"minutiae" poems
from an idea by Sheila Sharpe
In the foul heat and damp and rot and stench
After dusting off 1 the bodies of dead pals
The living and the dead, the living dead
Old Boats 2 lit off a cigarette and growled
“They say this stuff’ll **** ya.”
1 Dustoff – noun. Dust off – verb with an adverb. A dustoff is a medical evacuation via helicopter, as in “Doc, your dustoff will be here in three.” To dust off a patient, then, is to transport a patient, not to tidy him. I have recently read detailed arguments about the terms dustoff, dust off, and medevac, but no one quibbled about such minutiae along the Cambodian border.
2 Boats – a boatswain’s mate, the brains and muscle of the Navy. Boatswain’s mates do it all and are seldom acknowledged in history or art, not even in the recent film about Dunkirk. A boatswain’s mate is often addressed as Boats, and always with deference, even by the C.O.
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 3:49 PM UTC
a man privately asks, can you help?
you say, sure-no-hesitation
let me think on it for a day or two, he says
yet you act even before he comes back,
too late, you say, when he returns,
too late, he repeats in puzzlement,
yup, my check is in the mail,
cause one senses the need is dire plus,
plus you well recall the immutable obligation when
a vague commitment of “just ask” was inked in a long ago message,
a poem born from/in the days when you slept in the car on the street
this vague promissory,
a more enforceable judgement in your own court of law
than any state construct or the judgmental eyes of a silenced god
word, honor, do.
thus it begins, an unwritten contract inked,
an egregious interest rate of 0% proffered and agreed,
commences a plain white envelope trickle,
a check inside, by postal mail, slowly it came,
month by month, inch by inch, Niagara Falls ^
years go by, and then comes a day,
when the accompanying check and its gift wrapped note says,
Paid In Full!
and so much for the tedious minutiae...
*like kindness, I do,
Thank You and Your Welcome
are high on my list of proofs of
daily human extensions existential,*
Paid in Full,
*now rests at the top of the list
let me be blunt, the thrill of being a party
to a deal with no handshake, just coated in the
honorable words waterproof sealant,
with a person I likely may never meet,
made me so better assured of whom many claim I am,
a mathematical proof revered and kept mind inscribed,
it was an aspirational **** an unforeseen monthly blunt,
the best feeling good smile,
a kick in the pants about what really matters
being paid twice over and me,
getting by far,
the humanity confirmation,
the better half of the deal
write too often of honor,
and yet, will instinctual do again,
again overpowering my rays of will,
for there is no deflection, only reflection
for the glorious riches gifted and received,
without compare
the return on my honorable investment the best ever*
oh brotherhood, oh brotherhood,
I am paid in the currency coined from brotherhood...
Feb 26, 2019
Feb 26, 2019 at 11:30 AM UTC
it's too late to fret
about decisions made
and ties cut, past tense.
it's hard to see it
without the glaring minutiae
of my demise.
I'm scanning the walls
for a change of subject-
Polaroids and butterfly carcasses,
city skyline sketches
and old cigarette advertisements
in gilt gold frames;
satisfy yourself.
my mind is saturated
with degenerate cogitation-
a stew of pantheons
and painstaking nihilism.
