"artifice" poems
A wind blows like a wilderness of wolves
A vendetta, an apocalyptic vendetta
In its unpredictable, accidental quality
That swerves images of realization into tragedy
Neglecting all with swift intent upon a fallen fortress
In complected interests of caresses
Neither invited nor encouraged yet displayed
Displayed vividly with exclusive claim to that oppression
That howls by casting itself as a consequence of transgression
Upon a conventional expectation that claims a privileged sense
That persuades without an orator grotesquely amputated shapes
Extending extraordinary artifice as its priceless wealth
But who, yes who, has envy of so rich a nothing
Jul 29, 2012
Jul 29, 2012 at 12:23 PM UTC
“where time is the fly and age the fisher of men”
<>
*”until I fell forward
into fall where time is
the fly and age the fisher
of men, then when winter
begins all will be forgotten,
where time is the fly and
age the fisher of men”*
excerpt from “The Fall” by Rick Richardson
<>
that words from a different ionic state, jump as embodied ions from screen to the throat, evicting a guttural current of exclamation, you believe even with the half-heartedly palpitations from remainder of my damaged pumping heart, that these words were always intended, just for me…
boy and old man coexist, the pottage of memories stirred,
and the time is fly, and I drown in the miracle of greenest grass of
Yankee Stadium at age eight,
oasis, heaven, a child reborn in a sea of Bronx concrete,
and the swallowing up of my boyhood is forever marked henceforth, the hook has caught me, and I am of the age
once and forever
not a fisherman, but a fisher of men’s souls,
mine own is my best bait,
hooked line and sinker, and
wisdom and words
elude and delude always,
like summer is perpetual and aging a construct,
time does not fly, but slowly laps and waves
eroding our myths and ourselves upon a continuum with
no ends
~postscript~
<>
*yet I believe,
in miracles of
fish and loaves,
and that our individual continuums
will exist beyond the artifice of constraints
of
mortal time and that poems are
the forever chemicals within
our
bloodstreams,
even when our blood no longer spills*
yet I believe!
Sep 6, 2023
Sep 6, 2023 at 7:57 AM UTC
writing songs sans artifice,
that grow better different,
different better,
the lyrics of a man growing older,
insides out, featuring his slips, all showing,
eyes squinting from hard lifestyle experience,
taking on wearied shades of beige yellowing,
a tanned blackness, time edits them, so now,
they sound the same but holier,
from the hazing of hazards
one builds for and by himself,
drilling & extracting the spit-shine of
all that all is fine,
but liquor & cat's paw black shoe polish
just can't quite cover 'em up (2),
the stabbing itch each of the every time
one quests and questions
his ego,
always another test…
why would I ever want that?
his fingers create tinkling at rapido pace,
tinkling an arrhythmia of rhymes
previously perviously (1) unseen,
self exploration, that we all realize
is an unforgiving, never ending,
source of melodic crying out loud;
and when the sensual, arrayed pleasures,
begin to bore
holes of no important consequence,
the querys~to~self get even harder
to explicate what they intimate,
who they implicate,
which parts of you,
failed to answer satisfactorily…
why would I want want that
forever?
