"enactment" poems
my story will wander far and wide
(as I myself do in my later life)
in strange lands and strange tongues
though strangeness never surprises me;
and through centuries many will hear my story
and watch an enactment, on stage or in other visual ways,
and perhaps many will dismiss the story
many might find it banal and strange
a tale from a savage and mythic past
and perhaps some will stand on grounds of purity
and wonder that the story of Oedipus should even be remembered;
and perhaps physicians of the mind
might even analyze the symbolism -
but surely, surely
all who hear it will feel a discomfort
an itch,
an echo
a nagging question or two:
*why? what does Oedipus mean?
why is this remembered?*
Oct 18, 2010
Oct 18, 2010 at 2:38 AM UTC
What brief utterance this, the color of time
That gives more meaning than language can hold
To force a confrontation between unresolvable contradictions
Such as make malleable a gracious hospitality to ******
And sound trumpets of unwarranted discord
That lie and lament the reputation and experience of damage
Hold forth the envious clouds of displacement
To provide for the vicious energies of hate
Those oppressive weights of past problems
That enactment of intense and exhausting experience
Which embalms the tears of fresh bleeding
Without impediment dictates the human existence
Where the mistress of aggressive thought finds
Extremity of dire mishap a strenuous protest
Leads to well meaning certainty of illusion
And asks, art thou so in love with masks that you
Would transform thyself and as such
Bind a loyalty of angers to thy touch
Aug 21, 2012
Aug 21, 2012 at 4:21 PM UTC
Georgiana Seymour,
Duchess of Somerset
crowned _'Queen of Beauty'_
at the 1839 Eglinton
Tournament, the first known
beauty pageant;
W
European festivals dating to the medieval era
provide the most direct lineage for beauty pageants.
For example, English May Day celebrations always
involved the selection of a May Queen.
In the United States, the May Day tradition
of selecting a woman to serve as a symbol
of bounty and community ideals continued,
as young beautiful women participated
in public celebrations; such as the beauty pageant
held during the Eglinton Tournament of 1839,
organized by Archibald Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton,
as part of a re-enactment of a medieval joust
that was held in Scotland; the pageant was won
by Georgiana Seymour, Duchess of Somerset,
wife of Edward Seymour, 12th Duke of Somerset,
and sister of Caroline Norton;
Georgiana proclaimed _"Queen of Beauty"_;
Entrepreneur Phineas Taylor Barnum staged
the first modern American pageant in 1854,
his beauty contest closed down after public protest;
However beauty contests became popular
in the 1880s; In 1888 the title of _'beauty queen'_
was awarded to an 18-year-old Creole contestant
at a pageant in Spa, Belgium. All participants
had to supply a photograph & a short description
of themselves to be eligible to enter; a final selection
of 21 judged by a formal panel.
Such events were not regarded as respectable;
But beauty contests came to be considered more
respectable with the first modern _"Miss America"_
contest held in 1921;
Still the oldest pageant in operation,
the Miss America pageant was organized
in 1921 by a local businessman as a means
to entice tourists to Atlantic City, New Jersey;
The pageant hosted the winners of local
newspaper beauty contests in the
_Inter-City Beauty Contest_ & was attended
by over one hundred thousand people;
_Sixteen-year-old Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C.
was crowned Miss America 1921, having won both the
popularity and beauty contests, and was awarded $100_
Sep 1, 2018
Sep 1, 2018 at 10:04 AM UTC
It's been a long while
but I've no trace of time.
I'm covered in brown mud,
piled over with rusty
red and orange leaves.
I lay at the foot
of what now,
is an old friend.
It's not easy
to get much sunshine
the large Oak's roots
are what both isolate
and keep my company.
I'd been loved
a long while
but that story
is an old life lived
a memory
that became a fantasy
time stretched
until it's bonds broke.
They tried
to recover me,
for a short while
for something
that mirrored
commitment
at such a young
and impressionable
age.
They hunted
in and out
of trunks
of the large Oak's home
never to find
where I lay.
Embedded
in October's leaves.
