acrostic mirrors, a type of sonnet I created to be one of the most complex poetry forms in the English language — just can’t compete with the arab poets — If you look, you can see that the first stanza has the lines repeated in a difficult acrostic. The first line is “No Matter how you look at things, congruities the first column up to down says the same thing. The second line is “matter but little. It’s how things fit together”. And the second column reads the same way (second word in each line)
no matter how you look at things congruities
matter but little it’s how things fit together
how little equality yes even that can displease
you it’s yes how things stand not whether
look how even things are at even parities
at things that stand at undefiled be be
things fit can not even be odd even
congruities together displease whether parities be even or
and the table of contents is a poem in itself
Acrostic Mirrors
by Norman Clark Stewart Jr.
1
Table of Contents
Fraternal Twins With Nothing Psychic
To Judge the Odds of Both Living Past Forty,
………………… 4
The Radical Behaviorist and the Otherwise Inspired,
The Clinical and the Otherwise Inclined,
…………………. 5
Coming to Blows Over Capitalized Words,
You Say I’m Too Silly.
…………………………………….. 6
Just Juxtaposition of the Contrapositive
And the Unexplained, You
………………………………….. 7
Train Your Children to See
Into the Microscope With Both Eyes Open
Until Parallax is Focused on the Slide, No Longer
Dissonance ….. 8
You See the Ocean as Salt, Electrolytes, Algae, and Fish
History,
Fried Portions to Consume in Explanations,
…………………… 9
Tear My Horse to Pieces of Anatomy, Seeing Him as
Potential Glue.
You Dare Declare,
………………………………………… 10
“If I am Poet, I am Lost”,
…………………………………. 11
Set Words Against Me in a Clash of Ideologies.
So, I Want a Name, Don’t Want to be Named.
………………….. 12
Your Wife Knew You: Couldn’t Take Your Specialty Anymore–
Is That a Fair Cut? Divorce is Such an Easy Retort.
…………. 13
Ant and Aunt Rhetoric, You Divorce Me From My Words With
“It’s Been Said Before and Better”,
………………………… 14
Making Me Tramp About, To Find a Marriage of Word to Word.
I Look for Hitch‑Hikers,
………………………………….. 15
Pass Antioch, Dirt‑Black, Crouched Behind the Wheel
Of My Tractor to Remind Them, “I’ve Been Feeding You”.
……….. 16
The Big Gangs Bounced My Head Against the Sidewalk
Pulling Me Out of My Seat. We Both Went Into Hiding.
………… 17
I Feel Love Slipping Into the Closet With the Platform
Shoes:
Ignorance With an Excuse.
…………………………………. 18
I Really Thought They’d All Love My Rebellious Utterings,
Trusted “The People” to Find the Real “Me”.
…………………. 19
We Both Regret Decisions We Can’t Retrieve, Branches We
Threw Out,
Never Expecting the Dogs Would Keep Running.
………………… 20
Was That the Torment, That Even Dogs Die?
…………………. 21
No Rite of Passage Marked the Votes We Made.
……………….. 22
We Submit to Dialectic Subservience.
………………………. 23
Intimations of the Holocaust Thump the Crust of Our French
Bread,
Leave Fingerprints on Our German Pastries.
…………………… 24
Your Wife Just Deserted an Idea of You,
Sees Only Sperm in the Microscope.
…………………………. 25
Tilling the Cold Land, Part‑Time Farmers, Like You,
Stay Only to See the Ground Broken.
………………………… 26
At Night, By Firelight, I Admit My Age,
……………………. 27
Look to Life For a Reason To Continue the Fight
For the Individual Illusion.
………………………………. 28
Celebrating Constancy, You Realize a Different Strength
In the Spirit of Your Ex‑Wife.
…………………………….. 29
Lost in Your Science,
She Says She Won’t Speak With You.
…………………………. 30
Lonely Since She Left (With the Sunblock 45);
Lonely Since You Left.
……………………………………. 31
Anger and Covered‑Over Holes,
Patches of Smoothed‑Out Disappearances,
…………………….. 32
Nothing Makes Sense Without Distraction.
…………………… 33
Will My Love Give Up and Go?
……………………………. 34
I Still Scream, Though Subdued,
“What Do You Want From Me?!”
……………………………… 35
You Resign to a Future That Twists Your Children’s Faces
And You Call Me the Dreamer,
………………………………. 36
Make Me Outcast For Saying That Inventions Need to Be
Imitated.
…………. 37
Children Would Have Been Nice. I Watch Yours Growing Up:
…………………………………. 38
Thought I Could Make Information a Weapon
For Them to Change You With.
