the famous czech immunologist (miroslav holub) got it right, holding his complete works, seeing the precious output,  then hearing him say it: 'i'm not against the repetition, but what the hell would i write if i lost my first ambition of a career? i would write dross, but i'm not against balzac or dickens doing the ironing work - but i just couldn't do it - better me likened to a butterfly that was the czech spring of '68. indeed mummified flowers between the pages.'*

the main reason poetry books will never be
shelved, itemised, on the inventory: BEST SELLER,
is because they use priceless things in their contents
section of approved poetics ticked off...
poets mention the moon, the night,
the sun, the orange glaciers of skin of suntans
bundled up in fat and sold as ****,
poets forget they are touching priceless things
with words, i'm sure a readership numbering
1,000 will dry your socks after that marathon
run on lake verbose in the middle of hunting season,
but it will never go past that,
that's the fury and the fear surrounding
hunting down the poet who exceeds producing
the noble prize winning output of a szymborska,
~100 poems a lifetime means you really did live
it out, and wrote with slithering undertones
the art, the paradoxical art of the ancient world
trumpet or saxophone - it wasn't philosophy
that attacked us... but the woodwind instruments,
the harps are safe, i stashed them while cracking
and playing bone poker dominoes with my fingers.
poetry doesn't attract the most socially acceptable
form of lying: namely fiction -
poets don't lie - there's no genre that does it better
than writing fiction - and if they do lie,
it's un-intentional - mechanical, like the world,
like the world being so mechanised it almost
feels self-content without applause but an opera
chorus of screams and other forms of hysterics.
some books talk of seen and unseen realities,
i beg to differ, i can claim certain unseen realities
in the seen realities, take for example
man's ability to walk the method of onomatopoeia
like virgil walking dante through the inferno...
man as an animate thing can clearly imitate
other animate things.... he can howl, meow and bark,
he can imitate the pig's and the deer's snout
when impregnating a mare...
the grunt hot breath riff of things...
but he misjudges his accuracy of recording sounds...
he simply cannot fathom the sounds of inanimate
things in the realm of onomatopoeia;
it's not that he mishandles the 26 symbols,
but when he tries to make the visible doubly-visibly-divisible,
to notate knocking on a door, to notate
the scorching sounds of the sun in the equilibrated
exchange of hydrogen & helium (sun gods
laugh after all), when he tries to notate
the carbonated water fizz, the beer bottle cap
charles i pop / apache scalping with a tomahawk...
he's off by a mile and a marathon...
we can't mutilate words into sounds just to see
certain sounds (primarily of inanimate things)
with letters... there's an impasse about the whole thing;
this is trans-verbosity, overt-verbosity that cannot stand...
it's pointless trying to see a complex sound
with letter governed by the onomatopoeia...
it's enough to hear it... touch it... seeing is not believing
in this instance... this insistence...
after all we're utilising priceless things to get out message
across... so if man makes it worthwhile,
an onomatopoeic antonymous decision i have crafted:
the sound of the universe's vacuum "silence"
is counterweight to neither the sound of atoms congregating
into celestial orbs... but rather the place where man
out to shove his parallel representation of thought.
you can already see invisible realities within the realm
of visible realities, the many missing and the many amiss
onomatopoeias of what animate things echo from when
interacting with inanimate things... paradoxically
atoms are in an inanimate equilibrium as animate things
likened to the celestial bodies in orbit,
but in fact they are inanimate in an animate equilibrium...
worth a worth's worth of study in a laboratory allotment...
and if it was a cow's digestive system you were investigating,
the inanimate equilibrium is being worked on:
the equilibrium of what sort of usefulness from experience
can be possibly passed on;
but wait, you can't write me the onomatopoeia
for the crating of carbon monoxide (CO),
or formic acid (HCOOH),
or myristic acid - nutmeg  (CH3 branch with twelve CH2
and the carboxylic ending),
nor the ester (RCO2R) - because now you're
using a chemical alphabet of the periodic table,
and all necessary onomatopoeias are lost
to the names of the necessary elements
that begin with hydrogen, and end with anything
remotely removed from a famous scientist
by the elemental name akin to einsteinium.

