"sentience" poems
Resistance of the wind gives
rise to sentience inside,
realization that self is on the
fence of rejection and love.
Feel the hurt eyes looking out to the world,
always with love
and always behind bars.
Relive the old age that
you will experience near the end;
there is nothing to fear,
but fear is real.
Jan 3, 2014
Jan 3, 2014 at 1:50 AM UTC
Estimate tells us the avg. height
of a female in the U.S. is 64 inches.
This is quantitative. Unfeeling of prospect,
the numbers fascinate and baffle.
Recent estimation supposes
1500 active volcanoes on the earth of which
500 have erupted since history,
the invention of writing.
Such a short time ago.
Measuring in quantities, the earth is
4.5-4.6 billion years old.
Creatures of like sentience who never wrote about
volcanoes, the age of their earth.
Quantities hum of something borrowed.
So tight-wound, so deeply close, and yet still.
Something not ours.
Blind, free of invention.
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 7:44 PM UTC
Seasons pass, tempered by insalubrious fervor; treasonous design remiss of fate
An echo of prior songs resonate somber atrophy; mourn the passing of constant defeat, stained by triumphant dissonance and disdain
Fear strides along the broken path, left alone and solemn and crass: Through sour feats of vindication, tones of plight become dismissed
Surfeit, the sound of temptation rides upon the crest of dawn, blinding darkness like calming waves caressing infinite stretches of sand: soft and warm; kind and welcoming, embracing in its gentle touch
Sentience hides behind a creeping fog, whispering secrets of life eternal, bearing gifts wrought through sensuous candor
Two threads lost, now found; slowly bonding, uniting purpose, rhythm, rhyme, and reason; born from the same cloth, garnering habit, singing in harmony what echoes from within
Beautiful, intelligent, staunch with profundity; stark, handsome, wholesome, and good
The call of a true home may finally beckon..
Dec 13, 2017
Dec 13, 2017 at 2:08 AM UTC
I need only to smirk and you’re mine
Anytime
If it’s god that you want
I have dozens in mind
Devilishly divine
Bending time like a grandeur delusional
Spine
In a mad hatter ectoplas-mystical slime
A prismatic drug addict’s first nursery rhyme
Of accursed hearse verses of graphic design
Now to lay to rest intellect spectacles musing
Of selves glorified more than those of my choosing
To deify Destiny’s
Deathly serenity
Plentifully sending me vibrant surprises
And penning my ending in violent demises
Disguises surmised by the climate arises
Girl always there riding my similar waves
As I try to save face digging mechanized graves
But the cloud tentacles
To the depths
Drag me down
To demented ascension
Black holes in the ground
Where disciples of light
And my huntress in white
Vivify me by day
Resurrect me at night
To instruct and deduct
Reasoning in a state
Of a being supreme
Contemplating its fate
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 4:52 PM UTC
In my late teens I would wonder
What is The Purpose of Life?
What should I Value?
What is truly Good?
But now at sixty six it seems so clear:
Life per se is what matters.
The wonderment
Of selves
That know they are selves.
Of sentience married with intelligence.
The miracle we call Life.
At nineteen I said
That the First Priority
Was Survival.
I wrote a thing called “The Bedrock”
To grow this theme.
And what was it that had to survive?
It was living beings
Nurtured by Mother Nature.
I am a “Lifist”
If you will:
Cherishing all that lives.
Humanist Plus
And more than Conservation.
Health and Wellbeing
For The Common Good.
A touch of Socialism
And Equal “Opps”.
I coined the word “Positivism”
To sum it all up.
Is this all poetry?
Maybe not.
But the greatest poem lies all around us:
The very world and universe
In which we live.
Paul Butters
© PB 18\2\2019.
Feb 18, 2019
Feb 18, 2019 at 5:09 AM UTC
Empty humans echo when tapped
Ceramic heartbeats crunch through riverside air
BETWEEN IGNORANCE AND WORTHLESSNESS TRAPPED
Their senses vaporous, impaired.