………………………………. 39
Now, Breathing in Numbers Which Substitute for Free Air,
…….. 40
Afraid That Nothing is Free, Not Even Expression,
…………… 41
I Go Back to Farming and Bug Control,
Microbiotic Manipulation,
…………………………………. 42
Realize Plato Was No Farmer.
………………………………. 43
You Both Condemn Me for My Infertility.
…………………….. 44
Any Love I Had Is Now Only Devotion.
………………………. 45
Marcuse and You Deny Me Meaning
And the Existence of Any Public.
…………………………… 46
I Censor Myself:
………………………………………… 47
Used to Have Sex for Exercise.
……………………………. 48
My Body Has Become a Free‑Form Blob
But There Is Still Some Strength Here
………………….. 49
Fraternal Twins With Nothing Psychic
To Judge the Odds of Both Living Past Forty
No matter how you look at things, congruities
Matter but little. It’s how things fit together,
How little Equality (yes, even that) can displease
You. It’s, yes, how things stand, not whether.
Look…. How even things are at even parities,
At things that stand, at undefiled Be. Be
Things fit. Can not even be odd even?
Congruities together displease whether parities be even or…
The large cosmos and man‑made lore
Engage in altercation for what we believe in.
We build systems of order that tell us what we see
But, Truth, that fierce trickster, defies clarity.
Things seem to fit when the odds are not even
But beyond our belief there is always something more.
The Radical Behaviorist and the Otherwise Inspired
The Clinical and the Otherwise Inclined
Form and content are not separate, but unified
And controlled. To some intellects, form leaves the
Content to psychology. Kind thinkers give in: discrepancies
Are some kind of magical messages. The forms,
Not intellects, thinkers magical, not innocent trees (making
Separate form) give messages. Innocent lives are art
But leaves in the trees are not, truly.
Unified, the discrepancies (forms making art) truly expand
And language is not the only source
Of artistic amazement. The mere fact
That there was enough there to listen to,
The sounds of disguised equity as it plodded
Its way along, these and maybe something more,
Are hidden beneath the silly surface.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo-aib9H9cs
Coming to Blows Over Capitalized Words
You Say I’m Too Silly
Still suffering from a formal tendency of mind,
Suffering, sometimes, a placement against extrapolations (free emotion
From a freer mindset) creations question, making placement
A placement/mindset problem (that poems have nothing
Formal against creations that have nothing worthwhile). All
Tendency‑extrapolations, question‑poems, nothing‑considerations form poems
Of free making, have worthwhile form. All are
Mind/emotion/placement/nothing. (All poems are nothing‑‑
Nothing but poems.) They are not imagery,
Not questions, not extrapolation,
Not placement nor tendencies,
Considerations of free making,
Not suffering, nor mindset, not problems,
Not even worthwhile, but they are sometimes Poetry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRvywYA_yBI
Just Juxtaposition of the Contrapositive
And the Unexplained, You
Laugh at me, sweet dream child. They laugh
At you too. You fall for made beauty
(Me too) and, failing at fame’s fortunes, become
Sweet you, failing graciously, sunset taking you, (the
Dream fall at sunset is something, somehow) beast/
Child for fame’s taking, something easily ignored because
They made fortunes you, somehow, ignored, called nothing.
Laugh, beauty, become the beast because nothing matters
When love is lost. When love is lost
There is no fame, no fortune worth having
And the beauty of form is only refuge
From having to remember the dreams you discarded,
In the sunset of youth, when love
Was pain to deepen the pleasure you knew.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYzE1ZtSFn8
Train Your Children to See Into the Microscope With
Both Eyes Open
Until Parallax is Focused on the Slide, No Longer
Dissonance
And no men left to see the dawn,
No tricksters living out some devious plans and
(Men living imitations of hateful orgasms) daring dusk.
Left out of influence, dreamers left the present
To some hateful dreamers, reigned over consequences to
See devious orgasms left over, to make fashion
The plans, daring the consequences, make ugly the
Dawn and dusk, present to fashion the guilt
And become fashion themselves out of dreaming
So that dreaming is, for them, justified
But if no one sees the dusk and dawn,
If orgasms produce deformity, if my plans
Can be crushed, like my body can be, then
My dreams are worth something more when held.
You See the Ocean as Salt, Electrolytes, Algae, and
Fish History
Fried Portions to Consume in Explanations
I look at the ocean’s chores during summer,
Look at my duty and wonder, just how,
At my leisure, to form oceans that “better”
The duty, to masterfully create from need, (the
Ocean’s) and form. Create greater need? I, doing
Chores, wonder, ‑‑”Oceans from need?”‑‑, what need is,
During just that need. I need more than
Summer. How better the doing is than boredom,
So I do chores and write down lists
Of more to do, try to improvise
Like the ocean, try to fill the needs
It presents me with, try to be big
And impressive and, yet, soothing, hypnotic,
Try to find meaning in its movement and majesty.
