"canonical" poems
There's a private, invisible flock of comedians chanting soapbox knock-knocks in my parking lot
Noisy, clang, boom thingy aloft and clipping the air around the slimy snow
And why does ajax keep butting its nose into everything I’ve got?
They’re all just boom-lost facades in a canonical, sly-faced rant.
So slanted, frankly, and poised toward a milder pace that the clang clipped the frosty branches beneath a drunken frat-house party.
Ah, the dandy-clang : native to the sandy graves and morose olive branches.
But only on the night of the dandy-clang, candy dances
for the branches are not partial to missed solid caches
of want and woe
of tongue and toe
and seldom shaken beneath the overbearing heat of a white-faced predator
for times it was that here and now, because
the wind had bitten harder
What am I saying?
That if the dandy-clang came. And if it produced the branches of the dancing eve fame...
with but not together. The clouds up in the ether
that lake and earth should wither
May 31, 2012
May 31, 2012 at 7:10 PM UTC
God of Luck, please keep us in mind
As the rest of society falls behind;
Their souls all signed to goals refined
To the devilish needs, to find bold minds
Anti-eccliastical, non-canonical,
catastrophic bull misfit ****
Anathemas make paths for us.
So thunderous, their misfit ****
God of Fate, please choose the path
That's best for us. Please set up the math
With a positive answer, without this cancer
In body and soul. No necromancer's
Anti-eccliastical, non-canonical,
catastrophic bull misfit ****
Anathemas make paths for us.
So thunderous, their misfit ****
O' Cursed God, please stray from me!
Please stray from all of those in need.
The cursed souls, they bow to you.
Please stop my bowing, don't make me choose
Anti-eccliastical, non-canonical,
catastrophic bull misfit ****
Us anathemas make paths, we must.
So thunderous, our misfit ****
Mar 29, 2014
Mar 29, 2014 at 5:39 AM UTC
Check it out see what melanin is about
To shine you embrace you
With multiple clues
That'll stiff you like a statue
So I'll be black as the sun and black as the moon
Black as Saturn rings and Jupiter's moon
Black as the Hennessey and the shadow in the room
Black like a smoking heart that can no longer consume
Black oxygen soon to be a black death
Lost breath finna be cooked like a black chef
Cajun fire blazin' So I can climb the
Ladder of black steps
diggin' deep formulates my black concepts
Black as Madonna tongue swift as an Iguana
Tail no fairytale black as the prison system filled with with
black hell
Black sin casted since our souls blackened
Black like thoughts you'll see once the skulls get the cracking
Black like the Vietnamese burned into the ashes piles of scented death just stacking
Black like the smoke from a chimney
So ya know fire is what's happening
Black like deaths clapping
Appraising souls swarming black hole
Preparing for rapturing
Black capturing black like the Billy Lee
Leading Washington
Fighting the Great Britain
During America's revolution
But no black solutions
Still tryna climb into a black institution
Black intuition
Hidden deep within wondering
If the Black Lord will forgive me of my sins
Let back of the black souls be watered and cleanse
Black like Boyz II Men tryna find a road that doesn't end
Black like storm pushing strong winds
Black like my ancestors forming hurricane across the desert ends
Black as Mahogany angled to perfection with black geometry
Black with knowledge of Dogon
Black Sirius like the Dog logo so long gone
Cuz black love is gone black vibes made from black lungs
Fill with black vibrations from.the mental gongs
Black like the law canonical stolen from my ancestors manual
Europeans ain't nothing but savage animals known to be cannibal
Check my black cerebral digging from my black celestrial
Dropped the sugar now I see the black extraterrestrial
Waving so I can jump into the black.mothership
And dip where no other brother live
Black as night sky line
black as heiron cooked under a spoon
Black as blueberry pie
Black as darkness in an empty heart filled with gloom.
