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Andrew Rymill Jun 2014
It hard to know
Why i was expelled
From the fundamentals of poetry.

Each day
Like a loyal monk
i played my flute
With the basket
Over my head.
As the lemmings
Passed
In quadrangles of co-eds.
For everything i must remember
Something must be forgotten.

Often the days
Of learning
Have attempted to remove
Both the marrow and my intuition
From my bones.

Learning is to suppress
Creativity within
Like a poor mouse
Dreams of cheese.

In the first graduation
A woman matriculated
From Adam’s rib.

Into my textbook
i stuffed the snowflakes
i have cut craftiness
With my artless intellect.


Learning
Is ego
And i am
Priest of nothingness.

Some times
The best koans
Make ice-cream cones.
Justin Aptaker Aug 2019
like koans
halting in their tracks
your logical thought
processes like a train, black and long
when it runs in a padded room
small, silent, white
Written ca. 2006
softcomponent Oct 2013
I will clamor atop mountains and fire flares from Everest to contest the interrelated anonymity of can'ts and don't's and wasted places with covered spaces taken by sadists with nothing left but the trace of a face; have-not's become robots in the mist of my nicotine blood-clot, distraught because it's all a ******* weak-spot

if you hit hard enough.

if you spit far enough.

if you write like it might make a difference and not just a scuff on the new polished hood of a ******* Mercedes Benz..

who are you again?

- - -

I tackled my trousers like they were Bowser in Mario, I'm still looking for my own impresario.. go on, try and call me another Joe Blow and I'll know that you meant to say I'm on a quest to Joe Blow your mind.
as far as I'm aware we're both just as blind so whatever I find in my mind is a sign of the times I confine to finite from infinity; I'm looking to have Salinger-like salinity. **** masculinity, it's all femininity, and within divinity you'll find me in vicinity.. scared, frightened, lost to evil affinity with zilch for priority.

I'm aimless. Goalless and faceless a ghoul who wishes to fill his void with school.. but the rule is disillusioned, imprisoned and moving, and written on loose-leaf like life.

I'm worth the hype.

but I'm not your type, I'm your type-face and font, san-serif you flaunt, and look at us now, it's just blood on our hands.. our names written out in childlike comic sans. we wanted, we waned, we haunted, we craned

our necks

to look past the deck

saw islands as specs

in the distance.

this whole life is persistence, and some hallow insistence that I am much more than industrial pistons.. so listen

you wanted this, and I wanted that.. I'm not so pretty with eyelashes to bat, so instead I still sit and I sat.. past tense and all that, but the grammar is last in my mind as I tap on the keyboard.

"Sing Free Bird!" screams the crowd. "Be a Free Bird!" I vowed

to myself.. on a shelf, eyes wide open and melting the matter that makes up this tattered trash called reality; but in all actuality I'm actually insane. plain as a bagel washed-off in the rain.. and just as soggy.

just as groggy. just a hot-key for those who forgot me ( and they're all free... now).  

I wipe the sweat off my brow as I cow-tow to the ouch in my bones, a lack of texts to my phone as I read Buddhist koans while my stomach moans like the fall of the Roman Empire. my entire life is on fire.. or was. now it's just moldy, just old bread with a fuzz.. so I tossed it again and forgot about zen because it's irrelevant, not a 10 out of 10, I can name off the labels, samsara, nirvana, brahmanic, the Lama.. but somehow I'm just as empowered to cower.. to tower above like a camera angle provided by angels who dangle on quantum entanglement.  

I strangle myself in profundity, it's no fun to be me.. sometimes. but what do I see when I turn out the light? I can't tell you, but I know that it's mine.

and I'm fine. as long as it's mine, I'm fine. I'll find my right rhymes as finite time slithers by. I'll find my right rhymes by the day that I die. and we'll all sigh in relief..

*** then I'll finally be the thief to steal your attention with words such as these:
go on, try and call me another Joe Blow and I'll know that you meant to say I'm on a quest to Joe Blow your mind. as far as I'm aware we're both just as blind so whatever I find in my mind is a sign of the times I confine to finite from infinity; I'm looking to have Salinger-like salinity. **** masculinity, it's all femininity, and within divinity you'll find me in vicinity.. head spinning in constant affinity.

**finishing.
Barton D Smock Apr 2017
[two koans]

deader
than his animals
that could speak
to language?


