"sequential" poems
The Talmud Teaches...
With respect to his son, a father is obligated to circumcise him, to redeem him [if he is a firstborn], to teach him Torah, to marry him off, and to teach him a craft...he is also
obligated to teach him to swim...(Kiddushin 29a)
**lay awake when the house is silent,
doing maths furiously in the head,
sleeping can be keeping while doing my calculus,
knowing in advance a conclusion comes coined
in only two colors, black or red
the question simple, did I meet my obligations?
and your read the passage for the umpteenth time,
and the same thought interferes as always,
should the order not be reversed,
the first thing to be fulfilled,**
teach them to swim
**based on experience life arrives in sequential, repeating waves,
purposed to drown the weak with no pretending that waters,
salt or sweet matters, so first order is business ought be survival preparation and**
teach them to swim
**if they can swim, stay afloat, then they can then comprehend
the glory of distinguishing right over wrong,
get their priorities straight, that saving others,
especially those you placed on the starting line of life,
is the first principle and overplants anything else when you**
teach them to swim
**my eyes see the tally, why, they are red! could it be lack of sleep?
I am smiling when I am lying,
teach them to swim always first,
but not enough, one must do it well, well,
and even then, better,
as all else will, from the well, follow, when you**
teach them to swim
3:10am
~~~
Oct 31, 2017
Oct 31, 2017 at 3:16 AM UTC
I am the Bird of Hermes,
I devoured my own wings,
And that is how I keep myself tamed.
Like a dark ghost you haunt me,
Wherever I go, your memories stalk me,
You think you knew me,
But the reality is far from the fantasy,
You have just seen the worst in me,
How would you look at me now?
A piller of strength,
One, with dangerous potential,
in the end, it's all sequential
Part of the tragedy is that life is unforgetful,
So strong that others fear my potential,
So dark and timid, yet so calm it offsets,
the storm that goes where I go,
To the point where I have to bite my wings,
And stop myself from soaring,
Cause this is not the story of Icarus,
But of the Fallen Bird that outgrew the master,
Yes, I am the Bird of Hermes,
And I devoured my own wings,
So that I remain tamed.
Feb 12, 2019
Feb 12, 2019 at 4:47 AM UTC
Normal isn't normal.
According to my daily journal.
For each unique day is abnormal
For being anomalously usual.
Boring isn't boring
It will get you thinking,
To get you to do something exciting,
and exciting is nowhere near boring.
Normal is boring.
For each usual day got me nothing.
Only to get me thinking till evening,
Then I write on my journal a short shift of something.
Boring is normal.
For everything can be sequential.
Meaning any complexcity can be simple.
But it might not be understood by any mortal.
Therefore, Normal is boring,
And Boring is normal.
But Boring isn't boring.
And Normal isn't normal.
In other words, Normal and Boring are enticing,
By Normal being abnormal,
and Boring being exciting.
I will now write this on my daily journal.
Jul 20, 2017
Jul 20, 2017 at 12:04 PM UTC
All day yesterday was the best day of my life
Nothing went wrong, everything went right
Tracking all the factors that helped make it so
Reinvigorates me to continue with my goals
There’s a thought that returns, maybe coincidental,
But there is a common thread that is sequential
Early in the morning is when I first saw you
And at the end of the day you were in my rear view
So you were there with me from sunrise to sunset
Any moment we had together I never felt upset
No awkward instances, only natural feelings
No pressure to make myself seem more appealing
You make me feel like I’m almost where I need to be
To have something that you may one day need from me
Leisurely I will continue to approach the situation
Because this is a path that I want to keep straightened
At the prime of our lives for the time of our lives
We just have to be willing to hold on for the ride
Hopefully I’ll have you before the towel’s thrown in
Together we will laugh at what could have been
All the bullets that we dodged and the ones still lodged
Deep into our hearts, but they’ll seem like a mirage
Compared to the dreams that we’ve chosen to live
After each other’s hearts that we’ve chosen to give
It feels so strange to be so close to these emotions
I’m hopeful for the future, for once my mind’s open
To all of the possibilities that life could deal to me
I’m so thrilled to see what will be revealed to me
Whatever happens to me, I need you to be there too
Since I know with you there we could see it all through
I can’t recall a single bad day in which you were involved
Even in one of your foul moods I was still so enthralled
That’s just the kind of person I will always choose to be