Bustling energy of trade, fueled by wind and sea
By the bay, this town lived and died
Hauling stock, beast and trade

Commerce of lives, both benign and mine
Thousands of souls, the lifeblood of a town
Building, crating and shipping

Southward rumors of ancient gods, living in ocean deep
Too fantastic for the mind, first trickled then rain
They said, Cthulhu had walked again

Scoffing, things of myths and madness
Forgotten legends, and salty sailors' threats
But rituals pestered, beneath night and cloak

Attentions turned, as they always must
From fantastic, back to life and living
Until adrift, floating death made fall

Rumors resurfaced, cinders to flame
Dockyards without workers, migrants leave
A strange disease, visited from slave to master

From managed flame to fire, the grotesque grew
Crying of unexplained pain, watching madness spread
Freezing port, travel and even the wind

The bay lay like glass, frozen in August's heat
Neither wind, nor wave bothered the docks
And folk looked now, to the religious for bread

Of those, Christians alike
Busied with new, task at hand
I thought, we might pull through

But newcomers mingled, stole members away
Slowly churches emptied, in a span of days
As even their pantries, emptied and barren

I speak now, last fateful night
More dark than pitch, as quiet as death
A silent fire blew, giving neither heat nor light

Beams cracked, charred to ash
Before my very eyes, unbelieving and true
Foul smoke, oily and slick crept

Tendrils spilled out from the hall, I shuttered back
Those that it touched, almost gently
Fell, shuttering and breaking with plague

Gathering my wits, wife and children
We fled town, witnessing gathering horrors
Mishappen feature is friends, family terrorized our way

They had been broken, white eyes seeing naught
Flesh drained of color, ashen and sometimes crushed
Clawing at faces, a great violence to all near

A couple puking sea water, conjoined at the hip
Another opened his own gut, searching and chanting
Still more hunted, having features more akin to the depths

In the morning, as the ocean birthed the sun
I could just see, what remains of the town
In its unearthly stillness, movement caught my eye

A procession of black, marching in step
Strangely orderly, a contrast to the night
Following a symbol, a banner held high

It was then that I knew, remembered from the past
Prophecy foretold, elements of evil from lore
Stories from grand mere, meant to frighten or more

Fallen gods, cast from the stars
Slumbering, undead and yet alive
Bedded beneath, immortal in the deep

Such creatures, nightmares of another race
Gathering ours, devouring sleep
Now, awake

I walked a strait line

After a distance - such curved and lead me astray.

Upset at the false meaning of a seemingly “right way”

I decided to make my own way and draw a line

Such won't curve,swerve ,or leave another astray

The map which I’m drawing out as I go

Unfound ventures by many

Over looked by perfectionists

In the distance

See me reach paradise

Since I was unhappy with being lead

by the so called right acting leaders
I decided to become my own leader, instead.

I reached the truth and promise lands

through my own, unselfish, and clear minded tricks

of movement and devise.

