"counterbalanced" poems
I’ve been reading a bit about positivity, this past hour.
I have been trying to project what I’ve read, mentally, in scenarios where I’m under stress to see how things work out.
I couldn’t make peace with the fact that sometimes letting go and keeping quiet is the best course of action.
That sometimes, just sometimes, shutting up and letting things happen is the only way to get over a bad situation.
The fallout can be dealt with. The one percent of our animal nature within helps us rebuild every time.
I can feel an uneasiness settling, making its home in the center of my being.
Writhing in malcontent and uneven distaste, counterbalanced hatred for this feeling I’m riddled with. Where is the good in all this?
Is that what forgiveness is? Swallowing the bitter pill? Turning a new leaf?
Among other euphemisms for being a **** up.
Something that’s very hard to do.
Two minds too blind to make themselves up. Nothing is accomplished in confusion.
One kills while the other cries.
Despair and hope side by side, waiting for one to rise and the other to fall.
Positivity is elastic, it can be stretched to fit over what you deem right.
It can be mistaken for a rush of energy, a thirst for life, a sense of achievement, an inebriated night.
All the while festering, brooding, decaying inside, a heart of sadness, that once did smile.
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 5:13 AM UTC
perhaps we do not wish to admit,
that the majority of the words we speak,
the conversations overheard, even without intent,
leave us not awash, not suffocating, but
mesmerized in an awful way
squelching tirades of banality,
humdrum housework life's tirades of
meeting basic needs, functionaries of life,
bureaucrats of our domestic affairs,
accountants calculating marginal cures,
overridden by the occasional impulse,
which delights until it too
is humdrum-ed out of existence
a passing blazing ambulance
begs to contradict,
reminders that there are
crevasses on the city streets,
that in minuscule moments,
life becomes twisted making our lethargy,
a course 101 introduction to tragedy
but this is not the norm,
this imbalanced equation,
1X = 99 whys,
to survive,
to justify,
to mediate
between these un-counterbalanced weights,
I write poetry
Aug 18, 2014
Aug 18, 2014 at 6:57 PM UTC
your gratuity
is not sincere
if it is balanced as a pendulum.
the anticipation of return
counteracts
the authenticity
of generosity.
it is acceptance that brings humility-
acceptance that a gift
is not equal
to inherent necessity for reward.
you cannot define "gracious"
while using the words
"owed"
or
"deserved."
allow every inch of your heart
to be a gift.
to be opened
received
and valued
for it is not in balance
that we show love-
but in the counterbalanced abnormality
of sharing.
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 at 3:12 PM UTC
We the people
are a Sisyphean collective
our punishment: progressing humanity
With fiery eyes and frothing mouth
we charge towards its surfaces
bashing those with scrawny shoulders
ricochet like sparks from flint
watch as we fall back
how it moves a fraction of a hair length
knowing that
if all our efforts were combined
surely, humanity would’ve accelerated
But we the people
are a democratic anarchy
each one to their own
Each thrusts towards their own direction
each blow is counterbalanced by another
as we foam like sea surf on a shoal
crushing from all sides
and our humanity
crawls in place amongst us
For we, the people
are a paradox of will
the driving, and the stalling force
Insignificantly small, with significant resistance
the viscous drag that ebbs and flows
a choreography of chaos and confusion
we are so many
so many more
And humanity is singular
a monument to our failures
its minuscule fluctuations
a testament of battles fought
but from a far, and from way forward
it is but a speck of dust
which, ever silent, floats
throughout the cosmos
Sep 18, 2019
Sep 18, 2019 at 7:06 AM UTC
one more for Pradip...
"Poems...are never short or long, they're only more. Thanks Nat for ever filling the less."
firing up the poem kiln,
this intriguing provocation
insistent of deserved consideration,
after all,
it is thy stories that these days inspire,
my own stories are relentless
grey, old, cold, and to my eyes,
coded repetitious...
neither a chaster or a chastiser,
(You could look it up!)
confessing readily to sinning against humanity
by ecrivezing poems of length considerable,
the Mexicano from Indiano
releases a shotgun blast
to all those whose attention spans last,
to ten words or a single stanza...no more...
but this not the matter of import,
no, no, it is the
more and the less
that makes poetry the best,
no matter the length or the heft...
in each of us
there is a more and a less,
in cycles individual that are not bound to
tides, weather, or any effect natural,
but product of our own amber waves
of chemical imbalances and mental auras...
all my days have I rode waves of
well hid hills of mania *** depression,
contented moments surrounded and cosseted
by wails of worry, sorrel colored sorrows,
making the scientists amazed at the correlation
of the macro and the mini,
the precision of my indecision...
in sixty seconds, in sixty days, in sixty years,
have I battered and battled the disequilibrium
of more and less,
disallowing a pilloried intervention,
will likely do so until
that day when my pen
has bled its last...
this theme haunts,
for but a day ago,
a bus poem was blurted out,
that concluded thusly:
***to survive,
to justify,
to mediate
between these un-counterbalanced weights,
I write poetry***
here I am stunned that Pradip
with but a handful of seeds,
exactly isolates the genetic implanted notion
that I struggle to define,
knowing only that my poetry fills my less,
when the all the rest is just
another fine mess
we fill the less with our wit,
we top off our souls with writs,
we are more for having scribed,
one read or ten thousand,
it mater matters knot!
look upon the pages endlessly bearing
the ephemeral heavy-handed weight full of well crafted words,
the good, the plenty,
the sad, the sorry,
the trite and cranky,
those misted musty,
the light and the careful,
the bad and merely awful,
even the drip of torrential love stories gone dry
what matters not
any of this over sighted analytics,
each and all and everyone
a success,
for each poem makes someone's less lessened,
and someone's more, more,
and by this
ever filling the less...
