"chronicling" poems
Three parts treasure hunter
to two parts scientist,
the archaeologist
with picks and brushes
sifts through shards and ruins,
echoes of ancestral time,
burning for answers:
How on earth did we manage
to carve out shelters from the crust
tilting the scales
of survival in our favor?
A cliff house here, a cathedral there
a village by the river
chronicling our escape from
the shadows of pre-recorded time.
We wonder where they all went
and why they vanished, but the real question
that haunts our paleolithic selves,
is who are we and where are we going?
October 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015 at 12:06 PM UTC
I just sent an email to my Mom.
Part of me feels it
Part of me wonders if I'm overdramatic
I feel like ****
Like, I feel different than when I felt depressed
But this is still not a place I want to be
Consistent
Draining
I never feel ok anymore.
I'm not even sure what ok feels like.
I keep wanting to drink for all the wrong reasons
I never get drunk
But I always want to reach that happy nirvana
That "tipsy enough to forget all your worries" place
There's something seriously wrong with me
I haven't actually talked to my family in AZ for over a month
I schedule skype dates with a woman I'll probably never see again
More than I do with my own father.
What type of **** is that?
I looked at **** I ****** myself today.
I feel like the biggest piece of **** this planet has seen.
I also lack self forgiveness.
I got an email back from a priest today.
I told him I'd be interested in joining the priesthood
I realized I might have been lying,
But honestly,
I don't even know!
I feel like I'm sitting on my thumb,
Trying to figure out the world as it
Races by me,
Unwilling to stop and allow me to catch my breath
Or read the signs or understand a **** shred of anything
This is what I'm talking about
Part of me feels this,
And the other part just scoffs, and says I'm melodramatic
*Pick yourself up
Dust yourself off and figure out
what the hell you're doing*
I feel so alone anymore.
Like, if there's not someone by my side
I somehow lack basic humanity.
Like I need someone to be there
If they aren't, I'm obviously not worth much
I closed the blinds four different times today.
I didn't want the neighbors to see my actions.
After a certain point, I closed them to watch a movie
And I haven't opened them back up,
even though
it would probably cheer me up a great deal
This is probably one of the longest "poems"
I've ever written.
It's not poetry, it's freestyle
Not like it matters,
It's like an art major defining the different strokes that an artist used in a painting
Like I give a ****
It's still a painting
Lent is one of the hardest times of the year.
I feel it with every fiber of my being.
Nothing about this situation makes me feel ok.
I feel out of body, out of mind, out of soul.
I'm pretty sure, at this point, St. Peter wouldn't let me in.
In my heart of hearts I want it desperately, but
The rest of me still says no.
I'm so messed up it's ridiculous.
And I sent an email to my mom chronicling her son's failures
Her son's issues,
And why,
Her son
Needs to go back to a counselor
Because I'll be ****** if he's not "fixed" yet.
Feb 16, 2013
Feb 16, 2013 at 6:15 PM UTC
Choked up wonderment
still tastes like regurgitation
but numbness comes with it
It is fear
encompassing unfinished things
lump in throat
blood dropping degrees
in temperature
Chronicling this cool
deliberate **** of senses
incessant soul questioning
Worth
feasible future
nevertheless struggle
after eternal struggle
Eyeballing transports of delight
amongst wrestled trauma
morality’s cusp of change
Sacrifice or sacrifices
self-destruction
abandonment to death
Senicide
walk into icy tundra
Inuit elder casting himself away
to frozen abyss
and crystalline corpse
for good of tribe
One less to feed
left on floating iceberg
Dark day’s sunrise
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 8:33 PM UTC
A paper lantern,
Crafted by the small hands
Of a girl with lime green nails
And flecks of dried glue peeling at her fingers.
It sits in visceral stillness,
Made of bleached white paper
Usually reserved for the tedious documents
Chronicling this-and-that,
The unimportance of the adult world.
There is a smell of felt tips
To replace the lost one of chalk
That used to settle so stubbornly in the air
And reside powder-blue in the lungs.
We are in the proximity of Christmas now,
Nothing but a daze away.
And festivities are tangible in the city streets
As those shops and stalls display their colours
And sounds,
In the mating ritual of buy-and-sell,
Make-and-take.
The classrooms are empty,
The corridors somewhat cavernous.
Empty coat pegs tell the stories
That cannot be heard in the voices of the children
Still echoing against the walls.
The buzz of Santa Claus is permissible
For just another year.
After that, magic must be shelved
And brought out only for the first dust of snow,
A meteor shower,
Or in a generous two-for-one discount.
