"insofar" poems
The greatest demonstration of freedom in the history of the nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
A great beacon light of hope.
Seared in the flames of withering justice.
One hundred years later, the ***** still is not free.
We’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check.
This note was the promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white, men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.
Now is the time to make real promises of democracy.
Now is the time to make injustice a reality for all of God’s children.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the ***** is granted his citizen rights.
In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.
You have been veterans of creative suffering.
Go back, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
I say to you today, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.
A deeply rooted american dream.
A dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream where little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the context of their character.
I have a dream today!
That little black boys and girls, will be able to join hands with little white boys and girls as brothers and sisters.
I have a dream today!
The rough places will be plain and the crooked places will be made straight, “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."
This is our hope.
This is the faith I go back with.
With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children --- black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics --- will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old ***** spiritual, “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
Oct 26, 2017
Oct 26, 2017 at 8:26 AM UTC
The progression of Huntington's disease often leads to the need of a wheelchair. My husband resisted using a wheelchair for many years, even though his poor balance and tiredness meant he was prone to falls. I didn't exactly pressurise him into using one. To be honest it was not just because it was another sign of loss of independence, but it would have been harder for me too in many respects.
What I wasn't prepared for, when the time came, was the social stigma attached to wheelchair users insofar as becoming a kind of non-entity! In a weekly blog I wrote in 2008 I wrote about the first time I took my husband out in a wheelchair. It angered me how peoples’ attitudes seemed to change overnight.
Walking down the High Street,
Hand in hand like lovers,
The couple blend into the crowd,
No different from the others.
As the years go by though,
His body having changed,
Has sadly meant a wheelchair,
Has had to be arranged.
Strolling down same High Street,
The woman now behind,
Her lover needing pushing,
Steep pavements so unkind.
Entering the bar now,
With awkward navigation;
People jump to open door,
Aware of situation.
“Thank you” says the man in chair,
When wheeled into the place;
“Welcome” say the helpers there,
But all avoid his face.
Carer gets the “Welcome” mouthed,
No looks with him they share;
Let’s treat this fellow human being,
As if he wasn't there.
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 7:39 AM UTC
Changing Names and Changing Faces
Changing Times and Changing Places
The emptiness remains the same
The Sunna Sutta,
Part of the Pali canon,
Relates that the monk Ananda,
Buddha's attendant asked,
"It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord.
In what respects is it said that the world is empty?"
The Buddha replied, "Insofar as it is empty of a self
Or of anything pertaining to a self: Thus it is said,
Ananda, that the world is empty.
Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form
Emptiness is not separate from form,
Form is not separate from emptiness
Whatever is form is emptiness,
Whatever is emptiness is form
One time to the next time
That is all it is
Try to be a good person
Be kind to others
Show others the love that Jesus showed
I just want a good friend is all
That would be nice
Someone to share my life with
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 8:42 PM UTC
AFTER you have spent all the money modistes and manicures and mannikins will take for fixing you over into a thing the people on the streets call proud and beautiful,
After the shops and fingers have worn out all they have and know and can hope to have and know for the sake of making you what the people on the streets call proud and beautiful,
After there is absolutely nothing more to be done for the sake of staging you as a great enigmatic bird of paradise and they must all declare you to be proud and beautiful,
After you have become the last word in good looks, insofar as good looks may be fixed and formulated, then, why then, there is nothing more to it then, it is then you listen and see how voices and eyes declare you to be proud and beautiful
1.7k
outside, my
professor lights a pipe beside the daffodils,
and we make small talk about the cigarette butts in the dirt
and the history of natural science.
