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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.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2019
.i'm "sorry"... in a muslim society i'd be asked to only read one book, by a camel jockey by the name of muhammad, one camel jockey... 72 virgni experienced, that's worth celebration? you ever 2 walk into about 9 prostitutes giving you the "eye"?! 72 rottweilers: that would be fun! you know why i stopped liking western societies? they started to become very much islamic... in islam you have one man, and his one book: bibliothekvoneinbuch... the mantra speaks: i am expected to angst diese mann... what hope if western society? they also have their: einvereinheitlichendbuch... what is the quran to neunzehn-achtzig-vier?! weltlichblaupausen: secular blueprints... 1984... another ******* mantra... akin to the quran... secular: weltlichblödsinn! how many books does it take to create an islamic, or a western secular society? apparently! the ratio 1 / 1 (one to one)... the quran / 1984... *******... i'm not even bothered by the politico youtube commentators being censored... they only read one secular book... i don't like the sort of minds associated with only one book, these pretend not to be, but being, pseudo-muslims... wow! what worth of choice! either the quran, or 1984! spaghetti tangled junkies can have their way... sorry... what speech is there to be worth defending? i don't like either the quran, or the secular bible of 1984... zombies... either side of the "argument"...  i honestly hate the sort of people that only allow themselves 1984 commentary... one culturally relevant book they ever read, and it seems: the only book they ever read: or will read... (red / reed)... so it seems... the world pivots on only three books being digested by the general public... the bible, the quran, 1984... i've read too many books to have to succumb to this "cool" secular narrative of modern prophesy.. let's see english, a language, at its most flamboyant! british grenadiers' fife & drum... the sort of english not ready to invite immigrants! 1984 commentator zombies... **** me... **** unius libri... hardly an islamic quote, e when attributed to st. thomas aquinas... oh i'm shaking at the knees! as far as i am concerned muhammad is rolling in his grave when the arabs "discovered" oil... as is Khadija, rolling in her grave, scolding muhammad... i should attain the **** unius libri fear... but then i find... religion... predated the scientific concept of cloning... muslims were cloned, cognitively... obviously not physically... antithesis of dialectics... cloned... mind-bribes... i should fear a man with only one book, esp. if he wrote it himself... but then again, i fear that sort of man for all the wrong reasons... such company... eh... when looking up to someone akin to king ecgberht... yeah... i fear a man with only one book... what boring company they must have and must be.

completely: unpalatable...
   there's funny,
there's a punchline...
but then...
       "****" just becomes annoying...
i have learned that
the anglo-ßaß sense of humour
is fine...
          until it becomes excessive...
then...
well...
        then it becomes annoying...
really... annoying...
not, akin to, something,
i'd welcome to match:
host-it
    (samnaðr-den)
          ᛋᚨᛗᚾᚨᚦᚱ ᛞᛖᚾ
to account for a selb
                      (self)...

or
           minn thungr hjarta
            ᛗᛁᚾᚾ ᚦᚢᚾᚷᚱ ᚻᛅᚨᚱᛏᚨ
                     (my ... heart)...

i'm not english, but i do understand
extending the notion
of black humour...
up to, and including the point
of cutting-off
this strain of wit,
of intelligence
playing baron of status...
for the little man of
ridicule,
            i don't like overtly
intelligent comedy,
but the anglo-ßaß have pushed
have pushed the wrong buttons,
at the right time,
english comedy cannot achieve
a rekindled status
of being export material,
it has, devolved,
into a geographic idiosyncrasy...
i live in england,
and even i,
am not in on the "insider's"
take on a joke...

                    if i don't understand it,
you won't understand it...
           it's funny when it's plain
dumb, of slacking the intelligence
quotient,
  but not when its plain,
outright cipher logistics...
        
surely the english should be paying
less attention to me,
and more to...
those 300 or so illegal schools
set up by Pakistani muslims,
yes, no, maybe?

                     there's funny funny...
there's sort of funny...
and there's funny...
but i don't want to think too much
about it, either being,
or not being funny...
   laughter like tears is
highly impulsive,
   subsequently highly
spontanoeus, and...
                          uncontrollable...

black humour is one thing,
but telling jokes
to the point where you reach
a per se crucible?
and the jokes are so,
so, so "intelligent" that they become
"unfathomable"?
i think that's the time you take
a break from being "comedy arbiters"...