But for now the children go home for Christmas
And the paper lantern will sit
Constant.
Dec 16, 2012
Dec 16, 2012 at 8:56 PM UTC
1
The Clowns in Brussels Sprouts
have sent me a notebook. Tossers.
The latest thrilling instalment from ******** Creek.
The Animal Events Recording Notebook —
fits in your pocket,
if it happens to be a school bag.
A little picture on the cover
Jack, the farmer, a cow and her calf.
Equally gay as it is oxymoronically inaccurate.
No sign of a tag on either the cow or calf.
The cow has a pair of horns
that would **** any animal, never mind the farmer,
statistically dead. Plus,
the calf’s a bit too healthy looking
and the cow ain’t trying to **** the farmer either.
Between the covers coloured-coded sections
chronicling the animal’s progress
from Foetus to Fork.
2
Though, I do thoroughly enjoy filling out those
additional comment columns.
De-horning
Next to castrating lambs,
I love this job —
all-the-more if there’s a gang.
The first has no idea what coming
and the last wishes they weren’t.
But seriously, I’d say it hurts.
A lot.
Castration
See Revival, issue 6 P.14 —
revised in Inheritance P.26
Weaning
Always good for poem.
I laugh from the comfort of my bed.
Ye’re only halfway lads
And how far along are you?
They inquire back.
3
Ok, I get it. Seriously.
Stop depleting the rainforests please …
I have my own notebook thanks.
I understand their dilemma.
They fear mindsets will be inherited
form the old flock, the old stock —
the canners and brass tags —
who never converted.
It’s like auld women and the church
engrained since birth
and no amount of jibber-jabber will sway.
So they concentrate, groom us
weanling growing up
in the Age of A.I.M
on BETTER Farms
4
Regardless, the second you tag a calf,
the cunt’ll croak. So wink, wink:
so not to jinx yourself
and have to write a cheque;
adjust your Balance Sheet,
invariably affecting your Gross Margin.
I know … I know
S.M.R 6, 7 and all that $*@#
But it’s so cold the frost is complaining.
Plus, they said on the radio: be kind
leave food out for the birds.
I’m just thinking of the foxes.
And, if anyone asks —
she never came in calf
Nov 13, 2010
Nov 13, 2010 at 2:27 PM UTC
To poetry
guarding chickens
and chronicling crisis in Cleveland
To poetry
fighting back sleep
in a factory of miscarried dreams
To poetry
fighting for justice
with hashtags and cameraphones
To poetry in caves
gathering people like fire
To poetry in Halls
gathering children like home
To poetry
that is loud and activating,
To poetry
that is quiet and contemplative,
To poetry
that is honest and brutal
To poetry
that is tongue in cheek
To poetry,
in all shapes, colors, sizes
forms and meters
To poetry,
and to all of us
who are full of it
May 7, 2015
May 7, 2015 at 8:02 PM UTC
Two brown stars alight with fire fill my heart
with wanderlust. I'm aching to explore
the cosmos she creates within her art,
Galaxies expanding evermore.
Autumnal tones reside upon her pate
And winter's temperance somewhere in her gaze
With summer's passion lurking in her gait,
Spring's abundance in her creative ways.
The seasons below join the stars above:
A marriage of both mortal and divine.
Exploring and chronicling new love
Amidst these cartographic words of mine.
And if, by grace, my journey isn't bare
The borders of my heart shan't keep her there.
Nov 6, 2015
Nov 6, 2015 at 1:26 AM UTC
these incidents prove maddening.
i keep catching myself trying
to figure out whether or not
coincidences explain the way
that hints of you are interwoven
in the secret corners of my brain,
binding fresh philosophies with the strings
of new theories, stitched together
like the seams of my favorite garments.
from day one, i knew you and i were cut
from the same cloth. i saw your ears perk up
with curiosity when we first spoke about anarchy.
you doodled idly on the corners of my psyche,
renditions of ripe flowers, burgeoning
at the tips of my fingers.
though, i must say, in a certain way,
it has been a joy taking the time
to expose the treasures locked inside your mind,
like peeling back a fruit
and sampling the sweet juices i find,
an ambrosia fit for a king.
in the myths of the Greeks and Romans,
a Muse was a source of inspiration—
typically feminine—that controlled
the whims of destiny,
made the words of men
dance right off their tongues,
to be interwoven with the myriad threads
of elegant tapestries chronicling stories
of humanity's fate.
is it such a stretch to suggest
that i might not possess full faculties
of my tongue?
that, at the very least,
my mental agility
might be deadened
at times beneath
the empathy that screams
between you and me,
as if we were rogue planets
spinning infinitely
around the same sun.
with our constantly interconnected
strings that sing so eloquently
like strummed scales
on a ukulele,
can i entice
you to hum along
in harmony?
it doesn't seem
all that far-fetched to me
to think the atoms in our bodies
were forged in the core
of the same supernova.
if you don't agree, Listener,
then lean in close. get cozy.
i'd be happy to remind you
how we sync together
perfectly.