i mentioned it before, lost the 2nd volume
of the critique of pure reason
for about a year...
resorted to claiming the the end of the cantos,
and i did, at one point i was subconscious
imitating Ezra, it wasn't on purpose,
the cantos just rubbed against me like
a perverted mongrel dog ******* my leg,
i swear to got that happened to me, once,
tried to kick the ****** off my leg,
but he wrapped his front paws around my leg
and started *******, i was a about 7 or 8,
so if you're talking abuse... i was abused
by a dog... but i laughed at his attempts to
get satisfied... anyway... this afternoon,
started rereading the critique..
first thing that hit me was how i haven't been
reading prose, of whatever nature...
poetry has no claustrophobia, prose is riddled
with it... the way you have to strain your eyes
and scrutinise... the way you sometimes
lose the plot not because you're not understanding
what's being said, but because everything is
so tightly packed that sometimes to skid off
the narrative road and end up on a different line...
but after Kant completes his fourth antinomy
**** turns into a fudge bog of dialectical stink...
this afternoon it ended up being a 50 page
marathon (which is pretty good in one sitting)...
and let me tell you, reading philosophy can be
like entering the army, there's this need
for patience as if it were obedience,
and with philosophy you get the chance to become
rigorous... read one philosophy book
from the godfathers, and i promise you, you will
finish Don Quixote, or James Joyce's Ulysses...
you will... for 50 pages after leaving the
thesis parallel antithesis section of the 2nd volume
Kant launched into the fundamentals of
space & time (abhorring) in terms of regression...
but i've noticed the game they're playing
those philosophers... they're purposively avoiding
a certain pronoun usage, the existential movement
went as far as to ditto the i... in orde that
psychologists could work on the ego in abstract form
mediating a non-existent person using
the universal applicability and the particular applicability
ref. point of someone being studied;
Kant is the precursor of how this one pronoun use has
to be avoided to write philosophy, imagine it as
a novel, written philosophy is pure narration
that attempts to expel the narrator, even though there
is narrator, and there are no characters in philosophical
prose because the philosopher is inflecting the lost
first-person into a multitude of how problems are
to be addressed in abstract... he speaks of the indivisible
presence: the ego mediating both thought
and the soul, with the former activated by thinking,
the latter by odd-behaviour... anyway...
key phrases of note from the 50 pages:
it's basically about regression, the contrast of
phrasing in versus, how mathematicians would
have encompass regression in the phrasing
progressus in infinitum while philosophers
(noun sharpeners) would rather state
progressus in indefinitum, yes, it is really
a case of pedantry, but a pedantry that arose when
words became more and more ambiguous
or were no longer specifically one-dimensional,
and like a woman's womb with triplets were
given several meanings, or elasticity, for no one's
benefit other than for politics, and our current
political movement: that one about childish pranks
and even more childish denials.
the distinction in this case rests upon a choice,
within the framework of in infinitum is that
you must continue writing a sequence
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...  1034... 90754... to see infinity,
the elusive variant ad infinitum was missing
in Kant's argument, but i guess both are mediums worth
assembling as literally impossible to mind
considering in indefinitum... as in indefinitely...
infinity is definite, but the process by which you
define it is not necessarily worth defining...
you may choose to do so, but not necessarily.
yet he's applying this to regression, so it's about
the distance of cared for interpretation between
the interests of Darwinism                 the Big Bang Theory
        and major religious events...
or if you're American concern for the founding fathers'
genius in crating a constitution...
how far back will you go to make a modern standpoint
relevant to how you want to shape current affairs?
i mean, i can cite you quantum continuum
about how this principle is concerned with filling space,
i mean there's so much here, but you pay it
with a hefty price, yet even if you don't understand it,
such works train you to be a non-defeatist
when it comes to lighter works you probably like
reading... i know there's a necessary need to understand,
but strain yourself on a philosophy book
and the oeuvre of Balzac or Dickens awaits you
like a spring-time breeze in lightness...
and out of concern for your eyes...
the reason they packed it to feel stuffy and claustrophobic,
well back in the day printing books was expensive,
you had to write tightly, almost like the small-print
legal restrictions in whatever it is you're using...
poetry wasn't popular because it wasn't considered
economically viable... the digital age and
social media changed that (even though it's not
taken seriously), because it will be some time before
people realise that:
y                                      o                   ­                  u

             d                   o                         n
                                                               ­             't

                 n           e                             c        e           s
s                   a                 r        i              l                               y

h               a
                                             v                           e
t
                           o
                                                               ­                 w
                                              ­                                   r
                                                               ­                  i
                                                               ­                  t
                                                               ­                  e

like that to get emphasis across,
you're just lucky to be using a pixel medium...
and even so... we're not saving the Amazonian rainforest,
sure we've bankrupted paper, and this allows
us to really write poetry pixels, because no
capitalist would be crazy enough to invest in such
p

                          r
                             ­                i
                                                              
                                                                ­   n
              
                                                                ­                        t;
unless he was printing it on toilet paper.