oh... unless this is...
where you let me peer into
the "antibiotic" /
  "xenophobic" reactionary
tactic?
  no wonder i'm not
"in" on the "in-joke" of
the demographic!
     **** me!
              of course i'm not
supposed to get it!
  it's not funny to me,
simply because the in-group
mentality is so sophisticated
that i would never be
in on the "in-group" giggles!

         good! good!
at least thanks to this,
we will not be seeing
much of comedy, "comedy"
being exported outside of england
akin to monty python!
good!

           it's good that the crown
of comedy was taken off the head
of the english...
and given to someone else...
i liked "intelligent" comedy
up to a point...
   then "too much" thinking
became involved...
and i lost both the plot and a sense
for giggles...

     point being,
what was the best joke i ever heard?
only last night...
i was unable to think...
but i laughed...
     it wasn't exactly
the aeons of the sea before me...
it was the void in my mind
that was the joke...
         an existence...
with a ******'s worth of
"thought": albeit bound to:
not thinking...

that's the best joke
i've ever heard,
  hence my painting of
the hebrew definite article,
i.e.:
                         HA,

e.g. ha-stanley:  
                              the-satan.

*and why wouldn't the persians
rebel against the orthodoxy driven
camel-jockeys?
the persians would bow before
the arabs?!
                   really?!
fly a ******* kite, eat a mango...
*******
   donning a glove filled
with ice-cubes...
     i gather, that, islam,
was, the monotheism,
that found itself,
hopeful, to be immune to
a schism...
       and what's so true about islam
if it has succumbed
to the ontological reality
of all religions, except judaism,
namely, a schism?
      islam is lucky though...
unlike christianity,
with its late initial schism...
then the  
polytheistic-esque schism
past the orthodox / catholic /
protestant "debate"....
                 islam was lucky...
only one schism...
persians not happy being ruled
by camel jockey arabs...
   so... is it a "true" religion?
oh sure, sure...
i'd convert...
      but there was a schism in islam...
so it's no longer a "true" religion,
is it?
          why would it be?
the religion encountered a schism...
what if, and if i would...
i would... i would convert
to the shia branch of islam...
i wouldn't convert
to the sunni faction...
        what then?!

            true as in unifying as in:
rebel iran?!
  oops!
                   to hell with this world...
the bible, the quran,
the secular bible known as 1984...
if there's no afterlife...
well...
          i'm already bored, stiff, dead,
whatever comes next...
m'eh...
                whatever comes comes
and that's just another whatever
with no justification
or a fixation of a consequential
purpose.
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-*** 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
Richie Vincent Aug 2017
My uncle used to tell me that the sky was blue because we lived inside the eye of a giant, the sky would never cloud over, Nothing would ever feel better because it was already the best it could feel,
Nothing was ever going to hurt us and we could live our entire lives safely

When I was 14 years old my uncle took his own life by hanging, but my family always told me he passed away in a car crash,
Now I don't remember the last time I wore a seatbelt because ever since then I've had a really hard time believing in safety

I'm so scared of never being able to not feel like this,
To not feel like I am being taken advantage of,
My mind will forever consider these situations no matter what situation I am in,
I could stay up night after night trying to convince myself otherwise,
not that it would make any kind of difference,
So whenever I find something new and refreshing, all I know how do is sit in silence,
Hope to quiet this strange hurricane happening inside of me,
It kind of feels like one of these days the winds are gonna rip me to shreds, but I won't have the help, because I'll tell myself that I don't need it, anyways

I am terrified of calling myself a writer,
I am terrified of realizing that the only escape I have from this is a pen and a piece of paper,
Anxiety keeps telling me that one day all of the ink is going to spill out and the only option I'll have left is to take myself out,
They'll have to see me laying in a puddle of my own ink, my veins soaking in what once was my emotions and feelings, dripping through the floorboards and into the ground,
After that they'll see my entire body sink,
They'll see every comma and exclamation point flow out of my fingers and feet like it's some kind of tar filled river,
They'll see my lips start to quiver and the only thing left to come out,
The only thing they'll ever hear me say ever again,
Will be a sliver,
"I don't know why I am apologizing, but I'm so sorry that it never got better"

I wake up every morning and I am terrified,
I'm terrified of the nightmares I had the night prior,
When my best friend told me that I'd burn in a lake of fire because of my depression, that I wasn't normal, and that I had a disease,
That I was so sad all of the time because I didn't believe in a God,
That I was so hopeless because I wasn't leaning on some overplayed fake version of reassurance,
That I chose to pray to these demons to set me free,
The same demons that cast these shadows over me,
I remember yelling through tears at him, "I don't need to believe in a God to believe in myself",
I'm trying my best, but at this point, good things always seem so foreign to me,
It just seems so foreign to breathe

So until I reach that breaking point, where the moon and the sun are both only arbiters of light that I can use to guide myself through this darkness, through what feels like never ending night,
I'll be terrified of everyone and everything

I'll either get to happiness, or I'll die trying
Samuel May 2012
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
Onoma Mar 2017
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.
Conversation is Arbitrary.

