"compendium" poems
we are not the
embodiment of beauty,
despite the way
your
quips dance with
my vagary,
or how
our bones are trophies
built from the
same bits of shrapnel
from explosions,
forged by hands
who never learned
how to fashion empires
out of anything
but fragments,
no,
we are much more
than beautiful,
we are
isotopic, enigmatic,
we’re magnetic and
eclectic,
we are
the sum of all things,
a compilation, a mosaic,
we are a
memoir of the universe,
we are fate,
we’re algebraic,
we’re the intersection
of two lines
without a destination,
but
when i follow the trail of
freckles
up your spine,
i find the root
of my
elation
Nov 20, 2013
Nov 20, 2013 at 3:05 PM UTC
Fertile earth’s seductive sorcery
Like ephemeral effulgence’s effluent effusion
Can lead you to believe that it’s not a travesty
Like life’s visceral intuitive eternal is not lost in subtle evasive confusion
Life’s virile translucence reflects this glow
Like an aorist ensemble of interludes transposition
Can lead you to believe that you’re in the know
Like omnipresence presages omniscience’s ubiquity is existential exigency’s peroration’s exposition
Corporeally preternatural metaphysical mystique
Like a mirador bartizan tableau panorama
Can inspire us to rise above its critique
Like spatiotemporal’s telemetry incarnate is creation’s vivid intrepid cyclorama
Spectral verve’s liaison’s consortium
Like eclectic synectic’s conclave’s fatidic
Can leave you lost in germane compendium
Like terminus thrall’s apriori inclination is transcendental accession’s endemic mnemonic
Monad’s transitional majestic splendor
Like residual harmonic vibration’s resilience
Can autonomously evoke and vicariously render
Like rubato’s actuator’s prospectus revealed is orchestration rendition’s intriguing brilliance
Eidetic preterit’s aesthetic amendments
Like protractive analyses’ dimensional delineation
Can lead to cogent salacious enticements
Like phantasmagoria’s fantasia fantastication’s magniloquence is sultry solace’s ostentatious ideation
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 8:07 PM UTC
I am captivated by a thought of old
Yeller in the streets of Madagascar.
Shot me dead indeed for standing up
to digs of my deeds done wrong.
But what of his Sister, and did he miss her
for fiesta on Friday last~Until a droopy~eyed mistress crooned a cock~a~doodle~doo straight against the face of death.
They loved Prima, come subtle still life into the night. Brought Passion'd brink of tears, thrown forlorn wisping shutter to my skin and I am Thought.. thinking I migh'nt be lost to soon to this moment mi'amour.
Charging hunted into the streets, taken by day or by night. Overrated artform of statuesque mystique, compendium of gods have struck me mortal and I am Death...dying unto pleasures infinitum.
Quell into question the material mourning, noon and night. Antidote to antithesis is Imagination...imagining everything in nothingness all at once...banging out existence, through the vacuum...all the way to Madagascar.
Take my place, take my bullet for me on the other end of old Yeller and I will take your end on the other side... of You ...being Me.
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 6:15 PM UTC
The desire to make the rest of these words rhyme
Is immense!
Alas, I cannot do it.
All I can do is read Frost’s
iambic pentameter and wonder
just what has become of Lola C. Edwards?
It’s her tome that I’ve purchased for two bits
at this decrepit, yet beloved thrift shop.
The book became hers, according to her inscription,
in the year 1970.
Now, it belongs to me in 2014.
I bought it because it’s The Complete Poems of Robert Frost;
the same that resides in my father’s library
and was greedily scanned by my hungry eyes and inspired mind.
But, what happened to Lola, some years ago?
Was it the cancer? Did it consume her bones?
Was she surrounded by loved ones?
Was she all alone?
What else but death could force her to relinquish such a text?
Surely, she couldn’t have done so willingly.
Her estate has been sold.
Her knick-knacks dusted and boxed for their final voyage to The DAV.
Turned over to uncaring brutes that couldn’t care less about
her beloved crystal cake plate, now shattered, or the book
that I hold in my hand today.
Lola C Edwards shares her life with me.
Every time I open this compendium,
I shall celebrate her, this beloved stranger!
Because, we are alike, she and I
in that we have chosen the road less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.
***
-J. Claywell
©P&ZPublications; 2014
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 3:06 PM UTC
Call me stricken
by her
my favorite color.