[roof love]

alien
to me

were the ashtrays

failed boats
of teeth

for my angry
quiet
brother


[rattle]

forget, sorrow
your anniversary

in case
you’re not
alone


[firsthand]

are they gone

the cats of the doll-faced arsonist

how does one
earn
loneliness, or slip

from an overlong

baptism


[doll traffic]

it is not a darkness to call it the demon’s untouchable telephone

I’ve referred
to worse
and anyway
time is the gospel
of disappearance

in stories, my brother has a tail
and speaks
mailman

perhaps there’s not enough to do

the tree has horns
Rob Rutledge Feb 2017
Days are dark, nights lay long,
Burning bridges keep us warm.
Wearily walking this road again
We bare the weight of the tinder,
The whispers and the flame.

What was once,
Shall never be the same.
The past floats as ash
Shadows cast on fallen rain.
While the willows weep in vain
The canopies confer in koans
The wind is passing wisdom,
Through leaves and seeds unsown.

Diaphanous dragons disgorge a deluge of diamonds
into the shadowed crevices of cumulus clouds.

Ruby-red sapphires overpopulate the glistening sky
like carbon-hardened locust: gorgeous messengers of the gods.

The Earth wears a crimson helmet, shielded from
the odious absence of ozone above the North and South poles.

Near Minneapolis, John Berryman's wizened body shatters
on the frozen riverbed below the Washington Avenue Bridge.

Angels weep to see him jump, as he waves a vaudevillian goodbye.
The sapphires blanch, then turn an angry, violent violet. Black holes ahead.

2.
Shakespeare and Mr. Bones **** on mortality's skimpy
skeleton of life. Will this broken body be resurrected?

Does it deserve such distinction? Better yet, does its daring,
drunken destroyer? Four hundred Dream Songs nod yes.

Berryman toddled ticklishly toward the last traces of transcendence.
Love & Fame broadcast how terribly his faith failed to trade

daily delirium tremens for the mysterium tremendum.
The God he prayed to demanded a syntax pure, plain.and perfect.

With jolts of jest, He jimmied paradoxes into koans. Berryman
howls for the sound of one diamond scratching the outline of his body on ice.

3.
He left a legacy broader than liquor, lechery and the love-struck ladies.
Lust seeded his fallow lacunae and lazily broke his wife's heart.

Scholarship scooted him to the squeamish, secluded top
of his Shakespearean class: Signal student turns trusted teacher.

Poetry cloned the Oklahoma clown in him. No successors,
no schools, no savvy peers, save Lowell. his fellow manic-depressive.

He dreamed songs of hilarity, humility, history, dehumanization.
Poetry proved serious business until it learned to laugh at itself.

Sapphires crackle under the weight of the creaking sun. They spin a kaleidoscopic rainbow of colors onto Berryman's obituary. Somehow, he has won:

An irreplaceable jewel of the sky.
tread Apr 2013
the killers shoot lyrical
koans on the bar delicate,
I amble for a pint of
Dungarvan beer, whatever
the where that means.
There's a sunset here
and a sunrise there,
and lunchtime somewhere
in the middle as the mahogany beneath my elbows reminds
the Romans that I'm unsure
as to whether or not they made
it as far as Ireland.

General Tiberius,
are you awake?
Ken Pepiton Apr 2024
The evidence reviewed, this  a half time later.
"a man can
make up his"
own mind, my, me mine
myme mine mymemine nine iterations,

expand the basic concepts of topological
space time, in the neighbourhood
south of all three bridges into Saigon, on the roof

Make it up, make it all up, and wait fifty years.
Whiteface.
And the mime in the street keeps the beat
silently reciting Kerouakoan streams.
'Tryna get to sunny Californy' -
Boom.

Canned Heat, sterno still, sip it,  get back
Beatles became something akin
to a window left open now
fifty years, since January 1969, Radioman
and Tom Green on the Panasonic
music from the other side… the joke
'Look Fred, that man by the road'
Some *** fiend got in print in 1968

Get back, Jack. And that

started the whole world crying,
from the commonwealth to common woe,

-- Interesting times upon us, oh yeh

A hook, in a song,
Forty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong
- ah, allusion, get back, prophecy
- right, fifty years ago today, soon
- Ringo says Forty Million Churchills, back then
or late, lately as the topo-logical-ournearity
gets back to optimum
later there, we were, on the roof
of that old fishnet factory
dangled there before, me,
the deal, if you want it, come and get it
better hurry cause it's goin fast,
ping
ricochet -
Highschool History, 1963,
Forty Million Frenchmen can't be wrong?