We are all Arbiters.
Michael Franco Oct 2018
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....
Sam Winter Jun 2013
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!
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)
Excelsior Forevermore,


Sanders Maurice Foulke III
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
writ while sipping’ my morn coffee
open some eyes to its applicability
to just about everything
wisdom of writing prone and
well heated
Pearson Bolt May 2015
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
Robin Carretti Jun 2018
She lifted the morning flap her eyes
on water but things felt distressed
She needed so much to hold onto
something that was bright nice lines
with structures with meaning
But the places she went
was overgrown
was hitting hard times

The family was not aware
of the state
property lit by only
heaven knew the story
behind the lighthouse
“I do indeed know what
you mean or do I?"
So much thinking and
time lot of history
behind these lighthouses

Well, we all know what he’s after
wanting to meet the heiress
he was born
with the lighthouse spoon
But her gentlemen stopped
like stock-still
kinda a ludicrous mixture went
high stern voiced he is
What about the high tea tide
went dreadfully
with waved by at her
keepsake humor
Sometimes she would be so startled
to wake up to him so close proximity
she felt his slight breeze.

But couldn’t hear the faint of whispers
But the sounds got more intense
like his continual sounds how he met
“Let’s start again, like to dove birds
“Like you came looking for him
you echoed cataloging his picture
What was it intrigued and how things
could just respell over her
Sometimes it was bad and distasteful

How she hold’s on to her heirlooms. She had amazing command over her body and her blushed cheeks she was the control. He’s one of the arbiters he could be quite diabolical and she sometimes could see right through his sea eyes. The force went higher he took more of a chance dives of potential.

It needed to be restored to a former
self like a flower
the morning of September glory
The morning mist was getting higher
but she had this necklace it could have
lit up a whole entire lighthouse
This was handed down to her she
fled like the heiress from ancient times
Poseidon of generations
Like the God of the sea, the brother Zeus
made such a fuss everything so articulate
and the structure had to be magnificently
perfect
Like those iconic movie stars,
they just shine on. So blue velvet sky
“Elizabeth Blue Violet” pansies, or
Doris Day, our house its just another day
I saved the best for last Judy Garland
she sings up the entire lighthouse.

God Apollo reached up to the lighthouses
like the chariots statues were being loved by
the Patriots There was nothing no one could
put a finger of account there was something
about him all elegance
With a final importantly transient
an image that he projected
The day was getting longer but by the sea,
you could see no man is an Island but a
lot of hidden treasure of keepsake how
the sunset reflected on her skin.

A vision of honey golden watered
eyes that wanted to be up
in the lighthouse
looking down at him from the sea
Those lighthouses in America 12
iron Stanchion like the powerful
the psychic full force of bell
sounds near the lighthouses
How they would go off in
different times
but she had this facade and a lot of
the confidence she needed
more training
on him and defense

Her name was
Georgette what an enchanting
painting
of lighthouses and one
of them caught her
like he gave her the
crepe (Suzette) eye
like the bell rock

Many moons ago 1810
greatest achievement it was
an iconic movie vision
(Dynasty Blake) was well read with high
standards but he was pleased to
her when it suited him.

and to be showered by someone that can
light up her breeze ripple past.

He was eminent eligible and super rich and titled.
She could see him in the mystic bewildered

She wishes she was with him to
smile fleetingly so (Iconic) the name with dignity
Slowly she looked around again where could
he be in the lighthouse she sensed and
thought she saw a shadow
Her innocent daydream how could
it becomes more distant than ever

“She detested sometimes he knew about her fears

She was afraid “Whats to become”
she took a deep, shuddering

breath of sea air a loud pouring of contempt
She always feared what will happen next
”What happened?
He was getting to her a
surge of threatening energy
How she could tip her head up
she had these fun tower looking eyes.

