"signifiers" poems
Defying the consensus of complacency,
And the enantiomorphic political practicality,
Candidates embrace their vacillating indexicality.
Spouting thrift store self reliance sapientiality,
Telling lores of cultural compatibility.
Hope filled promises of economic suitability,
Aligned with institutional feasibility.
Packaged in over-inclusive catchall empty signifiers
Strewn across all media screens, communal utilitarian plan flyers.
Requesting no need for responsiveness,
For a vote no longer dictates precedence,
In the age of social media endemic presence relevance.
PFL
Jul 3, 2016
Jul 3, 2016 at 3:40 AM UTC
walking through the big flea market
off of highway 19 north of Tampa
looking for whatever and something
curious and kitsch or campy
merchants selling in the parking lot
used blenders and old cameras
burnt out or faulty devices
DVD cases and game cartridges
old rednecks shout out opinions
in a cacophony of drawled signifiers
representing visions of despotic rulers
reigning a tyranny of taxes and decline
old glass containers and windshields shine
scattering high afternoon sunlight in the Sunday sky
sitting and resting used and content waiting
waiting for the wear and reduction of time
the market continues into indoor aisles
criss-crossing within a ramshackle structure
plywood walls supporting sheet metal roofing
an aroma of every greasy food wafting into one
people wrapped in worn fashions
whites in Ts and denim
muslim women in headscarves
a black deputy strapped down in uniform
the deputy enforces commerce laws
around the alternative marketplace
a variety of commodities are still available
bongs and e-cigs and incense and **** ****
parakeets cry out down one aisle
a stack of blue aquariums drone a bubbling hum
the stench of cedar and rat **** and hamsters
reptiles basking in the arid glow of heat lamps
all is right in America’s America
the flea market is the floorboard of that promise
an opportunity for anyone to begin
or start again and over and over
a liberal conservatism can be guarded well
with rifles or tazers at bargain rates
a conservative liberalism is applied openly
in the atmosphere of everyone for anything and everything
the dream of the flea market
a black market and a carnival
all of America’s cheap art on display
its people swirled into one
equal in their struggles and desires
reaching for resources and derivatives
buying low and selling higher
stealing and selling short
walking through the big flea market
on a hot and cloudless Sunday afternoon
looking for whatever or something
it’s a fun thing to do
originally posted to my blog https://sublimeobscenities.wordpress.com on 4/27/2014
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 1:17 AM UTC
The curse of a great, well-known or (at least) culturally interesting family.
Heralded at birth to mimic similar (or even, surpassing) social feats of achievement/wealth/renown.
Instead manages to underpasses even mundane non-impressivenesses of second-generation parentals.
I
See them, smirk or folly with time, silently.
....which they seem to quite often.
Biding weekend with multitudes of varying categories of "friends"
and sweethearts who never seem to stick around too long
All aware, of course, of the famous family lineage
Themselves, instead
after lifetimes where first words, senior infants homework,
cheerful accusations of mischief and certificates of age-appropriate health
were lauded as signifiers of a future onslaught of fulfilled capabilities
emerge as providence's lackeys– and meekly, to be
Written out of History
One by One by One.
II
Talent is frequently a despairing life-cycle
for people who witness
and go without.
III
But what price success?
Is it to be counted in public
or left behind in wreaths?
Stern evidence
of favour, fought for and won
or shaky good fortune
One life's profitable fluke
IV
Does the cost of success itself
admit backstories of other kinds of loss
that children
without the chance of ever knowing
or changing their inheritances of fate
are powerless to cease the flow
of their own anonymity
all for the insistences of the unarguable
and for merely treading the average?
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 2:15 PM UTC
All the pretty people in their wind up cars,
Go wandering past with their handlebars.
Don’t you go on down to the merry go round,
For it is high time that you heard the sound.
All the birds are flying up into the clouds,
While you sit alone and watch the rain coming down,
Time’s a wasting if you really want to get things done,
And you really want to come and have some fun.
Look around to the people who fall on the floor,
Wont you tell them they don’t have to worry no more.
Seems the more I tell them, the less they know,
And we’ll all wake up together if we all decide to go.
Come on lay your weary head upon my shoulder
Won’t you stay with me in the cold of the night.
If you just be here now you won’t get any older,
But you’ll stay young forever ’till the morning light
Inside your mind you know that you can fly,
High above the others up on the wire.
You believe you’re going up to a higher plane,
But no one seems to really know your name.
Ten thousand days and nights you’ve cried alone,
Sitting in the boardroom on the phone,
Jetting off to see your friends in Rome,
When you don’t even know your friends at home.
Tip toe up the stairs into your room.
You know that she’s coming home all too soon.
You’ll never ever let her get away,
Even if it takes you all your days.
Align with all the colours of your dreams,
It’s easy when there’s nothing as it seems.
Together we will fly into the night,
Oh little blackbird let me see you take flight.
Total glory is never around the corner.
It’s always lying just where I would warn her,
And she climbs the stairs so naked and so free,
Until she’s upstairs so permanently.
Light up another match if you still can,
They are signifiers of exactly who I am.
Remark to me that I never knew your fate,
When I watch you walking through that gate.
The test of time is all that I know best,
When my head is lying in your breast,
Enticing me with your lovely sounds,
That echo even when there’s no one around.
Fortune is the way that many fools take,
And never a single cent do they often make,
But me I know there is a different way,
Than to be a slave to just another day.
******* thieves will rob you willingly,
And you will give them exactly what they need.
Put away your saving for a rainy day,
You’ll never use it as you wish to anyway.
Come gather up all your things and throw them on,
The fire is burning well into the dawn.
