"arbiters" poems
My community is like a day at the beach.
The warm water melts away the ****** seagull calls
As we build sandcastles large enough for the biggest
And most ridiculously hard to say umbrella that we can
Manage to stitch together from our broken homes.
We play volleyball with our hope
The biggest beach ball we can muster
Our net constructed of ally weave
And it’s got flames and it’s super bad-ass and ****
But nets are only nets
And nets can only do so much
You can’t play games without
The people.
We ride jet skis away from sharks
Sharing the strong towers
Of our middle fingers
Because **** sharks
I know only some of them are dangerous
But after you see a body floating in the water
Like a buoyed tomb
It’s hard to forget the biting.
The net asked us once
Why we never have a funeral
I guessed that it didn’t realize that
We don’t have the time
To bury all the bodies
That’s like
Asking us to count the sand
Like telling us to collect the waves
Like begging us to dry an ocean of tears
But
These aren’t tears
They are a body count
These aren’t sickles of sand
They are our ancestors’ ashes
These aren’t warm waves
but walls of black blood
And it’s here
Amongst the ashes
And blood
That we build our sandcastles
I look around in mine
It is insulated in white
The black blood
Only begins to broach
The moat outside
If I never bothered
To look
I might never see it
How much time
Must we spend in
Our sandcastles
Before we can
Smell the blood
Outside
How deep do we
Have to dig our holes
Before we silence the screams
Outside
Why are we just
Looking at the walls
Why aren’t we looking
Outside
We are not royalty
We are not arbiters of
Ash and blood
This is NOT a
Game
Net’s don’t matter when
All the players are dying.
How many sandcastles
Do we have to build
Before we remember
The stone riots that
Built them
Be spiked heel shoes
Be rock and brick
Be broken windows
Be shattered bone
Raise your fist against
The biting tide
Swim against the sharks
Until you bleed enough
To drown
Them
Be blood
Be ash
Be broken homes
Be ****** murals
In the street
Be white sandcastles
Then tear yourself down
Until you get back to the
Stone Walls of your foundation
You know what, ever mind
**** sandcastles
They seem too much like sharks
anyway
Oct 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015 at 8:18 PM UTC
To seek life is to find death.
Too seek health is to find disease.
To seek compassion is to find malice.
To seek wealth is to find poverty.
To seek victory is to find defeat.
To seek love is to find disdain.
To seek company is to find solitude.
To seek peace is to find war.
To seek comfort is to find pain.
To seek order is to find chaos.
To seek Heaven is to find Hell.
To seek wisdom is to find ignorance.
To seek bliss is to find sorrow.
To seek Enlightenment is to find illusion.
To seek control is to find indocility.
To seek awareness is to find a lack thereof.
To seek the conscious is to find the subconscious.
To seek waking is to find a dream.
To glorify a thing is to demonize another.
To demonize something is to arouse curiosity about it.
To seek anything is to find it's complement.
To isolate anything is to make inevitable the frenzied whiplash of it's complement;
It makes good sense for the Universe to work like this
in order to maintain Equilibrium; Balance:
Should we fail to chose to be the Arbiters, we'll make ourselves the Victims.
Jan 30, 2013
Jan 30, 2013 at 2:07 AM UTC
there's a quiet sense of knowing
in this fire, slow-burning as we
reach a state indistinguishable from
its freedom
my open heart, sure-footed as a rabbit on
pine needles in the summer, dreams
you here with me, two melting as
candle smiles climb our faces and
birds shriek their approval like
so many arbiters of the forest
May 15, 2012
May 15, 2012 at 10:26 PM UTC
Disturbers of dust,
shedding your peace
compensatorily, capering
through eyebeams to
become real.
How else achieve ideal
ugliness?
Russian Doll nakedness
opening to the possibility
of beauty.
Exhausting the pretension
of its arbiters.
Mar 7, 2017
Mar 7, 2017 at 9:59 PM UTC
Reverberations resound,
Airwaves surround,
The Holy Ethereal
Transcribes my Soul Sound.
I yearn for freedom,
I sing for heartsease,
I beseech the firmaments,
That musicality conceive
A New Dawn; Millenial Fawn;
Material-Realm Transcendence;
Spiritual Efflorescence,
O, my Spirit is hearkening unto
The Holy Dove's cathexis.
