Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Yes you do need to leave your room
You should not remain sitting at your table
And you must listen to many other voices
Do not ever simply wait

You do need to leave your room
Don't wait, and don't be so still and solitary
Be restless and numinary, no matter
How troubling, how counter to your nature this may seem

You do need to leave your room
The world will never freely offer itself
To you for its unmasking
You must request this pleasure, you must
Attend each ceremony

You do need to leave your room
Nature may have no choice, but you have a chance
It will never roll in ecstasy at your feet
Nor will it writhe in raptures before you
Come on now, did you really believe
This is the way it would ever be

Yes you do need to leave your room
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet." ~ Franz Kafka, Die Zürauer Aphorismen
ab ja na Apr 17
i wanted the world within you
i wanted the world through you
just through you
even if everything
everywhere else was as exquisite as it can be
even if it was all but dark and hollow within you

there is waves inside of me
ready to take you into my oblivious depth
with such voracious passion
i am afraid of it but i am also in love with it
because i am it
and i just wait for you
who is the all consuming dying star
that can devour all of my oceans and skies and apocalypses

will you go to war with me to love me more than i love you
before you **** love, nurture it, spoil it, spill its guts out
Andronicus VI Jul 2024
Here we are again standing on the precipice of war
Paralysed by the past and the greed of our forefathers
While the inside battle has raged since birth
Good enough? I think not.
History only repeats its worst parts
They saw a green orb signalling GO GO GO
Faith in illusion the yellow-blue glow
Look but don’t touch! You’ll break it child!
But, they silly foolish daisies flitter flutter in the breeze
What nature? What love? What future? Roars the uncanny double
As it reappears, so much better now at creating disposable monstrous insects
Death? Very well, I guess we accept. We’re ***** for pain
But why walk into the river with rocks in your coat?
You’ve never been to war they gloat
As the wax drips steadily sealing our fate
And so those monstrous insects march by one by one
Hurrah! hurrah! here we go again old sport!
I sit and wait for the judge
They say he's too busy to see me
I tell him, I tell him, I tell him
I'm tired from nothing and there is a fence around my brain
And I keep trying to leap frog over it but it doesn't work
And I feel boxed in and empty and boundless
Grasping at straws to express nothing
Just the gentle hum of complacency, what a strange thing to be afraid of
To stay awake at night, busy busy, out of fear
But the judge does not see me
His guard says I have to wait
And this gate was made specially for me
And I don't know what it means
But my inner world is dead and dormant and I should dance on its grave
Never ever giving myself a moment to think again
While the sun sets on my gap year and I'm left in a mad scramble to make sense of it all
The judge bangs his gavel
Bang, bang
Stay out of my courtroom
non linear thought is great
Zywa Mar 2023
The bell, an unexpected visit:
a gentleman who asks me

to come along, I have to
I am arrested

but only for further investigation
'Please don't make it any worse!'

At the office, I get a seat
'Please wait here, then it will

be fine, it takes time
You do understand, don't you?

Accuracy is required and you are
not the only one. I wish that was true!'



We get food, just enough
in our own stench, silently

arguing around
the growing puddle of *****

over the rotting mattresses
a soft bed of worms

from the breathtaking **** barrel
It seems we've been quietly forgotten

Sometimes someone whispers
if he dares and faces

the angry glances of fear
of caning, so as not to get crazy
India (Goa in 1675, Inquisition)

"Der Process" (1925, Franz Kafka [1883-1924])

Collection "Short Sermons" #30
DogKeep Nov 2022
When you know you are late to work
but let time hang loose from your body like an oversized suit regardless,
you are sure to open the floor of the earth and feel like a pervert.

Feet will try to scuttle you with haste across leaf painted pavements toward your occupation but, glancing at the bustle of similar people spread about, you now feel embarrassed.

So you force them to slow down, almost bringing yourself to a stubborn standstill. You can't stop entirely of course. The momentum of the merry-go-round would crush your organs against the stationary facade of your body in an instance, and there'd be no blood left at the back of your brain.
Work-a-day Work-a-life
Ken Pepiton Oct 2021
Martin Buber, I and thou,
du, nicht Sie,
see, I am, thou art and it is
nothing other.

Okeh, the sound, not the letter runes
to fix my meaning
to your way of taking grace
as granted.

Simple magi?
I am acted on by your you, I see,
how strange I seem, from you, looking
out
for one,
I say, one, may say, what I am then not
accountible for, or something like that, eh
no-account, you know
who you seemed to be in that one book, you passed
through
in a trance, thinking this feels real, as any reason given
listen, we are not the first to make this connection,
it only feels crazy at first, then it turns, eh
turn turn turn a spiral *******
as from the too small to imagine past the last edge
of ever and back to now,
speed of thought imaginable due to vast increase
in how far our tools can go to gather bits
to blow up with AI assistant importance, gage,
the twisted spot a galaxy, by god, there are billions
of
billions of things, and I have but one breath.

What am I to be,
wait and see, I think I am the string, soaked in hummingbird
juice from the feeder, from when the oriole tipped the balance,
and soaked me,
the string,
thinking this is as absurd as being a bug, and I have been led
to imagine being tried, while being a bug,
and some time,
after all
that
I thought I ought to imagine Sisyphus happy, due to not knowing
the whole truth of any given circumstance,
here I and it is me and thee, the ready written
and the reader wrote. I am with you always, even, smooth, no
ripple, even to the final valley filling with peace
I made with friends since who knows when,
this is the time, we gather to measure
worth of knowing who has lied,
to whom, today, all things being open, to the art intuitive, thou
seest all things, each thing
accounted for in the grand motion going
on, make it better,
AM BIG I dare you, live on and learn off chance bets
cheat the stats, if you knew what I know
then, when it counts.

You be the judge. What good can contain the likes of us?
You and I - Buber is a mind ******, par really good..
Lawrence Hall Aug 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                           The Emperor’s New Kafka

When an insect woke up one morning he found
Himself changed into a politician
And thus gatekeeper to Das Schloss, key clam
Through whom all arrival applications must pass

All shipping boxes to be checked for ticks
In a village that cannot be surveyed
Unescorted thinkers may not be seated
At corner tables in the Herrenhof

Many are desperate to be admitted
But few are desperate to be committed
David Plantinga Jul 2021
For ***** to bounce is very rude,
Unless they dropped.  Ascendancy
Is boldness we don’t like to see.    
And roundness really is quite lewd.  
For spheres, directions are the same,
And favoring the vertical
Is impudent in a mere ball.  
A proper toy should be more tame.
I got the idea for this one from Kafka’s short story Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor.  Those weird bouncing ***** really freak me out, like something out of The Twilight Zone.  I’ve always thought this story was one of his best and under-appreciated.  I’ve never been able to find much critical literature that mentions it.
Next page