But he was always on top and she needed to
see things for what they really are higher
She was feeling every single rock
digging into her back.

Wanting to go to the ball she was absorbed
like something overflowed it masked
her eyes her spirit
like an ultimate game, the keepsake be
careful how it could wear you
down in flames
How she was born and bred to the
higher anchor
but he was the shield
She-devil Islander demands and things
the Rhode Island lighthouses as she was
reading it she saw
his name on the bottom of the page

She was enamored but he had never felt the
tallest inclination to succumb keepsake
in her corner deadly
spark of the tomb

She was looking up at the
lighthouse clock
how in the corner of her
eyes something
was ticking like a candelabrum
then the doorbell rings and that
was history
Those sentinels shined over two
miles of the harbors.
..He had had one particular bell
ringing on for her
She identified the bell she
gave off the energy
He had to resist reaching out to her
deliberately he allowed himself to drift
right through her mind how she heard
the tower ring from many moons ago
Something is everything how it kept inside out mind we cannot leave it for a second like a bell it keeps ring in our head how do we wake up are we in our own bed is it a dream beyond anything you could imagine so many icons you see everywhere but who are you like the keepsake holding your heart for someone somehow you truly believe he's there then somehow he disappears he not up high in the lighthouse where did he go? Where do you want to go we hold our heart on a chain all linked into the lighthouse
Andrew Rueter Oct 2018
Suspicion runs rampant
No trust can be found
Even when lies are recanted
To their nature we’re bound
Releasing the hounds
Silencing sounds
Of victims drowned

Suspicion exacerbation
From false accusations
Causing ****** lacerations
Through spatial relations
Like shared incarceration
Or the local fascination
With public *******
Or child molestation

There are horrible people out there
They lack moral fiber
They do the wrong thing consistently
So in order to feel dignity
They develop extreme compartments of honor
And search so hard for instances to use it
It often comes out at inappropriate moments
And is used as an opportunity to signal masculinity
Imagine the person constantly yelling
“No one talks **** about my family/religion/country”
Then flies off the handle at the slightest perceived insult
This person may care about what they’re defending
But their defense is about themselves
And how badass and imposing they are

Conclusion jumping
Hatred pumping
******* lumping
The convicted with the accused
So with that flawed logic used
They decide to mercilessly bruise
Somebody a liar happened to choose

Why do people not always believe victims of crime?
The existence of liars
Who taint society with their dishonesty
Yet will never have to face their own impact
By apologizing to a survivor no one believes
For it is their kind
Manipulating minds
Turning men blind
Until trust is resigned

The liars mix with buyers
Lighting the world on fire
Creating an awful empire
Where the innocent are *****
And the innocent are slaughtered
I don’t know much more I can take
When no one seems bothered

I don’t have any answers
If we make penalties harsher on liars
We could discourage actual victims
But the injustice victims of false accusations deal with
Fills my heart with immense anger and frustration
People have no faith in our flawed justice system
So they look inside their own incapable minds
Deeming themselves the arbiters of justice
Too stupid to understand their lack of moral authority
That savage nature is reflected in the punishment they inflict
Innocent people die in a dark and lonely cell
While the rest of us must live in this deceitful hell
Where our minds are infected by hatred’s smell
We must pull love up from the spiritual well
To shield us from the ceaseless church bells

Those who lie
Mix with grime
Taking time
Deciding who dies
Innocent cries
Muted by guys
Smart as flies
That hatefully wait
For someone to mutilate
So they can prove they’re great
We must grow before it’s too late
And begin living in an empathetic state
Tyler King Aug 2017
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
Nat Lipstadt Feb 29
“I fear that many people are put off by poetry because they don’t know where to start. If I have any advice for them, it is this: find what you like.

Who is to say what guides this process?

In my own case, it has simply been the fact that certain phrases, poems, and figures have acted like flare-lights along the path of my own life. Sometimes you see a flicker in the darkness and know that it is saying something—often something of great importance—and you sense that you have to go toward it, to get near to it, all the time looking out for other lights.

My love of certain poets stems from a single phrase they wrote that hit me like a great freight train of truth.

At other times, I have been attracted to a poem or a poet because I am taken by that feeling of recognition that someone else has felt or thought exactly the way I did. As C.S. Lewis says, as a character in the film Shadowlands, “We read to know we’re not alone.”

