What Changes a Mind-Set?

“Neither Logic Nor Sermons Convince”
                                               (Whitman)
er
ah
ummm
hmmm
seems to me
all things considered
and not with standing
be that as it may
we can safely say
the saying of it is what counts,
      the SAYING I said,
                not the said

I have made no converts this summer
though I’ve had extended even sustained
converse-action which I love as much as
playing piano or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro  
 
Still and all: no conversions, catalytic,
metric, digital to analogue or vice versa,
political, religious, philosophical, no
convert to my way of talking,
thinking, seeing.
 
People have a mind-set of their own
even after my stalwart efforts to juggle
& tweak if not recalibrate their tea- party,
libertarian, conservative, liberal, independent,
radical, traditional assumptions, controlling
metaphors & rat-a-tattoos marching to
different drummer  boys: it makes no
never minding; might as well throw
rice at a rhino
 
I’ve never been enabled to transform any
one into anything contrary to their bias and
belief systems unless I had a grade-gun to
their heads & then it’s a matter of compliance
rather than conversion. so as to take the credit
and run, cerebral  homeostat intact, noetic
configuration same as it always was.
 
What changes a mind? .
Can’t change my own
to be or not to be: it’s
beyond me. A waste.
 
Nevertheless I think and talk as if I
could if not should –no, not should—
a terrible notion to change someone’s
minding as if I could help them feel
good, make them a better person, a
wholesome human being or what’s
a college for?  Vampiric?
 
Conversion.
Converse Action.
Wouldn’t I like to talk sense into
them tea party-ers, tip Glenn Beck
off his teeter-totter? Bottle up Bill
O’Reilly and ship him to Wasilla,
Chris Matthews & Rachel Maddow:
lend them my pink Cadillac & let
them go riding on the freeway
of love.
 
I could make a real difference
if people would just talk to me
for a long long  time, I think it’s
going to take a long long time,
& we could question everything
& make the whirl a  better pace.
     
(O my God’s in the Hands of Angry
Sinners; if I thought logic would
convince, I’d be logical rather
than pathological or
pedagogical. )

xxxooo, Sam