Doing whatever it takes to always have you with me
Especially when extreme patience is all that’s required
I’ll work hard at this job, no way am I ever getting fired
Committed until I’m beyond the age of being retired
Whistling while I work until the day I might expire
One day, to all these thought you won’t be oblivious
One day I’ll pursue you with an attitude that’s vigorous
Until that day comes I’ll patiently wait off to the side
For an opportunity to make you my source of pride
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 4:03 PM UTC
Philosophical epistemology strumming adventures
Albeit, coherent mental decoding stratifications structured
Supposedly our world rests in our minds, revolving knowledge
An entwine of conceptual abstract flowing within oneself
The mind in the “I” the “I” a reality lived in my experiences
George of Leontini, a mine mind approving solipsism exploring innatism
Imaginative insights that nothing exists, the secrets secreting secrets
The knowledge behind the veils that remains un-communicated
A reverse of normality and known existences, moral disposition
Hypothesis of depersonalizations, adventures of self internalization
Justifications for what lies outside the Medulla Oblongata
Skepticism and just alternatives to western philosophy
Subjective unapproved experiences only robust in one’s mind
Descartes abstraction of inner experiences, reciprocated paradigm
Intuitively, perceived lived formulations of "Cogito Ergo Sum"
Psychological conscious undoubted individualistic thoughts
Berkley explored perspectives that physicality is an embodiment of the mind
The mind a decoding visualizer, that encompass the non-existent
An idealism marriage of ‘metaphysical’ and epistemological philosophy
The intense esoteric “dualism” verses the fiery “monism” reality
Mind boggling differentiated truths bleeding with blinking unresolvable hypothesis
The jiggered methodological, streamlining the un -logic sequential beats
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 11:56 AM UTC
I am a certified expert in the sequential pushing of buttons,
this pushing performed, on a good day, in concert with the
expensively purchased, somewhat rare mental model of
the workings of a recently commonplace variety of machine
dependent at its core on the minuscule presence of increasingly-rare
earth metals allowing for the conditional flow of groups of electrons.
These machines, like their precursors, are further dependent on
the supply of slightly less increasingly rare combustible material
for which armed conflicts are routinely fought and many have died.
My interest in the machines began at an early age,
enticed by the illusion of control, and on the whole,
I think, motivated by the idea that these machines
processing information, the core mechanism of reality,
might be used to create understanding.
In the interceding years, it is increasingly apparent to me
that while some are used for this purpose, most,
like most things around me, are controlled and engaged by
multi-personed organisms concerned primarily with:
1) self-preservation AND
2) the collection of, and limited divestment of,
unit notions of rarefied value, insured by the
existence of another similar organism valued for its
1) self- and nearby-environs preservation AND
2) recent track record of insuring continued relatively easy access
to the aforementioned important combustible materials.
—it is generally considered to people's credit that this notion
of value is thus-derived and no longer as frequently derived by virtue
of possessing a metal which, while of certain non-combustible use,
is basically just pretty rare and really, really shiny.
I find myself again shortly in a need of convincing such an organism
that my button pushing is of sufficient quality,
on sufficiently frequent good days,
that it should consider me a temporary part thereof and divest,
of itself to me, sufficient units of value that I might happily
continue to push buttons on its behalf in the pursuit of further units.
I am, for some reason, somewhat less than thrilled with this prospect
finding it, despite its marketability, a maybe less than important enterprise.
I am existentially concerned by the idea that my whole value may derive
from my button pushing, and is thus further dependent on
the availability of rare-earth metal and also-rare combustibles.
In some delusion of importance amongst 7 billion plus similar primates
and a unfathomably vast universe,
I thought you might be interested to know
Jan 21, 2014
Jan 21, 2014 at 4:56 PM UTC
I accept and digest,
The changes being fed.
A necessary medication,
Essential to the operation.
Sequential,
But not complete.
Heard skipping on repeat.
Temptation lingers slowly,
Beneath the darkness,
The mask.
Sheathing,
Veiling,
Protecting fragile skin.
Because the pain that truly ruptures us,
Ignites from within.
