let them see
the way of knowledge themselves
teach them to read and to aspire;
male and female, brother and sister
strangers
the privileged and the children of the streets -
teach them to observe, to speak and to dream
teach them the ways of piercing
beyond the confines
be it each child’s unquestioned right
be it enshrined in the laws and in your statutes
be it inscribed on your City Gates
and in your Hearts and Minds;
let each sit to the sounds of the words and meaning
let each decipher, think and interpret
let each be empowered, guided but not circumscribed
let each explore and discover and capture the voices
and dreams in the very air about them
bring to them the means and the new and the old
regardless of one’s origin and history
each child, male and female
let there not be want and lack of means
let each be fearless
do not hold back any
let none be neglected
and let them be the heirs
to our world -
to freedom,
inquiry and exploration…
let each child live fully the life of the mind
there once was a time
you said you couldnt go out
alone with out me by your side
but times have changed
and you feel a whole lot different
maybe you'll find a new man sometime
there once was a time
when you always stayed inside
no need to go and explore
but the times have changed
and now, you remain
like other girls, turning in to a whore
there once was a time
when you pointed and laughed
at the skirts, and sluts, and the bros
but times have changed
you've turned into the same
as everyone that you used to ignore
there once was a time
there once was a time
there once was a time indeed
well you said that you loved me
and you promised it was true
but today i think we found the real you
If now is a prediction of the future than i hope to exit now and explore other realms of options and opportunities to better map my future in order to achieve happiness or at least a sense of stability I need a stronghold or a fortress of some sort to protect my insecurities and help mask my Great Depression which consist of a decline of love and joy which has become a treat instead of a meal my moments of temporary happiness is so few and far between that I see no silver lining in my unfortunate situation called life one of my hopes is that I disappear into a world of nothing to sit in a room of no emotions and no stress nor noise just utter silence as if I reached in my head and set missiles on a mission of mass destruction of my mind and a goal of freeing my trapped thoughts I hope to achieve something greater in this room something beyond anything I've ever felt something related to peace.
Freedom is a myth.
There is no time,
no place,
and no society
where it can be real.
And I can offer proof...
with actions comes
responsibility,
an ethical lifeline
which ties you to
humanity.
Judgement's forever
threatening scissors,
resting on it's pulse.
I see the reason,
I see the logic,
the neatened box in
which our world is
folded sweetly,
but...
I crave release.
I crave a freedom
to break the bonds of
judgement,
judging faces,
judging stares,
judging whispers...
to just
escape
and be me.
Be mad without the fear
of imprisonment,
to experiment
and probe
and explore
and run
and jump
and be happy
and be free
and to not be scared.
To still feel safe
because I don't,
and I really rarely
have done.
I am yearning...
for an impossible dream.
To have a day,
an hour,
a minute,
a second-
which I don't calculate,
and analyse,
and wait in fear of
repercussions.
And that is what it'll stay...
a dream.
And hauntingly wonderful one
at that.
.........................................
I don't come here much anymore.
Too many memories.
They say every house has a tale to tell,
Every rusted door jam a mystery.
That window over there, looking pale
And yellowed with age
And dust and yesterdays wonder, I broke
Way, way back before Grandpa had his stroke
And Grandma left her rocker for the last time.
I'd thrown a baseball right through it.
Pa was drinking then, the hard liquor,
And he whipped me raw out back behind the shed
With the full buckle. He reminded me
Windows cost money we don't have.
And Eleanor...
She was six or seven then.
She was just learning how to ride a bike,
And she was proud as can be.
She would hang out by the hollyhocks,
Pretending they were scarecrows,
Naming each one,
And telling me she'd found a pirates treasure
Buried out there near the windmill that still needed
A coat or two of fresh paint.
She was that shine in Momma's eyes,
The one person in all the world Grandma would tell
Her stories to -
Stories that would bring Eleanor
Into worlds of imagination and wonder
She'd never known before.
And Eleanor would drink it in,
All the color and fire,
That lingered in every word.
And when she wandered that late October night
Into the fields,
We searched up and down with lanterns lit and flashlights, And the neighbors helped,
And we found her come morning in the silo.
I guess she'd climbed in to explore.
You can't breathe when it hits you. It's like it
Sucks the air right out of the little space you find ,
And the weight of the grain slowly drowns out your Thoughts and your struggles, your prayers
And your cries. And nothing's left to do
But feel that terror
Of nothingness pull you away.