Yet,
distance
didn't make
the heart grow
fonder.
I'd been lost
and long forgotten
at the brink of dusk,
at the ring
of a more warming
love.
They came back,
once or twice,
to test
the shaded wood,
the darkened dirt.
They came back
until leaves
covered me
eye-high.
If they were still yelling
for the track of my presence
I could no longer hear them.
Even if
they were still scouring
built-down woods,
I could no longer
see them
allow them
to catch my eye.
Even if they still loved me
I could no longer feel them
covered
by cracked dirt,
and crumpled leaves.
The roots
had become my lover
now
grown to hug
my rounded hips
my heaping
dirt-covered
smile.
The wind
doesn't play with me
much
only to allow
a sweeping
kiss of leaves,
or to pick
the dirt coat
from my back
and donate
to a better cause
the warming
of a seed
that tiny
Christmas Rose.
I quit
listening
long after
I quit
looking,
looking for the boys
that had once
loved me.
Only then
did he come
sticky handed,
dressed in metal,
and armed
to save
a princess.
Engrossed
in his enactment,
poking swords
at my Oak
demanding
emptied branches
release
his Rapunzel,
I saw him
catch glimpse
of my rounded edges.
I
didn't notice
until
I looked up
into those
adventurous
eyes.
He knelt,
gigantic
in young age,
he plucked me
easily
from my big
Oak roots.
He wiped
dirt
from my body
slowly
and softly
like I was
new-found
treasure
Like I was
the gold
every child
hunts for
in their own
back yard.
He ran
his rough thumbs
on my edges
never lifting
his eyes
from his fingers
on that short
walk home.
He rinsed me clean
under
warmed water,
wondered
about my stories
then dusk came.
I was tucked
warm
under his protection
under that imaginative
mind,
and the boy
made me his own.
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 7:52 PM UTC
Post-truth.
Post-satire.
Monsters celebrated as saviours.
Wide-open, screaming ******
committed during every ad break.
A dynamic new plan to power the national grid
using snake oil.
Hosts of remote-controlled, cybernetic angels
raining down weapons-grade holy fire.
Eternal peace declared
between Eurasia and Eastasia.
The trenches full up with
poetic corpses.
*** doll mouths breaking
bad news to the bereaved.
The orgiastic scarification
of our own democracies.
Blood sacrifices to the Black Friday Gods.
The enactment of nursery rhyme into law.
The Disneyfication of the human heart.
Love only as legislated.
Hate as currency and
everyone a broker.
Strange, reptile creatures
ballroom dancing through
the sludge-filled annals of imminent history.
Endless war
between Eastasia and Eurasia.
A thousand candles
lit in memory
to all the moths that
burnt to death.
Nov 28, 2016
Nov 28, 2016 at 1:37 PM UTC
what is this love
for I have beheld it
cast in metamorphosis
a love that makes
transformations on the mind
permissible transformations
improvisations of the self
in ****** intensity
which emphasises the drama
of sometimes, dark, violent
and repressive potentials
vicious energies of hate and ambition
that propel the enactment
of intense and exhausting experience
of vigorous vertiginous chaos
indomitable in its desires
what is this love
is it a registered predicament
made memorable by vivid language
that would butcher in ritual
gratuitous memories and testify
to an urgency of unwisely relinquished emotion
what is this love
does it flourish in flawed
and unreasonable understandings
accumulated upon the mind
in vicarious thrill of sympathy
where traits are highly exaggerated
and eagerly anticipates
the oppressive weight of the past
that functions upon a common collapse
of distinctions
or does it manufacture artificial precepts
pretending in attractive collaboration
to associate fiction rather than fact
what is this love
is it that by treaty or inheritance
with loving ferocity would embalm all tears
and hide all those collaborations
in flared conflagrations of the heart
and yes create a turmoil in the mind
hotter than a thousand summers
and vividly stamp upon a twisted body
a moral viciousness of fathomless malice
that wouldst close its ears
to the admonitions of conscious
and thus through an improbable
incantatory verbal rite
touch the hidden order of all things
in disassembling nature
what is this love
if only it was known
Aug 17, 2013
Aug 17, 2013 at 5:26 PM UTC
Despite the daylight
It was going to be a torment of fright
Footsteps that stomp the streets
A past from the underworld neighborhood in their retreat
Every footstep in wanting to be heard
The moans with the multitude in being a herd
Every pounding heart is the coming stomp of footsteps
The neighborhood questioned often in their why, but heard stories that seemed a lie
An old man would sit and tell the tail
The neighborhood listened to every detail
Stomping footsteps an enactment of the trail
Former citizens who previously lived in the neighborhood
They were part of “Spirits Concealed”, a consultation group in casting out spirits
But a curse was transformed and it ended the neighborhood in defeat
The curse has caused deceased stomping footsteps in being unrest
Who will live will be anybody’s guest?
