Poems

Dogs Are Shakespearean, Children Are Strangers

Dogs are Shakespearean, children are strangers.
Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child,
Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog,
The running dog, who paused, distending nostrils,
Then barked and wailed; the boy who pinched his sister,
The little girl who sang the song from Twelfth Night,
As if she understood the wind and rain,
The dog who moaned, hearing the violins in concert.
—O I am sad when I see dogs or children!
For they are strangers, they are Shakespearean.

Tell us, Freud, can it be that lovely children
Have merely ugly dreams of natural functions?
And you, too, Wordsworth, are children truly
Clouded with glory, learned in dark Nature?
The dog in humble inquiry along the ground,
The child who credits dreams and fears the dark,
Know more and less than you: they know full well
Nor dream nor childhood answer questions well:
You too are strangers, children are Shakespearean.

Regard the child, regard the animal,
Welcome strangers, but study daily things,
Knowing that heaven and hell surround us,
But this, this which we say before we’re sorry,
This which we live behind our unseen faces,
Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither
Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished,
For we are incomplete and know no future,
And we are howling or dancing out our souls
In beating syllables before the curtain:
We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.

missing middle

no no see,
you're all missing it...

it's not dystopic, it's
a dystopportunity!

Anxiety criticises the weak Consoles with happiness they feel Peace and serenity exist never to heal The insanity that kills.

All Hallows

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

Anyone else seen this possibly insane man driving insane truck?

There's this truck,
I see it hauling
ass everywhere
around town
like it's blasting across the alkali flats
of some future hellscape.

This truck has no regard for
traffic laws
the regular citizen is
upheld to.

It's missing a headlight and has a stuffed dinosaur shoved in the whole where the light once was.

The man inside appears to be some kind of psychotic
but handsome
construction worker,
he leans out the window and calls
old men "baby".
The truck itself while already loud usually
has some sort of loud music emitting from it,
last time I saw it was limp
bizkits popular 90s track "nookie".

Anyone else seen this fool? I can't be the only one. This truck+man inside are lawless hooligans.

THIS WRITING IS FOR MY FRIENDS
IN MIND OF ALL COMMON & HIDDEN
MEN AND OF THE SECRET PRINCES
AND TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE
WITH ME IN THE COVERT AND IN
THE OPEN FROM THE BALCKWALL
THE BROADWAY THE CAUSEWAY
THE CUT THE FLATS THE LEVEL THE
ENVIRONS AND THOSE OTHERS
FROM TRAETH MAWR AND LONG
MOUNTAIN THE HENDREF AND YR
HAFOD THE PENTRE PANDY AND Y
DARREN THE MAELORS THE BOUNDARY
WALLS AND NO. 4 WORKING
ESPECIALLY PTE. R.A. LEWIS-GUNNER
FROM NEWPORT MONMOUTHSHIRE
KILLED IN ACTION ON THE BOE-
SINGHE SECTOR N.W. OF YPRES
SOME TIME IN THE WINTER 1916-17
AND TO THE BEARDED INFANTRY
WHO EXCHANGED THEIR LONG
LOAVES WITH US AT A SECTOR'S
BARRIER AND TO THE ENEMY
FRONT-FIGHTERS WHO SHARED OUR
PAINS AGAINST WHOM WE FOUND
OURSELVES BY MISADVENTURE

Evil betide me if I do not open the door to
know if that is true which is said concerning
it. So he opened the door ... and when they
had looked, they were conscious of all the
evils they had ever sustained, and of all the
friends and companions they had lost and of
all the misery that had befallen them, as if
all had happened in that very spot; ... and
because of their perturbation they could not
rest.

We Cry Together

Her shriek is raw, snapping all the world’s quiet
As dreams, unborn, tumble into the abyss of almost.
I don’t know this sound; an anguish that pierces my soul.
With what little strength I have, I grab her hand,
Weaving through the grooves of her sorrow,
Though my grip is frail.
The geography of her face is foreign to me,
As the doctor explains the terrain of a pain
I cannot mend. A black hole I cannot save her from.
Nah, this can’t be right. Look again! Refusing to accept my wife’s body,
As the site of such an inexplicable vanishing—
A promise left lingering in the world of daydreams.

She asks me and the doctor to leave the room,
Needing a moment to plead with the universe.
From the hallway, I hear her sobbing, an ocean devouring her smile.
My knuckles meet the steel door of a sterile hospital room,
Attempting to punch away our misfortune, until I can replace it
With something she actually deserves. For all of the IVF shots,
The nights we debated over names, the anxiety attacks about money,
And the moments we pinched ourselves at the idea of being chosen
by Saadiq. Saadiq Joseph.

