"tedium" poems
The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
15.4k
The young maricones and the ***** muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating ****** oysters
Surround my solitary home,
Enemies of my soul,
Conspirators in pajamas
Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.
Radiant summer brings out the lovers
In melancholy regiments,
Fat and thin and happy and sad couples;
Under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and moon,
There is a continual life of pants and *******
A hum from the fondling of silk stockings,
And women's ******* that glisten like eyes.
The salary man, after a while,
After the week's tedium, and the novels read in bed at night,
Has decisively ****** his neighbor,
And now takes her to the miserable movies,
Where the heroes are horses or passionate princes,
And he caresses her legs covered with sweet down
With his ardent and sweaty palms that smell like cigarettes.
The night of the hunter and the night of the husband
Come together like bed sheets and bury me,
And the hours after lunch, when the students and priests are ************
And the animals mount each other openly,
And the bees smell of blood, and the flies buzz cholerically,
And cousins play strange games with cousins,
And doctors glower at the husband of the young patient,
And the early morning in which the professor, without a thought,
Pays his conjugal debt and eats breakfast,
And to top it all off, the adulterers, who love each other truly
On beds big and tall as ships:
So, eternally,
This twisted and breathing forest crushes me
With gigantic flowers like mouth and teeth
And black roots like fingernails and shoes.
10k
.
I stare down at the plate of toast and beans
wondering why this was never part of my dreams.
Looking for the future with an illusional pretence,
hoping good apples will fall on my side of the fence.
And as the fork dances slow
around the legumes in spirals,
the tedium of a wasting life
bears the burden and scars
of missed opportunities in paralysis
and the colour of once bright lights
glow black,
shining a shadow into the void
covering the bruises
that were once achievements of worth,
now tender patches
of failure.
I drop the fork ...
… pushing away the plate and leaving food uneaten,
my desire for its nutrition fought and beaten,
Looking at the apple tree with sombre regret
maybe its fruit will fall and save me yet.
And disappointment
is worse than anger,
it begins with the stench of loss
the nasal whiff of
what if …
And what if the little apple tree
drops all its fruit down to me?
Would I recognise fortune on my side
or fear the illusions and run to hide?
© Pagan Paul (17/02/18)
May 14, 2019
May 14, 2019 at 5:09 PM UTC
There Is But One Law (The Dancer's Coda)
There is but one set of laws,
One that need be obeyed,
One that brooks no heresy,
One that gives no absolution.
One that needs no priests, no canons,
One that that refuses disobedience.
We all bend knee at altar invisible,
Though feasance never requested.
The Laws of Physics.
A body at rest, a body in motion.
Laws immutable, unconditional,
Equations, proofs, demonstrable,
Inequalities inexcusable, banished.
Dancer says:
I am heretic, even these laws I refuse.
My body denies limitations,
My mind believes I will make do
What it could not, but yesterday.
Defiance from wire to wire is the
Fuel in my veins, fear but a detail,
Leaping from from ten meters more,
My Declaration of Independence.
My body plastic, my mind ethereal,
Some mock, call it trickery,
Some hail, call me hero.
There are forces greater than mine,
Forces irrevocable, mathematically superior.
Each day my force grows as well,
Visions imagined supersede the
Tedium of definitions, of boundary lines.
Bend the law, conquer the null, fill the void.
Each day sketch, devise, organize a
New rebellion, follow only one command,
Honor but a single battle cry.
Leap, then fall!
That dancer, your only law,
That heretic, thine only coda.
Action is freedom.
For you are dancer,
Whisper as you leap:
The Fifth Freedom I possess,
The Freedom to Fall.
May 17th, 2013
May 18, 2013
May 18, 2013 at 4:12 PM UTC
(Inspired by article below)
I.
Continuity
your filibuster egg of sand
dazzled curiosity
with creaky shell of hints
heaped upon the tedium
of knowledge's unfurl undeterred
by encyclopedic impatience
Assurances of rip(Van Winkl)ed
economics shooed paper strings of
revelation like anarchy-powered
taxes summoning a foreword
to anachronistic campaigns
of environmental friendliness
II.