Those which melancholy cannot reach
Across the Styx with curling hands
DO NOT EXIST; THEIR WALLS WERE BREACHED
With icy fingers, buzzing bland.
Empty humans echo when tapped
With icy fingers, buzzing bland
FROM THE NIGHT BREEZE WHICH LAPPED
Across the Styx with curling hands.
Those which melancholy cannot reach,
Their senses vaporous, impaired
ARE A MIASMA ON THE BEACH
Ceramic heartbeats crunch through riverside air.
*Pottery people are all appearance
And their hollows are touched rarely
By their own sentience
While waiting for the ferry--*
Dec 26, 2010
Dec 26, 2010 at 12:47 PM UTC
I see the rabbits feeding on the grass
My heart is filled with joy
Their life is precious
I see the vultures feeding on the rabbits
My heart is filled with joy
Their life is precious
That's what I never understood about coffins
Life is about expanding your prison cell as much as you can
There's no requirement to be contained once it's over
Our nutriance to the Earth
Is our nutrients into Earth
All creatures that die on this planet
Become a part of it
The Debt they paid to the future
The Debt that is always collected on
We travel nonchalantly on their corpses
Wishing they could appreciate
That each and every one of them
Was one step closer to sentience
This planet's passion project
Could the first single-celled organism
Comprehend my humiliation?
When the first creature walked on land
Was it anticipating my shame?
Did it sprout wings
To give me nightmares of dying in an airplane?
Did ancient Neanderthals dance around a fire
To reenact my adolescence?
Could mystic voodoo shaman
Cure my lack of agency?
Or did lost American tribesmen
Prophesize the complexities of my love?
I can feel all these ************* looking up at me from the ground
And it's just me
As I accidentally burn my notebook with a cigarette
May 29, 2017
May 29, 2017 at 12:01 AM UTC
The spider Queen, aloofly vain!
She rules a silent ruthless reign,
with black-bead eyes like pearls of rain
that damp the depths of her demesne.
.
.
.
A spider spins, with nimble feet,
a sticky web of grim deceit
that drapes the corners, dark, discreet,
in catacombs of her retreat.
Her jointed legs (in number, eight)
traverse the threads with stilted gait,
but often more she'll lie in wait
within the hub of her estate.
Shy spiders live their lives alone
ensconced within a silky throne;
unless a transient guest comes flown,
their lives bide empty, monotone.
.
.
Well, now and then, a sullen breeze
may twitch the toils, begin to tease –
yet nothing's caught and nothing pleas,
so patience's bid at times like these.
But then again, when stars ignite,
may maunder by a gnat, by night,
be taught a dance, a writhing rite,
within a lace of death, wrapped tight.
Sometimes a spider's in the mood
and waits awhile, whilst being wooed –
and then, to later feed her brood,
the widow slays her mate for food.
In time a spider dies, 'tis true,
bequeathing but a residue
entwined, devoid of retinue,
in fibers decked in silver dew.
.
.
.
One asks "What purpose serves the GNAT –
to feed and make the spider fat?
Well, 'tis perchance just naught but that
within a mindless habitat.
.
.
"Yet, what's the aim?” you may inquire,
“at the heart of MAN's desire.
To which goals should WE aspire
reaching high and reaching higher?"
We've, through the ages, left the mire,
trundling wheels and taming fire,
doing deeds that must inspire,
nursing needy, calming crier, …
Such things as these, most may admire:
- placid dove and war defier
(some are bolder, some are shyer)
- patience (mess-up mollifier);
- humankind (Life's justifier)
- charity (charmed self-denier)
- tolerance (proud pacifier )
- love of Life (folk unifier).
What more could we, as flesh, require?
Needless kneeling neath the spire?
Childish chanting in the choir?
Preaching hell's impending pyre?
No, Death's the only rectifier,
comes the instant we expire,
nothing after, sentience prior.
So, treasure Life and don't deny Her.
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 1:29 PM UTC
By book-ends my stomach is churning,
I'm cantankerous and stand-offish
in spurts, barely there in others.
I could not dig up where my head was
if I had to. I do not have to.
