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zebra Oct 2017
Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

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Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

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SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

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IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
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PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

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OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition
softcomponent May 2014
Find the lighter, use it as a lighthouse on a walk below the wall you watch along the wave-formations. Who Wants a Cold One? a Coors Light ad corrects.. When it comes to your home, the little things matter.. an insurance ad blares.. my computer is infected with 3rd party applications unremovable to my meagre tech-ability.. there is a hero as Joseph Campbell once theorized.. in myself like a sick bastardly virus waiting for moments to prove to me "I AM THE SAVIOR, I AM THE CHRIST, I AM THE WARLORD, MICE, MAN, AND VICE".. the windows of opportunity close, I am left waiting the door

& the elevator.

Thirty-thousand years ago, there was nothing but a breeze.. a viscous breeze across chill-spined pterodactyls.. warm-under-the-jungle-brush tyrannosaurus rex, and to think one day I will be just a legend in bone..
Charlotte said she thinks of death and so did Jen. They sat next to the all-you-can-eat and discussed the inevitable. I was sour and playful with no-will-to-understand, just reminding my hair of breezy summer days of 10, thinking of strangeness, of place I was in.

When it's quiet sometimes, I think of old dreams.. dreams I sunk below drown-level as a child in bed and belief. Both mommy and daddy were arguing in the kitchen, this was 7 or 8.. they argued so often one could hear mom begin to cry sometimes, and dad I could see in minds-eye with a grimace so closed and so creased he was hurt and yet honest.. I did not understand so I hid under-stood-silhouettes, oh adulthood..

once in dream I was in pulsing green graveyard like crayon realism strobe lights, tombstones all-round and faint-buzz of outside and one of those strange balded henchmen of badguy Jafar from Disney's Aladdin came peaking outta nowhere with curled eyebrow and baggy one-thousand-one Arabian nightlives parachute pants, curled toes brown-beige moccasins to.. he let out conniving 'HEUHEE!' and slapped me right-side cheek and I JOLTED up bedwise in real time to feel actual physical sting for a few lingered seconds then the sobs of poor mother outside.. I never remembered a dream so clearly again.. they all come, Pro-Found, and dizzy away after hour or two for rest of eternity or perhaps to Place I Can Visit at Death to Review Every Vision and I wonder... when your life flashes before your eyes and the light is encroaching, scenes of mother, brother, father, son, daughter, best-friend, party, break-up, heartbreak, slip-fall, first-sip, first-drag, last-leg, first-kiss, first-hit, first-game, fear, love,  HATE, wait.. do the Dreams come to? Are they all flesh-ed before your eyes as you pass into Light? Are they brought to direct remembrance as you cross the border with Passport of Gods and a Goddess (and which Picture appears on the Page)..?

I remember the old eczema taking bits of skin to carpets round-town and round-lower-mainland to disgust of friends old and new-- this was era where confidence ate itself in mirrors, the sober reality of ugly-ness chiseling away at my Goodness Attempts.. All That Pointless Pain was no Exception nor a Rule, it just **** Happens every once-and-again to the sound of life farting. I used to miss school for feet so impossible to walk on, pussing and bleeding and staining the sheets, shoe soles, carpets, and soul.. limp thru the hallways of Brooks Secondary feeling like bad flavor additive to multicultural Planet Earth-- sleeping 'til the bell rang drinking coffee singing songs I said '**** the ******* educational system and **** me I'm so flatlined..' someday I felt things would really get better and lucky young me I was right.

A half-decade later, I am 21 and hoping, floating, free in the breeze as the wings I have grown keep on wishing the subsistence down. The girl, whoever-she-might-as-well-be, sits immediately vertical chatting frantically to boy with a bit of a cowlick slouching on-up over a bundle of colored paperwork. It seems late in the season for homework, and assume they may have some affiliation with a crazy-hep computer design group in the tradition of Nouevau Silicon Valley.... I sit at my laptop, inching a word a million cubic millimeters closer to God or Divinity or Crescendo or A Bunch More ******* You'll End Up Ignoring---

It's a sunny day, the rain having slathered-off into obscurity somewhere with the Monsoons when the Sun gave the Moon a Soft Slap and the poor purity white-kid went off whimpering, bleeding nose-- I sat, the other night, playing another Grand Strategy game as Tom divided his time between a vaulted and damaged lover, his labor, and his life (friends, food, video-games, vice)... Chai, old Chai the Thai Guy mentioned past his nose in previous iterations of Depictions sat and described his pins-and-needles upset at his bosses at one his three many jobs.. desperately firing text-messages into receiving-space-panel and reflect and back unto Tom's smartphone dash asking him to order a six-pack from a local delivery service cuz his adrenal was giving him heartpain with hurt, and Tom being Busy as All-Ways Tom Is wasn't able to decipher the scramble in-time to make contact before closure of the liquor stores.. poor not-so-poor Chai at first felt castrated at realization he would miss the 11 PM dot-time, but didn't mind as he rendezvoused with Tom and I at Willows Beach where Tom reminded him of a whiskey he'd bought sitting counter-wise at his place.. we kissed a few Mary Janes rightsideup, dragging our butts in the sand to discuss what was wrong (each of us had a problem that night, save for perhaps a less-vocal Tom, I describing my annoyance that a lazy consensus had erupted in my sorry-hometown between my sorta-friends and friends-of-friends that my writing and sharing my writing was arrogant and I an arrogant *** for sharing and I just confounded that they would find my passions so trivial-- perhaps jealousy, perhaps complacency and judgement-for-lack-of-anything-better-to-do and ah **** em all if they think like that, I'll write and be the arrogant me they think I am and share 'til I'm blue in the face and dead perhaps for outspoken intellectualism in their autocratic pointless-waste worldviews.. sad that I dislike them only on the basis they disliked me first..)

I had planned to stay late and leave early-morn (5 or 6 AM) to catch a first-off morning bus back home and sleep, hoping for most part to avoid the shattered-***-mess of a home I was living in.
About 2 days ago, give or take, a water-line for the laundry machine had erupted to soak our entirely-carpeted basement suite, forcing the poor new landlord (a sweetheart of a man named Ron having just taken possession of the house from previous owner on May 1st and, it seems, left 'holding the bag' as they'd call it in day-trading-investment-lingo) to tear out the entirely-soaked carpet and replace it with sensible laminate flooring and rendering the entire suite virtually unlivable for indefinite-few-days and so for me work and friends and especially writing become a welcome reprieve to I, a first world Refu-Jeez.. us, so terribly-off I sip a latte near sunny panorama windows-so-clear-they're-not-there overlooking the crosses of Yates and Blanshard with European church of Gothic architectural style poking heedlessly into empty-open blue.. ironically and strangely there is a liquor store quite literally right next door, and's one I shop at often for its decent prices (God is Dead or Just Drinking to Cope with Sartre and Kierkegaard's Ultimate Thesis) (Kierkegaard especially '*** Kierkegaard seems a good and long friend of God the Almighty) (...I talk with such Judaeo-Christian Catholic rhetoric it never ceases to amaze myself as it bleeds to page..) (stranger thing is, tho, there is no beginning, no middle, no end.. you read or you are bored and either/or is just fine..)

