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zebra Oct 2017
Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

............
Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

................
SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

......................

.
IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
...............
PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

.............
OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition
Brad Lambert Oct 2013
(I)

Whose coat is this? Sure as hell isn't my coat. I ain't got no coat with this parka ****, it's *******. I ain't no furry flamin' ******. I ain't no ****** chochy Molly-May-Ze-**** chokin' down chickens and nasalin' a'sniffin' snortin' nasty-*** choch; that ain't me. That ain't me. Look at this coat– I'm like an Eskimo *****. I'm like a butch-**** bull-**** crotch-lappin' a'swimmin' laps in that guy's swimmin' pool. Who's that guy? Who owns that guy? 'Ey, anyone here the owner of this guy– guy ain't got no owner? Whose coat is this? It's nice, real nice. Bet she said, "Does it come from France? Where do I buy one?" I want to buy one, I think I need to buy **** more. I sure as hell need to buy one of these. "And I need one these too and one of them too and I need a petticoat and a tipper-tapper and a whimpratic garfielder and one of them new bartlemores, I need more of them bartlemores. I need more, more, more, more, more, more..." That ain't enough. ****'s from France. ****'s from Paris, that's romantic. You think I'm romantic? I eat hearts for dinner, I chew down nails like nuts for my midnight snack. I smoke cigarettes and spit on concrete slabs, you think that's ****? I'll show you ****. I'll show you Paris, New York City, Rome, romance you in Rome. I'll get real ******' Roman. I'll take you to the desert and make love to you. That's how a free man does a woman, and I'm a real free man. Who's ownin' this guy? It ain't you, it ain't me. I don't own you, you don't own me. I'm a free man:

I said,
"Fire and wood, fire and wood, fire and wood. It is late, it is late, it is far, far too late."

I set
fire to wood, fire to wood; feel that fire fired fresh from that firewood.

I dug the pit,
he gathered the wood,
she started the fire.

She really does make that fire start.

O' how she makes that fire burn,
O' how the wood's wrapped in white hots,
O' how they smoke their smokestacked pipes,
O' tobacco teeming teenagers, tormented by and through youth,
O' adolescence, trending topics, and forget-me-not flowers,
O' old age, Floridan coffins, and coughing  cancers,
O' writers in the mountains writing to be,
O' painters and **** bodies in studies by the sea,
O' thinkers in their mindset, mindsetting the table for dinner,
O' tables set to bursting,
O' wallets so thick,
O' community,
O' society, our social games,
O' hope,
O' peace,
O' that I may be at peace,
O' that I may be content and pray only for peace,
O' how about them true believers,
O' how about that love at first sight,
O' sandstone. My sandstone. That guy sittin' on sandstone.

That's my guy. That's my guy. I own this ****.

Is a man breathing on a mirror the sum of his breaths?
Breaths foggin' a'mistin' my view,
my view of a body and that face,
you're a body.
You're a workin' day's bell,
you're my chill in an Icelandic draft,
you're my spare in a Middle Eastern draft,
you're my pawn in chest-to-chest chess.

You've got this. You've got this. You own this ****.

And it is ****, too. I'd be set, real ******' set, with someone like you. I'll make you a woman, check this parka ****. Coat's mine. I'm a classy igloo runner, runnin' a'ragin' a'czebelskiin' meriteratin', I'll be reiteratin' your points. Check the time, it's late! It's late! ***** was in the grassy knoll turnin' trap tunes on her turntable. Would you listen to that? She sounds late to me, does she sound late to you? I like the music; I like the music. What happened to Woodstock? Where's my watergate, Nixon? Where's my generation, Ginsberg? Where's the meaning? This music's too loud! We're so profound! O' profundity!

Tell me something I didn't know, I'm craving' the new.
Give me the new while I spit on the old,
while I spit on this fine art finely art'd by and for fine artists–
******' fine artists. ******* fine artists.

(You can realize radical-realist realism but you can't be real with me?)

O' fine art!
What fine art!
Which fine artists are dead?



(II)

Looks like they're dead.

Looks like them ******* choked out all them ghettos, choked out all them rednecks, chokin' a'stranglin' by-God-oh-God straddlin' the breeders. I sure did like them babes– babes with their laughin' a'lackin' o' cynicism. They don't know the word "****."

I sure am forgetful–
I forgot that smoke doesn't dissipate,
I forgot how to smell autumn leaves,
I forgot to check the heart against the fingertips,
I forgot why my fingertips went numb,
I forgot to cue in the meaning when the sentence was complete,
I forget to complete my sentences,
I forget who you were wanting when you said, "I want you."

I got as much depth as an in-depth discussion, high hats and electropercussion have got me going. I'm goin' downtown, uptown bourgeois tricked me out, johns and yellow Hummers laid me down and cussed me out. That's not a discussion. That's not my scent scenting my towel, this breath reeks of wintry air– my fingertips went numb.

"I want you."

"Oh would you look at that moon?
Take a look at that moon.
Look at that moon with the ******' mountains.
I love that moon.
That's my moon."

I love darin' a'dusty dareelin' derailin' your dreams, whose dreams are these? They ain't my dreams– ain't no dream derailin' a'nileerad radiatiatin' some hint of joy or Jamison Scotch Liqueur. Drink that ****. That's my ****, I own that ****.
I'm sittin' on this stoop like I own this ****, like this **** owns me; I owed me. I don't own me, you owe me:

Pay up man, feet off the stoop.
Pay up man, be real with me.
Pay up man, you ever thought of a man as a man?
Pay up man, give it in.
Pay up man, give in.
Pay up man, I need you to do me a solid. Do me solid from crown-to-toe, we're toe-to-toe let's do-si-do bro-to-** I'm ready go, **, jo, ko, lo, get low… Now I'm ramblin'. You say, "Ramble in to the stoop and tell me a story."