Feb 16, 2017
Feb 16, 2017 at 9:15 PM UTC
As sun sets over the mountain,
crowning this miraculous country,
wreathing it in purest gold,
visions of absent glory
cleave to the luster hanging,
suspended above the contours
of this majestic empire,
and by the light of that brilliant corona,
enduring the blameless and bitter dusts of time,
a delicate mirage emerges,
chronicling the last vestiges
of the valorous heroes who came before,
who influence our proud and dignified march.
And where a ceremony awaits -
beyond the scope of that western realm,
beyond the reach of that bleeding sun
into which silhouettes now fade -
to laurel today's new hero with a crown
of golden light,
so too awaits the ecstatic promise
of a brand-new, untamed world.
Mar 6, 2020
Mar 6, 2020 at 3:54 PM UTC
stained hands scar rough lines upon the dirt,
reinforcing a framework built upon a thousand lifetimes.
held within such intricate lace:
forgotten tongues and faded memories,
each lost upon the sea of lines, worn away by time.
each cut and curve defines a single moment
chronicling innumerable loves and lies,
periodically marked by falling tears
of those caught within such carving task.
importantly, such daily work
diverts each eye unto the ground,
so that each ephemeral being, squatting,
carving on the dusty plain
ignores the twisted branches and gnarled trunks,
of the darkness crouching patiently
on horizons edge.
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 1:15 PM UTC
a little water churned by acids:
internal stomach sounds
jaw clicks mash
strawberry ice.
repetition of noises
fading into never
mind the **** in the wall.
brick pieces falling—
one for every two moments
of hushed time—
tiny little whispers
chronicling each and every
blunder
there is a void—
silence where your
voice should ring
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 3:32 PM UTC
Coffee cups and ink stained hands
Half finished thoughts, part written papers
Aching, craving, sentiment
A purple book, so innocent
Chronicling an atrophy
Of soul
Jul 13, 2017
Jul 13, 2017 at 5:26 PM UTC
i've the mien of a human,
alien among his own.
gross animal urges, brackish greengold flits, uncrushable surge; then,
demispoonfuls of Other emerge, light like photons
barely reaching, then lapping,
at my fatigued bare feet, toes curling up
in the sand of someone else's time.
i don't let people in,
because i
myself am
outside of me,
full of blocked ways,
full of rationalizations.
i am all hallways
without any room.
--- it's ******* weird, i know that.
i am not
altogether
normal.
i am out
there, but
still here.
please please, understand
this. it's key.
like, the other day..
while taking out the trash (that i pathologically neglect to do),
as i approached the dumpster,
that old-as-the-hills
tall, ornately carved double door glinted
into my space
- yet again -
out of nowhere;
made of an ancienter wood hailing from
a lost time and a lost space,
whose two adjacent hatch windows were lithely guarded
by some bizarre crisscross adamantine sentient metal -
this precise door, which
i have never been able to open up, let alone fully approach -
laughed and widened its grasp:
and, with a confusing series of heavy deadbolts
receding from its nook with a resonant boom,
the left door,
ajar,
beckoned my
being,
as i
am,
and i crossed its threshold
into a velvety grooved room, remembered again
as a toward flesh warm and sliprune.
Apr 16, 2016
Apr 16, 2016 at 3:26 PM UTC
She is going.
I imagine her on the plane, mind brimming with possibilities and anxieties
She’s probably wearing those hippy pants with the beaded drawstring and the red elephant print
I know she’s typing away on her laptop, chronicling her unprecedented adventure
She is doing.
Everything we say we’ll do on late nights with that sense of invincible potential
She overcame the lingering doubt, the pessimistic thoughts that loiter in our minds
and trash our belief in possibility
She is being.
She is living.
She is trying to be more than just a name scrawled in the universe’s book, an afterthought.
She will be a page, a chapter.
She will do more, she will be more, she is more.
Jan 5, 2016
Jan 5, 2016 at 3:27 PM UTC
"After we die the only real thing left of us, the only real fragment of the person that we were, is not the children we had, not the pictures taken of us, not the random trinkets we gathered over our lives–it's what we wrote down, what we said about ourselves. That lives and breathes. That speaks beyond our lips to say at any moment after, just as we were in that moment. Writing then is the very serious work of living. It is the chronicling and preserving of ourselves–it is the task of immortality.
