Random Acts of Poetry

2003-02-08T16:11:00.000-08:00

With the Muses as Your Lover...

The ancient muses were not gentle spirits whispering in people’s ears
They came with swords and spears and stabbed light into the mind.
A thrust of grace that left the artist weeping.
Poets begging for a pen that they might find those words
And pull them out.

Drawn like an arrow from a wound
Drawn like a conclusion.
Out.

Those were pieces that demanded to be created.

We are burning art in effigy
Against all mediocrity, conformity and mindless entertainment
Against anything that doesn’t set the soul on fire.

Passion is not a pepsi product.
We cannot quench our thirst with bubbles.
No matter how much they tickle our nose

The ancient muses are cannibals. They demand their sacrifice
Not as the kindly New testament God
Let me help you with those nails sacrifice.
I’ll be back in three days to see how you’re coming along.

They were the voice that said to Abraham “give us Isaac”
Forget about the sheep.

We require blood.

They would eat their modern counterparts whole.
Pulling back the floorboards in our comfortable homes
To show the wriggling earth
Damp and moist and staining.

That is the paint they want us to use.
The stuff waiting in the dark places

“Here be Monsters.”

They are the reason that children cry at night.

*****

(please note the lines stolen from Ray Sweatman in the above piece. Go read his stuff. He always makes me want to write poetry)

2003-01-15T12:06:00.000-08:00

Pimping the Light Fantastic:

I met a man named John and it hit me
like a fashion model with a baseball bat
like the smile on a cat that you can never measure for sincerity...
... we are all prostitutes.

Selling the best image of ourselves to any interested party.
From womb to tomb. From the street corners to the board room
take away our playstations and we are a third world nation.

with all the lice and mice and dirt and squalor
with all the hurt and downtrodden starting to holler
with all the hunger and the disease
with all the do as you damn well please
Just set the money on the table before you leave.

Zeus threw lightning bolts to wake up the Gods.
Wake up! Stop turning tricks and start turning heads.
Stop weaving straw. It’ll never become gold.

Dystopic, myopic. It’s a slow kind of self murder.
Not suicide. Because that takes a choice.

We’re content to let the world do the work for us.
Sit back and watch it all drain away.
Like margaritas on a sunny day.
Licking the salt and biting the lime.

It would be funny
If there weren’t barbarians at our gates.

We are playing politics when we should be playing for keeps.
There’s no point in sowing if you’re too afraid to reap.

We’re too much in the passive and not enough aggressive.
Like an appendix waiting to burst.

And it’ll only get worse.

You are the pinpricks in my sanity
That lets reality seep in.

And you wonder why I laugh at original sin?

Those aren’t hunger pangs baby. They’re birthing pains.
And I'm afraid of this coming child.

The only thing scarier than a fractured mirror
Is a whole one.

2002-10-23T12:05:00.000-07:00

DNR
I always picture my father’s birthday in the autumn
Though it is actually in the summer.

Somehow drifting leaves seem more appropriate
Spiraling from the heights of trees.
The shedding of colour. Not the basking in.
The reduction of all nature to browns and greys.
Not the hazy lazy heat filled nights
But sharp winds and shortened days waiting
For the snow to fall.

At night I dreamt of Egypt where Pharaoh was God.
Commanding the building of the pyramids
I thought it odd that even in my dreams
Weather could be something so oppressive.

Too hot or too cold. There was no happy medium.

As I grew older I found myself
Returning to those desert images
Trying to reconcile the thought of approaching winter
With everlasting summer.

I became a runner in High School and I was fast.
But I never told anyone my secret though they often asked.

I always ran as though someone was chasing me.

In Egyptian mythology I discovered the story of Isis
And I wondered at her resolve. Fishing Osiris
From the Nile and fitting him back together jigsaw style.
A puzzle to be solved.

What chance she took!

I think often of my father, the Pharaoh of my dreams
The coming of winter. The building of tombs.
Did Cheops look upon his monument with awe and pride?
Or did he despair that he had wasted his time and life
Dwelling on where they’d lay him when he’d died?

Why have skyscrapers when you can have sky?

I listen to the silence on the other end of the phone.
Reduced like those autumn trees to barren skeleton.
Waiting for some sound or groan.

Staring
At the pieces of our relationship and considering
What they might look like re-assembled.

2002-09-17T21:17:00.000-07:00

Christmas in Purgatory

Fly on Perseus. Fly on
And leave Andromeda in chains.