He travelled south in a small blue wagon,
for no particular reason
except the summers are dry
and the air is silent,
….
inside mould grows on glass
windows, wood rotting damp
dissipates the rain through its splinters
cracked rooms containing muses, alight
with the glow of creation, reinvention
I am taught to eat with chopsticks at a fast food restaurant
each Friday night; I learn
to break them in two before I eat,
dissect myself in certain manners of precision
indulge in cakes with sprinkles
spires
lining streets
the lamps in the evening
dull for flashes of traffic
souls in sachets about to be added
in a hot drink, or instant frappe
we dissolve
into particles
about
the place in
certain manners of precision
break in two before
we indulge
impart
chromosomes collaborate
in the rooms,
in the mage’s quarters
dollar bills are sniffed and sorted
LSD and Ecstasy crossed, contorted
butterflies have patterns in conversations
on their wings, in teacups, sipping Spanish ***
drag my son up a hill to **** him,
in the ash tree foliage, faces in the sky
and ask of grace
deliver me to the divine class of men
what am I if only captive to contagion?
After all, I spread across windows
like mould each hour multiplying
to become sporadic, spatial,
discovering the heart’s variation
insofar as we are variable
asking Sophie, my daughter, to empty
the dishwasher, I pray she wonders
why we have cups
of coins in our pockets
why we ache
atoms
about
the place in
certain manners of precision
break in two before
we indulge
impart
chromosomes collaborate
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 8:36 AM UTC
keeping something away from myself
is harder than ever keeping it away from all others, a feeling of what's been felt
like a monster of mechanistic mechanical deities in the mask of an elk
as you melt into crusts below the surface of the Earth,
I tried to give birth to something more than I, as an individual, will ever be worth
could ever be a part of as any true influence which captures an axial tilt,
yet here I am continuing the trial like a trapped spirit embodied as a curse,
a progressive insofar as I'm miles ahead in a hearse that's headed off the edge of all turf,
and the next true hope I'll ever really have is:
"Cosmic burial is my first option, should that ever work."
Sep 13, 2023
Sep 13, 2023 at 1:49 AM UTC
Robes torn, her side was shown,
glowing red, nearing dusk,
primal intentions were aloof,
her minds eye was on the creature that we derive,
from, always reaching for the sun;
never finding just what she wants,
her hand reaches out in lust.
The robe slides down,
frangible, tangible,
her hair covers just the tips now,
silhouetting and mystifying,
men fray from even trying,
but the luscious fruit is worth the stretch,
not that of hers but the ones they lacked,
so Adam and Eve succumbed and never looked back,
the sun of the primitive one would crash,
a title wave hit all consciousness,
they lay in knowledge, the fruit had been snatched.
She sits naked, a lioness,
golden hair streaming in the wind,
lips plump, made of crimson,
wanting to trust,
but now she had her pride to defend;
knowedlge also brought shame,
good and evil begin:
in a bag of conceptions,
tied to a rock, thrown in humankind,
insofar as to drown them,
as it does feeble minds.
I rhyme, knowledge is power—
a word to the wise,
that and be humble,
and then man may survive.
Jan 1, 2013
Jan 1, 2013 at 7:52 PM UTC
daft as the last 3 things you said, I don't
question much aside from life. in how many
sentences could I make a reference to an old
French poet to illustrate to you how little
sense Albert Camus makes seeing as I have yet
to go to university? You'd think the sand clocked
in his socks from all those summers spent in
Algier's would have consumed much more than
background or 'home is where the heart is.'
the right mind is the right heart is the home
is the everywhere you go. in a world where
'I-Ching' and 'cha-ching' are context insofar
as bookstores, I doubt much and question little,
money is dharma too. dharma I wish to burn because
my hate for money is dharma. back-flip. slightly
arrested in development is the faculty of spirit
in GDP, at least the lion still roams the Savannah
and at least I can explore the lion. My New Years
resolution is 1080p. what's yours?
Feb 3, 2013
Feb 3, 2013 at 1:41 AM UTC
“Was thy loved ones’ existence still present
when she hassled an ***** position
to fulfil her responsibilities?
Where she endured multitudinous battles,
inhibiting every single darted tear
dying to transpire.
