"conscripting" poems
Hunger and Desire grew
'til bellies everywhere were
ruined for sustenance,
so in went the troops to wage
war against ideas and
when they arrived there were no
soldiers to speak of
so they set up tents
and didn't go away
they sang drunken war-songs
until the moan of starvation bellies
sang louder and more terribly
"That must have been them
the whole time!" they said, and
suited up for the charge.
So they trained their shells at the city
excited to see if target practice
had done them any good
but all they did was mortar themselves to bits
squadrons of video-game experts
sent drones overhead to drop
Hallmark cards titled "Why it's your fault"
and coupon booklets for American
chain shopping outlets to come
but they only marginalized
and condescended themselves
"Bring in the reinforcements!"
they cried, even conscripting
their hapless targets. This mob,
too, was a hungry belly
bellowing for satisfaction,
a cannibal ***
simmering
So they set up tables and stacked
boring paperwork, filing away
spirits broken by shrapnel and white
phosphorus
but they only resigned themselves
to imaginary lines and the plunder
of Control, insensibly
****** themselves to death
while they watched,
perplexed.
Oct 21, 2015
Oct 21, 2015 at 12:29 PM UTC
I've abandoned a withered state, fumbling
Toward your ecstasy - opening windows to
A brave new world: What a scene to behold!
My heart has calmed consuming life’s tonic -
I'm filled with attraction, alike an alchemist
disposition to discover their personal legend
How far, do thoughts travel? Become aware,
we’ve covered only but a few hours of sleep
The vicissitudes of motion - by faith we move
At luminal speed, ’til visions dawn and we’re
Before a sky clearing moon
Shall we recline in that loft above?
While it be suspended in the fetal position?
Or tarry until morn’ when reflections are reborn
From spurts of spontaneity, to cycles of growth
Apprehending blessings so as to appreciate the
distance of our obstacles
For camaraderie's had since severed –
And authenticity perfidiously pilfered –
And liars became prosecutors of liars
Pregnant with delusions of grandeur
Freedom is the temporal prison for
Revolutionaries wails of conditions
Psalms of sentimentalism provoke
An emotional tug of war, conscripting
another soldier of love – wearing a fig
Leaf of inhibition and foul remains of
passed transgressions...
Where to turn to when you’re cold?
Intransigent echoes give no warmth
I’ve fallen into the (d)earth of sanity
Erstwhile
Fumbling
Toward
Ecstasy
Sep 28, 2012
Sep 28, 2012 at 2:27 PM UTC
The refrigerator did it...
Results are in,
The crime is solved,
The botnet's done its ***** work;
The refrigerator has been caught
Just standing there,
But running just the same,
Cool as a cuc...
Never mind....
No appliance now is safe
Connected to the Net;
Programs roaming find some space
To pick up every megabit,
Conscripting all the little brains
Thinking on their own
To join together,
And while it's cooling Easter ham,
My fridge is on a mission now,
Releasing spores of spam.
(Check today's news...kind of frightening, but also funny.)
Jan 17, 2014
Jan 17, 2014 at 6:28 AM UTC
The memory of her sits on a balcony ledge, cigarette in hand.
My green light at the end of a dock.
And this time I am reaching out
like many before,
in pages and poems past.
Macbeth’s face is a book.
Her body is an atlas
tracing a beautiful continent.
Follow the long tributaries that lead to shallow deltas.
This shore begins softly and forms into slender feet,
quiet but powerful when outstretched an angler waiting for prey.
Odysseus, only, can hear this Siren play.
Follow her legs, those tawny plains,
unbroken, guiding along welcomingly,
inviting curiosity and conscripting imagination.
An oasis.
And her torso is a valley from which
her laughter is ****** upward and resisted until uncontainable.
Dimples break and burst like earthquakes.
A ridgeline is all that awaits until we see her face.
She is the Americas from bottom to top.
Follow her decorated canyon mouth
but know it is merely a diversion.
Her eyes are icebergs, which shyly reveal themselves
to sink ships and drown lovers, for always.
Her hair is aurora borealis,
the northern lights,
dancing colorfully
to an unaccompanied waltz
heard by everyone but her.
As the memory of her sits the smoke billows around
like clouds traveling down a coastline
only to dissipate
and disappear.
Jul 31, 2013
Jul 31, 2013 at 3:23 PM UTC
the first and the single greatest
discouragement from writing
always begins when people
ask you about money,
not necessarily that they want
money, but that they see
art as frivulous, something
to do on the side... and sure enough
most of art is done that way...
on the side... but then such art, what it
becomes, is an expression of chance
opportunism... i mean...
surely there's enough people in
the world that can allow one
man to write a few ******** poems
out, it's not like they're conscripting
young men to join salvation army
in syria or anything as ridiculous as that;
but in all honesty i don't know what
it's all about - first they tell you
to not get in trouble, then they tell
you art belongs in a high school art room,
then they put artists on peddlestools
when all they produce are massive blobs
of colour in a random way, or
make a messy bedroom an art work,
or pickle a shark in a plastic aquarium,
open spaces, strings of metal, ropes
around rodin's kiss... all kinds of airy fairy
bits 'n' bobs... then mediocre seasonal
greetings poetry: rhyme christmas with
business with busy bees with jabberwocky
or something like that -
but indeed the foremost discouragement
people place on you is to get your worried
about money, concerned enough that
you begin to wonder - are they really
chasing their own tail and insert that
serpent-eating-itself into you?
i mean, all the italian renaissance masters
didn't bother with adorments and fashion
for proof of being rich - they had a motto,
only one: we're not a bunch dumb peacocks!
how about i paint you a mona lisa
and make myself shine like gold in rags?!
surely enough modern art, on that
massive scale, in galleries across countries
is obsessed with space, perhaps the lack
of space in real life, the almost claustrophobic,
the sheer number of people on the streets,
all it's fighting is technique and detail,
it's trying to be a child again,
it cannot stomach the fact that old techniques
were never passed on, or if they were
they are like a magician's deception -
whatever that means - i just think that
what modern art has become is almost
architectural - how on earth could
you elaborate on a square is beyond me -
unless of course it isn't, in which case
it's forceful intellectualism:
trying to squeeze out some orange juice
from an old & dry orange.
Dec 15, 2015
Dec 15, 2015 at 5:44 AM UTC
A seed found furrow in my brow
Awaiting harvest, hungers now
Through my fertile mind’s palimpsest
A vine breaks soil where memories nest
Pushing on with a writhing stem
From deep brown earth toward blue welkin
With nostalgic rays, a star unfolds
a leaf, a story, yet untold
Each bud a poem that’s yet to bloom
In flowered couplets for the moon
awaiting dawn, for petals pleat
to release a blossom’s fragrance sweet
And from one strand a spider weaves
a gossamer web on trembling leaves
to capture prey that seeks to read
Poetic verse among the weeds.
Plant and spider thus conspire
conscripting minds of like, inspired,
to sew words of thorns, that never wilt
till every bough, a bookshelf built
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 6:01 PM UTC
Conscripting the Dead
Saturday Night, 12 November 2016
They’ve drafted now his hymn of innocence
Into their revolution against the poor
To sing in praise of dreamers they despise
To canonize the poverty of the rich
They weaponize the poetry of love
And drive sweet words into cold camps of hate
There to be regimented and uniformed
And beaten into a tribute unwilling
His alleluia is not their war song
It cannot be; it is his hymn of hope
Nov 14, 2016
Nov 14, 2016 at 8:59 PM UTC