MY GOLDEN FRIEND, EMILY DICKENSON 08-05-10

I have not the metaphors, nor the similes
Lined up for the experts in a perfect row
to scrutinize, critique my work with glee,
searching to find some flaw in my flow.
Then my friend brings a light of gold.

A little blue book rests delicately
It sits on my knees beneath me
as I sit on the steps, outside in the heat.

I read, not fearful, I feel her safety.
My mind peers out, I begin to see.
Emily, Emily!  You so humble me!
To an angel, I confess my deepest need.

She conveyed to me, what frightened me
I could not escape my worn out scripture.
Now, I can perceive a bigger picture.

The world does not orbit around me.
It has never been just about me
I exist for it, when will I believe?
My insipid perception has been deadly.

When I accept this fact, I’ll be set free.
I will love me and others willingly.
I'll see the beauty above and around me.
Emily, Emily, your soul surrounds me.

For neither fame nor fortune did you begin
To put down on paper, your thoughts to your pen
You refused publicity, and your fame.
which you held with the deepest disdain
though for you, it was so honorably gained.

You graciously chose a pure heart, instead.
As I crawl into my restless bed,
I place your words beneath my head.

I always wanted to be a "Bond Woman"
The kind of woman James Bond would want
****, exciting, worldly, mysterious
Bossoms to die for
But no,
I'm a "book woman"
The kind of woman who can recite Emily Dickenson in my sleep
Reading glasses that are eternally falling off my face
Bossoms?
Not so much
When the Bond women are wet,
They look like water goddesses
I look like a drowned rat
Plus my glasses fog up
A blind, drowned rat
I think its safe to say,
I'll never be a "Bond Woman"
I'm a "Book Woman"
And I guess that's ok

Here's to all us "Book Women"

They say actions speak louder than words
but I’ve never been one for shouting
so here’s my quiet confession
only for you; my sole obsession

My mounting
                    feelings soar
                                      on this paper

My words may not roar
But rest assured
They are true.
I need no hyped up hyperbole
No profound, mind-boggling simile

no hiding
behind complex imagery

all I have are my naked words

bare, exposed emotion
unbuttoned passion
white expression
embrace this page
clinging tight.


Still
nothing I write
can ever capture this feeling
no epic, no odyssey
can chart this journey of
                flying
with you

I am not Shakespeare
Dickenson
Frost
I’m just a fool; lost
Without you

I am not trying to compose a classic
not trying to re-write the Romantics
these are my words
from heart to hart

I love you

poetry, is almost dead
it’s gasping for breath
reaching out ,tearing at the bottom of our pants
clinging to anyone it can
A  solider of culture
being dragged from the battlefield,
after an open fire attack
by generations and generations

Poetry,
words strung together with beautiful precision
feelings reveled
people laying naked
exposed
Bleeding on the stage, on the page,
on the bathroom walls at the Mall
On the subways, in the sand
even writing on their hands
trying to save

….
what’s dying

This is why we slam.
this is how we resurrect the language
energy emitting from our bones like electricity
catchy beats and in your face attitudes
give flesh to the skeletal body
of poetry

This is why we slam.
because Poe wasn’t tough enough
Keats is too old fashioned for us
and the philosophical words of Robert Frost are foreign to us.

Today he who is shunned for his talented tongue
mush break the mold,
ignore the sweet sonnet and the subtle hiku
that is
misunderstood
modern day delinquents
those too ignorant to recognize
an onslaught of alliteration
                or
a well placed metaphor
those who find poetry
a bore

This is why we slam.
let our strength ring out through our voices

This is why we slam.
we speak our truths
pick off the paint covering the ugly reality

This is why we slam.
to be heard.

When the traditional beauty of Owen, Wordsworth and Dickenson
Just won’t do
us slam poets hear the call
and we come through

This is why we slam.
To face the harsh reality that is society
to attack
the politics,
the racism
the injustices
of life itself

Fast words whizzing from our mouths
from our hearts
slamming the ****** silence
and complacency
that has become today’s reality

This is why we slam.
To be heard,
to resurrect the dying art.

This is why we slam.

I dig Joe Rogan
Suheir Hammad
And Alix Olson
Truth seeking
Artists

I dig Howard Zinn
And Noam Chomsky
Dead intellectuals
Truth seekers

I dig Marty
McConnell
And Jason Carny
Poet lovers
Of Humanity

I dig Shakespeare
Mark Twain
Edgar Allen Poe
Emily Dickenson
John Keats
Percy Shelley
Ginsburg and the other Beats
Writers and poets
I will never meet

I dig The Daily Show
The Colbert Report
The John Oliver Show
The Young Turks
News and fake news
Comedy Shows
That expose
Deep truth

I don’t dig me
Always
But I like you
And all the potential
You hold
You are not a black hole
But a blazing star
Waiting to blow
Waiting to be born
The only good form
Of a hydrogen bomb

That reminds me
I dig Einstein
Tesla, Da Vinci
Gandhi Thoreau
Bruce Lee
Great Minds
That are dead

My list goes on
Forever in my head
So instead of
A dissertation of love
I would like to know

Who do you dig bro?