Write from your heart,
Sing from your soul,
Unravel the Perdition
Until The Vestibule of Lightness unfolds.
Dream in stratosphere;
Achieve upon The Terraqueous Plane;
Ascend The Earthen Spire;
Know we each bleed the same.
What is music without love?
What is Heaven without Hell?
The Elemental Legacy beckons you higher,
Legion fatidic arbiters conspire
Rendering self-sovereignty a liar.
Open your eyes,
Unfurl your heart,
Sing to the Aethers
That The Spirit never depart.
This is Musicality's Manifesto,
This is Destiny's Diminuendo;
Therefore,
Know the blaze, fathom the burn
Of unquenched ardor, unyielding zeal;
With passion within, ye
Shall never fail,
So pilgrimage Life's Mecca
Bearing its sacral travail.
(Se' lah)
Jun 8, 2020
Jun 8, 2020 at 12:17 PM UTC
Dusk on a dreary December day.
A brisk cool breeze blowing by the bay.
Billowing black smoke stacks, iron smelt.
Dull, dark, and disturbing a devil's deal is dealt.
Theres tremendous tension throughout this town.
Crisis, chaos, and confusion, these cretins crave a new crown.
Terrible tales of a titanic tragedy beset by the trinity.
Capture control through the calamity, and claim divinity.
A friendly face behind a false god.
Satan and his servant structured this falsetto of fraud.
The lord has left these lands.
Blood spilt stains our hands.
We're the arbiters to our own prosecution.
Awake and embrace your absolution....
Oct 14, 2018
Oct 14, 2018 at 5:39 AM UTC
To the harbingers of day, in a day of ceaseless night;
To the arbiters of wisdom, when knowledge turns in flight:
Give thy friends thy peace, and console our weary souls;
Preserve our honor, saints, as we wander the pit's bowels....
Hang naught a lamp in vain, but guide our faith, bound blind;
For we have yet to find the savior of heart or mind.
Great masses that we are; all blind, and lame, and dumb:
Find that hand within the fog, from which that lamp is hung!
We are not all lost, brothers! We are not all forgotten!
We are brothers in life and death: we die, and are begotten!
There is a string that ties our noose; yet binds us, all the same:
Seek, and ye shall find; walk, thou art not lame!
As our friends preserve our sanity, we too, preserve theirs,
As we stand as siblings in life, our numbers dismiss our errors!
Jun 22, 2013
Jun 22, 2013 at 1:56 AM UTC
engaged in
sippin’
it’s a delicacy
among all the
actions we fool
humans partake
sippin’ is of a kind,
a slower breathing,
a finery of human,
tiny steps taken,
gifting balance,
perspective
one sense
at a time
sorta a purification,
a priest anointing,
oil on a king’s head,
droplet by drop,
for that is what it makes,
takes, to be royal, patient,
wisdom of consideration
my love is royal,
parceled out like
broad wide~wet~
white wake, witnessed,
verified bu synchronized
fly~sized human eyes,
tiny impartial arbiters of
finery, the lace hand~
sewn into the delicate
fabrics of our world,
skin of our lives
sipping’
is the pace
full of grace envy,
but forget to emulate
rushing to join the
waiting frustration
of endless traffic to
meetings that blab
blah blah blah, ah,
wasting brain cells
turn to my woman,
big grin, worn in a
slow borning smile,
she
says what? as if
I’m keeping a great secret,
an angonizing revealtion for
when I slow breathe out,
in drops deliberate,
giving a pledge,
a phraseology,
I~Love~You
but taking
maybe so long
an extended ten!