There are some things in my life that
lead themselves to failure. I have dropped
instinct, instead adopting pattern,
a means of coping with the endlessness
of life in a globalized world.
This is not lament. I could part with
objectivity, happy to expire for a
scrap of extra sentience. Please, before
my words become manners and manners become
holes full of dirt, pardon me for the mess.
I only had so much time after all.
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 7:13 PM UTC
I'd never cared for flowers
Symbols of affection that wilt
And forget memories
And fall apart in kitchens and bedrooms and strew their pieces on the floors
Dried and broken after only days of being lovely
Flowers with their alternating patterns of
Unreliable determinations
Claiming every other petal as an opposite declaration
Of a determination
Of love
And I never liked removing thorns from roses
Because they added something truthful and
Poetic
But when you gave me flowers
I held them to my heart and let my eyes dance across the kaleidoscope that they created in a glass vase
I let them live for longer than they did
Because they were still pretty even when no one else seemed to think so
And when they hang dried on a wall
Still colorful but slightly brittle
Maybe they'll stay like that if I just don't touch them
When you gave me flowers
I plucked off every other petal
Into a bouquet of He-Loves-Me
Because for once there was no doubt
For once I believed the sentiment in the flowers and the words from your lips as you handed them over
The lack of nots in the petals
Pulling apart the knots in my stomach
He loves me
He loves me
Truer than the dirt that holds
Wilting symbols of affection
Sweeter than the honey
Of their pollinators
He loves me
He loves me
A garden of something new and beautiful
Perennial and built on symbolism after all
Until you let me know that dead flowers were just dead flowers
That they were past their worth
And metaphors aren't worth the dirt they were grown in
That perennials can't return
When you've salted the soil
And brittle flowers on the wall should always be removed
But I always lived in metaphors anyway
And I had a new appreciation for flowers that I didn't want to lose
I was no longer a rose
But a thorn
I always thought smooth stems were so boring
Not to mention dishonest
But I didn't want to make you bleed
So painfully I dug an olive branch from my rib cage
Then realizing that a ****** token may not be so well received
I decorated it with a bouquet of blue Forget-Me-Nots
But you plucked off every other petal
And handed back an array of He-Loves-Me-Nots
He loves me not
And there was no doubt in the sentiment
The sentience of metaphors dying all around me
When all I know is metaphors
And flowers were never just flowers
And words were never just words
But both are found on gravestones and poems and apologies
And parallels have fallen into nice and even spacing
Reducing flowers to clichés
Of alternating promises
Of He loves me and
He loves me not
Of broken promises
He loves me
Not
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 6:04 PM UTC
let's make a deal.
uncap the bottle,
discover my greatest work-
a soliloquy on sentience,
performed to an empty room.
the walls
are bleeding lead poisoning again
and i
am leaving logic behind.
the air is crisp on my wretched skin
and as the world dies
its aching breath helps me
to finally feel alive.
i am pure white.
let me rise, enlightened.
as i float, breathless,
i can feel, finally,
the weight of my bones.
make me into a sparrow,
feast upon my marrow,
so i can become porous-
but leave my hollow mind whole.
idolize me.
spin my disease into pure beauty.
a stone-cold rose
grounds the coffin for my dreams,
liberating me from responsibility.
awaken me.
strip my heavy corpse of its wings,
eviscerate the breath from my lungs
cease my tangibility
oh glory,
build me up
strip me down
to my knuckles and teeth,
to the weathered bone.
remove the bloodstains from my home.
if i bleed now
it will be beautiful
when i fall, i
will glorify the cement, decorate it
with my shining insides
when i come down
it will be stunning
it will be dreadful
and i will be resplendent
-but the delivery
won't change the content
candy wrapping
can't cover up the stench of death-
i have given up
on purging the necrosis from my tissue
i have found
this tantalizing muse once again, and
once more i
will let her put cigarettes out
on my sorry skin.