In sin,
In harmony,
In truth.
Cast upon the world at large,
Stand alone.
It’s you.
Feb 16, 2013
Feb 16, 2013 at 6:09 PM UTC
My uncle slit a man's throat with a box cutter in my childhood home and didn't apologize.
Sitting in a circle filled with crack smoke and stale beer breath.
This is a shining example of what I've lived with
and the lengths I've had to go to escape the thing people call "destiny".
Thievery, lies, pressure, and violence
has been calling my name for the longest.
But I know the voice too well to be taunted.
Words are my freedom and words are my piece of mind.
There is not a single substitute.
Whether poem, prose, or paragraph,
This is the only calling I've ever had.
I've lived with a hoarder, addicts, senility, and ignorance
in a variety of different combinations and forms.
At times, power, water, freedom, money, necessities, have all been an unachievable thing to me.
Lost to the vile goals of those folk I love.
I am the only one who sees the beauty in the fragile and odd.
The others see only a mess on a paper, and move their eyes to the nearest glowing box.
My father drowned when I was six.
My grandfather followed soon after.
My mother felt the stab of this and caved so many times.
I witnessed and shared the burden of her pain and grief.
My grandmother forgot everything she ever loved or knew, and short after passed as well.
Pets and possessions,
friends and followers.
All gone with a drastic breeze.
I am the one with the vision, but I am trapped in a shell of a city,
covered with that wretched stink of refined soy.
Will I be able to unburden the world from myself?
You all give me such great courage and allow me to share the beauty as I see it.
You all have such great skill with symbols and it makes me feel like home isn't far.
I want this. I want this.
If I keep breathing like the rest of the world
I feel I may miss the sound of the world's heartbeat.
But my death would not bring a solution for the ones I love.
Only a warrant for more death.
I need this. I need this.
With my words, I conjure up hell.
And hell brings with it the familiar.
Run little kitties, run.
The Doubling House and The Sequential Church will not hold forever.
My havens are temporary, but the craters are forever.
I will struggle till the pain becomes all I am
and I buckle under the weight of what I shouldn't have taken
from the mighty Atlas.
I do this for me.
I do this for you.
Sep 5, 2013
Sep 5, 2013 at 2:58 PM UTC
I dreamt
of becoming
an oarsman
on the
rowing team
fervently
pumping my
arms to
the cadence call
as the craft
chased the
twilight
moon
under sequential
bridges
but woke up
remembering
my buoyancy
is like unto
a large
rock
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 16, 2012 at 6:06 PM UTC
the lovely picture window (always the same, always different)
There are painters who must,
having found the place, must,
repaint it, compelled to repeat it,
each a variant, yet always the same,
always different
I awake to a perspective that is wide,
always differentiated from the prior,
always almost similar, but never with
the same exactitude, differing attitude,
same longitude, identical latitude,
always different
horizon distanced, in all ways a view
encompassing, duality near, far distant,
harmoniously, eyes open, magnetized
to wake before 6am by the suns modesty,
first light, first clarity, a curtain risen, yet,
always different
am I so blessed or thus cursed, for the urge
to disclaim and ode, compose and thus self-
decompose, analyze, reflect, slice apart, needing
the comprehensive understanding this me/place
scripts the raw appreciation, daily differentiated
always the same
this peaceful venue seizures, chest calmly
pounding at the insistence it commands,
the price I must pay for the prize to praise,
to sing, weep, reward restful sleep with lyrics
eked out, pouring, unsustainable yet finished,
always different
a single May Iris, returns, born from a torrential,
thunder, lightning, sky mayhem, rises by a sundial
greets midst a planted clump, upright rises, lavender,
in a majestic solitary, absent but a day prior, yet mine eyes
failed to witness its discernible emerging birthing creation,
always different,
always the same
here, I am Iris too, always the same, a day aged,
but the differences minute but stolid actualized,
this overnight sensation, my body’s restoration,
what I visualize, indivisible, now visible, realized,
miracle of continuity, unchanging chained change,
always different ,
always the same
wonder, am I more blessed, or a s~lightly cursed being,
my breath restored, wet eyes full brimming, changed,
revived but always modified, a newer old man, whose
sum total always a different number, but in sequential,
compelled to confess, no understanding of this miracle,
always the same,
always different,
this daily visionary miracle
6:36 AM
Fri May 24
2024
Silver Beach,
Shelter Island
May 24, 2024
May 24, 2024 at 6:53 AM UTC
man was the first to preform suicide
natural born martyrs
too sick to bring themselves to eat their own filth
our strongest are easiest to fall
men were not made to survive
but sequential installments are in
follow suite in order to remain on top
in order to fall farther
Sep 10, 2021
Sep 10, 2021 at 3:28 PM UTC
Veins, veins,
length and breadth,
intertwined
beats to freedom
or desolation;
a terminus
lost on a circular.