How do you stitch a wound living in the syllables of a name never called?
There is nothing to say, when spun into a vortex of unspeakable loss.
We spend weeks huddled around grief like a campfire,
Telling silent ghost stories about the people we stopped being
Just days before. Nurturing a flame so small it could be mistaken
for hope.

In the most somber hours, when the world took its deepest breath,
I sat beside her, staring at the slight crescent of her unhoused belly,
For so long, I swore I heard a heartbeat, but it was actually planets collapsing
In the cavities of my chest. And I wondered, how are we going to survive this,
And in time, my question was answered: Together.

TAOING

The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.

Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.

So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.

Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.

THE BALLAD OF STEVEN SLATER

Ain't we all had a day
When we just had enough
Ain't it true each one of us
Has been battered, worn, and rough
Ain't you never felt irate
And won'tcha get irater
Well, my friends, we have a hero now
I speak of Steven Slater

It ain't that easy to ride the skies
Laboring for JetBlue
A man's got to keep widened eyes
For terrorists or shampoo
And worser still are the passengers
They turn a kind man to a hater
Won't nobody stand up to this?
One man: Steven Slater

There was a particular day
And a particular customer
Who grew abusive to Steven
when he instructed her
She was endangering herself
And he didn't care to debate her
And all at once she struck his head
She struck at Steven Slater

Some will say he made a scene
Or it was a crime
But Steven he had had enough
And if he has to, he'll do time
Perhaps it's great to keep your cool
But sometimes it is greater
To bid one final fuck you too
As did Steven Slater

He cursed her on the intercom
So that everyone could hear
And he then bid his adieu
And he grabbed himself a beer
And threw open the JetBlue door
With an escape slide and its inflater
And he slid down, drinking, shouting fuck you
Our hero, Steven Slater

The police they went after him
They caught him in his bed
He was supposed to finish work but he was
In flagrante delicto instead
A hero and a lover now, not a
Circumnavigater
Say what you will, but tip your hat
To a man who had enough
A man named Steven Slater.

nickleback

Some people who have trained themselves
to have their emotional
catharsis
through sophisticated art

get annoyed at untrained people
having an emotional
catharsis
through unsophisticated art.

Count Eberhard’s Hawthorn

Count Eberhard the Beard
From Wurttemberg’s domain
On a pious journey fared
To the shores of Palestine.

One day as he was riding
A woodland path in spring
From a hawthorn bush
He took a little cutting.

In his iron helmet
He placed the hawthorn spray;
He carried it off to war
Over the flowing sea.

And when he was back home
He set it in the earth,
And soon the leaves and buds
Into life were stirred.

The count, faithful and true,
Each year came to the sprig;
He was filled with joy
To see it grow so big.

The count shrank with age,
The sprig became a tree.
Beneath it the old man sat
In deepest reverie.

Its high-arching limbs,
Its whisper in his ear
Remind him of the past
And of the distant shore.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Yellow Bittern

Yellow bittern, there you are now,
Skin and bone on the frozen shore.
It wasn’t hunger but thirst for a mouthful
That left you foundered and me heartsore.
What odds is it now about Troy’s destruction
With you on the flagstones upside down,
Who never injured or hurt a creature
And preferred bog water to any wine?

Bittern, bittern, your end was awful,
Your perished skull there on the road,
You that would call me every morning
With your gargler’s song as you guzzled mud.
And that’s what’s ahead of your brother Cathal
(You know what they say about me and the stuff)
But they’ve got it wrong and the truth is simple:
A drop would have saved that croaker’s life.

I am saddened, bittern, and brokenhearted
To find you in scrags in the rushy tufts,
And the big rats scampering down the rat paths
To wake your carcass and have their fun.
If you could have got word to me in time, bird,
That you were in trouble and craved a sup,
I’d have struck the fetters of those lough waters
And wet your thrapple with the blow I struck.

Your common birds do not concern me,
The blackbird, say, or the thrush or crane,
But the yellow bittern, my heartsome namesake
With my looks and locks, he’s the one I mourn.
Constantly he was drinking, drinking,
And by all accounts I’ve a name for it too,
But every drop I get I’ll sink it
For fear I might get my end from drouth.

The woman I love says to give it up now
Or else I’ll go to an early grave,
But I say no and keep resisting
For taking drink’s what prolongs your days.
You saw for yourself a while ago
What happened to the bird when its throat went dry;
So my friends and neighbours, let it flow:
You’ll be stood no rounds in eternity.