Now the spirit footsteps must roam the streets
Looking for new souls to live in as an eternity feat
The footsteps are determined to get revenge
Endless mark of no trail and the spirits soul that won’t fail
It’s let the games begin
The walking until when
Taking refuge on new citizens to the neighborhood
But they will be living on if they could
Followed by even if they would
It’s the footsteps that continue to preserver
The moans are the diehards of the fear
The walking footsteps not wanting anyone to come near
Death in the footsteps search, and the soul being what they want.
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 4:26 PM UTC
Such vicious energies of hate
That propels an enactment
Of intense and exhausting experience
Where vigorous rhetoric of contending factions
Show inability to shape a moment into coherent form
Providing only chaos
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 10:53 AM UTC
Her legs hang low,
just above the night's whispering tide,
illuminated only by dawn's dim light.
Polar limbs and the nonlinear confide.
She does not hide. No, not on this night.
Her outstretched arms
question the supposed limitless oblivion.
For foot by mile, lightyear by revolution,
she has seen everything:
Loves enactment upon re-enactment,
The crying of the lost and lonely infant,
the rodent's of the night that creep and crawl along
a city's cobblestone streets,
and she has seen two worlds fall asleep
time and time again.
The moon has already heard forever
yet each night she listens to a different tune.
The moon is forever.
The light and the wise coccoon.
Nov 17, 2011
Nov 17, 2011 at 8:47 AM UTC
my brother is the safe environment I’ve created for the history of my lord. political awareness, I mean, I mean, is a darkness. my eyeglasses tell me you’ve been to see a train station. do animals wait? several impatient years later, two blindfolded mouth-breathers walk cheek to cheek in an Ohio fog that combs forward worms the length of a screen name on craigslist. I am nearly pronouncing krokodil until my tongue disappears so I can pronounce it correctly for my mother’s not frostbit ear. as for the two, they are mistaken by the disembodied poetics of local policing as the trophy nose of an odd-for-these-parts moose. any re-enactment is my father the victim of a spirited birth.
Dec 7, 2013
Dec 7, 2013 at 11:20 PM UTC
Life must be carried on with contentment
We must develop an enough sentiment
All our ideas we must try to implement
Doing the best not for just compliment
Efforts to succeed we must augment
Waste not time in useless argument
Go for wise and shrewd agreement
And ever work for World's betterment
We must perform well our assignment
Sending kindness as our consignment
Work hard for our fine goals' attainment
By accepting arriving disappointment
We must make our rules" enactment
Acting always with real commitment
We must obey God's Government
mvvenkataraman
Mar 10, 2013
Mar 10, 2013 at 10:46 AM UTC
the problem is that
we still care about the effects.
We still plan,
we still schedule what we are about to do.
What we MUST do,
right?
We want to be always ready,
to always have plan B close-by,
because
we don't really like any kind of surprises.
But you know what?
We lose everything by sitting
and calculating,
organizing the things as we want to,
and they will fly by
and...
We wake up, then,
with tons of list in your hands that you were expecting to tick.
And time passes,
because it does not forgive,
and you end up realising how you can lose
any essence, sense and purpose.
Aug 1, 2018
Aug 1, 2018 at 4:12 PM UTC
Are you scared Johnny Reb?
