"dostoyevsky" poems
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;[email protected])
I don’t don't how much the world is tired
Of hearing again in this year that
Still tribalism and negative ethnicity
Is Gog and magog with Africa, I mean Africa
The second largest continent in the world
After Asia, being seconded by Americas,
Her only cultural overture is tribalism and tribes
Large tribes swallowing small ones
Small tribes making desperate moves
Like bush ****** in the lethal fangs of the python,
Large tribes swallowing political fruits as the small ones
In despair look, being choked by forlorn appetite,
Tribalism, listen! Leave Africa alone; stop messing up the African youth
Tell the Dinka and the Nuer of the southern Sudan to put down the arms
The arms made in the old Russia, the AK 47,
Tell them to go to Russia not to buy
Arms but books of poetry and literature
To buy Dead souls of Nikolai Gogol and
Brothers Kamarazov of Fydor Dostoyevsky,
Tribalism, listen! Am tired of introducing myself
By my clan, I don’t want to be known by my clan
I want to be known by my work; I am a poet
I sing and chant the African incantations of freedom
I do not perpetrate feelings of tribal terror
It is never my work to cement ethnicity
Tribes are good but tribalism is evil, or satanic or impish
Or gnomic or macabarous or ghastly insidious,
As its hatred is the most heinous.
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 8:53 AM UTC
…These men are worth your tears:
You are not worth their merriment.
-Wilfred Owen, “Apologia Pro Poemate Meo”
When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean? Paradise Lost? Probably not
Nor Saint Paul speaking on the Field of Mars
The Kalevala, Hagia Sophia
With its pendentives lifting up our prayers
Horatius fighting to defend his bridge
And Wilfred Owen dying bravely on his
Lord Tennyson and Idylls of the King
Chapultepec, Henry V, Becket
The paratroops at Arnhem, Saint Thomas More,
His King’s loyal servant, but God’s first
The Stray Dog poets of Saint Petersburg
The brave last stand of Roland at Roncesvalles
Lewis and Tolkien and glasses of beer
Montcalm and Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham
Hildegard von Bingen, Siegfried and the Rhine
Magna Carta, HMS Hood, the Thames
The Grove of Daphne, “The Old Rugged Cross”
Beatrix Potter and her little pet rabbit
El Cid, Anne Frank, John Keats, Saint Benedict
“I Have a Dream,” Dostoyevsky, and Greene
Viktor Frankl, Dag Hammarkskjold, and Proust
Good Chaucer’s naughty pilgrims telling tales
The Gettysburg Address, Willie and Joe
Stern Saint Augustine of North Africa
Wodehouse writing a jolly bit of fun
Saint Corbinian and Bavaria
The ancient glories of Byzantium
Pius XII contra the bombs and lies
The 602nd TD Battalion
Saint Joan, the Prado, and Robert Frost
And far, far more.
When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean?
Nov 4, 2018
Nov 4, 2018 at 4:06 PM UTC
Dostoyevsky said, “your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”
I've felt rage seething in my chest for as long as I can remember. I've felt as his talons ripped open my sternum, digging for a place to call home. this rage has nestled deep into my ribcage, devouring my will to survive while carelessly residing within my nightmares.
I've surrendered to this forsaken depression fury has vacated deep in the confines of my irises - despite witnessing myself across grey-tinted glasses; a smoldering storm rippling miasma throughout my body, manipulating my hands into a devout pyromaniac; suffocating every chance to heal.
I've known nothing but bitterness congesting my heart. My dreams were burdened dreadfully with the stench of wrath. it mutilated my arms; burrowing into capillaries, and asphyxiating my habit to vanish.
This incessant sin I've endured has brought me to my knees, existing only to ***** out my ability to be a mortal in an unforgiving universe. I am not a cosmic metaphor, the iron residing underneath my skin has become impenetrable.
I am adorned with stillness while this betrayal has bloomed into a supernova. the things in which I lack have ignited into an endlessly violent explosion -
Atomizing my bones, swirling stardust into a forlorn emptiness.
A world that was held by the unfaltering resistance I persevered against, it has ravaged my memories, my moribund existence trembled; shivering from the growl of the recoil - the remnants of creation kissed abysmal lips within the faraway distance of a boundless abyss, raining tears for the last time as the destruction leaves a life void of meaning.