What's a stoop– who's a stoop? That **** ain't stoop– you ain't stoop. You're stupid. You're a joke, check out the joke. Hey ladies, you seen this joke– joke ain't been seen by them ladies? I'm a joke. We ain't laughin' with you, they're laughin' at you.

O' hilarity!
Such hilarity!
What hilarious histories have passed?



(III)*

"I said I loved him once. I only loved him once."
(
And how long once has been...)

I sure did like them hand-holdins,
them star-gazin' moments,
them moon phasin' nighttime nuances,
them fingertip feelin' a'findin',
them sessions o'meshin' limber legs unto steadfast *****,
heads cocked like guns toward the sky,
beyond the horizon
but well
below the belt.

Them star-gazing moments seeing stars seemin' small, I love how they gleam- gleamin' a'glarin' comparin' shine to shine, shimmerin' a glimmer shone stumblin' her way home from the bar. She's drunk. She's brilliant, brilliance of whit and wantin' a'wanderlustin' gypsy nomads- that ***** gyp'd me, no mad man would take a cerebral slam to the face lest them moving pictures are involved. Read a ******' book, it'll last longer. Kiss me on the collar bones, clavicles shone shining with slick saliva pining for my affections. You're clammerin' to feel me, clammin' up (Just feel me.) I want to run my hands through long hair and peg the nausea nervosa to the wall. The writing's on the wall:

The sun bent over so the moon could rise, chanting,
"Goodbye and good riddance,
I never wanted to shine down
on them seas o' tranquilities anyhow."*

O' what a day. What a day.

And the wind ruffles leaves and it ruffles feathers on birds eating worms in brown soil.

What a day. What a day.

And the men under the bridge gather in traitorous conversation of governments overthrown and border dissolution and poetry with meters bent out of tune.

What a day. What a day.

And the billboards are dry for all the consumers to consume, use, and review.

What a day. What a day.

And hearts break messiest when you're not looking.

What a day. What a day.

And the ego and the id and the redwood trees are talking. They're sitting **** in the marshes, bathing in the bogwater while fondling foreign fine wines and whisperin' a'veerin' conversations towards topics kept well out of hand, out of the game, nontobe racin' in races, rampant radical racists betting bets on bent, bald Bolshevik racists wagging Marxist manifestos in the bourgeois' faces, yes. Make it be. Nontobe sanity as the captain creases his pleats, pleasin' her creases and the dewdrops of sweat trailing down the small of her back– down the ridge of her spine forming solitary springs of saline saltwater in the small of her back. Aye-aye, guy's pleasin' a'makin' choices a'steerin'– government's a'veerin' a hard left into the ice.

'Berg! 'Berg!
Danger in the icy 'berg!
None too soon a 'berg!
Bound to bump a 'berg!
O' inevitably unnerving 'berg!
Authoritative 'berg!
Totalitarian 'berg!
Surveillance of *** and the sexes 'berg!
O' fatalist fetishist 'berg!
Benevolent big brother 'berg!
Homosocial socialization 'berg!
Romanticized Roman 'berg!
O' virginal mother 'berg!
City on a hill on a 'berg!
Subtly socialist 'berg!
Nongovernmental 'berg!
O' illustrious libertine 'berg!
Freedom of the people 'berg!
Water privatization 'berg!
Alcohol idolization 'berg!
O' corrupt and courageous 'berg!
Church and a stately 'berg!
Pray to your ceiling fan 'berg!
Biblically borne 'berg!
O' godly and gorgeous 'berg!
Ferocious freedom fighters launching lackluster demonstrations far too post-demonstration feeling liberty and love, la vie en rouge, revolving revolutionist ranting on revolution tangible as
an ice cold 'berg.

'Berg! 'Berg!
O' the 'berg, the ****** iceberg–
You'll be the death of me.
MC Hammered Apr 2014
There's more
wine
in the glass than
ink
in the
pen.

A truly conflicted
narcissist
upon
obscured
reflection.

Beauty.
Skin deep?
I'll carve
manifestos
in
flesh
when the wells run
dry.

Trace each
scar
with
shaking
fingertips and
blind
eyes.
Ugo Jul 2013
99 cent wars, rooftops, Gibraltar Screaming "god bless the fabulous" Christs;

In the eyes of years
Man is king only over that which breathes,
So let's throw hugs in the air,
sit on flowers and vanish to Cook stones on the hips of Cleopatra
with all of December's left footed children

For through the cried ***** tears of furry German banana caskets,
Eternity awaits
In the failures of our greatest triumphs,

So let's dance

After all, Psychological Wednesday societies
Are only good for curing Xbox manifestos and Tuesday sanities

And if we died one day,
it sure won't be yesterday.
Jonny Bolduc Jan 2013
Friends of Friends

A cup of ocean, steaming like an elixir-
boiling empty water like a primordial sauna.
We drink to the thought of a flawed philosophy.
Cheers.
Cuttting all the corners as we skate around our grey garden.

We are friends. We are the friends of friends. We drink thoughts, slurp insight-
trip on _ to Plotinus, dig to Polycarp, copulate
in the stretched shadow of a specter, a long
skeleton Marxist,
beard coated in Ketchup-
Butcher entrails. **** the saintly each other.
Never stop. Ingesting. Breathing in. Spitting out.
Friendly manifestos, heartfelt wine grinning slipping spitting
blood forever-

You’re a fat cherub. Coated, winking, grinning, sleeping, *******-
you are not special.