Her frame of mind wavering as she
suppressed her deadly psychosis,
stirring the emotions of her loved ones.
Unenlightened was thou
that as she rooted in their presence,
she nonchalantly decays within.
Her vehemence veiled into resisting mankind
fishing upon her burdens.
Insofar she is overpowered
by the mere evidence that she
cannot silence her sorrows."
Nov 13, 2018
Nov 13, 2018 at 6:37 AM UTC
That panting belief of men;
a thirst for that which fills the glass,
beckoning the hand to grab the cup
like the itch moving the mind
to believe in
what?
Whether or not it’s enough we still fill that cup;
with some things,
others put in nothing.
Grab your cup and get drunk, get crazy,
love the world who is a capricious lady saying,
"Have one on me, fill it with everything!"
It’s a prayer without word or plea, the sound of everything ringing inaudibly.
It’s the power of song pursing lips to kiss dreams where we believe.
The canvas of our body, mind and soul
where we draw the ink,
imagine the dream,
and become reality.
The moment when the pen is the same as the beast starving for a feast only fit for men.
The same as the artist holding onto their vision.
The same as the language translating the soul within.
The same as the stars burning away the wick of entropy that ends the same as it begins
insofar as all finite things have their dreams in essence of their being
and yearn for infinity.
Jul 23, 2013
Jul 23, 2013 at 3:19 PM UTC
My grief was only ever her fault insofar as it was "her fault" for falling asleep in my arms.
Jan 4, 2017
Jan 4, 2017 at 5:28 PM UTC
Destructive tendencies
You are wandering now, fallen
In this forbidden
Torn apart wasteland that is your forest
Your mind
Trees fall as you collapse
Sobbing to the floor
Wishing for it all to end
Overwhelmed
You break, again and again
New scars riddling your body every day
Every moment tearing your sanity anew
Making you cold
Frozen to the bone with anger
Fear
Longing
You stumble across the line you've drawn
You never wished to revert
A tree you're climbing
Hand over hand to emerge
Atop the fragile canopy
As if made of glass
Cracking under the weight of your sadness
As you panic, frantic
Looking for some release
Some escape from the terrifying
Cold
Shadows surrounding you
Sliding over your soul
Caressing your heart
Tantalizing your mind with thoughts of pain
Of screams locked up
Never to be released to anybody
Doomed to torment you forever
Like the terrified call of some beast
A last noise of suffering
Brought short by others
Treating you as some snail
Pouring salt deep into your open wounds
Into your gouged out eyes
Your mouth agape with a constant, silent scream
Tearing your hair out
Covering your ears
To repel the constant torment following you
The forest
Once black
Now stained a ***** red
Towers overhead
You only want to escape
To hide
To see the light from the darkness once more
To stop the searing pain of the past
Reminders bringing about rage
Bringing hate
Polluting your life
Your pure colors become *****
A white sheet dragged through a rainstorm
You cry out in pain
Frantically searching for the invisible enemy
Who hates you fully and completely
Laughing hysterically at you
Driving you almost over the edge
Pulling a blindfold tight over your eyes
Dragging you toward a dark ravine
Jagged, dying plants littering it
But look, in your blindfold
There is a tear
Through it, light is shining
Mysteriously, you are released
The rag is untied
As you peer through the inky darkness of the forest
There is a clearing
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 10:52 AM UTC
Yea, ye shalt ne'er be discarded
such as is aged linen lace,
rather ye shalt e'er be safeguarded
insofar as is my place.
Thou shalt see auroral fire
and eavesdrop on the surf,
and embody thy soul
with another soul
so as to blaze
with
e'en brighter
worth.
Nov 29, 2014
Nov 29, 2014 at 1:17 AM UTC
there was never much left for me to say,
insofar as I didn't know how to articulate it or,
if I did, I no longer possessed the energy to do so.
Hope comes stranded, like a helium balloon
left to wander the skies once released
at a city parade.