So many memories...
And I was angry then. Angry at Pa,
At Gren,
At God.
I blamed them for everything and then some.
I learned to smoke , and I did it well.
I learned to swear, and I was good at it.
I didn't stay home much after that.
I left, hitched a ride to New Castle Valley,
And then to Porterville.
I didn't care for schooling,
So I found a job feeding pigs.
That lead to butchering. And I was good at it.
I could lose myself in it. In the thunder of the sin,
Found some satisfaction in how they bled.
I didn't go back til after Dad died.
He'd lost everything, did a bit of drinking,
Spent his time in the county jail,
Did more drinking
When he got out.
I'd learned Grandpa died of the pneumonia,
And Grandma had a few strokes.
Nobody ever told me what happened to Momma.
She just disappeared.
...and over time I grew less angry.
And I'd talk to God at night,
Sometimes I'd talk to Eleanor, cuz I knew
She was up there with God doing angel things,
Probably riding a bicycle real good by now.
Time marched on and I made due.
But I don't come here much anymore.
This place haunts me.
The silo that claimed Eleanor now a rusted heap
Of wood and metal that watches every step I take
...and I hate it,
I'd burn it to ashes if I could.
The porch where Grandma's rocker sat
Is weather beaten and tired.
And the stump where Grandpa would sit
Trimming his fingernails with that pocket knife
Lays on its side, victim to the winds of time
And those echoes that whisper things I thought
I'd forgotten.
And I lose it for a moment
And have to mop away a few tears.
Me, a fifty-six year old blubbering fool,
Still picking at the scars.
I can hear her voice,
Her laughter,
As she circled the gravel road on her bike,
Kicking at the small stones to get the bicycle moving
Just a little faster.
And I can almost see her sweet face
And her eyes so wide
They captured the Autumn sun like a rising star.
And there's Momma, hollering "Supper's ready."
And Pa, slamming down the hood on
The truck and wiping the hot sweat from his brow
As Grandma's little rocking chair squeaked its protests
Into the wind.
And there was Grandpa,
Grinning and pocketing that knife
And kicking mud off his
Work boots and heading on in.
No, I don't come here much anymore.
This place holds far too many ghosts for my tastes.
Copyright © 2012 Richard D. Remler
.........................................................
"You fall out of your mother's womb,
you crawl across open country under fire,
and drop into your grave."
-Quentin Crisp
........................................................
i am a product
of this
society
i pick-pocketed
my personality
from a ghastly array
of tv shows
and teenaged drama
if you would like a re-run
of last night's
late night
sitcom
i'm at your service
i am a product
of this
society
if you want some fashion advice
from me
because i dress
so well
log on to
pinterest
they'll tell you
exactly
what i would
because everything i wear
no matter how weird
or ugly
i wear because
they told me
to
i am a product
of this
society
i do not
think for me
i have an iphone
that has replaced
the normal functions
of my brain
it remembers everything
for me
i know everyone
we talk
all the time
i text
really fast
i'm so connected
i mean,
i'm plugged into
everything...
i am a product
of this society
my thighs
don't touch
and a lovely
mountain ridge
adorns
my back
a cavern
in my
belly
come explore
me
a beautiful
bony
product
of this
society
I AM A PRODUCT OF THIS SOCIETY
and you all should really stop blaming me
for being a social deviant
for being unwilling
to conform
to this new normal
sanity isn't
statistical
and this isn't
1984
meaning:
just because a billion people
do this shit
it doesn't make it
right
doesn't make it
make
sense
i will not hold onto your tail
and follow you
blindly,
society
because you don't know
where the fuck
you're going
anyway
if we progress
one more step
we'll all be
dead
You will have a moon-faced child who is good at keeping secrets. She will be a piece of the the sea, ruled by the sun, and afraid of the dark. She will start to explore and never stop. More than anything, she will be frightened of being settled, getting stuck. She will say, "No, I will not", but at what cost?
I have terrible nightmares. I dream that I am running, trying to defend my truths against immoral powers. In my sleep, systems corrupted by the complexity of control try to steal my simplicity, try to make me dirty and compliant, things I will never be. In my dreams I am persecuted time and again for things that make no sense to me. It is a feeling of choking claustrophobia, worse than any coffin. The injustice insults my soul, and I wake with heaving lungs and an aching heart.
I am obsessed with knowing myself. Maybe if I can understand that much, the rest of this will start to make sense. We'll see.
