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At work, I loved to read,
I had a small salary,
But I had the chance
To read books.
I found my inspiration
In William Blake and his painting of Death on a Pale Horse
Time has passed, but my heart has not grown cold toward them.
Now I’m reading J. M. Coetzee,
Smoking more cigarettes,
Enduring the summer heat.
Perhaps somewhere in the West,
There’s a woman who resembles me...
Ken Pepiton Aug 30
re reading readily past and present read
read real as a word for what we do
so steadily balancing known on known,
thinking some things at the same instance,
we knew the will to tell, and knew as well
the will to listen, to learn while thinking,

to me
this means that

losing my breath, reaching your reason,
tuning our times to the musical mathematics

all matter is dust, all thought is spirit,
all memory has a price prepaid, the flaw
we may imagine,
maya, Kabir suggests to Rumi, and I ask
might justice mean what Karma does?

The nameless suggester, be it muse, or
some detail in a day so long ago it seems

forever, onward, outward, inward fretting,
lack of knowledge, sublime serpentine bending,

folding, creasing, not snapping in rigged tension,
compliantly bending the knee, image-visualize,
meandering streams of everything,
realize our link to thinking marked taboo.

Discover why secrets are so typical of life,
in bubbles where our sapien relatives live.

All men, wombed or un, catch phrase, me
included, learn in sequence, literally faster
whosoever
than at any time in ever before, we know more,
truth, conscious use of useful knowings shared,

to our advantage, supposing us capable of leading,
while braying mindlessly like a
sotted piper, blues on a fancy Hohner, here we go

asking reception signaling the surfing analogy,
lift us as might those children we see ourselves, once,
imagine turning at the first star on the left, using
Peter Pan, then Peter Principle, from Canada,
Laurence J. Peter, appears in color,
dressed in polyester 70's gear,
as would have looked cool on TV
while McLuhan was doing his thing.

Fit the mind into the hard problem,
let it seem the spiritual force, why

imagine satisfaction while satisfied?
What a man hath, why doth he hope for?

As when Lobsters stack for social duty,
forming hierarchies, certainly,

Delphic precepts urge recalling 1, 2,  3,

know how empty you are, know how small
your little lamp, asking measure mete,

nothing spilled remains thine own, surplus
is for general consumption, evolution taxes

the comprehension of the universal conversation,

we find old rules used to form governable clusters
of us, tabula rosa versions of each of us,
mirroring imaginable completed visions,

like Google Earth, eh,
imagine, we live there, and where we see from
is this imagined plateau in nowhere, really, just
imagine, spell binding,

how newly known is all we know, each time,
the economy collapses and we are left wondering,

was the pile wrong at the bottom, first test of load
bearing Lobster pride for being most useful, calling all

come climb on my back and become the memory,
of original reasons used to do truly childish things.

Roof high stilts was one we succeeded at,
having seen it done, doing it was nothing,
couple of old two by fours, common
artifacts in growing towns out west… nailgun
misfires come to the magnet rescued
from the uncoiled motor
on the old concrete mixer. Grandpa had hammers.

Life with electricity, safe bet, you never had no choice
but to live in a world without power… industrial strength,

but the stacking order adaptations from King of the Hill,
does evolve a kind of specific survival set of reasons,
make do, make things change, to become ladders,
and then stilts, to walk along the Al Can Highway
waving at the tourists on their way to Vegas,
as society evolved around us, hiding wrecking yards,

all the weights in the bag, when balance is primary,
all the weights prove their worth, be it true to fair.

We can think we know less than we must to finish,
but that is maya talking, the cloud of unknowable's
tyrannical kind of order,
attempting to dam the flow…

first king reason, ready to speak up and say, I know.
I know, yes, just
what you mean by too much,
too much
water in your cistern, let it flow down gutters
intelligently placed to slow erosion,
leaving
first pure, mere thought bought by breathing
consistently for seventy five years, attended to
by books that my grandma read as a child,

and my grandchildren read this summer.

Presently passing on the purpose of first and last.
Godin's Practice, a lesson, learned or spurned, whose to judge...
daily musing using magic tools unthinkable except in books, since ever ago,
a good book is one you enjoyed experiencing in your youthful mind.
I recommended Stranger in a Strange Land, got a fair response.
JusMe Aug 29
Oblivious to why he would write Clueless of how he could Fight,
Wishing he could handle one more night
To Many Deaths to hear any Insight.
Just a Simple Wish of Something to go Right why the **** would he have eyes that look Bright ?
Sometimes ignorance is all that exists
Ken Pepiton Jun 25
Last thing you have to do,
in your bag of things you have
in mind, that must be done, before
finality sets all you lived for
in allegorical stone, for
example, ensample
being subtil until
the inside out
recognition

set the next generation straight,
using ancient innocent Disneyifity.

