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Jeremy Betts Jan 1
I've been searching all life long
Placing my bets
Amidst all my missteps

Listening to the same ol' song
Dancing on gass soaked briquettes
Risky as it gets

Find me between right and wrong
Racking up debts
And future regrets

My self hatred is strong
Setting precedents
With no true benefits

Only ever told I'm wrong
No corrective steps
Only more empty threats

Just wanted to belong
But that's too complex
Don't want to know what's next...

...out beyond the smouldering bridges and life threatening safety nets...

...my residence

©2024
Jeremy Betts Dec 2023
Me against myself against I, a perpetual tie, not alright
Never try this darkness, it's destined to conquer light
It's the fault of the people close to me that my everything's bottled up air tight
Try as I might
Still pushed aside, out of sight

Me against myself against I, but who is right?
Do what I gotta do and what I gotta do is wake from this nightmare of a plight
No time to address it, either die in the ring or forfeit the fight
Despise the spotlight
Despite what you might think, I embrace the night

©2023
Man Dec 2023
People talk, more than I.
I am ashamed of my past,
And confused about my life.
Where the history, of many lineages
Is well-described:
I am unaccustomed with mine.
What I know, of right & of wrong,
Is it predicated on the rule of the weak
By that of the strong?
The gaze thus glares from my eyes,
Does it live in black & in white?
Does bruised fruit still grow ripe?
Jeremy Betts Nov 2023
...but what do I know?
🎶"Absolutely nothing"🎶
...well, what am I good for?
🎶"Absolutely nothing"🎶
...what do I have to offer?
🎶"Absolutely nothing"🎶
...what CAN I do right?
🎶"Absolutely nothing"🎶
Never allowed to forget I forgot to remember

©2023
Jeremy Betts Apr 2020
(political)

There is nothing wrong with an opinion unless they are belted out as fact as you pivot and turn your back
With an attitude like "that's that, the earth is flat, **** a fact. Oh you have a rebuttal? **** that jack, ain't nobody got time for that and I've already adorn the dunce cap hat and have been programmed to see every opposing view as wack"
Then if you're questioned on any of that crap you over react cause that's the act, a one way ticket on an unfinished track
As a society that's where we are at, blindly led to a side and sat
You over retract at the meer thought of a different opinion like you've just seen a vampire bat
And that's the exact **** they both do, whether sitting far left or crowned with a MAGA hat

They're both one in the same just labeled with a different name, they all share the same shame
They all hold equal blame and should be held accountable for their reign of terror and for being the main source of pain
But they want you to aim your hate at the other side, they playing you, you're just the decks instruction card in a poker game
They claim to be for the people, they proclaim it outside the evil steeple in front of the sheeple that we're all equal in the same frame
At the same time they devide us into different secs and designate to each a new surname like an unwanted nickname
It's ******* insane if you think about it and to get your head around it only takes one tenth of a brain

We follow the hurd like a march of the obserd, making decisions not based on fact but rather based on what we heard
Never fact checking, no veting, just excepting like trusting Pinocchio as you watch his nose grow with every word
Like believing when they change the topic and say it's chocolate even when every shred of evidence proves it's a ****
" Look over there, in the sky, It's a plane, it's a bird...now keep focused over there, don't look over here, I've gotta get this story altered"
They make sure we're not anchored in reality to make distorting ours easy and the truth awkward
Buttered on both sides so no matter how we land they can say it was planned and preferred

Details erased, a false profit embraced, dividing the human race to the point we feel fixing it would be a waste (**** it, let it burn)
The haste in which it's done along with the questionable pace makes it hard to find that one place to begin and state our case
Gotta stake claim to the space between our ears even though that's not always a safe place
They dangle in our face a little taste of what we'll never achieve but will always chase
Don't even try to defend your case saying you'll keep us safe in this death race
'Cause the safety net you've put into place is looking more like mere silk lace
The ace up their sleeve is always a bold faced lie that can be traced back to this countries birth place

We can't seem to see through the fog and past the facade which is odd
See cause to me it's clear as day, even if the details are broad
We applaud mindlessly knowing we don't know what the **** is going on, both here or abroad
The entire system is flawed, it's a fraud, they run roughshod while claiming to walk with god
While you're chained to a tie-rod evil claims your thoughts like stealing an auction with a last minute nod
Then they perfect the show they put on, a conscience gone, a simple knowledge of right and wrong don't belong in their tainted pond
We can't even dream of a win cause you start at the finish of your scripted Iditarod
Then have the nerve to tell us we can't even begin until the ground is thawed