Meanwhile years
have been filed down to flashes of
chronology for continuity's organic rebus
However long it took
the economic karma to fall into the
abodes of hedonistic pharaohs
it was instant
Skin that ruled behind the constitution
of allergic breath
bailed on the bones against their most
sublime intentions
Limbo-treading landlords
huddled in their mummified freeze
after breadline bashers scolded them
with the spoils of a new brand
of pyramid scheming
Robbers of the coffin palaces
stole the intimations of identity
theft from today
Immortality and freedom
were compelled to share a meaning
like estranged siblings
or bound dynasties
I(a).
Abydos
how you coyly toyed with us
with a diversion bordering on monolithic
04 23 14
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 12:58 PM UTC
Squalid off-white cube
fluorescent buzzing hue
water stained tiles
tribulation from digital files
dilapidated symbiote
invisible hungry parasite
optimism capsized in the abyss
tedium tongue french kiss
five hours a month
forest bathing in the sun
a cure they say
nature is a gateway
shambling down trails
languid gait sails
fractal patterns surround
tweets in background
head starts to clear
wondrous frontier
five hours a month
soaking in the sun
not enough time
to melt away grime
five hours a week
leaves a happier physique
summer sea breeze
rolling over unease
basking in the heat
leaving is so so bittersweet
return to human farm
pray for fire alarm
nature is a gateway
natures my getaway
Sep 20, 2018
Sep 20, 2018 at 8:52 AM UTC
sleep walking through you
dead brain with a hard ****
a man
all pretense
hiding behind your skirt
who hurt you like a cold razor bleeding
and who was hurt by you
like a bullet in the chest
your charms killer ray guns
making me collapse from the inside out
like a house in flames
screaming
left out of your dreams
oh dread
an empty shroud
with a charred mouth
who twisted your heart out
a man with a winter corpse for a soul
short ***** and dead tree eyes
who ravaged your bones
and ate your marrow with belligerence
crushing your fragrant garden
my feet pebbles and stones
trampling your bed
while you sped by me
in your new man's muscle car
sneering
you
a laughing hot *****
wearing cold silver sunglasses
and flaming lips
that ***** hearts
blacktop down
in a red fast car
like a rocket with fat Dunlap's
spewing
mud in my mouth
like me
he looked at other women endlessly
like rows of sprinkled cupcakes
for the eating
loving their form
imagining their slick glide
and wet kisses
insulting your tenderness
so you would believe in nothing
until you where an endless black pit
until i found out i needed you
and it was to late for us
your absence a lesson
that your presence could never teach
like snow in the summer
in youth, i was a deadbeat
somnambulist
struggling with angels and hellions
tedium and desire
i feel
remorse for all i have done
and did not understand
only now dusted white am i ready to love you
so please come to me
and we shall make a home
of this tortured cage
and turn it to
heavens tremulous kiss
i have finally learned my lesson
have you ?
Mar 23, 2018
Mar 23, 2018 at 12:32 PM UTC
There is a tendency among
those poets who may be very young
frequently to put in verse
those foreign phrases, or much worse
the now dead words of oh so ****** Latin
to boast of classrooms that they’ve sat in.
And just in case you’ve never heard ‘em,
Let’s reduce a few to ad absurdum.
It was amore a prima vista
until he left her for her younger sister
for, after all, who could resist her,
so moving on to secunda vista
he took that step and boldly kissed her,
behaviour that is hardly utopista.
The trouble with modus vivendi
is that it sometime rhymes with eye
but there are those who don’t agree
and think that it must rhyme with tea.
Who cares? It’s all the same to I.
Or should that be the same to me?
You may say it is not de rigueur
that I defend with so much vigour
what surely is no more than hubris
that I attribute to Confucius
for he surely ha detto tutto
albeit un po convoluto.
And everyone’s heard of carpe diem.
If not, then I have yet to see ‘em.
But I prefer to seize a waist
which may be thought somewhat unchaste
though far more likely to have shocked ‘em
would be to carpe in the noctem.
