"protagonists" poems
what were Walt Disney's nefarious purposes
behind inventing a cartoon landscape where
children are subjected to an intense media
driven recapitulation of childhood; a technology-driven
experience of childhood; does a child know
what constitutes its own childhood & what is
corporate psychological product placement;
coming from Middle America how did Walt Disney not find Jesus?
in the Transcendentalist American religion,
Hollywood is Heaven & Vegas is Hell;
therefore Disneyland is Purgatory - - I totally get that;
Forbidden Planet & The Ten Commandments
both had their special effects done by Disney;
that Disney owns Marvel Comics means that
half of all super heroes are Disney characters
the protagonists in each of the above
mentioned films are respectively:
the Id monster & God
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 11:35 PM UTC
tell me what words are there
to articulate this savage parade
not here, not in all the Lebanons
whose crystal castles sparkle
like broken glass
on the dark horizons
at the jagged edges of the world
from which cultured minds have receded
and all humanity has been relinquished
to the barbarity of the frenzied flavours of fools
who will speak for this wild parade
without impediment to mythical protagonists
tell me where are the energised arguments
against sophisticated yet false laments
where testament is torn through
weeping cedar trees
producing the unpredictable accidental quality
that memorialises phantom caresses
that have neither been invented nor encouraged
the hallow that inaugurates
the distinctive features of
destructive energies that are both
exuberant and hard to comprehend
this parade where there is
a savage sensibility
capable of apprehending
contradictory ethical imperatives
that vouch for a mocking stream of
tragic political consequence
displayed vividly in the inextricability
of civil order and political violence
that defies exclusive claim
by casting itself as freedom warrior
in disguise as militaristic humanism
and burns the temple tree
and where human identity
becomes an elusive possession
owned by a few
who in the inevitability of ignorance
refuse to recognise their tragic error
and the world does not mount
a strenuous protest
at this headlong dash for Ephesus
where antagonistic language and
neutral expression of thought converge
and here the value of valulessness
repudiates, even in a single poetic moment
Aug 25, 2013
Aug 25, 2013 at 4:04 PM UTC
To watch or not to watch.
That is the question;whether it is nobler in my mind to suffer the feels and emotions of addicting shows and yet be so in love with them.
To watch, to cry.
One more episode and only sleep will help me to end.
The heartache and the thousand cinematic shocks the writers are obsessed with.
‘tis a consuming world with everything I wish.
To watch, to cry. To cry-- perhaps too much. Ay, but it's worth it.
For, when watching these shows and knowing what feels may come, when we have shuffled off this depressing factor, we must not forget the humor that makes happiness last oh so long.
To watch characters travel the depths of space and time.
The detectives prove wrong the proud men and even the relationships and love ‘tween the main protagonists.
The insolence of the hiatus that even patient fangirls cannot take. When we go on great adventures with a hobbit and a ring. Who could bear the long wait? To punt a sweat is a weary life. To discover world's unknown from books or shows. We travellers never want to return.
Our fangirl hearts burn and even still
We would rather bear the tears we have Than live in a world where there are none. Thus Fangirls are not cowards, not at all
Thus we are heroes so very proud
So we proudly say take flight on the enterprise with Captain Jean Luc
We bare our lights sabers alight
And lose ourselves in the action
Go we now happy as could be-- off to fangirl forever
To be normal? Ha! Never.
Aug 1, 2017
Aug 1, 2017 at 8:29 AM UTC
~
*Weddings and honeycombs.
Why do they give us the hives?
The keeper knows.
There's a buzz in the air.
It belongs to
the rudimentary happinesses:
The minor miracle of father's smile,
a morning breath of honey,
painting toy lips with
blood from mother's finger.
Deathless protagonists,
Mom and Dad,
our propolis.
They love us from afar.
They love us with what they are.
There's a buzz in the air.
There must bee!
They can't help loving
us little monsters,
who sting
and then say goodbye,
sting and say goodbye.
A linn begins to form
in the corner of their eye,
as wheat fields sway in the wind.