i've grown to love the smell,
that acrid poison
it almost covers up the scars
she leaves-
if i can make dying sound beautiful
then to hell
with us all
if you could romanticise suicide
you'd be rotting
too
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 9:14 PM UTC
*She is essence of la bella donna,
herein lies the paradigm mid
***** pearls & nightshade's poison,
exhales echoes of dark crescent moons &
sandalwood's perfumed incense
burning sentience of duality's seasonings
'tween contradiction 'neath her own breath,
born to gypsy souls 'twixt a solar eclipse
she worried naught what society thought,
her poetry was incalculably beyond measure
neither less than or more than incurable,
rendered nuances as a badge of significant honor
gaily whirling beyond distinctive contrasts,
'neath importance of individuality's calling
amidst her own unique indulgent nature,
dazzling sensuality's intrinsic whimsy*
Jul 19, 2015
Jul 19, 2015 at 4:06 PM UTC
What gives you the right to
judge me,
criticism wasn't asked
so why you
open your mouth,
What's your prerequisite
to make assumption's
& judgments-
Constructive criticism
my ***
My
ADHD
PT-SD
Dyslexia Anxiety
& dealings with you
caused me a break down,
got me
chronically depressed,
You say you only
want the best for me,
Well shut up & let me be!
pill popping just so my E.E.D.
(Emitted explosive disorder)
wont cause me
to become
sentience
with life
new labels
would say
******
if you keep bothering me
I ain't stupid-
So stop talking down to me
Im not illiterate
******* I read
So let me be
No I don't have TS
(tourette syndrome)
I ******* cuss
cuz I wanna
so shut the hell up
I know right from wrong
I'm no psychopath
Then again
I just might be since
I could give a flying ****
about you
weather you live or die
I wouldn't cry.
Your making it harder
for ya self not me just go way
Doc
Do ya got **** Job,
I don't want to talk anymore
My past is where I left it
Behind me
You deal with it
Cuz
I already did & do
For you that
call your selves
wanting to help....
My OCD
(Obsessive-compulsive disorder)
is personal
So what if I wash
my hands& ***
3 or more times
I'm not stupid
or deaf
I have
Selective Hearing
Nor am I ********
that's how
I say hello
with my middle finger
I told you,
I'm not ********
***** I'm Special!
Always Me Ayeshah
Mar 10, 2010
Mar 10, 2010 at 7:15 PM UTC
"strange"
is declared
of person
who rationalizes
that matter if
non-human
non-animal
non-living
merits recognition
as being good
on it's own
but really
are we
the ultimate stewards
of absolute purpose?
what confirms our judgement
in deeming what deserves
to exist for it's own
and what belongs
to our means
and ours alone?
is it so fantastic
to suggest
that by some means of
indefiniteness
of intangible
comprehension
all matter
is fundamentally intertwined
in the sense
everything is stardust
created by
the universe's omnipotent hand?
don't you
ever get the feeling
inside of your conscious
too?
doesn't your awareness
ever whisper
as a sentience
you have an obligation
from some unspoken contract
signed before birth
to uphold the integrity
of everything
that inhabits this earth
whether or not
it thinks in the way you do?
for what purpose
we exist assembled into
abrupt profound togetherness
remains undecided
earth's fabrications
will survive
harmoniously
but
will you
do the same?