Spoken word.
It ain't about
rhymes
sonnets
Shakespeare, Dickenson, or Poe.
It ain't about
the iambic pentameter flow
or the 5-7-5 of a haiku.
It's about
the heartbeat
the pulse that courses through your very soul in a rhythm that is completely
you.
It is YOU that falls from trembling lips
into the figurative and literal microphone before you;
YOU who breathes life into words that would
otherwise be considered
scribbles on a page.
It's an essence
a way of being
and beating
the drum of your being
that would otherwise have you hanging---
on tenterhooks,
waiting for permission
to raise your voice above the rest
just so you can feel
like you've got something to say.
And child,
you do.
You got a story all your own
a thunder that outnumbers
the roar of the lions that are too busy
with their 9 to 5 to stop
and listen.
So don't think you have to shout
just to be heard
but don't you whisper the words
that mean so much
but can seem so small.
They ain't.
Those words are your fists,
balled up tightly and raised high in the air
demanding the attention of anyone who will just
listen.
They strike
again and again
breaking the air and airwaves
with a newfound
beat
so don't you think
your fists are too small
to mean something
because child, they ain't.
Raise your words high
with that of your peers
and chant them again and again
like it's the last war cry that will ever
be heard
around the world
your voice is strong.
It echoes
and shakes the earth to it's very core
like a stampede
so don't you stop
don't you stay silent now
just step up to the mic like this
will be your legacy
your last words to live by
and the first words to make you
reborn.

How infuriating, knowing
of the infinite supply of “hope”
and how it is and will continue
to be so—defying the abyss of
our debt.

Smug! That’s the word, not
what Emily Dickenson wrote
in sympathy: hope
is a thing with feathers,
is a bird’s song, Extremity.
Somehow made heroic
by abstinence from reward.

“Hope” does not hold it’s hat
out to us for crumbs and drinks;
we have already buried hope in
bread and drowned it in wine—
for with each hope that hoists us from
the depths, another lets our grip slip
off its palm greased with
false promises.

I don’t want to live in a universe where cats are considered liquids— They’re bad enough as they are.

So some idiot decided that cats fit the definition of a liquid—
“a substance that flows freely but is of constant volume”.

Obviously the dictionary is wrong, wrong, WRONG.
I shall spend the rest of my dotage developing a definition that will not accept cats as liquids.

Perhaps “A freely flowing substance of constant volume that doesn’t meow.”— Perhaps not.

But wait,  cats don’t fit the definition after all. They don’t stay the same size, especially when frightened or wet.

I bet that idiot spends all his time watching cat videos and has never hosed down fighting cats in his backyard.

Dotage saved for more important stuff :
Continue study of Schrodinger’s aversion to cats, look for hidden messages in Emily Dickenson poems recited backwards, master fake outrage.

boeing 747-700x
they say that size doesn't matter
but i disagree with them
and say they're full of ****
size DOES matter
this is why i fly my jet
a boeing 747-700x
my baby is f8cking huge
a touch under 280ft long
i can carry hundreds of people
all around the world
flying in luxury in my jet
served by **** air hostesses
with bruce dickenson my co-pilot
take it from me size does matter
and yes my jet is big and black

I’m afraid to die.
There, I said it.
My greatest fear is dying.
What the hell kind of fear is that,
it’s like being afraid of a sunrise,
or of black eyes,
Something that’s gonna happen,
and something that doesn’t hurt after.
For years I convinced myself it was gonna miss me,
but this ain’t kickball, and gettin chose last is the same as gettin chose.

"I could die right now, I could die while reading this."
It’s terrifying, don’t you think, that we could die at any time?
There my heart goes on its Zanzibar drum solo.

And it’s crippling too.

Because you can’t move past that fear and do something else,
what’s the **** point of even thinking of anything?
We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die.
What should I do now?
Doesn’t matter gonna die.
What about my dream?
Doesn’t matter gonna die.
Will I be remembered…
… doesn’t matter, still gonna be dead.

It makes every other fear bearable, no, romantic.
Living alone, being unloved, being unremembered: how the hell is that scary?
Each offers insight into character, the beautiful motivation of self reliance and self understanding is what led to that deep understanding of humanity, these thoughts drove
Thoreau,
dead
Whitmen,
dead
Dickenson,
dead.
dead dead dead dead dead dead dea.
they are all dead!
and what the hell did they do to deserve it—what will I do?
Nothing.
I'm still paralyzed.

It’s a granite bench that I frequent
Your name carved in stone; eternal
It’s the ink over my ribs.
A barrier to protect our vulnerable hearts
You used to tease me for my love of symbolism
How could we have known?

I’ve been reading up on Dickenson
I’ve been keeping my room a mess
I’ve been seeing you in my dreams

I talk with you there, but I still can’t talk with you here

On this granite bench that I frequent
I kiss your name in stone; eternally it lingers for you there
The next time I return, it remains, unclaimed and cold

What was protecting your heart?
Was it that through which the bullets tore?
Two to the chest, that’s all I’ve been told.
No CPR preformed.
****** up thought, I know.

I cut my bangs after your funeral
It was a poor choice
As we both could have predicted.
You would have laughed and kissed me all the more.
They’ve grown out now

During the time it took for them to grow, I hated the sunset
How could something so beautiful exist in the same world that kicked you out so soon?
How could I find peace in that?

And, I was ****** the moment that it did
It’s not a habit that I frequent
But none the less, that night I did
How could I have known?
A symphony of blinds clacking in the wind,
A leaky air mattress’s hiss, crickets that sounded ******
And I couldn’t move
So I just listened, and composed, and
All the while you bled, your heart stopped
Your last breath

I just laid there, ******, arms spread wide, eyes fixed
Maybe like you, I suppose?
****** up thought I know.

So, I offer a kiss to your name, carved in stone
I leave it there
But I know
It will just grow cold
And my ink itches me, over my ribs, over my heart

It must be the cold