Perhaps you think it’s ipso facto
that I’m intolerant of lacto
unless it comes directly from the breast.
I think it’s better that the rest
of this is left to your own opinatus
for which I offer no blank cartus.
Then there’s the modus of my own vivendi
that I indulge in cacoethes scribendi
the itch to write for which I daily
scratch myself or play my ukulele
which is my form of modus operandi
before I pour myself a king-size brandy.
And thus we leave this boring dull citare,
by this time you have certainly grown quite weary
of any further venture into tedium
Or as ***** Harry might say, fac ut gaudeam
For after all a day senza sunlight
Might altrettante facilmente be night
Sep 8, 2018
Sep 8, 2018 at 6:15 PM UTC
Planks, splintering in solidity
Together twined in tedium
Curving cords of mated metal
Lost in ludicrous loops
Twines of tetanus protrude
Danger danger
Rising flying roaring floating
Above the stillborn trains
Arching acrid aerial arms
Lazy concrete spiral, neighbor snail
Inverse slide with railings
Rumble rumble try and grumble
Jitter in jumpy juxtaposition
Guts of grotesque giants
Flayed flawed under flaming flight
Blink away oblivion
Orange and omnificent, opaque concern
Useful hangnail, table scraps
Rise above
Shocked stillness soon stumbling
Ornamental oasis for the oracles
Unseen unheard untasted unsmelled
Unfeeling unused to understanding
Carry me across
Fly me over
Lift me beyond
Suspend.
Glimpse the unparalleled phenomenon
Ribs of steel, rain has parted
Seeping to the soul
Buzzing through the boards
Immobile, cradle in the wind
Twist
Take off your sunglasses
Be sure to look around as you pass through
Oct 20, 2012
Oct 20, 2012 at 10:30 PM UTC
Boredom #2
I’ve never seen so many synonyms for one small noun,
Blocking maturation and enjoy-dom:
Boredom.
“Weariness, ennui: frustration;
Restlessness, dissatisfaction, unconcern: frustration;
Lethargy, lassitude, flatness and frustration;
Dreariness, repetitiveness, apathy: frustration;
Tedium, monotony, dullness. yes, frustration.”
Can it be overcome, this boredom?
No more war - the boredom won,
Exchanged for something more like fun?
It can.
A friend who, when we speak, says,
“It’s a part of nature…has no answer...”
Reasoning fallacious,
She is wrong as wrong can be
And her reasoning a fallacy.
Awake at night: hormones, full moons;
The glut of light: electric gadgets and devices,
Radios that play a song too strong, too long..
A trick I’ve learned that’s brought results;
A knack, a shortcut worth consulting
Is to train the brain to focus on/in/with the brain;
Travel round in, sense and feel…
Make it real – as if you really feel
The part you aim at, frame then tame.
In seconds you’ve an object that’s becomes a subject.
Boredom fled, you freed,
You and your mood well pleased, released
And taken places least expected,
Un-objected to by you,
The burden boredom’s through.
And doomed!
Boredom 11.24.2016/ #2 revised 2..16.2017
Revelations Big & Small; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin
Feb 16, 2017
Feb 16, 2017 at 6:30 AM UTC
“cold winter sky—
where will this wandering beggar
grow old?”
— Issa
I. Stories
A ranch north of Spain,
his woman, their child... a dream
painted over, gone.
His... (unrequited)
...own tragedy for himself—
young death in Paris.
Quiet night at nine,
inside a café... gunshots—
being... nothingness...
II. Histories
A cold monochrome,
the winter hue of darkness:
umbra of despair.
Portraits of torment:
beggars, drunkards, prostitutes,
1901—
Lapis lazuli
thinned, turpentined—bleu de France—
ennui of sorrow.
III. Images
Melancholia
—the impotence of the will—
in Barcelona.
Barefoot on the street
corner, sitting on the ground,
he leaned on nothing.
A half-stringed guitar......
Germaine’s ******* distracted him..
he laid his revenge.
IV. Meanings
No can a beggar...
no steel strings a guitarist...
—a friend’s eulogy.