Sometimes, we read poets because we want to be like them, or because they are arbiters of good taste, or have been through something we want to know about. Literature—poetry, in particular—offers us a way to become different from what we are or might have been otherwise.

In the end, I suppose the question is: What is the purpose of all this? Why is it worth making our heads into a well-furnished room?

I think it’s because what we have up here—in our heads—is the only thing that cannot be taken. So long as we have memory, we cannot be made into automatons by man or machine…”

Which brings me back to Shakespeare.

The Tempest is the last play Shakespeare wrote on his own. And because of that—and because we know so little about his life that we always look for clues in his work—a lot of autobiography has always been read into the play.

It is about a magician, Prospero, at the end of his magical days. At the end of the play, he promises to drown his magic book and break his staff. It is impossible not to read a certain amount of biography into this, Shakespeare’s farewell to the stage.

Every now and then, somebody comes up with a new theory about Shakespeare. All have been heard before—for example, the vivid description of the sea in The Tempest indicates Shakespeare must have spent time as a sailor.

My response to this? In that case, Shakespeare must also have been a Roman emperor, several English and Scottish kings, a Danish prince, a shepherd boy, a teenage girl in love, a murderer, and almost every other person who ever lived. It is a reductive argument, because it forgets that in the realm of the imagination, you can be all things without actually being them.

And, in any case, at the end, it all disappears, falls apart, and comes together again somewhere else.

This speech, by Prospero, in the fourth act of The Tempest, is the finest farewell of any I know, and one I hope to keep in my own head for many years to come.

**Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep
excerpt from
https://www.thefp.com/p/a-second-year-with-douglas-murray?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=260347&post_id=141539442&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=1njhw&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=emailwaq
David Betten Jul 2017
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?
From my play in verse, thefloralwar.com
Commuter Poet Nov 2016
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 ******* 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
29th November 2016
Wk kortas Jan 2017
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.
Nat Lipstadt Jun 9
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~
(1) New York Times
Andrew Rueter Dec 2021
I can still remember going to school
when it was raining
morphing into a mule
for things draining
from the life I thought I would rule
it's enflaming
all of this taming
with no one to save me
when the student meets master
whose whip is faster
than the policeman's blaster
protecting their interests
on the command of corrupt arbiters
so I can't make up the difference
when their money muscles are bigger.

They turn my peers into overlords
I can smell the overtone
of the rear odor grown
living in my motor home
parked at my job
the ark of the lost
heartless and tossed
friends of the frost
counting the cost
of commodity crops
guarded by cops
so I must pay the right price
or get filleted in a knife fight
by members of a different ark
their difference is stark
like they're the FARC
from Jurassic Park.

We once went to school together
until we were unspooled forever
diverging cultures sever
our tumultuous tethers
until we're rats racing
to the flats facing
the cliff casing
of a bullet blazing
through rodents raging
while automatically aging
in a game not worth saving
until our grave is paving
so the rats contract rabies
and try to enslave me
through shameless shaming
their nameless maiming
is grating gravely.

Their laugh of wit
a crack of whip
they slap I slip
in their pool of spit
which is fuel for grit
to not take their ****
until they break my hip
with the quake of work
I'm too raked and hurt
to spank their skirts
so I bank my irks
for another day
when I want to play.

The days continue to pass
as they misuse my ***
their issues last
through the time elapse
I can't seem to grasp
my life from their clutches
I tightrope with crutches
until I break for my lunches
or break from the punches
of a million miniscule crunches.

They break me in
they break me down
I can't hear any hymns
over factory sounds
I haven't been to the gym
since I developed this limp
being their gimp
getting ****** on the regular
my only communication is cellular
feeling so molecular
kicking for a living like Shane Lechler.

I look at the analogue clock
sitting next to my Econolodge cot
to see this is all the time I got
getting high smoking ***
pretending I'm something I'm not
which is happy
childhood friends outlap me
all the while laughing
about old jokes from school
like forgotten jewels
carried by a beaten mule
working for wool
so it can dress like a sheep
so it can get some sleep
to forget the regrets it's reaped.
(huff fin Bach seat driver)...