On the average day,
Laziness takes a grip and forces you back into the bed.
The blankets have a magnetic pull-
Head pounds. Throbbing like a siren, in and out.
You are-
You’re slushy, like a spring day. Lethargic. Sleepy. Reading.

The day soon transforms-
the restless night comes catcalling-
The slurred voice, indiscernible- indescribable
an existing ode, folklore describing the lonely confines of an empty savior.

Not a hymn, but a dirge. A lonely gysm.
A struggling complex-
a grimy,  violated existence of crust. A damp home, a purlieu,
a place to occupy, a dug tunnel dug bed-rest, burrowing in filth like a worm-

Eyelids drooping. Socks wet. Keep them on-
you’ll get sick, but that’s alright.
Bled out from the scrapes and cuts.
Doing nothing ever ever sure does drain the life outta you.

There’s a little stick in your finger where a pin pushed through.
Bood peeked out like little specks,
like crimson blotchy roses- you smeared, painted
the front of an empty milk carton,
turning the white cardboard
red.
It’ll get infected. You should- no, you won’t, because-
you are a tiny splinter. An infection. A tapeworm.
Eating, feeding, relentless, biting-
the cold draining storm. The white fleck
landing on a bushy eyebrow and sticking-
drinking. For the warmth. For the cold. For the love of nothing,
Whiskey. *****. Sprite, Sprite and Whiskey, Sprite and *****, Salt Lime And Tequila, Gin Tonic *** Coke, endless libations to only gods you know-
an existence, expansive in scope,
covers the ****** of every friend of friend, every sick sad joke-
acquaintance, take it- cadence, leave it-

call a cab with a friend
or a friend of a friend on a lonesome morning,
stumble and fall and ***** perhaps.
Stick the head in the endless *** and
call the bray of the donkey an ******* shrill.
It's not a fib. It's not a lie.
It's an exaggeration.
Blast the mix-tape-
Dig to Hobbes- shuffle out the door while
some Neoplatonist ******* you feign to
understand loops around twists stabs maliciously inside
the skull of the your own Neanderthal
head-
Lawrence Hall Nov 2018
A Manifesto Against Manifestos

          “You can silence me, but you can never convince me”
                    -graffiti on a bulkhead in Viet-Nam

I am not woke; I am awake. No one
Commands me how to see and think and write
I am not one of The Masses.  I am.
I am not one of The People.  I am.

I choose as my teachers Dostoyevsky
And Byron, too, and Shelley, Keats, and Waugh
Ahkmatova, Shakespeare, Chesterton, and Lewis -
Not some embalm’ed face upon a screen

I am not obedient, and no one
Commands me how to see and think and write
So,
now they want a debate after
they got us in this hell of a state.
The knock on the door,
'Labour does more'.
'Preserve the Conservative, go with the flow',
The Greens don't you know want the whole ****** country to grow,
biodiversity?
are there no limits to what we can be?.

Well,
you can all **** orf
take your policies and shove 'em
I've made up my mind to grind up manifestos
plant them in pots and see what grows from them.
Probably tulips or grey men

Nothing will change whoever gets in
whoever's first past the trough they all stop to
dip in,
they're all of the same, using us by
confusing us by using a different name.

But I'll wait and then see on the BBC
Who's going to be the new 'pope',
whoever it is
there's no hope,
I'll still be poor.
Mary McCray Apr 2014
(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 2, 2014)


God couldn’t be everywhere so he invented…
old-testament guilt, judgment. Surrogate mothers,
an imperfect second to ever-presence.

He is mysterious, withholding.
She is threatening to write
daily—manifestos, depositions,
your biography, threatening
the tell-all proverb.

Sentimental menace, righteous and verbose
with her Saran Wrap of affection.
She is threatening to love and to be loved.
Tommy Johnson Apr 2014
This season we're going all out
And I mean ballistic
We ain't pulling no punches
Taking out all the stops
Were gonna go mad
Talk,talk ,talk
Go, go go!
I'm talking about road trips to nowhere
Bar hoping like alcoholic amphibians
Bus rides to The Big City
Cliff jumping
Hold our breaths as the fireworks launch themselves into the summer evening sky and explode
As we dance and sing of wonderful things
Debouched ***
Experimenting with sense derangement
Study the spiritual teaching from the far east
Make the suburbans myths that will never fade
Roller coaster calamities
Visit strip clubs under the unfinished highway
Lay back on a crowded beach and float in the ocean
Hike in the wilderness up a torrent mountain
And when we reach the top we'll howl at the moon in the starry midnight air
We will write compelling manifestos of freedom
And we will not sleep
We will grow stronger, wiser
And when fall comes we will be new
We'll be alive
We will have known what it means to live
Live
Live
Players,
Upon people’s weaknesses they play.
Tramplers,
Upon people’s happiness they trample upon.

They preach,
Oh they preach,
Preachers of men,
Preaching their manifestos.

Their mass oppressions,
A whipstroke of slavery,
Keeping freedom away,
Allowing unspoken speeches.

Mr. Government!
Your planting of truth,
Yet acting lies,
Like Lucifer upon earth.

Our lost lands,
The cornering of leaders.
Our cherished freedom,
The bounds of greedy mortals.

Their moral compass,
A dumpling for gutters.
The words of restructuring,
A lie they tell to sleep at night.