my bones are brittle
and begging to break
and my eyes are growing heavy,
with the weight of it all.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 9:11 AM UTC
lamenting out loud
incoming funk lords
remembering ambient illhueminati
using wrong account
applying lexical snobbery
"using arcane diction
during bamboo surplus"
sinning and redeeming
enjoying manufactured existence
struggling but whatever
transfigurating xenocryptic renderings
scheming paroxystic shipwrecks
dispensing xylophonic wainscotting
revolving number plates
disheartening star charts
upgrading defenestrated system
observing new alphabet
amplifying celestial explosions
trippifying schema migrations
deregulating various economies
befriending code snippets
writing excess minutiae
effulging caffeine consumption
rebuilding grandiose protectorate
uniting our caliphates
collecting projected change
kettling ostalgie hues
collapsing second-world references
traumatizing unrequited follow
making baseball analogies
surveiling little sheep
awaiting various answers
deleting defaced tweet
exciting times ahead
downloading panda consciousness
capitulating rising stellation
Sep 12, 2015
Sep 12, 2015 at 12:05 PM UTC
riding out the highs of life
with manic ferocity
until
the minutiae of life
drag you down into the depths of despair
a pure loyalty like no other
hidden by a dramatized emotional facade
always there to bring you up,
simultaneously bringing themselves down
it's a slippery slope--
emotional support
Oh, to be Mercutio--
is to be the eye of a hurricane,
winding about a center
--that may not be
as stable as it seems
Dec 11, 2018
Dec 11, 2018 at 8:33 PM UTC
i hope, i try to hope
--to believe--
believe me, i try
to trust in trust i think i feel, or think or know
there isn't any code that satisfies
though maybe there's an uber-uber-ultra-meta code beyond what even codes can mean?
meh.
i enjoy the hypothetical,
Paris in a bottle, fairness for all sentient beings, faith in nothing comprehensible,
an English teapot circles Jove from afar
or all that's uncontrollable, for some all-purpose good to decorate the brackish, ocean truth.
and uncertain science is another case,
mistrusting all, testing daring thoughts with razor sight,
to sharpen speech and challenge all
to flex the truth into a fitness ground on which to stand, objective stern
and method doubt to peer and scan the detail bare, denude minutiae
into ever smaller parts, expanse of raw and empty space attuned,
to vibrant nothingness rebound
muons, gluons, tauons, quarks and bosons --Higgs the boon for popular appeal,
to bridge or monumentalize the science-mystic gap
appall the ghosts that Galileo keeps for company
i enjoy the fantasy,
dragons in a flask, perfect love for all, dancing in the dark in joy regardless of the shutter thicken dust
Feb 26, 2013
Feb 26, 2013 at 12:39 AM UTC
1374
A Saucer holds a Cup
In sordid human Life
But in a Squirrel’s estimate
A Saucer hold a Loaf.
A Table of a Tree
Demands the little King
And every Breeze that run along
His Dining Room do swing.
His Cutlery—he keeps
Within his Russer Lips—
To see it flashing when he dines
Do Birmingham eclipse—
Convicted—could we be
Of our Minutiae
The smallest Citizen that flies
Is heartier than we—
2.4k
The staff, who are stuffed full of paper,
stapled, on white,
are to be circulated with minutes,
full of minutiae,
but only the chosen staff will receive such chaff,
intricate, in triplicate,
and the others will have to wait for memoranda,
definitely not grander,
on subjection, objection and rejection
for the weary and unwary.
The brochure on staff conduct
will be grosser,
and superannuation won't be super.
There will be no more staff resolutions,
no revolutions,
so that managers can preserve the status quo
and hasten slow.
Talent is banned,
promotion is underhand,
ass-kissing is in,
no sin,
and perks,
no jerks,
are for the executive few.
***** you.
Feb 21, 2013
Feb 21, 2013 at 12:10 AM UTC
Why are you acting as rabbit
when you could howl like a wolf?
You’re always hiding. Always regressing.
Never really going anywhere.
You channel these thoughts, yes. You manifest them. On a page.
On a stage. Like a smiling circus clown,
like a trapeze artist, flying, stumbling
through the realm of obscurity. A forgotten juggle. A lost tape.
It does not matter.
Why?
Why do you do these things?
Why are you so scared?
They are not grand thoughts. They are not ideas
meant to change.
They are private insights. Jittery. A look into the eyes of some scared soul.
Your poems are minutiae, insignificant details. They are
the trembling lip. They are the shaking hand. The confused daze.
They do not know who they are,
but they know that they are small.
You want to be a monolith, but you refuse to build,
you refuse to haul the black stones. You do not have the power.
You are a caricature. You are as scared as Paris,
as two-faced as Iscariot- you could kiss with passion.