The cadaverous
curves of the bones torqued the flesh—
tedium of old age.
An allegory:
artists, poets, mendicants...
****** or broke oglers?
V. The Painting
His evocation:
the grave of Casagemas—
a guilt exorcised.
A mute’s discontent,
a blind man’s desolation,
an oil masterpiece!
An old guitarist,
blind, begging for an audience—
a blue Picasso.
Jul 28, 2017
Jul 28, 2017 at 7:22 AM UTC
The rosy-green flight
Of hills and ramps
Blurred in twilight
By a soft lamp
Golden valleys darken
Red in the breeze
Small birds harken
In headless trees
The sadness fades
In my mind’s medium
These autumn shades
Shatter the sky’s tedium
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 8:48 AM UTC
All Day
The Dams burst into song.
The golden throats of Honey Ants exhale the sweet air from crystalline lungs...
I am thinking of You.
And the roar of the moss that glitters in the moonlight that fell across your stone,
your soul, your next move...
amid the giants of your camouflage,
your masterful dodge of tedium,
that bores you completely...
The roar of your pancakes.
Feb 7, 2012
Feb 7, 2012 at 1:47 PM UTC
Tedium brought them here.
Bored with routine head-counts,
museums and man-made landmarks.
Impulse told them
To flatten the silent fronds,
Blindly tear down the hampering vines,
Rattle the industrious cities beneath their feet.
Curiosity led them
To this patch of unkempt squitch,
This sacred space littered with clean bones.
No words came with them.
Only Observation...
... a leaping fire tended by savages
Polished teeth strung around their necks,
The bark-ridged skin,
The supernaturally piercing eyes,
Their ashen members grazing the farinaceous earth.
At the heart of this sacred place
Littered with the clean bones,
Condesention covered them with coats,
Misinterpreted grins exposing evidential remains.
Fear penetrated their too-white skins,
Their souls through the sockets of their eyes,
Their clattering teeth.
All this is true :
The scattered bones,
The brass buttons blinking through starved ashes,
The arrows in a glass case.
copyright © Caroline Grace 2012
Feb 23, 2012
Feb 23, 2012 at 10:27 AM UTC
Are you relieved to be normal?? It's something only you see.
Wasting away with a false impression we're all as strange as can be
I take some consolation as light reflects differently before passing my eyes and disguising inside mistaken identity
Spooked by our shadows safer with backs against trees
Wandering hopeful in vast space kicking round autumn leaves
Vanish like Houdini chained in a box at the bottom of the sea.
Just like smoke through every vent caught by any breeze
I think a part of everyone resides somewhere else
The 21 grams we lose in death
We've all wondered what it was in the corner of our eye
Maybe you looking back at you now you've died
Say there was no answer just questions?
Would we stop looking for them in the bottom of glasses?
Something seems strange but I'm not sure
It's not a disease there is no cure
It's not a house of cards or castles made of sand
But a poisonous web spun by delinquent human hand
Sunny days and weekend stays in places far from home
Meet the locals to say goodbye before you've even said hello
Leaves in trees so eager for a breeze to fall
This is no life at all.
Its one or two things that remind me it's a game
The tedium like nails at scabs and the blood it'll bring
A slice of lemon is all I need to add a little colour.
Perhaps a banksy on my garden wall.
Having a door held for me.
Strawberries for breakfast.
Punctuality.
Four feet at the foot of my bed.
Not waking contemplating regret.
Sun on my face
Sand in my shoes
A different kind of saltwater kisses.
Grandstand welcomes from close friends.
Tearful goodbyes everytime.
The magic must happen when I blink or during the blackouts when I drink.
Aug 25, 2013
Aug 25, 2013 at 6:09 AM UTC
Most late summer days fade into night holding a tepid dreariness in their breath, beating away with the tedium of the sun from late July through early September.
Yet ephemeral as it may be, the life of early summer is purely sanguine in the face of its oncoming age, as willowy saplings sway in the blustering breezes of June, and sprouts of vivid animation appear all around.
This is when the soul heals, and out of the mulch rises new beginnings and the ripening fruit of various works.