i'm completely insane im not afraid to do any things you give me to try!i cant function with out my music playing but ill do anything that is crazy.i take thrill seeking rids that last till im called up on the phone saying your insane. that means noting to me cause i already know that! is there any thing this world that can be done cause whats the point if you dont have the exitment in your life to try new things. im insane cause i dont think stupid i think smart before its tested. my parents think im insane cause im not afraid of what the consequesnes that come with the dangerious ideas. im insane cause i think big not small . this world has never showed what my insane mind can build. im insane cause i show no fear cause im willing to make sure the road is safe for my own friends and family.im insane cause im not afraid to prove the skeptics wrong. im insane cause i want to improve this world better with new ideas. im insane cause im not afraid to speak my mind wen my heart starts to cry.
im insane cause i can read a chapter book and build the storie around society.
im insane cause i have so many things to try. im insane cause i have a big heart and im always caring even when things get dark. im insan cause theres no fear when it comes to the new suroundings that blind the beauty in  life as we go. im insane cause ill never let go of what the truth has told me . im insane cause im inovative and mechanicaly inclined. im insane when riots break out i stear the grouyp the right way. away from the danger. im insane cause i only follow what my heart and mind say to. im insane cause my family tells every one im not afraid of what dangers wait for me. im insane cause i'm willing to get answeeres for the hopless who needs to be helped.im insane cause ill risk my life to help you in the most worst conditions. im  insane cause im not afraid to help you fight when your wounded.im insane cause i want more answeres to help societys troubls. my family thinks im insane cause im always crating someting crazy to solve a problem even if its really stupid. my mind is insane cause im not afraid to take things to a new level. every one i know thinks im insane cause i want people to fell free and not traped that slaves them to. people call me insane cause im always working on new things to improve my theriories that might be insane but what if they became the next thin g to work for societys lies. im crazy insane cause theres nothing im willing to try so follow me in my foot stepf and be com what you truly want to speak your mind. speak your mind with me and society will be come opened with ideas to try for future hope . so follow me and we will open a world with ideas that will never be silenced by fear

thank you letting me speak my mind

follow if you dare for change

She once told me she liked being sad, sad enough to feel helpless, because she wrote her best poems when the sky was gray. She was married to the idea that artists need to suffer to create. And I told her she was stupid. I told her that all that sadness escalated from the point where you feel helpless to the point where you become helpless. I told her that what made a good poet was their emotions, like paint did to a canvas- blues and oranges and greens and reds and all the in-betweens, were what helped crating. I told her that being sad didn't help if you didn't had happiness to contrast it with. I told her that poems about jealousy and anger and sadness were beautiful, but they were even better when they were about love and stars and trees and bees and how the world was captivating in every aspect. I told her that the sun was better that tears and that kissing was better than hating. I told her that the sky was prettier when it was the shade of his eyes and that even though he would never look at me the same way back, they were beautiful- he was beautiful. I told her that even when her family never loved her much, she had made it through so much and that was brave, and bravery is beautiful. I told her that the best way to write quality material was to love life- to accept everything it threw at you with wide open arms and when it hit, you had to be human. You had to feel.

you felt like my cabin,
when the wood sank under.
loyalty doesn't take time,
it takes character.
seeing fallen branches
crating to one side of it,
like rough patches,
which I saw him through too.
and there i sat with you
with 3 drinks too many -
and saw the way you spoke to
strangers under the canopy.
did you notice me watching?
i knew it as soon as we sat down
and shared battle stories,
like coming back to comfort,
then into torrential feelings
i found parts of you in me,
shavings of pain and joy,
contingent to democratic debate
and i found parts of me in you
pairings of ego and art,
conditional to romanticising realism
did you notice me too?

This most silent of silent nights
Was no different from any which had come before it,
Nothing at all to mark it as extraordinary or sacrosanct:
The village had long since stopped putting up decorations,
(Lights featuring jolly snowmen and steadfast wooden soldiers,
Now faded, cracked, with ancient and capricious wiring
Impossible to replace and impractical to repair)
Those old enough to harbor warm memories of caroling
Having long since wintered in some southern locale
Bearing Spanish names of dubious authenticity,
Those left behind by circumstance or stubbornness
Very likely slouched behind a cash register or un-crating paper towels,
The Wal-Marts, Kinneys, and Price Choppers,
In a shotgun marriage of customer service and rank capitalism,
Staying open a bit later every year,
Though at least providing the unanticipated benefit
Of one less hour to fret over things unbought,
One less hour to dwell upon promises unmet.

There is some solace, perhaps, in the notion
That the good times were only so good, after all
(It’s been said when the great ditch connecting Albany and Buffalo
Was finally completed, you could already hear train whistles,
Shrill and of ominous portent, in the distance)
And as Barbara Van Borland,
Thrice-married and eternally hopeful,
Opined from her perch at the Dewitt Clinton House,
If you’re gonna fall, better offa stool than a ladder.
Perhaps there is a certain mercy in laboring under the yoke
(Allegorical, but securely fastened all the same) of knowing
That we should expect little and prepare to make do with even less,
That these hard times are the only times we can expect to know.

