"unexamined" poems
I though he carried the light
where words would illuminate
driving me to a euphoric ******
a man without a face or a trace
unhindered in a double live and lies
a bubble of psychotic psychic surety
his passion was an addiction
my reservations moved a notch
addicted to a body of ideology
the stances of philosophical terms
uncovering ancient possibilities
the unfelt mysteries of history
veiled in icicles of pretence and lies
as if a Marxist, a closet bourgeoise
The stoicism of present bargains
questioning Socrates and morality reasons
a fatal dose ,examining the unexamined
as colourful as his mind blew my inner glow
he was lost in sad and low dialogues
afraid to face the earthly shallow shadows
yet his spirits moved deep within mine
and it paralysed and fed on my energy
and his delusion became my seduction
but he woke my inner poetic tongue
letting it caress all his inner wounds
A shadow hiding behind Frankenstein’s
a sly monster who lied to my eyes
ghosting in with the a pen that weakens
romancing with letters of a fiery doom
a penpal whom I met within my lowest
but whose words lay in a deep unending quarry
his warmth I could never ever tell
his kiss only a draft on the dewy grass
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 5:29 PM UTC
I believe in a universe where a sleepy eye opens existence...
a slowly drooping eyelid ushers it away.
I believe in a universe where Indra and the other Gods
churn the cosmic milk...
where Shiva does the eternal dance.
I believe in a universe where light is separate from darkness
and mankind is molded from a ball of divine ****
a breath, Be and it is.
I believe in a universe where Gaia watches as Cronus
devours her children until she gives him a stone...
and hides Zeus away.
I believe in a universe that expands
from a singularity of infinitely dense potentiality
less than a speck,
to our cosmos immeasurable in scale.
I believe in a universe where Lao Tuz hands a guard
a little book of wisdom
before disappearing into the mountains
where the sages go.
I believe in a universe where Siddhartha contemplates emptiness
and feels the winds of eternity
whistling through his soul.
I believe in a universe where E=Mc2.
I believe in a universe where an old man lights the first holy fire
and describes the war between light and goodness
vs darkness and evil.
I believe in a universe where the earth and moon,
and all the planets go round the sun...
in a galaxy carrying us
dancing a waltz
we can only catch glimpses of.
I believe in a universe where "Know Thyself"
is revered as a deep truth.
I believe in a universe where
an unexamined life is not worth living.
I believe in a universe where the words of a carpenter
are a true path.
I believe in a universe where an illiterate man is commanded
Read!... a burning coal upon the lips.
I believe in a universe where every God and Goddess
exist, each in their own heaven...
each in their own hell.
I believe in a universe where there are no gods or goddesses
only the relentless laws of matter, energy and gravity.
I believe in a universe where everything is mathematics.
I believe in a universe where everything is holy
I believe in a universe where everything in profane.
I believe in a universe where everything is a simulation.
I believe in a universe where everything is ****** in nature.
I believe in a universe where everything is stimulation.
I believe in a universe where the hoochie *******
is what its all about.
I believe in the universe.
Jan 6, 2018
Jan 6, 2018 at 2:19 PM UTC
Hello Poetry
Yearned.
Ached.
For so long, for a community,
That values the ineffable wonder
Of a wordsmith's creations, intended to
Repair himself and the world with bullets of
Verses.
And here you are.
Like/Dislike, matters not,
So long as we value each others work,
And the the heart echoes within
What the eyes read and the mouth whispers.
The array and disparity of your names,
A delight,
Each name a poem
In its own right.
So I resubmit a question for your consideration,
The answer is now known,
The answer is all of us.
May 2013
---------------------------------------------------------
Who's Who In Poetry
T'is a curious thing,
these verbal peddlers, tribal members,
famously well known to no one,
perhaps at best,
a kindred few, fellow-travelers.
Each a troop,
bloodied, purple hearted,
word-wounded,
anonymous unto each other,
yet all bonded intimates,
in solitary struggle united,
yet sea-parted by the very nature
of the solitude of composition.