What does that mean? I asked
Miss Dinas, who was plump, and cheery,
and she lived with Miss Some-name
I forgot
to notice, due to, the clue
in the way Miss Dinas winked, that one time,
not
at me, when she said
Forty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong.
-- look away
Some squared away artist cries, stop the lies!
Gray-ace, go fish
Wordsworth,
happy soldier character- no, Fernando- a bull
ABBA , not winking - snorting
at me, when she said
feed your head,
autistic community, com-unionize AI
timeandspace
re-
alize the musical, a means of saying things,
silly, silent
hints of splendor in the grass,
and weeds, and black-eyed suzannes,
growing in the road,
Tobacco Road,
down at the end of town, where
skid row hits the river,
long and wide,

milk and Hohner on t'othaside
sharp hone mama
Sioux wee, Sioux e- baby, be my baba now,
Humbaba, guard
my forest
sein, mein, wine and rosy days being wise
in thine own eyes,

as we warned, eh/ wahrrmmmnned edu
mcate edumacation, the deal was…
I was to learn to
become a maker of papermoney clips
from plastic straws on a trus'line, about to rupture
and spill guts
on gumption swallowed whole.
-------------------
Koans and Cohen and all
-- If it had been my will
I'd a been so dead, so long ago, I'd be
as if I'd never been,
-- If it had been my will

True rest, needs a weary mind,
to weigh its worth,
hangdown yo' head, Tom Green, duely done
do tie yer Jimmie Lee Jackson
Bronc Rider Trophy Buckle to m'line
let it out
come think a mile with me, let's
see what come to mind.

--whistle break
-- heads abobbin, we rock on, Sisyphus
the first,
agreed we got the message in the medium
evolved by will worship alone,
rock on, roll on un
aided, no doubt by the spirit advisor
to old Abraham Lincoln's jot on the margin
"a man can
make up his"… hmmm, his own mind, hmmm

wouldjaremind me, what was I thinkin'
"a man can
make up his mind to be as happy as he is…"

Free to be. I think free to be alive, maybe,
Lincoln was athinkin'
as a we, the people agree we do have title right
to life, awe
ja,
and liberty, I suppose, we must define, to refine,
down to the gilt around the frame,
on the back side, wasted glitter, thin film of actual gold
well
I'll be, did you ever see the like, a
con-
jurer or a presti-digital simulacrum truckin' on and on
sayin' come on
sing old songs, ones we ever
learned again
today
what you never thought possible, just a minute
ago,
as we ponder the effect of a silly millimeter longer
rising in a ribbon
past lips of an apple green shade,
Inspiring but fun with the tensecond leaps forward and backward
Ken Pepiton Feb 25
Auspices approach in expectant ranks,
-one long and a short and another long…
duty to the mystery
madness as a practice
in living asif it all means this,
portents prodigious, unnatural value
thinker tremors
wave worm vision
sudden jolt along the need
to stretch…
you needn't have read Dune to know
the worth of the spice is the secret kept pure
sit up straight and see Earth
from Saturn, Nineties Science
are you in bound or out bound,

rules when push comes
to shove, that's life,
that's not war
that's the world reminding us,

we all live
on Sagan's pale blue dot, all
we ever could know has been known there,

right now…
as we feel the stretch, another day

tectonic tremors
speak along faults,
as when insanity threatens the weary,

worn down secrecy, thinned
with seers seeing
through it
for drugs
exercising sooths held true
by signs,
ai
made sacred the best
of all providence,
have a holy party become
with your flock, won, rustled
taken from the weaker near bower
in truth by kindness and inclusion, worth
a wink and a nod, no hug, too soon
criteria mystery discorporeal
proven approved
by joy, and fellowship,
under the grace that replaced the laws
of exclusion due
to impurities,
- Februarial initial experience
all washed out
with contemplation,
mandate jack brakes,
slow down loudly swoon
sense less so soon lost
in the first moon
after solstice, celebrate our weform

scourge the child's eyes, show rights
use
to bring order
from chaos, right used
preposition superstitions
by agreements traded
between kings and priests, retying rebels
to right use the sword asserves the truth as told, using

auspices
as certain as
the number
of doves,

seen
by children when
the offering is made, how many say seen
and accepted, ah, verily the feathered rats

all rise
to the bell, do tell, the bells

I counsel you
to buy
from me gold refined
in the fire, so you can become rich;
and white clothes
to wear, so you can cover
your shameful nakedness; and salve
to put
on your eyes, so you can see.