Trees sacrifice their leaves in fall
Shedding colour and beauty for barren necessity.
The bedding, as you left it still stained with perfume.

We have a duty to pick at scabs.

And there’s that little voice whispering
“Don’t tilt at windmills.” Right on time.

Tilt like a pinball machine instead.

You know what your problem is?
Too many carrots and not enough sticks.

The Pope drools before the assembled multitudes in Rome.
Can he smell the smoke waiting to be shunted out into St. Peter’s Square?

White like his robes.
White like the smile of a cat.
White like Christmas in Purgatory.

I noticed the other day that they keep children on leashes
While their dogs roam free.

Ash can do a passable imitation of snow.

2002-09-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

Sisyphus Shrugged

There is a class of people who insist that the world is a creation of their mind and that there is no objective reality save for an illusion that the blind fool themselves into believing.

James Joyce said of these people “no man is a solipsist while scraping dog shit from the bottom of their shoe” by which he meant that life has a way of asserting its own reality regardless of our beliefs.

Or more succinctly: those people were idiots.

Sisyphus came to love his rock. The endless twilight of the Otherside.
Sunset or sunrise, The in-between time. Perpetually still.
Perpetually in change. Perpetually.

Each press of his fingers into stone was a caress. He would struggle.
Muscles aching. Retracing well-worn path up the hillside.

He would curse the rock.
Cajole and scream obscenities at it as he walked.
Urging it to move faster.

And when it crested the rise he would chase after like a jilted lover.

“Come back! Come back!”

He would forget the blisters on his feet and the calluses on his hands.
He would forget the harsh words of moments ago.

And in that moment -that scarce second
when the rock was balanced precariously
and all the world held its breath
- in that moment he felt love.

Deep and pure and abiding.

Tell Sisyphus that his rock is just a creation.
The by-product of some Grecian morality tale.

Tell Tantalus that his hunger is a figment
and that he should rise up and eat and drink.

Say that and you must say that love likewise does not exist.
Say that and say that there is no art.
There is no consequence. That we all but chase phantoms.

‘Come back. Come back”

The words echo in every twilight. In every sunset.
In every lover who has tasted their own tears.

Come back.

And will you run after? Or will you stand and shrug.
And watch it leave.

Argue some: there are worse things then the smell of dog shit.

2002-08-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

A Digital Prometheus

I don’t like the idea of transubstantiation. Drinking my saviour.
Should I wet my lips? Take a gulp?

I don’t like the letter ‘t’. They remind me of crosses.

No, I don’t want to touch your wounds. It’s not a matter of disbelief
But unease. They weep and ooze.

Technology is my enemy. Photographs steal my soul.
Blinking lights, On-off off-on. Ones and zeroes.
A binary decision.

Bits and pieces in byte sized mouthfuls
Communion wafer chips and Mother boards.
Wysiwyg

Upgrade. Download. The second coming version 1.0 in a zipped .avi file.

Surf the web and catch a tidal .wav by accident
Stolen fire. A few moments in the monitor’s glow.
Gates fiddled while Nero burned rom.
Networked fishermen pulling their catches from
Server secured LAN-scapes.

When God closes a door, he opens a Windows.

Darwin meets chaos theory best two out of three
Either way, the chimps win.

Pierce my side and I bleed technicolour.

Crash. I pray the surge bar functions properly
Our Father who art in Turing…
Hail Mary full of space…
I believe in one Microsoft…

This is my OS given for you

Forever and ever.
Amen.

2002-08-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

Beneath These Sculpted Lawns: An Apologetica Infernum

I may sleep beneath these sculpted lawns and listen to you beat your wife
I may curse the coming dawn and smile when you twist the knife
But I didn’t build the houses here or cause the wound that makes you bleed.
I have a sympathetic ear and give you what you claim to need.
And if it’s bleak and grey and cold I apologize… but do what I’m told.
You want the fence around your yard that makes you owner of the tree.
You ignore the twisting roots beneath. I know its easier not to see.

Keep your virgin sacrifice, I feed on deeper, darker things
Keep your safe and quiet life. You see the sky but don’t want wings.

There’s nothing broken, nothing old. The rust is scrubbed with extra care.
An extra can and dab of paint can distort the eye and hide what’s there.
Deride conformity if you must but it contains the things you want
The blending of the grime and taint. A sense of safety sold and bought.