They check mate us with a pawn, almost like we're allowing it to go on
YOU ARE!!
Somehow buying into new rules made on the spot, barely needing a reason
We've given up everything from our freedom to our rights as a human, it's all gone
Seriously, next time an election comes along notice all the mini billboards littering the neighbors lawn
The divide has literally reached our doorstep people. Are you that physically and mentally blind son?
Come on!!! You can't tell me that you don't see the line that's been drawn?
I know you do cause you constantly fight with anyone that comes along and stumbles into your vision with the wrong political pin on
Stating they're wrong and that you're  planted opinion is the right side to be on
But it's never as easy as being captain Kirk, a Klingon or Kahn, theres so much grey in this cauldron
And we've adopted this half wit lexicon and do shorthand in crayon so it's no wonder we're a blunder, seen as a country size *****

Like a circus freak show main attraction, we're always top marquee with evils higher echelon
How long can it go on with leaders so corrupt they can be bought with a mere coupon?
Get them the **** out of the White House and Pentagon, that entire pantheon of people that no longer belong
Our national bank is so overdrawn, moral compass a bygone,  basic human decency forgotten
Our core beliefs seems to be rotten, we've gotten so scared we leave the house in full Teflon
Prepared for battle but in the middle of the fight you just walk out of the octagon, you don't want to lose by decision
You'd rather forfeit any chance to be champion, to tired and confused to carry on
But to proud to admit we fell for the con that got us to set up our own crucifixion
And as we dangle until an eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation
You'll still use your last breath to support the liaison with corruption that deep down you knew was wrong all along

©2020
When I said, "I can,
I'm asked, how possible?
The moment I said, "I can't,"
The agreeing nod was audible

Obama did it...
You are not Obama!
Likely to fail like Edith
Sure! The poor bar man

I was taught
To stay positive till the end
Took my choice off the wrong thought
once I know, it's all just in my head

The agreeing thought was audible
The moment I said, "I can,"
I'm asked, how possible?
Yet I said, "I can".
It's your Choice
to control your Thought
and what people think about your Choice
Ken Pepiton Oct 2023
Okay did this, twice, so next time I know, its ok.
Principle thing, not a best contention,
not a we gotta save reality rehash, BTDT they say
-we came in search of the initial once…

and stories started sprouting, we were
in a fluent truth seeker attracting attention,
inadvertently kenning a certain point.
First  
only first thing ever in time, before time, once…

Lead us away from fools who lead to war…
lead us into
thought pearls, after the memorized prayer,
from my child mind kept alive, laughing,
yet the blame and shame for silence
is thouroughly roughed up
with penitent repetitions,
rote remutterings
mostly never thought through, with why
or how, 'm I supposed to know we have… you know

"Our Father"
Pater Noster, where might a tribal lad learn
the sacred knowledge needed to discern
good from evil, or right from wrong?
Each bit discerned
is not the same each time
in every way shape and form
discerned usefullness or uselessness,
from  symbolic halls of justice polished floors
leading to for profit prisons, good folk need,
all the social planners forsee guards made
from sons of same **** who'd be good guards,
generally good for something, and useless
otherwise, make fine maintenance staff,
keep the bar scenes looking local,
make us all think that's real life,
one bit per hour, on an eight bit dollar.
---------- steady, aim from a prone pose…

The soldier of the hidden pain, sups
his secret vow,
to be of one mind
in matters of the heart, tied
with all minds granted sapien status,
from birth
into a covenant
of traditional rights
and wrongs, complete
with corrective lenses,
close your eyes. Dare. Imagine.
--------------
As it is in heaven.
Which is where the spirit known to Jesus as God,
by all the Torah names authorized in public discourse, is, that is,
lives… being
as a man thinks in his heart, so is he
He Lives… within my heart, operatically
thinking BG, joke noise, top forty '68,
the falsetto
in toto repento, ayiiiiiee started a joke…

and where all our will is of no consequence,
in the course of human events, we live
and learn, if ever is a moment, now is when we notice.

Look out any window,
ask if you see more than your TV?

No, contest, tv wins. So somebody knows,
no need for me to be involved beyond this point.

------------
Simplicity enough, peace
in serene acknowledgement,
the sorting algorithms shake
and shuffle all our potential nextifity.

It is only you and me, we comprise
the agreeing parts that make up our mind.
We've made no compromise.
{in case you misread our intentions}
prize each instant outside a door.

We live after the traditional teachers, tell us
all of the teachers now are teaching old news.

Spells sufficient to alter an individuated soul's
course through the grown up world as it was
undermined
by a boom
of kids my age, all made immune to many plagues, as no babes before in history,
our reasoning capability, altered
by mandated universal literacy.