Aye kin recall when both offspring
     (yay high) as a small child
and now ma deux daughters
     (fledgling young chicks
     though they be),
     flew the coop, sans answering,
     when call of the wild dialed

their biological cell
     phone rang off the hook
as post pubescence metamorphosis
     (into young adulthood),
     they gingerly did brook
arbiters as consensual nymphs
     baited verboten fruit yum zook

thus, freed as private on call designated
     papa chauffeur de jure
yet, a nostalgic feelings
     surface within mine being,

     when many occasions
    witnessed this night owl
     barely awake
     stumbling out the front door

nonetheless diligently
     donning "taxi driver" hat
now, a virtual dust collector
     replaced by near identical head gear

     capped upon me noggin monogramed
     with pet name "hubby" and/or "matt"
thy (well worn) first name,
     despite futile protestation
     simmering into *** for tat

case in point encompasses this poetic blip
     instinctually navigating
     (southeast as the counting crows fly)
     (with ma own embedded

     global positioning satellite micro chip)
from Schwenksville habitue
     to center city Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where,
     nary agitation viz calm, cool,

     and collected demeanor did e-clip,
nor (as prevailed during anxiety fraught youth),
     emotional state would hove done a flip
with clenched steering wheel,

     whar white bar knuckles would grip
but nowadays (courtesy
     of targeted prescription medications)
mien psychological state quite mellow,

     and approaches ferrying human cargo
     via 2009 Hyundai Sonata
     as one shaded eyes, cool cat,
     and (so like...mon) really hip

telling spouse to pipe down and zip her lip
lest she wants the aggravating maneuver
     thru plethora of pedestrians
     (nope, yours truly
     DID NOT run anybody over)!

This mister plied his way
     to 1601 Market Street with nary a hitch
though returning back northwest to our abode
     entailed a bit hove va glitch

when orientation
     found me way off beaten bath,
     (a quarter tank of gas) circling
     the Philadelphia Airport with

     "Welcome to Tinicum Township),"
     some natural wildlife niche,
and of course did NO confession getting lost,
then breathing sigh of relief

     espying urban skyline,
     where Ben Franklin statue
     forever frieze a stitch
in time, and even rumbling
     deafening noise elicits nada flinch!
Victor D López Apr 2022
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.
You can my podcast reading of the above poems and others at https://anchor.fm/victor-d-lopez
wordvango Aug 2021
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 ***** ***** 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.
#posing as a conservative
Joe Marcello Jan 2021
So big tech, the media, and Democrates will team up
They will be the arbiters of what is now true
These television and print journalists will all be cheering
Not realizing they'll be a day they come for you
Lawrence Hall Sep 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                The Back Yard Museum of Art

Children are the truest arbiters of art
Finding beauty in the unlikeliest things:
A bottle cap, a rusted auto part
Metal washers, broken glass, cigar rings

A discarded knife with a broken blade
One dime-store earring with one rhinestone
A greenish bit of plastic – can it be jade?
And a real-life, genuine dinosaur bone!

Art nicely displayed along the fence row -
Adults think it just junk, but what do they know?
Art, like poetry, is where you find it.
Megan Sherman Aug 2021
Beguiled? By whom am I beguiled?
Not Kings; for they are mean
The arbiters of irrational wars
Their lust for blood is keen

By rebels? Yes, they have my Heart
I fear their end, demise
At hands of an immoral state
Whose corruption deep as skies
What is poetry?   It is a mystery
It is a desire to live forever; to Love
Forever; To write Forever.  It is accessible
For who can say what it i and what it is not
Aspire to be something  you can be a poet
A poet is somebody with possibilities for
That alone ****** deserves to be respected
Poets are ever threatened to be called out
As charlatans but the greatest danher comes
From within their .own  Jealous,paranoia are
Ever on the horizon and all they to counter it
With is their poetry a tenuous thing hanging
Upon inspiration which is given and and then
No  one knows when or if it shall come back
The complex must be made simple without a
Vital truth being lost But then what is truth as
A judge once said of ******* I may not
Be able to define it but I know it when I see it
Might he not have been wiser and just said I do
Not know.  But that peace prevail we must have
Arbiters and we pay them well very well then
Change our minds that we have put in chains-
The poet is eminently human flawed and in
Need of  love and forgiveness to go on Love
Divine and human and to give it back in all
Ways but poetry is his chosen way the gift that
Is asked for To know God's mind and work out
Words thaat can be understood by all who  have
Ears to hear as Jesus said of His parables ; and
That some would hear and remember and only
Later understand.  Are their amongsts us some
Pretenders it not mine to say but to have a wish
To be is enough and God may is His wisdom or
Foolishness grant it-Let us love one another even
Unto folly and the lord thy God as One. Amen


For Brendan
poetryaccident Jun 2019
This is a work for the tome
it’s publication now foretold
in distant days beyond the now
holding scratchings frowned upon

collection made of muttered thoughts
each alone is not enough
to count as authoring to the ones
those arbiters of writer's charm

depending on a word count
this measure slams stanza’s breadth
crafted for a wry intent
now ****** against the yardstick

critics rally to critique
still I’ll pen another poem
the muse demands a sacrifice
a book waiting in future time.

