Bananas

Damocles don’t have nothing
On what we’ve got at stake
Oh if it was only a sword
Oh if it was merely my life
That would be easier to part with than this
Construct
The work of demons, surely
A collection of doubts and fears
And an off comment by a
Careless classmate, conflated
Conjured into a definition
A context that grew and consumed
Hungry like mungry beginning
To gnaw his own toes
Little gods in their sandbox
Making selves, and worlds
Without a manual.
The monkey trap
A banana beyond a barrel bung hole
It’s not the trap that catches the monkey
But the monkey, who continually
Chooses the banana
Oh is that not the great conceit
For the American consumer?
And here I am drawing attention to that
And away from my banana egoself

20230525

Advertisement

A road to the infinite summer

He loves to rant and rave

On social media about how

We all are enslaved

By the govt and Rothschilds

Each month Fb banns him three weeks

They too then must be part of the plot

But what is it he really seeks?

Revolution it’s clearly not

Does the individual matter?

Of course it does, it must

Who’s wallet does he make fatter?

As he’s complaint of unjust

Rings out across the ether

There’s no cherry picking there though

It’s each individual, or none

It won’t work, we can’t grow

If those who make a difference is only some

Those who think they don’t matter

lol at those they think do

But go and ask them if they matter

They know they are not the chosen few

Which is the lever to change

The course of the world,

Bring the individual into range

The each one matters flag unfurled

A new paradigm, a lasting change

20230511

Open link night at the pub

https://dversepoets.com/2023/05/11/open-link-night-338-summer-is-coming/

Peeled Eye

This is the human condition:

I hide in a hole

With the sun on a pole.

We walk around with our faces to the back of the mirror. It’s a good hiding place.

Only the cat can see through the Ruse.

It’s amazing we function at all

Guessing as we do at the shadows on the wall

(Plato laughing)

We will keep it up,

Stuffing ourselves with bread

And fishes

And Wine

Until our boat burns through and we drowned.

What will they conjecture of our

Bridges spanning nothing?

.

I’m so tempted to leave it here

With just that question mere

But with through the drowning rise

That perspective opens unused eyes

The illusion becomes clear

Promoted by dVerse, https://dversepoets.com/2023/05/09/poetics-slipping-into-surrealism-with-erik-johansson/. and thru that, the works of Erik Johansson. https://www.erikjo.com/about

Surry eel

The being is exposed

Becoming

Mountain flowing

Sea ment

Turning><reflection reflecting

Reflect.

Paintings afire

Wire. lyre.

Intent

-ion pyre

Growing.

New.

Lamplighter!

Reaching over.

Heart shucker.

Beginning

20230509. https://dversepoets.com/2023/05/09/poetics-slipping-into-surrealism-with-erik-johansson/

What paying attention buys me

When the world was young

Or at least when I was young

Within it,

One of the worst first things I learned

While still in the womb, was

Wall building as a way of willfully

Withdrawing. She showed me this

She didn’t know what else to do.

I plowed into the world like

A plow into the earth, heedless

And headlong, held back by very little

And then, increased throttle, or

Lift the plow a little. If only I knew

About keeping my wheel in the furrow!

“Pay attention”

“If he would only apply himself”

Each year another teacher added

Their voice to that choir. The vibration of that shook nothing loose.

It seemed to make it tighter.

One day while playing in an end

-less snowy field

Like a sheet of unwrit paper

I came across a line.

(Thankfully not the way my cousin

Adam did, on that snow covered shakamaxon golf course 1979)

One side is the world, as it is.

Ontologically. The hand,

The wall that won’t go through it.

It’s solidity is fleeting and ephemeral

It’s emptiness is so full.

That is where my muse’s house is.

Watching people cross the threshold

(Not the threshold to my muses house, or maybe it is)

This poem is big enough to house more than I can say

More than I can know. The act

Of paying attention is the cost

And the cross

-ing of the threshold.

I’m rushing to the end

To close these lines

To forget about the line

And hide in sleep.

I don’t want to hide anymore

20230504 followed a few fellow poets around, bounced from blog to blog and wound up at https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/?m=1 then this fell out of me. Yay! Good to read some old friends again

Is not the territory

Lie to me by omission

Tune out huge tracts of what is

Carve away the marble that

Does not look like David

Begone with anything

That does not fit my intention

My

Master

Plan

My beloved visionary

Remind me

For the map, the map

Quadrille for https://dversepoets.com/2023/05/01/quadrille-175-mapping-out-our-poems/
So I’m cheating a little bit, repeat the title again at the end. Where is Toni she always reprimanded me when I’d try to pull a fast one. Hope she is ok.

The streets here are not straight

As the month winds down
I find myself far to the west
As the last verse comes together
It’s only ten here
But tomorrow is already there
The winners chosen
No! I cry
There’s still time!
But
It’s already too late
The doors have been shut.
It’s over. Lights out.
Another year goes by
Unrecognized
Uncognised.
So what’s to become of this poem
And this anxiety that bubbles up,
Erupts, wanting to encase it all
In lava stone

The streets gave up
On being straight
When the hills said
It must be so
Thus they twist and climb
Until
I am lost. My words will
Not be long remembered
If they are read at all.
Any skill I had in this
Remains unvalidated.
The days are getting longer
I can still walk
And think
And write.

20230430

to Brendand’s prompt https://desperatepoets.com/2023/05/01/challenge-1-desperate-poetry/

This album earth

I am in these mountains

Valleys creeks rills

Hogbacks, saddles, arete

Following these grooves inward

And up

There is a song in between

Me and these mountains

The arm of god reaches over

I am the needle

20230428

Started with a list of mountain features.

Sitting in Denver airport

https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-eight-9/

The rose of Jersey City

The rose of Jersey City

Doesn’t sound nearly as incongruous from here

As it does down along tonnelle Avenue

Where the cars have no wheels

More than half the paint

Is graffitim

In the seedy hotel room

Has a lovely view of the train tracks

In that ditch where the Creek was

Full of refuse and effluent

The roads of jersey city

Potholed and pockmarked

Here I am sitting in the middle of it

Trying to be invisible,

To remain unmugged.

Yes I am a bit of a crab. And

This hard hard shell is getting so tight

20230427
https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-seven-9/ 

also for the prompt at d’Verse: https://dversepoets.com/2023/04/27/openlinknight-337/

Byzantium

1.Grapes they grew there

Pinched by schoolboys homeward

Or hung in the window

On their way to raisins

Some got to feel the firmness

Of her soles

And by that touch came undone

Crushed

Fermented to the sweet wine

Of her lips.

2.goats they grazed there

Trimming their way around the barn

Like barbers on beards

Save a few foul tasting weeds even they wouldn’t eat

His hands rough and brassy like

Their horns. Grabbed and led

They’d meat again at the table

3.unspoken ache

Each year turned and pulled like taffy

It’s elasticity stretched throughout

But bland and sweetless

Familiar like tool handles polished

From use

4.what happened to that soul

That would have come through

That iron gate

Had fate won

And not succumb

Did he, or she come

To this village by another road

And pause to rest under the fig tree

On their way to Byzantium

20230423

Join the poeting at https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-three-9/