The last words ever heard in this universe spoke softly as if to lull the existential bereft into a long hiatus -
"This was all for nothing, just as destitute as this vacant nothingness, human life is ill-fated to be star-crossed and powerless."
Sep 25, 2024
Sep 25, 2024 at 6:51 PM UTC
First day of class, her nerves are crunching inside while she tries to maintain a cool surface. The nervous foot tapping and magnetically crossed legs I see giver her away. On top she is collected: calm, serene shirt color, long hair tied back in a ponytail and a smile as the teacher talks and jokes. Her pen is tapping out a nervous jig, but why?
Is she eager to impress or is it nerves too anxious to start her first day of class actually ‘specified for her future.’ Is this class the first stepping stone on her “road to success?” Nervous laughter at all of Dr. Sandlin’s corny jokes, sometimes her laugh rings out a trill and true chime and sometimes it is stale.
She has big plans, big dreams, a big hope. Creative Writing 3400 is her first “official” step, from there a journalism job in London perhaps? Her nervous feet are thirsting to walk the streets of history where Shakespeare, Milton, or maybe for her Dostoyevsky have trodden.
Cold determination, a warm smile, she will succeed.
Aug 27, 2012
Aug 27, 2012 at 12:38 PM UTC
She was the strangest football fan I'd ever met,
Between match programmes and leaflets she hid Nietzsche and Thoreau;
Philosophy being a bright passion of hers,
It all seemed so natural in her visage.
On days, she'd hum You'll Never Walk Alone
While turning delicately the pages of a new text,
Smiling at the words that appeared before her on the page.
Dorian Gray, she took time to point out,
Kept her fascinated—
But it was always going to be Nietzsche,
And the first time she strummed the pages of Thus Spoke Zarathustra it was as if the humming had turned to fire,
And she was melded with the page.
I would believe only in a god who could dance.
If you asked her who she favoured,
she would reply back with a chirp,
the Russians!
And hold to you a copy of Dostoyevsky,
Crime and Punishment, she said, was her fascination
And she'd as fluidly as ever switch back to the fixtures.
Never passion, always fancy.
It was as if viewing herself through a third party lens.
Her passion for the game,
As mysterious as her gentle touch on softer pages.
How could she love so drastically?
Football, her passion,
But her books were her mystery to all, to even herself,
And the quiet murmur of Nietzsche, her nectar.
Mar 9, 2015
Mar 9, 2015 at 12:34 PM UTC
Across the ice a baritone
Projects his notes of steel,
A tenor’s harmonizing
Adds that melancholy feel
And the glory of the voices
Flows out through alders bare
And the listeners weep for Russia’s soul
And the tragedy found there.
The tragic melancholy
Found in every Russian heart
Liberated by the sadness
A fine harmony can impart.
Of the monolithic yesterdays,
Those forgotten fields of dead
And that fire within the *****
Which numbs the agony of the head.
Dark stains along the timber wall
Wood fire’s stones make steam
It fills the room with stifling heat
Which sweats the bodies clean.
Red wheals raised on shoulders
Birch branches whip the back
Whilst companion tones of maleness
Speak in vectors women lack.
Red larches in the foothills
Gold lantern light on snow,
The vastness of ancient steppes
Of Central Asia grow.
A viola’s velvet passion
Sighs beneath a cottage door
And the sadness in sensation
Brings grown men to weep once more.
The vastness of the terrain
The hardness of the land,
The bitter cold of northern wind,
Each freezing winter spanned
By Siberia’s lashing gales,
White snow is metres deep
And turquois ice as hard as steel
Beneath which... rivers creep.
Dostoyevsky,Kruschev,
Rasputin and the Tsars,
Great Lenin, Marx and Trotsky
And the swords of Horse Hussars.
Gorbachev the great redeemer,
Poor Yeltsin’s pale white skin
And the ****** found in Stalin's smile
Span the politics of sin.
This great Russian melancholy
Lies deep within the soul
It’s a legacy of yesterday
Of her history's brutal goal.
It’s a product of the suffering
Inherent in the past
Endured by legions of the people
Then dispensed with…
With a laugh!
Marshalg
@theBach
Mangere Bridge
13 April 2009
Jan 27, 2010
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:46 PM UTC
“Do you know, to my thinking it's a good thing sometimes to be absurd; it's better in fact, it makes it easier to forgive one another, it's easier to be humble. One can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan't understand them thoroughly.”