Tear My Horse to Pieces of Anatomy, Seeing Him as
Potential Glue
You Dare Declare
“Plague, like the old‑fashioned kind, or some
Like death bug, bags mainly weaklings”. They say,
“The bug is bad for faltering whinnies and
Old bags, bad for bloodlines”, intimations that mean,
`Fashioned mainly for bloodlines, blowing’ (evil wind), “too‑
Kind weaklings”, faltering intimations (evil plagues), “down already”,
Or, “They, whinnies that wind down, become infected.”
Some say, and mean too, “already infected.” Others
Say only pleasure they hope to give,
Say only silly formulations of mental acrobatics,
Say only intimations and are contagious
In their simplicity and art is obtuse
For them, because death is so close
And they fall down without screaming.
If I am Poet, I am Lost
If you place me where you wish to,
You give me something less of a chance,
Place me next to me, course set, with
“Me” something to be. Is that any good;
Where less “me” is more like anyone’s fortune?
You, of course, that like the concept, you
Wish a set, any‑anyone’s concept and leave
To chance ‑‑ with good fortune, you leave it
Completely to chance and formal law ‑‑
Whether I am what I’m supposed to be,
Whether I’m close enough to everyone and not too
Far from me. Once placed, my life can be judged as
Being on or off course, as compared to every anyone
On that route, in that place. So, I get lost.
Set Words Against Me in a Clash of
Ideologies
So, I Want a Name, Don’t Want to be Named
Game’s played this way and only this way,
Played for profit, for fun. If not done
This profit‑sharing, insurance‑included, people‑diminishing, greedy
Way, for insurance percentages, for power returns realized
And fun (included for productivity), profit shrinks. “So,
Only if people power profit, give us that.”
This, not diminishing returns, shrinks us, impoverishes. The
Way, done greedy, realized so that the whole
Human race can be lifted by raising the standard
On the top, is the only way we know to make
The folks on the bottom struggle upward.
“And the greedy topsters like to tell us what we need to do
If we have a conscience, if we want to do the right
Thing and be like them, rabid redistributors of grief.”
Your Wife Knew You, Couldn’t Take Your Specialty
Anymore
Is That a Fair Cut? Divorce is Such an Easy
Retort
Marriage is like a poem like this one,
Is sometimes stodgy little ritual moments, even (often)
Like stodgy separation. Love, well‑spent, wisely gives
A little love back. Of all that this
Poem, ritual well of watery poison, can realize,
Like moments spent, all poison and mean, remember
This, even wisely (that can mean well) : Love
(One often gives this) realize! Remember love when
The passion takes you, when the funny words flow through
Laughter, realize that the stodgy moments of ritual
Were born of love, as well, and the pretty lines
And times, the sickness and health, poverty and wealth,
The subservience and mastery, the top and bottom
Of it, the dishes and doorknobs, also, are close to truth.
Ant and Aunt Rhetoric, You Divorce Me From My
Words With
“It’s Been Said Before and Better”
Same old story when they’re black and white;
Old sunlit lines, just sitting dead; those fine
Story lines and existence here entangled like lace
When just existence survives, making webs these concepts;
They’re sitting here making webs, crazy moonlight crammed
Black dead entangled webs, crazy moonlight visions, mourning,
And those like these moonlight visions, dark within
White fine lace concepts, crammed mourning within knowledge,
Within me and I try to tell it all
So that it’s beautiful and funny,
Try to look at life and imitated art,
Try to put something new on the page, imbedded
In something timeless and, black and white,
All I have is formic tricks and words.
Making Me Tramp About, To Find a Marriage of Word
to Word
I Look for Hitch‑Hikers
The drive toward a higher love, expressed as
Drive not wasted, fine tones spoken, lyrics, waved
Toward wasted minds (addiction to habit), being like
A fine addiction in themselves, until artists, humming
Higher tones to themselves, music, almost in symphonies,
Love spoken, (habit until almost perfected) love, then
Expressed (lyrics being artists in love with truth)
As waved like humming symphonies, then truth, then
Beauty, along with that love, as all made real, all one, come to grips
With the enormity of their task,
Is a drive
Along
A desolate
Road.
Pass Antioch, Dirt‑Black, Crouched Behind the
Wheel
Of My Tractor to Remind Them, “I’ve Been Feeding
You”
When the truth in structure is definitively denied,
The rhythmic complexity measures out every broken beat.