The innocent
and the beautiful
have no enemy, but time.*
~
Mar 3, 2022
Mar 3, 2022 at 9:46 PM UTC
We have a small sculpture of Henry James on our terrace in New York City.
Nothing would surprise him.
The beast in the jungle was what he saw--
Edith Wharton's obfuscating older brother. . .
He fled the demons
of Manhattan
for fear they would devour
his inner ones
(the ones who wrote the books)
& silence the stifled screams
of his protagonists.
To Europe
like a wandering Jew--
WASP that he was--
but with the Jew's
outsider's hunger. . .
face pressed up
to the glass of ***
refusing every passion
but the passion to write
the words grew
more & more complex
& convoluted
until they utterly imprisoned him
in their fairytale brambles.
Language for me
is meant to be
a transparency,
clear water gleaming
under a covered bridge. . .
I love his spiritual sister
because she snatched clarity
from her murky history.
Tormented New Yorkers both,
but she journeyed
to the heart of light--
did he?
She took her friends on one last voyage,
through the isles of Greece
on a yacht chartered with her royalties--
a rich girl proud to be making her own money.
The light of the Middle Sea
was what she sought.
All denizens
of this demonic city caught
between pitch and black
long for the light.
But she found it
in a few of her books. . .
while Henry James
discovered
what he had probably
started with:
that beast, that jungle,
that solipsistic scream.
He did not join her
on that final cruise.
(He was on his own final cruise).
Did he want to?
I would wager yes.
I look back with love and sorrow
at them both--
dear teachers--
but she shines like Miss Liberty
to Emma Lazarus' hordes,
while he gazes within,
always, at his own
impenetrable jungle.
3.2k
Boys will be boys, will be men, will destroy
Will take and take what you create
Will shame you if you deviate
Will make the rules they proceed to break
And after every encounter, you're a little more shaken
A little more autonomy from you has been taken
You rack your brain to find the words to demonstrate just how it hurts
Time passes - and the moment is gone
They were staring at your *** and you know it was wrong
You know you don't belong
You are an object for observation
But that's a whole different song
So does it make it any better when you play along?
Are you simply playing victim in a manmade system?
A child of the Fight, how do you extract from that mode?
In a world full of players, you let yourself be taken
How is it that you manage to let the simple words break in?
The glass ceiling is surprisingly sharp
And the burden on your back gets heavier as you approach
The child in the closet didn't make it this far
There's a fine line between honoring your wounds and hiding in the dark
This is the line I walk every day
On one side, victim and healer, I tend to my wounds
The other lives in reality and makes the right moves
But duality is a falsity
Of course one can't be two
And the structure I see in the world I perceive brings out the fight
**** the patriarchy
**** the Right
They're not right
Their vision is just limited
There are so many issues I wish to address
If I cry through the fight, does that make it worth any less?
Does my brokenness somehow discount the rest?
The weight of my burdens change by the day
And yes, victimhood is the easiest way
May I be the last to place blame
This glass house holds no shame
And if you won't throw the stones at the broken and stuck
Pass them around and throw them straight up
Let's all make the ceiling shatter and fall
And watch now as the shards rain down
And this can happen when we're all ready to be active
And act as protagonists in our own play
So **** the patriarchy, but do it in your own time, and in your own way
Apr 15, 2018
Apr 15, 2018 at 8:32 PM UTC
Woe is the man who revels in romance
He must hide his revelling from the world.
Never on a bus or plane or train, have you
Seen a man reading a romance novel, the
Lurid cover compelling the reader to delve
Into the protagonists embarrassment of
Embraces, between the satin sheets.
Jun 15, 2013
Jun 15, 2013 at 6:51 AM UTC
You had to be me
talking **** about Aristotle
then finding him in the poem on the next page.
We had been talking about how rhetoric makes students of analysis
feel like they live in some intelligent matrix.
You had to be me
to know that was very topical at that time in my life.
To know what wild bewilderment meant
at it’s actual size.
Two eyes, about the size of spare change, must of been going crazy,
but I couldn’t know unless I was you.