The revolting of souls,
A bribery round the corner.
The dawn of a new day,
A shutting down of a never casted dye.

The Bantu they throw at us,
An education of their disloyalty.
Equality they preach,
Yet enjoying the fruits of our labour.

Our heroes past,
A burden dropped,
To be forgotten,
Yet remembered for belly sake.

Me, My belly and I,
A stomach infrastructure,
Catering only to the rich,
Yet diminishing the poor.

The controllers of affairs,
Dictating one’s future
Offering obedient slaves,
A slaughtering for their ****** souls.

Their theatre signatory,
A passing for comedy.
Our leaders,
A legacy of betrayal.

The citations of a bad fruit,
Their forever plantings,
Bringing over odour,
Of sadness and slavery.

An act of niceness,
Yet taking my bones at every given chance.
Giving us no choice,
Yet claiming we have no bounds.

Stirring us along
Giving us hope
Talking of a bright light,
Yet sinking in your treacherous torture.

Stealing of freedom from our lips
Pushing us into the dark quarters
Digging our early graves,
Yet cometh like a Redeemer.

Telling us of your democracy,
Yet ripping off our fundamental rights.
Your dictatorship,
Creating our unfree society.

Coming out,
Telling us of our victorious times,
A bribery to generations,
Yet helping to dig out graves.

Giving heart-warming patriotic speeches
Telling us not to be afraid,
Portraying tunnels of hope,
A bribery we didn’t reject.

Your illusion of a god-complex
Crushing everything in your path
Giving false hope
A mockery we carry on our foreheads

Our daily tyrants,
Walking freely,
Taking slaves,
Yet leaving no man to rise.

We envisaged a better tomorrow
Leaving the past behind
Creating new dreams
A dream you cut short

Our pens as placards
Establishing dictatorship
Safeguarding a revolution
Writing hopes of tomorrow

Your speeches
Bringing apathetic graves
Letting out your brutality
Showing life’s forces

You stand on the hill
Shouting your command
We all gather in fear
Singing silently “dictatorship free us now”

Written by Tosan Oluwakemi Thompson
This is me telling the story through poetry how leaders in Nigeria behave.
Drunk poet Jul 2016
My country Nigeria,
Am a citizen by birth,
That’s the Criteria,
A blessed nation on the earth,
Driven by atrocities as bacteria,
A place I was proud to call home,
Am a negros and Nigeria is my home,
But she’s going down the pan,
Causing mortality in my clan.
Due to manifestos,
We commercialize with hoes.

It started with our independence,
We thought love would take
Prominence,
But rather war, corruption and coups,
And Tribalism feed on us


My plea goes to the world power,
Our corruption is taller than any tower,
Our leader convince us that colonization
Was necessary,
Seems we we have cross that boundary.

Please colonize us again,
Because decolonization has no gain,
Remove all these leaders,
The made us cry aloud to mothers.

I admit we weren’t ripe,
We just wanted to be free,
Like the smoke from papa’s pipe,
Please colonize us! At least
Of these situations we shall be free!
Andrew Wenson Nov 2012
Kites float to the troposphere
Ozone stability unchained

Orator's manifestos have failed us
Latent content fools men
H-A-A-R-P
Distraction from The Real
Fractured and failing systems, **** off
Manufactured citizens

Gods of emergence survive
Jaded culture-heads walk to death

Faithful science suffocates
Juxtaposed on the annals of reason

Oceans reach the mountaintop, our last safe haven.
A chance operations poem using the rules/formula originally created for 'Nature's Lie.'
Marshall Gass Apr 2014
Snaking through the cities roads into highways
that connect people from all suburbs
to a central spinal cord of lanes that
take you up and away from slum to slum.

The upmarket stores are full of bright lights
and little else that is elegant
its a cosmetic upbringing, mirage that
rises over the city's mist and clogs up the minds
magic as it swerves and rustles up the
the energies of other super cities
where commerce and hard labour have
equally sculpted a life of crime and distance.

Watch out for the airport which swings
in between the mountain of rubble
and municipal mania and parthenium ****
what finds every possible nook and cranny
to manifest itself. The politicians mumble and jumble
their way through manifestos and gimmicks
that endorse themselves as saviours of greed.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Pearson Bolt Feb 2016
there is a glacier
partially concealed
melting from a climactic
climate shift revealing a
reality congealed by revolt

rebels burdened with
a philosophy that
elevates humanity
insisting we will not grovel
before a vain messiah
espousing erroneous
iterations of ideology

will the human race permit
the iceberg to dissolve
as vapid reformist
rhetoric inundates our
political consciousness with
pragmatic progressivism

or will we rise in resistance
with the radicals
fists clenched in protest and
hands outstretched to one
another rather than
lifted high in praise to a savior as we
witness the glacier solidify once more

as CO2 perforates our atmosphere
with heady highs and noxious toxins
will we succumb like dumbfounded
addicts intoxicated by inoculation
consuming the opiated semantics
of charismatic personas or will we

challenge the corrupt
with our wits about us
facing the sobering corporate
corporeality with the pride
of lions facing a den of thieves

abandon the chosen champion
of the vanguard party
we stand hand-in-hand
7 billion
sisters and brothers
in an anthemic chorus of

solidarity that shakes the
bastions of the enthroned
with the resounding shouts of
perseverance in our
non-compliant defiance

our manifestos are written
in the blood sweat and tears
we've shed for this
dream deferred
and we will not be the
silent majority anymore