All poets are Cain scar-marked,
purposed for everyone to see,
a warning to rabbled boors,
imagination suppressors!
World:
cherish these flawed ones,
gentle these frail but gritty,
the Lord has tasked them
to be prophets in one tongue untied,
undo the strife of Babel's division.
Poets!
Be the harpooners
of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody,
comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy
to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders
into crinkly eye-lined smilers.
With clinical observation,
dense and demanding,
make us laugh at
the comedy of our situation,
teach us our free-to-see peep show,
reveal, unseal us
with **** empathy!
For who's who in poetry
is all of us!
saviors and failures,
recorders and decoders,
night writers of the oohs and aahs
of dreams and nightmares.
When this poet cannot,
no longer, anymore,
tastes his poems upon your lips,
keep your poems within his heart,
then he breathes no more,
and becomes one who was,
yet is,
because of you,
in poetry.
---------------
Postscript (1/25/17)
Even more true today, than four years ago.
Thank You.
May 22, 2013
May 22, 2013 at 1:40 PM UTC
T'is a curious thing,
these verbal peddlers,
these tribal members,
famously well known to no one,
perhaps at best,
a kindred few, fellow-travelers.
Each a troop,
in the army of orphans,
bloodied, purple hearted,
word-wounded,
anonymous unto each other,
yet all bonded intimates,
in solitary struggle united,
yet sea-parted by the very nature
of the solitude of composition.
All poets are Cain scar-marked,
purposed for everyone to see,
a warning to the rabbled boors,
the imagination suppressors!
World:
cherish these flawed ones,
gentle these frail but gritty,
the Lord has tasked them
to be prophets in one tongue untied,
undo the strife of Babel's division.
Poets!
Be the harpooners
of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody,
comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy
to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders
into crinkly eye-lined smilers.
With clinical observation,
dense and demanding,
make us laugh at
the comedy of our situation,
teach us our free-to-see peep show,
reveal, unseal us
with **** empathy!
For who's who in poetry
is all of us!
saviors and failures,
recorders and decoders,
night writers of the oohs and aahs
of dreams and nightmares.
*When this poet cannot,
no longer, anymore,
taste his poems upon your lips,
keep your poems within his heart,
then he breathes no more,
becoming one who was, yet still is,
because of you,*
because of poetry.
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 4:53 PM UTC
People always complain about political correctness
Unless it's something important to them
Then they expect you to use empathetic indirectness
As to not hurt the feelings of men
I'm a homosexual talking to a stranger
They don't detect this
They say ****** and unleash my anger
They don't expect this
They were expecting me to be socially correct
To their bigoted views
They can't handle it when their hatred reflects
And they're given their due
I can't ask for a simple date
Or mention anything about God
I can't ask for their ****** state
That would imply that they're flawed
Yet they say I'm easily offended
But their argument is upended
When there are many topics I must avoid
Or hedge around
Otherwise they will get easily annoyed
And wear a frown
People say Donald Trump is politically incorrect
But that's not true
He's a hateful piece of ****
People confuse that with political incorrectness
But if about half the people who vote are pieces of ****
Can that really be said to be incorrect?
The idea of the president being politically incorrect is absurd
By virtue of being elected his politics are being endorsed
And endorsement is what comprises political correctness
He may know nothing of governance or diplomacy
But he was correct when it came to politics
I live in a country where I can say pretty much whatever I want
And then everyone else can react however they want
To be angry at someone's reaction is its own political correctness
They're just mad it's not their own specific politics being adhered to
So when people mention political correctness I laugh
It's a defensively reflexive path
When they live an unexamined life
But then complain about their plight
They think they're hated because they're white
They think they're hated because they're right
I dislike them because they have low empathy
So I don't want to be near that
Because their hatred starts to enter me
When they call me a queer ***
Then they expect me to love it
But instead I tell them to shove it
They tell me I'm being politically correct
Maybe it's their own lives they should inspect
Feb 3, 2018
Feb 3, 2018 at 11:31 PM UTC
*"Be the harpooner of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody, comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders into crinkly eye-lined smilers."*
l<>|
writ many years past, just another dusted off phrasing,
composed from life's lecture notes, collected by eyes tired
from the hazing,
eyes wearied by the addict-strong,
incessant observational needing,
of celebrating the loopy,
they who make this planet
capable of laughing at itself,
a helping habit for mutual survival...