May 29, 2016
May 29, 2016 at 2:21 PM UTC
fed the birds
my monday. held out my hand,
and fed them mirth
from a lifeline pun.
blackbirds.
early morning
connoisseurs
i fed them
my monday.
all gone pecked. now, first suspect -
in a ****** of crows. i rose
from the damp. surveyed
the scene of the crime
and bled. no contest
nor are there ribbons given
even if you don't
want one. you'll find
another monday
with a stray
dog star... a crown
for a chipped
tooth.
it will always say " You shoulda' seen The Day Before...." then promptly -
plop on your stoop... and vaguely,
as if seen from three paces
behind stained glass...
Sunday sulks into view
like Dostoyevsky
belching "Hey Jude" backwards,
just strolling down
East, Main street
with an egg-cream
and a fist of
kettle corn.
soggy in his meaty paw
an earlier downpour
you slept through.
or maybe, this just happens to me ?
now then. birds fed,
i wandered off. biting my
upper lip to keep
Christmas in
my Edelweiss
grip.
left the birds a book called " How To Fly "
and they still flew
away.
Nov 6, 2012
Nov 6, 2012 at 10:41 AM UTC
Joy Kogawa’s Obasan,
Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle,
Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby,
The Ninja Handbook…?
Dalai Lama’s Open Heart,
Haddon’s Curious Incident,
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment,
Brook’s World War Z…?
*The Life of Adolf ******
Crichton’s Terminal Man,
e.e. cumming’s poems,
Jon Stewart’s America…?
Dante’s Divine Comedy,
Leonard’s Rules of Writing,
Poe’s Complete Tales and Poems,
Book of Useless Information…?
Smith’s Junk English?
How to Lose a Battle?
The Ultimate Guide to Spider-man...?
I’m beginning to have my doubts…
Nov 8, 2011
Nov 8, 2011 at 10:20 PM UTC
Thanks thespis for another muse anew,
Filliping my soul with the spirit of a song,
To chant for the young world in these pepperish letters,
before my callous eyes on the skull of historical future
on my pykitonic torso of I another African pykin,
as I finish my coffin for the cadaver of poetry
that the law of poetry is a distorting neurosis,
neurotic abnormality its baseboard of time
giving classical balance for wondrous poetry.
Compensatory motivation a charm of its seed,
Taking dear eyes from the skull of Demodocos
Leaving songfull mouth his legacy for humanity,
Warped physique not short of history,
Teaching the world to drink in full pyrene spring
As hunchbacked dwarfism of Alexander Pope
was not in any sense dwarfism of his poetry,
nor club foot of Byron in ******* to Maugham
Byronic heroism to Europe of yester times,
That sired Proust, the Jewish neurotic
And Keats the most dwarfish and Wolfe the tallest
Of man and woman to the cultural matrix
Of Europe, the mother of art, poetry and synaethesia,
From which was born Pushkin that took poetry
Out of his nymphomaniac heart, to the solace of czars,
And Shakespeare the dear thief, luckily converted
Childhood kleptomania into royal theatre of King Lear,
The parallel of four brothers from the house of Karamazov,
Their father; impecunious penny penchant muzhik
In the name of Fydor epileptic Dostoyevsky.
A lull of the time to escape from world of rent and tax,
Gripped nerves of the duo to a new realm of art
wherein sensuous glory from ***** and Indian hemp
propelled the souls of Coleridge and De Quincey
to grandiose highness of poetry in the dreams of *****
bordering on the teutonic greatness of ritualistic breed,
poetry that transcended from rotten apples in the writing desk
of Fredriech von schiller the begotten son of Germany,
writing under the arms of Balzac dressed in monkey clobus,
that along with Milton in the lost paradise, gave him swaddles
only when the poetic vein of Milton flowed happily from nothing,
but from the ritualized autumnal equinox to the spiritual vernal,
as Coleridge was in full recondite of marquetry,mosaic and miracles,
the miraculous white male sheep, the white ram of Wole Soyinka,
that he gave as a gift to Achebe at the last anniversary, evil decoy
that become a car which deathly crushed Chinua Achebe
down to demise in the catacombs for the law of poetry
as abnormal human neurosis an equation of perfect art.