© 2019. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20190618.
The poem “A Book Waiting” is about the less glamorous world of poetry writing.  It holds this place in comparison to vaunted novel.
Brian Buttlicker Dec 2020
Verse 1:


Ive walked this road many times before
This time it seems something strange
I took a wrong turn
Did I lose my way
Did I break my compass
Let my distracted mind stray


Hold my thumb up to the sun
Manifest destination
Road rise to meet me
World won't you greet me
For a while will you mirror my smile


Chorus:


Always one more
Means an even score
We can't win for losing
But we losers are doing just fine


We're going to be all right
Awake through the long night
Prepared for winter, we arbiters of center
Never fear one more mile


Verse 2:


Dear lady will you fix me some vittles
My feet are sore and spirit brittle
Sit beside your fire, before I retire
I'll even sing you a tune for a smile


I won't refuse your company
Feel free to lie next to me
But I'm a gentleman
I won't get handsy
Unless it's you that asks me


Bridge:

 

Biding
Building
Patiently
Anxiously
Calmly
Coura­geously
Humbly
Waiting
Distracting
Acting
Exacting
Protecting
Lis­tening
Existing
Persisting
RESISTING


Dear man, may I offer you a hand
Cutting wood and plowing your land
All I ask is a roof to sleep under
And perhaps a bit of warm supper


I notice your daughter is beautiful
Has the lass given her heart away
She's nice to talk to
Rustles up a mean stew
Did mention her comely face
Another song, this one is an Irish jig.
(After Emily Dickinson)

The earth has many colors
Where canvases are not
Near the unbounded horizon
Beauty is nature's faith

But dip a fresh brush for the sky
Dip a fresh brush for the sea
The stars are distant arbiters
Of painting's fate for me
Godot

The space between love
and tomorrow harbors
the lost, the arbiters
And the waiting.

I am waiting for Godot,
But he is not coming.
Noone is..  This place,
where's dialog plates,
where the audience
sees failure

My heart
beats a
Tattoo, a

small wine glass.
A swallow lefť,

An initial fades.
Love

Rubs off
With the
Cleaning

Cloth


Caroline Shank
8.2.24
i want to write i don't write i'll write anyway,
luxurious escapades of the tongue
crafted to make suitor letters and somewhere
a diligent me takes care to be
a...
                ah blah blah...

     from hearing the offensive god
and somehow a somewhat off nothing that's
similar...

the sweet scented air of Poland come the onslaught
of May, Spring...
that recollects both magnolias
and bez (without): bzu - lilac...
         bzdura: nonsense...

20 years ago there was this massive expansion
of the European Union...
10 new lands giggled at the expansionary
vision... lackluster because
withholding only a few retained
the monetary communication
of shared investments...

the Czechs still have their coronas
and the Poles still have their gold standard...
but together is the best kept apart...
weltsprechen...

exhausted by the racial hyper-focus
of the likes of Krista Franklin...
because i'm tired of the Afro-American narrative
that brings no one together...
like fathoming the force-feeding of turkeys
before any feast day...
not pouting a sense of critique: not necessary...
but i'm just tired of
people supposedly not getting along...
some vague aloofness some:

a stranger in a familiar land...
i spent so much of my youth among graves
that i've come full blown "circle"
to seeing people as graves...
perhaps if there was as much rigor in me
to drink later after having written..
no writer in me ever to be born...
a good excuse to not watch the t.v.
and and tiredness from adverts
and all that K-POP boom boom...

i could perhaps understand dancing before the pyramids
like it would be a wholesome hope
for... instance... one two three...
mirage of the dictated life
then the non-dictated life
and now this is not me with some
J. K. K. Tolkien ambitions...
no ambition to riddle my efforts with
escapism to tow and tug at fiction...

laptop positioned on a washing machine...
give me the well earned wages of loitering
but not anything associated with
post-literature political of a Harry Potter scoop...
verbiage and misnomers
some feeding ground of peckers and
lazy sleuths... dropping words missed in
casual conversation...