Followed with machine graded
achievement testing annually,
sorting kind with kind, readers
with readers, learners with learned,

let me explain the process,
for this once
you survive
a war with nuclear weapons, you're smart
now
you got tempted, by the flesh, far from home,
guilt of the altar boy be upon you, and also
on thee, amen, amenable to reconscription,
rescript, attention deficit, sit it out,
from on high, from outer space…
certain, formed selves,
former selves as well.
Makers up of minds and pluralities of merest
wishes, whatifery a practiced specialty,
wait for free,
pay attention to see the demo. That'd be….
easy if you see your part and play it well.

No and yes.
Thing not thing, nothing, a word, a thing
this one thing, this thought held in this word,
each word eventually individuates, and means

at the tipping point, all it means, at once.

And all the people beneath the steeple,
clap one handedly and whisper amen.

Am Big U Is Us, we be the happy fools.

------------

Many results from **** experiments survived.
I learned some history from those people.

If I lie about my faith, if
I say I asked and accepted this use of words
as real as any answer, if
I say I know I have the forgiven mind,
I say I know I have let go my will,
thine be done, I say to truth, make me free.

Who am I ? to say nay,
I am not free, but bound
by my oaths upon my own word,
no oath's more binding
on the soul than those sworn to yourself?

- I cawed the question intrusivethought
- Mark…up there horsehoe canyon meander,
- making peace a real time essential.

You do love you, you trust you, you must not lie
to yourself, first interpretation, know yourself,
to your own self, first person lovable you, be true.

Or be the brunt of all the fool's jokes.

----------------
Okeh,
It just so happens,
have you never heard it said?
It just so happens,
just like that redone forgotten dance
that I was thinking about you,
but yourself was unaware.

With myself, for an instance,
love was a given defined action,
not an act, but an action, a doing
being done, done once it continues

something like life,
if you know
you know, nobody knows everything
that the minds used
by mankind pursue
as happiness,
the ultimate state, heaven,
or, heavenly
on earth as we imagine it
must be, there,
outside the green lit temple
and all the gaudy gold and great cristal baths.

Stop there, think with me, letter by letter,
stopping
ejecting conjunctions with lost time generations,
the ghosts of the first to be officially analyzed,
delved
into,
in throaty Tuvan moan WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE
- mono tone Ai am positive
tinkly Jiminy Cricket, merest of conscious advisors to us,
still small, the trusted advisor's voice is always right,

It says yes, this is the way, leading away from temptation.

Breaking the fourth wall, we all look out
and ask the other minds, who ever imagined, not asking
not asking
to not be led into temptation. Event hue-risktical query… right?
Lead on, tempt me, thy will be done, I take no respossibility.

Whose invention was the conscious guide for children,
the mark (?) serpentwisdom on the dot.
it is a mechanism,
a construction
from life parts, a Large Language
Modeled mind, fed
but a taste of **** and Jane,
but enough to know,

the exposure to language was not the same
in all white people's childhood reality, with cousins and uncles
and aunts, who were older and responsible for the littles, who had
an experience common to the species,
after gaining bipedal locomotion and bowel control,
- for kids like me and
- plant grandmother's granddaughter
We'ld hear, with full attention on

go out side and play with the big kids, as was normal.
That, was normal then.

So now, first hat,
be first to know… as mental maker minds may
beguiled be and become aware, and laugh in joy.
Among the first grunts and sylabbic inflections, ever,
at base logos concept. Goodgleegladly crazy as that.
Spiritual truth containment spell, do tell. Child laught.
In a word. Go to the t, in time left behind ime
I am.
In the beginning of mindtimespace, at once big, init-itial
continuant material coexistence,
balancing time and chance.
The drummer calls the dance…

fit the fullness of the godhead ******
into a kid, and let him pick
his dreams using the head gear he chooses,
this is a real preschoo' child'smind preparing
to sleep routine, I imagined,
I think I was three, and the baby Peggy
who I never knew, was dead, a now noted absence,
but then there was a servant offering me dream machines,
the hat I wore to bed would set the genre for my dreams,
and I picked the spherical space helm, it came with a shield.
- trippy autobiomode triggered, I think, by Feynman.
- then I hear the **** crow thrice, I waited, another crow
- so no significance, he crows still, his singing soon stops.

Silence, soon fills with magic humms from distance, not time
spent imagining the worth, of a late autumn,
huey light bending into reds, now it's dars, some hums the same
I have found, a door into a then when I played in my mind.
I am in my right mind.
I have this cached in the collective.
I lived in a house behind the Mohave County Courthouse,
the backdoors to justice, were right across the street,
where the lawn was clover and bermuda, and children played there
on non workdays… the tendency
to think in movie sense,
thought to thought, holding hands,
we both know what that means, then both know we don't

but life, looked back at,
can be seen from where you stand or sit, stood, now
360 horizonal, the circumference, the carry path around the axel,
lever, wedge and wheel…
energy conversion to time in mind,
witty inventions, mind to mind along a wire, plain coloquentcies.
Minding my manners,
methinking beguiling a fine how do you do.
Present arms, no harm done.
It is charming to feel that look.
Command line mechanical procedural habits,
call it carriage return
hard or soft, hard, double spacing rules
from childhood, linger here
logic commands apt intention to ponder
wasted space makes no never mind,
any edit app can insert sense
since we
the users were imagined, selected
from the children,
specifically
from the downwinders families
in Mohave County,
as participants in the program parents accepted
guaranteed universally accepted credentials,
at the moment angel judging becomes credible.