In this early season of summer, many taciturn inhabitants of the flourishing earth made their home, and among them, Lily: a creature of reticence and intricacy.
She burgeoned in attitude and character as days crept forward, extending her limbs upwards in an eternal paean to the heavens― as such was her sinecure and quiet delight.
In this, she stood insular to her ubiquitous family, an outsider to the sisters who flitted about carelessly on the wind, satiny gowns of pink and yellow billowing as they twirled.
Always invited into the fray, Lily was evermore stalwart in her choice to keep out of their plainly sordid affairs.
Yet in her isolation, the night whispered to her many a berceuse.
The sleepy stars implored of Lily’s indolent nature as she gazed into their eyes, trailing across eternity into peaceful slumber.
The night sky held wonders and questions that filled her paltry existence but placed her in stasis with the decorated heavens of her dying season,
Left to wither away with the insidious heat and vibrant splendor of late summer evenings.
Aug 11, 2018
Aug 11, 2018 at 2:45 PM UTC
Gene Wilder's ***** Wonka* once asked me
to step into a world
of pure imagination
and I danced to his voice
of sugary imperfections.
The swelling strings drizzled
on top falsetto inflections
captured me childishly
with candy-coated attentions
But even the finest chocolate melts,
and I learned to let purity be
pushed by treacly lyrics
or stern midgets secure
in their fudge-topped zealotry.
It sifts too pretty for me,
powdering my grown-up
infatuations with petty
wants, getting a little messy
What I crave instead's stained-glass contraptions
to propel me past the stretches
of biblical proportion
where light and dark don't mix.
I'm no Idiot, good-hearted
in the veins of Fyodor
or Akira, and I can't see
beyond the pure tedium
of a blurredly driven snow
I like my mental drifts grime-choked and splotched
with some savory do
dropped in to dissolve flossy
confections to a salted soup
of imagined impurity.
May 20, 2010
May 20, 2010 at 6:08 PM UTC
THIS IS A CALL TO ARMS TO ENFOLD ANYONE WE CAN REACH
We are malnourished of blankets and binkies
Mother’s breast and meaning
We are earthquake spirit lands rumbling for peace
We are a bright light that plays on squinted eyelids so that you may see
We are the kaleidoscope of what is and what could be
We are
KINGS AND QUEENS
Not worker bees.
We are dry mouths and cracked lips thirsty
Drinking crying eyes and kissing empty hands
THIS IS WHAT I FEEL FROM THE TIED DESOLATION OF A PROMISED LAND
We are seraphim
Selling ourselves on suburban streets
We are cherubs
Peddling angel dust to children’s gums
Slipping LSD under their tongues
HOW FAR WE HAVE STRAYED FROM OUR RIGHTOUS PATH!
We are a fall from grace that knocks the air from chests
So we may realize what it is to BREATH!
IN! OUT!
We are One from within
With or without sorrows or the tedium of tomorrow
We are our crystal innocence and reptilian rigidness
We are a mirror
Reflective of all that surrounds us
We are the lush trees and the desolate land bound by fences and man’s prosperity
We are the lake
Warping realities reflection with ripples and rhombuses that wrinkle our surface with every stone skipped
Galaxies teeming underneath
TAKE OFF!!!!
Become what we didn’t know
Find the eternal reassurance that no matter what will be, is, or was, WE WILL BE!
https://soundcloud.com/spiritbarehear/call-to-arms
Feb 7, 2013
Feb 7, 2013 at 5:41 PM UTC
I have laid claim to the Tyne Bridge - it is my home.
You can keep the streets, the shops, the bars
Share them between you
But please
Let me have the bridge for myself.
The bottle green arch of Newcastle,
And the stew of water that runs beneath
The sheer drop of air between them,
Lightly salted by the sea.
It is but the only childish affectation
To follow me and hold true
Through the contaminant of temporality.
Just please, let me keep it.
I shed the skin of adolescence
And left my school tie at home
When I made the journey North.
I arrived expecting transcendence
But instead I received the unwanted gift of the present.