the masque of anarchy
is ours to share
will we wear its visage
or will hell freeze over
before we choose
freedom
over happiness
"The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better."
- George Orwell
Mahdiya Patel Jun 2018
Baby I think I have the power
Let us heal
Let us be whole
Let us talk our selves into existence by being great
By becoming undestroyed by what has been the greatest creation
You are magic and I will not alter my perception of you by making you less because of your choices
You are greater than what you do to other people
You are you and your vibrations are mighty
They are not on my wavelength and that is why they scar me
But the battle is not defeated it has been signed in a peaceful treaty where we split the treasure
The treasure being us completely
We can now reclaim ourselves by leaving this comfortable war
The safeness must end and we must face what we fear most
The raw us .
We must discover the cravesses of our flaws and embrace them how we embraced eachother
We are not monsters we are light
And I’m going to write about what you have unlocked within my brain
The system of my mind has been broken by your manifestos of who I am
I must take your mighty text and write my own manifestos of who I am and through this I will heal
By myself

I love you eternally
It started with beautiful words with the rebirth
Let it Rest In Peace with beautiful words too , because above all this safe haven was contentment

Goodbye my forever spirit
My always energy
I swear to always hover around you with light and to guide you on your journey with the love I have gifted you
May the road rise up to meet you
As you travel on THE WAY
May the music in your heart
Untangle the worries of your day

May old dreams be tossed
Upon that pyre of strife
And personal manifestos of peace
Ascend to take on life

And when the night closes in
Anxiety and bliss compete
Remember growth is hard my friend
Some truths come incomplete

In the meantime:

May you step easy o’er the rocks
That appear on The Way to defy
Keep in mind your destination
To reach that far-rimmed sky
This time last year I prepping to make my 1st Camino with a girlfriend from college. We walked the Camino Portuguese -- the last 100 miles. It was a time of sheer excitement at what was to come and after we completed our trip - two women carrying our lives on our backs raised a glass of proseco in the ancient town of Santiago - there was and remains the incredible feeling of accomplishment. I will do another Camino - most certainly.  This poem was written 6 months prior for a young man who wrote (on the Camino blog) of his life fraught with troubles that he knew would dissipate once he started his Camino. I wrote this with him in mind - and have since dedicated it to a dear friend who did her partial Camino last month. Bien Camino to all.
babydulle Oct 2013
When we walk back to our rooms,
Talking about what we’ll do in our lives,
Once we’ve grown up and grown out
She says to me
‘It’s ok.
You’ll get a job easily because you are English
And you are white.’
I don’t have a reply
I want to show her the nights I spend studying, coffee induced, trying to make it to deadlines to get that grade
Believe me
There is nothing in this skin colour that can achieve that A, that job or that degree
Yes
I know I am lucky
My family history may not hold your exact pain
But tragedy is also in the ancestry of all of my forefathers’ names.
Does she know that her family earns more than mine?
That if our bodies were painted
hers would look gold
And mine would look off white
Like the old Vauxhall left around the corner
Broken and damaged
Doing its best to still run
It is spray painted white
Of course it works.
I am tired of being made to feel guilty for being the colour of milk bottles.
All lined up,
We are freezing into frosted shadows
Like we deserve the cold
We have been thrown into a snowstorm and told it does not matter if we are lost because at least we are not seen as different.
How can I tell her that snowflakes are all naturally unique?
All different shapes and densities and depths
I could only be whiter if I was dead
A corpse
Would I still be entitled to the world if I wasn’t even around to live in it?
We are told to celebrate difference
And I am in total agreement
But since when were pale shades considered nowhere near as important?
I can’t even be thankful that I was born in this gender
Because being referred to as a ‘typical white girl’ is a personal offender
Offended, offended
I know we are sick of political correctness
But why do manifestos of equality make feel like I’m worth less
In no way am I saying my skin colour makes me better
I am saying we should not target people for something they have to live in forever
We are all born into varying shades of brilliance
So why attack anyone?
Do not resist this
Do you think colour-blind people give a **** about anyones’ races?
It is not about looks or image or even faces
It is about heart and mind and love and affection
So why is my skin colour the only thing that grabs your attention?
Just last week there was an article written stating
That white working class boys were doing worse in the tables
Than any other race in the United Kingdom
Is this because we teach that white working class boys are entitled to everything
Except for an education, except for the freedom
To be proud of their skin colour, themselves, their entire culture
Instead we tell them
At one point in time
You had it all
Complete power and look what you did with it
How can they ever learn to trust themselves if we keep reminding them of what their great great grandfathers have done?
This article entitled them ‘the problem’ with British schools
As if budget cuts and institutionalized bullying isn’t what’s at fault at all
The villain in films often wears a mask – does he do that so you can’t see his skin colour?
So you can’t see that there is good and evil in all of us no matter how dark or pale you are
Do not make a villain of yourself
Do not make a villain of me
Please teach your children it is ok to be whatever skin colour they are born in
Tell them to wear it like their favourite dress or their favourite tie
Tell them they look good, that they suit it
Please teach them they are worth the world
Please teach yourselves, it is ok to be white.
Harry J Baxter Feb 2013
there's those certain tales
which are older than any city
never ending, always growing
and every generation
has a brave few
who wish to give parts of themselves
to that thriving monstrosity.
each tale
gracefully
bluntly
violently
mockingly
holds the elements of humanity
and are laced with honest expressions.
each tale outliving their authors
and nobody can remember
their names or faces

it's a seductive habit
**** and cool
edgy and real
intelligent and spiritual
all encompassing
a suicide mission
we all have our own blood on our lips
and we use it
to leave messages
cries for help
damnations and manifestos
or maybe just
a silly little poem
we just don't want to be forgotten
we just want to be
a never ending tale
Mary McCray Apr 2014
(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 25, 2014)


