"outsized" poems
This has nothing to do with the Absolute -
this idea of God.
In childhood, God was the loving
Father in the sky -
Outsized, sporting a flowing white beard, and
ever attentive to my prayers.
Now, God is an abstract notion -
transcendent and immanent,
Infinite, eternal, and
difficult to embrace.
But all of this has nothing to do
with God -
All these continually mutating
mental constructs.
- fr
Jun 19, 2017
Jun 19, 2017 at 3:37 AM UTC
By: Cedric McClester
I’m not buying
What he’s selling
He should whisper
‘Stead of yelling
He’s the greatest
From what he’s telling
Which is the ego trap
That he fell in
Who’s the best
Let me guess
Could it be Kanye West
Is it no or is it yes
Some might say
He’s so much less
But sing his praises
Nonetheless
I realize
He was a gift
When it comes to
Taylor Swift
But he didn’t make her famous
That’s a myth
Nor is he a *****
That she’d get with
Kanye’s clearly out his mind
He proves that time after time
What a megalomaniac paradigm
With an outsized ego short of a crime
He’s convinced himself that Yessus
Is a walk on water short of Jesus
Raise the dead and he might please us
Short of that I am nonplussed
Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved.
Feb 13, 2016
Feb 13, 2016 at 2:01 AM UTC
Not far from home, not far
Small difference here, one there
Though miles and mountains have roped us away
Not much separates us at all
The same asphalt earth at our feet
And petroleum smog, only stronger
The rest is an outsized cartoon of our home
The same symbols drawn broader and bright
The twang of these voices may vibrate
Familiar strings of my soul
But this lamentable facet,
Like the barren mountainside,
Obliterated by thoughtless greed
Makes me ache in those very familial chords
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 1:40 PM UTC
1.
Sasquatch stalks
the Washington woods.
I lope through low-lying
bushes in search of huckleberries.
The purple-reddish stains on my fingers
are as real
as the grumbling in my stomach,
or the solidity of these mighty pines.
The “small rain” begins to seep
through the atmosphere.
It will not wash away my stains.
2.
I do not believe in Big Foot.
He towers, an outsized legend of the forest.
A Nessie of the woodlands.
A mythical creature created
to satisfy our impoverished imagination,
atrophied by the ever-encroaching
artifice and sterility of the human world.
3.
Soon, the mist turns to big rain.
Clouds blot out the sky.
Dusk turns to night, hours early.
Thoroughly soaked, I
will seek shelter alone.
4.
Mountain folk recite encounters
with Big Foot like happy-to-be-frightened
children around a campfire.
The scariest tale is always the next to come.
Twigs snap, branches break, pine cones are crushed.
We all listen, acutely alert.
5.
Gorged on huckleberries, I will sleep tonight
beneath the pines, solitary,
curling up safely in the contours
of a giant footprint.
I can hear the leaves hit the forest floor.
Dare I dream of conversion?
Dare I dream of belief?
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 3:35 PM UTC
Every word on my mind has the power to save my life, but like a sharpened knife I keep them at my side, because this was supposed to be just another fist fight, and I fight fair even when I'm outsized.
Oct 2, 2016
Oct 2, 2016 at 11:12 PM UTC
If, furnished back to Prime Memories, if
These ****** Fans review your very Young
Then, as Coach or Commenter state, consist
What Fetus or Form your Body has sung
Strike, if so given Bags or Condiments
Ready to face that Sly Monster called Heat
Outsized your Height; Thus with Impediments
Forced Tender Blessings to High Noses repeat
Which, after all, placed your slice of the blame
Though Infection be the source to consume
If Consumption be Truth, then swallow the Name
For yours and their Eyes bid Lust to subsume.
If we view again, let our Conscience bear
What Red Eyes we style; What Cold Lips we wear.
Mar 21, 2013
Mar 21, 2013 at 7:21 AM UTC
We’d stumbled upon it simply by chance,
Playing on a channel heretofore unknown to us,
Almost as if the remote, in a final, desperate attempt
To escape the CGI-augmented Britneys and Biebers,
Had taken matters into its own hands and steered us there
(Indeed, when we tried to find that channel later,
It had gone a-gleaming, replaced by some lower-case Telemundo)
Presenting no outsized and over-decibeled spectacle
But a stark, quiet, indeed all but silent black-and-white panorama
Where a distinctly un-scrubbed and un-homogenized Santa
Delivers no new cars, no cartoon-mouse vacation cavalcade,
No million dollar prize from some scripted faux-survival experience,
But those things from the realm of the small, the subtle:
A sweater, a meal, a bottle for those not overwhelmed by the contents,
All courtesy of a purveyor of gifts seeking nothing more
Than to provide some measure of comfort and joy
For those who were well short on either.
It all tends toward the romantic and maudlin a bit,
One could contend
(And, indeed, did not the teleplay’s progenitor
Insist on spending his eternity on a lonely hilltop,
In order that he could have an unobstructed view
Of the cold, narrow lake
For which he’d formed such an improbable and irrational fondness?)