Yeah I guess I am too
With each re-enactment
The grey and the blues
Get under my skin
'til it's just me and you
In our animal colors
All black and bad news
Are you scared Johnny Reb?
'cause I've heard hunting men
Is just one hard **** then again and again
It is joy past the point of all drugs and all zen
Let the next re-enactment
We enact again
Have the slightest addition
Of two powdered men
I've come to consider you
More than a friend
So honestly Johnny
Between us too men
Let the end of our war
Be decided again
Aug 10, 2012
Aug 10, 2012 at 3:43 AM UTC
I read some poems badly and in bad light, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR3w2eHYE5Q
from 12.9.13
messianic allure
my brother is the safe environment I’ve created for the history of my lord. political awareness, I mean, I mean, is a darkness. my eyeglasses tell me you’ve been to see a train station. do animals wait? several impatient years later, two blindfolded mouth-breathers walk cheek to cheek in an Ohio fog that combs forward worms the length of a screen name on craigslist. I am nearly pronouncing krokodil until my tongue disappears so I can pronounce it correctly for my mother’s not frostbit ear. as for the two, they are mistaken by the disembodied poetics of local policing as the trophy nose of an odd-for-these-parts moose. any re-enactment is my father the victim of a spirited birth.
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 4:10 PM UTC
Why don't I meet those students?
I can be a teacher
I am a teacher
not teaching English in a community college
or NYC for that matter
yet a teacher
and I have Freudian asymmetries
I mean I am hung up on women
on old world literature
on promiscuity , racial mixing
tense ****** moments.
I am also quite frank
to myself, to my sensibilities
my self centered world.
I do have students
who seem to be interested in
chitchats outside class
those evening walks grabbing coffee somewhere
learning a thing or two
about life, men.
I mean, their chief complain
they have dated boys
missing pseudo-intellectuals
& everyday enactment of 'Oedipus Complex' in reverse.
I see compelling eyes,
provocative bodies,
keen to learn, waste and start from scratch
yet I don't meet those girls
who would rip apart my three year old marriage
keep me pseudo-happy for the time
have *** in claustrophobic venues in unknown hours of the day
make me quit jobs, sanity and pragmatism
marginalize me to despair and defacement
to
inevitably break up with me
so that I can write a book or two about it
Random House may be interested
and I would have to turn forty,
without a single care in this whole, wide world
Mar 25, 2012
Mar 25, 2012 at 6:05 PM UTC
A tremble begins to settle on seething skin
She is a maker of parasitical kin
It does not consume like a dancing fire
But it amplifies with a vision of curdling desire
Just like a mother, it grows like a molding seed
A miracle of the asexual spirit in a world of greed
Abrupt in nature, beloved by its own flesh and blood
It left an intangible mark inscribed on her soul in disguise of a hunch
A precautionary tale serves a special prevention of the ugly occurrence
What a marvelous delight it becomes when it reverts as a guide, full of opulence
But not in a sense of monetary value, rather a calculated demise
How does one understand a raw creation of wrath?
What will she become after venturing the thorny path?
Does an inquiry halts her progress in activating fury?
Is there an object of her ire that requires a narrative of her mutiny?
Why does the poison never spread like death in a rush?
Can she possibly raise an army to march with an uncontrollable urge of violence?
When will she endure the thinning of her lips to match the peace of a deafening silence?
Is there a warning to keep herself intact for the coming apocalyptic days?
Will it save the dormant history of her being through enactment of saving face?