Truth, complexity, and that old organic concrete (diluted
In measures that signify complacency) picture perfection, pattern
Structure. Out old complacency comes. Poetry staggers and
Is every organic‑picture‑poetry‑piece concocted of
Definitively broken concrete. Perfection staggers. Concocted truth, (course
Denied, beat diluted) pattern and, of course, imagery
Are tied by wisp and whimsy, to pollinate the visceral
With branches, shaken just enough to excite a bee
With the prospect of honey, but swatted before the planting
Of that stamen expressionism. Buds scream for Morning Glory.
That flora grows too fast and strong. The picture wants nothing
That will need cutting nor guilt for the loss of a petal’s perfect proportions.
The Big Gangs Bounced My Head Against the
Sidewalk
Pulling Me Out of My Seat. We Both Went Into
Hiding
Too close to tyranny, we try for freedom,
Close doors, erect bars, keep weaponry close, ready
To erect a new democracy, after combat against
Tyranny bars new ideals as futility, after all.
We keep democracy, as hope fades fast. We
Try weaponry after futility fades, create enemies, despise,
(For close combat) after fast enemies fall, keep
Freedom ready against all we despise, keep faith
In a relative freedom of lain bricks and sometimes
Spontaneous offerings of good times and wonderful
Words that flow easily from the lips in rhythmic
Relation to our lives of freedom, inside the bars
That safety requires, with weapons and words and a
Faith in our ability to be free and keep our faltering faith alive.
I Feel Love Slipping Into the Closet With the
Platform Shoes
Ignorance With an Excuse
It is always about love when a world
Is made from imagination and words. Mighty emotion,
Always from sense of self, can talk, not
About imagination of pictured hyperbole only but of
Love and self, hyperbole tamed, force constricted; for
When words can only force truthful style or
A mighty talk (but constricted style, still) with
World emotion, not of, for, or with love
But only hyperbolic pictures of self‑indulgent moments of
Masterpiece idolatry without heart and soul,
Then the created thing, like an adopted child, looking
For a parental reason, past sperm and egg, is telling
A little bit more like a lie about where it came from,
When the love in imagination, hyperbole, force, constricted style is denied.
I Really Thought They’d All Love My Rebellious
Utterings
Trusted “The People” to Find the Real “Me”
Twisted with age, angered and unused, I wait,
With rage spiraling, for recognition. Talent, want, desire,
Age spiraling upward, all temper and shape me,
Angered for all humanity exploited. Time is taken
And recognition (temper exploited) is some sedation for
Unused talent and time, some small enough reward.
I want shape! Is sedation enough? I can’t
Wait: Desire me! Taken for reward, can’t I
Be like the prize at the bingo game? ‑‑Talent for before,
Time for benign, selfless acts in diagonal lines,
For fun and something to do when there are
Too many cards out, being played and thrown
Aside when someone else jumps up for the prize,
For something they want and always wanted ‑‑ me.
We Both Regret Decisions We Can’t Retrieve, Branches
We Threw Out
Never Expecting the Dogs Would Keep Running
Trapped in a crystal prism of facets cut,
In fluid suspension, we know refracted, twinkling reality,
A suspension of dreaming, other ways to pretend
Crystal. We, dreaming within structure, are not pure
Prism, know other structure, fantasize, (living sanction lives
Of refracted ways, are living still, solidity, with
Facets twinkling to not sanction solidity) forego chaos‑
‑Cut reality, pretend pure lives with chaos removed
But look out at the stars and butterflies
To know what life could be, if only
We were not so responsible and committed.
We allow chaos as a conceptual enigma
That we are getting into shape and order, for the feeling
Of progress and movement, for when even twinkles freeze.
Was That the Torment, That Even Dogs Die?
What was so pressing about the growth process?
Was it wanting every growing dream in us,
So wanting, so young, to appear as close
(Pressing every young cause forward, as many legends
About growing to forward mankind’s destiny ‑‑ full of
The dream ‑‑ appear as destiny) as adult life.
Growth in as many full adult plans means
Process us, close legends of life, means, riches
Off, close us off from greatness, for social security,
Find ways to keep back a tide of crabby kids
Who proliferated from adults, like sand in the cracks
Of juicy lust. What can we do? This growth
Can be stopped by immoral means, but how human
Will we all be, when it’s over, how processed and packaged?
No Rite of Passage Marked the Votes We Made
Freedom’s frightening, about the time propaganda takes over,
Frightening when it only tells the good things
About it, the big it, unknown information, hidden,
The only big secret, all we have not.