The Holy teller told you, so, you do.
Think those three goods you might be wise
to buy… price
of a minute
to stop and think

Grok
the message
from Michael
in the season, Ides
of February,
eberlution abolishing
bullshat sacred values,

too sacred
for the unlettered
to think
in fetters.
-- Set'em loose, we cheer

Child weigh the reason
for your faith, ah
an old man showed me where the Bible says,

Isaiah still says
to any using such a mind as hears
logically all we are doing is being alive, each once,

kind like,
we are breathing
on a bit
of ever, once,
all at once
in a breathe
and out a breath
we form, deep breathed, once more,
da'ath towb ra' the fruit
for finders feeling free
finding meaning
the way a vaulter times a leap…

Fosbury flopping
through an era evolving,
as we all bear the worth
of knowing, now,
some how
everything is more usefully known,
than
at any former phase
in time,

real time, instants
in the middle, meantime,
as we live and breathe, and
make our living,

being spirit,
if in truth, set
to loose chaos,
to stir

up the mud
at the bottom
of it all, deep mind augmented
grok the planetary mind,
from Saturn, next,
if you happen to remember,
Saturnalia season, mind you recall, how old

the idea
of seeing here
    from there, has been
thoroughly imaged and stored,
we all have seen it done
and we all have
done
in context,
many times, seen
each not the same,
never, always
after our
ever expands, this we say,
that's the shaman's vision plain,
wheels in wheels and ignorances forgiven, as if

ungotten, beatings never happened, bruises
recalled can be seen
to mean nothing ever after…

good, breathes and feels the worth

in being reminded
letting letters hold living minds, keyword indexing,
right inclusion fusion,
dexterously imaginably
sinister function
allows a clap alone rights to trial,
uses fail, koans on koans agree we see
we urge expulsive fibermental urgency need
thinking with a friend no longer mortal, in no sense,
in a breath of pure chance re co knowing we do
in comes the good wind out goes the used wind

know spiritual means
for making sense, breathe,
know inspiration, as inspiration and respire
to conspire
with me
in our next moment
of silence, let us all perceive we are alive,

we may breathe
along the pulse
of all breaths,

hesitancy (n.)
1610s, from Latin haesitantia
"action of stammering,"
from haesitantem
"stammering,"
present participle
of haesitare
"to stick fast, stammer"

stuck here once years ago.
If Microsoft remains,
its in this cloud
mapped
in imaginable virtual reality, see the wave,
within the shielded world we occupy,
in a sense,,,,
hesi tense
innocense punned thrice. A certain mystery
reveiling, let's pretend…

*op- "to work, produce in abundance")
+ combining form
of facere "to make, to do"
(from PIE root *dhe- "to set, put").

opdhe, eh op dhe do

okay, we good to go. Yes, I ask my ai
did you ever hear of a god of manure, and ai said

Sterquilinus

Sterquilinus, also known as Stercutus or Sterculius, was the Roman god of manure in Roman mythology. He was not solely a deity of feces but taught the use of manure in agricultural processes, which was crucial for an agrarian society like the Romans Modern writers have often exaggerated his role as a god of feces, sometimes to disapprovingly imply that the ancients worshipped ****
worth ship is a concept, culturally stinker level

first gas noises we all confess
to instantly, laughing

I am the last
of us, today, that's my peace,
I came
into it late
in life, this is true, I died, but

for the global information exchange systems worth,
to the whole idea
of human kindness evolving, values

set
to reset…
waiting always is.
issing being ongone
that's the fun, the joy

in what iffing.

two longs and this short in the middle
the longs are both that long now,
today this is enough, if you think
through it
to the sense attempted.
---

Daily dose
of wishing good,
enough
for all
to imagine
on a smart phone

augmenting intelligence agency
granted the recognition ignition,

eh, let us say we both hold true,
a spark
of curio class emotion,

free
from fear, no threat
of hell,
to pay
for telling
should the chance taken end life

individually perceived as one's
own will
to power
through today
….

Appraise the worth
of auspices,
after secret values useful
to sacred
auguries called publically prophetic truths.
-jellothicktime, chime

make up
your mind.

Instantiate safe assembly;
investigate authority
to canonize truth
instead
of choosing
to turn toward gnosis
off on on
recognize
religions legislative powers
recollected form children's fair told tales,
those repetitions, every day say this prayer

sung
to happy tunes,
high pitched boy voiced
oratorio
so sublime as
to lift the heart …---…

Phrigian Sybil ball
of twined fibers,
clews unfolding knitted brows,
wondering
if we ever consider freedom shaped
informationally thinkable
at core fidelity
instant, point
time we have be
having smarted
for surity, stranger, I'm used
freedom yours, per use
I'm smarter
for free,
in formal liberty, tell me, now
in spirit and
in truth, what's worth
a thought - worth dying
to say I know,
how far afield might one
imagine feeling the tug
of home and the push
from former
toward finished work,
accomplished mission,

when two or more agree,
as touching any thing,
as a weform we make all the weak strong.