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 8:26 AM UTC
Tucking Dostoyevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
into the bedside cabinet
of the cheap
Paris hotel
having cleaned
the greasy sink
and bidet
you walked out
on the street
breathing in
the Parisian air
smelling the perfume
of the restaurants
on the side walks
seeing the sights
taking photographs
as memoirs
drinking the wines
and beers
and that fish
with eyes still there
putting you off
you tried to get out
of the cheap cafe
but paid for the meal
you couldn’t eat
the fish eye
gazing up at you
dead eye
battered fish
and the Left Bank
and night
and you taking in
the sights and lights
and those ******
sitting in windows
like gifts
to have wrapped
but not take home
or the **** films
you never
went to see
in those cinemas
you just walked by
or the Eiffel Tower day
right to the top
the view splendid
the sight historical
or those rides
on the Metro
riding the wrong carriages
looking out
for the train inspector
pretending to be Aussies
giving it the yak
and later
in your hotel room
taking out
Dostoyevsky
and entering
the Russian world
of ****** and deceit
and being followed
you imagined
by the detective
looking out
onto the Parisian street
from the open window
of your room
gazing at street corners
and shadows
or remembering
that French girl
in the cafe
who served you
with bright eyes
black and white dress
and white apron
the fine long legs
and wiggling behind
recalling the old priest
who once said
too much ***
will make you blind.
May 20, 2013
May 20, 2013 at 1:42 PM UTC
Alexander K Opicho
Eldoret, Kenya; [email protected]
when i start by name
perhaps in a flap of fault
exculpate my soul
for maximum rectitude
is the true fill of my heart
glory to the sons of Russia
Kudos to you all and your foremen;
Nikolai Gogol the master in the dead souls
Alexander Pushkin the effeminate poet
Vladimir Lenin who knew what was doable
Alexander sholenestysn the Siberian jail bird
who was on the poetic phone by five
Feodor Dostoyevsky the epileptic Karamazov
Maxim Gorky and Antony Chenkoy leave them alone
Ayn Rand the woman who shrug the atlas for we the living
Vladimir Nabokov the school master who asked for ***
from her student the adourous ******
Boris Pasternak the Muzhik like Leo Tolstoy
who wanted land beyond the horizon
for doctor Zhivago the **** peasant
or Vladimir Makayavosky who slapped the public
in the face of their capitalistic taste,
Glorified be you all you sons of Russia
your Muse is beautiful and erotically crazy
glory for your humour and your finer threads
with which you have woven for me my poems of dystopia
glory be to you all in the stark oblivion
of Leon Trotsky and his penman Leonid Brezhnev
Jan 24, 2014
Jan 24, 2014 at 12:15 PM UTC
**Anything that stirs life is alive;
therefore art is alive
It moves and perturbs humans
since time immemorial
Revolutions, wars and madness even
were chronicled in art
History bore witness as art
metamorphosed lives, ideas and
Eventually the world
Art is a living entity
it has kept us alive
And breathed into us our
imperfections so human
They are as timeless as Bach, Dostoyevsky or Picasso**
Feb 8, 2015
Feb 8, 2015 at 9:48 AM UTC
since i turned into a nocturnal creature i’ve changed a bit,
i started the theological arithmetic:
(right hand) thumb, index, middle finger(s) -
january february march,
ring, pinky & pinky (left hand) -
april may june,
ring middle index (left hand)
july august september -
thumb (left hand) thumb and index (right hand)...
of yes, intelligent design...
now make a hole using your thumb & index finger,
then ensure your thumb goes in & out from that whole...
like god, say: oh **** i forgot the piston!
guess what’s the slang term for a russian in polish?
kacap.
guess what’s the slang term for a german in polish?
szwab (shvab) /
i know, i too wish it was sax...aphone.
guess what’s the slang term for a dwarf in polish?
karakan.
but i said, there are really two branches from the 20th
century growing into the 21st century,
there’s the proustian branch that’s a cul de sac...
and there’s the joycean branch, that leads to ezra pound et al.,
finnegans wake (which i have read) i can a 50p with an invention
of a terminology: uncoded phoneticism, i.e.
alpha bravo charlie delta echo, only because:
prirates’ aye, eye and lie and high sounded pretty much the same
even though they were spelled differently.
uncoded phoneticism means you use a coding of language
from thought / silence in a way that elevates it
from the standard usage, from novelty interests
of a righteous narrator crafting new characters...
of course your writing will appear chaotic... but in reality
it will not be... trust me... i simulated paranoid schizophrenia
for seven years... fooled three psychiatrists
and regained a chance to provoke.
nicholas ii is smiling at me from a banknote i own,
and i have a kopek’s worth of currency from dostoyevsky’s times.