Time tells it all. We search ‑‑started with
Propaganda, the unknown ‑‑ We search desperately, but it
Takes good information, have started but aren’t getting
Over things hidden, not with it getting so
Confused,
Lied about,
And lost, like us,
In a muddled maze
Of half‑lies and half‑truths
About it, them, they, we, us.
We Submit to Dialectic Subservience
Maybe we’re not long worth making slaves of.
“We’re not as efficient as machines –just consumers,”
(Not as long as creativity is needed). We’re
Long efficient as buyers but how can our
Worth, as creativity but not control, survive? Image‑
‑Making (machines) is how control is kept. Consumer
Slaves, just needed, can survive, kept barely cognizant
Of consumers; We’re our image. Consumer‑cognizant carriers
Of fair play and the fine ways of compassion and justice
Are subjugated to the big ways of business buys
And corporate profit curves and the DNA
That we are is sold. The fetus is bought.
The money we are worth is determined in ways
We would never allow, so, now, we wait for judgment.
Intimations of the Holocaust Thump the Crust of Our
French Bread
Leave Fingerprints on Our German Pastries
Don’t talk to me about wrong, wrongly righted.
Talk about freedom, equality, new ways to get
To freedom, with equally fair remedies that give
Me equality, equally, without statistics that lie. Talk
About new, fair statistics that don’t denote only
Wrong ways, remedies that don’t work. Relationships, twisted
Wrongly to that lie, denote relationships left, not
Righted. Get, give, talk only twisted, not actual,
Truths and get, give, get votes, give favors
To the most you can and call them minorities,
Who, combined, make eight‑five per cent or more
Of us, who want justice so much that we
Have to be lied to, so we won’t feel guilty
When we get and give to our own little group.
youtube acrostic 22
Your Wife Just Deserted an Idea of You
Sees Only Sperm in the Microscope
Relative hardship makes so much talk sound like
Hardship from whining, apprehension for tears yet unwept,
Makes whining brats of us all, fury philanderers.
So, apprehension of adversity to confession is too
Much for us to claim (from elsewhere) and
Talk tears all confession from us. Beautiful music,
Sound (yet, fury is elsewhere), beautiful sufferers, everyone,
Like unwept philanderers, too, and music everyone hears
Are like monotony, imagery of the average.
Psychographic and demographic and image‑oriented graphics
Are the music of mankind and personhood.
Pheromones are sold to give the illusion of strength,
To get everyone on the same schedule,
From bull semen to cloned frogs. We are all hungry.
Tilling the Cold Land, Part‑Time Farmers Like
You
Stay Only to See the Ground Broken
Winter wasted in worries and wind, we make
Wasted our time, in talk, to save us
In time, before random togetherness, weather, time, mundane
Worries, in random order, separate us. We live
And talk togetherness, separate but equal, have blistering
Wind to weather us. Equal time for pay,
We save time we have for those that
Make us mundane, live blistering, pay that bill
When the cost is the little lives we have
And time
Ticks
Along,
Second
By Second.
At Night, By Firelight, I Admit My Age
New worries about health make the man. He
Worries, but not about revolutions lost, is concerned
About not getting too far from civilized, modern
Health, about too many roads, running quickly, that
Make revolutions, far roads, no longer taken, is
The lost, from running longer than life. That
Man is civilized quickly. Taken life takes revenge.
He, concerned, modern, “That is that”, revenge‑accepting
Fool that he is, and seems to have always been,
Tries not to forget the reasons he ran those rambling roads,
Tries to fight the resignation but
We all
Settle down
Sometime.
Look to Life For a Reason To Continue the
Fight
For the Individual Illusion
Resurrection from alcoholic sleep ‑‑ like licking candy stolen
From a baby, I embrace life. I’m an
Alcoholic baby, fighting thought about dry bones, ultimate
Sleep. I thought, when twenty, “There’s no disgrace
‑‑Like embrace about twenty times a day ‑‑ love
Licking life dry.” ( there’s a reference to rotten
Candy) I’m bones; no day to spare ‑‑life
Stolen ‑‑ an ultimate disgrace ‑‑ love rotten, life squandered
And she’s already gone, all black hair and green eyes
Of her, (when she knew I’d never become
Someone to grow old with) and what I hope
Is that I can survive long enough to say,
“It wasn’t all wasted. The grief isn’t gone
But today’s a baby being born.”
Celebrating Constancy, You Realize a Different
Strength
In the Spirit of Your Ex‑Wife
She collects coffee and tea cups (like Grandma),
Collects memories ground by her hands, chipped, impregnated,
Coffee‑ground‑stained memory trinkets on shelves’ suspension
And, by memory, keeps the home warmth, steeps
Tea, her trinkets, the glow, those precious stains,
Cups hands on “home”, those cups, with wrinkles
Like chipped shelves’ warmth, precious with cracks, dents.