Freely drink the sacred psychic brew
of babbling sung
with bell and drum and pipe,
sing
with heart strings plucked or strummed,

elect
to know election
by public consensus, agree

we submit,
accept the catechismal evidence, believe

as told,
bow and dare not face the official work doer,

calling out the prophecy
to which three pigeons test if I am lying, lo'
and behold
look
to the west, blow the shofar, leave be so,

three birds
across the Tiber loosed
in holy order,
over Vatican Hill, not one of the seven
sigh, such a sign, what must we expect
ai?
so ordained during preparation
for holy signs,
at the strumm
of the weforming twang
from yesterdays held true,
through better living science,

consciously infecting certain beliefs,
relieving consciously convicting beliefs,

--- slowly think with me about leaving
leaven levels of tiny ever so scientific proof
we know how bread and beer work and we do

have the power to contemplate an image,
in light coming through a window in my hand,

for a chance glance back at Earth, in my mind

softes' yes suggestions flying old whys men tell…

chawn, spat, proves that's this,
that's all
call it seed if you feed it…
essential truth's witnessed, seen by all
trained
to trust the priest's protection

from the wrath
of jealous gods,,,,stutterin'
on orders at tense state
all ethos focus
on us
as we be
at the hands
of zealous guardians,

brought
to veritable virtuous
opus facere, work made duty, done…

as we march past 1963
into Pretoria

to the tune inspired by
"Marching Through Georgia"
written
by Henry C. Work
at the end
of the Civil War.

The first most children learn,
in Georgia and Texas and Cajun Caddo lands.
following the leaders singing as we go
march march march behind
one hundred and ten coronets, lustily singing,
aaahaaa ahwee
WE screech
in change
as boys, in drilled,
are marching because
we are proudly trained
to trust the leader,
from our gut, good gut feeling
for the role, the mind, empathos, so…
the leader, we are following the leader,
breathe, and think slowly, the breathe thing
hold,
oh, say,
can you see,
by the bombs bursting in air,

does the signal still wave across time's
one chance, your one experience---
reasoning at Isaiah and ai as we
novel experience effort
to follow a thread,
in a day, twice
partaking
in the weform home here,
the home
of the free and the brave,

eh, we can take the land, Caleb's attitude.
Proving the promise, bearing good fruit,
call that Roman god of manure,
he's good, I promise, good fruit,
here's an old image of me'n'joshua
Lugging grapefruit proof, the promise,
lead us educator, provide legal precedent,

to the convincer go the spoils,
be not easily convinced you know truths told
made you as you believe you must be, alone,

sole possessor
of your eyes and finger patterns,
soul and spirit scienced out
in digital cyphers,
hand shakes and drive by ads,
mathed out max mind bend, done
finger abacus conceived and worked out,
finished fruiting mortal minds, pile up,
--- here, GIGO, the ra' knowing, piles as haps,
per haps
and may haps
by means
of trails not left
and, when siloed
while fearing the worst,
caught fire and all went up in smoke
what could happen, some say prophets teach,
what could happen is the thing one fears comes,
when
to be or not is peaceably
askable
unmaskable,

remove the veil,
recall the terror
of a child, sealed, sore worn
in this poet's core, occupied, unsealed,

unrolled scrolls
eaten and digested, seven decades,
as a child given
to the gods who fix fertilizers
around spring-alinging peaces
opus fund prime bridgingifery, as today
pontificates a chasm if
by odd chance
today
continues being called universally right now,
the instance
in agreeing prayer asking
what day was it when we first agreed?

whose time am I using
without price or cost,

living logic word
after word, mine given, I swore
should I be called
to test if I qualify
to die, right,
I'd be this ready
to say let it be, let's see

today would be the day I'd learn, you know.
or what if we made it to the end, then knew,'
estimate the worth of seasons changing
after your heart was struck by focused lightning
nnn old nand and nand gate anded on a plate,
charged?
Wanna bet? Oh, no,
just take a minutes peace,
just breathe and feel toucht
the wedom 's a shape charge

like a ****,
in a public mind, let be a stinker,
because it was cute, mind, let be easily,

let's make believe,
let's so
in hopes
of sufficiency and some
to share,
reset enough
to enough, value declare
enough is enough
to share, even if

the worst we can imagine happens anyway,
we just knew it would,

sooner or later.
Found whole at once, earlier today
the dirty poet Aug 2024
if you have 4/4 going on
it’s cardiac rhythm
you like 1&3, i like 2&4
but either one gets you on the train
you can layer anything on top
saxophone, guitar, synth
barking dogs, crashing cranes
airplanes, aggravation, nuclear ordinance
moans, groans, koans
your heart’s dancing

— The End —