An ebbing destination,
unchartered targets,
Follow the signs.
We are a one way street,
follow the signs
on software maps.
Stumped
by sequential lights
and us, caught
in a dragnet
within steely fish,
gasping for air,
choking on smoke,
bilious coughs,
hacking sputum,
gobbing phlegm globs
in interval gaps
within gridlocks;
nose to **** to
nose to ****
The rage, the stares
the shouts, the finger,
the Grrr’s, the Rrrr’s,
the honks, the blares,
the bumper to bumper
expletive shares.
The rolling down,
the alighting,
the threats,
the fighting.
The falling down,
the separation,
reseating,
the rolling,
the thunder,
the trudge,
the stops, the starts.
Follow the signs,
follow the signs.
Robotic conveyors
for humans,
mechanical
fossil fueled
chariots,
grumbling, grunting,
wheee-ing and
screeching,
and screaming
and spewing
and chuffing
and guffing
black plumes,
air tarred,
veins, veins
clogged and bogged,
viscous, molasses,
liquid black blob.
Road fogged,
numbers logged.
Veins, veins,
follow the signs,
slow crawl.
Veins, veins,
follow the signs,
follow the signs,
sprawl.
Copyright Marc Hawkins 2017
Nov 12, 2017
Nov 12, 2017 at 6:20 AM UTC
More so now than not
I glance forward and back.
Not at the sequential morning.
Back to you and I and he
Mourning our cynical place,
He is not known to you, or to I.
Place torn away with regret, but never remorse.
I do not sleep for fear alone.
A lonely, lovely intrigued chamber of Death.
Alone in our chamber of lost things and letters
Death, it seems, will take me broken and shattered.
Letters catch my eye, not on paper but on the floor,
Shattered among the wine glasses.
Floors not stepped on, to an emptiness-and
Glasses cannot help my weary eyes from tearing.
And to the slamming of doors and screams!
Tearing of a love long past alive.
(Screams), and then, silence eerily drunk
Alive, but only just, I tip this wonderful wine.
Drunk, I come to a realization, much to my surprise…
Wine does not bottle up that which does not fit.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 3:59 AM UTC
We imagine Life sequential-
from birth until we go.
Yet, being fraught with memory,
I protest it is not so.
Our hates, our loves, our prejudice,
all build up over years.
Before we face the precipice,
we face our sum of fears.
My passionate kiss upon your neck
was learned with other lovers.
Even in the here and now
I'll speak some phrase of mother's.
Even when all my cutaneous cells
have shed and been replaced.
I continue to show the world,
what appears the selfsame face.
Every moment of my "Now"
betrays this underpinning
Only in my final breath
can I put paid to my sinning.
Jan 13, 2013
Jan 13, 2013 at 1:11 PM UTC
Morning rays creep through curtains
to disturb the slumber that I seek
bright & early, surely certain
to start off ruined for the week.
Yawn & stretch, then wipe my eyes
of the sleep that crusts the lids
check the time with a blurry sigh
today’s another day to live.
Start off slow with little function
in need of a smoke & some caffeine
Camel plus coffee's consumption
eases the vices that I fiend.
The chill outside engulfs me
and lets me see my breath
if I could know what the wind can see
I'd win this battle over death.
I'd curse every glint of morning sun
and let him know he's met his maker
it's a future tense, but I have won
the "givers" met the "taker."