Aug 2, 2025
Aug 2, 2025 at 2:11 PM UTC
(and I cannot live
from with-out)
<>
a poem in appreciation to Rossella Di Paolo
<>
I, too:
- am an embryonic work in progress,
well into my seventh decade, with no ending in sight
I too,
live in the house of poetry, the address likely differs,
but suspect the innards of the houses differs little,
the decor, quite similar
- my house shrewdly requests a rethinking,
noting, it lives my artifice,
with in & with out
Then, we are a We:
- my cavities house her, She, Poetry is of Ruth (1) born,
- Poetry, She, reminds me, ”whither thou goest, I will go”
This duality:
- where the haunting of words providential,
emanate, both inhabiting & inhibits my breathing
She, a fearsome creature, a fearful-something,
for it tears me and shreds tears its demands be wrung
from with in to with out
She, Poetry:
- leaves me gaping, hollow, fills me with
depressurizing boreholes exposed to the elements of
externalities of an admixed atmospheres, that nature demands be refilled, fresh in, stale out,
for which the artifice trick is knowing which is which
when Poetry’s birthing:
- chest pounds, heart-rate beats heavy metal,
abdomen contracts, there then, no languid in my language,
no help untangling the alpha-bet jumbling,
product of the screams of pushing,
squeezing it forth*
*you’re hoping to quick-catch newly formed combinations,
for if you fail, a poem
noisily crashes to and through the floorboard cracks,
where poetry’s chaotic glinting etes
maliciously glimmer~winks at me
with a sarcastic thank you*
*“ah, too bad, another creation stillborn,
gone to rest, biting the nether dust,
without hope of resuscitation…”*
just another unfinished work in progress
periodically
a survivor clean caught, transcribed, edited to be finished,
amniotic fluids cleared,
poem resurrected
blessed with eternal life,
readied to be shared and delivered,
affirmed
and you say to no one and to everyone:
this poem will be our poem,
wither it goes, ascending, descending,
all live in the house of poets,
one house,
many apartments,
each poem a god,
and
my God will be our God,
your God, my God,
in the House of Poetry
Jun 21, 2023
Jun 21, 2023 at 5:55 PM UTC
Overcrowded a hollow sound
In the circumference of birdsong
Rising with the Sun
As roosters crow morning
Wake-up calls
There in Cebu / House
Full of family
Pieces of my other me
Feeding many mouths
That overcrowded feeling / not again
A nest that homes
A clutch of poor
Cuckoos
Consuming, so many babies
Paradise islands
Third world poverty
Not so far away
White man and money
A supposed land of milk & honey
Beyond the tundra snow
Bleak / must speak English
The beautiful broken
The overgrowth of crowding
it's called city life
Unlike Manila
Although artifice and hollow
Full of the fragrances
Colored by Birdsong
Oh beautiful life / I am drowning
In the thicknesses of pollutant
Mouths speaking
ill
Humanity misbegotten / Understood
We connect with nuttin'
“nothing is the cure
When nothing was wrong
With you”
Birdsong in twilight
Xylophone-stars across the ocean blue
Teeth of night
The cold chime
Befallen
In the infinite / magic of you
Oh love I let me
Overcrowd
Still this loneliness
Feels so very loud...
Then I hear / halcyon Birdsong
The soft feelings of truth
Oh love!
Oh god!
Oh my!
Goodness you.
Apr 16, 2017
Apr 16, 2017 at 12:16 PM UTC
Yes I go, yes go to seek a Great Apocalypse
One that will unravel the complex elaboration of difference
To articulate a perpetual aesthetic with violated codes
Of the experience of illusions of temporal stimulus
That are beyond all compass and soothe a fragmentation
Oh Great Apocalypse of beauty whose deception finds strategies
For youthful prodigality and binds me to your inarticulation
An embodiment of beleaguered and charmed fictions
Whose artifice is the governance of generous impulses
As such sway about me with a harmony of moral disquiet
Inadequate in description of the qualities of their oppression
Yet oh great apocalypse there is a plausible generosity
In these pale assumptions of impatience which carry
The obligations of a universally shared human existence
Compelling a projection of charged issues on competing claims
For the enigmatic logic of life
Yes Great Apocalypse now I understand all thought
From Everywhere and for Always
Sep 15, 2012
Sep 15, 2012 at 12:18 PM UTC
~
*alone and an imposter,
deep in syndrome.
she absorbs the frost of seasonal ghosts
and hopeless feelings
of death and darkness.
she only shows one side of her every time.
she calls a random number
from a bar in the middle of the night,
seeking to confess
or find solace in the voice of a stranger.
but any stranger might just happen to be
a lie detector.
still she lays bare all the duplicity
and fragmentation of self:
prescription bottles with two different names,
elaborate façades in Los Angeles
and in New York,
so complicated she creates
something she calls the lie box.
inside her purse there's a collection
of file cards. "I tell so many lies," she says.
