Tanka-ka
Or Not Tanka

American tanka: Japanese influenced poetry that ignores rigid syllable guidelines; typified by an individualist, nonconformist sentiment.

1.

You step so cautiously
That sometimes you forget
To take a step
And I am left waiting,
Running far ahead


2.

You don’t realize
That your body
Might just save this one
This body might,
Just **** me


3.

What does all this stuff mean?
What does this world mean?
Long after I am gone
This **** will still be here,
Forgotten by everyone


4.

Internet ****
Seduces mens’ hearts
And objectifies their desires


5.

The destruction of the self is intolerable,
Everyone tells me
To destroy myself is unacceptable,
Little round pills


- Kinney Ryan

Whatever it was
That once drew words from
A tempest of a mind
Is missing now.

Whatever it was
That animated my withering hands
With dancerly motion
Has taken flight.

What did I have
That sifted through chaos
And spoke with power
Through my juvenile lips.
Power with which my grown voice
Could not conjure except
In a moment’s horror.

Skill generated from the lust of a fire
Stoked by unpredictability,
Fed by creative superiority complex.

I can look back at my adolescence with shame
And disgust.
I can tell myself
How much wiser I am now.
But that lustful child,
That frail beast
Could soak a page in pain
In ways I struggle to mimic.

I was erupting with language,
Bursting at the seams with monologue,
Overcome by soliloquy.
Now I am a mute stage hand
Calling for my line.

Must I once again take the spotlight
For an audience of self judgment
To prove to myself
That I am capable of putting on
A written performance worth reading?

Let this be my audition.
I will move myself to a standing ovation.

Grayness swells above,
It rains glass drops from heaven
They shatter on me.
The glass will not make me bleed,
My skin is hardened as stone.

what love- bursting at the seams,
his manic eyes
translated the tendencies.
I look to the sky
and your resentments move like tides
how we will deny, and never ask why
the capsize or joyride
of an unruly sense of pride.
your mission to suicide
or the fear I felt as you died
the clouds became my guide
as I tried to make you stay inside.
you can decide
a flame will burn and we’ll collide.

Winnie the Pooh is trying to think
As are Plato and Socrates
While The Little Rascals get rambunctious
And The Marx Brothers cause calamities
Jim Jones stirs the Kool-Aid
And Georgie Porgie makes his move
Bo Peep and Miss Muffett start to blush
Red Ridding hood just swoons
The Muffin Man does a deal
With Johnny Apple seed
These beings and people our real
In our Surreal Reality

******* lets the paint splatter
And Moses parts the sea
Belushi buys an eight-ball
Bruce is on trial for obscenity
Rorschach is on the case
Right behind Sherlock Holmes
John the baptist goes for a swim
Along with Brian Jones
Jack and Jill meet Hansel and Gretel
They're hungry, they're thirsty
These figments of imagination do exist
In our Surreal Reality

Rasputin was so evil
As bad as Captain Hook
Now was it ** Chi Minh or Nixon
Who said "I am not a crook?"
Mao Zedong looked at Stalin
With a shared murderous grin
Booth stormed the Ford theater
And shot President Lincoln
Kennedy and King we're both casualties
Of the process of the deciphering
Of our Surreal  Reality

Zeus said to Aphrodite
"Wow, you look real good tonight"
And Handel says "Hallelujah!"
As the Wright Brothers take flight
Baby Face Nelson
Teams up with Dillinger
Moe, Larry and Curly
Mengele, Mussolini and Adolf ******
Three bears, three little pigs
Along with three blind mice
Sit together, while Maurice Sendack
Cooks them chicken soup with rice
Charlie Bucket had a buy out
Wonka gave up his factory
Fiction or nonfiction it's all a apart
Of our Surreal Reality

Chicken Little tried his best
To warm The Little Red Hen
Of the sly trickster
They call Rumpelstiltskin
Rimbaud applauds Leonidas
And his 300's final stand
Da vinci  paved the way
For both Newton and Edison
Folklore and war heroes
And those with intellectual mentality
Are all just pieces
Of our Surreal Reality

Wee Willie Winkie's scream
Wakes up Rip Van Winkle
But not Sleeping Beauty who's been asleep for thirty years
But has no acquired a single wrinkle
Caligula has lost his mind
And Nero's lost his fiddle
What does Beethoven's hearing aid
Have to do the March Hare's riddle?
Abbie Hoffman fights for civil rights
Thomas Jefferson for democracy
Products of the conceptual
In our Surreal Reality

Berryman writes an ode
To Washington's wooden teeth
Manson speaks of Helter Skelter
Neruda damns the fruit company
Charles Schultz frames the story
And Seuss gives it rhyme
Some where far, far away
Taking place once upon a time
And the villagers all had omelettes
Thanks to clumsy Humpty Dumpty
It's all food for thought
In our Surreal Reality

Santa brings us presents
And Cupid bring us love
But we can never get back
The members of the 27 Club
Warhol makes his movies
And Buddha meditates
Joseph Smith reads the golden plates
Mohammed and Jesus save
Theses figures bring people hope
In life's dualities
Trusting faith
And our Surreal Reality


Han Solo is in carbon freeze
Don Juan's preoccupied
Sinbad sets his sails
Simple Simon didn't get his pie
Caesar looked at Brutus
Brutus looked at Saddam Hussein
Hussein looked at L. Ron Hubbard
Who prayed to Eloheim  
Dionysus can out drink us all
We cringe at Achilles fatality  
As Ra soars through the skies
Of our Surreal Reality

Aristotle says to Shakespeare
"Well Billy you old bard"
Frodo trades the ring of power
To Fidel Castro for a Babe Ruth Baseball card
Biggie and Tupac write their lyrics on paper
Ted Bundy is put in jail
They're making another skyscraper
For King Kong to scale
Hemingway is too far gone
Kant's take on morality
Einstein says it's all relative
In our Surreal Reality

Churchill said victory
John Lennon said peace
Judas gave back the silver
Then hung himself in a tree
Tojo and Kim Jong-il
Wanna be as cool as Brando and Dean
George Carlin warned us all
Now Hermes leaves the scene
So do the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker
Followed by Old King Cole and his Fiddlers Three
As they make their way to find
A sense or Surreal Reality

Odysseus pines for Ithaca
Paul Bunyan chops the trees
The Jersey Devil has not been found
Noah herds the animals by twos not threes
Anubis wraps the mummies
And Augustus leads Rome
Bugs Bunny laughs with Pryor
All at the expense of Job
So what can we all make of this
Is this all actuality?
Symbolism or nonsense?
Realistic Surrealism or Surreal Realty?