The question remains unanswered, but the fulfillment of the instrumental vengeance shall prevail
The inappropriate conception is almost complete to its term
A note emerges from an acidic confinement for the preparation of a womanly stern
This clump of a girl is not a shameful creation for the sake of tragedy
If anything, the child's fulfilling rage will cleanse her ancestors as a token of remedy
There is no reminder of a continuing paternity names on her birth
No need for prophetic visions as she strikes down the Earth
An abundant offerings on her behalf shall never satisfy her
As the melting iron starts to sizzle the plumper skin, the blinding nostalgia of rage tastes better
She has no patience for warnings to initiate an appropriate plan
The hour of her sustainable war has begun
Jan 3, 2024
Jan 3, 2024 at 11:59 AM UTC
i have given hearing
to deaf ferocious monsters
with well meaning incompetence
i have disturbed the reality
and illusion of human identity
where i am enmeshed
in insoluble confusions of difficulties
where i find strange images
touching on the grotesque
and ask what is myself
what are the guarantees
of my identity
by what right is a name possessed
by what means is my individuality secured
these questions in my mind
have a curiously derivative quality
that pretend to govern themselves
where they collaborate in their own oppression
and make assumptions upon
ethical behaviour and social institutions
which represent fictions rather than fact
function in a world of collapsing distinctions
of artificial precepts
where these now hearing monsters
with vicious energies of hate and ambition
that propel the enactment of intense
exhausting experience of a mind
spiraling vertiginously
toward an inner chaos that proclaims
I am myself alone without moral constraints
yet register vast predicaments
with the memorability of vivid language
but with an individual rapaciousness
that creates an amalgam of narratives
with the oppressive weight of the past
designed to induce this evaluative vertigo
with such ferocity to produce a turmoil of demons
monsters of evil, whose viciousness is vividly stamped
upon their bodies that declares
their fathomless malice sending my mind
into a cruelly disassembling nature
where i have given hearing
to deaf ferocious monsters
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 9:43 AM UTC
Italian love songs
Canzoni d'amore italiane
fires the need, touch touch caress.
alla necessità, tocco tocco carezza
my hand engulfs her little finger,
la mia mano avvolge il suo mignolo
sliding down from her knuckle,
scivolando giù dalla sua nocca,
to the glassine hard smooth of
alla glassina dura liscia di
a petite fingernail, contradicting,
un'unghia minuta, contraddittoria,
confirming the sensational opposition
confermando l'opposizione sensazionale
the forefinger performs a solo,
l'indice esegue un assolo,
exciting the ear’s topography,
eccitante la topografia dell'orecchio,
the sexuality of hill, vale, spaces,
la sessualità di collina, valle, spazi,
curvatures extending an invitation,
curvature che estendono un invito,
the neck, plane of the neck, take
prendere il collo, piano del collo
I’m no longer of surety possessing,
*Non ** più la garanzia di possedere,*
is it my finger or my tongue, is it
è il mio dito o la mia lingua, vero?
that my finger became my tongue,
che il mio dito è diventato la mia lingu,
all senses at attention, blurred,
tutti i sensi all'attenzione, sfocato,
the love song enactment, touch
recitazione della canzone d'amore, tocco
<>
the confusion of love is its clarity, the master and the slave
becoming one
la confusione dell'amore è la sua chiarezza, il padrone e lo schiavo diventano uno
Oct 19, 2019
Oct 19, 2019 at 8:43 AM UTC
(a tale of goodbye)
I know this is not the end
but, it feels like it.
Patiently I wait until we perform
our last scene together.
Possess by the passions of
two star-crossed lovers,
our enactment brought silence
over the room.
Anxiety flushes over me
as we take our final bow
and the curtain closes.
Secretly my heart hopes for
a standing ovation, even an encore.
I yearn for one last moment
to spend with you in our short story.
Sorrow engulfs my entire being.
My body starts rejecting
the thought of losing you.
As I look into your eyes, I reflect back on
how beautiful we were together.
I question...
Can we add another scene?
Why does it have to end?
~Butterfly εїз 2011©
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 1:07 PM UTC
one.
two.
three.
four. i am still breathing.
tonight and every night,
your fingers in my hair as you **** me. hard.
almost to the point where i wish
for no mercy. one.
two. three.
four. five. six.
it's at the point where i no longer question it,
though i am often surprised
by the popular opinion,
for the internet is a bad place to be
when i have questions.
i have been told i should be choking, i should not
enjoy this, there should be no enactment
of agency to be found
within this moment.
one. two. three. four.
five. six.
seven. eight. nine.
ten. and each time i do this
i do not want
to apologize, not for the gasp
that escapes my lips as you bite me,
the grip of your fingers around my wrists,
the whole of your weight against me
as you pin me to the bed, or even
the frantic motion in which i move to kiss you.
for there is no point in questioning
the logic of how my lungs and body
breathe together in this natural state
of being.