How, then, do we carry on?  
Follow Pope’s dictum, one supposes,
And say your lines and hit your marks
With as much conviction as can be mustered
As we walk through this land of shuttered country schools,
This forest of plywood and concrete,
Where shoots of grasses and patches of weeds
Rise up through crevices and faults in the neglected blacktop
(But ride out on the back roads of the other side of river,
Out toward Cherry Valley, say, or Sharon Springs,
And see the wide panorama of the valley below,
The hills gently, gradually sloping upward to the Adirondacks,
Creating a vista which would make Norman Rockwell blush,
And you would say My God, how beautiful
If it didn’t seem foolish to give voice to something so patently obvious)
Until that time we are carried gently to that plot
Where we shall lie down next to our parents
In the newer section of the cemetery
Sitting hard by the edge of the sluggish Mohawk,
Where the remnants of by-products
From dormant farms and long-closed tanneries
Mix with the residue of hasty abortions
And the bones of forgotten and un-mourned canal mules.

Poetic analogy
The barbarity of this universe is frightening
Constantly on verge of damnation
We close our eyes, alluding the reality around us
Running from what ruined us

We plough earth with our truths
Jesus is lord
Allah is God
Lord Shiva is......
Don't dare disagree  I'll shave it down your throat
or chaos rains
until one is deemed superior

So we forgot what love is
And  hated each other
And focused on our sins
And inhaled decriminalization
Of our race
Of our faith
Of humanity
All the while ******* our deeds
On God


Now you are busy cruising through life
Crating facade for justification
Isn't hell too nice a place for you!

A mere mortal betting on division
For loyalty
Or sometimes hope
Is the most heinous deed
Committed on behalf of love

(AUTHOR'S NOTE:  This is a re-post of an older piece, but I am inexplicably fond of it, so I thought it warranted being on the line to air out once more.)

This most silent of silent nights
Was no different from any which had come before it,
Nothing at all to mark it as extraordinary or sacrosanct:
The village had long since stopped putting up decorations,
(Lights featuring jolly snowmen and steadfast wooden soldiers,
Now faded, cracked, with ancient and capricious wiring
Impossible to replace and impractical to repair)
Those old enough to harbor warm memories of caroling
Having long since wintered in some southern locale
Bearing Spanish names of dubious authenticity,
Those left behind by circumstance or stubbornness
Very likely slouched behind a cash register or un-crating paper towels,
The Wal-Marts, Kinneys, and Price Choppers,
In a shotgun marriage of customer service and rank capitalism,
Staying open a bit later every year,
Though at least providing the unanticipated benefit
Of one less hour to fret over things unbought,
One less hour to dwell upon promises unmet.

There is some solace, perhaps, in the notion
That the good times were only so good, after all
(It’s been said when the great ditch connecting Albany and Buffalo
Was finally completed, you could already hear train whistles,
Shrill and of ominous portent, in the distance)
And as Barbara Van Borland,
Thrice-married and eternally hopeful,
Opined from her perch at the Dewitt Clinton House,
If you’re gonna fall, better offa stool than a ladder.
Perhaps there is a certain mercy in laboring under the yoke
(Allegorical, but securely fastened all the same) of knowing
That we should expect little and prepare to make do with even less,
That these hard times are the only times we can expect to know.

How, then, do we carry on?  
Follow Pope’s dictum, one supposes,
And say your lines and hit your marks
With as much conviction as can be mustered
As we walk through this land of shuttered country schools,
This forest of plywood and concrete,
Where shoots of grasses and patches of weeds
Rise up through crevices and faults in the neglected blacktop
(But ride out on the back roads of the other side of river,
Out toward Cherry Valley, say, or Sharon Springs,
And see the wide panorama of the valley below,
The hills gently, gradually sloping upward to the Adirondacks,
Creating a vista which would make Norman Rockwell blush,
And you would say My God, how beautiful
If it didn’t seem foolish to give voice to something so patently obvious)
Until that time we are carried gently to that plot
Where we shall lie down next to our parents
In the newer section of the cemetery
Sitting hard by the edge of the sluggish Mohawk,
Where the remnants of by-products
From dormant farms and long-closed tanneries
Mix with the residue of hasty abortions
And the bones of forgotten and un-mourned canal mules.