of reach,

mewing and chirping;

reminding that no other line,

should another bother to come to mind

today,

tomorrow

or another day

will do so well,

be so good, 

as the one that got away.

No other line that comes to mind today,

tomorrow

or another day

will do so well as the line mewing

and taunting in the shadows,

as the one that got away.

© 2012 Chrome Poet

If you belong to a social network you have likely seen tag-requests, a post with a list of things with a paragraph or two in which you are named and invited to create a similar list. The tag-requests float through the sites like chain letters.

A while back, quite awhile back in fact, a poet I read, Melfamy Melfamy tagged me with a tag-request.

Normally, I do not respond to chain letters, digital or otherwise, but I enjoy Melfamy’s poetry. I read but seldom make comment praising his work. Hoping to atone for not providing deserved, encouraging feedback, I decided to respond to his tag-request.

The tag-request urged me to write seven things about myself and chain the tag to seven friends. Following you can read my attempt at first half of the request. I fear I cannot fulfill the second half. I do not have seven friends I feel comfortable chaining to.

I found the first half challenging enough. I and other alter-egos were not raised to discuss ourownselves. My initial attempt to publicly expose seven personal tidbits took, as you can see, a weird twist or three in short order. 

In truth, you really only need to know one thing about me. Like Dionysus, I was not born but erupted from a thought filled forehead.

Unlike Dionysus, I do not attract singing swarms of swirling, twirling women who, overwhelmed by my presence, offer themselves to goatish paramours and in throes of ecstatic bliss, scratch loyal, human lovers to bits.

Additionally, unlike Dionysus, the forehead from which I sprang belonged not to Zeus but to a hick farm kid known to local women as somewhat tall and somewhat gentle with strange eyes and equipment falling well within the measurement of normal. (1)

In the wee hours before dawn, from beyond the silvered glass called mirror, I peek at this curiosity from which I sprang and whisper to him he must watch his weight (2) … as if one could miss it. 

In passing decades since first I looked out from behind his eyes. I’ve watched his beard, beneath which he hides a slightly weak chin, become more salt than pepper. (3) A result of long-term exposure to corporate, florescent panel lighting, blonde, tastefully groomed to social expectations, hair dulled to cubicle beige. When he escaped at last, sunlight, open skies, age and wisdom brightened beige not to expected Danish gold but to the cumulus white of childhood. (4). 

I sense from my place behind his eyes the number of  his days and from them know the number of my days (being a voice for inner dialogue, his days are my days), and the measure of my universe. He passed beyond life once while we, his voices watched helplessly. We, that is he, tasted utter nothingness beyond ego and language. Reluctantly dragged by medical hands back to the living light, he never forgets that neither he nor I nor our universe can survive. (5)

He suffers a peasant attitude; his personal albatross; limiter of life and opportunity; an artifact found in the luggage of immigrants and passed down, father to daughter, mother to son.  From first wail he learned the Great things in life, opportunities that knock, deeds of knights and kings, lovers from outside the village and world changing ideas, “Ain’t for us. We don’t do that. Look around. Those things, other people do ‘em. Be  happy with what you got and get back to work.” (6)

He grokked dysfunctional speakers, parent, teacher and preacher, accepted peasant obligations with blind obedience but without joy and happiness. They pretended and promised, one of the obligations they accepted, but without genuine joy and happiness.

His awareness that neurological poison tarnishes synaptic paths and pollutes subconscious whims and desires does not provide antidote. Knowing does not undo damage. Imprints etched in the virgin panels of his undefended, infant mind solidified in time. 

Rewriting ancient imprints and life-games requires therapy and psychedelic excursions; remedies ironically belonging to the list of things that “… are not for us … ” (7)

Finis.

One or three things about me and seven more concerning the owner of the forehead from which I jumped. 

This exercise produced a few stories, memories adopted to the non-confrontational Zeitgeist of the twenty-first century, post-post-modern spiral toward the neo-Dark Ages. Should I overcome inherent laziness, perhaps, before February brings the false thaw, I can share those as well.

© 2012 Chrome Poet

I do not disagree but does he intend we not use semicolons merely because they are not necessary?

Those of you who read me know I love semicolons. Where others use dashes to weave related thoughts tighter, pause prose and mimic, in-line, poetic line breaks, I employ semicolons.

Is it necessary? Not a bit. On either side of my semicolons lie complete sentences, or at worst phrases easily sentenced. With little effort I could replace my semicolons with conjunctions or full sentences. I admit some readers, those put off by odd punctuation, may find conjunctions and full sentences less contenious.

But at the moment, I love semicolons.

My mind rolls sequential thoughts not quite needing conjunctions but sharing something surrounding thoughts do not share. I use semicolons to join them. 

I most often think in prosody, not prose, and use semicolons where, if I were writing a sonnet, I would begin a new line or insert a caesura. 

In blog posts, I attempt a conversational tone; since I tend to cram thoughts together when I speak, I feel using dashes or semicolons clarifies by providing necessary pace.

Which is all find and good but somewhat bunk.

The real reason I use semicolons is, I think they are fun, for now. I like them more than dashes. 

Like Seth Godin, I think the semicolon is “…almost never necessary…” but I decided to make it my own, to give the semicolon my rules and use it in my prose form to indicate connected breaks.

And, like baby ducks, semicolons are cute.

© 2011 Chrome Poet

hands on your keyboard

your fingers type words

that nobody reads.

