All year long all year all year!
We were all unable to leave all
Unable to breathe all
Unable to grieve all
All year!
And we’ve been holding
Off holding off
All year!
The floods heavy
The fathoms blue
The ballooning fear
The agony and sorrow we’ve lived through
It is a dark time and it is. It is
Past far past!
Time to acknowledge the hurt time
To let in the pain time
To exhale
The lost rhyme.
The lost rhyme.
Dear Steve,
To summarize the thoughts I shared with you this morning over our heaping trash and virtue-signalling recycle bins (as you so cynically dubbed them):
The conspiracy theorist is problematic not because rational people believe conspiracies don’t actually exist, he’s problematic because he cannot offer rational people any persuasive evidence that confirms his often extravagant fever-dreams. He is no detective, but simply a self-indulgent and self-imposed outcast in love with his own fantasies and blind to basic reality and reason.
Everyone knows the truth, except you, Steve. It’s too bad you missed that day at school.
Cordially yours,
Bon
And still you allow the wild to awake, take fire, and break free
You still listen for the chatter of the ancient trees gossiping secrets of freedoms dreamed
You still believe the hope of these towering hills and blinding plains, the lie of infinite rains
You still swim the chaos of rapid waters forsaking the eddies, the ease, the still pools of disease
And still
And still
You’ve become this bloated butterball baking
Basted brightly in cortisol tattoos
And Schadenfreude shampoos
Laboring place to place
A slower and slower pace
Agony in your face
Cowering against connections
Ignoring local elections
Seeking advantage and protection
To mock and tweak
The others you seek
To re-tweak, re-Tweet,
Fellow-travelers naive as thee, judging them, my phrasing, and me
I worry for your heart
Your literal and figurative heart
America
And still
Here I sit
You remind me
This armchair pundit opining
This internet poet resigning
To soft wrinkles, a stiff spine
A graceless and sad decline
Still overwriting every goddmamn line
True
True, I admit
That’s it, that’s it
I too
I too am
Complicit
And still
I do
I do still worry
I still worry for you
My fattened flailing friend
My family
My blood
My soul
My soil
Coiled to bite
Too spoiled to fight
Happy Birthday goodnight
Happy Birthday goodnight
Your poetry is quite pedestrian
Like that old lady I saw walking her dog
Along the sidewalk
This morning
Look
My poetry isn’t good either
But that’s not the point
Now is it?
All I’m saying is go back to poem school.
You need it.
Yesterday morning I observed you
From my living room
Via my drone
Tee hee hee
You sat at the cafe table for two
With your eight year old son
And gazed lovingly into your smartphone
Tsk tsk tsk
I left my soft warm perch
Braved the cold stairway and sidewalk air
And beat you to death with my selfie stick
Tee hee hee
No matter how much I meditate on the other
No matter how aware and open I’ve become
No matter all I do
I only see how silly and lost they are
All of them
How much they need me and my innate wisdom
How much they
And you
Require
Me.
And sure I know I’ve earned no degree nor toiled among the ancient stacks late nights into the morn
Sure my insights come from the mirror and the books a middle schooler would find profound
And overpriced seminars I still can’t afford
And no I haven’t allowed myself the vulnerability to suffer the emotional breakdowns and risks I see all around me
But that kind of proves my point, right?
Don’t you think?
The ivory tower of ignorance has a purpose
It protects me so that I may be profound
And speaking of profound, man oh man, the insights I’ve got are good and I know – I just know – like I know I can breathe – that they’re right
My insights -whatever they are – are right!
And I look so good and my voice is so nice and soothing when I share these pearls
How could I be wrong?
I honestly believe in the telegenetic code, I honestly do
Looks represent who you are, what you prioritize in this world
Looks reveal character
You need to know that
And I really, really look good
Like a wise man should.
Like a wise man should.
Saw me a further flown flower
All the way from Ee-jup
Imagine that
Smelled sweet and acrid
Acid wells and candy cane
Glowed soft white
Speckled yellow freckles and freckled yellow speckles
Pancake
Pancake just burned in momma’s overripe oven
This flower
This weed
A thing of beauty
And I let it slip away
Saw me the man abscond with his purchase
No doubt mine eyes did burn
No doubt
But the burn ain’t have time to blink
For this fire to ignite again
Elsewhere inseminated
Another flower flown
Flown further still
Whispers of community flow through the trees across porches cooling apple pies
Whispering of traditions nearly lost
Urging in soft pillow pleas to gather, build a human network
And the call seduces, promising slower, easier days ahead
Yet all I find in these new communities is queasiness, an oily reaction to boundaries crossed, lookee-loos indulged, shallow connections curiously growing more shallow and shallower
Perhaps I lack the training to unearth the rich warmth of community. Perhaps it’s a degree or two too warm for me and yes I want my own cool pillow to find my piece of the peace we all deserve. I want to be left alone.
Be successful
But don’t be suck-cessful
Do you know the difference?