From the clamour of Manhattan,
To the desolation of New Mexico and Peru,
The present will forever be the most effective ammunition
In shattering the stained glass of the world’s wonders.
I know this from the beauty of memories.
Those wonderful fragmented images of childhood
That so efficiently cut out the hours of exceeding boredom,
And the tedium inflicted by the men in suits.
And the future,
The future of flying ships,
The mining of the moon
And downloadable pizza.
But we know in truth, when we arrive
There will still be lawyers
And adverts,
Beggars on the street
And apostrophe’s used incorrectly.
I digress.
Let me return to the Tyne Bridge
My bridge on the Quayside.
For despite the bird ****
And the playboys that trundle over it day after day,
It stands defiant over deep waters,
Daring to cheat death
Or vice versa.
Dec 13, 2012
Dec 13, 2012 at 9:33 PM UTC
With her black eyeglass frames and sensible heels,
the psychiatrist is a contrived portrait of neutrality.
The timer on her desk ticks sickeningly,
counting off the missed opportunities for revelation
that pass with each minute.
I ask her if she has considered a Victorian fainting couch,
she does not smile.
I make cheap cracks about diet ads and the plight of the modern anorexic,
she scribbles something on a legal pad-
from where I sit, the only legible word is "questionable".
She is not describing herself,
yet I can think of nothing more dubious
than being paid to listen to another's tedium.
I spend one hour each week with my hired companion,
and she, in turn,
spends her time relaying information
to another army entirely,
sending reports to the other doctors,
leaking statements to my family.
She is the informant, and I,
the gullible sap who believes in
"conditional confidentiality".
I pretend I know nothing of the arrangement,
and try to speed time by imagining alternate realities.
I picture her as a talking doll-
A string protrudes from her back;
when pulled, a mechanical voice says
"I see", or occasionally,
"How do you feel about that?"
I stifle a laugh,
and glance over at her glazed expression-
there isn't much of a difference.
Jan 13, 2013
Jan 13, 2013 at 8:52 PM UTC
“A groan of tedium escapes me, startling the fearful
Is this a test? It has to be, otherwise I can't go on.
Haven't written a word in three and a half years.
Time to take the broom out to this shallow grave”
Middlesteps
~~~~(|)~~~~
For
deep is the fear, coated in thickening veneer
of might-be-bravery,
the weight, Oh, the weight!
of that writing utensil that both
bears and bares all,
an uncomfortable unconscious,
uncontrollable surrender
that sweeps down upon us,
when first we seek the unwieldy unwinding
of our proactive fist of a first step,
the unclenching, the open face palm,
seeing our lifeline’s revelation, the shame,
the lines we thought that faded away,
upended, open ended, that the worst
un-finishing, but here I am, my taking, the
baby steps of Middlesteps,
only looking
back to forwards for permission,
a new looking inward
forward!
we confesses, beg for our own forgiveness
for ourselves, the years of summary silence ,
at last!
unveiled and unbound, this first step stinks of
tremors, poems never writ up, but on our mouths
and fingertips yet memorized as IF they were bespoke
this return,
“startling the fearful,”
a provocation to the mirrored images
caked on my disheartened body,
goes lightly noticed, but not by me!
daily, I ask the bay and the sky, the animals,
the query lives in almost each of my scripts,
Where is Shelter?
today the answer is not an apparition,
but the question is rephrased,
not where! but when
the answer is now apparent,
for the seed planted, this is for you,
watering the seed, feeding the shoot,
that I know too well,
for asked and I answer,
everyday…
Sep 24, 2023
Sep 24, 2023 at 11:53 AM UTC
God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.
All others are outside myself;
I lock my door and bar them out,
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.
I lock my door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall wall
Self from myself, most loathed of all?
If I could once lay down myself,
And start self-purged upon the race
That all must run! Death runs apace.
If I could set aside myself,
And start with lightened heart upon
The road by all men overgone!
God harden me against myself,
This coward with pathetic voice
Who craves for ease and rest and joys:
Myself, arch-traitor to myself;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
My clog whatever road I go.
Yet One there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me.
Break off the yoke and set me free.