Yo talk to em Yosef
Dec 31, 2017
Dec 31, 2017 at 6:38 PM UTC
tired autonomies, days keep on flailin', seizin'; darlin', I'd
be bolder if only I'd tried. makin' plans to abandon 'em,
the dark reach and tenements of those towers of regret for
all of my inactivity or self-targeted hostility, and those dreams
meant everything to me until awakening into morning hours
or afternoon, more likely, with the dull grip of uncertainty
shudderin' all the windowpanes back and forth lightly, oh
so **** delicately, and I think about you as soon as I've
drawn up ambition to make any kind of move, the pieces of
the vast puzzle I've called your mind for the better part of
the calendar dates I've drawn up into fifteen gauge shells of
the ghosts of my past, those that follow my footprints in evenings,
the pools of aluminium meltings and lemon extractions
to constrict the summer hours, convictions that bleach out
all other chances of hope.
so relinquish your grip on my red and unfolding heart I've
been beating the syllables of your name with, and abusing
the page width of headspace, serving only to alienate the
froth on the shoreline of daring chances: I'd have given
my all at the sight of romance, but I sit here with no
glimpse of intention from you; the crestfalls I subject myself
to, not for the sake of lack of want, but full lack of what
I'd do if I called and asked where you wanted to go at
three a.m. or five p.m., or any other canonical time of
the day; I'd spend any of 'em with you, and I'd
ask, but I'm somewhat sure you're not that into whatever I
could mean, or whatever my words do seem to transcribe themselves
upon contact with your mind, so keep on existing and I
will do the same.
[or, anyway, at least I'll try]
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 5:27 AM UTC
i never knew when forgiveness of ******
deviations equated to
the obscurity of citizen allowances,
whereby i was excused from doing ****
like i was excused from having a conscience
stealing your herd of sheep...
but i guess i must have a medieval mentality,
******** childish, having to interpret
the profanity of the tetragrammaton
with the canonical gospels' acts of dispersion,
you said ****** were akin to
meat cleavers... fair enough...
god forgives me butchering you like you
were forgiven having a frolic in the hay...
and we're all one big happy family...
'cos i swear that's when ambiguity on the dogma
entered and the nadir was expressed:
sin - ****** ambiguity - equated itself
to crime - citizen ambiguity -
you want to put that forth to Buddhist
authority chaining ******** bandwagons of
thieves en route to the Tibetan Vatican?
only so much is allowed,
given you're championing one Jew of your fancy
while giving others the gas-chambers...
ain't it just Prince's 1999... we're gonna party
like it's 19-99.... i think you mistook sin with crimes...
that's my "doctorate" opinion...
you said **** with thieving being synonymous,
Christ was saving Greek intellectual culture
with the pederast **** to boot...
St. Paul was encouraging circumcision,
twat-like people with a statue of Buddha asking
whether head meant the shaved one ******
or whether it meant the prickly one gagged on
was on the cards - goose-pimple **** frostbite...
the moment when the forgiveness of sin
turned into the forgiveness of crime...
hence such ****** freedoms right now,
and a... ah... whatever... of challenged citizenship,
why would i? why would anyone even bother?
**** it, let's go crazy, Las Vegas is waiting for us,
the cowboys will never churn out a Thatcher
to "rule the world".
Jul 4, 2016
Jul 4, 2016 at 9:31 PM UTC
"What dew drops is, Miss W?"
Where do I start?
What dew drops is?
Should I address the syntactic structure of that question?
Should I even bother to correct the grammar here? Will it matter?
Or will this student roll their eyes because they've heard it all before?
They know how to speak properly. They simply choose not to.
Or that, at least, is the opinion of many of my contemporaries.
I don't know how I feel. I can't form an opinion about anything.
I'm too young.
Not much older than the 18-year-old squeezing into that tiny desk asking
What dew drops is?
Should I go into a scientific explanation about
how the heating and the cooling of the earth,
each rising and setting of the sun,
affects condensation?
I'm not even exactly sure how it works.
I apparently know more than this kid.
What dew drops is?
Have they ever been outside?
Have they been up early in the morning or late into the night?
Of course they have. This is high school.
There is no sleep.
When I was in high school, I woke up before dawn and worked late into the night.
I knew what dew was because it dampened my pant legs
as I walked to my car in the morning and at night.
What dew drops is?
Is this a real question?
Is this really what one addresses in a 12th grade English class?
Shouldn't I be sharing the true meaning of literature?
Or some life-altering insight into a canonical work?
No. I teach English at a high school.
And that means I answer questions like
"What dew drops is?"
And I love it.
Aug 23, 2012
Aug 23, 2012 at 7:16 PM UTC
I can be a waste of time,
electrons dripping into my veins
through my eye socket
assaulting my ear canal
directly into my brains.
When my purpose is stretched
between too many ambitions
it is easily punctured
by the buzz of inboxes,
and mindless online exhibitions.