Dec 13, 2010
Dec 13, 2010 at 4:45 PM UTC
We run our course
We go the extra mile
We stay up sustaining immortality
Our deaths turned round
Projects on behalf of Eros
When we usually preach Agape
We enact sequential art performed with grace
Luna tunes colored water splashable you
In person honey with unlimited shelf life
We mate across spanned labyrinths a maze
Combs ensconced with nectar leading back to queen
Our hive stops the minute drones bring home virus
Reconstructed renewability narrative needing update
Horton hears who made the sky say so much
Way past expiration date skids our frictional kiss
We could almost imagine eternity naming the date
Mutual assured destruction averted by forming pact
Loosens the chain reaction fused by fission escalated
To the max man’s post-apocalyptic grocery store tale
Sells e-foods gold light fear energy time bubble Dimension X
Dash between dates tombstoned selfie virtual cemetery
Tandem lovers pass together clasping each last breath alone
Little deaths punctuate like piano keys pluck cat gut strums
Enameled amber encased in static slabs conjoined by fringe elements
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 12:31 AM UTC
Forcibly removing wisps from fruit soaked heads.
Curling into melted breakfast.
Willing to line the lateral.
Cracked soup pouring, selfish.
Grinding halt in whole old text.
Pre-youth in use lost in chronos.
Trigger a lament looped put new, lude.
Masses of self-titled separation.
Entangled in sandstone, origin archaic.
Natural disaster of a birth-right in shards.
Trees growing limbs in lungs producing rust.
Forever dystopian dust in rungs of a ladder.
First hurt by ascending sequential first love.
Content with enough abrupt living daylights.
Apex green latex sunrise painting me from inside my blood.
Obtuse.
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 10:25 PM UTC
A broken shell, a living hell, and all I'm left with now is my regret.
Better days ahead were a pipedream after our relationship crumbled. Countless arguments. Disagreements. Every day! For my life, I can't believe we stayed together as long as we did. God knows I didn't want her to leave me. How much longer must I wrestle with these painful memories?
I just feel regret, unspoken, I just feel the pain; since she left, my life has been a broken shell, a living hell — I can't believe I let her go; it was foolish pride before the fall the day she left when I lost all — I should have held her closer, I should have made her see the feelings I have for her, what she means to me; I didn't say I love her or beg her to stay, instead, I stood in silence and watched her walk away, and all I'm left with now is my regret.
Justification is an exercise in futility. Knowing what I could have and should have done leaves an inextricable switchblade in my soul. Love's lessons learned too late — love's loss too great.
Misting eyes beseech as memories replay in my head, but they're too painful, and I feel dead. No joy to be found. Oh well, my self-imposed hell. Painful memories open like an oubliette under my feet, plunging me lost and languishing in isolation's labyrinth. Questions left unanswered, decaying in the debris fields of "what if.”
Reflection can be a catharsis for the soul, but it can also rip a hole in it, and soon reality roars from guilt's bottomless pit to devour all hope. Sometimes despair is mitigated by occasional reminders of us. Thoughts lingering on happier times, blessed moments mine to treasure. Until the damnable loop of regret dominates to decimate any respite of joy. Vanishing expectations. Weeping willow's silent wail. Xerox memories fade with time.
Years have passed, and my thoughts continue to haunt me over what we could have had. Zero-sum game — all I'm left with now is my regret.
Mark Toney ©️ 2023
* * *
April 22, 2023
I hope you found the above fictional prose poem interesting. I wrote it in response to a writing challenge I heard about. Write a 26-sentence short story (or prose poem). Each sentence must begin with the alphabet's sequential letters starting with A through Z. One sentence must be 100 words long, and another sentence only one word. Would you like to try it?
Apr 22, 2023
Apr 22, 2023 at 2:07 AM UTC
Faces are recreated on a piece of paper,
Words copied from my mind and saved for later.
Cause the windows of my mind are my eyes,
And the view is not something I've improvised.
I'm just enjoying being a passenger with such potential,
Getting inspired by the events even if not sequential.
And in turn art is a part of me, woven so beautifully,
That I use the colors of Twilight, waves and trees.
I'm trying to savor the universe so that it never runs out,
I've turned its essence into more shades of pastels than I can count.
I've written its stories in the memories of timeless books,
So diverse and enchanting, some I never understood.
I'm in love everyday, but I'm also forlorn too,
I cry my sorrows to the sun as it dives into the blue.