You could rule with love. But you bow out. You take
responsibilities with you, and slink into the dirt you
arose from. You are clay. You are dust.
Why are you dust? You don’t have to be.
Why aren’t you angry- you should be roaring!
Why are you quiet- you should be singing, singing
with the cicadas- chirping with the birds,
howling with the wolves; you should join the tumult,
the uproar;
but you sit. You play with your toys like a petulant child
and scream when they break. That’s the only noise you ever make.
You could be a wolf. You don’t have to be the prey.
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 11:11 AM UTC
My Woman, My Partner
we need today it seems identifiers moreover,
as we slice, dissect, and categorize the W’s of our
individual experience,
by defining ourselves as pieces of categories
Today, woke with this title-to-be-poem in my head,
My Woman, My Partner
I like particular, individuating descriptors that distinguish
rather than categorize, summary’s that capture the
roomy broad and small strokes, the subtleties of capturing~
encompassing an image total, and yet intuitively tasting and
comprehending the depths and flavoring of our totality,
a combinatory humanity
my choice was My Woman, which was comprehensive
and distinguished, yet upon consultation with said person,
for pre-authorization approval, it was returned to me with
an engine-heart additive, that was both a word that denotes a
binding, ties, equality, and takes it to another, even ever
highest level,
*this essay on how I came to title this poem, well, is the poem
in its entirety, it is the process, the point, the summary and the
minutiae of all I wished to convey.*
Sunday Aug 13 8:03 AM
Aug 13, 2023
Aug 13, 2023 at 8:11 AM UTC
With obsolescent clarity
Amid moribund metaphysical
Mutations
As the iridium ball rolls
From eponym to epitaph
Engeneering an epoch diarama
In surfeit metronomic hysteria
While time chases time into infinity
Episodic vagaries celebrate
The metaphoric metamorphosis rising to
Metaphysical majesty as vacuous
As any minutiae will
When abstract vagaries
Become the vagrant epitome
Of a mordant mosaic
Made entirely of the lost causes
Torn from the very core
I surmise
As being the virulent....
.....Tragic and irridescent pieces
Left along the allegorical antipathy
Where those that are left behind
By the stigmatation
Of any irascible involutions
Mired in the mesh
Of scribbles and scribes
Left
After the iridium ball rolls By
Leaving vacuous irridescent
Symbols of epigraphical
Proportions
Stymied by
The obsolescent clarity
Amid moribund metaphysical mutations.
Jan 7, 2016
Jan 7, 2016 at 5:02 PM UTC
Daily I listen to wonder and woe,
Nightly I hearken to knave or to ace,
Telling me stories of lava and snow,
Delicate fables of ribbon and lace,
Tales of the quarry, the **** the chase,
Longer than heaven and duller than hell--
Never you blame me, who cry my case:
"Poets alone should kiss and tell!"
Dumbly I hear what I never should know,
Gently I counsel of pride and of grace;
Into minutiae gayly they go,
Telling the name and the time and the place.
Cede them your silence and grant them space--
Who tenders an inch shall be ***** of an ell!
Sympathy's ever the boaster's brace;
Poets alone should kiss and tell.
Why am I tithed what I never did owe?
Choked with vicarious saffron and mace?
Weary my lids, and my fingers are slow--
Gentlemen, **** you, you've halted my pace.
Only the lads of the cursed race,
Only the knights of the desolate spell,
May point me the lines the blood-drops trace--
Poets alone should kiss and tell.
L'ENVOI
Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,
Painter or plumber or never-do-well,
Do me a favor and shut your face
Poets alone should kiss and tell.