I want to fill my ears with static
to give my thoughts some room to move
and my eyes monochromatic
with an artistic side to prove
She writes
like shes giving
Noah Webster a *******
her labyrinthine constructions
of consonants and vowels,
leading in circles
obliterating disbelief,
and I
AM
the words.
She tastes like ***
and nostalgia
nauseating my pages,
wearing thin over keystrokes,
repetition,
the mother of decrepitude
so my muse
decimates my thoughts
one in ten
one in ten
one in ten
CRACK
Sep 12, 2013
Sep 12, 2013 at 2:06 PM UTC
Once upon a time,
i had a book i read nightly....without fail.
t'was a compendium of impossible dreams,
big plans, summaries of late night talks
on "long-shots-but-worth-a-try," stuff,
...our very own fairy tales, where we
wished for magic wands and wings,
written on nights when sleep was elusive,
when bottles of cold beer had lost their effect.
talks were long...my fingers grew tired, for,
my guitar wept with sad songs....t'was then
i learned to pour martini...into my coffee.
::::::::::::::::::
lost my guitar one day, got busted....but, life's
many notes and tunes, played on with time.
eclipses shaded the already dimmed horizon,
floods ruined boxes of souvenirs...stamped,
handwritten...with ribbons of silver and gold...
people died, some left...some fell out of love,
moved near the mountains, others left their
preferred milieus...for uncomfortable zones...
the moon, looking down from mountaintops,
was a witness to tears...of sufferings,
.....realization, and of acceptance.
when nights refused to end,
when the howling of distant dogs, echoed
and shattered the stillness of the night,
i question marked our tales with suspended
endings...tore off unfulfilled, hopeless pages,
i crossed out those with "no forever afters,"
only a few pages were left......so, i began
creating new plots......and new settings
i added new characters, and new twists,
all written in the midst of unholy hours
.......til a new dawn....proclaimed itself...
:::::
to this day,
i write my own fairy tales, with no beer, definitely
i still have my night coffee...though sans martini
......it could be black, or with its mating cream,
....and all the dark curves and swirls, in between...
:::::
"a long shot, but worth a try," it may seem,
...yet, i do wish, i could put some sugar and cream
......upon everyone's dark, and bitter coffee...
:::::
Sally
Copyright June 6, 2017
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
Jun 5, 2017
Jun 5, 2017 at 11:33 PM UTC
Fertile earth’s seductive sorcery
Like ephemeral effulgence’s effluent effusion
Can lead you to believe that it’s not a travesty
Like life’s visceral intuitive eternal is not lost in subtle evasive confusion
Life’s virile translucence reflects this glow
Like an aorist ensemble of interludes transposition
Can lead you to believe that you’re in the know
Like omnipresence presages omniscience’s ubiquity is existential exigency’s peroration’s exposition
Corporeally preternatural's metaphysical mystique
Like a mirador bartizan tableau panorama
Can inspire us to rise above its critique
Like spatiotemporal’s telemetry incarnate is creation’s vivid intrepid cyclorama
Spectral verve’s liaison’s consortium
Like eclectic synectic’s conclave’s fatidic
Can leave you lost in germane compendium
Like terminus thrall’s apriori inclination is transcendental accession’s endemic mnemonic
Monad’s transitional majestic splendor
Like residual harmonic vibration’s resilience
Can autonomously evoke and vicariously render
Like rubato’s actuator’s prospectus revealed is orchestration rendition’s intriguing brilliance
Eidetic preterit’s aesthetic amendments
Like protractive analyses’ dimensional delineations
Can lead to cogent salacious enticements
Like phantasmagoria’s fantasia fantastication’s magniloquence is sultry solace’s ostentatious ideation
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 2:47 AM UTC
As a compendium
of somber faces
become a dentist's
occupational hazard,
so with death.
Trying to die with
the dying, the very
lifeblood of suicidal
tendency.
Only, the dentist is
successful--and death
is forced to say: open
up wide.
May 14, 2017
May 14, 2017 at 11:52 AM UTC
blind from birth, she
could tell the difference
between the odor of chrysanthemums and tulips,
and remember her first whiff of both
she could identify
the scent of her brother
in a groping group
of sweaty brutes
she knew
her nose was her biographer
collecting memories, visions
her eyes could not
she studied biology
only to discover her compendium
of smells originated in a space infinitely
smaller than a fly's eye
a few molecules
devoted to identifying ham,
the rich smokey meat
of her first Easter
another clump to help her hold
the faint smell of perfume which lingered
in the room hours after
her mother passed
and who knew what atoms,
what cells, what curse of chemistry
forced her to recall, most of all, the sweet scent
of her newborn's hair,
the few seconds she held him,
after his heart stopped, and they took him
and placed him in a smooth, cold box, where sight,
sound and smell were locked forever
Jul 9, 2016
Jul 9, 2016 at 11:36 AM UTC
This trio, conjoined by the snaking coil of a common dream,
Put forth their writing on the proverbial wall
The void between breached by the collective of the written word
Surreal landscape all the while sifting before their wise eyes,
Reached across miles to clasp their hand in the hall of time!