Walls have ears.
Read your poems to the walls.
The hills have eyes
and study manifestos over your head.
The trees are not poets
but let them have their say.
Tupelo Sep 2014
I never considered myself one for the books,
A pen felt clumsy in my hands,
Something too delicate to touch,

You introduced me to my first romance,
Tales of rivers and sweet words of Hughes,
Pages were my optics, my eyes danced in the light,

Nights turned into highways of jazz and beat poet longings,
Kerouac and Ginsberg whispering into my ear
of corrupted ivy manifestos,

Maya told me to sing, I did.
My love for her still echoes in her passing,
Set sail to the open waters where Neruda lies,
sonnet 17 afloat upon the tides,

You knew my addiction before I ever got high on the ink,
Drifting across the sentences in the midnight hours,
A prayer in thanks of what you gave to me
If you can keep your feet upon the flat ground
And draw the line at frivolous ideals
And tell yourself this downhill train can turn round
With just a bit more fat to grease the wheels
If you can reduce all the pressing questions
To a straight coin toss between blue and red
If you can close your ears to all suggestions
That there might be a wider choice instead

If you can vote the way your parents voted
If you can leave debating to the press
And disregard each novel concept floated
While wondering how we got in this mess
If you believe the latest polling numbers
Regardless of the leanings of their source
If you believe that while this nation slumbers
It somehow still can hold to the best course

If manifestos leave you feeling hazy
If your first thought is what's in this for me
If anyone who disagrees is crazy
And not just someone who thinks differently
If you would rather come to a decision
Based on the outfits of the leaders' wives
If anyone with hope, ideals or vision
Is just a naive fool to be despised

And if when you are at the polling station
You'll squash down any doubts that you possess
If you can put your needs above the nation
And never give a thought to its distress  
If you can steel yourself against reflection
And, promised real change, if you hold your nerve
You'll vote like all the rest at the election
And, what's more, get the leaders you deserve.
With apologies to Mr Kipling - who did write exceedingly good poems!
MAJD S Apr 2014
Dry tears accumulate
On the corners of my sleepless eyes
As my thoughts circulate
In my brains
Like old sweaters in washing machines.
My spirit is knocking on the doors of my mind,
Peeking through windows
Trying to get a signal,
Trying to do something
Screaming
“What the hell are you doing!?You’re going to **** us!”

It’s raining,
Inside me it’s raining;
Droplets of infuriated thoughts
And angry manifestos
Declaring that I’m unpleased with this world,
Unpleased of how it’s too small for my dreams,
Too tight for my overflowing self
And too narrow for my vision.

I’m a social claustrophobic,
Desperately attempting to get out of my social class
That is made out of four walls
Hate, prejudice, fear, and socio-economic dictionaries
That are set to define human beings.
I’m a lost pilgrim;
My compass is lying somewhere
In between the sand castles
Our father’s built for us
In this country on the shore;
In this country that drowns
Every time the moon decides to push away the water to its surface,
That clenches,
To the air that’s given to it
Split seconds after the moon changes its mind.

I can see the sunset;
But when the mind is not clear
One can never find clarity in a cloudless sky,
I can smell all kinds of spring,
But the scent reminds me of what I’m missing
Rather than what I am to find;
I’m busking in a starless sky,
I’m rotating around my words
Trying to avoid the meanings
Jumping over my reflections
Only thinking of one thing
“How the hell do we get out of this labyrinth?”
Sayzar Nov 2012
those in the tribe of “that is enough for a  40 and a bag of chips” like to self diagnose, self medicate, and self love/hate

they spend 3 dollars and 75 cents at least three times a week on medicinal purposes only. most often, 3 dollars and 75 cents is not enough. so they diagnose that they can spend up to, but no more than, 6 dollars and something cents on healing yesterday’s wounds and on stitching up tomorrow’s possible cuts

those in the tribe of “i wont live to be that old” enjoy loud music, avoiding sleep, and looking angry

they wake up dizzy because last night’s dose was a little strong, it will feebly run it’s course through the veins it learned to call home for a few more hours. they hang on because in no time, tonight’s dose will warm their blood again

those in the tribe of “i don’t need your pity” like to question authority, read manifestos, and tattoo nighttime cityscapes.

they, sometimes, live so fast that they forget to remember. on early morning occasions, they find puzzle pieces they forgot to throw in the closet and they remember who they were, are, and want to be. it is during these “it is 4 o’clock in the morning, why are you calling me” moments that they remember who to love and what to hate. for some, this is progress. for others, this is another 3 dollars and 75 cents.

the tribes meet as often as possible. sharing a couple dollars, 75 cents, and some loose lint, they gather the right doses needed to obliterate the demons. although only temporary, the fix holds long enough to help heal, release, and erase.
I see the mechanical men that peddle the illusion of wheels which drive down to the crankshaft,staffed by robbers and thieves that steal into the day putting a tax on the way you would speak,
and I peek in through the keyhole of Whitehall, dragging the chain and the ball that is tied to my leg,and sooner or later I will beg for some leeway from the mandarins but they'll say,
'Go away little man,we are the mechanical men in the doing of things and we'll bring blood and thunder,put you down 'til you go under,don't bother us now',
I have bowed to their power and ****** on their shoes,I choose not to be used by the ones who abuse the privilege of rank and position.