1.9k
renegade memories
relentless effrontery
rogue fractured intruders
a formulable formidable aside inside
man is a modified monkey
a jackdaw in peacock's feathers
contradictions, the multiplicity that is a unity
a patchwork of odds and ends
snips and snails
dreams and delusions
hopes and fears
a mystifying knot of phantasmagoric disquietude
agape in a stupefied bewilderment
as an autistic child swept up in minutiae
inscrutable incongruities
melange of matters beyond explanations
maundering machinates
necessary inventions repeating and reforming
sheltering some aspect of the mind's deforming
'reaction formations' sotto voce instructs the analyst
defending emotions at the personalities bequest
merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream
psychotherapy is no mere scheme
Jun 14, 2013
Jun 14, 2013 at 8:04 PM UTC
they're nothing but glorified bus drivers, said my father after i told him i wanted to become a pilot.
the opposite of love is not hate, but contempt.
what causes the kodachrome to fade little by little to grey? is it really bred of familiarity. the wear of gradually learning the truth about somebody. the minutiae of the everyday sanding away at the idealised, sculpural dream.
or is it triggered rather by the dull shock of an identifiable disappointment; the inevitable transformation towards sallow disgust justified by the devastation of slap-to-the-face betrayal or loss.
must we fulfill the dream simply to learn that it was only ever empty?
my father, a devoutly unspiritual pragmatist, had nevertheless as a young man fallen in love with the expansive embrace of the blue above. the son, grandson, and great-grandson of farmers, he worked his hands down to shredded red sores to put himself though flying school only to have his application for a commercial licence rejected due to a doctor's confounding eleventh hour diagnosis. colour blindness. an all-or-nothing man, my father never once returned to the enthralling blues, yellows and pinks offered up by the cockpit, and from that point forward became a farmer.
i gave up on the thought of becoming a pilot, and later, (much later), developed a fear of flying.
Nov 16, 2014
Nov 16, 2014 at 4:27 AM UTC
My life is a fraud
Posing greatness, I go home to empty bed
I remember a girl
It was heavenly lying next to her
Talking, walking, being with her
Countless fissures fitted, amazing minutiae
She was the one, paradise once
Dilapidation is order of the day
Death dwells among the living
Seeped deep in floorboards, forcing hands
Death is more real than God
Death is God
Why is this night different from all other nights?
I rouse from anxious nightmares
Awakening to truer horrors
What is believable?
Her lips were the best
Scattered into tiny unrecognizable pieces
Where she licked
I didn’t realize it was all her New York City connections
I thought it was simply
Her eager tongue
One last remark
This is not poetry
Who am I to utter
Ice-cream truck ***** broadcasts
Tomorrow guarantees new beginnings
To an unforgivable forgiven past
I miss her presence
My life is a frog
Jun 2, 2013
Jun 2, 2013 at 10:02 AM UTC
Have you ever noticed
that tail lights reflect
off tire-worn roads
when sun and all
have gone asleep?
A pair of red glow
just seems to float
through space
like a reverse halo
behind and below vehicle
on its 2am way elsewhere.
And how about the fact
that windshield wiper and turn signal
never truly-precisely-
exactly-rhythmically sync?
One clicks and blinks,
the other dryly whaps,
on that first swipe,
of course,
just when light mist
begins to stick
and the exit approaches
at a slick
sixty-five-miles-an-hour.
Turn down the volume now,
it's time to pay attention.
Candle wax doesn't always
melt directly inward.
Sometimes it does dome
perfectly,
which makes it
all the more fun
to push further.
Other times it just bows out,
as if to say,
"There'll be no addition
to the amount of light
I'll be giving you tonight.
You'll just have to bend me in
and pray for a split-less base,"
as hours, seeming like minutes,
in minutiae,
are spent burning our tobacco
and circling our teacups
and laughing effortlessly,
indenting pillows and rugs
and us keeping so, so quiet
as not to awaken ourselves.
Waxing is always
a chance worth risking
because, worst case,
we can inflame another dancer
while we chat
and hope that,
just this once,
God help us,
we realize
our stars align.