There is some hypothesized crescendo-bliss Tech Singularity on the way in the try-dition of Ray Kurzweil and William Burroughs.. Oscar Wilde to.. (see The Soul of Man Under Socialism in essay-collect book De Profundis).. one day we will all be eternal happiness expressed in song and dance and LED erected-projections of Imperfect Universe (Our Imperfect Earth) with lives stuck on infinite repeat.. our idea of Paradise.. and for those with ability to remain rushed to cortisol (stress-the-best hormone) it will be Hell on Earth, so DRAB and THE SAME all the TIME and it's READ and it's WRITE and it's RIGHT.. the world runs faster with every passing day so desperate to discover the Globe is Flat so we can Hop Off the Other Side into what one might assume to be The Better Place.. elusively picking-up speed thinking 'closer now definitely closer now' unaware (or, secretly aware and unwilling to admit for what will one do when one cannot run?) they are Running in Circles Over and Over and Over and Over and Over Again... cannot take the hint in the fact the Pacific (same Pacific) has been crossed a hugeillion times, nor the same McDonald's in the Azores of Atlantic Portugal is the Same ******* McDonald's stopped-thru on the then-trillionth time last year... and all whilst the International Space Station remains muted up-above crossing 'round and 'round 'til the Jehovah'n Day of Judgement (Chris Hadfield now below with advice for how to run a little faster even blinded in one eye..) then there are the dying Prophets Predicting Industrial Collapse who preach upon the Mount of Internet Sinai Eternal and state "the world is now unsalvageable and we are all about to die.. if ever you wished to find Buddhistic Nirvanic Peace, now is the time so start meditating and imagine Death as New Life and Geopolitics as Game".. forever and ever and ever and ever.

It is only natural to find existence to be 'weird..' layered with Who's That's and giant What The ***** everywhichway you turn.. did it start in a Big Bang, will it end in a Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bang.. ? all questions once ignored for certain ignorance and resurrected as questions concerning the Nature of the What The ***** (also known as 'Science').. and if it did start in a Big Bang, did I start in a Big Bang..? and if it does end in a Big Crunch, will I end in a Big Crunch..? am I a sudden flash of REAL in a Universe that isn't me..? or am I an entire Universe.. perhaps even more than that...? the questions pulse in youth like bad words or bullets. I once stayed up all-night thinking of infinity with my head soaring space-wise forever and ever and ever and I stopped in sudden panic thinking: I could lie here up all night and all day 'til the towered age of 37 (I was 14 at the time) and still be no further on the Universal Map than from thumb-tip-middle to thumb-nail so I wrapped up the attempt with a mix of fear and incredulity, went to school next-day exhausted and tried to explain it all to friends.. they got it, I suppose, but we were all 14 and played basketball instead (I imagined infinite-spinning-basketball on thumb of Michael Jordan).

It's always best describing life in form of Disembodied Poetics.. sure some Philistines won't understand '*** their minds are made of Clockwork, Digits, and Blockthought.. but the general psychic underly implied in all with human faculty will ring-a-ding-ding! and remember all such ancient thoughts and feels as forgotten as a child, locked away until the Spirit rose-up from a rosey thorn prickle to flower straight-up into a Rose! or so I hope as a one-of-many writers-- all of which will write so-as to speak on your behalf.. all floaty and marking a purpose.
Sean Critchfield Dec 2013
String Theory. A theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one dimensional objects called strings. In string theory, the multiverse is an idea in which our universe is not the only one; many universes exist parallel to each other where all possibility has potential as the universes are theorized to be infinite.

When I heard this for the first time, I imagined us all on this giant carousel, spinning in the infinite, to the ***** music of fate.

And the possibility was sweet, like cotton candy. And the potential seemed to rise like tidal waves and I was filled with joy for the other versions of myself doing great things out there somewhere.

Writing lullabies to star children. Kissing ink blotches on to skin like paper. Replacing the light bulb in the moon. Dreaming love into reality.

And I began to imagine the strings stretched and rotating, propeller like, in a theoretical game of double dutch. Fighting back my desire to move too quickly.  Feeling my body sway and rushing in too soon.

And I was sad for all of the versions of me that are struggling. Failing to see the beauty in the gutter. Walking alone in the rain... still. Writing quarky signs on information superhighway off ramps, like:

Quantum Mechanic.
Will tune your Hadron Collider
for food.

And I began to remember the geometrical string patterns we would draw on graph paper in math class. And knowing somehow, even then, that they stood like a veve for infinite possibility. And I began to wonder what would happen if I'd chosen differently at key moments in my life. The infinite outcomes circling like ashes falling down.

Would I be bigger? Smarter? Stronger? Easier to Love?

And the web began to stretch until it was bigger than my simple mind.

And I began to wonder at the insignificant moments. The moments overlooked. And I began to toy with the possibility that our fate is truly ******* in these moments. It was these choices that determine how easy we are to love. And how it would unfold into a chess match of a million different decisions until it was so far out of reach that it was painful to consider.

And these strings, interwoven and bundled “bigger than the sky”. Marionette strings to just as many possibilities as stars. Or more.

A universe where these strings are ropes binding sails to boats and time is the ocean.
A universe where music is medicine and I could sing your broken heart back to hope.
A universe where we could leap from place to place so I could find my young self and say,
“Listen. Don't try so hard. It gets better. And you become so much cooler. And though it seems so important now, it isn't. And guard your heart a little more than you do. And a little less.”

A universe where touch is talk. And to dare is normal. And our hearts are fluent in every language.

And then the notion of the strings as veins. Veins that form a complex system in a beautiful body of flesh and possibility and star dust so much greater than ours. With limbs and hands and heart and eyes and tongue and soul. And this body of possibility is not the only one. Other possibilities are forming other bodies. And this greater celestial body is interacting with other bodies comprised of infinite possibility all making decisions at light speed which will cause it all to reverse or go round again.

And in this framework.

We are you.
And he and I are we.
And once is always.
And never is nothing.
And I am everything.

And we are all the same celestial body.
Made from the same strings.
The same gift of possibility.

We are the carousel.
And anything, anything is possible.

And through it all. All I can do is wonder how...