"I have to write them down and keep them
in a box so I can keep them straight."
alone she waits for either
sweet apricity or identikit:
each a memento of her faces.*
~
Feb 26, 2023
Feb 26, 2023 at 3:57 PM UTC
Where is the cake? You
totally promised me there would be
cake. Words fail me. That simpering
gleam in your eyes is well-deserved,
you swine.
Yes, I'm still ****** about it.
You said I could have some. All
I wanted was a bite because I don't even
particularly like cake, but I guess
all those sweet words of yours were
just artifice.
No, that's okay. I understand, you
just did what you had to. If that entails
giving away my cake, I don't care.
I'm not going to hold a grudge or anything
over something stupid like cake. Ha!
Don't be ridiculous, it's not like the cake was good, right?
Carrot cake, you say?
Someday there will be time to reminisce,
But now my current plan is one of dread:
To yank your hair and whisper **** on this,"
And pull your eyes out of your ******* head.
Mar 5, 2011
Mar 5, 2011 at 8:18 AM UTC
1.
A flower opens in the dawn.
Drink the dew,
dispel the night,
feel the warming of a new light.
We go under different names,
but only one sun warms us.
The rainbow is but the refraction
of pure white light.
2.
You are awash in me,
that singing sea
that gives me beauty without artifice,
forgiveness without guilt
and love without qualification.
3.
One day
while beachcombing
I will come upon a magnificent conch
and putting it to my ear
I will hear your voice
calling me through the honey of history.
Then an urge will seize me
and putting the conch to my lips
I will sound a single sad note
to carry the stream of my tears
across the ocean.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 3:49 AM UTC
The Physics of Love: The Equivalency Fallacy
the poet places his Sunday porcelain coffee mug
upon his bare chest, purposed to heat the heart to a
higher degree, equal to hers, next door, three feet away,
in their communal bed
two identical alarm clocks, one on each nightstand,
confirms the degree differential, for far beyond time-telling,
it informs on me, providing the room temperature,
and her side of the bed, 5 degrees warmer
the collegial scientists posit theoretical excuses,
the rooms wind currents, proximity to the A/C, body mass,
all refuted after visual and mechanical inspection,
all indelible proofs of the Equivalency Fallacy
despite the visual evidence abounding all around,
despite the surrounding starlike quantity of busted,
love songs, poems and the other artistic churn,
depicting the principle, one requires love physics to validate the
living principle for the living, that love is rarely identical
in quantitative quality, typology, representation and
manifestations measurable
each greets the other with morning declarations of
mutuality, trying to find those hundred different ways
to love her/him today, employing imaginative artifice to proof
the impossibility, that in every aspect your living love ability
is precious capital precision equal
and ha! each love is the greater...
you knew this?
then you knew, his coffee spills (intentionally?) and the
Fighting Fallacy rules,
every thing is fair in love and war, for they too, are
identical and equal, in so many ways,
but never quantifiable exactly
8:33am, 73 degrees, on my side
11/12/17
Nov 12, 2017
Nov 12, 2017 at 8:45 AM UTC
Closure invents a reason to let go;
that hoped-for last **** is
anything but
Life is cataclysmic.
Seizing an imagined moment
in a now that ends
before its beginning
signifies a slavery to transience
so complete and pervasive
that words heave and shudder
in its withering folly
Timeless puzzles are incompletable
by artifice; rather, resignation
to disparate pieces,
and identification with neither
the pieces that didn't fit,
nor those that did
The period does not
complete the sentence.
The sentence ends
when it is finished.
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 4:58 PM UTC
753
My Soul—accused me—And I quailed—
As Tongue of Diamond had reviled
All else accused me—and I smiled—
My Soul—that Morning—was My friend—
Her favor—is the best Disdain
Toward Artifice of Time—or Men—
But Her Disdain—’twere lighter bear
A finger of Enamelled Fire—
3.6k
Nostalgia
is a poor excuse
for ignorance
yet it pervades
with a tenacity
stemming from fabricated desire
for the smell of ****
we're told
is roses
and it's blasphemous
to question potential "isms"
lurking behind the veil
of Saturday morning cartoons
and black and white family sitcoms.