Summer Night

The sounds
Of the Harlem night
Drop one by one into stillness.
The last player-piano is closed.
The last victrola ceases with the
"Jazz Boy Blues."
The last crying baby sleeps
And the night becomes
Still as a whispering heartbeat.
I toss
Without rest in the darkness,
Weary as the tired night,
My soul
Empty as the silence,
Empty with a vague,
Aching emptiness,
Desiring,
Needing someone,
Something.

I toss without rest
In the darkness
Until the new dawn,
Wan and pale,
Descends like a white mist
Into the court-yard.

Soledad A Cuban Portrait

The shadows
Of too many nights of love
Have fallen beneath your eyes.
Your eyes,
So full of pain and passion,
So full of lies.
So full of pain and passion,
Soledad,
So deeply scarred,
So still with silent cries.

'Of Children in Swaddling Clothes

O cities of the sea, I behold in you your citizens, women
as well as men tightly bound with stout bonds around
their arms and Iegs by folk who will not understand
your language; and you will only be able to give
vent to your griefs and sense of loss of liberty
by making tearful complaints, and sighs, and
lamentations one to another; for those who
bind you will not understand your
language nor will you understand them.'

To whom it may concern, I am requesting and applying for a waiver to enable me to go to the United States of America. Back in 2009 while trying to leave the U.S. after helping an expat return to the States, I was pulled over at Port Huron, Michigan for an exit search that violated the border patrol's own stated protocols.

Having led a sheltered life, I failed to think about the power dynamics at work in authoritarian systems and the extent to which the U.S. has criminalized the expectation of reasonable communication between civilians and the authorities who keep them in check. I therefore approached one of the officers to ask what was going on. I had no intention of provoking hostilities. I neither raised my voice nor used incendiary language. But of course the very act of asking questions is considered provocative in such situations.

I was ultimately convicted under Michigan statue MCL 750.81d1 for - as the prosecuting attorney convincingly argued in her closing statement - failing to immediately get on the ground after having been punched in the face.

Fortunately, the judge in that case chose to ignore the prosecution's request for jail time and released me with a small fine, remarking that I was the kind of guy he'd "like to have a beer with." I like to regard this small endorsement as evidence that my rehabilitation was already under way.

Enclosed with my application are reference letters from accomplished professionals in a number of disciplines: law, finance, journalism, science, engineering, literature, even from one of the jurors at my trial who stood at my side during my sentencing in a show of support and whose family was subsequently subjected to ongoing police harassment for reasons that I'm certain are completely unrelated.

I also include a CV including the degrees I've earned, the awards I've won, the books, articles, and scientific papers I've written, the twenty languages into which my work has been translated, the courses in which my work is taught, and the impact my work has had in fields ranging from philosophy to computer science to video games. These documents speak to who I am now, and while unlikely to confer the sort of credibility you'd attach to a border guard with 13 weeks of training under their belt, perhaps they'll give you hope that I may yet become a productive member of society.

I have learned and grown a great deal since that unfortunate altercation at the Blue Water Bridge. I understand now that the brave members of the border patrol daily risk their lives to protect your citizenry from people like, well, me. Right up to and including that member of the Port Huron detachment who, just days after my arrest, was himself arrested for possession of child pornography.

I should have realized it was a mistake to approach the guards on an equal footing as fellow human beings. As a former biologist, I should have known the only appropriate response would be that practiced by subordinate members of other primate species: avoidance of eye contact, servile posture, and reflexive, unquestioned obedience to all commands no matter how perplexing.

Realizing my error, I have chosen to follow the lead of that great American Harry Whittington who, after being shot in the face by then Vice President Dick Cheney, actually held a press conference to apologize to Cheney for the incident.

In that spirit, I would like to express my sincere remorse that I have cause to reenter the U.S. especially at a time when so many of your own countrymen appear to be going the other way. Perhaps you've heard that Immigration Canada's website crashed on the night of your recent election.

If you grant me the requested waiver, however, I can promise that I will not stay a moment longer than is absolutely fucking necessary.

Any fool can get into an ocean . . .

Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

Eunomia

These things my spirit bids me
teach the men of Athens:
that Dysnomia
brings countless evils for the city,
but Eunomia brings order
and makes everything proper,
by enfolding the unjust in fetters,
smoothing those things that are rough,
stopping greed,
sentencing hybris to obscurity
making the flowers of mischief to whither,

and straightening crooked judgments.
It calms the deeds of arrogance
and stops the bilious anger of harsh strife.
Under its control, all things are proper
and prudence reigns human affairs

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
 They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
 And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
 By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
 And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
 It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
 And don’t have any kids yourself.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
our huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse to your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"