And like all such tasks it ultimately fails. Only, it fails more accurately."
Jul 18, 2015
Jul 18, 2015 at 6:06 AM UTC
A man walks into a bar
He sits down at a table and sobs violently
He takes out his hunting knife and begins to carve words into the wood
This is what he writes:
There is no point in a suicide note
I am the last survivor
I have wandered in desolation for five years and found nothing but destruction and the ravenous creatures
Empty shells, a hungry remnant of humanity
I suppose if there is life out there, one day this may be found and it will be an explanation and a monument of sorts
These crude etchings, an echo of ancient times
It is not for me, but for all of us
We killed ourselves, this so called human race
Now with the last of my life, I write
How foolishly, I waste myself on chronicling my journey to my journey’s end, how human it is
Because I exist, I am “in myself and for myself" but my philosophies will die soon
I am the last heat in a dying coal, the exhalation of a dying man, and so as I cease to exist, humanity goes extinct.
He finished writing, and felt his leg
The open wound left blood on his hand
He checked,
one left,
cold metal on his temple
He grimaced,
and with a big bang,
the world ends
Jul 27, 2013
Jul 27, 2013 at 4:04 AM UTC
I have endured through the shadows of despair,
chronicling the haunting spectre of suicide,
Each word a desperate attempt to vanquish
her insidious thoughts, that creep back into
my mind.
As long as I draw breath - I live to write,
and write more so, to stay alive.
Dec 4, 2024
Dec 4, 2024 at 4:50 PM UTC
coffeehouses and bookshops are obsolete and underrated
i always seem to feel the most comfortable and loved
while the wooden brown furniture and smells of roasting beans
envelop me in transparent steaming tendrils of intimacy
reaching inside to find my inner poetic self
coming up with all sorts of ostentatious phrases
to make my prose sound extremely extravagant
and therefore myself a satisfied troubadour
chronicling my ****** escapades through life and love
agromania
heliotrope
pavonine
quinnat
vorpal
zydeco
don’t i sound special?
It’s the coffee fumes that are finally getting to me
Caressing the recesses of my brain, drawing out streams
Of words that which i do not know the meaning of
Can i be sure they’re even real?
Can i be sure of anything anymore?
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 6:53 PM UTC
I thought I had retired from the life of rhymes
I fancied myself free of the call to write
Retired from the confessing of my own crimes
Free of chronicling the sinner’s plight
But then a funny thing happened to me today.
I ran into a friend that just changed my life.
She completely took my breath away
I can’t help but think she’d be the perfect wife
But no matter how this adventure will go
I wanted this poem to let everyone know
Even if I have to write to pick up the slack
Trust in this: The Chosen One is back.
Feb 4, 2018
Feb 4, 2018 at 12:31 AM UTC
Fresh home from therapy,
and resonate with zeal
**** air cerebral cogs a turn'n
analogous to rack and pinion wheel
hence attempt made to bare soul,
sans thru poetry re: veal
ling avidity, asper barreling neurological
daily kos loaded truck full
heading toward figurative
lifelong landfill deposits
on weekly ******
logical session I unseal
manipulating bothersome issues
controlled via bot size thumbwheel,
which grave undertaking i.e.
professional counseling allows,
enables, and provides opportunistic
gradual process at selfheal
ling oft times necessitates
reviewing silent Virgina reel
comprising the story
of earlier life piecemeal
akin to a slapdash montage
chronicling existential ordeal,
now referencing adenoids
(removal first mention within
poetic endeavor, when young boy)
loosely linkedin with nasopharyngeal
pseudo oral palate
highway tucking each meal
across miniature bridgework,
ma late mum meekly
acceded to doctors orders,
said operation sub
sequently deemed unnecessary
affecting negligible decreasing nasality
predicated on split (bifid
or bifurcated uvula), viz laryngeal
utterances finds me speculating
speculating now, whether taking kneel
ling pose possibly coo dove
wrought divine intercession
giving me super powers ideal
for fighting off being bullied
gloating this instant imagining
bringing beastie boys to heel
actual reality visit my kid self,
a most convenient scapegoat
socially withdraw puny size lad
internalizing hateful barbs glom
ming up significant emotional gearwheel
inferiority complex predominating
supplemented with cumulative
anger, a potent feel
ling exacerbating anxiety prone disposition
courtesy chromosomal
(pop'n mom genes) art of the deal.
Jul 9, 2018
Jul 9, 2018 at 7:50 PM UTC