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 7:52 PM UTC
Wordsworth bubbled in my cellophanate bath water
yesterday, at the candled hour.
whilst horse tails whinnied from Joshua Bell—
Tchaikovsky in brood, 1878.
Oh, but if I had thought to Bogart the whole affair, well,
I'd be a modern Michelangelo, a downright da Vinci—
a Dostoyevsky before the dawn—
propped between the cold **** and the hot,
wet behind the ears.
Then I turn the note-the page-the scene:
Don't try this at home, they echo in the shackles of
celebrity. A drowning horse has sounded better
than their confession of our normality.
Feb 11, 2018
Feb 11, 2018 at 5:03 PM UTC
Benedict turned the page
of the Dostoyevsky novel.
His brother puked in the bidet,
too much cheap wine,
Benedict thought,
but he’ll be fine.
He immersed himself deeper
into the Russian world
of ****** and fear
and dark corners.
Crime and Punishment
was one good tale all right.
Even the book cover held
the attention, he thought,
turning it briefly over.
His brother’s moans
interrupted the puking.
Benedict asked an
are you all right?
There was a groan
of response.
Benedict recalled the time
he had been in that condition
in Yugoslavia the year before,
same cause: too much
cheap wine.
And that beautiful guide
came to his room
to see how he was
and sat on his bed
and all he could think of
was when would
the puking end.
No thought at all
of her presence there,
her body so close,
her perfume making him
more nauseous.
She was Croatian,
he thought, pausing at the page
of the Dostoyevskian novel.
And that waitress
he and his brother had liked
in the restaurant
at the Yugoslavian hotel.
***** Yes, that was the name.
Got no where though.
Just the luck of the draw.
His brother returned
from the bathroom
and flopped on the bed.
The puking over maybe,
Benedict thought
and his brother hoped,
pale of complexion,
perspiration on brow.
Outside the window
the Parisian streets
echoed with life:
Cars, coaches, buses,
people, natives, tourists,
males and females.
Tomorrow they’d be out
on the streets again.
Sit in restaurants where
the famous once sat
over coffee or beer:
Hemmingway, Sartre,
Picasso, Henry Miller
and the others.
Art thrived here.
Ideas born
from philosophic minds.
Benedict book marked
the page and closed
the book and put it aside.
Some one laughed outside
in the street, another sang,
voices of ghostly singers
of the past, breathed
from the walls.
His brother returned
to the bathroom,
more puking.
Benedict thought:
poor brother.
Of course, he mused,
gazing at the Parisian
night sky, they’d never
tell their mother.
Jun 13, 2013
Jun 13, 2013 at 2:17 AM UTC
That year
in Paris
you took
Dostoyevsky’s novel
Crime and Punishment
to read when
you weren’t touring
the sites
and you became
so immersed in the book
that you became
Raskolnikov
and killed
the old woman
and her half sister
and looked about the streets
you looked for the detective
Porfiry whom you suspected
was following you about
and as you sat
in the Champs-Elysées
or stood by
the Arc de Triomphe
you thought of all
the famous
who had stayed here
in this fine city
Henry Miller
Ezra Pound
Hemmingway
Debussy
Van Gogh
and that fanatical
conqueror ******
with his sick smile
under that
silly moustache
and that evening
your brother
in the hotel room
puked in the bidet
after sour wine
or too rich food
as you looked out
the window on
the Parisian street
to see if Porfiry
was out there
waiting for you
to charge you
with the murderous crime
you didn’t do.
Jun 6, 2012
Jun 6, 2012 at 3:12 PM UTC
I perused through the catacombs
gliding my fingers along your innumerate spines,
picked you up where you blossomed in my palm
and breathed archaic mysteries into my face.
I felt myself trembling
as I dared enter the hallowed corridors,
opening doors and peeking inside
in hopes to catch a semblance of your touch,
your taste,
your voice.