Never quenching the fire of their talent threefold muse,
Or assuaged in time the darkened orbs of the wise.
Through those hands that reached out for each other,
Three incomplete souls, three beads of one unique rosary,
Their heart full of amorphous love,
Breathed into each other a new life,
Became one missing piece of their puzzle,
Bound by a string of silent promises to stay intact,
To not fly away from each other, no matter how high their wings took them,
They set forth a journey, a journey full of never ending journeys.
The perils of their Fellowship, intangible
And the only barriers space and time
One being divided in three by fourteen hours and many miles of Earth
A chance linkage has set this pursuit in for a piece, a work in motion.
A work to describe their separation is forged
And the cogs of a collective mind start to spin.
A single piece borne from heart to heart as in a compendium
Spread out, and all around them the duties of the spherical lay;
Compiled by their hands is done,
And the same rising of the sun is seen of the three in each own way
The beauty of each rose is unfurled like the beating of each momentum!
The victory shall soon be won!
The goal of their want was met by the shores of brighter halls;
Herein contains the working of those annals which rose out of grey walls.
Now hand grasp hand to work complete,
And forged a work and friendship which cannot delete!
Though they rise and fell,
All around their eyes did well;
To see the beauty of one goal,
That did not crash upon some far off shoal!
So ran they the race of the clock which halted—injuries could not hold
The lays of their hearts was far stronger than the ills and their story's told.
The wheels of motion could not stop their voice,
Now they each rise up in one and do rejoice!
Dec 5, 2012
Dec 5, 2012 at 10:42 PM UTC
You talk about agape
And leave me agape.
Really Beulah
Go peel me a grape.
At least you’d be useful
Because now you are not.
A bunch of superstitions
That is all you have got.
A badly written compendium
Of fairy tales for adults.
The kind of book of spells
A witch might consult.
Gobbledygook and folderol
All except the dead cats.
This kind of mumbo jumbo
Tells us exactly where you’re at.
If you came to me and said
I really dig Carlos Castaneda
And I want you to live by him
And his rules, I’d say, “Later!”
The same would be true if
You told me to dance in skin
Under the light of the moon
In the direction: widdershins.
If you came to me with a rock
And said the thing was breathing
You might as well claim it a baby
And tell me the rock is teething.
If you tell me waving your hands
Makes my bad mood go away
I might, out of pure courtesy
Not have that much to say.
But if you tell me I must talk
To infantile pieces of stone
And wave my hands at you
I’ll tell you to leave me alone.
The same thing goes for folks
That read misquoted old books
And when I say I don’t believe
They shoot me evil looks.
Oct 21, 2015
Oct 21, 2015 at 9:02 PM UTC
you are a complex circuitry of veins and arteries
a compendium of extremities and intimacies
you are either a trillion accidents or a single success
a whisper of life or a shattering of precedents
your structure is art
your conception a masterpiece
mechanically, you are beautiful
the core of this existence is uncertainty
does your rib cage shiver around the catechisms?
at your worst, you are
the part that can not be cut open
the part that can die before the body
your existence is a war
a perennial blooming and crumbling
your mind and body's slow destruction
flinging themselves together and apart
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 1:28 AM UTC
"Future"
The word alone is dangerous
So full of blown-out-candles,
Long-drowned purse-change,
And hundreds of thousands of shooting stars gone still.
I have so many hopes pricking into my skin
that I start to think I'm stitched of impossibilities
As if my soul was drenched in daydreams.
I laugh at the paradox that is "Future":
Today is yesterday's tomorrow,
And this poem, the past.
Every time you ask me who I want to be
In ten-times-three-six-five I sink
Deeper in my body
My skin tinged blue
Dye creeping from my chest to my toes
Dye for blood, blue for heartbeats.
Pardon me, Future? Who am I?
No answer.
Sorry, this poem is too
DIFFICULT
too STRENUOUS
to think about right now.
I know what's next: tergiversation.
Ask me who I was before
My poetry will be a compendium of a girl
I never knew.