Grandma‑impregnated suspension steeps, stains, wrinkles, dents her
Life, which sits on the land like the cups
On those shelves and I am the stumbler who falls
Into them, breaking her,
Bit
By
Bit.
Lost in Your Science
She Says She Won’t Speak With You
Leftover solutions from an ice age ago, they’re
Solutions that would aggregate forms and structures, cast
From “would be, if”, flowing past, ignorant, into
An aggregate, if/then, crystalized confection of molded
Ice forms, flowing crystalized, sometimes sweetening our perception.
Age and past confection sweetening youthful loss, forever‑
Ago structures, ignorant of our loss, tell nothing,
(They’re cast into molded perception) forever nothing, until
We find our own meaning in the glacier
Of slow‑moving truth. Yes, ice melting
Is the best water history. New reality
Is conceived for every new discovery and the big,
Frosted cake of self‑realization
Is the birthday of “will be, when”.
Lonely Since She Left (With the Sunblock 45)
Lonely Since You Left
Warmth creeping over cold concrete and brown bushes,
Creeping back to life, green coming back ‑‑ Winter’s
Over, to pass into memories of wet, snowy,
Cold life, into new‑made vigor, perspiration, resolve,
Concrete, green memories, made leafy life. The leaving
And coming of vigor, life renewed, sun‑tanning,
Brown back, wet perspiration, the sun drench thirsty
Bushes (Winter’s snowy resolve, leaving), tanning thirsty skin
With all the young hopes of Spring
Meadows and wild flowers. I am
Not ready to leave this cocoon of grief.
Your father’s death was like the loss
Of a friend to me, combined with
The loss of my lover to his memory.
Anger and Covered‑Over Holes
Patches of Smoothed‑Out Disappearances
I love light, the bouncing I see. I
Love the refracted beauty, the rainbow colors, see
Light refracted and split, banana‑formed yellow entering
The beauty‑split orange crystal, made in glass,
Bouncing the banana‑crystal, curving (of windows). Am
I rainbow‑formed, made of solar brilliance? I
See colors, yellow in windows ‑‑brilliance, the sparkle
I see, entering glass, Am I sparkle and
Fire, in a watery world, a dirt and airborne
Dust, floating world,
Crashing into the plate glass window
And a lover with a shotgun,
Pointing, to plaster me
Into the white wall?
Nothing Makes Sense Without Distraction
Wall came down. Television memories of relatives dying
Came flooding in, telling something. Uneasy, I felt
Down, in this glorious, momentous time. Watching the
Television telling glorious tales of fast freedom, dark
Memories (something momentous) of bodies falling; barbed wire
Of uneasy time, fast falling, invaded, (cemeteries) ripping
Relatives, I, watching freedom‑barbed‑cemeteries, remember their
Dying, felt the dark wire ripping their faces
When the television showed their spurting blood
Or their fallen bodies.
They ran for freedom and died
And now the wall falls down,
So easily,
And I’m supposed to be happy?
Will My Love Give Up and Go?
I couldn’t understand that wall, giving so quickly,
Couldn’t fathom why friends died, forfeiting escape, couldn’t
Understand why Gorby gave up lands, wasn’t celebrating
That friends gave all ‑‑ freedom for death. The
Wall died. Up freedom! But what? ‑‑He’s watching,
Giving, forfeiting lands, for what? Freedom for free?
So, escape wasn’t death? He’s for mankind, enlightened
Quickly? Couldn’t celebrating the watching, free, enlightened, be
A sort of desecration? Are we not going to say
“Never forget that one that died, crossing no‑man’s land,
Toward
The promise
Of
`Freedom!’?”
I Still Scream, Though Subdued
“What Do You Want From Me?!”
Public opinion justifies the lies, the winning of
Opinion polls. The dogs of knowledge tell lies,
(Justifies the killing, greed, gluttony) often about all
The dogs, greed‑inspired, power‑poor, who hear
Lies of gluttony, power, ambition, are not in
The knowledge (often poor), are consigned to almost
Winning, tell about who not to be, full
Of lies. All hear, in almost full‑blown
Light of day, that high‑pitched
Whistle
Of
Their own
Intentions
And desires.
You Resign to a Future That Twists Your
Children’s Faces
And Call Me the Dreamer
Forget about fun, just plain forget about fun,
About all things that wrap death with ribbon.
Fun things degenerate. Strive to find success and
Just that. Strive forward, hide joy in boxes.