How do I get back to the version of me where you didn't leave.
*Quick Note. Sorry. I wrote this awhile back. This little beast was angry. I needed to put some distance between he and I before I posted him. But here he is.*
Julian Jul 2020
A key feature of invigoration is the enterprise of mapping the entire syntax of all relevant human language as measured by the gamut of applesauce that doesn’t sour and an in depth analysis of creative fiction and poetry for common cadence features in the linguistic enterprise of mapping the subroutines of complex articulation as etched by the fabric of genius intellects intertwined in a gamble with wits to try and create coded missives that entangle hypertrophy and enlarge the gamut of decryption in the universal rudiments of alchemy. This is based on depreciative and appreciative aspects of apperception that depend on visual cues and funding from a collaborative venture of universities to challenge people to zero-sum games or net positive games where teams collaborate to usher unconventional unchartered territory of classification beyond normal proclivities based on the lineaments of idiosyncrasy to pinpoint the provenance of ideation itself and unveil the mind at a bargain pittance for the eventual headway this could pave for the Department of Education to revert from froward to forward in their recalcitrance and insouciance with the current linguistic modalities of outstretched engraven hortoriginality trailblazing new modular seismotic waves and hotbeds for firebrands to debate and scholars to joust with in the jest of the cineaste metaphor and the rubricated rundles of rectiserial innovations in the taxonomy of devolved meaning relying on an inventive enterprise to galvanize a new jargon into prominence based primarily on guarded secrets of the trade that might unlock the primordial soup of verbal creativity while also probing detective apperception for a wide-ranging panoply of digested movies and beyond that a farsighted incumbent inclination to probe the calibration of numerical happenstance in estimate and in long-term theorization of taxed realty in the estate of guarded tegular relationships among the woven fabric of conceptual latticeworks pioneering in scope and analyzed rigorously in reward of discretion and furtive cryptology to untether the world from the apothegms of sloganeered piggybacks that swivel in sockets but enforce a reductive paradigm of obganiation of core themes reiterated hypnotically to traindeque entire generations into piebald thinking that overlooks the panorama for incident and incident for categorical generality when no such axiom can be the logical predicate of its antecedent conditions that spurn the traditional rote moot wernaggles of futility and inseminate crafty legerdemain of writhing contortion altering the specificity of revalorized meaning in the novel context. This instantiates that the consequence is always the consequence not only of its predicate but its successor by the very modalities of proven reversals and enantiodromias of sorts that revert in a reverse progression spatiotemporally to exact incident as antecedent of its own existence by the very fact of iteration and this map of the recursive cycles of consequences elapsed only because of their insertion in a predevoted matrix is the gnomic apothegm of a new frontier of advanced logic that assumes the impossible is only improbable if the possible can be proven impossible by reductive inversion of core precepts in the rigmarole of design that states for every orchestra of butterflies that echo is actually the incident of refraction that contaminated the first polyacoustic trace of amplified sources in space time to revert into primordial form but the reversion is only incurred upon the fixture of origination and beyond that point remains inscrutable because foreknowledge necessarily prevents accuracy in determining the spectrum of the cacophony or rhapsody of the echo dependent on the observer’s perspective: which is only fungible to the extent that the subliminal remains guarded by the protectors of the clepsammia and the recensed polarization of time. This transcendence of time transfixed on orbital gravitas and centripetal ****** initiates a promulgation of the swallock of a remanded entropy that works in swiveled contraposition to the dynamic flux of the internment of balkanized forces of demassification dampening the efficacy of the central butterfly actor to expand the ampitheater of its own audience to the extent that every cultural artifact can be mapped to the geotaxis of its conceptual orbit. Thereby we can prove that pivots of the obvious focal point peak in resurgence upon the heyday of retrieval but dampen into a logarithmic regression of decreasing amplitude fluctuating around the aleatory probability of insemination through the percolation of the widespread narrowed to a fulcrum that balances the orbit of the stellified narrative of ingemination that some artifacts like Stayin’ Alive achieve maximum geotaxis because of their centrality in the taxidermies of revived memory recapitulated by both virtuosity and valor and posing as consequences of future foresight clouded by preventive measures that one quaky spasm in alarm could paralyze the precedent to the incidence of the afflatus that galvanized the heyday of remonstrance so that we can affix a modular angular gravity to events as well as referents to those events in a spatiotemporal mapping of consequence reverted upon itself because of necessity that binds the taxemes of the subliminal in the architecture of a curvature of geotaxis that is centrobaric not necessarily to the contingencies that magnify the germane propositions that affix modern eyes but rather the overall stifling modularity of temporal sequence redoubled by manufacture and manufacture alone predevotes antecedents that trace to a pivot in space time curved without prescience beyond measure but precision enough to approximate the summation of collective cultural shifts away from the estrangement of diversion from itself as a balkanizing force into a collectivized unity that orbits eccentrically by the very nature of the parallax between gravitational pull and the dynamics of time itself centripetal but centrifugal simultaneously.  Both conditions must be met so the converse of meaning becomes the recapitulation of remontant blessings rather than pruned dry garbologies relevant only to margins of subculture minimized in heyday and scope but pinpointed with exact precision the dynamos that inhabit the sphere of the populated future defenestrated from the magnetism of the past by very definition. Thereby, we arrive at Back to the Future because the paradox of recensed calibration suggests the free fluctuation of time between the eccentricity of magnified lens distorted by the entropy of calculus to become the integral summation of the sinuous vacuum of a trigonometric balance that barks with amplification of synergistic elements of strings and quantum flux to emigrate from an origination to the mapping of the eventuality. This precisely explains the scene in Back to the Future with the amplifiers turned all the way up because by exaggerating the simplicity of the declassified it expedited cinema to its eventual intermediary conclusions heralded by that one event of transfixed mystery that binds spacetime into a coherent bidirection of multidimensional philosophy of the enantiodromias of sorts of the parallax among constellated events. Mapping the impact of funneled cartels that hegemonize regions of the geopolitical sphere explains the amplivagant effects of the refracturism of swallock and thereby seminal ideations can be traced to provenance of cowardice cloaked in excuse but incisive in the skullduggery of the mechanical reinvention of excuse and pretext as a cloak for more furtive workings of the intelligentsia to engineer time by deriving the precise tangential multidimensional syntax of the calculus of proliferation reviewed from a consequent perspective of a future unknowable gravitas fluctuating between states of annihilation and existence in the acatelpsy of design so that specters actually enforce more change than events and prospects magnify positive dimensional thrusts that galvanize prospectus emigrating from either distant knowns or parallel realities that converge on the optimum of either the hapless or calculated design of a synergistic development of social engineering so precisely mapped that it identifies trajectories of improbable events with increasing specificity at the alarm of the spectral realm promulgating wealth to the foreseeable compunction of science to revert to probable pivots of consensus manufactured by think tanks that outfox the syntalities that defy the system or piggyback on their very causes to empirically carve the spectrum of future possibility becoming entelechy desired or feared but always predestined or flanged into distortions of reification that are transformative of precision in design without exactitude in the terminus of the centrobaric chambers of all meaning. Thus the algorithm outsmarts itself until only the machination to dehumanize for prediction occurs at a pessimum of morality or an explosion of a proliferative new venture in unchartered territory conquers the novantique of novelty. The ampitheater of its own audience is the traction of embedded subculture in subroutine becoming a compound atocia that sterilizes opponent possibility and probabilizes the occurrence of endomorphs that resemble effigies of constellation primed to swivel in retrospection as a recurrent lapse of amplification upon the culmination of predestined time points or