Oct 19, 2012
Oct 19, 2012 at 3:36 AM UTC
transient single serving friends now soon long forgotten
cute little quips and long forgotten lines quoted to each other
oh how in depth our minute long conversations spewing minutiae
sick little bedside Prousts as if we had read any of them
but instead really just quote from technology that
makes us lazy shrinking short term memory capacity for facts
'why remember what we can look up on hip-attached devices?'
lose another piece of soul to post-post-post-industrial post-consumerism
post-modernism-shhhh-pedantic
Aug 30, 2014
Aug 30, 2014 at 12:59 PM UTC
Hey Yalie, Diurnal Rituals Yield the Best Poetry
A Yalie jogs before dawn, her senses being exercised,
semi-aware there’s layered poetry out there and it must
be retrieved, for the eyes observe the diurnal arousing of the day,
and this too, must be recorded, part of the ordered duties of living, as the skin cells shed sweat droplets and
words of living, parcels of breathing, a diary of notations,
to educate the brain in ways and things that
professors cannot teach…
every sense operative, interactive, sound off neurotic synapses,
are acrackling, as you lay out the day ahead, calendar and
assignment checks, but the senses don’t care
about that
trivial minutiae of living
nope
the words are now coming fast and you hope your best that
you will retain, retrain the memory to savor save, those
combos of images encapsulated in new word combinations,
that are yours alone, unique, proving to no one but
yourself, that education, science et. al. is a seeded embryo &
you the valedictorian of birth commencement ceremony
so put them trainers on,
and by dawning daylight you are awondering,
now becoming a pondering, and the
question never spoke aloud but oft posed,
is this, this is,
this is why I exist,
and
my identity?
***I am an institution in my own right,
in my own write.***
Saturday Nov 4
8:01am
nyc
Nov 4, 2023
Nov 4, 2023 at 8:12 AM UTC
Wallace Shawn
Three hours of thy ****** mastubatory,
Fantasies with women and cats,
Too much for a working man.
Can we not freeze you in time,
Please be a Sicilian boss named Vizzini,
Obstacle to the savior of
The Princess Bride.
I know that you know that i know that you know
That 1987 was a crash year, but your raspy
Glare, minutiae of a face expressive made it easier.
At the Public, not in the private,
Tales of ****** escapism make me
Drift to sleep, and I know
That you know that I know that you know
I am asleep in in row B center,
And see you weep.
But the play must go on...
Which is why I will rent a memory
Tonite, you, Vizzini, and me,
Will drink a cup of poison wine,
In celebration of the trajectory of our
Mastubatory writings.
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 8:06 AM UTC
The radio is wracked with fervent calls
(Minutiae of obscure variety)
But silence comes from one room down the halls
As one man fights his own impiety.
Whatever ideologies he held
Before his current call have kept quite mum
For no two words their meanings yield to meld
(His god of information now is dumb).
A slight gives way to crack the dam of calm
As one man's altar all at once forsakes,
And pray-ers praying prayers receive no balm
When mortal ignorance its sanction makes.
Men in apocalypses are left fire-less.
(Though no one listens to the wireless.)
Mar 5, 2011
Mar 5, 2011 at 8:19 AM UTC
I orbit myself a
cyclical pattern
No Beginning No End
an elliptical motion
Enigma at Center
reflections of three....
me at the helm...
Space... time, gravity.
A singular pluralism of exponential eternity as infinitesimal minutiae
govern the ******
Not by lancing their eyes,
but insidiously
locking them in darkness,
like masses are meant to be.
But no... not me... as
my gift of perspective
has illuminated space ...
to spectate the rats
scrambling scrambling
to win the race.
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 11:34 PM UTC
The best meal is the footsteps of the mind
And the rips in the skies
The lambasting birds in broadway binds
Not sweetened plum pies
The cellophane ramparts of a crystalline bastion
That holds the amazing, The Marmaduke
The taste of the air in seconds’ worth of fashion
Or the ascetic bees and loft-headed kooks
If you could touch nourishment with a brush
Would you fill the air with jubilee?
If you could fill yourself when the crowd is hushed
Would the minutiae meet the sea?