Aug 24, 2015
Aug 24, 2015 at 1:55 PM UTC
**Conjugated amid liberated duality,
surreptitious catharsis of
poetic revelations' flip side,
the underbelly of sentience
potentially validating perceptions'
indefinitely extended,
figuratively speaking beyond
literally unleashed metaphors
play it backwards, if you dare**
Jun 14, 2015
Jun 14, 2015 at 7:30 AM UTC
Exclusively molded in the divine image
or egos big enough to declare it so
A dangerous theory
a disastrous belief system
Gardeners of Eden
turned stewards of entropy
Superiority conquest of nature
symbiotic balance forsaken
Jealous hoarders of spirituality,
sentience, self-awareness, intelligence
The irrational glorification of reason
despite a history of upheaval and war
Bullies on the playground of manifest destiny
exploitive excess worshiped as progress
Arrogantly intoxicated on the dregs of Pandora's jar
blindly stumbling toward self-destruction
Welcome to the valley of the shadow of death
Environmental Armageddon
May 23, 2013
May 23, 2013 at 10:00 PM UTC
It’s all laundry and cigarettes
White-knuckle odd jobs
And freezing your *** off, at 7 AM, to
Help your buddy out
Breaking and bleeding, and
Smoking and shirtless, and
Spinning your finger and thumb
Counter-clockwise until the
Resulting ring of fire and fury can
Torch your inhibitions
No one ever restricted you from
Rioting with grace
And through the windshield of your vision,
The streets wake up to the smell of
Alcohol and experience
It’s all rubble in dumpsters, and
Spray paint that swears
Oaths, to bands and bandages
Singing the praises of
Stolen promises, their swiftly
Prying minds can’t understand
And you’re standing
In front of the truck
Arms outstretched
Pistons firing air through your
Organs, that vibrate with the
Trepidation of nightmarish resolve
It’s all battlefields and accomplices,
The kid that kicked you down so,
That you’d eat the dirt,
Place your teeth in
Leather pouches,
And taste defeat for decades
You’re pleasantly high on the
Smoke of your still-burning debt
You’re a supermarket superhero
You’re the queen of the Gasoline Dream
It’s in the way that
Your outline is
Edged out
By your insides, and the
Arms of the chair have become
Wings, that unfurl over
Valleys and oceans, of headstones,
And nursery wards
Tinted windows promise nothing
Regarding secrecy of soul
What would your wisdom teach me
About sentience?
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 11:36 AM UTC
I see a Woman eating her muffin
looking at Man who is looking
looking into the depths of his paper cup
and the wrinkles and rivers on the back of his hand
thinking When did I get those?
Coffee Cup looking at the blue bin in the corner
Coffee Cup thinking Well, I guess this is how it goes
The secret force that wrenches eyes upward
from the secret morning monologues
happens like electricity happens
and Man sees Woman's eyes and frowns
and can't tell whether they are blue
or brown.
Crumbs are on her lap.
Man doesn't notice but Woman thinks he does
Moving imperceptibly and not wasting a calorie
she flutters her hands over the warm loaves of her thighs.
Man notices an ephemeral strain Simon and Garfunkle and
becomes aware of a softening within his sternum and
electrons slowing, softing, into a May spring aesthetic
Woman rubs her finger which does not have a ring
and Coffee Cup wonders if it will still
have sentience within the bin or if the world
with all its broken beauty and mornings and warm hands
will suddenly just stop everything?
I look at my keys. The sort that express, not
the sort that open doors and drawers
but even these, time to time, will
fall beneath the wooden floors.
Man pulls his long coat off the back of his chair
without ceremony rises and turns to go
leaves his cup on the table for a coffee girl to attend to
and exits as the rain turns to snow.
Woman sits. And sits.
Woman might order another pumpkin muffin.
Her knees are chilled, watching her pinkly from the edge
of a pencil skirt like children's faces from a blanket.
A moment later she makes that same comparison
and laughs internally without gesture or sound.
And Woman looks around.
Woman smiles. Not because of Man or muffin
or the secret life of a Coffee Cup
but because she is Woman
struck lively by the sudden meta
fleeting passage of The Bigger
and her eyes, definitively brown
spark like bumper car antennae
and struck by magic, the same magic electricity
for an irreversible instant meet mine.
And for one fourteenth of a moment
Woman knows Me with all her life.
I shiver and she lobs me the red bean bag
and I hold the image in my mind like
a relic of the living divine.
The Bigger, the morning
the secret was mine.
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 11:44 AM UTC
*How does one overcompensate
For the incompetence of a nation?*
No compromise for the masses
undeniably stuck in ruts of habit
These days Ive seen and see
We're all craving harmony
With no equitable solution
To take the race out of the face
It's just accumulative corruption
Apprehensive assimilation
Aggression stirring underneath
A stone passive shade of sentience
Now say we might anticipate
The fantasizing fringe of youth
Where we will conquer or be conquered
By depravic spurring truth
Oct 27, 2011
Oct 27, 2011 at 2:07 AM UTC
I sit inside a body in blood that isnt my own. There are voices calling out a name, a name attached to this vessel. It's not mine.