junctures specified within the realm of the matrix of possibilities to outstretch the realm into a dampened exponential explosion of self-reference becoming embedded consequence by conditioning and by anticipatory psychology working in preconcert to evoke the determinative impetus of momentum that magnifies the speed of acceleration in technology that depends on the propriety of reification itself that swarms us with evocative tempests that barnstorm in reiteration to recapitulate by design to engrave themselves on the collective psyches of the hortoriginality of many minds intrepid before me that transfigured reality in this precise contortion of terminology with variegations in the specificity of context and articulation of the clavigerous entropy of swallock and how the outfoxed design becomes that cage of destiny that is a baritone complexion of vibrant hues exploding into the trammeled paths that have elapsed before me by the first movers advantage of theoretical physics but nonetheless independently verified by dovetailed emergence of that centralized balance between design and destiny that is precedent to the antecedent of the consequence of the precedent’s consequence on the direct antecedent inflexion point upon which the provenance of momentum drifted into cultural psyche and enlarged the gamut of myth in the raillery of subaudition. Essentially Time only exists to those without the simultagnosia to appease a mirror parallax of universes upcoming and universes forestalled but pivot with omphalism on the gravitas of Einsteinian calculus that theorizes that the acatelpsy of enumerated prediction is a lapsed regress the pinpoints with the harpricks of specialization the regal momentum of time to its own behest to propagate the elucidated certainty of its own traversal to the expedited enumeration of the future which populates the past because the curvature of time is an entantiodromia of reflexive itinerant vagrancies that cement the authorship of events to warble through the tilted hypertrophy of design itself to maximize the freebooter avarice of those people that rely on the luxuriance of trespass to magnify the modular gravity of culture to forswink its compunction and regale its own recursive logic. Essentially Time is a mapped ampitheater that depends on an audience of sentience to enlarge its own gamut and because it is riddled with obscurantism of believable recursion it magnifies its own entropy in reversal to orchestrate events in a rectiserial convolution of the whipsaw between the expected and the foreknowledge of the knowing class because when shaky vacillatory politics prevail the behest of time looses its capitalization of the amplivagant affects of the marginalia that is wed to the devolved rudimentary rigmarole of proliferation scaffolds destiny in alternative configurations to fulminate with explosive progeny that latitude incumbent to those without perspicuous clarity to fathom the acatalepsy of the unfurled universe magnetized by the seminal tremendum of the moments memorialized by memory that provide the traction of time to supersede its own acceleration by the writ of the beneficence of the eccentric orbit of the brittle axioms of design to recense and revalorize the wilted transponders that refer to specific events where the space-time continuum was cleaved in divisive anticipation to balkanize the resistence to the fringe clavigerous amplification of the resonance of etiolation that marginalizes the dearth and amplifies the prospectus to make time supersolid beyond all reckoning to cement its captaincy as the algorithm of rhythmic gravitas orbiting the moribund fragmentary flictions of regimented truth to be at war with its own foresight. This is because foresight is a compulsion of time to recapitulate the foreknown deeds of the future to the regenerative hypothesis that hypostatizes that the transcendence of time is mirrored illusion because the future populates a region of space-time that is not forlorn but magnified in scope to reverse the trends of abomination and cast the aspersions of grandeur into eccentric orbit that by geotaxis foments the revolutionary impetus not of cancellation or nullification of the bereaved past but a culmination of deeds known only to the future that galvanize the very fruition of the dependent expectancy to become antecedent to the consequent by a warped form of recensed logic because the orbital sphere of considerations is tangential to the evocative memory of the memorialized statutes that prize their own entelechy above their divergence from design in such a peculiar way that obscurantism of the leaders of the world is manned by an alien presence to mendlatch the locked keys of a virtuouso future compounded in interest and destined for unfurled clarification. Time is an ironic boyg and quandary because for time to give birth to its own recapitulation it must be stammered with seismotic statutes that rip through the fabricated rudiments of predestination to enthrall the apostasy of the knowing from leverage over a future they vaguely see but provides largesse to the regimentation of design to rickety consternation that prediction is evocative of expectancy less than expectancy is its own geotaxis around the gamut of foreseen affairs that must be iterated rather than violated in order to maintain the mainlined integrity of the brittle fungible force of quantum dynamics to bypass the rigmarole of etched design to be evocative of a reverse transpondency that reconfigures the past into perfectible strings of amplification to anoint time its own behest at the formidable specters of its own violation by those who seek trepass but are predevoted out of ephorized control by the vicissitudes of the gamble and the frapplank of the known destiny catalyzing the unknown progeny. By that very definition this could not be obrogated in tenure or tutelage over the past because the elapsed gravitas of the known past depends on the pivot of the ampitheater of the future to ambitious reckoning that provides absolution to its forlorn vestiges to cement the centrifugal impetus of many from exact foreknowledge.  Many pioneers have probably theorized similar hypostasized concepts but the fact that even without a degree in physics I understand these arcane precepts yet tested by the rigmarole of comprehensive known experiment is a testament to the power of hortoriginality to pave the trailblazer focus on the rivets of a rickety secrecy designated by definiens of abstruse taxemes of yet defined meaning. The primary quandary is the isolated pretext of predevoted sequencing that abandons me (and this is central to my theory) from the weather of meaningful social encounter in order to hone in with precision on the empirical enterprise of seminal regress cemented as ceremonial progress and only by vaulting above this cage of finicky predestination can entelechy that desires rapprochement can be achieved because eventually the relevance of my ideas can be shelved and the peremptory obligation of intervention must be deployed to salvage my parable into completion. The itch for the government to anticipate the universe’s localized traction delimits the sphere of social indoctrination to a reality amenable not to the coercion of precise anticipation but the gamble on vagary to produce more seminal events that compound the amplivagant effects of ecumenical exhaustive troponders to the extent they flourish beyond the bounds of completion and into optimal conditions that is whipsawed by the demands of the rigmarole of precise definition of all trajectories conclave in their logarithmic design  anticipated by designation but not predevoted into futility because that capstone would reduce the proliferative affect of space time to carve a more extravagant reality that tests limits beyond frontiers of expectancy. The brain is highly malleable and entity theorists are moribund in their defenses of trite hackneyed racial arguments about intellect. The mythos preserves that radical ethos that prediction of my insights supersedes the importance of my rapprochement which will amplify the effects of the spatiotemporal mapping in a much more profound way with specialized focus. Thereby when we conceive of time we must specialize in inhabiting the sphere of acatalepsy of flanged prediction preventing the abortion of the future based on the vagrancies of the gyrovagues and bibliopolists seeking to demolish the fruition of the ribald coarse albatrosses of the future to diminutive leverage rather than amplifying the stringed syndication of knowledge to eccentrically stellify the unknown regions of the populated presence contingent on the populated future which ensures the eternal life of all by some formant boundaries of the universe because what is recapitulated in the lapse of certainty known by the anticipatory vagary of a riddled rigmarole of complex dynamism this thermodynamically reversible into the reversal of entropy because the organization of the past hinges upon the reconfiguration of the future and thereby we swivel endlessly with recursive iterations of evanescence that spoon-feed the generations among us to truckle beneath the cartels that array spatiotemporal mappings into their personal optimum to catapult the granular edification of all deeds beyond their forsifamiliation from their provenance gamboling with the distant frescade of a known destiny cavorting with the meddlesome reconnaissance of all that is observed and the tribunes magnify this effect by centralizing the bronteums of fulgurant strikes to be localized to a centralized pivot of universal acclaim that provides felicity for the ecumenical endeavor
girl diffused Nov 2023
I.