Yet by the time the sonic *** organs
have lain into us with repressed emotion,
the holy spirit has spilled its ***** in the dirt
to traverse onward floating apparition
out of the room and down the hall
closer towards progress.
and we are left reeling
stumbling into the hallway
buttoning our blouses
and yanking at our zippers
wondering what could cause
such great haste
and we follow blindly
in the wake of the first high
or we turn backwards
and plunge into fading bricolage
as a means to cope
with the rapid and fleeting ***********
of the electric eye
in its shape-shifting pylons and appendages
getting smaller in the naked eye
and gargantuan in the mind.
Clutching our *******
in great amorous heaves
of lust
or donning our father's clothes
in a mask of artifice
and enlightened cultural pretension.
Moaning for the days of youth a week ago,
the epoch squeezed in the space between thumbs,
looking for treasures in the trash
craving something tangible
in an increasingly intangible world.
The semblance of touch lost on a generation
who knows only of emotion through hieroglyphics
and never through direct sensation.
So we dig through the toy boxes
and leave Generation X puzzled
as we dig into their records
in Guns n Roses T-shirts
and high waisted jeans.
We're just looking for an immaculate conception of something palpable.
Oct 25, 2016
Oct 25, 2016 at 10:26 AM UTC
mmm, palce lizać, albo wsadzić je w dúpe i nadawać sygnał wriggly-wriggly alter: wriggly-pigglety; counter-alt? calling it: the miracle of five croutons, and two pieces of sushi... c'mon, let's go crazy! and take it to the excesses permitted by the original feat! (yes, i mean the fish parts of sushi, there's enough carbohydrates in the croutons, so yes, no rice-bed for the tartars).
ć is the puritan's aversion to cz / chai;
or at least an exfoliation curbor.
i write honey,
honey honey honey,
i write honey,
honey honey honey
p'ooh bear
droned in on it.
when i write,
i write honey,
honey honey O'Milee.
from serving in the US and A
navy, to a beach-buggy
accident.
when i write, i write
honey -
*** e -
Atilla styled liquorice -
lee co reesh - not
liquidated rice -
ghosts of latin almost everywhere;
quadruple that.
convene and converse -
contrary collective.
some say this might as well
be the famous goldberg sardines;
when i write, i write honey,
i write: honey honey honey...
will you be my Duracell bunny?
honey, will you be my
******** par excellance?
i see... no, you won't be.
the museum of Greek sculpture
was vandalised!
guess what they took,
the ****** fiendish crooks!
with a wet splash of colour
comes the cold marble artifice -
a bit like the cool-mouth
refrigerator of a woman during
felatio... still don't know
how she gets that gob down
below room temperature.
(heresy input, never start a
sentence with an) and
there you have it,
writing, catering for
abstractionism,
just after he said: they're on a diet.
Dec 14, 2016
Dec 14, 2016 at 10:49 AM UTC
1054
Not to discover weakness is
The Artifice of strength—
Impregnability inheres
As much through Consciousness
Of faith of others in itself
As Pyramidal Nerve
Behind the most unconscious clock
What skilful Pointers move—
2.6k
Inadequate to the task
Humbled by the enormity of our love,
The perfection of our joining,
Where are the words kept that sufficient
Honor and portray what we have achieved?
You seated, beside me by the bay, finally,
Two old adirondack trees side by side,
By the sheltered place you bequeathed me,
Where poems are raindrops, so numerous,
And you, if not the subject, the source.
The waves rolling in, mirror the
Fluidity of thy dancing,
Fluidity of the adaptation,
Two lives, now one bay blue colored,
The merging, the unification,
Many waves, but one bay,
The Bay of Us.
Yet so different.
We are cloud worshippers,
Does not the Skye's Tableau inconstancy,
Mirror our ever changing form, individuality,
Yet, one sky,
The Sky of Us.