A fingerprint,
a coffee stain,
clues and the origins of bricolage
that left me breathless
and teary-eyed
as the weight of this sacred place
bore itself entirely upon me.
A part of your soul
encased within each one of your treasures:
I heard your stereo in a jazz history,
heard you ponder within Dostoyevsky,
saw your wry smile and charm within Fleming,
and your humor within Vaudeville--
and as I perused onward,
and the archetype bore itself naked in a holy privilege,
I closed myself within that impalpable bubble
and wept at the gates of Eden.
As I removed my hands from your ribcage,
and withdrew the breath from your nostrils,
walking away with your words and fragments of your soul
I soon realized--
You Are What You Read.
Oct 13, 2016
Oct 13, 2016 at 12:40 AM UTC
I heard of a man
who never owned a
television.
Instead he bought
a set of solid oak
bookshelves stained
like mahogany.
With the money
he saved on cable,
he filled them with
classics like Plato,
Aristotle, and Dostoyevsky.
He studied Darwin
and Descartes, and
memorized poems by
Whyte and O'Donohue
Because he never
made the switch to
high definition, he
could afford trips to
Rome and Tuscany.
Walking those ancient
streets and resting
in those heavenly fields,
he learned the art
of attentiveness,
minding the
genius loci
of a place,
and setting
one's cadence to
the breath of the wind.
And in the end,
he had a few books
of his own,
but they taught
nothing new
other than
how to truly live.
Jan 16, 2017
Jan 16, 2017 at 10:16 PM UTC
Perched atop,
mighty, serene and calm
glistening midst its suns
with skies the tinge of aqua
At center of creation,
was the glorious kingdom of Minerva
With nervous steps that echoed
under imagined eyes that judged
On my own,
yet pulled and owned
like sunflower midst thousand suns,
the divine palace I entered
Countless royal birds,
sat in quiet melodious trance
Seeking the seeker,
with folded wings,
of colossal rich expanse
Each had a name,
and with each I flew
With Plato to meadows of morality,
With Kant to the river of reason,
With Emerson to emerald waters
With Socrates to rhetoric ethers
With Vivekanada to dunes of duty
With Dostoyevsky to tragic beauty
Each flew me to their heaven,
at different times of the night
Closer to light,
closer to heaven I felt,
closer than I ever might
Neither wine nor its colors
Neither Venus nor her flowers
Shall ever match,
the soaring journey at dusk
tearing across,
skies the tinge of aqua
lost in timeless views,
of the glorious kingdom of Minerva
Nov 10, 2013
Nov 10, 2013 at 4:52 AM UTC
(the reconvening of my mind)
It's always the extremes
that bring me back to center,
but it's the trips I take on purpose
that remind me its time to go home.
Today it was the thought of blood.
I cannot stand the sight of it,
and neither would I brave a plunge
in icy depths this time of year.
I’d rather gather sunlight
and convince myself there are
no ghost revivals,
only blood reprisals from
daddy's DNA.
I tell myself
I need to get away
to where I can pray
again, to quit giving in,
to stay and fight wars,
the black, the white,
the gray fluttering darkness that
comes out of nowhere swooping
past my ear, scaring the **** out of me
as if it never happened before
but it has, its just been a while.
So I call for a council of angels,
then prepare for the riptide
of demons that join the fun when
my cranial convention convenes.
The left against the right,
The east against the west,
The pros against the cons,
all the ups and downs,
I don’t give a **** what it is
just give me back my wars.
Give me back my reasons to live.
Give me Nietzsche
Give me Brennan Manning
Give me Sam Harris
Give me Frederick Buechner
Give me Bertrand Russell
Give me Henri Nouwen
Give me Daniel Dennett
Give me Gerald May
Give me M Scott Peck
Give me Pia Mellody
Give me Dante
Give me Jane Kenyon
Give me the Marquis de Sade
Give me Dostoyevsky
and that should just about do it.
Within these names exist
enough controversy,
enough conflicting views
on life, on love, on God,
enough heresy,
enough truth,
enough lies,
enough knowledge,
enough beauty
to keep me waging wars
inside my head until the day I die.
Give me back my wars.