Apr 25, 2017
Apr 25, 2017 at 11:21 PM UTC
His partner isn't simply what she seems:
he sees her through a mesh of memories.
She isn't just the woman she is now,
but a compendium of all she's been.
She's still that girl in light-blue jeans
(stunning, with her tan and long, dark hair)
who made his life seem suddenly worthwhile,
when they were students, crammed with dreams.
She's the mother of their children, too,
and though they're starting to leave home,
he remembers all the care she gave:
help with homework, food and clothes.
Or she's a forty-something lady on a beach,
who seems untroubled by the sun's harsh rays -
soaking up its warmth for hours on end,
while he must leave, in search of shade.
She could be likened to a Russian doll
concealing all those other selves inside.
When one has known and loved someone so long,
there's much, much more to them
than meets the eye.
Sep 1, 2011
Sep 1, 2011 at 4:28 AM UTC
I
meteor showers are not
very cleansing nor are
shooting stars much of
a threat
they pass over arms
raised and waving with
a hundred cries of
‘not yet’
by the time they
have passed the universe
might expand enough to
engulf Regret
and our arms will touch
our sides as we realise
the chances we may
have missed
and by then stars may
not exist and Never may
have already paid
its debt
and we’re left wondering
why we were left behind
and not chosen as hunks of
rock flew by
and though Ever After
has been stitched on
our minds dimensional
thread by thread
(and has with it what the
past cannot forget without
a vast sense of swoon)
Ever After will never
become Forever if it
speaks too late
or arrives too soon
II
if you were to ask Where when it would be
he would most definitely reply with ‘not now’
and if you were to ask Why exactly how
he would probably reply: ‘without me’
but if you were to question What with how it was
he would redirect you straight back to Why
so the last one to ask is the ever glum Was
(for he knows many things, most of all regret)
and Was also knows all you’ve done
and all you’ve done wrong he won’t let you forget
III
I’m about to begin work
on Forever but I don’t
know how long it will take
by the time I’m done
with Now who knows When
it will be
maybe by then North will
be South but true North
will be down somewhere
else
and clocks won’t have
numbers they’ll just
have words like ‘never’
and ‘too late’
it might take
a very long time
so it would be nice
to have someone here
just for having someone
here’s sake
it wouldn’t make Time
any less steady nor
pass it any quicker
or slower
but when the little hand
gets to ‘too late’ or
where ‘too late’ should
have been
I hope to have felt
and seen
everything
Nov 18, 2012
Nov 18, 2012 at 2:16 AM UTC
Silence have thousand different voices
it can be scary
it can lift the air
it can utter appreciation
it can send an elation
it can dance,
it can destroy
it can mean insecurity, fear
or arrogance
it can invite to fight
it can require the note of hate or of love
if you long enough were connect
with a being who listen read and watch
but didnt talk
you slowly gather the compendium of meanings
what hides behind of curtain of it majesty silence
yes silence has thousand voices
dont you believe it?
Is it a strange speech?
Do you imply me for insane?
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 6:41 PM UTC
Cast a drab shadow on my adjacent soul
And protecteth it from Helios above.
Neglected in shrouded shalom, contoured in kohl
You indefinite ruin, You darkened dove.
Obelisk towering as my shaded shelter
Untied to serve no master in dark.
Forged with fire, with brimstone in welter
Obliged to nothing, Ronin sharpened arc.
Ripped through tear of flesh and blood
Gave way my physical being of desire.
It punctured through altar, frustum of mud
Veiling ethereal magnificent, we all acquire.
Eastern deities and imperial gods,
Match not with what I awed.
Erased, my heart is not.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 5:10 AM UTC
I sat there beneath the big Maple tree in the center of Sunkenwater Park. I leaned back onto my hands, peering over the compendium of countless smaller trees that littered the grounds like so many cigarette butts and beer cans. The Sun hung high, looking down at me with a smile you could only see if you were staring directly at it, which I did for a moment until my vision became bleached with Godlike light. I sighed, scanned the grounds again and then slowly descended onto my back. I stared straight up into the spider leg set up of branches above me, hanging there indifferently and silently. I sighed again without even noticing, this time completely unintentionally.
And that's when her head found it's way into my kind of sight. She was standing over me, looking down, eye squinted like she was examining some microscopic and otherworldly specimen.
"Hey," slipped from her pretty pinkish lips.
"Hi," I replied, staring right back.
She smiled slightly and sat down next to me, descending slowly and gracefully into her back just like me, right next to me.