*should you spot a man ungainly wrought,
weighted down by a harpoon cross
cursed 'pon his Cain-marked back,
you need not move to the other side,
'tis only a make-believe poet,
with his recording device,
seizing your rhapsodies to rhyme,
his collected artifacts, your crinkly smiles,
his meat, his metier, his chosen career,
a comfort caresser of your illusions into
a shapely sculpture of words for you to keep,
a token of your now examined worth,
a celebration for the keeping...*
Aug 13, 2016
Aug 13, 2016 at 7:05 PM UTC
Two aging message senders
and receivers, circumspect
men of reflective thoughts
and words spoken, written.
Wayfarers from divergent
oceans converging.
Both Harpooners of the
unexamined life, seekers
of truths and wisdom.
Kindred spirits different
and yet the same,
A spiritual awakening,
a brotherly bond in the making.
Both touched and renewed
by a voyage taken
upon a common sea
of curious self discovery.
Jun 16, 2018
Jun 16, 2018 at 8:02 PM UTC
(This one is rough, wanted to try and write a poem tonight in one sitting.)
the unexamined life
is not worth
texting. Stop selling
your inadequacy, instagraming
packaged, processed, stylized
banality, like a ******
miming painting
to the long pedestrian
line at the Louvre.
Dec 8, 2012
Dec 8, 2012 at 12:11 AM UTC
I often ponder life's biggest questions
But what's the point? There's no worth testing
Hopelessness often meets despair
I can't even begin to care
Intellectualism is in my name
Surely I am without a blame
For who lives life
Without a single care
For how
Or where
Or when
Or why
They came about
I once met a man
Who told me son
Life can be lived simply
If you consider it fun
But I responded solely
Only in my head
Life is no fun
Unless checked by reasoning's hand
The life unexamined
Socrates once said,
Is a life not worth living
And he put it to bed
For what man
Who calls himself a man
Can honestly live a day
Without caring where he might lay
On the fated day
He departs upon tomorrow
Jan 3, 2012
Jan 3, 2012 at 10:32 PM UTC
Is an old poem of mine that I tender to you to turn your mind away for just, even just, a few minutes from the sadness and the depression that I read about in poem after poem. I am an old man whose sighs are recorded in the lines on his hands. It will be better. You will be loved.
Be brave.
Lead to Gold, Philosopher to Poets
When the philosophers abandoned
castle turrets for ivory towers,
lost was the secret of
I and thou,
of turning lead to gold,
but these cagey, canny scholars in new residences,
who traded
perspicacity for pensions,
before they left,
they tasked to the poets,
a singular task,
cloaking them in a life long responsibility
charging them as follows:
Be the harpooners of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhaposdy,
exhort the loopy
to light candles of illusions,
canonize the nursing mothers to deliver us
the kinder Ishmael's who will revel,
lead us with warmth and apprehension,
with the strength of sinews
fixed and flexible,
we will believe and
they will teach the rest of us
that the first commandment
is to empathize.