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 6:15 PM UTC
i told bunkle,
if dostoyevsky's right
that the person
god trusts is
the one to
whom he gives
a lot of
pain, think he
trusted us too
much this time,
he said well
we gotta trust
him he knows
what he's going
to do with
all of this
i looked down
at my sweatpants
someone other than
me and none other
than me had
written you say
you have faith,
where is it?
save Your people
...save me
god, i don't
have much left
but bruises today,
it hurts to
wake up it
hurts to try
to sleep it
hurts to think
Jun 14, 2013
Jun 14, 2013 at 12:05 PM UTC
No one dies twice, keep living each momement, making love and money, heel to toe, step by step, always ahead, stopping only for poached eggs, buttered toast, and grits, reading the Times, sipping coffee black, a cab to the Park Avenue office, calls to Lisbon, meetings with subordinates throughout the day, sometimes laughter, sorrow lurking bemeath smiles, all the while pretending, Central Park filled with joggers, solitude in the sky, a bagel with cream chesse, capers, and lox, a new tie at Brooks Brothers, memories of Andover, sun-bleached benches, Columbia beating Princetion, Harlem hidden, a chapter or two of Dostoyevsky, daydreams of ecstasy, a hotel room at the Pierre in mid-afternoon, her golden hair brighter than the sun, covering her shoulders and one of her young ******* the rest for loving, an endless stream of searching souls, thousands making millions on Wall Street, vapid, vacuous, empty endeavors, dinner at 21, a long stroll up 5th Avenue to 63rd, back home that had never had been a home, a kiss on his wife's cheek, she always meek, no one dies twice.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Feb 9, 2021
Feb 9, 2021 at 1:26 PM UTC
I am going to buy
A big black cowboy hat
And lick the heels of suicide
For my 25th
I invited all the guys at work
Then followed with a disclaimer
" i am not responsible for any distasteful or aggressive acts i may, and am planning to, commit at this dysfunctional function"
And the kid at work said
"Ill try to make it, i gotta see this, but i made plans with my girlfriend. Im gonna try to get out of it."
"Just bring her along" i suggested
"Im not takin her anywhere near you man, your disgusting" says the kid
And i didnt mind too much
Because i have skin like a vulture
And am currently reading the
Complete works of De Sade
But i have also read Dostoyevsky's
"White Nights"
And i almost cried
But the kid doesn't need to know that
Let him know me only as the wild
Drunk
That he has heard so much about
Those stories are far more interesting
Than love and loneliness anyways.
I laughed.
"Well...let me know if you can ditch the broad man"
I walked to the break room and read
De Sade's list of different ways to eat
Human ****
He sure got creative in prison
It all made me laugh
Then the girl with the dark tangled
Burning forests hair walked in
And she smelled of the
Death of winter
Pulsating green and the sludge of
Forgotten Decembers
And i could taste
What Justine was trying so hard
To protect
Well....anyways....
Heres to 25 down
And 25 more to go.
I am the fool
Like Ironheart.
Jul 14, 2016
Jul 14, 2016 at 1:28 AM UTC
The rails scream in the darkness
Sparking, lambent bulbs trace starlight behind tinted glass
No words, just motionless exhibition of man
Child
The shrill yapping of a terrified pup
Ears plugged from the disastrous din of metal rubbing against itself
The train flies through an evacuated tube pressed beneath the innumerable water column
And it is deafening.
Behind us the gentle shipyards, ahead the recipient city
Waiting to drink up our wallets and time with her promiscuous streets
As she bends her towering legs to the ironically Chinese
Barge
Blowing its baritone warning flutes
As it tugs itself upon her Bays.
I am reading the book, seeing the Brothers through the din, in between the two cities
The two unhappinesses
and the creatures they identify with
It is a giant artifact,
the tube
It protrudes through
The ships
She sunk and constructed
Market, Mission, Pier, a swamp of concrete
Over the dried clump of trees
A thousand bits of Theseus
And the abandoned bones of thirsting men
Running east, towards Pittsburg
Richmond
Warm Springs
The line is soft between these rusting zones
And the gold
Forgotten for silicone
I am reading a book
About brothers and the curse of stone
Sharing stares with dirogenous hobos
And girl's pupils
feasting on bodies hidden behind periodicals
The rails scream in protest
The railcars are turning up and out
Towards the end of the darkness
And the start of the largeness
The city waits to list her failures to me
To cry herself to sleep with raindrops of fog
And rasping breaths of breeze.
Jun 18, 2019
Jun 18, 2019 at 5:17 PM UTC