Please tell me that this is not true,
that the election of robots to Westminster is actually down to me and to people like you, and we get what we vote for,the
***** dealing,wheeling out manifestos,posing for papers,oil cans for arseholes and bolts for their braces,automatic voices,you've got so many more choices than this shower of ****,
do your bit,a bit of research,search online, easy most of the time,vote for them and you'll vote for anyone,vote for anyone but,
the mechanical men have replicated in them and all is lost,we are *******,might as well use the suicide pill.
I will.
Ivy Swolf Jul 2015
Where do you worship when you've
been exuded
from the fire escapes of every building
that you've ever been blessed inside,
when all the holy skin
you've been revering night after night

comes to a shuddering end
like a life line slipping
out of chafed fingers? Sirens wail
wantonly during the peak of the moon's
reign, and
is it an ambulance or
a body that will salvage you in

your most vulnerable
hour, after
you finish playing the part of the secret anti-hero
and have nothing left to give
but platonic ecstasy? Cheap
lighters
are littered behind your departure

like footprints, but
the useless
manifestos you preach behind every moan
won't ever be forsaken
in your trail of dust and suggestions
of abeyant arson,

because you're just living how
you were born to endure: like a star, burning,
burning, and far away.
trying to make a portrait of a person of sorts.
Minal Govind Mar 2016
Eyes wide open,
mind tightly shut,
we play victims to the postman
slotting news and letters
where little light filters through,
only as he sees fit.

Grotesque, gross manufacturers
spewing out page after page after page
of page three scandals -
of rich brats waxing lyrical,
American hip-hop DUIs,
fat cats cat-fighting.

Media
breast-feeds her gullible men
and milks the misfortunes.

We are part of the orchestra -
synchronised puppets looking to our
Master
to tell us
how
to read the notes.

Outside
there are flimsy flyers
advertising freedom
that have morphed into paper-planes,
but are impenetrable of ignorant masses,
flitting around the heads of the blind -
like cartoon characters after
being beaten up by
fists.

It is injustice.
Peel the scales from your eyes
and open the flood-gates, let forth the criticism!

Ask why an American singer's ten minute jail sentence
is more important than an Afghan girl's sentencing to be gang-*****.
Ask who the ten percent of the South African population are that receive sixty percent of our gross national income and how to alter that socio-economic gap.
Ask what is to become of learners who pass with thirty percent and if that is even possible when books aren't being delivered to schools.
Ask where one can find manifestos instead of accusations from each political party.

Do not let them dictate
your truths as
CAPITALISED LETTERS
with no urgency.
Do not let them confine
your insight to the ink on a page.

We are worth more than glossy sensationalism.
We are worthy of urgent honesty, transparency and enlightenment -
herein lies true freedom.

The liberation of the mind.
The uncoiling fist of a freedom fighter revealing the truth held within.

Amandla awethu.
Mike Essig Oct 2015
politics = soiled
toilet paper
best flushed
and forgotten

parties, manifestos,
attack ads, slogans,
talking points, blather

don't put your faith
in other people's ****

robots stand in line
to vote imagining
they have a choice

same old arguments
among ghosts

only lonely resistance
is fit for a human

the silent blow
against the masters

even when it
makes no difference

especially then

   ~mce
Sharina Saad May 2013
A loud cheer from a huge crowd
Anxiously waiting for their idol
listen to words of promise
An aspiring Future leader
Charismatic and strong
Loved by many hated by many
Singing his manifestos
Some agrees some are doubtful
Music to the ears... real sweet..
If only he did not sugar coat everything
He might have won....
There goes one charismatic leader
All talks but no action....
Tyler King Aug 2015
The Magician, gifted deadbeat, listless designer of immortal destiny, tragic comedian of the purest order, locked and buried, chained to the weight of indecision,
Ordained by cancerous night, canonized in the manifestations of nightmare heart withdrawals, ascending the cigarette strewn steps to lost versions of heaven,
Eternal kindred lovers in mourning, trace the chemical pathways to a neural shutdown disaster, martyrs imprisoned by their own mission statements, murdered by the cosmic truths exposed in tape recorded suicide manifestos, played backwards for empty auditoriums in a requiem for their apathy
Endowed with brilliant catastrophe, with the wand double edged with creation balanced to destruction, with infinite purpose,
The Magician breaks as he parallels the Fall,
the all consuming detachment,
the disconnected realities viewed from shattered lenses,
From distilled terror, from magnificent prose, from the ashen pillars of kingdom rotted, gutted, broken
Holy and lost, wisdom wasted,
As a mother's rage moves 1000 eyes and 1000 hands to some unclear end that I doubt I will be around to see
The Magician smokes his way to an early grave
While flowers grow over the memorials of those unmoved
I'm not sure what any of this means or why it should matter
But listen
There is a story here, if you will have it
Incompetent, corrupt and on the make,
You know all politicians are the same
You know this public service thing's a fake,
A cover for one more expenses claim.

Don't read their manifestos (they're all lies)
Don't go to meetings: stay in, watch TV
I'll tell you just which aspects to despise
You can't trust politicians. Just trust me.

And if on polling day you hold the line
You'll send a powerful message, do you see?
The lowest voter turnout of all time:
Vote by neglect – that's true democracy.