Nov 20, 2013
Nov 20, 2013 at 1:08 PM UTC
*don't harangue my life with care for pity at woman's idiocy, not having adopted Caesarian birth as universally adequate and prospering her, to instil this barbaric guilt in me wondering why women, of all mammals had no natural anaesthetic produced when giving birth... **** your little guilt-trip argument! Caesarian or no argument!*
to be robbed of a glorious death, and be given an
inglorious birth, esp. when women were given an ease
with a Caesarian birth diplomacy... what's there to retain for man?
ardency in labour? old age? i too was robbed of what
Caesar described as the ideal death: the sudden one...
am i to wait for my sickbed...
if i only chanced the thrill of life
within one sunset and sought no night
to encompass my life as worthy compensation
of nothing.
a life lived to the bell-tone of a replaced
uvula, no care for charity asserted...
in that one momentary exception of all life prior,
to have lived it, and hence entombed,
readied for the element acquiring me to
further its signature... as sustainable...
i'd rather die a painful death that live
a comfortable life: pain is eased with its short-lived
establishing awareness when the glory prior is "prolonged"
ascribed to the fates akin to Achilles... and indeed pain is
merely pain with its prolonging on the sickbed...
counter heroism, so defeatist;
how many times am i to be robbed? to thus experience
such shallows of thieves with cheap constantly
expedient thievery? i've had enough to concede to a juggle
of fates and fortunes! one smooth stroke of the ace
rather than the many axe-hackings of the neck
of ****** Mary. bothersome agitations via pride, honour
and braveness, only if they do not happen,
and should they, they'd be undertaken, but to no quest
of celebratory non-enactment, i.e.: farting rather than ********
prior: to be given a wave of the standard acupuncture
of infantry: as guarantee of mythology; and a nobleman
on his horse without a stirrup prior to the *** intervention.
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 10:14 PM UTC
The light has already cast itself into the dark corners
of this shameful story: a man who was despised
and fell towards death, only for his presence to remain.
Is it such a hard lesson to learn that it is over,
and two millennia past? And yet we mortify ourselves
with holy guilt when we could enjoy these spring days
bursting with the budding leaf, the floating blossom.
Is there really a need for this re-enactment of selfishness
and death? Are we such poor dumb souls that we observe
a Friday to remind us how it was? There is a presence
in our midst: the Eternal Christ who lives among us,
an incarnate being continually blessing us with love.
Apr 18, 2014
Apr 18, 2014 at 4:44 AM UTC
The discomfort
Of my comfort zone
Far outweighs
The discomfort
Of
The unknown
To live
Alive
Surpasses
The enactment of
A living death
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 6:17 PM UTC
Between tree line and snow line, the alpine plants survive.
Cold and desiccation are enemies, but there is no surrender.
Clonal propagation is adequate: *** is often dispensed with.
Between fame and indifference, the quiet people settle.
Ice is melted by family life.
Coupling does occur: but surreptitiously.
Between the eccentric and the outrageous, my love lives.
No-one is ever oblivious to her presence.
An immediate outflow of passion is always an option.
Time to go upstairs, dearest one.
Time for a re-enactment of the big bang.
Time to roar.
My! Where did you learn to do that, Cynthia?
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 8:08 AM UTC
You lie on this bed with no sheets, only ghosts
you touch your lips in movement,
you deliver words of an author unashamed of his own limitations.
You seek to erase what has been:
out of context – unimportant,
inside this body -- crucial.
Without hesitation, you let your words slip
and your crimes spill
and you still haven't left this bed.
The third re-enactment is a joke;
the lines you rehearse haven’t been yours in so long.
Mar 28, 2017
Mar 28, 2017 at 5:18 PM UTC