|
Know Thyself
I certainly was born the happy pig,
and wallowed in the sacredness of life:
I saw my friends as lights who waved hello;
I knew myself as living flowing flesh.
Then madness shredded my mind to its core.
I saw what no plush toy should have to see:
my stuffing -- gored guts, gears -- across the ground.
Then all the King's men put me back together.
I'm now a dissatisfied Socrates.
Here, sacredness of life is just a sham.
I see a friend as paint and molecules;
I know myselves as thoughts duct-taped with time.
42
i am a point
in the universe.
i am a point
in existance.
and i think.
i'm the definition
of life.
what is the point in the universe?
what is the point in existance?
what is the meaning of life?
me.
philosophy
i think (;)
i exist (.)
now (.)
what?
Growing Thick Skin For Idiots
Even lack of love can be replaced.
Don't worry that your son is gay and bashed;
Hatred, given time, can be erased.
Society might slap him in the face.
Don't worry that its slant will cause a rash;
Stigmas -- smears -- can always be replaced.
Classmates might insult, and chill, and chase.
Don't worry that their slurs are far too harsh;
Self-doubt and fear can always be erased.
Friends might fall away to elsewhere graze.
Don't worry that his solitude will stretch;
Eventually, friends can be replaced.
Even God might shun him in disgrace.
Don't worry that his sin will stain his flesh;
Even false beliefs can be erased.
And while he's bleeding waiting for embrace,
don't worry that your hatred made the slash.
His scars will fade in proper time and place:
Eternity in heaven to erase.
poetry
To you who hate poetry:
you don't know what you're missing.
To you who don't fully understand it,
you who know what you're missing, but try anyway,
cuddled up on a couch, cup of tea in hand,
re-reading a phrase for the 45th time,
scraping away at the three-inch-thick layer of ice
on the windshield in front of you,
smashing, scraping,
working out from the one crystal spot
you've already broken through,
scraping, smashing,
picking apart,
picking away,
fascinated, intrigued,
determined, drivin within this endless mine
to find and pick away the sacred golden bits of
understanding
that will bring you one tiny, extraordinary, enlightening
step closer
to the vast, elusive meaning of life:
Keep picking.
To anyone who understands it all:
you don't know what you're missing.
now
to hell
with picture albums,
boxes of old letters,
and nostalgia.
life
is meant to be lived
not remembered.
if life were meant to be remembered
we wouldn't forget everything
at the end of it.
magic jars
how
cold and empty
the number 73,289,761.
how lifeless and inanimate
a few droplets of paint.
how crude and mathematical
text is --
a choice of one of 26 symbols
repeated indefinitely.
yet how neat
that you can pour the magical stuff of life into them all
and store it on a shelf, where it will stay
even after the generator has fallen apart.
wrote a young artist's mother
of millions of strings of 1's and 0's,
"The songs on this CD
are the true 'remains' of Jeff
Buckley,
not the spec of dust they pulled out of the Wolf
River."
|
Nothing Holy
sacredness of life is just a sham.
life is only playdough for the Gods.
Some Kid above commands with colored clay:
He smooshes two figures together.
He plops another two side by side.
He forms a funny-looking person.
...far away,
a woman is raped.
two soulmates meet.
a retarded baby is born.
life is only playdough for the Gods.
Christ and Prometheus look down on two towers:
"Hey Pro, betcha can't do THIS!"
SQUISH!! goes one of them.
"Pah, I can do that too!"
And the other goes
SCRUNCH!!
... far away,
flags shed tears.
soulmates are hung
on the missing-board with care
with prayers that St. Nicholas soon will be there.
children are told their mothers
have left for a better place.
sacredness of life is just a sham.
and me: a madman,
sitting in a psych ward,
sanity battered, shattered.
my mind: a horse pinata,
(What a piece of work is man!)
bashed by the Gods for fun,
a hundred blindfolded times,
(oh, the taste of destruction!)
(oh, the taste of inflicted pain!)
'till its entrails now spill out,
and all rush to claim their keep.
and while i hang in gored pain,
i watch the junk-food candy fall:
(thoughts, memories, feelings...)
and cry, seeing i'm just stuffing
and brightly painted cardboard;
and here i thought i was a horse.
(i'd run and tell the other pinatas,
but they would never believe me.
just let them think they're animals.
they'll be happier that way).
i'm a gutted tickle-me-elmo,
staring at my cold, inanimate
battery-powered giggle box
and some cotton stuffing,
soaking in a black epiphany:
i have no soul.
Paper Canvas
I liked the assignments for poems in this class,
Then came this fifth poem like a yank in the ass.
I read the blank words that I soon came to mourn:
"You're choice of topic and form."
The assignment seems simple: just write any poem,
So why must I fumble and grumble and groan?
"Damn her!" I scream, "Now my structure is screwed;"
I can't write a poem when I'm nude.
No assignment? Really?
I can write anything?
AGHK!! Too much to talk about!
Too much to think about!
You don't tell a manic streaker:
"Do anything you want!"
We scream and run around in circles
flailing our arms in the air
running from the swarm of ideas chasing after us.
Oh god, whatever...
I pick up the notebook
and turn to a blank page...
firefly / fire-fly / fire fly / fly, fire
burning thoughts; burn away; away, thoughts!
burn, burn...
firefly / fire fly / freefly / fly, free
free of structure, free of sin, free of yang and free of yin
freefly / fly, free / fall-fly / freefall
fall from fancy, fall from space
fall from freedom, fall from grace
into homework -- in a cell -- into labor -- into hell:
what to scribble? what to say?
what to ponder? what to pray?
love? lust? pain? joy? rainbow skittles made with soy?
what to scribble, what to say, what to ponder, what to pray
thoughts and feelings circle me;
some i grab and some i see
for a moment, then gone, like a leprechaun
and others swim like sperm to my head
plethoras of ideas, fighting fleeting swarming sperming
i could catch the lake i love in a jar for all to swim in
or catch a delicate tear for anybody to try on
i could write about:
my dog, my aunt, pringles, nuns, mountains, kiwis...
i could i could explore the meaning of life!
or i could i could ooo-- how about-- no, oh!
i could -- i could -- what to scribble, what to say,
what to ponder, what to pray
firefly / flying free / fall-fly / free
fall, fall..., fall.....
So I write up a poem about writing this poem,
Yet still I must fumble and grumble and groan:
Do I write it using trochees?
Or iambs in pentameter like this?
Do I tie it with a knot?
Do I tie it with a bow?
There must be a million clever ways
To end a poem about itself.
Chameleon
This is a poem that looks like prose. You
may ask, "If it's spaced like prose, isn't it
prose?" Well, not really. You see, a poem can have
about any format it wants. Verse is free and flexible,
constantly taking on new forms and adapting to its
environment. This poem choses its spacing and syntax
precisely to imitate prose. But don't be fooled; it's
just pretending. If you look very closely at the end of
this sentence, you'll notice it does something that only
a poem can do . Oops, it slipped.
|