All I can say is that it is a hum
Reverberant, droning, consistent
Quiet thrumming along the surface
Stirs me awake and then it fills me with
Ichor and I sip, sip, and sip (until I'm drunk).

All I can say is that it is a hum,
Quiet droning, a hushed whisper,
Loud screaming inside the head,
A piercing headache, sometimes a discordant wail.

II.

You sit on the porcelain lip of the tub
Hooded eyes lowered, your fingertips
Pressed together like the steeple of a church

I think: Yes, this is what Renaissance painters modeled angels after. Your skin is like a rose-tinged alabaster, your cheeks Suffused with blood. The painter took a measured time with you.

"Do you honestly think you'll be okay on your own?" You ask.

Silence, she greets you.

III.

Hasn't my mother violently
Ejected me from the nest
I'm only a few months old, a nestling
Wings awkward and clumsy
Beak agape for masticated food
(I'm not ******* ready yet)
Ejects me
Her beak threatens to pierce my shell

This is dejà vu.
I've conversed before
Different room, different domain,
Different speaker, a sicker listener
I'm as sick, sick as **** now

Mind, she hums, crescendo
Crescendo high like a choral piece
Orchestral, and this is resplendent
Everything is gleaming
Your face encased in a soft glow
Halo of light
Your face, cherubic,
His face, Romanesque, was sculpted like a Bronze Age statue.

"Your mother didn't give you the right set of tools. My mother at least gave me–" he falters.

IV.

I remember calling the ex 28 times in the span of 2 hours.
The policeman, he counted.
Thrashing on the floor, weeping like Persephone must've in Hades, like a fallen Mortal reborn as a minor goddess
Stripped me, he did though, of my wings
Avian feathers streaked with years-old blood

My tears, why yes, they're bleeding rivulets.
My ****-brown eyes alight on the bleach
Yes, sweet death

"Stop calling me. I'm ******* another ***** right now," the ex says.

V.

Memory is so faded,
Plays like a scratched and worn cassette tape

Mind is a-humming, humming, my mind is
Orchestral choir, church choir, Pentecostal
Now, I eat ichor, ravenous, now I am Closer to God and she is a woman,  
Draped in funeral attire
She weeps, soundless, a Seer

"I don't know," I say.

"The med isn't working," you reply
Cherubic face shifts and morphs
Melts into soft glow light,
One with the halo, is the halo

Nothing makes sense, everything else does too. My mind races, cassette tapes
Whirs, skips, images flash, I weep
Weep like Sisyphus
Eyes spilling rivers of penny-tinged
Crimson, sanguine ichor

One day he'll taste it and hate me,
Loathe me, the jade-eyed serpent
Poison-fanged
I'll clutch his scales until my fingers are Cut, welts, mottled bruises, fading scars
I will be punished, am punished
The illness, the eternal Boulder on the eternal hill, it rolls and rolls, my mouth agape

I await my cyclic fate ordained by the Higher God

VI.

How many men have I lured into the chamber?
Drunk on sweet wine or mead?
Petrified into osseous
Their gazes failing to avert from my Penetrative stare?

He was an errant General, beautiful but stupid, his mind a one way road, his temper unpredictable and flighty
Oh, how I loved the duality of him
We philosophized
Theorized on the Gods
Laughed at their follies
Wondered at the mysteries of the universe, Her deep annals

Oh, how I loved the physicality of him
Tight, corded muscle, his back like a Wound spring, Bronze hand
Grasping a silver sword

Hark! His rounded shield is lifted, my hideous reflection stares back at me
My eyes, widened, the cup of manna Clatters, soundly in the chamber
Reverberates
Bounces off my throne of skulls

How many men have I–?

VII.

"Can you honestly say that you can take care of yourself?" You ask from the place atop the lip of the porcelain tub. Your hands, a steeple, a church spire
Perhaps, you are a lesser God, perhaps we are all falling Lucifers, wingless, blinded by vengefulness and betrayal
Perhaps, he too is–?

"Am I an infant to you?" I ask.
The headache splits
The pain demands, claws at the side of my skull, dances across my nerves, liquid iron on my tongue

Because when did I?

Oh, Sisyphus you weep! You, who slaughtered so many!

Oh, Medusa, you wept, you beautiful serpentine harlot, you *****, you–
The choir is a strong crescendo, Ascending, ascending, ascending
Lowers like a thrumting and heavy bellow
Deep, rich, and full, timbre

"Everyone, all your life has said you were crazy, but I don't think you are, I–"

VIII.

The tapes skip, voices garbled, muffled, Indiscernible and distorted
Mind shrieks, lower now, quieter now, Barely audible, a fading whisper, your halo Recedes, soft glow dims

Your hands separate, the steeple, no, the Spire collapses.
Held breath hitches,
Serpentine tendrils become wisps of hair, Cloudlike

We are lesser gods, not quite mortal, not quite divine

The itch demands to be felt, protests
And I, I scream endless into a dark chasm
My voice, it does not call back to me
It does not–

"I don't know."
A/n: It's been awhile. Hello. This is the unedited version of "medusa." This is the result of me reading T.S. Eliot and talking to my dear friend about older contemporary poets.

This is the result of dream and haze filled nights and stressful but languid mornings.

Enjoy.
Glenn McCrary Mar 2012
Upon pulchritude I gandered
Alchemy materialized
Adamant sentiments mere panders
Upon pulchritude I gandered
Fervor ascended, language stammered
Imagery never once had I theorized
Upon pulchritude I gandered
Alchemy materialized
Jose Remillan Jun 2015
The month of May may not be a part
Of our struggle. It belongs to those
Who have chosen to remember the
Blots of blood showered along the

Mendiola pavement, paving a closely-
Knit kinship of beliefs and bewildered
Minds, of a passing moment, of a
Movement passed on generations.

Struggles don't end, for they never begin.
Gun's barrel is where power grows. Mao
Theorized it, generations lived it. Not until
This generation's search for new reason,

Tilling fields

Are mapped in the hearts of the masses;
Where new weapons are fashioned, new
Passion grows for living the theory, for
Doing philosophy out of soil, out of gears.

Superstructure is rebuilt on chalkboards.
For Dr. Karl Marx, on his birthday
May 5, 2015
Stanley R Larson Jan 2012
My neighbor and I still hang out our wash,
(I, each Thursday, taking my chances.
She, according to weather forecasts, I think,
or maybe by what she feels in her bones).
We laugh at StarTribune's report of some suburban bans
against clotheslines.
We wonder out loud whose tomatoes will first turn red,
and whether cucumbers will make it at all;
this year, it's been too cool and dry
for normal progress to the fall.

Tenacious dandelions, spread as stars across green-earth skies,
drive in spike-like roots, take hold of earth, and won't let go.
Kids squeeze bunches of stems in tight fists
that will open only to release the buttery bouquet to Mom
who hurries to put them in water, in a crystal vase,
wondering how soon she might mourn both flower and child.