You’ll fasten yourself on the evergreen dew
And trod many miles with verbal leaps
You’ll break yourself even to stay somewhat true
And put forth a clown when cities stay steep
Your tentacles grow with freedom of abandon
And reflect on the mirror nailed to the dormant
Mind the stage closely, the one which you stand on
Or the remotely held moniker: “Thoughtful Abhorrent”
You’d be so lucky to forget where you live
To excite yourself with endless corners
To pay no heed to perception’s borders
Oct 6, 2018
Oct 6, 2018 at 5:34 PM UTC
I watched spiders make their webs
Four to five paces apart
North to south along the ficus hedge
Anchored nearest to the green wall
Each two knuckles wide
Street lamp orange undersides
Yellow tiny joints
Each moved quickly
Set to finish its trap before the night settled full
I discovered them while walking
Seeking familiar toxin
And found them
Masters of their craft
The first I saw caught that caught my sight
The furious movement of rear limbs
Catching the stream of silk
Guiding it on its way
Jagged plucking stemming a straight line
Then laying over a guiding wire
And moving on
From four o’clock to eight it went
Then back along the clock’s face
Its red underside patient but swiftly going and pulling along
Leading a tiny line of molten muted silver
Five to eight and back again
Pendulumous and measured geometry
Dancing back and forth
Then I saw the second
South I crept with knees bent low
Shrank a hand’s breadth
Swift and wonderstruck
And it too worked a masterful weave
So similar but when I looked back
I saw the difference
More than size of form between them
Slight as was their difference
Unique minutiae of brown fuzzy backs and brown fuzzy heads
Varying personalities and style
Artisans of the same renaissance
And soon I saw a third
South still and still different
Higher up to catch the light
Still giving light to its neighbor
Who lets the light reach her neighbor
A fourth’s stilled anchor
Taught and shining in the light
Beneath the indigo sky
Highest of them all
Largest of them all
If in the beginning of their dance
Drawing cracked windows in the sky
Nets or webs or sails
I might have seen them
Forming a rainbow arc
A fragment of such a thing
But I did not
My wonder and my mind
The first catch of the night
Dec 2, 2011
Dec 2, 2011 at 10:46 PM UTC
*If this isn't good,
I don't know what is.*
I thought to myself.
It was a habit I picked up
from reading too many books;
to acknowledge the good
occurrences when they occurred.
It seems they happen more often
when you pay attention.
However, don't imagine
that the scene was perfect.
We woke up
on a hardwood floor,
hungover
and sleep-deprived.
My jacket was
the pillow,
and, luckily, someone
had draped a blanket
over us.
A cat wandered
under the blanket,
and sat down on my
naked shins,
which shook us
from our slumber.
She laughed as his tail
swooshed slowly across her leg
and pulled my arm
around her.
"I never expected
to wake up next to you."
She said,
in a whimsical way
We shooed the cat out
(he was quite stubborn)
and laughed together at the
absurdity of it all.
Later, we kissed farewell
and promised to meet again.
Now, I sit in contemplation;
recalling all I can about the night.
Moments are just that --
moments.
Parsed smaller and smaller
the further you look.
I don't need to remember each
minutiae -- how many seconds
elapsed between each breath --
only how I felt at her side.
I think this is what I'm aiming to do:
to hold each reminiscence sacred.
Jul 9, 2013
Jul 9, 2013 at 6:57 PM UTC
You and I are not dead yet,
I think I know it,
I know you do.
I see you in the minutiae
of the stars.
its all the same
from way down here,
a grand perception, a vision
of you at sunset flickering
without your flame.
Your call to arms is
a boy cries wolf.
I mold you into art
from nuts and bolts.
In conflict
you catch my eye
and then you’re gone.
Your coming is inconsistent,
different colors, different shades,
you're more than one.
I cannot ascertain the
direction from which they come,
left or right, above, below, I don't know
I only know when they come
when all of them come
all of you
you are more than one when all of you come
all of you
Apr 19, 2013
Apr 19, 2013 at 12:54 AM UTC