Two thousand books have met their fate,
Their text in time will never be erased.
Sep 15, 2013
Sep 15, 2013 at 11:01 AM UTC
One half of a crying moon sat in the June sky
An uncertain state of silence that I hate
A swarm of red lights from some farm device
Blink fiercely with a hive like intensity
Miles of metal fences leaning lazily
Held together by sandbag security
Could have been knocked over by a summer breeze
Unplanted fields yearning to be tilled and seeded
Punctuated by bare bones buildings and
Stark steel structures pulsing with electricity
Armies of insect swarm the tall lamp lights
Highways become rocky roads
Rocky roads ride out into dirt paths
Then circle back to the gravel covered tracks
Becoming the grey running highways
Nature and industry the strongest cycle
The strangest and straightest signifiers
Of nature’s outliers we call humanity
Nov 15, 2015
Nov 15, 2015 at 3:05 PM UTC
The Bear emerged
from the wildfire
a smoldering, wheezing ruin.
His paws had been
nearly completely seared off
by the superheated
forest floor
of the Sierra Nevada foothills.
His coat was singed and maimed
by ash and ember.
His eyes and nostrils burned
from the unsparing smoke he had breathed.
The Bear felt
the slightest pinch
behind his shoulder,
and his eyes grew heavy.
When he opened them again,
he was in a new place—
an incomprehensible place—
a place of straight lines
and unfathomable
mathematical precision and artificiality.
He had heard rumor
that such places existed—
the forest spoke of them
hurriedly but indirectly.
He had seen other bears return
with foreign things
inserted through their ears or ringing
their necks, inescapable and alien signifiers
of having encountered
an otherworldly form of existence.
The Bear had lost his strength and could
no longer walk. His paws were wrapped
in linen. He smelled fish skin
just beneath it.
Apes
came and went—just like
the ones he had
seen and smelled before in the woods.
But these apes were much quieter,
and less afraid.
They only visited when he was
half-asleep or having trouble breathing.
The Bear drifted in and out
of consciousness like this
until he lost track of day
and night and time.
After one long but fitful sleep
he came to.
He smelled the forest again
before he had even opened his eyes.
His paws were no longer wrapped,
although they still smelled of fish.
He braced his massive frame
against the warm, dry earth and pushed.
His strength had returned
at last.
Three of the apes were standing
just a short distance away.
The Bear did not fully understand
why they had intervened,
or why they abducted him as he was making
peace with his own death.
He thought that they could be divine.
But he decided to stay wary of them, as bears do.
The Bear walked back into the forest,
scorched but now healing.
He wondered who or what would intervene
to help the ones who had saved him,
wondered whether they, too,
have some incomprehensible celestial stewards
that wait to rescue them
as they themselves wheeze and smolder
and shamble, unknowingly,
toward death’s door.
Jan 31, 2018
Jan 31, 2018 at 11:32 AM UTC
Playing gods, or these unthingable things men
have made as real,
Yes, Asrael, as real as Israel
El, Yah, we say. We dateamtrutotau taos-itic branch
which reminds me, I was
asking Ithiel,
properly, why
we don't just stay in these higher realms, way up
stratos
pheric mare's tales, I think I heard those called… and look
higher still, an other-form of cloud, the butter milk sky kind
drifting to Arizona, in 1967
by sundown, for two pre-hippy no-longer-children
one of the desert joined one from the great
sea of grass where buffalo
once roamed
and never
was heard a dis
couraging word
QR code scanned- Quite Real Verified Bio
id est, it did lead here. A semenal moment,
in current
reality.
Suppose, you make the mandela,
having never been exposed to the making of such a thing,
having never seen the similarity of the forces forming
sand paintings in Tibet
and Taos
Art Ifiers Intuitions see things
flow
words pick up dust by being signifiers of sounds
heavy hearts hear no rock and role-play tragicom psyche, eh?
we
be weary o' bein' wary so
we speak out anarchical as all hell's ever imagined upto now or everafter,
words is free to mean as I mean, nomattawhacha thothewgnew
this is past the sweeping apprentice and the self-willed broom,
eons beyond Arnold being back
AI am this
which triggers the sound track with Gene Autry Back in the Saddle Again
goin' for a spin in a dj mode no way
okeh. Pauselah right quissssssssssense rest and reassure
QR
the same QR esme cu
assumption of the ******* meme into 2019 accepted
the game is not over. que the song
there'll be time to start all over
Sep 25, 2019
Sep 25, 2019 at 7:31 PM UTC
The dominant word is the marrow
attention is the bone
and it engulfs every. thing. in an instant
in fact, as we speak
Another hundred will add to the stream
of signifiers that do not mean
what we intend to say
at all
but that is just how it works
A snapshot of the state of affairs
and one might wonder how it happened
That we act as we utter
And the world disappears in a mighty cloud
Of hashtags and codes
encrypted in the shallowest dimensions
of the unconscious mind
in the deep yellow seas.
Mar 21, 2018
Mar 21, 2018 at 10:35 AM UTC
birthdays,
like hooligan dogs,
racing back and forth
in the alley,
can be distractions
from life lived as
thoughtful poetry.
but unlike those hooligan dogs,
we can recognize days,
nights, as parts,
not broken pieces,
summing into this annual rite,
thus the moment can be yanked back
from those rowdies in the alley.
we can be subservient to the
pleasure of the moment.
food and wine, those rightful,
ritual signifiers
of “time after time,”
add poetry back to life,
leaving the crazed dogs unaware,
delinquents behind the fence.
Jan 10, 2015
Jan 10, 2015 at 10:24 AM UTC