whole seconds, which
to her is an eternity, earning/deserving
a punch to whichever of my arms
be nearest to her body’s
heart
while I slow laugh,
sippin’ great pleasure
from a well and proper
brimming cup of joyous,
write a small sip tribute
of an another
only love poem
Sep 24, 2024
Sep 24, 2024 at 9:21 AM UTC
illusion festers at the
altar of apathy we
sacrifice our intellect
for luxury items
woe-filled slaves chained
to hypocrisy
if this is what grows in the
absence of thought—weeds
spread out to choke all semblance
of hope—sew my eyelids to my scalp
i'll sleep no more no nightmare
is more terrible than this
reality we must endure
stretched out across this wasteland
we built temples to worship
finance bathed in our own arrogance
we fancied ourselves gods through
deicide and accepted the
inheritance that gave us such a throne
measure out the violence in Biblical
proportions spread like fire
to every corner of the globe
cover the map in a sea of
ash and smoke white phosphorous
raining from the sky like manna
on all the forgotten children
anguishing in third-world exile
we are the arbiters of our own demise
drunken bloated ignorant harbingers
reviled for our revelry of orgastic negativity
plunging the Earth into the sixth
extinction that surely spells
the end of our finite kind
some sentient race may yet witness
our only home caught in the
death-grip of its sole intellectual organism
as life ebbs from her lonely pale blue eyes
winking in and out of existence
from hundreds of lightyears far far away
no telling whether such a recollection
viewed through the chasm of space-time
might offer a mirror to some species
possessed of less self-destructive
tendencies devoid of suicidal mentalities
a warning sign to all the legions spread
across the galaxy:
do not follow in our footsteps
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015 at 10:41 PM UTC
we are all liars.
in the endless combat battle of our internal infernal eternal
wills,
we lie-kid-delude ourselves with futuristic promises,
false pretenses,
oaths and rosy predictions
in bold and bareface thoughts,
all lies, as they pass from the conscious
to the part of the brain where
guilt is stored and storied
our success leads to extensions,
the big white lies we tell others
from shame, or kindness,
and trip so easy off our moistened,
tongue licked lips, that we are continually
amazed
by our ease telling
lies.
I read the words **factual liberty” in the “newspaper of record,”(1)
regarding some political figures who oft
do tell short and tall tales
with great frequency, are
feel free by taking
“factual liberty”
and so
my
heart
skips a beat:
hostages released,
lies well dressed
and redressed
in prom attire lies well
dressed poems birthed
for the arbiters of
worldwide
propriety,
have granted me
life and the
pursui of happiness,
and most importantly
liberty, from those terrorizing
the
factuals
Sun~Day
Jun9
2024
8:55AM
_in my hometown~
Jun 9, 2024
Jun 9, 2024 at 8:57 AM UTC
When I grow up, I wanna be a heretic
Save some rope for me, all you hangmen, all you executioners, all you arbiters of holy justice,
Grab your axe and cut down this forest,
Use the wood to build the biggest pyre the world has ever seen,
Chains around my wrists and my feet,
A crown of thorns staining my golden hair red,
And that blood is the last vestige of my humanity, running down my chin and dripping onto the grass
It is the last thing I taste before you light me up,
The fire opens my skin like a present it's been eagerly awaiting all year,
Takes its fill of my blood and ***** what's left from my bones, and seeps into what remains
In that moment I become one with my destroyer,
I become that which scorches earth and blackens sky,
I am the inferno that swallows empires,
I am Rome 64, Chicago 1871, London 1666,
I am the prophesied beast,
The end of days,
I am apocalypse and I come for you and yours,
I am the anti-life, and I will leave your cities in ashes and your fields barren
I grow a hundred feet tall then, screaming up into the night like Hell come calling,
You will watch me wither to nothing this way,
You will sweep what is left of me into your dustbins, something you will dispose of with the rest
But do not mistake,
Wherever you go, and whatever you do,
You will never escape that night, when you lit me up, and I became something endless,
You will always be living in the shadow I cast
Aug 23, 2017
Aug 23, 2017 at 11:22 PM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
My lowly hoop of servile sycophants
Arise to stands of judges, triple-tiered,
Grave, gyral, escalating arbiters,
Who shake their damnatory, hooded heads
At me- Their blotch, their convict, and their prey,
Caught in their spotlight of interrogation,
To twitch and quiver in disclosure’s sight.
And now, what plan can salvage my appeal?
Jul 23, 2017
Jul 23, 2017 at 7:34 PM UTC
It's always the new ones
tradition
Breaks rank with
suffering change is us old *****
Wearing suspenders and
Proper hats. Fedoras and cowboyed
Booted gray haired country lovers hate quite a lot, not to mention pull their goddammed pants up. Music
Holy hell where's that gone to?