(Plain wrap to hide colorfulness) Through work, you’ll
Forget death. Find joy through effort. You’re jostled
About. With success in work, you’re master of
Fun, ribbon and boxes. You’ll (jostled, of course)
Be in charge when you take charge
And your children will laud your name
For giving them their leisure,
Fun, ribboned packages,
And the chance to take advantage of you,
Without guilt.
Make Me Outcast For Saying That Inventions Need to
Be Imitated
The Theme is that sometimes beauty’s tight, formed‑‑
‑‑Theme enough, isn’t it? People attempt critical paradox
(Is isn’t, cold is hot) to claim non‑existence,
That it is somehow about solopsistically unstructured poetry.
Sometimes, people, hot about reality, say “Looseness is
Beauty’s attempt to solopsistically say `Everything exists'”. Their
Tight, critical claim, “Unstructured looseness exists”, their loose‑
Formed, paradox, non‑existence poetry is their loose, but
Not formless, expression. It exists. It is.
It defines its own and their reality. Once penned,
It is not non‑existence, not formless, not
Unmetered, but shaped by their own
Personal rhythms, real when it
Speaks easily but not the only beauty that is.
Children Would Have Been Nice
I Watch Yours Growing Up
Leftover pain, scab picked too long, scars crimson,
Pain I avoided, the long‑covered, bandaged truth‑
Scab; avoided by twisting lies, weaving life, I
Picked the twisting pain, lay, half an animate.
Too long, lies lay, half‑hidden. Expose the
Long‑covered (weaving, half‑hidden) rug of flesh
Scars, bandaged life, (an exposJ of secrets hidden)
Crimson truth. I animate the flesh, hidden beneath
Bandaged basket webs of healing, pushing itself
Out to air. No lie lasts,
Not if Heaven exists,
But how can I call myself humble or meek
When I pick at the truth,
Ignoring the blood?
Thought I Could Make Information a Weapon
For Them to Change You With
My rights and all that freedom lost ‑‑your
Rights and mine do not conflict if yours
And mine further society’s proposition. The courts, united,
All do society’s bidding. Polls, skewed, question propaganda.
That, not proposition polls, but multiple‑choice‑style
Freedom‑conflict, the skewed, multiple‑true‑false justice,
Lost if courts question choice (false society) makes
Your yours united. Propaganda‑style‑justice makes justice
Just ice in this blistering desert, devoid
Of the pure water of unpolluted truth, disguised
As the only truth possible in a dual two‑party
Reality, but what is society’s proposition,
Hidden, by “national security”, from the secured?
I’ll tell you mine. It is “Liberty for all.”
Now, Breathing in Numbers, Which Substitute for
Free Air
Lack of access to leadership positions is not
Of only female cause or held by that
Access. Female‑lacking‑power mentality diminished rights (empowerment)
To cause power to be denigrated, spilled. Could
Leadership or mentality be controlled, (to spread wealth,
Positions held) diminished, denigrated to soothe? Synthesized chaos
Is (by rights spilled, spread, synthesized, lost) made,
Not that empowerment, ( Could wealth, chaos, made systems
Be made world‑wide exploitation?) but useful, to imitate
Butter, to imitate that empowerment until, even, bread
Is something fake, bulk and roughage only, with
Power a margarine, spread over it, outside
Of a store‑house of croissants,
For those who were not concerned about leadership.
Afraid That Nothing is Free, Not Even
Expression
Rain, trees, Spring coming; red shoots on roses,
Trees budding green, Fig forces out newly grown,
Spring‑green branches, crops coming, will empowered, anticipating
Coming Fig crops, work to be independent, sunset‑
Red forces, coming to life of seeds, pushing
Shoots out, will be of absolutely no impact
On newly‑empowered, independent seeds, no longer “potential”.
Roses, grown, anticipating sunset, pushing “impact potential” of
Darkness, to be sold as “Night in a Bottle”,
And farm life become, again, the same struggle
Just to keep it all alive
On the edge of a city
That breathes and sprinkles death
And calls for roses to profess its love.
I Go Back To Farming and Bug Control
Microbiotic Manipulation
Spring puppies awakening and warm weather coming soon,
Puppies of Winter’s discontent, happy, wearing fat fur,
Awakening Winter’s ire in their eagerness for grass
And, (discontent in cramped housing becomes life, leisure,
Warm) happy, their housing, now the outside, becomes
Weather‑wearing eagerness, becomes the telling of Spring’s
Coming (fat for life, outside of themselves, luxurious).