I'm so small, I'm so inferior to the creator,
But as long as I'm alive, everyday I'm an innovator.
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 4:24 PM UTC
The buzz of the knife is music in my ears
the same machine..i've used for years
i can't help myself...
god knows i tried
since i was sixteen...i have the devil inside...
as i carve yet another slice of this life
she is moving...why
because i eat them alive
the machine still buzzing and doing it's thing
i'm almost finished...dismembering this pretty little thing
she's quiet now...all is fine
i'm eating her tongue...with a glass of wine
the law knows to well...i am compelled...
i will not stop..... till i am shot
when they find these corpses of mine....
they know the world is no longer fine..
to leave my mark...i take the tongue
pickle it in brine......
would you like one...?
i don't seek contrite....i have no right
my hunger for flesh...is no longer a fight
i am normal as defined by me...not a cell in this world..
will i ever be...
i will end it first...by my own hand..
i am the king...of my land...will make my own stand
oh here's another..been waiting for her
i saw her talking to a friend at work...my mouth started watering
what a tasty treat indeed....i will have it for dinner..you wait and see
garlic and onions and...oh i can't wait
to have her tongue on my dinner plate....
Apr 29, 2013
Apr 29, 2013 at 12:48 AM UTC
*Well the stages
Were lit for these people
And those pages,
Demanded another sequel.
The stroke of a pen,
The swipe of a blade,
Dare to do this again?
Do I let myself be afraid?
Each sequential simile,
Painted the portrait
That was given to me
of emotional anguish and torture.
While sunbathing in the shadows
I let the thoughts consume me
And as I'm alone, praying not to explode,
I remember the way that you'd hold me.
I was breathing, speaking, hurting,
a mask behind a rugged shell that was forgiving,
But under a slight gap in an undrawn curtain,
I was struggling, grieving, and tired of living.
The stage was roaring,
Viewers were watching, laughing,
And as I watched their smiles soaring,
I convinced myself to stop cutting.*
_____________________________________________________________
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
I am not one day closer to death
I am having one extra day of living
And if I shall witness my final breath
I am leaving this world singing.
Jun 12, 2016
Jun 12, 2016 at 7:50 AM UTC
A Division of Mathematics
Adding great value to it
Multiplying its applications
Reducing laborious means
Going on logical steps
Riding on its riders
Gliding on its theorems
Solving hitches and glitches
Assuming things as “x”
Applying rational methods
Adopting sequential steps
Solving problems complex
Starting with assumption
Running through derivation
Following brilliant notion
Deciphering through perception
Grand in concepts
Grand in derivations
Grand in suppositions
Resolving problems in a grand manner
Mother of mathematics
Mother of logics
Cracking all mysteries
By initializing things as “x”
Assuming God as “x”
Following tenets and commandments
Living life on virtues and truth
Surely shall we know what “x” is
And what “I” am and what “V” (we) are
And surely shall we know that
X=I=V is Life’s Algebra.
Sep 11, 2016
Sep 11, 2016 at 8:57 AM UTC
I feel sick.
The taste of cigarettes
In ash-colored air -
The two are non-sequential.
Cigarettes taste like home.
The good part of home.
The part of home
That silences my mother’s mouth;
Preventing the vices of its tongue
And the stresses that cause them.
Over generation.
Over generation.
You are your mother.
A compilation of love
Forced by proved masculinity
In your open cavities.
And my father said...
Well -
He didn’t.
Words failed him,
As he failed us.
Silence and cigarettes.
Over generation.
Over generation.
Aug 17, 2012
Aug 17, 2012 at 6:06 AM UTC
I sit wrapped in mist...
as the Fog Bank rolls in
on the shores of my mind
I find through an ocean
fed upon by the River Styx
lost in my own Complexity
Thoughts like confetti
float through the air
as if to Puzzle me to Dare
To arrange the Puzzle Pieces
of my life, while constantly bogged
in the mists of my own Mind
Sequential thoughts drifting
in the mists of time and place
as I continue to search for my face
Lost in the pile of puzzle pieces
a jumble in the duration of the
persistance of my procreation
All the Work here is licensed under the Name
®SilverSilkenTongue and the © Property of J.Flack
Apr 26, 2015
Apr 26, 2015 at 8:38 PM UTC