While hanging bright, white unmentionables (some somewhat tattered)
on our clothesline, I, unembarrassed, remember my mother:
   with one clothespin held in her mouth
   and half a dozen more in her apron pocket,
   (thus needing not to walk over and over again
   the east-west path to the back door  
   where full supply of pins hangs on the ****)
   she does her woman's task with flair,
   spacing each garment so as not to block the sun or air.

You'd think she'd held some tool to calculate
where the sheet would best allow the breeze to circulate
or where to place each pillow case and sock,
so each would recognize and meet their mates!
And I know she theorized regarding how to hang those socks,
always with the toe pointed upward, so as not to show,
when dried and worn, a crease or ever-so-slight evidence
of the pin's pressure displayed for all to see
on the exposed ankle,
as if that might be a matter
worthy of shame.
aar505n Jun 2014
The waiting room was quiet
beside the faint click of the blinds
against an open window

A single dead fly on the table
on his back
with his legs pointing up

This death did not bother the models in the posters
As they smiled with bright white teeth from the wall
like they knew some great secret
that pale in comparison to the dead fly

I looked away from the poster and to the fly.
I began to wonder how the fly left this mortal coil.
peacefully or violently?

I theorized, cause I was in the mood,
that it was peaceful cause he had no obvious trauma to the body
But what do I know of a fly's anatomy?

Maybe his little heart just gave up
maybe he lost his way and then lost hope too

He tried to stay busy
buzzing away
but it was an act
trying to distract himself from the pain

He couldn't keep it up forever
his heart was too tired
and he deserved a rest
he had been through enough

So he stopped flying one day
and with one last sad beat
his heart just stopped

That what I theorized
My theory on the matter
I'll never know how the fly died
But that's what happens when the heart just stop
and it's not violent
it's peaceful
To concretize my theorized love,
I could play the accidental odds and strew
slippery tongues of spotted petals
onto thickly trafficked highways,
or use the best predictive modelling
to deduce when and where I can poke out
a well-heeled boot to trick unwary spills
and ****** a kiss from the unsuspecting
lips of any suitably compatible
passerby oft times inconvenienced and passed
on by.

These well-oiled and crudely experimental
methods do produce expected results,
but not the breakthrough nor the looked-for
satisfaction of appropriate reactions,
so I'll keep my dotted eyes tucked in
their pulpy stems and my shoddy toes curled back
while I beam my bits of invitation through
circuitous routes spatially arrayed along
parallel paths where one might search
with an extra-terrestrial inventiveness,
and wait.

I know the trials of these errant waves
won't add up to a guarantee
my burpy blips of a pulse can reach
the receptively comprehending and responsive
soils I seek, but it's the remoteness of a stead
to come stalking that appeals, and despite
the Hawking drone of unveiled warnings
I might regret such contact, I'll risk it all
on vaguely washed wishes this astronomical
anomaly with an alien sensibility has
one match.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
ConnectHook Feb 2017
♪ ♩ ♫ ♬♪ ♪ ♩ ♫

[for Snare Drum]

Client-centered, data-driven,
yet their sins are unforgiven.
Tweaking the assessment standard
while the Word of God is slandered.
Current practice (science-based)
meanwhile, souls are laid to waste.
Evidence-based evaluations
fail to stall abominations.
Power slideshows, bullet-pointed
bypass Christ, the Lord’s anointed.
Titled expert: talking wraith,
buzzword-based, devoid of faith.
Sources cited, praxis theorized.
Mankind’s plight ignored, unrealized.
Humankind enthroned, enshrined,
entombed in shadows yet unshined.
Branding, marketing, organized crime:
brother – can you spare a paradigm?
par·a·did·dle:
one of the basic rudiments of drumming, consisting of four even strokes
played in the order L-R-L-L or R-L-R-R.
♪ ♩ ♫ ♬♪ ♩ ♫ ♬♪ ♫ ♪ ♩ ♫ ♬♪ ♪ ♩ ♫
JAM Feb 2016
RECORD: INSOMNIAC OLYMPICS
FROGMAN: BLOCHEAD

Suzy's: Then it heard The Word:

You are not special.
You're not a beautiful and unique saltflake.
You're the same decaying mental laughter as everything else.
We're all part of the same info heap.

We're all singing,
all dancing
data of the word.
-- Tyler Durden, Tacky Frogman

I mean just try to

Imagine a Johnny waking up one moment and thinking,

"This is an interesting thought I find myself in —
an interesting wHole I find myself in —
guides me rather neatly, doesn't it?
In fact it guides me staggeringly well,
must have been made to have me in it!"

This is such a powerful throught that as the sun rises in the mind
and the clouds heat up
and as, gradually, the throught gets
smaller
and
smaller,

she's still frantically stinging on the notion that everything's going to be aulgburight,
because The Word was meant to have him in it,
was written to have her in it;
so the moment that reappears, caches them rather in reprise.

I think this may be something we need to be on the waytch-out for.
We all know that at some point in the future the throughts will come to an end
and at some other point,
considerably in advance from that but still not instinctually re-pleasing,
the Sun will rexploade.

We think there's plenty of throught to tarry on about that,
but on the other Read DeadHead
throught ’s a very anger-ous ink to lay.
-- Douglas Adams, Frogman

Johnny's: So,

We just ought To Be.
-- You and Me and Everyone We See

Suzy's: And it would be nice if

A Brad and Janet could change their mind,
plan a din-stinction,
butcher a clog,
conn-a-fusion,
design a dream,
write a union,
balance brains,
build a wall,
set a tone,
belay the lying,
make orders,
live orders,
cooperate,
act alone,
solve self equations,
analyze a new corruption,
throw info lure,
program a harmed-brain-puter,
hook a hasty mind,
fight self efficiently,
receive truth carefully.
But all-selfse destruction is their mode.
-- Robert A. Heinlein, Frogman

Johnny's: In other words,

Show me one Brad or one Janet alone and I'll show you a saint.
Give me two and they'll fall in love.
Give me three and they'll reinvent the char-ming thing we call 'Propriety'.

Give me four and they'll build a panic.
Give me five and they'll make one a Number.
Give me six and they'll reinvent Master's affair.
Give me nine and in nine moments they'll reinvent ludechrist.

WhoMans may have been made in the image of nature,
but Brads and Janets were made in the tincture of their opposite Number,
and they're always trying to get back to The Hearth.
-- Glen Bateman, Frogman

Suzy's: Picking up the Data Crumbs as they go, like High Speech. And yet

Brads and Janets do not seem certain of how they gained the ability to speak.
It is theorized that they began dinning objects with iniornticulacy,
until eventually the din became more organized—

still tumultuous clamour,
just a bit more meat in the current day.

If this is true,
it means that to attain bsproken thought the Brad and Janet brain created a specific system for language and a way to code it—working largely off the constantly developing faculty for memory. It is an idea revealed by bit com-partitian-alization of throught data threw the structure of language; re-veiled in the way that Brads and Janets peak or wrighte using their memorized vocabularies and concepts.

This mind fore Toe-ing mortgaged itself to the e-x-ternal word,
and Brads and Janets found power in pontification of life.

Then dawned Ninetbeen.

If the systems of Ninetbeen were enhanced then a more dominant Reality presentce resulted. The most refissiont equation became the most dominant, but
the most efficient equation is not the best.