Tinker's solder dam seen into once,
and being seen seeing, the seer chose
to loose the reason we've begun choosing

from nothing, something everything is made
from or of or in or on or a gross or so more
pre-positioning facts,
every where we look,
there it is, nothing is impossible
to do right. On the last try, you die.

Guaranteed.
………
addicted to love, by some other name, it feels good to be read.
they receive, interpet, discard, rehydrate, delegate, redistribute,
brook no, smile stupidly at stupidity, opinionate but never lecture,
never hector, rarely curse unless it is essential, tell good jokes, abhor verbosity, act on instinct, admit error when instinct stinks, sharpen
their teeth, their tongue, and their verbal reciprocity skills

in case,

life becomes interminable intermittently intolerable when other creatures impose, flagellate, pontificate, render the impossible as quite likely, reveal things I wish I never heard, detail the details of the inexplicably intricate uninteresting with prodigious force, and an unlimited absence of periods, commas, or breaths taken,

and escape
impossible for some meetings require good manners, first dates the remote but not trivial possibility that a false start has or can occur,
(see The Pleated Skirt poem) and the incidence of really good books in very poorly designed book covers…ditto the men variety of same!
“We read to know we’re not alone.”
C.S. Lewis says, as a character in the film Shadowland

~~~

my lovers mumble when they leer and clear the
assorted sordid, livres with dust jackets, spines,
and notable ideas, POV’s that dare to offend; me
thinking seeing they’re uneasily resting uneasy, for
there appears to be some scales, mountains that need
mounting before they can successful scale my
heights, a big BE WARY atmospheric global warning
signs prior to enter my magic kingdom,
quizzes  they are unassuaged they will pass
with  any color schema,
let alone flying ones…

that amuses me, ah well, a sign of my changes, when
those  days when a merely handsome man turned this
now skeptical-woman agog, and flushes of heat made
a breast beat,  a flesh and blood chin, ***, eyes, rock me
like a movie poster definition of movie poster handsome

they are smarter and when they cautiously inquire re my
diversity, a broadening array of fiction, philosophical disput-
ations, that lay and lie with me, they, and I bare skinned,
open to the ah ha! of titillating notions of human endeavor,
or British ****** mysteries, and lots and lots of history…

this commends and cerifies
my screening choices for,
when alone, I read
to know I am are not alone,
for my thoughts need hot
company, and my caress
of divers words diverges,
in so many directions, I need
assurance, insurance that the
men who wish to bed me are
capable of making love to my
mind, where stimulus and that
they can feed me endlessly a
variety of bouchées amusantes,
that wet my appetite for their
entirety

should they fail,
to for want of trying,
I comfort them obliquely,
informing them that
*”We need to read to know we are not alone!”
Carved stone for all to read
You cannot read it though
Feel it taught all over my skin
You just touch what you WANT to know
It could not be more obvious
Written all over my face
Choose to remain blind to the words
For you in the first place
If needing me to translate further
Not sure how else I can
Emotions simple to decipher
You don't want to know who I am
Written 2-8-21
Ken Pepiton Dec 2023
What a time capsules mission was,
was ours as well, as our lives,
measured going in,
mind state measured going out, measured coming back,
once we opened your will to wonder what we say the mission is, was it…
When
measured growing old, mentally augmented since the laying on of hands.

Some body believed, they burned all the crutches and wheel chairs,
we all heard the stories of those strangers healed and walked away,

by and by, we grow a knowing kind of religious net, we import miracles,
we make words come to self fulfilling prophetical perfect sense, until,

the incompetence of a particular kind of literalist, literature as real lessons,
learned on levels deeper than the silver screen can command,
as one reads Psalm 15 and the parable of the talents with the same angel.
hide, and watch, words,
live in tiny bubbles, times and seasons take scale,
powers of ten,
and then again a billion times a second
in four billion breaths in
and four billion breaths out, all in cadence, mortal coil chorus of average.

We the people, current idiom,
we the earthling sapient word and number users;

Brainstorms tickle our will to undermine liars, calling life impossible
to enjoy as much as many nobodies do.
Or did before my grave was opened.
An empty bottle, a sense of sublime timing tapping sources below my pre heart attack series of flat lines, I heard about, later, and sort of remember, most mornings, it is a good jump start on doing something enjoyable as breathing.
leeaaun Jul 2023
our eyes will keep on hiding
the secrets
deep inside our cores

till someone will reach us
with genuine intentions
of providing us with help

that we couldn't provide ourselves with

they will be the one
who believe in their powers unlike us
who can read what we have to say
because they understand thrmselves

making us understand the same logic
soon there will be a day
where we will learn to accept ourselves
Nigdaw May 2023
someday I'd like to sit
in my armchair
by the window
bathed with sunlight
book open at a portal
to drift off into storyland
like Alice
down the rabbit hole
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