A child not yet wise to the knowledge
that helium
is lighter
than air
imagines she can let go
to weave her little shoes
into secure knots with
both hands,
so by the time she looks up to find this renegade bulb,
it's nothing more than one of what could be
ninety-nine red balloons
floating in the summer sky.
In this sense,
it could be said hope comes
from all angles,
regardless of whether this
little drip of serendipity
is gifted by accident,
intention,
or
simple curiosity.
Existence always hurts.
But it's our challenge to choose
how it hurts:
will it be a chronic sickness unto death,
inspiring moroseness and jaded apathy?
Or will it feel like gym pain,
as if liquid gold has pooled
into every open crevice
of bone marrow
so the ache is nothing
but
a
friendly reminder
of our living vitality
through having
expended
the body,
mind
and soul
in satisfaction?
Mar 5, 2018
Mar 5, 2018 at 5:36 PM UTC
Beedazzled
The hornets appeared on the horizon.
Zipper was on lookout with Tryin’ Flyon.
The two of them were in an argument
And didn’t see the hornet’s a-flying.
In fear Tryin’ stumbled back and hit a plant,
And all the water came raining down with a mighty splash.
Sound the alarm! I can’t, Tryin’!
My wings are soaked through, said Zipper, nearly crying.
The two of them ran and watched as above a squadron of hornets,
Crashed down with a thud!
What have we got here lads? A couple of wet-through bees.
Please don’t hurt us, please!
Oh this doesn’t look good!
Shut up Tryin’, we are not scared of hornets.
You should bee, we’re bigger and stronger that you lousy maggots.
Zipper grabbed his stinger and said en garde!
The lead hornet laughed and insofar,
As to actually consider Zipper a threat,
Grabbed his stinger sword and said ok Bee, let’s!
The two of them fought and soon Zipper was no more.
Tryin’ was desperately trying to find a door,
But he was surrounded, soon to bee pounded,
Like the honey in the hive,
When it was deemed too rounded.
But the hornets didn’t know that the two bees were a three.
Scaredy Bee flew off as fast as he could,
Heading back to the hive and brotherhood.
He didn’t wait to see what happened to Tryin’,
He was too busy screaming and rapidly flying.
The guards saw him approach at an incredible speed.
Who the heck is this? The fastest bee I’ve ever seen!
The guards said wait! He said no way!
And he was past them before they knew what else to say.
Did he say hornets? No way, get your ears fixed.
He did, he said hor…He said there were hornets!
With that the two guards turned tail and fled.
The commotion caused by Scaredy Bee was up ahead…
(C)2019 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
Aug 18, 2019
Aug 18, 2019 at 6:50 PM UTC
Loosen your pattern,
Locked in cloth.
The shaded memories dampen.
Blurred be the images of your emotionally betroth,
By the beloved froth
Your horrendous sloth hereby hearken.
The age of light...
What a frivolous delight!
Insofar as to say that all things float.
That's it's just one big game -
Of hide and seek.
“Oh no, what a shame!” Such is presumably remote.
And disgustingly meek.
See that star?
You've come to adore?
Will you spare yourself what you know isn't healthy?
Knowing that all things are.
Dying and nothing more.
You see the tranquil secrets very deftly.
Oh what's this? Face forward!
Feet a' stepping!
Hearts a' ticking!
The truth's all backwards...
But who cares?...
“A human with any insight would say that they don't need a purpose. -
Surplus filled the brightest emotions; Will to commit heinous actions.
A malicious goal reduced to a fraction of importance.
Time to think of yourself in this instance.
The emotions of others the next,
For this most surely directs,
Superfluous answers at last.
This life just moves too fast...”
Says the man who thoughtfully stares.
But oh great joyous occasion!
Oh this glorious revelation!
The presents of the past deny the presence of the present.
Your eyes deceive you; These thoughts control you.
Free the mind within it's own boundaries -
You see all things have a subconscious foundry.