"What's up?" I turned so I was facing her ear as she refused to face me yet.
"Nothing, just thinking."
"Oh. About what?" I narrowed my brow inquisitively.
"Us. Me and you. And why."
I cocked my head slightly. "Why what?"
"Why you love me so much."
I pursed my lips. Turned my head back so I was staring at the spidery branches and breathed slowly out if my nose. Then I pointed up, aiming my finger at the the beams of cut up Sunlight that was finding its way through the branches above our heads and onto us, the source if all life.
"Because you remind me of the Sun."
"The Sun, huh?"
"You give me what I need. You give me my reasons. You give me movement. Physically and emotionally. And you do always fund a way. A way through. A way out. You're a resilient person. And you do it without even trying. I love you because you are who you are. And who you are is pretty **** ridiculous in the sense that I've never net a soul quite like you. For lack of a less cliche term; you are my light. And I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world."
She kept her gaze upward for a long time. I did the same. Soaking up the Sun's rays with a dumb grin like I knew it was the last time is be able to take part in such a miracle. It didnt matter in that moment that she didnt love me. All that mattered was that I loved her. And would continue to do so, unapologetically, until her rays of light stopped finding their way into my heart, which had been growing increasingly dimmer and dimmer until I met her. I was thankful and I felt dumb but I was too proud to care.
She turned to me, but I didn't turn back. She lifted her hand up off of the grass and found mine, interlocking her fingers and turning again to face the sky.
May 1, 2013
May 1, 2013 at 10:14 AM UTC
_'Actually, my friend in Taranaki makes the stars. I combine them with my own elements and string them into garlands,' wrote Makery. There was an element of apology about her words. As if she’d been rumbled. As if someone had confirmed the voice of self-doubt that whispered in her ear, 'Who do you think you are, calling yourself an artisan?'
Stringing things together is applied artistry - whether it be words, Scandi-style stars, or fairytale mushrooms threaded on candy coloured twine. We are all hunter-gatherers who construct our creations from discovered elements. Some transmute received knowledge into constructed knowledge. Others beachcomb lexica for found syncretic treasures. All aspire to contribute to the infinite compendium of human self-expression, to create something which says, 'This is who I am.' With the silent addendum, 'I hope you like it.'_
May 19, 2020
May 19, 2020 at 2:07 AM UTC
"I am freedom itself" hummed aloud,
the wind that passes agitating tree tops,
air am I, the giver of life,pumping energy"
"I am with you" I echoed his song sans words
"Though I won't hazard a guess where do we go"
"Don't you bother, our circumnavigation is yet another
of the stories, in the compendium,universe does cherish.
We belong to all, as movement that never ceases"
"Get in to my vehicle, the heat will look after the rest,
the transporter,that makes everything light,
by burning down, I am the transformer too"
"I am the hunger you possess" I replied
"I eat and digest, create growth, make things move,
in my ***** is the hunger to procreate,progress.
Once the hunger is satiated, I get back
slithering in to the burrow, like a serpent
Anger I become when I decide to destruct,
it's from the ashes of the old,the new is constructed!
"From the salt in me,everything living sprout"
earth, the begining and end of everything
in customary silence,implied, I was overwhelmed.
she is the nurturing mother of every seed with the
potential to life, wants to open eyes to the sun
then grow roots deep to entrench, stand *****
"I am one with you mother earth, from you
sprung my body, that seeks light, rest at night"
Sky was full of birds,regaling in every presence
in it's fold, sky beams"I am a vessel fathomless,
come in to my space open,dance your way to bliss,
and seek wistful dreams written by interstellar light"
"I am filled by you where there is an absence of other
my mind limitless is in you exist, I am you in spirit,
when I withdraw from all,I am all in you, nothing left"
Water did speak both to my silence and eloquence,
water is beyond the markers of darkness and light,
From earth to dust, dissolving to be water and flow
from one kind of existence to other, till the limits of cosmos.
Sep 14, 2017
Sep 14, 2017 at 11:03 AM UTC
New Pompeii clasps the old
in a fingerless glove of
tourist gold. A grubby
British penny is grinning from
the rabblement of dust. In the
West it's all the same. A
compendium of histories fill the
Seine, the Thames back home's
a rotted filed-away old thing.
And I am bound upon the cascade
of the Atlantic waves - no matter.