I am conscious of my state, this sentience pains me.
I know what's out there. I know my potential, what I could be. This barrier of skin and blood prevents me. It hurts.
I'll sit in this shell of a body to be perceived by those who happen to pass by. Wading in blood that isnt my own, with skin like marble begging to be carved into, and I won't mind.
This body isnt my body, my body is inside.
Apr 18, 2021
Apr 18, 2021 at 12:53 AM UTC
Looked in the lint trash
What, a bucket of spiders?
But that's just my smarm, I mean
Charm, yes so charming, I
Feel I should tell
You: See, I am the kind
Of a man whose particles of rage all blend blisters into macrame
What? That's to say I only craft with vengeance, Art is Hell.
I'm not really sure, see, it seems I
have so many words inside and yet
No order, no syntax, no form, no norm.
Can't spin A.D.D. into gold, No,
I can't tremble, blink, then in that
Blink! Distill a miracle
Of words whose sentience, er,
Sentence myself to the chair,
The chair at the computer where,
Confounded,
I shiver and sigh, sob, eye.
Sep 7, 2011
Sep 7, 2011 at 6:43 AM UTC
Knowing makes me wonder
At evocative truths which abound
Salient sentience is a crucible
Where the enlightened meet
To sip ambrosia’s elixirs
Enrapturing mesmeric enchantments
Fecund grace ensues
Pervasions depths seem within reach
With treatises we expound
Lecherous libido’s pandemic liaisons
A chorus so unique
Each one a sentinel equation
In harmony replete
The decadent arrogant squirm
As rubato’s flair reveals
All the things that might have been
The love that they concealed
As they reach with grasping greedy hands
For things they can not steal
Jan 13, 2013
Jan 13, 2013 at 3:15 AM UTC
Be wary of the
paradoxical, neglected sentience among the departed minds
Seek the route which makes accessible...an absolute truth
oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, calcium, nitrogen, phosphorus
The composition of life
The creation of awareness, drifting from your nature
live irresponsibly, expose the fear to danger
it will devour the inessential anxiousness
and set yourself free
release from obligation,
release from routine duties
the masquerade of conditioning
no longer possessing you
bare spirit,
confront yourself
See the illusion, its deception
of your perception
remove the veil and feel
intensified anguish of the acknowledgment
of authorities dominance
to invent and forge manufactured minds
to divide us, impregnate the beauty
with depraved psychosis
then label it with sanity
taint them with vanity
to take the present moment
as an opportunity to breathe
here and now, everlasting liberation
reality, what is sincere?
What is truth?
It’s an option you determine
sight, holy sight
creating this world, this dread
this opportunity to break loose
undress and **** the reality in camouflage
reborn through a perceptual experience
the wilderness is within
the blinking 4th dimension
will soon carry us away
to an enigmatic change in sensory perception
the ego, self importance, it will pass away
is there a choice, a selection of setting?
When you zoom out of earth
examine closely the size of this
universe, we are microscopic babies
from the womb of infinite mystery
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 4:10 PM UTC
The fog came in and cut the hard edges off Monday morning,
Which really didn't do much good because a cold rain
Fell through it and soaked down to my soul.
It is the kind of day when reality bends and
The big questions beg for answers,
Like where does the spark go when it leaves?
I mean we turn out the lights, but the beam travels
Endlessly, the fastest thing we know, to the end
Of what?
The universe? Time? (Whatever time means compared to eternity)
So, the light in our eyes, where does it go when the power is cut?
Or am I supposed to accept, Dr. Hawking, the light we make
Rubbing two sticks together is superior to the light in us because we
Can't yet find the formula for sentience or measure
It's limits beyond what we can see?
Big questions, foggy, rainy Monday and I am alone
A week after the light went out in dad.
I expect he’s out past Jupiter by now, heading home.
He’s also right beside me, I can feel him, thank God.
Jan 23, 2017
Jan 23, 2017 at 3:41 PM UTC