And those who take such a position may very well be right,
But it is equally likely that we could be better men in a better place
If the notion that we could rise above
Our tin-can and yowling-tabby tribulations
And embrace that within ourselves which is child-like and yet saintly
Was submitted for our consideration on more than an annual basis.
Dec 5, 2016
Dec 5, 2016 at 9:51 AM UTC
It’s five o’clock; the coffeepot
rattles, sputters, gurgles as I
assemble lunch and feed the cat;
another morning, another dark
beginning to an endless stretch
of days flowing to some unknown
rendezvous where it all ends, what-
ever it is, wherever what is where
it is when it ends—the normal beat
upends such morning meditations.
It’s so hot when I walk outside
sweat begins to bead; I wonder
when we’ll reach the September
divide when the first front moves
down from the north, sending leaves
scurrying forth, plopping outsized
raindrops on the dusty earth. The
rain falls south along the coast, or
follows the freeway, leaving our
trees to brown, and gasp, and die.
Drought clutches the ground like
an ardent lover not to be denied,
sprinklers but a feeble effort to
fight off its insatiable lust to ****
the very marrow from the land,
scattering dead pines and blanched
oaks in ones and twos and threes
across lots and yards whose green
grass and manicured gardens belie
the dying waste that’s setting in.
The morning light oozes in from
the East, a sickly yellow glow on
the jagged tree line invading the
darkness behind a band of blue;
as I ease out onto the two-lane
toward the freeway where already
cars are stacking up in their rush
south toward the city’s towers,
the radio lists the casualties of
the latest shooting madness and
I begin to wonder about those in
power, and how they sleep with
so much carnage, before I remember
power and psychopathy are close
allied, and those who serve serve
only to survive. I then negotiate
the on-ramp to another day where
minutes, like cars, flash relentlessly
by in multi-colored hues, and death
rides shotgun in ones and twos.
Sep 7, 2016
Sep 7, 2016 at 10:29 AM UTC
(POSTSCRIPT TO AUTHOR'S NOTE: As the bit of my brain which allows me to actually complete a piece of writing seems to have gone on hiatus, this chestnut is re-submitted for your approval)
We’d stumbled upon it simply by chance,
Playing on a channel heretofore unknown to us,
Almost as if the remote, in a final, desperate attempt
To escape the CGI-augmented Britneys and Biebers,
Had taken matters into its own hands and steered us there
(Indeed, when we tried to find that channel later,
It had gone a-gleaming, replaced by some lower-case Telemundo)
Presenting no outsized and over-decibeled spectacle
But a stark, quiet, indeed all but silent black-and-white panorama
Where a distinctly un-scrubbed and un-homogenized Santa
Delivers no new cars, no cartoon-mouse vacation cavalcade,
No million dollar prize from some scripted faux-survival experience,
But those things from the realm of the small, the subtle:
A sweater, a meal, a bottle for those not overwhelmed by the contents,
All courtesy of a purveyor of gifts seeking nothing more
Than to provide some measure of comfort and joy
For those who were well short on either.
It all tends toward the romantic and maudlin a bit,
One could contend
(And, indeed, did not the teleplay’s progenitor
Insist on spending his eternity on a lonely hilltop,
In order that he could have an unobstructed view
Of the cold, narrow lake
For which he’d formed such an improbable and irrational fondness?)
And those who take such a position may very well be right,
But it is equally likely that we could be better men in a better place
If the notion that we could rise above
Our tin-can and yowling-tabby tribulations
And embrace that within ourselves which is child-like and yet saintly
Was submitted for our consideration on more than an annual basis.
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: This poem owes a considerable debt to the December 23, 1960 episode of The Twilght Zone. The episode, entitled "The Night of the Meek", features Art Carney as a decidedly down-on-his-luck department store Santa who receives a helping hand courtesy of Messrs. Serling and Claus.)
Dec 24, 2019
Dec 24, 2019 at 9:31 AM UTC
Here come we
as perfect a baby
Button nosed
and dimpled cheek
shrieking nights
and babbling morns
A handsome son
A beautiful daughter
Somewhere
Somehow
We become misfits
design by Evolution
or Grace
to take too much risk
with each other
Nose ringed
and potted face
acned ambivalence
and strident justice
We come together
in holy matrimony
to find outsized
reward randomly binds
only a few in rarified
forever
The languid eternity
of a few
short
nasty brutish and sharp
years
We leave her
We leave him
Here stay we
Dec 11, 2020
Dec 11, 2020 at 12:14 PM UTC
I live in a city and the sounds
I hear are all too human
aching echoes
the desperation
of desolate souls
outsized egos
looking for power
everything is artificially loud
there are no in-between parts
the pauses
the silences
where voices find their freedom
we are reflections
but we never reflect
sometimes I hear the
deepest part of my mind
the sound of a howling wolf
searching for the same
Jan 25, 2021
Jan 25, 2021 at 10:42 PM UTC