Soon, fur‑grass‑leisure becomes Spring’s luxurious burdonsomeness,
Mowing and trimming bushes, planting crops,
Swatting heart‑worm mosquitoes,
Picking the sheddings from mange‑ridden bodies,
Some playful moments in the cool rain
And, sometimes, a harvest of joy,
Amongst the rows of browning memories.
Realize Plato Was No Farmer
Part of the beauty of life is reason.
Of roses torn in the ground, razed sunsets,
The torn picture, the rainbow, we, poetically singing
Beauty in the storm, create chopped, tuned reflections
Of the rainbow, create for our lost innocence.
Life‑ground, we chopped our vocal chords. Reason
Is razed. Poetically tuned, lost chords echo of
Reason, sunsets singing reflections. Innocence, reason, of course,
And beauty seep into Summer heat
But the hurricane blows against us.
You scream at the storm with me.
The dogs howl along with the wind.
Plants and homes are uprooted in this type of chaos
And the logic of the corn‑row garden lilts in grey‑green light.
You Both Condemn Me For My Infertility
It’s too late to make an art museum?
Too late!?? I ignore that assynine thinking. Too
Late? I own art, right now. That hierarchy,
To ignore art unknown, choice‑foregone, money‑reigning,
Make‑that‑right‑(choice)‑investment exercise makes creation
An assynine, now foregone, exercise, degrades it; buying
Art, thinking that money makes it and a
Museum too, hierarchy reigning, creation buying a good
Meal with a well‑placed splotch and line,
Hiding the creator’s real work in basement store‑rooms,
Saying, “`Art is dead’
Is what our art says.
Buy my baby’s spittle on litmus sheets,
Call the drool‑tracks my art.”
Any Love I Had Is Now Only Devotion
If that was love, then what is this?
That was consuming, passion, hormonal, esoteric, spent fast,
Was consuming me like fire blazing in tinder.
Love, passion like insanity, faded slowly, (grief known)
Then, hormonal fire faded faster, deceiving memory now.
What esoteric, blazing slowly, deceiving as this is,
Is spent in grief memory? This lost loving,
This fast tinder, known now, is loving you
But is the memory that loves you
Enough to hold on to?
I hold on for dear life here,
Hoping that you are happy,
Ready to play white knight
If you call.
Marcuse and You Deny Me Meaning
And the Existence of Any Public
If I must speak pictures to make metaphor,
I will talk color temperature, about how we
Must talk of shadings, of relative hue, tones,
Speak color, shadings of the white truth outside
Pictures, temperature ‑‑ of the snow that life melted
To, about relative white that creams walls, to
Make how‑hue‑truth‑life‑walls of why‑
Metaphor. We, tones, outside, melted to why, are
Outside of the metaphor that we create
To encapsulate us,
Uncluttered by skin color or skin tone,
In the muddy, grey world of fewer elephants
And mixed metaphors about monster
Organizations that tame us with pictures.
I Censor Myself
Is there freedom anywhere but in the mind?
There were dreams laws shattered (trying for control),
Freedom dreams “they” destroy by writ and I’m
Anywhere laws destroy liberty (societal rights to shackle)
But, shattered by societal “good”, men are lost
In trying. Writ‑rights, men‑foregone, laws become
The for and to, are laws that initiate
Mind control. I’m shackle‑lost, become initiate for
This security, a pledge to that fraternity,
Written about as a statistical average and not trusted
Because liberty has no norm and societal “good”
Is an easier sell than the individual
Civilian’s, all too average, case of better that average
Treatment and above average, but impure, civil rights.
Used To Have Sex For Exercise
Laughter, finally, explodes in the house and what,
Finally, was separation, aging, grief, becomes wonderful joy,
Explodes separation to bits, for a time, jiggles
In aging bits of my body like Jello.
The grief for my loss trapping me, the
House becomes a body trapping all emotional force
And wonderful time, like me, (emotional) bellows against
What joy jiggles (Jello). The force against living
A life, happy, the knowledge of grief,
The time that was wasted,
The love spent and the sperm spilled
Eject themselves in a healing paroxysm,
Splashing against the walls
Like a projectile, pea‑green, reverse hyper‑peristalsis.
My Body Has Become a Free‑Form Blob
But There is Still Some Strength Here
Free form is increased complexity, never simple expression,
Form so intricate that it is often ignored,
Is intricate enough to actually, honestly approach uniqueness,
Increased (that, to me, seems obvious) by hidden
Complexity. It actually seems simple, having rules, but
Never is honestly obvious. Having to (not always
Simple ‑‑ often) approach, by rules not written, an
Expression ignored, uniqueness hidden, but always an easy
Flow of whatever poetry flows with,
The poem
Must stand
Like the human soul,
Alone,
And yet, connected.