What's here is here - and here I am.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 12:16 PM UTC
▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒
_I write to right the write-less, the unvoiced compendium of my experience. A
panoply of shadows between each line and behind the fumbled words miswritten
out of loyalty to the fiction I maintain. The letters which move beneath the page,
scintillating with suggestion, leaving their impression - a glimmer here, an echo
there; they are more honest than the fraught narrative that I deem fit to 'save'. I
write to right the write-less, to balance the unwieldy, to illuminate the intangible._
▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒░▒
Oct 17, 2020
Oct 17, 2020 at 2:52 AM UTC
sometimes it just feels like
having to make an interjection,
accompanied by,
and listening to, and making do away the
slightest spiderweb tickle...
sometimes it just feels like
you writing something and your muse is
only an insomniac radio d.j.,
and it really does feel
like a freefall sometimes,
having taken the time to possess
a library of music, giving it all
up to simple turn on the radio....
it can appear pointless at times...
but then you can hardly stomach
the need for adverts...
and because of adverts you started
building up a music library...
but then again, once more:
you end up only writing
for a niche... i live a few miles from
London, but given my holiday to
the most obscure place in Poland...
London is about as far as the moon
from where i'm criss-crossing...
tango of a daddy-longshanks spider...
confirming that with the
crown beheld by Edward IV...
was radio, always the necessary
blockage, the necessary sound
when you woke up?
i built a music library
and became prone to listening to the radio
at 3a.m.... nice... real nice,
i'm about to do a Borat impersonation
with the words: jak sie masz?
i.e. how are you?
don't know, given a jew asked it,
i'm starting to wonder what it means
to be alive in Tel Aviv these days....
and that really is: balaclava worth
a statement on it own.
if i knew i'd come back to listening
to the radio, i wouldn't
care to make a compendium of obscure
music, i'd throw the television out,
and i'd read a poem more often than
taking to the ritual of ingesting
a newspaper...
see the ailment?
bound to wishing to be blown up
in a terrorist attack?
for most days, i feel like
a street-cleaner of the past ought-nots
and did-in-fact happenings,
later slimmed into a new year's eve
firework sadness concealing
a claim to a celebration.
Jan 25, 2017
Jan 25, 2017 at 10:08 PM UTC
Some nights I wring my hands in worry,
thinking the same thoughts again and again
“It hurts to believe I still haven’t found
my purpose, my, calling, my reason for being.”
In a world where “I don’t know” is the Scarlet letter
and “not having a plan” is a badge of shame
It’s a load of crap to think, that at 23,
I got a ******* understanding of how any of this works,
where I'm going, or when I'm gonna get there.
Spent a year at a store, making some cash
then a year at school, dealing in trash
I found myself hating everything structured
found my critiques were full of self appointed experts
and my craft was to shape into their expectation of art
as if another twenty-something could possibly
know everything about how to structure my mind.
I believe there is a problem here
but it ain’t with me, it’s with how we write life
it all comes down to image of us
about who we put into the universe
about what bright shining star we want to be
instead of the bright shining star we actually are.
And I blame the twenty analogies of academia
I've come to hear every start of every year
“it’s for your future.
it’s about shaping you into—
When I was your age
When I studied
My college was
My theory is
My
My
My”
“Hey teach, I came here to learn
don’t preach, I didn’t come for the psalms.”
And there is not a doubt in my mind
that if you were aware of how little I cared
about your spiritual awakening
in Ali-Baba's Tomb
you’d give me this speech again.
“It’s for my future
it’s about shaping me into—
When you were my age
When you studied
Your college was
Your Theory is
Your
Your
Your”
I came to here to write!
Teach me to write!
Tell me to write!”
Cause when I get of a taste of the verse, that’s all it takes!
It’s the kind of mood you can’t get with prescription
one hell of addiction and it ain’t the kind of drug you can just, kick.
I can feel the words gnawing at the edges of mind
and the hands, I got,
start shaking and twitching until the next time I find a pen.
So let me find the verb for this noun
and express my tension,
past tense,
as it moves from present to future
I don’t have the time to polish my grammar
I propose preposterous prepositions, purely to pontificate, a precious pittance of a second more.
I think,
sometimes,
of all the ink I’ve laid and erased,
I could tear down my bookshelf
and place a compendium of failed and tortured lines in its place.
It’s a memorial to how far I’ve come,
maybe that’s why I still dwell in the past,
I’m more comfortable with my failures so far,
and worry too much about my future ones,
that I can't know exist yet
I think that’s why I can never write a decent ending.
Sep 19, 2015
Sep 19, 2015 at 2:44 PM UTC