**with clinical observation,
dense and demanding,
make us laugh at
the comedy of our situation,
the comedy of our conscience,
our free to see,
the peep show of us,
explicate and deconstruct
our unexamined lives,
help us to extend the boundaries,
record the voyages of our timepieces,
declare us all free and victors,
file away the chains of language
and declare us all poets**
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 12:43 AM UTC
Be a harpooner of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhaposdy,
exhort the loopy
to light candles of illusions,
canonize the nursing mothers to deliver us
the kinder Ishmael's who will revel,
lead us with warmth and apprehension,
with the strength of sinews
fixed and flexible,
we will believe and
they will teach the rest of us
that the first commandment
is to empathize.
with clinical observation,
dense and demanding,
make us laugh at
the comedy of our situation,
the comedy of our conscience,
our free to see,
the peep show of us,
explicate and deconstruct
our unexamined lives,
help us to extend the boundaries,
record the voyages of our timepieces,
declare us all free and victors,
file away the chains of language
and declare us all poets
Jan 24, 2014
Jan 24, 2014 at 6:21 PM UTC
He awakens, sighs, bones acreak at every move.
Reaches for the boilerplate, straps on his rapier
wit (but half of once it was), takes an aching
hold of his rusty lance, and mounts the ancient keyboard.
In clattering, staccato bursts, they gallop through
acres of verse: thatches of haiku and senryu,
prim English gardens of sonnet, manicured villanelles,
and mile after mile of untamed blank verse just like this.
All along the journey, he tilts at the ogres
in his mind, swiping in steady rhythm
at possesive pronouns replacing contractions,
your/you're...their/they're...its/it's...gah!
Set to charge full speed downhill from the
Valhallan heights of two courses of college English
at unedited mounds of unexamined thoughts,
he fetches up sharply; slows to a trot, looking uphill
at the hordes of English majors
eyeing him and his keyboard
with malice aforethought.
Jan 13, 2011
Jan 13, 2011 at 4:06 AM UTC
Socrates drunk the hemlock
And for once, death has lost its power
to intimidate, enslave
mortality transcended...
Admiration for the brave
the courageous amongst us
Truly, there is more to life
than food
work
***
and *****
Those who live earnestly
are the ones who look inside themselves
proclaiming with great ferocity:
The unexamined life is not worth living!
Jul 13, 2020
Jul 13, 2020 at 9:22 PM UTC
As noted by Socrates,
an unexamined life
is not worth living;
as a disciple of Christ,
I’ve decided to adopt…
His lifestyle of giving.
Humanity’s selfishness
needs to be subdued daily,
for we need each other;
regardless of opinions,
we’re still God’s offspring
as sisters and brothers.
From embracing The Word,
we go forth as ambassadors,
since Truth we must tell.
For an unexamined life
keeps one unwittingly on…
the unmarked road to Hell.
.
.
.
Author Notes
Loosely based on:
Matt 7:13-14, 19:26, 28:16-20;
John 6:45; Eph 5:1-2
Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://amzn.to/1ffo9YZ
By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2014, All rights reserved.
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 10:21 AM UTC
1.
My mother hates me!
My father hates me!
Oedipus screams to the
stealthily silent Sphinx.
He scatters riddles like laurel leaves
waiting to be braided into
a playwright's crown. It is too
grandiose to fit his cracked. cramped cranium.
His unconscious mind flies open
like the Sphinx rocketing to the sky.
Sacred haunches soar. Wings beat
steadily to reach titanic heights.
Blind to his murderous fate, Oedipus
cannot know himself. Before the
Delphic Oracle, his life shrivels,
unexamined by his bleeding eyes.
2.
Freud exults in triumph.
Maternal love births eternal love:
endless comfort and affection
for the newly bloomed beloved.
Soon, comfort metamorphoses
into feral eros, unspeakable, unthinkable,
beyond the bounds of catastrophic evil.
Submerged desire sullies the chastest kiss.
Jacosta embraces her son
as her new living king, her husband's
royal blood bubbling brazenly
on the bitter road to Thebes.
His hands stained, Oedipus strives
to transmute his trauma as our own.
We become him when Freud deigns
to interpret our darkest, direst dreams.
Blindly, we mimic him: carnal union
with the mother, lethal rage against
the father. Mourning Becomes Electra
beckons to the wary second ***
3.