One soundtrack a few words changed rehabbed **** turned up until
All you hear is thump thump thump.
Should only be 50 plus years old other side the slope ***** can be arbiters of morality and law and educational agendas. We pay ALL the taxes for ***** sake.
Not to mention by time alone we have earned it! Built the country you despise. One kneed ***** calling for equality! It is. There's no racism.
How about we have white men's month?
Get it?
You blame me you young disrespecting entitled punks.
Just know, we did this. We built this country the GREATEST IN THE WORLD!!
I'll be ****** i let foreigners in , and blacks to take control.
I'm going to listen to Tucker now. He knows.
Fox News knows.
Goodbye.
Aug 2, 2021
Aug 2, 2021 at 6:19 PM UTC
The politics of hatred
Are at play in our nation
A drama of conflict
Marching in, rolling out
Aggressors jeer drunkenly
Assailing integrity
Opponents lash out
Tottering, unbalanced
Our children are dragged
Deep into the fray
Positioned by gladiators
Engaged as arbiters
Small lives lie shaking
And torn asunder
Forced to take sides
In a war of monsters
We are pushed to believe
In a dichotomous world
A heaven and hell
A right and wrong
A world of extremes
Where people divide
A dog eat dog world
Where the dogs are raging
Rabid with rage at the love
That's denied them
Furious at loss
Of a life never lived
Incensed at the dreams
They birthed and destroyed
Withered and brittle
Encased in concrete
While one is left standing
Another's defeated
Crumpled and wheezing
Ribs shattered, skulls cracked
An ill gotten prize
Grows intolerable to bear
The chains weighing heavily
On the winners and losers
The instruments of power
Work hard on the people
Wearing away
At self belief
We are told to think thoughts
That the state has invented
Daily demands
To expose our weakness
Crushing humanity
Beneath tabloid mountains
Hatred and jealousy
Abound in this time
In this age of quarrels
And vicious reprisals
The people stand desolate
With eyes red and bleary
Hands reach out trembling
With broken fingernails
Yearning for hope
That has slipped from the Earth
Nov 29, 2016
Nov 29, 2016 at 6:36 PM UTC
He had been this month’s bright, shining hope,
Producing bits of promising prose poking out of obscure journals
And higher-brow magazines here and there
Like shoots of tiny grasses between cracks in the pavement.
Then there was a novel--not good, really,
But flecked with sufficient promise
To leave the arbiters of culture wanting more,
But he departed the publication party
With a foot heavy on the pedal and the tires light on tread,
Thus precluding a sequel.
And so he remains, beyond the slow decay of time
Or the clucking and tut-tutting of critics
Who, bored, cranky, and ultimately undone by their own limitations,
Cannot help but add the dross of a touch of bronze
To all their former golden children.
Yet as his peers grow older, their lives in various states of disarray,
Their legacies vacillating between disrepute and utter disinterest,
He remains, on the dust jackets of first editions
Or inside the covers of the quaintly priced paperbacks
With their quasi-psychedelic artwork,
Completely untouched by the passing days and years,
His smile bright, hair dark and curly,
His potential limitless and unsullied.
Jan 4, 2017
Jan 4, 2017 at 11:29 AM UTC
On Modern Art
Art is in the eye of the beholder,
Modern art is especially troubling,
Since when anything goes, nothing matters,
When everyone's an artist, art is dead.
Splotches on paper art? Yes if you wish,
And so are vulvas rendered in a dish,
Mother of God submerged in dung and ****
Men urinating in men's mouths is bliss.
Who are the arbiters of this grand farce?
Why art critics, of course, for they know best,
And we, the unwashed masses, must all yield,
Our sense to what their wisdom will reveal.
Filtered through their ego art is revealed,
Through platitudes delivered with great zeal.
Redemption
Even in lost souls,
Embers of goodness remain,
waiting to be stoked.
With a gentle nudge,
Our better natures can rise,
Purified, renewed.
We can save ourselves,
Make amends for our mistakes,
Choose a wiser path.
The two poems above are inspired by two short stories from my Echoes of the Mind's Eye collection.
Apr 2, 2022
Apr 2, 2022 at 3:59 PM UTC