I gorge on useless tips and viral videos
positioning my open mouth
below the gaping search box
as I pull the lever again and again
and my willpower goes south.
Each stray thought, each nagging question
is an excuse to trade concentration
for an immediate rush,
a canonical ******
of electronic validation.
I pull as hard as I can,
interrupting the current
feeding these diversions.
The network inside my brain lights up,
completing my inner circuit.
Jul 17, 2012
Jul 17, 2012 at 9:10 PM UTC
It is raised a corpulent Spirit,
dangling it legs suggestively,
over the abyss of national identity,
an ideological state apparatus, BANG!
Mind the gap of danger when boarding and alighting trains.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 5:42 AM UTC
in the penguins luck the furnace begins
at reprograming the news. Picture frames on 2 x 4s , three
photographs and glass bottles in the most decadent of matrimonies.
Three-hundred million dollars.
And the race riots show 'em who'll take the dampit from the mound of
Soot stained elements, canvas, trash bags, electric guitar riffs, giraffes, bingo, the drip-drop on the drop cloth. Easing into the new processor.
She who settles the wages of crickets with ether and single-barrel vanilla buckshot and maple. Incisors and cynical stereotypecastes and the shadows of the other mugged and loose canonical charades the worser and worsening play their ad keywords at in the sketchmakers many movements her dactyls fine and her fingertips many. Sweet lines of breathing and setting.
Feb 14, 2016
Feb 14, 2016 at 3:24 PM UTC
I don’t see your reason to play
Is there something you know that I do not?
Things I tell you are given away,
Much like I did and left them to rot
When things are seen through a monocle
Not two, not a pair
The acts I’ve committed are still canonical
As these clothes,
You do not wear!
So I anger when the truth is diluted
An answer it seems, must be reputed
While wrongness and hurt
Plant seeds in the dirt,
For trust between us feels polluted…
Feb 2, 2011
Feb 2, 2011 at 8:31 PM UTC
poetry is gymnastics, plain and simple, it requires a good stash of words and a tongue like the skeleton of an gymnast, each part mandible, nimble, snail goo; or at least a pair of eyes like a kaleidoscope content with crude images that phonetic symbols are. oh the day when you're kicked out from the garden of the dictionary & thesaurus rex (the tree of good and evil that you have to eat from) - once you've abandoned that canonical foundation of the indexing fruit that keeps you aligned and in formation with a lazy vocabulary, once this ejection takes place: you're basically skydiving.
why do philosophers have this
rigid and predictable
vocabulary? god they're so rigid
with words when they
begin their so called "adventure"
into systematisation.
Mar 29, 2016
Mar 29, 2016 at 6:49 PM UTC
I say
‘Marguerite Johnson’
and you don’t know.
Who she really was, what
She really did.
Maya, a childhood nickname turned professional
Angelopulos, past other, Greek and unknown.
She was a poet, a woman of many
words that changed America.
Words that touched our hearts,
Words that opened our eyes
to truth.
She was an actress, in the Obie-winning “The Blacks”,
Off-Broadway, “Calypso Heat Wave”, inspiring her singer.
She was a singer, writer of song.
West Coast and
Hawaiian nightclubs were once
Embellished by her voice.
She was a dancer, a portrayer of emotion, through movements
Rhythmic and graceful
Calm, phantasmagoric, and beautiful.
She was an author.
She knew why,
“The Caged Bird” sang.
But, once. She had no voice.
Traumatized and scared. Age seven, suffered at the hands of the distant mother’s boyfriend.
She went mute,
feeling responsible for their crime,
After her uncles rid the world of the problem.
A candle’s flame blown out.
Mrs.
Flowers
A friend and fellow lover of the spoken word.
Helped Maya find her voice.
Introduced Hughes,
Du Bois, and Lawrence Dunbar.
Then, the canonical Shakespeare,
Dickens, Poe.
She was a scholar.
She was a mother.
She was a fighter.
She stood for her rights and the rights of her people.
She stood, side by side, with many known and recognized.
Malcom X.
Martin Luther King Jr.
His assassination on her birthday stopped the celebration forever.
Then she sent flowers to Coretta until her death in 2006.
She was an inspiration.
I say
“Maya Angelou”
And now you know.