The Sphinx belies its own riddle:
How can prophecy spring from
the sculpted, smooth stone
of these perfect *******
Only blind Teiresias plumbs the depths
of Oedipus' fate: Judgement lies blinded,
action lies blinded by the ventricles of
violence, the twisted telos of the mind.
Humans sin against the world, against
nature, siphoned of joy. They sin without
a sacred perch to rise from. Blood and *****
mud and blindness fashion their Oedipal souls.
Feb 21, 2020
Feb 21, 2020 at 3:21 PM UTC
I understood I would never marry,
buy a house, have kids,
mow the lawn on Saturday,
wash cars, clean the pool.
I had an atypical plan,
thinking back, for my life:
a wanderer, adventurer or pilgrim
without want of firm roots.
Each destination a chance happening,
an introduction to the unexamined.
Sidewalks, cafes, alleyways, and life
being lived, journaled for remembrance.
The North Country, New York;
Watertown, Carthage, Clayton and Ogdensburg,
strolling their streets dripping
history and memoirs never told.
Lassoing thoughts from wild conversation
with caffeinated coffee shop poets,
struggling with Calvinistic thought streams
and priests in moments of doubt.
My theories in marble.
Gently chiseled with each interaction,
chipped, thoughts evolve
leaving inference among spilt beans.
All memories and dreams mingle.
l hold them gently.
As midnight creeps I’m untethered,
drifting from the shoal once more.
Suddenly I sense wonder:
The Appalachian Trail at Katahdin,
Continental divide at Loveland Pass,
Mount Hood from Pacific Crest.
Have you ever witnessed
views of Mojave’s Kelso Dunes?
Felt the Great Basin’s rainshadow chill,
or contemplated Joshua Trees in prayer?
Often the life of could have been
is more lucid than I am,
kneeling gnarled,
pulling obstinate weeds.
Shallow breath’d and gazing… scanning
my cut grass, clear pool,
a loving wife, adoring children,
my home…
This man,
mind wandering,
acquiesces,
to clarity of thought.
I would have… could have
been that man, that other life,
a Walter Mitty dreaming
a life; mine.
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 5:05 PM UTC
genius is snapping at my dragons. feel free to ask them. they’ll barter hard tongues
and won't apologize for mad hatters. but this. This matters.
it ungathers. It unravels and the sunscape chafes on the void's tatters.
but it rathers you know me now,
than meet me at crossroads.
it's your call.
come
from your unexamined life
and be sitting with your eyes
like two mouths.
they will speak when spoken two;
when i give you all...
and you want me
too.
hello. my name is unsung. and That's the song.
don't get me wrong; but right your vessel -
and
this ocean will float your devils
with your nephelim. with your unbridled elan.
be sweet. keep your feet unplanted, but be enchanted by the road you're on.
find me in the thicket of unbearable seeing.
you will be me -
for the moment you release
' things '
and imprison Nothing.
of course
you'll need a cauldron
to rehearse your heresies
as often.
may i suggest
a new
guess ?
a question that suits you
better than " what the **** ? "
and has feathers ?
can we do that
and love each
other ?
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 8:07 PM UTC
an intimacy of affections and intimate attentions
hovers in the air
sometimes shimmering
perhaps swirling
this way and that
creating at its core an impulse of hope
of a shared dream
drawn to each as each is to each
as in pursuit of that which is hidden in our hearts
obscured by what we think we know about ourselves
yet we are drawn into this thing
and find ourselves called to each other
in pursuit of our dreams of love
yet we have lived this long experience
these shared echoes that we realise#
each without each would be stunningly incomplete
a lavish perfume it envelopes us
invests us with new forms
in the most powerful and novel ways
with new rituals and language
we bristle with unexamined interpersonal connections
so gentle, so powerful, so beautiful
like the terms borrowed
from tow different galaxies of homeless stars
yet complement each other as a whole
for we have found it
what
love
what is it
it is the music only we can hear
for we are the duality of our dream
May 31, 2013
May 31, 2013 at 6:25 PM UTC
You'd rather see the Shrink
than stand up tall
take pills than learn to walk
on thorny ground
you say you
wouldn't be here otherwise
that you've been saved
at least for now
I say look hard
& seek the truth
even if it means
toying with Death
what is a life
unexamined & emotionless
we all carry burdens
not all of us run from them
Jul 19, 2015
Jul 19, 2015 at 5:43 PM UTC
I need to resist writing metaphorically
with literary techniques and motifs
that occur only for my mind.