You had to be me
to feel as if you were enclosed in open space
feeling simultaneously,
empty objects come to life.
Tugging at the connections in mind
I was bound to make because of where
those same mechanical hands
had already fostered me.
Making me think something like god
could be construction lights over my exit sign
creating a tunnel out of the kind of darkness
night tells tired protagonists
exists to make you stronger.
You had to be me
to know that strength is a metric of preparedness,
and preparedness is a metric of memory.
I forgave mine.
I only know an instant,
the past shrinks under the weight of my experience
like a shivering body
under a bed sheet.
My strength dreams quiet fists and
sweats from voracious hips.
Unlike the stories,
the night has made me a tender man.
Unlike the stories,
that’s ok.
I’m dying just as fast as any hero with much more romance.
Nov 10, 2013
Nov 10, 2013 at 2:33 AM UTC
I am now
starting new chapters
with new
pretty
protagonists.
Nov 14, 2016
Nov 14, 2016 at 8:19 PM UTC
when my mother was pregnant,
my mother looked up names and their holy meanings and found one to be to her liking
and so i was named ;
but my brother, upon hearing this
squirmed and pleaded to change it for whatever reason
and so i was named ;
and later
i would play two videogames and love the two female protagonists so dear
i'd name myself ;
and a little further on
i would read a book with a main character so enticing and thoughtful
i'd name myself ;
and now
i find myself drifting from meaning to mood to games to books
and so much else - so many factors in a life and person
and i am only character
with a debated name
Nov 21, 2015
Nov 21, 2015 at 9:34 AM UTC
I have been wondering
Every story are just the same
There's the protagonist
And there's the antagonist
It's all just the same
I have been wondering
Every story are just the same
Protagonists always win
Antagonists are always the losers
It's all just the same
I have been wondering
Why everything goes for the protagonist?
And this little antagonist have nothing
Every story are just the same
They're all just the same
I have been wondering
Aren't all stories unfair?
It leaves a mark on our minds
There's no chance for everyone
There's no hope for everyone
Feb 1, 2012
Feb 1, 2012 at 8:32 PM UTC
I looked for love,
In high language novels read by men who always wear big glasses, and bigger intellectual endeavors.
In independent films with moody pianists for protagonists, or extravagant detectives, or mad prophets.
In the disappointments of post-12 AM conversations with strangers smoking outside an underground theater.
I looked for love,
In old photographs with brown spots, and wrinkled covers of vinyl records.
In candles with mysteriously inviting names, like “white musk” and “black forest".
In dictionaries that show how nostalgia and exoticism are alike: a longing for the imaginary.
I looked for love,
In between the lines, and tucked into metaphors.
In the closet where I used to hide as a child
In everywhere except for the coffee shop in plain sight where a 23 year old goes to have coffee, and write about how love is nowhere to be found.
Nov 5, 2018
Nov 5, 2018 at 2:00 PM UTC
Different books,
Different chapters,
Different protagonists,
Same world,
Same cast,
Same rival;
Can you turn the odds?
Would that rival be friendly,
Or would it be brutal?
Make up your mind, quick;
It's cunning,
It's deceiving,
It's time.
Jan 9, 2016
Jan 9, 2016 at 11:40 AM UTC
It’s the hollow sound of a toast to fill the silence of unaddressed questions,
the celebratory clanging of glass on glass
ringing from assumptions based on past experiences and theories
from synapses of protagonists or all
that is mystical; a god or a God
for the rhetoric of bad days; the precatory shoulda, woulda, coulda’s
you can count with all digits and the humdrums,
the lalala’s to songs with lines you can never remember.
It is to fill in, with pencil, the
blanks of unclear intentions, capricious endings,
the what comes after the highest number, tentative now, for it is a trick question,
the true stories of Bermuda Triangles and Altantises,
for the ones Amelia kissed goodbye and all that is brief,
promises neither broken nor kept;
some, hypotheses for what happens after waiting.