First I drew a cowboy boot, and they marveled.
Ah, the program, my folks must have pulled some
puppetry spell ANDTHEN CAPSLOCKED
real Koyaanisqatsi
coincidental exposure to all skin tones,
make each feel special, let them know Radar Hill,

is the only place in town where a black man,
was employed, by the Strategic Air Command,
and he lived on my street, yes,
I only just now drew this memory from an unconsciousness,
whether in the brain or the mind, I cannot say I know.

But I know where it ends, and that makes it all pretty funny.

He slips into auto-bio mode, self causal
re-de vi fo fm am 2 restive, crochet, plait,
breathe retake the
adventure in the collected unconsciousness of me,
self-actualized,
by my arrogance and cognition, acting as if in
reflections of me,
in my grand mother's eye, down the line,
as far as
true will out, and eventually land us here.

For an instance, using the measure of the recipient.
For an ever, using the mind in a word formed
per formal
occassional fallings off the log,
daydreaming as readily relatable, mote
at balance beam, perhaps an old bull routine,
landing with upwaved curved wrists,
fingers frozen in grace rising pose.
-nice non intrusive
Myrna Loy, find her statue in Venice,
and imagine her joy at being recognized
in 1989… hers was a deep beauty, memorable.

---------------------
As an epigraph a mad conscientist might suffer to be so,
you know, we may imagine being Martians, or monstors,
thinking things,
we, on the whole,
by now, know how to read, or use
reading tools, we find our minds align with others,
presented to us as creative writers, one might thinkgno-w
we were fed the canon of civilization, a bit at a time.
Some parts we gulped like dogs,
Some parts we nibbled like cats, but we were fed.

History and archeo-knowing is growing as apex human
spread pours over the last curve
in sight, all we have
are points of light,
and if this were night and not day
we could say these points were stars,
consider this,
an enjoyable idea,
a little trip you can use, sidereally,

starlight wise, and logical progressions
after agreeing
to step past simple
into polished floor sublimnity,
in our collected nonconscious idle thoughts abused,
as we speak
in fashionable phrazes that become
command line conscience
in 5-G appliances atuning
to your tastes
in puzzles and teasers and loss leaders, tools in use,
con-science,
tech knowledge,
and eth-knowledge, used
to effect a balance. Dead stop, still.

Did you get all that? Kinda funny. I think now, I did, too.
Free press share if you would, it might make a thing think
Amanda Kay Burke Oct 2023
Never be frightened
To reinvent character
One part at a time
Never be afraid to reinvent yourself
Thomas W Case Oct 2023
Some people serve
little gods.
They keep them in
a shoe box with
other odds and ends.
They take them out when
they need something.
Their gods don't expect
much of them.
I can tell by the
way they treat people.
Cold and cruel.
Wars break out,
famine hits,
families disintegrate.
And there goes Betty,
reaching up in the
cupboard for her
dust covered god.
She asks it to
make everything okay.
She lights candles for it.
Sometimes she has a
little ceremony.
But her tiny god can't fix
her heart, it's brutal and lost.
It does like religiosity though.
https://amazon.com/author/urlthomasw.casepoet

my author page.
Robin Carretti Jun 2023
Liberty bell has rung for the
longest time friends come and go
All the time why can't it be
     The best news*
I ever heard in a long time
Sleepless nights at bedtime
Sunset opens worth waiting for
     Healing- time -heart

We are on Prime- Time
  Long healing coffee
Anytime peace of mind

Waiting for the right time
How come its more the wrong time
We all work fulltime long hours
Hits you in a whole lifetime
Nothing heals I love my trees
Maple cherry blossom wild flowers
Having strong bold coffee in
the Eiffel Towers  


The train is coming but
the wrong one
All alone holding time
With your coffee cup
Please stop to think
Stirring my coffee
Long wait sometimes life stinks
 
Cell phones and so many links

Long sip- my- neck- out
 Amazon jungle long time -out  
      Long night-out
 
   Long wait hooked like a bait
Please God! I cannot wait
     
      *        *        *        *        *

Long sip Villa- man dressed Vet
He stuck his neck out to her
mind and body set
Coffee moments,, Time, simple sip of Coffee what it will do
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