Mar 5, 2019
Mar 5, 2019 at 9:35 AM UTC
*don't worry, even i think this is all a bit too wacky... but then i eat the placebo of feeling the emotions of https://goo.gl/tzEPhO / dido's no angel album, and i really concentrate on the symbol... and it feels less wacky after a while; i'm always apprehensive about influencing people, even if they number the 1 or 2 or 3, less than a dozen... these are sensitive areas, where there's a seemingly en masse acceptance for either accepting or criticising such potent reminders of human history... always apprehensive, only because i do not really care much about illuminating footnotes... always apprehensive... it's an apprehension born from not wanting to influence new arguments in these debates.*
why is it always either 1:30 or
13:30 when men hold sway the hour hand
and women the minute hand...
or it's either 18:05 or 6:05 when women
hold the hour hand and men the minute
hand? well, never mind, a new
interpretation of the ☿ (mercury), lineage
of all sourced prophecies, the crescent horns of
mobilised islam, by the power that mobilised it,
that of the feminine nature...
and that femininity mobilised islam in
christianity with the emergence of the nag hammadi
library, and no official plan to instigate it
along the lines of canonical orthodoxy...
an undercurrent emerged in christianity with
the parallelism drawn by the historian josephus,
a false prophet, the unearthing of the library in
egypt... the flight of joseph, mary and infant jesus
to egypt... but as the symbol clearly suggests...
the crescent moon became mobilised by a
feminine ontology... St. Thomas' gospel working
its way, into the mainstream, although well hidden
in the undercurrent... replacing all known
canonical orthodoxy - and you know,
if your prophesy about the end of the world,
and to prove your prophecy to be true with the
culmination of the atom bomb, and the only
way you can imagine proving your words true...
then i guess you'd have to get yourself crucified
to make everyone follow your words to ring true
should they actually be rather unconvincing;
a crucifixion would desirably create a sperm-like
influx of people who'd believe you
and follow all the preparations through -
Pythagoras' estimates about the future had
about 30 followers... and he's still covered in dust
in school libraries and mathematics lessons;
judaism is still a minority religion:
the last words of convictions from it were written by
Isaiah, who was cut in half for going among the
people, as a former courtesan.
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016 at 3:03 PM UTC
When poetry describes the historical,
One refrains from becoming hysterical.
However by use of the judicial rhetorical
A Poet makes full use of the allegorical!
So when writing poetry I remain stoical,
That though some may think me radical,
Employing words they considered lyrical,
I try never to appear, irrational or critical.
To write about the mystical and cryptical,
Using strict rhythm? Can be diabolical!
As for themes regarded purely mythical,
I shy from words too pictorial or technical.
My approach to topics humourously comical,
Is to compose lines thoughtfully satirical.
In turn this allows me to remain sceptical,
Whilst appearing not too fanatical or cynical!
So, if with words I am reckoned economical?
I hope my rational thoughts are not illogical,
But in using descriptive words, is it ethical
To ensure Poems not be too whimsical?
Now, without appearing to be pontifical,
Though I'm always careful to be veridical,
I'm allowed at times, to wax philosophical,
As I attempt to depict matters paradoxical.
Doubtless some will find my words inimical:
Fanatically methodical and chronological?
But in attempting the facetious or ironical,
I'll avoid the pitfalls of being too graphical.
Should poetry be left to the technological?
One might find it becomes too puritanical.
And suggest the Poet was unduly practical!
Such is the way of the biased hypocritical!
If my poetic lines appear to be egotistical?
Then readers must understand, that's logical.
But please I beg of you, never be heretical,
When lines concern the canonical or political.
Will a Poet's thoughts be considered farcical,
If a reader is left bemused and quizzical?
Or should he stick to the unequivocally canonical?
Personally, I'm happy if my poems are grammatical!
So I'll conclude thinking poetry may be symbolical,
And my many rhymes, in quantities numerical,
May not satisfy the purist nor the global ecumenical,
But they deal with topics that are never hypothetical!
Rhymer. July 10th, 2018.
(Your turn Jim!)
Jul 10, 2018
Jul 10, 2018 at 4:40 PM UTC
by: W. A. Marshall
There’s a thornbush blocking my path
its branches shudder
from dust devils
like the tormented
coat of a colt -
the spectral bush must burn,
for me to see
through the canonical flees
that clutter the infinite path.
My splendor is disguised however,
it hides inside my chest
I point to my breast
a parched mark of the sun,
cauterized by nations,
an open country itemization
goes further now
with the bush burned and gone
down into a damp stairwell
the lane leads me -
where I can hear
distant hammering of fists
on rusty cellar doors
beyond view from mounted kings.
