"pragmatist" poems
Some girls just like something very traditional. does that make them any less of a woman. can a woman be a traditionalist and still be a feminist? I think so. I think that what we shared in that time was exactly what we wanted, to fall back into structured and secure roles, because we'd been through the centrifuge lately. And that may not have been who the both of us were at heart, but it worked to heal us, to make us both better for the future, and most importantly, less cynical. I think that what is most feminist about any relationship is the ability to choose. I've been in relationships where I'm the dominant one, and others where I'm not. It takes the ability to check your own self and being a pragmatist, because if you love someone you will change for them. You won't change your personality, but you'll change the way you approach a relationship if you care about them enough. I think that's what feminism boils down to. Allowing both partners to choose their roles in the relationship instead of having them chosen for them. So, **** it, my girl wants to be Susie Homemaker; that's her choice and I lay my head on that.
Jan 28, 2012
Jan 28, 2012 at 8:31 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
I know I'm *******
But you're ******* too
And I quite like that.
Jul 30, 2012
Jul 30, 2012 at 5:44 AM UTC
I remember sitting in
Numerous wards
And clinics
With all the madmen
Around me –
Wondering if they are dying
Or whether that
Scratch has turned
Septic.
I think people enjoy
Thinking there’s something
Seriously wrong with them,
It gives them
Something to do
With their dull lives.
But it works both ways,
Doc can feel a hero
And he can tick a box.
God incarnate,
Allah, Buddah, Jesus.
I am called in
I’m sure my diastolic is up
After nabbing a handful
Of pear drops.
“Right, Mr. Hinton, please sit down –
Are we feeling okay today?”
“What can I say, I’m in a
Practice when I could be writing?”
“Ever the pragmatist... Now let’s
Have a look – your blood pressure’s up.”
“You just stuck a rod on my arm
And contorted my arm, I’m sad
It’s not through the roof.”
“Now, you take it easy on
The beer and the women.”
“You know I won’t, see you in
Six months time, John?”
I shake the Doc’s hand and
I slink away.
Immortal for another day
*******
Nov 12, 2011
Nov 12, 2011 at 10:00 AM UTC
I didn't have the guts to be a rebel
All the counterculture called at me
Asking me to join
In living rooms with Goodwill couches
Owned by a friend of a friend of a friend
They reached out to me
Hands and hearts so open that they couldn't stop bleeding
Asking me to join them
To make what I felt
To do what I wanted
Regardless of whatever the rules said.
They asked me,
Passing the tokens of a shared insobriety
That sought out the essential truth beneath
A thousand and one layers of culture and biology and social pressure
That only ever manages to turn diamonds into coal
I don't have the testicular fortitude to forsake the gifts of my birthright
My middle-class hope
Of a sliver of land beholden to an HOA
Of a wife who loves me kind of and children that will hold me to an anachronistic social standard that will leave me wanting
But it could be mine
It could be a world of my own making
With love and joy and plenty
And the mediocrity and turmoil
That is essential to life whether it is good or bad
It could be mine
The true face of the world is violent
And life struggles unconditionally to enact it's will on a world
That has extinguished more species than are alive
We are mayflies in the cosmos waxing and waning
And no one cares
And no one guarantees that I will eat tomorrow
Let alone find love
Or persist in the presence of my ancestors.
I don't have the ***** to wager my little bits of happiness
Even if there is a slim chance to change a million minds or more
Call me a coward
Call me a pragmatist
In a century call me dead
Right now you can call me mostly happy
And I don't know if there is anything better
Mar 22, 2018
Mar 22, 2018 at 2:04 AM UTC
Before there was a field,
filled with fragrant, though strange,
flowers, stretching on forever.
It was in this place, this bastion
at the end or the beginning of
eternity that I found you the first time.
Splayed, as you often are, against the
grasses, eyes watching the clouds as they
find their way across a lazy sky.
You with your impossible answers to
serious questions. You and your
******* riddles.
There is only this room now.
It is squat, squalled, musty in now
familiar ways. It is piece of mercy,
in an ocean of hell.
Beyond these flimsy four walls
lays entropy, the end of all things.
A nothingness of another kind, like
I'd never known before, and hopefully
will never know again.
There are no windows in my room,
for that is how I have come to think of it,
as my room. Yet even windowless I can
still stare into the vast emptiness it is wrapped
up in. I can see the frightful void.
I know what lurks just behind the horrible
safety of my walls.
I scream into the void, if only to
keep my sanity.
You put me here. You wanted me here.
It was through your machinations,
devious and brilliant as they are,
that I find myself facing this nothing.
This was all just one more of your
self-serving, stupid ******* riddles.
And I, ever the pragmatist, ever the
logical counterpoint,
I played into it.
I thought we were so clever, to put
these symbols on our faces.
To shout to the world that this, not
the weak beings we used to be, but
these powerful, noble creatures.
