Hey I wrote more poetry! (I don't really ever stop). This year I have been trying on more formal styles and rhythm. I probably stayed away from rhymes for so long because of the trope that poetry must rhyme--and let's face it, it's kind of out of vogue. But rhythm will never be out of vogue! and rhyme teaches some basic meters for it. While I do have a poem in an older post about the Orlando shooting, I have not written about anything political since and I'm not sure I will. I feel myself withdrawing a bit from that realm. I miss philosophy and in missing it I am loathe to turn my mind to the concrete things of what twit tweeted and shit oil all over ND.
“Alzheimer’s"
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| Our Boulder effigy for peeps who didn't journey to the illustrious BRC this year. |
Morbid, it may be
to appreciate this kind of atrocity
praise the methodical undoing
that is an individual’s slow entombing
The mechanism is not known
of how a brain cell can atone
I have witnessed their minds unravel
I have seen their how their memories travel
the once busy boulevard
of dinner routines
now unpottty-training in
post dinner latrines
We deliver an adoring smile
to all the drooling germ infested children
but detest and ignore our adult infantile
leave them to wander locked halls, human pins
Have you ever spoke
to someone in a dream
while you yourself remained woke?
It would make you doubt things are as they seem
There is something to that plaque
that separates it from a mere plague
of general dementia, of any malaise vague
a progressive regress, a systematic attack.
This disease unmakes a man
like a maid unmakes a bed
and when the mattress is finally bare
there’s nothing left there.
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“The Gardener”
She came by Piety
at a thrift store.
She was looking for something,
anything,
really;
row after row
of shelves
but all that junk,
with their forlorn miens
pre-owned
by the shadows
they cast
As she passed through the isle of decor
a figurine of a plump cherub
woke from his tepid slumber on a yellow cloud
and putting down his golden harp, reached for her
sang her given name
but not her true name
Cloyed, she stepped away
turned
wandered towards the back
too awkward to fit on any shelf,
an old sturdy spade
leaned up against the back wall
forgotten there by a long gone employee
A solid handle,
cleaned of old earth,
and straight edged
but for a couple dings
she had to hammer out
She took her home
She digs now.
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“Before God”
Before gods’ honey,
batches of empty darkness
teethed invisibly in the shade
I say—
This is how we were (deliriously) made.
That Absence
a Fertile dark heaping
points
to Her.
Diachronically outsourced
divinity
From Pan to poly
From trinity to binary
from monotheistic infinities
to zero-sum game theory
Before those gods
Of ego and shame
There was love
Before Love
there were not one
fool
to sing
a hymn upon a Marionette’s string
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“Thou Shall Eat Bugs”
“Consumerism Consumes”
Not all the words of love and light
could mute the Warriors song or dance
designed
to persuade lovers or foes upon a glance:
Were purity a goat
And fright, a lamb
We'd call love, rubbish
and get on with our soft clams
Do not be fueled
by the flight of a white dove
If you are not fooled
by the plight of seekers
of not a spiritual trove
but materialist tinkers
but materialist tinkers
We manifest nothing
when the sake is sour
capital, you know
begets false power
The keepers
of their houses
will tell you the truth:
higher square footage
lowers the ruth.
Sidewalks are inflexible
grainy with a bite
and yet I’d rather be kissing one
than rolling in spite.
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“Thou Shall Eat Bugs”
when we are dying
after a long life
when the skin is not taut
all eumelanin gone from the hair,
the hair
gone from our
shallowed flesh corners
you will not care
if you ate bugs or not
when you were younger.
you will not ponder
on any decision
from yesterday
or today
or next week
you might not even remember
if you had any children
or if they died
or who you married
You won’t remember
being insulted
at work
or why
but your body will remember
if you had enough protein
and your psyche will know
if you spoke to God
and She spoke back
enough
to say Her words
again:
“Eat bugs, they are for eating.”