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 3:35 PM UTC
The Statue of Liberty in New York
counterbalanced by
The Statue of Responsibility in California
Thich Nhat Hanh is right to thus employ
O wise Buddha!
We are indeed not free to destroy.
Mar 21, 2019
Mar 21, 2019 at 9:06 AM UTC
We seek love because in love we are validated in our perfect flaws and exactitude of malformation and in love we are given reason not to hate ourselves for the things we see are wrong but cannot change even if we spent a millenia in an instant or infinite instants in eternity struggling to shake off the shackles of our humanity which is both our captor and liberator in this,
life,
yes we recognize its importance in allowing us to be but we spend the congregation of moments we are given in that holy being damning it, for it also makes us imperfect and in our imperfections is the capacity to do harm unto the world which we love so much,
and so,
we equate these imperfections with evil and seek to expunge them with all our might of will and all our cleverness of wit and all our screaming and pounding and passion of
soul,
but it is all in vain for these things which we despise so greatly are joined at the sutures with our very being and hence have many good but troubled lambs of the internal apocalypse chosen to end that being for sake of ending that malformation, though they know this is wrong, but it is the only solution in trying to remove the weight of one’s existence and hence the weight of existence from one’s mind and so they sleep easily,
unbreathing,
unknowing,
and having completely cleansed the burden of themselves from this immaculate and gorgeous universe which they love so, but they are also
unloved.
And it is in love that we are validated, both in our perfect flaws and exactitude of malformation,
it is in love that our weight on the world is not lifted, no, but counterbalanced and nullified,
and in that way,
we are set free.
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 11:12 PM UTC
Anything he calls me it must be true, Opinions are like ******** but I must be too
Nothing is everything and everything is wrapped up tight, right and everything is counterbalanced with unintentional natural born spite
This fog filled phantoms box I'm stowed away in
Pandora's dopplegangster the wicked we, the hidden brethren
So locked to my box no keys to set me free, I listen to all of beautifully damaging words he believes me to be
Opinions are like ******** but I must be one too, anything he calls me must be true
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 9:50 PM UTC
upon becoming a nestling sans nest,
i decided to make a half-baked plan of mandates,
stating how i ought to quest, trough to crest.
egesting the presently unpleasant facets,
i adopted a policy of empirical puerilism.
now a newly groovy pluvi-dendrophile philomath,
a counterbalanced feng shui caricature,
promptly finding rapture bereft of culture.
plundering the dysfunctional,
worshiping the digressive.
anything is adjustable,
everything can be lovable.
finding bravery in regret,
forever simply vincible.
basking in the ebullience,
bringing passion with my presence.
learning to rhapsodize my sentience,
projecting admittedly confusing ontologisms,
concerned with not much else than pleasance.
my means of conception have become my heaven,
and with no evidence of the clandestine,
i simply stepped in.
Jul 6, 2019
Jul 6, 2019 at 4:42 AM UTC
got what he wanted at my expense.
Said crack fast talking
hacker and scammer
pulled figurative wool over my eyes
going incognito and speaking a clipped
English mien his disguise.
He appeared (rather sounded) genuine
after yours truly experienced computer snafu
(the Macbook Pro essentially hogtied
courtesy virus that disabled any activity)
even turning the laptop off then on
only wrought frustration to boot.
An out of state Apple computer
technical support person impersonator
(imposter invariably linkedin
to aforementioned fraudster -
most likely brother in arms)
answered telephone number
provided on the screen.
Admonitions against sharing details
about case in point, whereby cyberpunk
donned many hats to convince me
serious computer virus,
malware, trojan horse, et cetera
counterbalanced with voice on other end
affecting sedulousness to "listen carefully"
and carry forth the following commands.
Yours truly trustingly,
passively, meekly, et cetera
(though feeling jittery)
carried out the repeated instructions,
which charlatan inveighed against
speaking softly (in retrospect,
I ought to have carried a big stick),
indicating (as if held at gunpoint)
to headout off to the Trappe branch
of Citizens Banks and withdraw cash
all the while recording verbal dialogue
with small, medium at large criminal
(the scam artist(s) in question).
Upon retrieving legal tender
(quite a *** thee next entrapment
entailed driving to closest ATM machine,
an MP gas station/convenience store
in Collegeville to convert
high denomination bills
(a considerable number
of money crisp Benjamins)
into bitcoin cryptocurrency
then hightailing back to where I live,
an assisted living facility
named Highland Manor.
Finally, the schmegegge script
(incorporating ejaculations that
questionable hacker convinced me
to swallow hook, line and sinker)
alluded to strong likelihood
scam artist lurked in close proximity
to above named banking institution,
which divine comedy bumbling
Ace of spades, an inept card shark
anagram name Meg Found
left as crypto clue told.
Jun 25, 2023
Jun 25, 2023 at 1:09 PM UTC