It is the makeshift certainty ascertained the day he left
all these unfinished, unanswered, incomplete… things. The sure of it
invented by staking everything in a nebulous something,
a nebulous anything that will have to do, like cotton patches
on satin dresses or saints for hopeless causes.
It was the invention to quench the constant
need to know, to fill the in-between start to end
for all that we can not stop. A made-up map by pirates below ten
for every time we must set destinations beyond unchartered unknowns;
a make-believe place holder to hold us to the relief
we get from closure when
the universe gives us none.
It is the lemniscate, the amen,
the St. Jude we assign to our altars
until we find actual satin or the aviatrix herself,
or surrender everything in the spirit of faith
or believe
that not all things unfound are lost.
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 12:23 PM UTC
mostly undiagnosed ghosts host coast roasts
and no one shows
haunted wind blows going slow
dethroning grown men being sown
unknown gnomes debone stones
throwing plumbs at scrub jays
whilst listless fitness ****** insist
on resisting mystic visions
implicitly –
ragtag gag gifts for bags
smoking **** with saggy pants
chancing protagonists
and prancing fisters
wrist rocket **** pocket
time, clock it
rock it sock it
don’t mock
interlocking bicarbonates
wait for the ingrate to **********
and regulate the regurgitation –
****** ancestrally protestors
digest their disgust
discussing muskrats as lab cats
basking in the glow of white coats –
Jun 5, 2015
Jun 5, 2015 at 3:02 PM UTC
It's the awkwardness and strangeness and
slugging-in-time-ness
of discovering a new
person.
Too often, movies portray the meeting of the
protagonists as some
heady rush or a
whirlwind of sparks or some
******** like that.
In reality, it's a slow fire
laboriously
begun with two
sticks.
And sometimes that fire never even starts.
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 2:15 PM UTC
I have always thought of home to be a place
have described myself within a myriad of
different protagonists, herbs and flaccid analogies
i have been birds nesting in rafters, wolves
and nothing more than a willowy spirit without a
body--
and i thought for a moment that people could be homes
too, the way you walk into hugs or are metaphorically
gathered, i watched him in the mirror sliding around
my waist, resting on my hips, smelling my hair, picking
me up to put in a vase, ridiculously pretty, you know that?
and it's not that I longed for more,
that I have longed for where, for a here that
i am acutely aware of how i vacillate between empty
and overflowing, of my own thoughts, i have heard
you think too much and maybe I do-- maybe too much
of me lingers
In dreams I unzip and turn myself inside out
like a dress, fold my shoulders down and the mountains
reappear, i am all the grass of a former self, before the tides and winds and men, before my choices bent me back
and took a swiss army knife to whittle me away
i think i am longing to be clean
to be over to breathe and not feel the strings
the way my voice splits into a rank of pipes swelling into a hundred voices and he only hears a few, i am many
longing to be one, he cannot twist the drawknob
because I am already filling the cathedral in the words of
Stravinsky, *the
m onster never b r e a t h e s*
and I feel like i never have
i am earnest to fill my lungs with air instead of water
join the present, but the Welsh knew me too well,
the portuguese, saudade and the Germans, sehnsucht
put a letter to the things that can only be described in paragraphs or tears or indeterminate intervals of time sitting on his bed while he showered, all the doors slammed, empty coffee cups,
clogged sinks, unswept floors, long drives,
shots of whiskey, withering glances held on tension and
te amo mouthed across the room--
we wonder, can we be reached? wrought? touched. found.
in our deepest hearts, wounded mysticism, an untapped sense of joy that can be lanced and spilled, I am wistful, anxiously waiting to be siphoned,
Hiraeth.
Apr 9, 2017
Apr 9, 2017 at 9:41 PM UTC
The tea cup clouds were reason enough.
Reeling, the clock hands spun on an axis wobble
noon flirted with night
and I broke into a run
as the sky opened its maw
and screamed.
Even the suits scramble for burrows.
Retrospection always has a punchline.
Hide away, slide away
Stop looking at my ******* please.