I worry. I worry about dentists. Pharmacists. Business marketing majors. The dispassionate masses. People content to do things for money. For little bits of green paper that aren't particularly attached to anything but false notions of power. I have no religion to reassure me that it will all even out on some other plane. I have here, I have now. I will not fritter and waste the hours that make up the dull day, I will not be made to be afraid.
It hurts my heart to see how easily my brothers and sisters accept the notion that we are destined to spend most of the precious hours of our existences working at jobs we don't care about just to stay afloat in a drowning economy, and how easily judgments are cast upon those who don't conform to such broken logic. It's easier to judge than it is to think. Thinking is so uncomfortable.
It makes me want to scream, to rant. Don't they see? We pave the way for each other to be lazy. We have created technology that we use to save time so that we have more time to spend on the important things, like trying to figure out how to get our hands on more money, so that we can buy more things. We aren't paid to create, repair, discover or teach. We are paid to entertain, not question. We survive by serving. And that's a little too close to indentured servitude, wouldn't you say? Planned obsolescence. Wage slavery. Stockholm syndrome. Electoral College. War on poverty. From the makers of Agent Orange, corn! And no, you can't heat up your burrito, you think you're fucking royalty? That's right baby, keep voting. You have a voice. You are free.
Our entire system is obsolete if the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat are killing us because we've been so busy saving time that we forgot to remember not to poison ourselves. We create disease, and then spend lots of time and money "treating" it. Treating and treating and treating, fixing things by breaking things. Quality of life be damned, we want to live forever! It increases our GDP, don't you see?? When it's my time to go, plug me into a wall for a few years and then bury me in a big fucking box to make sure that the nutrients in my body won't feed the earth. Spend a lot of money on all of that. I will look down on you lovingly from my cloud, stroke my chin and proudly ponder my legacy. The end goal, it seems, is to die old and rich and fat, surrounded by things. To leave no mark of love on anything, not even our own hearts. It hurts my heart to see my people so removed from their selves and their truths that they think they are right.
So much of what I see around me hurts my heart.
twinkle birds and tessellates, bends my mind to outer space. lands me in infinity of never ending affinity to the universe.
but sweetest ideas were shortly lived at reality slowly sifts away to repeated visions that turn loved faces into panic that glitches me into unbreakable circles of walk away, walk away.
no awareness of a before from this feel the abyss of this helplessness suck me into no ending so I seice to begin.
but as the panic subsides my mind starts to ride the energy that resides in my being from the kingfisher floor to the fish strewn ceiling.
sentient beings suck at the seams, my dream of weightlessness pull the windows to break towards the secrets of simple existence.
invisible water sends the strands of fur swelling and glowing into talk of the polar bear whose hair weaves into the atoms that feed my jumbled dreams.
hands rip through the plaster as the sounds grow louder and faster, helicopters shake the boiler from the pipes but I still feel great.
the tables tremble as I soak up the bass and the treble. sensual overload through my eyes the magic multiplies, angels can hear my sighs as the roof opens to tunnel towards the skies.
geometric patterns that I could never have imagines circle and sweep, creeping my further from sleep.
I have breached something new, an extreme that dares its self to be seen only my the few who snatch it. I grab these new senses and attach it to my masses of emotions, that have been formed my these chemicals. neutrons and protons that explore the breadth oh Pantones schemes, weaving into the atoms that feed my jumbles dreams.
release my mind from the confines of rinse and repeat, out of easy street and onto the sunrise that surrounds me. revelations that never siese to confound me.
destruction was peace pulling my beliefs, daring the world to touch me as the floor tips the cabinets from the walls. I am small. here in this perfect world. my hands make the plants grow as they show me all it takes to break the confines of the human condition is to expand your mind and reposition your nervous system to reach a different supposition.
little lion
please read my other work if you like this one!
http://trivialitesofabusymind.blogspot.co.uk/
Too dark to see,
Too far to reach,
Too large to ignore,
Yet we sit waiting.
Waiting for what might one day be visible,
Maybe on a special occasion be in our grasp,
Possibly shrink enough to ignore.
Now,
Hopelessly waiting will do nothing.
Hopelessly waiting will water the seed never intended to grow.
The only way to stop it…
Conquer the unknown…
Explore the depths of reality…
Is to leap.
Shred the odious black hole that rages within.
Smash it into the mud.
Burry it in the ocean.
Suffocate it with courage.
And then, there will be no fear. Only accomplishments.