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 5:23 PM UTC
As sure as I am that I'd need several paragraphs to dance across the page it simply occurs to me that I'm not only a single player upon the stage but one of many that dance within this troupe and if I had to say something I'd have to step outside the group and pronounce soliloquy except that's not what this is about because I'm not the star upon this stage and I've never really studied the page but in this single sentence I've bought about a truly remarkable find insofar as I find it's easy to write a single sentence and make it work almost as easily as Miley Cyrus can twerk except it's December you see and at the end of the ignorance and loneliness it's just me.
Dec 26, 2015
Dec 26, 2015 at 5:36 AM UTC
lover of love's long lost history
you are so intrinsically dear to me
and i know you can hear the beat
when our hands go blistering
i love the neapolitan but not naples
listen to how the city sings like the others
but she buys time and barely bothers
to remove her appropriating staples
she is a reflection
of a reflection
of a reflection
of a reflection
but you, my dear neapolitans,
how holistically human you happen to be
and what a human thing to do
to braid oneself with a few
ventricles of other hearts unseen
you are not special insofar as you are human
and the home you make mistakes you
for a permanent resident, assumes you
are a planted person whose sole purpose is bloomin
but you are dynamic, not static
you do not live in someone's attic
you move around, the ground beneath you
isn't bequeathed to staying beneath you,
you
keep moving and loving and all of the aboving
because our love isn't something
that can be taken away by a location change
or how 21,000 hearts are arranged
Apr 3, 2018
Apr 3, 2018 at 5:37 PM UTC
Watching the student of hate
become the teacher of fear
is only one variable in the equation.
Not all students sit at the
front of the class, some view
the world from behind the
couch, pulling a blanket
over the eyes to ward off
extermination.
It all comes down to
reading the word problem,
insofar as words matter
and how you read them.
Classrooms are so very much
the same as rollercoasters,
multiple rows for
multiple views.
Nov 24, 2013
Nov 24, 2013 at 11:19 PM UTC
“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others–the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else.”
Mar 8, 2016
Mar 8, 2016 at 3:22 PM UTC
The sun casts long shadows upon the lawn
As a man races for that distant point—
a heedless body of effulgent brawn,
brighter still than the gleaming stars at dawn.
In him the earth and heavens are joint,
like a chimeric animal, a faun.
But only insofar as he is free
from the accursed gleist and its petty plea.
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016 at 12:50 AM UTC
petty and pathetic,
insofar as when a wreathed breath
brings the being to the brim
of each death-defying word,
a woman. lying naked,
nailed to the Earth, burning
auburn-bright from windows
a wraith unannounced without a diadem
even, consoling the heavy lark
of the doused dark with something
weightless swinging against
the boughs — shuddering after a great
fall from presence to heart's pompous
flare. flat is the world
and light, the bendable one:
laugh, laugh, brave the hill
and behind the bramble, the dimly lit
foliage you are there
from the tumble: an aureole
simmering in the unbeknownst.
Nov 1, 2015
Nov 1, 2015 at 1:34 AM UTC
Come, now, follow me
Through the dark forest
Dying trees
Please, dear, follow me
I take way now, your life from thee
Sapping heart and melting soul
Don't worry dear, no heads will roll
Shadow forest
On and on
Oh tell me where
Your light has gone?
Tear from your body
Shadows dark
Creaking bones,
Achy heart.
Give to me your sadness sweet
Light fades no longer
Torn up feet.
Escape, you say,
Is coming now
Follow me dear
I'll show you how
To leave this forest
Dark and frightful
Just take that path
For you, tis rightful
Walk along the path of light
As morning comes
Forsaking night
Light unto you, I hope will come
Brings happiness,
Candy and gum
I want a joy
To fill you so
Child with new toy
That face I know
That light now fills you
Love and existence
No darkness kills you
I see a clearing in the distance.
Oct 10, 2013
Oct 10, 2013 at 9:31 PM UTC