But, if you peel or peer too deep, its not my fault the things you’ll find
They COULD make a mother weep. They COULD turn a wise man blind.
But then there’s risk in every thing. It all depends on what’s to gain.
I can’t hide the battered child but I can take away the pain.

Go back inside and close the door. Turn up your music very loud
Luck is fickle and unkind. The silver lining has a cloud.
Every candle casts a shadow, you praise the warmth and like the heat.
You lament the fate and fear for cattle but like the burger, eat the meat.

But what of those that live in shadow? Shadows made by light you seek?

I am not the kind to point a finger. I have no wish to assign the blame
Fly around and poke in corners. Give each evil thing a name.
But don’t forget to look inside dear. Every candle has a flame.
And should it touch a watching child? Would your flame not burn as well?

I don’t believe in Heaven, shaman, but I certainly believe in Hell.

2002-08-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

My Day As a Serpent

I regret the whole incident in the Garden
Not the actual tempting mind you
But the way it played itself out.

I've never been able to look at an apple
The same way since.

God is management. I'm the union.
Send the vice-president down to straighten things out.
The monkeys are thinking for themselves.
Redeem them.

Redeemed. Traded in. The new model isn't working,
Downsize and factory recall just to be safe.
Maybe if they were born again?
You have three days.

Hallelujah.

But listen human and listen well
Though He would have you forget
Alone, at night, when you swallow
You can still taste the apple.

2002-08-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

The Lesson of Icarus

They said that I had perished.
Fleeing from my shame, I let it stand.

As I washed up on the shore
Spitting sand and coughing blood
I was content to let my name
Mingle with the mud.

Wash out with an unforgiving tide.

I watched sodden feathers drift away,
Gathered those I could with reverence,
Stolen flight and damp decay.
I carry them still.

Feathers and my memories.

My father was a demanding man.
A perfectionist, ever striving
Never satisfied till the latest object
Of his attention had given up its secrets
Beneath his questing fingers.

He never looked back when I fell.

All too long ago he had learnt everything
I had to tell. His gaze was forward. Level.
Staying between the Earth and Sun.
Fixed on some distant point known to no one
But himself.

Do I have regrets? How could I not.
Despite the times we screamed and fought
He was my father first. Before he ever
Became the great inventor.

That should have counted for something.
But it didn't.

I regret that my name has been linked
With overweening pride. I was never prideful.

It is true that the sun tempted me upward.
A blazing jewel, burning my fingers as I reached.
That the glue that held my wings together
Melted beneath its unblinking stare.
Heroditus lied. It was beauty and not pride
That drove me higher. not the 'how' of my father
But the 'where' of laughter and mystery.
Seldom linked, but there embodied in that orb.

I can still feel the warmth on my back.

The spiralling diziness of my fall still wakes me
From the soundest sleep. I was burning
When I touched the waves, Drowning
Before I kissed the deep.

Rejected by sky, spat out by water, torn by earth.
I struggled through a second birth, wept upon the rocks
That severed the umbilicus linking me
To shrinking Daedelus. Still flying high.

I heard later that he built a temple to Apollo
Sacrificed his wings in hollow offering
Upon the altar of the Sun.

Much as I did, I suppose.

Yet, someone saw me fall.
I learnt years later when the stories
Of a winged man cast from paradise
All aflame, reached my ears.
Lightbringer, Morningstar.

I remember how far I could see
The sky stretching onward
Glorious tapestry of the world below.
Perhaps it was a shade of paradise after all.
As Plato talked of shades.
Again my sin was made pride.

I met my wife on an island
In the sea named for my passing.
I haunted those waters, my spirit restless.
She offered me a pearl
Stolen from Poseidon's daughters.

They wept for me, or so I was told.
Though I never heard their sad lament.
It seemed appropriate to wear
One of their tears threaded round my neck.
In her eyes I saw the Sun.

I burnt again beneath the press of fingers
Their caress, a thing of wonder
Searing closed old wounds.

And I forgot my lesson for a time.
That we cannot own beauty, only share.
Fleeting moments snatched with gentle care
Rescued from embers cold to coax new warmth
In things we long to hold.

I sit sometimes at her grave and watch my son
Take stuttering steps. He waves proudly from
His perch, high in an olive tree.

Don't be proud. Oh please, don't be proud.
But share a moment of purest beauty with your dad.

I swear I will not look away.

2002-08-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

A place to paste poems and poetic musings that in all likelihood no one else will ever see.