I once wrote openly with clear contexts
with rhythmic verses that showed
thoughts kept in line.
That is all lost now.
Writing use to be my medium, my expose
but i've learned beyond this middle line that Icarus
swayed in the sun, fluttering grasping his own wings
that were never part of himself.
He could have used "Red Bull" , but that is just
another false marketing campaign to ourselves;
to utilize tools that already preexist within us all.
The world that we live in is filled with stimuli
that our senses get overloaded and we focus
on what we see in front, as opposed to our front
sour facades, and alternative personas
just so that we can conform; forming
molds that we have no choice but to breath in.Cough!
There is a reason why I wrote in symbols
broken sentence structures, because i did not want to be vulnerable.
To speak this mind, not of mind, not for mind,
but to remindme of emotions, experiences, and realizations.
What we keep inside is our pandora
our deep hope cluttered, underneath,
covered with all that confusionthat we reflect to others.
So, I failed to resist to write in metaphor
but i spoke my mind, i spoke in passion
yet remained somewhat clearand ascertained something to adhere.
Who I am to myself.
Jan 23, 2010
Jan 23, 2010 at 2:29 PM UTC
This poem is dedicated to Steve Yocum,
author, poet, and soldier
farmer, father, grandfather,
man exemplar,
whom I honor
and honors me,
with the noblest title in all humankind,
friend.
But above all,
I honor him most,
as a tireless, truthful, harpooner
of the examined and the unexamined life
~~~
*"Be the harpooners of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody, comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders into
crinkly eye-lined smilers."*
~~~
these mine words writ many years past,
dusted off phrasings,
on dusty shelf long lain,
mined from notes,
decades steadily collected by steadily diminishing ears and eyes,
gathered most from self-taught lectures
and self-deceiving dances,
garbed and wearily grabbed
by the addict-strong
observational need,
persistent and perpetual,
to pay off fresh debits,
renewables owed
to the lovely,
to the loopy,
inhabitants who excite and inspire
my so far, rebirthing, youthful,
yearling heart
who provide the special crazy that
justifies existence
just men,
connected by a bond of sonship,
kinship crowning kingship,
blood types as different as an
A is to B
both shall weep in one blood,
I, as I do now,
while midst the nascent commencement of this sonnet,
He, at its commencement,
for a good friendship has no
beginning or end,
but is a circular track,
a loop,
familial by repeated runnings,
yet never, coursed in the exact
same manner or speed
this thought,
this knowledge,
bring a smile to this crinkly eyed composer,
that the metaphysical
will always surpass the binding physics of mortal physical,
that two man,
who have
never met,
race side by side,
not in competition,
but in the mutuality of composition,
each a candle holder,
both writers,
observing the dark illusions,
re-making each into a carrier,
a shedder of light,
each a debt giver and a
debt holder to each other,
hosts to all the loopy,
comfort caressers,
to each other
and to all
who too,
are light-bathed by being in possession
of the title
friend
Mar 20, 2016
Mar 20, 2016 at 3:39 PM UTC
"The unexamined Life is not worth living."
-Socrates
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 5:16 PM UTC
"The unexamined life is not worth living" -Socrates
"KNOW THYSELF" -- Socrates
"Wise is he who knows that he knows nothing." - Socrates
"Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well." -- Epictetus
"No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but things which produce certain pleasures bring troubles many times greater than the pleasures." -- Epicurus
"Natural wealth is both limited and easy to attain, but wealth, as defined by groundless opinions, extends without limits." - Epicurus
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 4:07 AM UTC