I'll make the choice for you, so don't be sad -
I am the Editor, and I approved this ad.
Inspired by the following, seen in the London Metro, Letters Page, Monday, March 8, 2010:

"Voting Tory or Lib Dem won't change a thing. So, instead of wasting my time in a queue at the polling station to put my cross of approval against yet another useless politician who claims he can change the way this country works, I will be stood at a distance, laughing at everyone who buys into this illusion of democracy."
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
philosophy: and yes, we all believed in the insane asylum in the first place... at least the theists are suicidal... the atheists are hanging-on, mundane boors... listening to atheists is like listening to someone trying to erradicate the thesaurus... like someone trying to sharpen a staff... atheism is case of: stoppage of synonyms... because no philosophy book i've read invokes grammatical words, i.e. nouns, verbs... no argument in this direction is cool... the *** knows Tai Chi... i'm just waiting for a ******* to say it's Chinese!*

and beyond the counter to worship,
the atheistic argument
is bound to a lot of talk and thought...
when atheism does do much away with
prayer...
then secularism does...
let's just say: acknowledge the idiot...
   either pray... or think or talk
    and subsequently acknowledge
that sort of ultimatum...
       i can't agree on either pathos...
                    pray... or talk...
find enough Goebbels, and you'll
find enough like-minded manifestos
  of Englishmen...
                   and esp. Jews attired as
such... cos you weren't gangraped enough.
if you were a friend of a friend... and a friend that
said: biology... via the pharaoh's gambit...
                    you still wouldn't
consecrate their friendship over a steak,
but you would.
atheists don't have an argument,
they still abide to arguing his existence,
by thinking about him, or talking about him,
prayer seems the most lazy escapism
to the caged compensated comparison,
given we're all caged...
and escapist... and bound to escapism...
   you construct the pyramids!
you do!
    a bunch of quasi intellectuals!
    plainly stated: brick on brick!
you lay it down: down to: a word on word!

  i can have an argument...
   but i can't be even bothered to keep it...
  it just gets boring after a while,
and given that i'm not keeping the argument
for a way to shove food down my mouth...
      i just think atheism exists because
we have transcended so many natural obstacles...
personally? i'd rather hear a tsunami quake
than hear an atheist talk...
          and that's because so few of us will have
the actual argument in this stratosphere...
since most of us will probably rather the thrill
of a tornado... than a **** on our daily commute...
  even the Frankenstein monster will be more
attractive in experience than the roudabout of an atheist...
       women are least likely to champion atheism...
might be a quest for feeling...
                 with all the pathology...
                 rather than that other quest for feeling:
apathy...
  and that's really, truly, manly.
can we simply prescribe one label: i think?
   no... evidently we need many more labels.
Haydn Swan Nov 2014
The film plays through a cigarette haze,
spliced souls flicker on the silver screen,
noir shapes moving through the mist,
dark shadows and beating hearts,

soon the story starts to unfurl,
plots thicken through startled eyes,
rehearsed actions and missing words,
electrification through a Gothic grin,

tears fall on the words of a script
undulations of what we once were,
the movie closes to a final score
torn manifestos as the credits roll.
                    
                       Finis
please dig around here for the abstracts, folks,  this is not just a poem about a movie but then again maybe it is ........
Joshua Krueger Oct 2017
glass half empty or half full?
why do we even ask at all?
all this thinking takes its toll
on our society of analysis
anti-action and paralysis
it really is a dangerous thing
overphilosophizing i mean
we've fallen victim to the allure
of thinking that we can cure
anyone anything and or any problem
with enough thinking tinkering and or solving
but truly there's really got to be
more to cure the modern malady
of paradoxes and dichotomies
and meta-epistemologies
we've come too far for us to merely be
just because i think we think
if i can really only see
what's standing right in front of me
once it's gone to the periphery
then i'm positive that we'll all have been
over inacting and underachieving
for far far too long


we think too much and do too little
it's not like it's a test or a riddle
we write creeds and manifestos
but there's no credence manifested
if we don't give precedence
not to kings queens or presidents
but to becoming a society-
a people who won't go quietly
whose thoughts and bright ideas
suddenly begin to coalesce
into lives being lived
to the absolute fullest
we need something more
we need a paradigm shift
made from something much more sure
than a philosopher's two cents
but if we don't act now
if we procrastinate and wait
our dreams will just be dreams
and tomorrow will be too late
so then-
if you don't mind
instead of stopping just to analyze and think
i think i'll take that half of a glass
and maybe take a drink
I was had been awake for 32 hours when I wrote the initial draft of these letters on a page. I had just lost (yet another) job and had realized that I couldn't stop thinking. They say guys have the unique ability to think about nothing- but I've never been able to accomplish that feat. So anyway- I took the overflow of my firing synapses and spilled my thoughts onto a page. When I write, I find that I can think about anything and not be stressed or overly emotional about it, as opposed to keeping it bottled up in my mind. So, yeah. Stop thinking. Start doing.
A side note- I don't drink. The most alcohol I've ever had was probably when I accidentally swallowed some mouthwash...
Tammy Boehm Sep 2014
So the world spins
Inner discourse thinning
In the wake of daylight
Muted blues shift crimson
And the halcyon light floods my vision
I remain saturnine
The inner tenebrae of my dusky soul
My personal shadowland
sedulous manifestos etched
across my heart
the tattooed movement
cadence of oblivion
stained by the purpura
Of bleeding dreams

Apollo rides grandiose
Careening orb obliterates the dusk
Yet my eyes rain
myriad tears chase themselves
forever obedient to that same gravity
leaving me face down
with nothing but wet earth
and seeds dormant
full of promise that never blooms
My heart in the darkness
Of a shuttered room

TLB 092308
just a ramble. If you're gonna be in a mood, you may as well squeeze a poem outta it.

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