There are many sacrifices made for effishinsea.

For the most dominant Brads and Janets it became an obsession
to control every aspect of the nature from which they Rose,
sacrificing natural progression

(Of course, it does seem like this is the natural progression,
Brad's and Janet's predetermined path—
a relief that is a symptom of the most engineered systems of code).

Unfortunately,
these systems are destroying Brads and Janets,
and raw rEffissionsea,
Pure confusions,
will not save them.
-- Thrusher Swainson, Bear M.B.

STOP: TURN THOUGHT
The Letter-Ing: word
tenth or last
in a series of poems made of quotes
one part to a whole
its sum has yet to be totaled
may be more than its parts
subject to change
Amy Grindhouse Mar 2014
We dissected his synapses
sent him subconsciously
seeking theorized sources
of the substance
Thanksgiving is coming
and I'm stuck mute on my new path
If he comes bearing gifts
can I say anything
through the slow death mask
and scramble suit deceptions
that will make him understand
the murky depth of my regret?
*Sincere homage to one of my all time favorite books and movies.
Mikaila Oct 2013
I buried you in the backyard of my soul
In self defense I sang a requiem,
I theorized- what harm could do a hole
If dug by me and filled in at the end?

I held your funeral, mourned cold at your grave.
I sat vigil until the morning light.
And my heart I hardened, should it have forgave
Your absence and distraction, dead as night.

I urged the moss to swallow up the stone
Which said, "Here lies another lightning strike."-
The newness of the wound couldn't condone
The pungence of the churned up soil's bite.

And once the grass had taken, loosely, root,
And from the corner of one's eye the place looked old,
I hurried by, each day and night, a mute-
To make it old my heart I would have sold.

But no matter how stoic I try to be
I find that in my love of you I dwell.
Perhaps I shouldn't've looked so tenderly
Upon your cold face as the spades of soil fell.
That hour made me busy
questions were easy
not yielding a moment

he was sitting glum
peeping at my diagram
of Michelson Morley experiment!

I could hear his sigh
from the corner of my eye
could gauge he felt bitter

all he had read
had quickly fled
clouding him in ether!

It was all in mist
what those darned physicist
had theorized in vain

no lover’s tryst
but a paper of physics
an agonizing pain!

My worst fear
was remembering the year
when the experiment was done

for once did it Michelson
then with Morley redone
was it ’87 or ’81!

That boy behind me
was thinking bitterly
worrying in fright

soon the time would be spent
without his writing the experiment
on the wavy behavior of light!

Tense was the air
when I heard him whisper
push your paper to the right

in his voice was despair
bothered little to be unfair
quite visible was his plight!

*With all my toil
burning the midnight oil
how this I lost sight

covered all nitty-gritty
of magnetism electricity
missed the chapter on light!
Matthew Harlovic Aug 2016
i theorized the continuity
of my contemplation
as you picked your guitar
questioning all of creation.
you told me, "i hold no
obligation to anyone else.
if i break a promise, then
i will break it to myself."

© Matthew Harlovic
[in theory]
If there was a such this as
perfect

it would be found in the
simple

A child’s smile
a mother’s love
a father’s protection

if perfect
could be theorized philosophically
placed into linguistic terms
there could be no words
no label grand enough
no construction simple enough
save only laughter

if perfect
could be understood mathematically
it would be either be a 1 or a 0
no other representations yields the same
universal and instant ease of understanding
that children instinctually grasp the idea

yet

the same children
when grown
could spend  their life exploring the complexities


If perfect
could be known on a spiritual level
it would be that moment one realizes there is a god
ascending to level of worship and devotion
others mistake them for the god they serve

or

it would be that moment when one rejects all divinity
professing that all in creation is not of creation
but of nature and nurture
the only guiding force is the will to survive  

If perfect
could be expressed in dance or music
there would only be
one motion
one note
maybe none
stillness
silence

If perfect
could be expressed on canvas or in stone
it would be such that the work would
never be started
untouched
maybe never completed
unfinished

Perfect
is as simple as knowing that one can never see one’s own face
what one knows as one’s one image
is only a reflection
what’s more is that a person is the only person that can never see ones own image
yet all they encounter sees them exactly as they are
exactly as they never can

Perfect perfection
is realization
not thought
not contemplation

Perfection is everything labeled imperfect

The only imperfect thing
is the word its self

© Christopher F. Brown 2013
There is no such thing as a flaw, poetry, Christopher F. Brown
Dylan Burns Dec 2013
The dead will laugh
For they know what is in the aftermath
What is left to be my own
In a world not ever completely shown
With an attacking ego
It must be dueled with the unspeakable feelings of the body to let go
All that which makes I unique
Invites me to grow or sink
For my mind will only calculate and analyze
That which can not be theorized
No words or sounds can be found
So it is to be and allow yourself to be the ground
Jessica Saunders Mar 2014
In a Kingdom by the Sea,
you kept me cold
in the closet of your mind
.
We were children who
made promises of love,
but for all my lovelorn words,
it never came close to others
.
You theorized our demise by an
unseen hand,
and a voice that whispered
death inside your head
.
And this was the reason
that in our kingdom
you wrenched my grip
from your wrist and let the
wind take me
.
The voices left you
complacent in your
decision to rid me from
our kingdom, blaming
others for the love that
was never given
.
I do wonder from time to
time if I ever cross your
mind and if you’re waiting in
Our Kingdom by the Sea
Babu kandula Aug 2017
Well, this is a long day.. but a thoughtful day..

I memorized the power of words, not memorized but somehow theorized not really, I don't know what I can say .. but if you are patient enough read it

Take an example

If I impose positive words against me or just say I am a good boy or conclude that am a good boy, my fellow folks .. they might believe me, hopefully if they did.. their thoughts create a positive energy and yes a positive vibration fills my life and my surrounding even am not a good or great guy .. this vibration lets me to change my point of view or perspective or whatever it is.. I change myself ..

The reverse might also be true, I'd say am bad a negative energy, clouds my surrounding.. eventually that turns my point of view..

But, it's my whole self .. which has to take a decision.. if more positive am more positive and good or great guy.. and more negative am more negative ..

Well, a bit confusing ... but still this has some meaning I think .. impose or bombard positive energy rather negative energy ..

Every coin has two sides, choose the best side

Hmm, I conclude without a conclusion.. I hope someone from my vast list of friends can understand my true intention..
jimmy tee Apr 2013
the rights to this poem belong exclusively to the author
the man with the drink in his hand
with scowls over chin
lock solid in his belief
tank tied into an intricate knot
as lovely as a flower
in equal permanence
by the theorized statement large
movement
is but the universe
looking back at itself
Jennifer Weiss Jan 2018
I made an idol out of love.
Romanticized
Theorized
But never came out above.
The tumultuous sea
of emotions in me
that waged war
on your shores
Beat continuously against you,
the beach.

I thought that's what love was.
Passion.
Fire.
Dancing.
Idols.