So many times have I lain be-sided
Even as we this afternoon sit now a-sided,
Tears welling up, above and beyond control,
This man's steady nerves, constant on patrol,
Our secret open, visible, un-hided,
Your are my Magi
My Yogi,
i.am, your, obedient devotee, shaped to you please.
This is the birthday present my words present.
Words, unremarkable,
Except for the contentment
That lies within them.
Let me love you more,
Recklessly abandon norms,
Kiss you at the supermarket, at the opera,
Unashamedly, take you in my arms
Wherever wonderment and wandering lead us.
T'is so very hard to compose
When tears flow upon my writing tablet,
To wipe, blot them away, I refuse,
For tears are joyous emblems,
Salty badges of love,
All compliments of our complementary beings,
The Tears of Us.
The soaring music we gather in.
The shimmering sparkles upon the bay,
My gift of natural diamonds better, this day,
Than jeweled glitterati I hide in the refrigerator.
All this treasure, part and sparkle of
The Treasure of Us.
T'is truth,
I know not, forgot, your age nor care,
The day the time the year,
What matter they to me these artifice markers,
I weep carelessly, undone, overcome,
Every day, but this day, most, united joy.
Need-No reminder,
I am a survivor,
From a concentration camp
That slow programmed to destroy,
Perhaps the kindness you claim
As the hallmark of my fame,
An inadvertent gift, from the devil?
You shook my hand on our first meet,
Don't think, have I ever let go?
Let me be your driver, entertainer, your only poet,
Let me be whatever you need,
Even as now, I laugh-cry, your tissue carrier.
For t'is I who weeps and keeps
These tissues as part of our history.
You are the first,
Who has ever read
The Words of Us.
Sep 15, 2013
Sep 15, 2013 at 1:52 PM UTC
Part I
No words need be spoken
Inhaling loudly,
She is mindful and content.
The only artifice here
A camera in her gear;
This instant in a frame
As wonders engulf her,
She claims.
I stand at the centre,
Swamped by
The tick of high heels and chatter.
Mindful and composed,
Left aghast
By the mass who walk past.
The right words come up
Binding my feelings to my art.
Part II
Smell the air
Both dig inspiration
Elsewhere;
Differences
Of worldly proportions
Our nature
Do not fit by definition.
Entering each other's realm,
We love to understand.
May this gap
Be bridged with time
For I am afraid
We do not rhyme.
Jan 23, 2015
Jan 23, 2015 at 3:12 AM UTC
The Other Woman (Kisses Incessant)
*There always is one.
I am a man, and yes that's my excuse.
It's not as if I kept her hid from your penetrating eyes.^
She has icing on her nose,
Heart shaped sunglasses hiding her pizazz,
She knows about my other woman too.
I write love poems for her too,
Like this one.*
Kisses incessant,
ten thousand for the present,
ten thousand more,
stored away for the future,
secreted in this poem
lest my lips dare to forget how!
Hugs galore,
beyond no more,
limitless,
defying foolish boundaries of
"enough, grandpa!"
Limit is an artifice,
a mind-made precipice,
kisses for the children,
are ethereal, open sky-wide,
limitless, here and now,
forever, for herein,
an oath sworn, taken.
Horizons demand demarcation,
physical selves,
containers for multi-taskers,
simultaneous five sense users,
ultimately biodegrade
after three or four choices made
But fret not, rest easy,
my love, my darling granddaughter,
here and now
and yet to come,
for the love I feel
and the kisses I provide
are spiritual cells,
that will divide and grow,
and never fade
**Kisses incessant,
one for the present,
millions for the future,
lest my lips forget how!**
Tears now, as I write,
thousands more to share
with you for when,
the inevitable arrivistes,
heartbreak and sadness,
Boyfriend troubles,
infuse your inexperienced heart
Even my best friends,
these bespoke words
that I string together,
for our future together, unneeded,
for when I go silent...