This is who we are.
But I didn't pick the symbols.
They were always there.
You expected them to be.
You counted on my arrogance.
Oh, but you know me so well.
Aug 12, 2010
Aug 12, 2010 at 8:48 PM UTC
"Call me a pragmatist,
but I like my ***** to **** me up
and taste **** good doing it."
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 1:31 AM UTC
systematized philistinism
aesthetic appeal to reason; ingenuity
iniquity within crusadery, crusadery within violence
right versus wrong versus up versus down versus christ versus jam versus peanut butter-
ceaseless competition of egoism within protectorate instincts
totemic defense of ideals
burn the effigy of the opposing party via verbose roastery
point at fingers
pointed at moon
hapless the artist,
and hapless the pragmatist
and hapless the sodden fool ye who wish to knows better
haplessly holier than thou
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 1:28 AM UTC
If the time comes when someone
Asks me, “Dan,
What one thing would you hope for,
For this world I mean?”
I guess, after much deliberation,
I’d have to say ‘hope’
I’d wish for ‘hope’,
It’s all you can do.
The hope that this
Fear that consumes us
All in concrete
And frigid isolation
Dissipates
Along with the falseness
And the corruption,
And that we are free
To seize ourselves
Seize the day
Seize everything we want to be
Maybe I would not go
As far as Blake to say
We could retrieve the lost Golden Age.
I am by all definitions a pragmatist
Therefore I am hoping.
Hoping
And waiting
Nov 18, 2011
Nov 18, 2011 at 1:24 PM UTC
Pacific, pacifist pampered papa
parading par excellent paragon
parent (parenthetically parochial
particularly partisan) parvenu
passive, passionately paternalistically patient,
paunchy, peaceably pepped, perfectionist,
perceptive, perennially perky, permissively
persevering, persistently personable, perspicuous,
pertinent, phenomenally philanthropic, philharmonic
picturesquely pious, pioneering, piquantly pithy,
playfully pleasant, pleasurably plucky, plummy,
poetically poignant, politely pontificating, popular,
positively potent, powerfully practiced pragmatist,
praiseworthy, prayerfully precious, precise
predominant, preeminently preferable, preparedly
preponderant, presently president, prestigiously
prevailing, priceless, princely, principally pristine,
privately privileged, prized, proactively procreative,
prodigiously productive, proficiently profitable,
progressively prominant, promisingly prompt,
prophetically propitious, prospectively protective,
proudly proven provocative, prudent psyched, puissant,
punctilious, punctually purposeful.
May 28, 2018
May 28, 2018 at 1:07 AM UTC
Ted Slade was a Communist, an Atheist,
a Realist, a Pragmatist. All the ‘ists’…
Even as you’d see from his poetry…. a perfectionist.!
So, right to be bitter now and then,
about how the so called maker made him.
I’m right there with him on that.
How can there be a superior being… The Big ‘G’
The creator of all things living and breathing
when, he dished out the proletariat’s grand life plans…
The stoop, the damaged flesh, retracted blood and bone,
the twisted hands.
After he’d fixed the sun,
the moon and the stars
and the creatures of the sea,
he made man in his image… his own
the likes of you and me.
But Ted picked up a duff one,
an already beaten body.
Spine twisted, lungs restricted.
Unfit for purpose - ****** up.
Like a life jacket with a puncture
If he had jumped overboard with it
he would have drowned.
He’d picked up the parcel in the warehouse
that had already hit the ground.
One that shouldn’t have made it beyond quality control.
If he’d had a hand in a design that was plainly odd
he would have chosen the super deluxe model for his starring role
So he just ignored everybody else’s God
Just got on with the job…
And as such, scored an even more brilliant goal!
Aug 28, 2020
Aug 28, 2020 at 10:11 AM UTC
Maybe, maybe, maybe, if you say sorry enough they’ll believe it, know you mean it.
I think your heart could use that kind of break.
right now it’s breaking.
For some small comfort there’s the night, the silky smooth night, the moon and stars.
For the hopeless romantic and pragmatist- for we’re but a second in eternity, a speck in infinity
But what a privilege it is to be so.
And what a burden it is to be so.
To be so….what?
Because here, for the first time in a long time it’s not my poison.
It’s his and hers and theirs.
Regardless, I’ll drink to my place in forever and infinity, and in regards to how my throat burns holes in my heart as it goes down, I’ll make do as I’ve done before.
Down is where it mixes with the roots,
With the ashes from which this sort of deep pain burns in the embers of my own broken glass
That’s right, I’m filled to the brim with bottles of what used to be stale beer, scorched purple in the sun of some far off desert.
They’ve been lathered in hope, rinsed with cynicism, dried with the same snot ridden shirt sleeve that dried my tears.
From them, I’ll drink poison until their pain is gone and my wish washy smile resurfaces, blood in my teeth from a war not mine.