I burnt out bright
smoldering ash in the night.
And when I cooled,
realized I was fooled.
Because the only true love there is,
is Light.
Mae Feb 2021
in infancy,
I was everything
you had hoped
for in a child,
played a cherub
in our church’s
Christmas pageant,
wore a felt gown
& angel wings tethered
to my back, a halo atop
a mop of blonde colored hair.
it was as if I were finally
worth the title of
beautiful.angelic.
god sent. elegance.
you had finally
worked up enough
magic to procreate
& theorized that
something you made
could finally be an
angel. you threw yourself
so hard to another’s body
you became divine, if only
for a moment.

but you’ve always been
such a skilled poacher.
cut off my wings in slumber
& nailed them
above your head
board. one might
think this is a
brutal comparison
to how you’ve
never learned
to love anything
god sent.

both our knees
are bruised, but we’re
practicing a different
type of prayer. I still
feel a pain in my shoulder
blades from where you cut me,
your hands no longer feel damp
with my blood.
maybe, one day, you’ll hunt me
down, with your poacher’s pride,
& with your rifle, you’ll finally
take more than my wings. &
as I bleed out, a task which may take
days. . . or months . . . or years,
I hope you’ll look me in my eyes
& you’ll remember that even as an
angel, I was once still just your
daughter.
Inspired by the song Poacher’s Pride by Nicole Dollenganger
Stephanie Dec 2014
The ancient Greeks theorized that as the soul descended from heaven to be born, it gathered elements from the seven visible planets: silver from the moon, mercury from Mercury, copper from Venus, gold from the sun, iron from Mars, tin from Jupiter, and lead from Saturn. These were the components of the soul. After death their souls would return up, dropping off each element at their respective planet, appearing naked before god to be judged.*

If I could rip apart our souls,
what do you think I’d find?
If we are composed of only simplicities,
then I must be copper,
because I’ve always felt the need
to be close to every part of the earth.
Or maybe silver,
since the moon always seemed
more trustworthy to me.
Or maybe because that was Artemis’ color,
and I always longed to be pure.
It was an alchemist’s noble metal,
strong yet malleable,
able to be hammered
or pressed
permanently out of shape.
you seem to have spent far too long
on Mercury, learning from the god himself.
Filling yourself with liquid poison,
learning to dissolve precious metals.
The Roman god Mercury,
often helped guide lost souls to the underworld,
so maybe that’s why
the longer we lasted,
the more it felt like hell.
You always were toxic to me.
The ancients used lead for everything,
they lined their bathtubs and pipes,
and was considered the best ingredient
in fine wine.
They bathed and drank and drank and drank
until they couldn’t tell the difference
between the two,
washing their sins
whether from skin or from soul,
they were dying just the same.
I guess some things never change.
Tin is still a simple,
under-appreciated metal,
used for simple, unappreciated objects,
but if we are all only elements,
you are a tin man.
The finest element has always been gold,
believed to be of the sun.
People loved it because it seemed
to ooze warmth.
Most religions worshipped the sun,
even though it could **** them
before they had a chance.
The sun,
though warm and life-giving,
has too much power,
and you always did, too.
untrue Jun 2015
"
in life
some of us were hermit philosophers
some of us joined the youth in marches

in theory
we left our mark in moving sand
we walked a barren wasteland

like you, we saw the world crumbling
but when others despaired
bereft of hope
averted their eyes
from what humans had done
we gazed far into the abyss
we did not hate, we theorized

like you, we saw the world evolve
but when aged paradigms failed
as ideas of old were led astray
as all succumbed to chaotic change
and people turned to masses
we critically advised
we spoke of the era of the spectacle

now we are gone
who will stand strong
with feet on the ground
with eyes looking down
against all shouldered giants?

"
I'm reading critical theory in my free time
River Oct 2019
You wanna heal,
Don’t you
But breaking the ingrained patterns of generations
Is hard
But you’ve grasped the idea
And now you just can’t let it go,
This notion that you could be stronger, healthier, more joyful— inviting all of life in through your senses
And just letting go
Of all the heavy burdens that have weighed you down for so long
You’ve spoken your burdens for years
But speaking never beget change
The change you ached for, the transformation you only theorized about
But what you didn’t know
Is that this idea of healing
Was a seed that was planted into your heart
And this kind of seed
Takes a long time to gestate
So even if you haven’t seen visible changes in yourself and in your life
Just know that the seed has cracked open
And is spreading deep roots,
Replacing the roots of your traumas
Your healing, when it is born and continues to grow in its visible manifestation
Will appear differently than how you imagined it
Yet you will be more overjoyed by its reality than by your limited fantasy of it
Your healing
Will be a revolution to yourself and to all those you have ties with
Some won’t understand your changes, neither will you at times
But just continue to listen to your heart, it’s simple, inviting song
And rest in all the beauty that is unfolding before you and within you.
Jacobo Raymundo Jun 2013
Life is not some course
Upon an unmarked path
As was theorized before my time

No, life is the path
Unforeseen, elongating, meandering
Being blazed with each escaping moment

We do not leave prints on the path
But others leave footprints on us
As they travel along with us

Some are minuscule, some gargantuan
Some are washed away with rains of sorrow
But others, they last forever
Sky Feb 2016
The words of Keats stick to my brain
“To cease upon midnight with no pain”
Though I am scared to
I’ll confess my deepest fear
Since the beginning of time
Humankind has theorized
The meaning of the end
Is it an eternal sleep, the black that comes
Or is it a soul’s journey to another place?
I do not know who to believe
And that makes me afraid
I am terrified of the words “The End”
I’ll admit it, oh, yes, I’ll admit it:
I am terrified of death.
Corey J Grace Apr 2015
A great man once said that we are all born from star dust.
I think that's true.
It would explain why every inch of you glows like the sun.
Another great man theorized the universe started with a bang.
I think, actually I know, this too must be true.
Because you started one in my head from the moment we met.
And since then it's been you and only ever you.
Like an astronomer I've found a star among millions
That somehow makes all the other stars immeasurably duller.
And every inch, every crack, every imperfection, every scar
Is utterly and undeniably beautiful.
Like the smile that seems to come from your very soul.
Or the lilt in your voice that sings in my ears and into my veins.
Or the way you curl your hair around your finger when your nervous.
Or the way you laugh at all your own jokes.
Or the way you will always take time even if there is none.
Or even how in 5th grade you bullied a girl once
and since then you've never forgiven yourself for it.
Or the way you always know just the right thing to say.
Or...how you think you're just another person.
You walked straight from a dream and into my life.
Because sometimes life is fair and kind.
Sometimes you meet people that feel larger than whole galaxies.
Sometimes you meet the type of person that will change whole worlds.
Sometimes you meet stars.
Frisk May 2015
because this strategy of lighting myself on fire
to get your attention resulted in varying amounts
of burns all over my body. i theorized that maybe,
if you stared at the sun, then you would go blind
to my deformities. witches like me wouldn't have
to be burned at the stake for your comfort. maybe
instead of me, you would jump head first into the
fire and take a few polaroids of what hell looks like
for me and pin it up on your wall next to the picture
of us. make a collage of things that are dead and use
those few polaroids, and maybe you'll understand.

- kra

— The End —