Mom’s words cut like a knife, honed razor sharp
Which saddened my new wife
Mom now, after years of strife
Says I married up in life!


© 2020 by Mark Toney. All rights reserved.

There once was a girl who played the fife,
Looking at her filled my ****** with strife.
She played me a tune,
And I swelled like a balloon,
Now that girl is my wife.

In a posture of a Thinker i do
Sit; my head perched on a fist which is
Attached to an arm which concludes
In an elbow which rests on my knee; the
Tile is aquamarine; the door is ajar for
There is some problem with some hinges;
Not enough-ajar to see but sufficient
Enough to notice some discontent on
The visage; the pipe is running through
My place; beginning and ending though
Beyond my sight; so the rest of it does not
Exist; and so my head is proped up and in
My bowels the strife not for life but for
Death cannot come to the conclusion;
No truce is possible i presume; as if
Someone wrings my intestines both large
And small; the wamble or a growl crumbles
My entrails and shakes them trying to
Displace then; all exertions are to no
Good ******* right was Tolstoy as
Always that there is only two truly
Important plights: good health and clear
Conscious; ******* the old man was
Right all along; though when I imagine him
In his loo of the 19th century doubling up
On his throne holding perhaps to the walls
In the moment of the endeavor to push to
Push to push O God to push forward O
Man that connotés to you something
But doesn’t change the fact that you are
Still in that tiled room with no means of
Escape but to fight and push your way
Through Oh there it goes like in the
Hospital they say to you Don’t go to
The white light but go now you must it
Is your time my man come on we’ve been
Through so much so come on go and be
And throes are in the way but that is okay
For This is the Way **** let it be and ohhhh
Bloop; Friction; Flush; off we go and may
Our paths shall never cross

This is poetry--
Unknown and discussed
In no particular matters
Until death
Doth part
the Poet from his art
And ought to be--

But the saddest lovers are the living--
Who weave dastard tragedies
In goldpence and fame
And in hope, break Foundations
on laureled mounts,
Calling desperate to empty crypts
Which once housed their Muses

Praise and please to you, Polyhymn
Us hominids speak so bold
In our kindness to you!

While this is computed
And tooled to the ringing of gold
Glass
And transitions--
Mere sparks
In the ember of forge

That these mint implements
Are the forgery of that art
Consumes Hephaestus in his doubts
Of a father's true fires
And the alchem of his own

Clio, remember thy crowning!
The doubts of this mournful sphere
And the pain of our pasts
Are yours to cast within the stele
And praise be, toward your simple carvings of man!

Doting and careful could I be,
Lashing my wrists with decay
Stash my words by the reeds
I could hold the world up to keep
Our own love of the earth
In the same way
she should be earned

There is a certainty of that
Loveless act, the plotting of land
To place corpses upon the earth
For circus and grandeur

This is ultimately
The fate of you poets,
Cast as stones amongst the stream
Blackened and cold

And you will not know but the soul of you in deed
And your words will fall Deaf
Upon these fears of the freed

When they devour themselves in the temples
And massacre the streets
Exhume worn roads
Which bridged their father's feats

And when it is done
And the words come to rest
In the ruins and the spires
All but symbols and jests

No more, no more!
For it is all in their speech
It is all in good kind
And all left to me.

"If for me you’ll go through strife,"

Says the Spirit,

"I’ll give you Life."