1.9k
I can't sleep. I don't want to sleep. I don't know which it is but it's happening, now and infinitesimally forever my eyes are open and not shutting down for the day, not recharging, not doing anything but waiting for something to see and perceive and solve, a problem to appear before them and present itself begging to be taken in and toyed with like a Rubik's cube. I don't want to sleep because sleep is giving up on the day, it's saying the day is over and it's giving up the chance to accomplish the innumerable tasks yet to be accomplished before I sleep that I haven't done and won't do if I sleep now, if I lie down in that bed and pull covers over my head and let myself drift away. I don't want to drift away, can't let it happen, can't let go of control over really the only thing I have left to control which is when and if I go to sleep so I don't, I force myself not to, I expunge the records of thought from my head into a text box and hope that the soft rattling that had droned there softens because now after all of this my eyelids get heavy and I may have to let sleep win, give up the day, defeated, fight again tomorrow because I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting, fighting against the minute tedium tripping along, fighting against transcendental ecclesiastical endlessness, tired of fighting when all I do is get bloodied and bruised, tired of fighting when I can't win because I'm tired. Rest now. Fight again tomorrow.
Feb 4, 2014
Feb 4, 2014 at 1:44 AM UTC
Do you learn,
how do you earn,
if you did not burn
what you do into gray
matter memory.
Memorize by rote,
by rote,
rote,
a reducing game,
I'll call it stacking,
to maximize your
gain of what you
know, I mean know
for certain,
repeated physical
and mental actions
over and over,
over and over,
and over and over,
like a martial artist, doing a kata,
till he is caught doing it in his sleep,
or his nerves are always there
ahead, waiting for him to arrive,
but do we know for certain,
anything?,
photo shopping,
auto correcting,
foolish sexting,
conspiracy theorem,
bring me to life
AWAY
with boredom just a drop of inspiration,
AWAY
with tedium just some time and some space
A WAY
and I can and will learn it all,
with peace as my covering,
peace as my covering,
as my covering,
my covering,
covering.
Honest learning is that which is
involved in dwelling, some times
easily and at others it is a crime,
and a torturous process but in this,
***
"Finally, brethren, whatever is true,
whatever is honorable, whatever is
right, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is of good repute,
if there is any excellence and if
anything worthy of praise,
dwell on these things. "
***
That would be
what honest learning
could be,
where do I start,
memorizing by heart,
when my is heart turning
to stone, hardening,
not fertile and not prepared
for gardening and the
planting of good seed,
use a funny voice,
if you need to memorize,
tape to a mirror in front of
your eyes, your face,
*where you do spend allot of time I might add.
but before you go forward,
I will be forward and
remind you there are better
things, on which to dwell.
©DWE082013
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 11:08 PM UTC
Every morning I must slay a mighty rusted dragon. His jaws gape as he waits for me. I climb his belly slowly, but persistently. When I reach his mouth I throw myself in. I burst from his stomach and slide down his back and he lies with his wounds and waits for tomorrow. I will slay him again today. These dragons are everywhere, waiting to be destroyed every morning by commuters and diabetics and dialysis patients. We must grit our teeth as the needle pierces the skin or as the engine starts again. We take that bitter pill and emerge victorious. But to what end? The dragon will be waiting the following morning as he always has, as he always will. It is the curse of the modern man. Each day we will slay this dragon until one of us is too weak to fight.
But I know, too, that this dragon is necessary. He is the grain of salt in my morning that seasons the bike ride down his back. I have learned to enjoy riding through the rusted iron bridge that is his throat, and yes, even the climb I must endure to reach it. Each day I must slay this dragon. I must. It is for me that he exists, not the other way around. And I will slay him each day until I am struck by an automobile or die of a blood disease.
So when I rise tomorrow, I will look him in the eye and he will wink. And I’ll know that he is not just a hill capped with a rusted iron bridge. He is the plight of modern men. He is the eternal struggle that must be, else life would be tedium. and we need each other, him and I.
When I wake, I will rise and slay him again.
And again.
And again.
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 1:30 AM UTC