Now watch wide-eyed behind
public glass, with a
sitcom gang of affable protagonists
who are now late for their respective chapters
Staring at their phones, willing the weather
forecast to telepathically change.
The light strobes, the bricks quiver sympathetically
and I riddle a fourteen year old pantheon
as they sway, as they jaunt
ankle deep in charged water
daring each other and daring the sky
daring the noise with headphones still around necks
like defiant plastic boas
Clothes plastered, mouths open, rain-drunk
feeling **** revealing secret intimate shapes,
feeling sheepishly exposed next
to crushes who will kiss them at the next movie.
I am aware of each nerve as I drip and shiver
I'm terrified of storms, my reasons are mine
but even this fear
can cat-stroke my skin
hyper-sensitized, electric
and make me feel
**** too.
Jul 31, 2012
Jul 31, 2012 at 3:58 PM UTC
The lake is colored a hue of purple, even though the retina is deprived of blue.
Freedom to swim, yet choosing not to.
Choosing to eat, although mandatory.
Funny how the world works. Especially while dreaming.
Wake up at 8, feeling like the amount in my pocket.
2 dollars and 47 cents. Illegally consumed.
Breakfast at 9, ****** eggs again. We eat in silence.
After breakfast I am forced to the yard, forced to smoke, with no gun to my head.
Run run, shoot, steal. Basketball used to be fun.
1 oclock, and I decide to read. Not much choice on activities, but a crate full of books to read. Yet what's the point?
Why fill my mind with wild dreams? Wishing the problems of the protagonists were my own?
The cell is colored a hue of gray, and yes my retinas can manage.
Freedom to think, no choice but to.
Choosing to eat, but why not?
Funny how prison works, especially when it's reality.
Wake up at 7, the nap was delicious.
Pockets are empty, and with two cigarettes to show for it.
Dinner at 8. Oh **** it, its the same **** every day.
Sleep by 9.
Mar 7, 2011
Mar 7, 2011 at 6:44 AM UTC
Looking forward to a beginning
Everyday will be written a new saga
Few, we shall carry forward
After the ellipsis
Much happens even during a hiatus
We are stretched ahead
Time pulls us away to a new realm
New vistas and landscape
Fresh flowers and aroma
Old vases shall hold them
With much pride
Amidst the new rooms
Every wall has a door
Welcoming the new beginning
Old and new protagonists
Have taken the pledge
To give a new twist to the saga
Sometime we take a turn
Allowing us to reclaim
That was elusive in the past
Fresh ink
Shall fill the void on paper
New chapter, new beginning
Story shall continue
With renewed charm
Miracle do happen
If you believe
Jan 2, 2015
Jan 2, 2015 at 11:51 AM UTC
step one: you must realize that
villains are the protagonists of their own stories;
ergo, everything does revolve around you.
you really are not worthless.
why should you care
what the people trying to overthrow you think?
step two: use your anger to create.
step three: or use it to destroy.
step four: allow yourself to feel.
allow yourself to
hide.
you are not wrong for shining in the light or for shying from it.
step five: you must realize that
this too shall pass.
in one thousand years louisiana will be underwater
and new landmasses will rise from the sea like individual venuses.
geologic time will march on, inescapably slowly, on clocks you cannot read,
regardless of you.
we are still only in the holocene era.
the universe doesn't care how many times you try;
the universe doesn't care if you try; but
someone has to, and i believe it should be you.
on the word-a-day desk calendar of existence,
humans only arrived on earth on
the last minute of december thirty-first:
whatever pain you're feeling is temporary.
Jul 4, 2014
Jul 4, 2014 at 10:17 PM UTC
Sometimes we return to long ago conversations
where more than cross words were uttered
where protagonists squared up to one another
and arguments and insults were uttered.
And when with the benefit of hindsight,
that most magical and wondrous thing
we realise often how wrong we were
and the knowledge of embarrassments sting.
If we could just take back those words
that were aimed to wound so deep
knowing how they’d hit their mark
and said to make someone weep.