Marketspeak buzzwords,

positioning statements,

defining a product

that nobody needs.

Telephone vibrates you out of your flow,

paragraphs flee from your mind.

Fumble your pocket but voicemail picks up

and it’s gone.

Read what you’ve written.

Remember the artist

you buried to marry

her beautiful eyes.

Everyone loved her

and she fed your ego;

adulate lovemaking,

sky shaking sighs.

Poetic flashbacks appear in your mind;

reality paints them dull grey.

You pay the price everyday of your life

and she’s gone.

Back to your cheap chair

your eyes find your schedule,

you’re late for a meeting:

hors d’oeuvres and fine wine.

Finger food beckons

a drink then some flirting,

adopting her standards,

forgetting your whine.

© 2011 Chrome Poet

I wrote weak drafts of this post four times in weeks past and again today; a fifth attempt to stay on topic while my pen meanders off target like an over-eager hunting dog chasing stale idea-scent that when written, like dreams chronicled before coffee, bore writer and reader alike.

And here I go again, pen fluttering like milkweed seed wafting in Morning’s siren song breezes. Unless I rein this stream of semi-consciousness in, I shall find myself, tomorrow, scribbling draft number six.

Awhile ago a man approached, introduced himself and within five short minutes of inquiring small talk asked me if I was an atheist. I hesitated for a nano and responded, calmly, “Probably.” As I heard my answer, my jaw dropped. I take pride in knowing myself. I take pride in candid honesty. “Probably?” did not sound like either.

Why I responded “Probably.” put a seed of disconcert in my head.

I like to know why I think and say what I think and say. When I do not, I look in to turn mystery out. I think about what I think to discover why I think what I think and how I came to think what. It’s like getting high. Inhaling iterative introspection safe behind the covered windows in my room; achieving altered consciousness; blocking tire on pavement hissing din of reality; ignoring time and stacking material concerns on a corner shelf to collect dust.

Within me dissolves without me.

Eventually, I grow hungry, re-emerge, grab a snack and review things about me I know after but did not before my trip through pensive shadows.

I employ two vehicles to traverse the Inside: writing and contemplation. or writing and meditation for those of you less Nordic and more Zen. In this case I employed, for the most part, the soothing act of writing with fine-nibbed pen on foolscap. Results below.

I admit I felt unprepared to respond to a request to label myself and enter undesired theological discourse but to ignore the question was not an alternative. Although any answer threatened to open doors I preferred left locked, he did ask and deserved an answer. Conscious Thought, flat-footed and caught in the beam of approaching headlights, froze. Grabbing the controls, Sub-conscious Mind flipped a coin to decide between fight or flight.

Tails.

Flight.

The softish answer to the question “Are you an Atheist?” emerged in less time than it takes to read this. Foregoing delays required to include Conscious Thought, Mind chaired a panel of inner stakeholders to discuss possibilities, omit obviously unimportant elements and shelf minor influences. The executive action took less time than it took for Conscious Thought to register one gold-finch flight from feeder to tree.

Mind and enpaneled experts devised a plan; sought safety in non-committment, prepared an appropriately evasive response and simultaneously suppressed emotion chemically evoked by glandular reaction to an ever-so-slight whiff of resentment that a stranger would be so bold as to request self-labeling of atheist or non-atheist.

During the blink of wordless panic in the real-time world the expert panel and Sub-conscious Mind set aside chocolate eclairs and double-double lattes long enough to decide that anyone who could ask, “Are you an atheist?”, would label me Atheist, but in an act of selfish, cowardly consensus deemed it best not to answer “Yes.” The distinguished panel of experts produced and delivered to Mouth and conscious Mind, in that order, four opinions and a decision to blurt, “Probably.”

I shy from labels as a rule.

People live complex lives. We can know little of people’s Minds and how they work. Labeling someone, or ourselves, we substitute label for unseen complexity. If we mistake the map for the territory, begin substituting labels for reality, we eliminate motivation to explore the character of people. Sociologists say we stereotype. I think we build barriers to knowledge.

Yet, we are people and people label things. Labeling seems as much our nature as hunting seems the nature of felines.

The labels, Atheist and Theist, occupy a sphere of subjectification I do not. Atheist and Theist fail to interest me because, to dredge up a Groucho Marxism, “I never wanted to belong to a club that would have me as a member.”

I suspect both labels limit. Atheists limit themselves from the awe, wonder and mystery of God. Theists limit themselves from the awe, wonder and mysteries of Nature and Universe.

Each of us develop unique realities molded from cognitive potential and personal history. We create versions of the universe from intersections of singular sapience and sui generis experience.

In my little world, Gods, Nature, and Universe require direct, personal contact; contact achieved though cautiously fashioned Weltanschuung incongruous with prevailing authorized editions and involving rites and rituals that, unlike mainstream institutions, I keep private.

I assumed, likely my first mistake, that the-man-who-asked would inquire to my choice of sect if I answered, “No.”

I feared he would evangelize, likely my second mistake, if I answered “Yes.”

I also did not want to respond “Yes, I am an atheist.” because it was Thursday and on Thursdays “Yes. I am an Atheist.” tells a lie.

I do not like to lie.

This mess of messiness messing up conscious reason left no option except to answer as directed by Sub-conscious Mind and stakeholders, “Probably.”

There you have it. The babbling innerlogue of a Probably Atheist.

Or not.

© 2011 Chrome Poet