When the straight laced meets the twisted, who bends and which way?
For better or worse, or shall I stay here in the numb, sweet and cool embrace of neutrality?
No, because I seek warmth.
It gets more than warm, hot enough to bend steely figures into what seems human.
Don’t touch. Too hot.
Proximity is a dangerous game here, where you risk skin and bone bubbling, dripping into the fire.
Burns leave scars, did you know that?
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
Contradicting, questioning, quizzically,
I’m making my way through this like a blind man through a labyrinth of the social species.
Say maybe, so you don’t land in concrete, before you freeze from waist down and can’t breathe.
Say maybe, so time moves quickly; or stay here and bear their moment, heart and soul rough and bare.
Say maybe, so you don’t have to be sure you’re forgiven.
Say maybe, keep on holding their sins so the weight can pull you away from your own.
Jan 10, 2018
Jan 10, 2018 at 7:54 PM UTC
Cosmic tool
never stop looking
for newfangled science
procrastinate in a future scene
“Lets be honest…”
ill-mannered to speak
of perfection
in a body so busy
w/ hypocrisy
My pain ain’t yr pain
don’t think I understand you
don’t think I ain’t care
don’t think you overstand me
I ain’t believe in victims
of society on account-a
i ain’t no perpetrator
It’s not wise to wage war
on preferences
and
dogma look silly when
you’re 25 or older
Sad to hear pragmatist
is now
the face you wear
when you have no foundation
yr mouth could talk an endless mile
of rhetorical obfuscation
Gimme change for yr hope
…O child hope is but a dream
-Life’s sure a joke heh?
-O it’s just a scream!
We need divide
like the dope need a junkie-vein
blood rush concrete monkey brain
Who can we blame?
Cure the myths
and **** the idols
Don’t commoditize the truth
or fetishize our differences
No-one owns the past
No-one owns the future
W/ all the guns in Chicago
we could be free (for) tomorrow
but with all the language
in our words
we could free our heads
and make enemies
into neighbors
like Grown-Ups do
Cosmic tool
never take nothing serious
play the fool
while the world is delirious
Get-a laugh
out-a the hootin’ and the holler-in’
Such divine comedy make a man spoiled.
Jun 18, 2017
Jun 18, 2017 at 4:11 PM UTC
I'm a pragmatist: on the off chance that I see a pack of hoods drawing nearer, standing around,
acting a littering of open walkways, I basically
move to the next
side of the road, take no chances. I keep it on me constantly,
for well being purposes.
In case shooting start,
you'd be a danger I revealed to them when I, unfortunately, proved unable
permit the parcel of them into the gathering.
We're a piece of the same
political gathering, as indicated by every one of the numbers I've seen.
When I close the schools down, I was simply
doing what must be finished
to adjust a city spending plan crooked. When I put what
I found in his trunk on adjust,
it was sufficient to tip the scale
towards a lawful offense. I used to be a server, and they never
tipped extremely well as far as I can tell.
While we were putting down wagers,
I saw him tip his hand marginally and there was
a ̶̶r̶a̶c̶e̶ confront card in it. He didn't appear
like a lot of a bluffer, so I stood
my ground. On the grounds of legitimacy – that is the manner by which I got
into Harvard. I'm simply not that into dark
young ladies, by and by. That is to say, actually,
I don't SEE shading. I'm so sad, I truly didn't see you there.
There they go, utilizing that word once more:
on the off chance that they can state it, at that point for what reason right?
I can't comprehend why everyone is so touchy nowadays.
I concede, what I said sounded a tad
inhumane, yet trust me, I'm definitely not
a bigot. I'm a pragmatist: in the event that I see a pack of hoods drawing nearer, standing around,
acting a littering of open walkways,
I basically move to the opposite side.
I keep it on me consistently, for purposes: in case of a
danger, start shooting I let them know, unfortunately,
taking a gander at the body spread before me.
Oct 24, 2017
Oct 24, 2017 at 7:35 AM UTC
Who heralded the news!
Who put cat amongst the pigeons?
the question?
Who of who is whose stooge?
The truth never rings true
even when truth is by adage ‘stranger than fiction’
What if fiction was a precursor of truth?
What if in every truth there was a % of lies
and in every lie a % of truth
What if every POV changes the percentage?
The magician uses the art of distraction
Slight mind and hand
What then does miracle worker use?
The hand of faith and soul
What does the dramatist use?
Staging and emotion illusion and suspensionQq of disbelief
What does the Pragmatist use?
What ever is philosophically practical
What does the conspirator use?
Any means necessary to move the hand of fate to seed the lies in the Eyes of those they wish to hold.
what does the truth demand?
To see the light of day,
the cat without the feathers amongst the pigeons.
May 18, 2018
May 18, 2018 at 9:02 PM UTC