The reality of this composition
of kisses incessant,
of hugs galore,
tears and thoughts,
is for you, for us,
for now, for whenever,
for our forever, whatever that be,
but that too, limitless,
for this poem will be stored, incised in our
cojoined hearts
and in our genes
**For my beloved, my Isabel full of Grace
Oct 22, 2011**
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 5:20 PM UTC
A group show in a city church.
Nothing religious,
but selections from an evening class
occupying otherwise vacant space:
only a tomb here, an extravagant memorial there.
These are 'advanced' painters,
and decoding their statements,
examining their work,
it's possible to imagine daily lives
where art lives in the spare room.
Lewis paints you know.
After Laura died, and with the children distant,
he did this course in Norfolk - oils I think.
That large landscape in the sitting room is his,
all sky and salt marsh.
Jayne is studying the disorder of ******* dumps,
the contents of skips, what's left after a fire.
Her photographs she prints herself you know.
She says she loves to control the image,
chemically, and you can tell.
And more and others,
their 'work' holding stories,
other worlds of imagination and
depths of looking;
the silent collecting of things,
photograph after photograph,
the tidy sketchbook
(with last week's life class experiments).
And yet and yet
at the group show the finished pieces glow
in this badly-lit corner of a city church
where few visitors venture - but you must see this.
It's good, arresting in conviction and purpose.
This is art without artifice, reticent with meaning,
intense with intention, good, affecting, good
well-chosen tutor-curated;
good enough to come back to.
Consoling? Yes, consoling.
I needed consoling.
It consoled me.
I was consoled.
Sep 25, 2012
Sep 25, 2012 at 3:37 AM UTC
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees -
Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My ****** form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
2.1k
i can't know
my artifice of kneeling doesn't change the fact
at Delphi
gasping words
from wide silken eyes
mating doubt and trust
in seizmic gnosis
fissures claim
even olive sky
freefalling streambeds
tossed
chests of gold heave
spill with ******* lovers
mingle debts
and portents laid
denuded
over cool marble
shimmered under earthquake suns
===
ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα
Hèn oîda hóti oudèn oîda
"I know one thing, that I know nothing"
Socrates, paraphrased from Plato's Apology.
===
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 9:11 AM UTC
What do they mean, this actor-as-if and the never-did, or says-he -never-did, sacrifice or sacred be made?
Primal, on to logic, come reason.
The artifice of sacrifice,
whatever necessitated making sacred a thought?
a sign for a time when words fail,
if words were to fail again,
in confusion after war,
this sign says
trust. Yes, such a sign. By this know us,
fret not, good news... not here...
secret. Sh.
Suffice to say sacrifice means more and less than most
Jordan Peterson /Sam Harris fans would act as if they believe
but, to live as if
be live
me
that's new at every opportunity, pay real close attention,
a safe zone, far from that same madding crowd…
(occluded allusion,
The Classic Far From The Madding Crowd Movie)
I see that crazy dog herd the sheep over the cliff, and I cringe
I cringed then, in the dark.
I was holding your hand but I've forgotten your name,
thanks for dropping by.
Tell Sis hi.
still
be live in the home
a safe zone, far from any madding crowd…
clouds are aloud
contrast to the blues and greens and puples and yes
keepemkeepemkeepem AI wantemferwampum
yeah, this part is
wat do you say? crazy weird need you add **** crazyshit weird ****
if you were a platypus, just cruisin' playin' hunt with hi-tech
magneto-electro-gravitonal sensors, in a pre release, like alpha
version of the proteins involved
And you find your way back to where you once belonged
blocked by a thing named a weir,
it 'lows water through, but not you.
What do you do?
the mud settles you, scout around,
an unhearable sound
an unfeelable touch,
a final beacon, repeating the final news from platypus you,
it worked. dis encorporation all gone rhythm engaged.
Est. system reliable against all obstacles: .166 billion years
by the measure of the man, who was the angel
rolling the rock back up the hill.
Nov 8, 2018
Nov 8, 2018 at 3:56 PM UTC