Their whispers never heard
a fat consequence
that I shave away and away
day after day
in order to admit to myself
my impatience inside a palisade
causes me to stagger.
To escape my flight
or hide when the dark night
creeps on fog and seed
howling winds blow
down the staircase
and into the cellar
where the moon collapses softly
along my reoccurring path.
Oct 10, 2014
Oct 10, 2014 at 11:10 AM UTC
Though you lose, thus becoming an intimate as a lover or friend, brother or sister, parent,
you will always lose through attrition or accident.
We know that 9/11’s are attrition and
love is always an accident, because
we reap what we sow, and never choose whom we love.
Attrition is the rain, forming
from pressure within the skies,
high and low temperatures at Armageddon:
yin and yang becoming earth’s tears.
Accident is the rain, vilifying
the evil of being from these two lessers of the skies,
love is sought but never found or found at odd places:
yin and yang becomes earth’s joy.
Thus, rain is a lie, liar, lying, saying
joy and love at the same time.
But love is not from this world. It is
not recognized, but named… “No” to the world’s belligerence.
We know love is expressed by this action, yes…
Thus, it’s not a lie. Love cannot be otherwise
or we would’ve never crucified the Savior
or our true loves for the world…
Love cannot exist naked.
It is always ready to be whipped, strangled, maimed
as Jesus or a twice victimed Iraqui,
the third world or as Salvadore Allende.*
But I love the rain despite my self.
It is within the reach of definitions
but not confirmations. So, love
like rain cannot be held hostage
by human view nor divine postage.
I love as it rains, I rain as I love.
From here, in my prayer, let my love of rain be love.
*Found in Voices of a People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, and the now canonical historical work of the United States by the same Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States: “Watergate had made both the FBI and the CIA look bad---breaking the laws they were sworn to uphold, cooperating with Nixon in his burglary jobs and illegal wiretapping. In 1975, congressional committees in the House [of Representatives] and Senate began investigations of both the FBI and CIA…It was also learned from the investigation that the CIA---with the collusion of a secret Committee of Forty headed by Henry Kissinger—had worked to ”destabilize” the Chilean government headed by Salvadore Allende , a Marxist who had been elected president in one of the rare free elections in Latin America.” (pp.554). For a more balanced view on the complicity of Kissinger and his role in U.S foreign policy, moreover his role in the death of Allende, see or read the acclaimed movie or book: The Trials Henry Kissinger.
Jul 5, 2016
Jul 5, 2016 at 7:29 PM UTC
In the beginning was
a connoted Word
a representation
canonical information
before the fracturing
before the fall
We **** genius in our
simplistic love of self
our tribe living
in fractal time
across Eden nucleating
an uneven sky
like freckles dotting
a girl's face flowery
complexity
like our branched tree
budding with delicate snow
flakes a new layer upon
the Stack
Jul 10, 2017
Jul 10, 2017 at 8:27 AM UTC
I stare at the wall
with thoughts thick as molasses sliding
down my arms,
mind is blank, the refrigerator hums,
semi-solitude.
Tickle the ivories, hoping to spark
the motivation to learn a song,
but instead find ashes where
fire has not been in god knows how long.
My brain has heard the screams of
my liver and knows it is time to
rebalance the chemicals,
but it will take some time.
I'm surrounded by books with knowledge,
yet all I have the will to do is
add to mine my sub-standard
notes.
Write the things that feel like
sentences, but when spoke,
are accidental rhythm and
stride, I don't know.
My eyelids have attached to them
dangling rocks under gravity's
command while my eyes cannot
dare to fall under a restful pitch,
so I stare.
Catatonic, canonical,
half here, whole gone,
I stare.
Dec 11, 2016
Dec 11, 2016 at 10:59 PM UTC
At the beggar's banquet
There are two kinds of worker bees
One in the blows of the breathless insects
With pollen for keeping, and the food they cannot respect
But, the honey lingers like the sweet
The lingering smell
Of the dew
Of a thousand years kept in a hidden hive
Imaginatively, the prey to the work was just canonical
And I worked really hard for my canines
And the square of that lines up with the 6 sides of a cell
Of nine lives
Like a cat curious enough to shake the hornet's nest, three times
Jul 14, 2019
Jul 14, 2019 at 5:13 PM UTC