Posts Tagged Idealism
Riffed Out of Easy
Listening to loud Middle
Class Rut, wishing I
could run away to
their fields of play.
Some things are simple,
blare with clarity,
and they’re impossible.
I Want a Robot (3)
to sit amongst the tans,
the creamy, sandy blurs
that don’t muffle, but seem
to punctuate the sounds of
gossip, soap-operatic gifs,
and cackles that reopen all my
wounds, to sit there,
punching the numeric
keys and alpha, as needed,
to be a steel case, undisturbed
by the chaos of death wearing
down the cubicled, doing my
job, so that I might wander
in a normally-hopeless search
for my life, for my reason.
.
I Want a Robot (2)
to permit me a walk
on the fantastic stairs
by the architectural
wonder, feeling the winds
from the South, full of
future lives, to only
reflect on sharing experience,
hoping it helps or comforts
or perhaps alleviates wounds
of loneliness.
I Am the Trash Man
The litigiousness of society rips at me, but I’m likely to blow off the residing anger, say a cuss word like fuck and move on. When it was finally my turn, my day in court finished with a tremendous victory for me and my sleazy lawyer.
Later, after all of the media bullshit, when all of the people started detesting me, the anger erupted inside me, refusing to dissipate, so here I write my cultural defense, having crushed the competition in the courtroom.
When I did the people’s taxes, I had these spirited periods of time like being in a jet when I would punch in these crazy numbers, but it was always in the people’s favor. My customers loved me except if they happened to be audited. My audits seemed to get worse and worse, and the partners always blamed me instead of understanding that I was only trying to make things good for our customer.
I went out in a storm of blurry shouting when three of the partners sat me down in Fred’s office and fired me without letting me defend myself. I was still drunk from the night before, so I had yet to hit the sauce I kept in my desk drawer. I felt put together, Read the rest of this entry »
You Too Can Write a Novel in 30 Days
I’ve been sold on so many things.
But I’m slow.
Too slow.
Too old to be slow.
Might die in 29
if you only give me 30.
Need infinite time
to create infinite art,
but I’m a wasted old man.
Accept my lack of time,
knowing my dreams are
infinitely stupid.
Dream I might write one,
just one, artistic poem, but
while I might finish,
it will never be good,
so I’m at peace
with my infinite inadequacy,
fueling my hopelessness,
but fighting my restlessness,
and putting it away.
.
Who Left Me Dead Alive?
If the music gets loud enough, I feel
the escape of despair, and I scream
with dizziness, though I never say it
as well as the musicians, and I’m left
wondering why I’m pale and so muted.
Freedom, let’s catch the bus as it leaves
the station, jumping up and down on the tin
roof, grabbing the crumbling cement,
passing under structures meant to bury
us, swallow us, throw us away.
Superman and I rage against the wind
as we jump from rooftop to polluted roof-
top, scrambling to locate our missing
hearts, rumbling through city forests,
making pancakes out of cement trucks.
Screaming in my twisting intestines,
coughing, blowing out clogs, who is it
who shut me out from my art, who has
splayed me, sucked out my screams,
removed my hums, left me breathing?
.
Lightly, Not Trespassing
This is my late submission for PAD Day 3. My dog ate the first one and that is why this is so late. The prompt for this day was to write a poem on something tentative.
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Lightly, Not Trespassing
Her ego, too large, but perhaps not,
might it be a sensitive soul,
needing defense, causing compassion,
and I’ve fallen in, or have I?
She talks of her fans. They love
her, cause her to be reticent in shar-
ing, about how close they get to her,
and I want to be one, a fan, close to her.
More of her takes me into deep, warm
areas, and I must hold back, not tell
her any truth about my desires, so I
watch her, shiver, downed by longing.
.
Revolutions – This Isn’t a Poem, but I Don’t Write Fucking Essays
Posted by Carl in Essays, Finding Purpose, Poems on March 18, 2013
Here today, things started to change dramatically.
Do you know, when I just said that, I knew it was false,
but it’s hope, so fuck ’em. So for a few minutes, I thought,
I might be a writer. To me, that meant I might be a decent
human being. I have this blind sense that humans need to
have a central purpose, a reason for going on despite all
the facts that seem to recommend action to the contrary, but
it is blind because I don’t know other humans well enough
to know that they need a purpose. In fact, often, I wonder
how these integrated, bloated masses of people get along
without purpose because they simply trudge through, yes,
contented, but vacuous, contented with eating three meals,
with chips and snacks and pops, and weekend trips to the
lake ( THE fucking lake), and working on these schedules
that are preposterous, barely having time to hug the dog,
rarely awaking without an alarm designed to send humans
into blind destitute, where they don’t know how empty all of the
facades are, and I sit here, wanting to spit on my new pants,
wanting to throw the cafeteria tray across the room, blowing
out the perfectly-clean window which teases me with a Zen
garden that is never used for true purpose, not for lack of need,
but because the minds are entrapped in this buzzing hum
of doing what responsible adults and other gurus have told us
we are meant to do, despite our god-given sense that we waste
this gift of life every day, each day with these millions of
moments that spin down clockwise through snake-cleaned
drains made of the detritus of all of the gold we mined in the
good days when living in a tent and eating smoked rabbit
was a good thing. Here I am praying for a revolution that will
turn me into a writer and allow me to live out my days,
comfortable in some sense of purpose, praying that there
are people who might read and might be changed in the
slightest, because if I can touch a few people with writing and
eat a bit of rabbit, what would be wrong with me, but I’m scared
in the end, remembering those nightmares of walking out of
my tent and hanging myself with heavy rope on the sturdy,
horizontal limb of the old oak tree, ending what seems to be a
useless quest, a useless longing to rid myself of this vast,
empty purposelessness. And here I am wondering what kind
of stupid fuck would write about writing, and I stop. I’m due
back in my cubicle.
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A Depressive’s Unfulfilled Manic Late Night
Siri
can’t help
me find joy, life, wading
through thick machines, littered, soulless,
with tricks.
.
Brahms, Revisited without Tears for Today
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Brahms, Revisited without Tears for Today
Brahms has the twitchy fuse,
lighting me in acidic
flames and the arguments inherited
from old elephants, between piano and orchestra,
are trudging – me, I verses the world,
and I’m losing
but I’m pounding the keyboard
until I get a break, a breath, a sigh,
and I show this grace
that is un-Brahms
but is
Brahms at his greatest,
and when the horns arrive
in red army coats, you know
victory is grasped with dirty,
dry, crisp finger nails, but it
never happens, never consummates.
I am finished, a heaping
pile of slippery dung
when Brahms is done.
And as a practicing drunk, the tears
would wilt tarnished cheeks and create heat
emanating around thorny eye sockets,
but these days are desert dry, pain layered
and hidden and only Brahms, only the
master knows, knows the truth, and now,
at least I rest, I stop, I pray, lost.
.
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p.s. – Embedded below is the referenced piece, performed by my favorite conductor and one of my favorite pianists. The exposition of the first movement lasts 3:45, so patience is needed in waiting for the arguments between piano and orchestra. The climax/recapitulation of the first movement at about 13:20 is one of the most intense sections of music I know along with the ending of the first movement. It is immense music. The third movement is a kick ass jam if you make it that far…
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stillfugue 