In those teenage years, how cruel we were
how very little of life we knew
how gentle and forgiving our heart’s desire
how slow the understanding – in young men grew.
I’m now a man – three score and five
a man who love has touched so deep
but I colour now as I think back
at my cruelty then and I want to weep.
For almost fifty years I've loved just one
kindness flows through her every pore
I've strived to make up for those teenage years
and she just smiles and then loves me more.
My luck has held, we've stayed the course
I pinch myself to check I can still feel
and she looks and smiles at me and I know
it’s not a dream and it’s still real.
©Joe Wilson – Teenage boys can be cruel 2014
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 8:37 PM UTC
Lost child afternoon
green pick up truck
cigarettes silver lipstick gold'n red
red like the horizon
in closed eyes
in
underwater blankets
where
Tiny fish and clams and beer bottles swim
Lost Child Afternoon
Gorgeous road signs
laying like a dog
with women of Florida purity alligator tongue
laying like a dead fly
on the carpets chest
resting like a mother
resting like a newborn Larva
like a newborn seed
grasping onto a Nebrask-ian breeze
A'hoy
A'hoy
the sail boat of life
is casting out
give us
give eye
a penny for a ride
for a passser-by
2 pennies to love
3 to keep the love
and 4 to
come back to shore
come aboard
come aboard
the whiskey is
practically gone
practically free
Wear some boots
because it rains
and the mud is thick like hair
the flowers of life
bow like magnificent dream girl eye lashes
questions balance on a blink
come aboard
life seeker
life conquistador
life Apollo 11'er
life
wanderer wonderer
life protagonists
life main character
life 10 dollars
life love affair
life
30 years old
in dog years
Life
Mexican SunRise
Life
A.M.
Life
take her out to dinner
she put on
25 dollar lipstick
to imprint
to stain
your
offered
cigarette.
Mar 24, 2013
Mar 24, 2013 at 2:11 AM UTC
we have our plots and flotsam
and plod joyless; rain smitten.
we join the heap of foil and protagonists
in the tale of our distemper.
we whimper in the dark of our hard furnace.
fumbling for trinkets of mirth
where no god has birth
even as a dented
trumpet
to a hairlip...
Or a Name that comes First.
and yet we sing. but -
the song is wrong righted. a blight
blighted and a long drum
mumbling benighted
in the silk light
of our simple
worms.
our apples ache. our knowledge, rots .
but our temples, at the core
seed the valley. we famish the mountain
but feed the foothills of our strange
and strum the harps of Oblivion
with our mean thumbs.
constant gardeners of hard loss and flight.
and the Night's Sun.
May 20, 2014
May 20, 2014 at 1:14 AM UTC
*Is it really any wonder
That we court the God of war ?
When a man offends in innocence
With imprudent comments poor,
When the slightest altercation
Leads to seeking of red blood,
And grudges borne with vehemence
Paste protagonists with mud.
Why is it that we tip toe
Through the fragileness of life ?
How is it that you rage
When he glances at your wife ?
What generates the jealousy
Of competitive bright flame
And activates the trigger
In the deadly baiting game ?
Why should we seek redemption
When the way is set in stone,
When antagonistic temperament
Is the customary way home,
When the flare of angry attitude
Leads the bearer to abyss
And inevitable conflict
Throws all reasoned thought amiss ?.
Reflect on how protracted
Is the winding road to love,
How long to place the building blocks
Of friendships’ hand in glove,
How gradual the process
Of steady cultivating trust
To the wondrous actuality
Of a brother bond that must.
Why does the God of war surmount
Mans best and dearest quest
To find a peace and harmony
Despite discords’ very best,
To live his days in certitude
Sidestepping risk of harm
To work toward tomorrows’ dawn,
And evening’s soothing charm.
Shatter prides absurdity
To dare to breach the norm,
To reach aloft for courage
And scale the unknown’s form.
To rail against mans’ enmity
To flail against his foe
To conquer human natures‘ worst
This beast of war must go!
Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
21 June 2010*
Jun 20, 2010
Jun 20, 2010 at 5:21 PM UTC