            arbiters of writing escapades
and truths-saying and soothing humming...
by the ordeal of giving love from a heart
like squeezing water from a stone...
perhaps... somewhat hallucinogenic in purpose
or rather escaping with words
that govern and sooth any ordeal
that does not necessarily have to be written about...

grandmother's fetish for Harlequin novellas
because the way she loved supposedly "loved"
my grandfather...
how two men in her abiding: blame who?
seemingly died from malnutrition
because she was so dissolved
this happy feminist junction of happenstance
luckily i am a man with a fetish for
German (tongue) and the ability to cook...

find me: chasing chickens on the village-island
of Kauai...

in those 2 years, imagine... i've travelled
a river's worth a sea's breadth...
yet he with his earnings
grossing an estimate 1 million
became the conclusive
waste of fiddling with possibility: per chance
wasted....

       how he spent those last days listening
to terribly angry music...
i can understand friendless isolation...
i succumbed to listening to music
akin to:

the titans, the elements...
the sound of rain falling on a tin roof...
rhapsody of imitation: knock knock... knock knock...
then the sea waves...
then the air turned into a wind
whirling...
then the earth rumbling... i too ate hunger
and felt a grumbling "inhibition"...
then the sound of the crackling of
breaking of wood in fire....
music devoid / detached from the progeny
of the usage of words...

of(f)...                    terminology of the posit
of "things" to begin with, to end with:
on note...
           my little Nuremberg extravaganza...
no **** poor soul in sight...
but all this weight and height
and all this this... miasma... myopia...
this borrowing of inherited stink
like all the ******* have all the good brown
while all the whites have this *******
sickly sweet albino blah!

     **** the covert tattoos
living among us alias "us"...
             i'm more bored than tired...
then again i'm also bored and tired
and it's under not disguise of "inhibition"
that i get to...               digest these fundamental
loathsome truths of a nocturnal Babylon.
poise zen dystopian rant

This prognosticator doth predict
potential based at current rate
sinister debacle that will
instantaneously annihilate,
United States storied republic,
which alarming horror
points to instantaneous annihilation
of America the beautiful;
(ohm my dog) turbulent
endemic chaotic spate

within human race poised to strike
doom and generate
shock tummy once
amp pull goldenlocks,
now revealing a shiny baldpate
erratic behavior attendant prescient
intimations presage apocalyptic fate
while current commander in chief
didst unwittingly generate,
and sow the seeds of anarchy sparking

global conflagration that will create
instantaneous prime evil
total mortal kombat,
cuz "FAKE" mandate
issued, when Trump went ballistic
loose sing rockets red glare,
when pressing hot button to demonstrate
thermonuclear supremacy,
(albeit a moot point),
would render superfluous need to late

to draft intestate
last (or perchance first, second,
third...) will and testament, tete a tete
perhaps minuscule (nee infinitesimal) bomb
turns out a dud (Amazon, Toys "R" Us
Walmart, or  store
of choice reject) aye narrate
finding Don irate
(blaming "crooked Hillary," democrats,
gumby...yours truly...)

the list goes on, thus no need to iterate,
thus a sudden religious fervor gripped
the wide webbed world
attributing why weapons did not actuate
which found pontiff in high demand
in an attempt to accommodate
frenzied zeal attributing aborted blitzkrieg
to divine intervention with bajillion
talking heads airing where to dedicate
material trappings to indigent, great

full not dead, plus those petty
criminals rightly or wrongly,
the strong arm of
lanced law did incarcerate
bowed down on daily and nightly basis
exploding huzzahs every
human did *******
"not prematurely," where
all walks of life did integrate,
a spontaneous international

utopian revelation awoke
with linkedin diversity to promulgate
protecting the planet took precedence
yea right Matthew Scott - dear mate
only in the context of
this poem I did create
on December twenty third
two thousand eighteen,
and now hemming and hawing
CANNOT wait,

thus conscientious, fractious, and incautious,
members of the electorate
must not shirk their role
as arbiters of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness
obliging themselves obeisance
to the fifteenth amendment
of the United States Constitution,
which prohibits the federal government
and each state from denying

or abridging a citizen's right to vote
"on account of race, color,
or previous condition of servitude,"
when said legal resolution
ratified on February 3, 1870,
as the third and last
of the Reconstruction Amendments
cuz the wise ghost of Abraham Lincoln
did not procrastinate.

— The End —