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Poems: 120621 - June 12th, 2021
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Robert Morpheal
Jun 12, 2021, 2:44:52 PM6/12/21
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070621A
------------
The torture was boring
and so were the torturers
but it was just another way
to make a “living”.
I was out on that ledge
with no one to talk to
except for the jumpers
on their way down.
They were going down
settling in gracefully
so comfortably
I almost wanted to join them.
They had perfect wounds
and nothing to heal
admiring each other's
broken wings and situations.
They all found someone
with a wax heart to melt
and there was just enough heat
to do the melting.
I was cold to it all
always gone too far
held in disagreement
with the light and the heat.
There was little to say
and even less to do
forced to toe those lines
along the thin and narrow.
Some curtains were open
at peek through Windows
where romance is busied
with taking its clothes off.
We knew the beer guts
were carrying families
full term career path
their faces of afterbirth.
We don't do that here
tells you everything
you need to know
about the management.
We used to hide out
days off on fire escapes
where the smoke pretends
to touch Heaven.
There was no reply
and everyone holding
their particular chance
of a sinking species.
The high didn't last
and the low started Monday
if you followed anything
in the weather reports.
It was nothing more
than usual observations
made from lookout posts
behind camouflage nets.
Then they always say
it could have been different
but I don't know how
so I write these memoirs.
-------------------------------
070621B
------------
When the rain streams down
thick as honey
into the stations of mind
we watch it harden
into ancient amber
encasing little dreams
of yellowing precision
under the glass of eyes.
Bugs blood, bugs blood,
we used to say
not even knowing why
but it was more in wonder
than it was anything else
about how we learned
what a crush eventually feels
spurting its meanings.
Eventually we return
to wherever we came from
realizing there is no honour
in any play of words
displaying legs and wings
as iconic blotted lines
resembling being
a crawling creeping thing.
We once crawled
long before we walked
and then began to wonder
what became of our wings
feeling the growing pains
where we expected wings
sprouting from shoulders
readied for flight.
Various parts never did
really work right
and the whole thing
never really took off
having been put together
from left overs and bits
that no one really wanted
the way it all turned out.
-----------------------------
080621C
------------
All the whisperers
of seductions
have long left
the ancient playing fields.
All that blood and vigour
breaking something
to get at what is inside
so as to take it out.
I know nothing
of where they have gone
and I never found a way
to follow them there.
Though I tried to remain
something small enough
to slide through
any possible openings.
I would have gone
if I had really known
more than a rumour
of what happened.
Knowing it is too late
for a following
along any startle leap
into any such ways.
Everything was contrived
so very differently
and approaching the end
knows no real release.
We gave up on that
a very long time ago
knowing only war horses
forming battle lines.
What happened then
to change the world
so absolutely
beyond all recognition.
No one that I meet
was anyone that I knew
but they all made claims
about being familiars.
Too much talk
concerning black cats
and broomsticks
after the threshold is swept.
We were swept away
in maelstroms of change
that came at a high cost
as to our obsolescence.
The past
is an impenetrable mass
of religious ceremonies
muttered by stale men.
Foetid mouth organs
determining the odds
as to the outcomes
that make up everything.
An odds sort of world
where father failed
to teach what he knew
about the art of gambling.
He taught me the razor
but I was never quite sure
what I should cut with it
looking at throat and hands.
He taught me how
to piss standing up
and we argued for fun
about what didn't matter.
My ex wife loved it
that he was manly meat
shirtless at the table
and never anything girly.
It is all carefully noted
in the classified records
pertaining to my body
of failure and divorce.
Life was a horse
I really did not know
how to bet upon
before it threw me.
It was all about
getting up
and trying it again
until you can't anymore.
Always a wrong horse
in the wrong race
and I was faltering
at the starting gate.
Trying to please them
without realizing
it was about the purse
comes to the finishers.
I could never finish
in any place
and ended up blamed
for being interrupted.
I had begun to believe
you die after school
in hopes of resurrection
at early retirement.
That too was a myth
passed on as oral tradition
from the war generation
knowing different monsters.
I had tried very hard
to make a name
at something ordinary
and never knowing what.
I was never any good
at anything ordinary
the way my father was
but I tried very hard.
I was always taught
it was very important
to be ordinary
making ordinary friends.
It seemed surreal
playing board games
on family holidays
Careers, Life, Monopoly.
It created expectations
when you played that way
bringing you closer
to families on television.
Secretly a stranger
in a strange land
land of plenty
land of milk and honey.
I had no idea
I had gotten lost
in my father's footsteps
on the way to a factory.
Failing to be a little man
and losing the struggle
to keep the creation down
as though it was vomit.
I was no hero
the way my father was
and eventually I doubted
being any sort of man.
After I realized that
everyone I ever met
wanted the same hero
that I could never be.
---------------------------
080621D
------------
Clamped in the jaws
of our dream matrix
all the pieces
that can be held
come together.
The messy process
that glues us
to whom we are
according to someone
whom we never met.
The wire splices
that make up our minds
into twisted connections
radiating from servers
that define our networking.
You eventually learn
your networking is limited
to where you have access
and access is controlled
by someone else.
You learn it
when you get invited
\to the meeting
to find out
who talks to you.
A mistake
the dullest keep repeating
in a vain belief
in freedom of association
combined with entry skills.
It is a very small world
and it gets smaller
along the event horizon
screaming its finality
as to another erasure.
A game of leap frog
past associations
where playing checkers
with random yesterdays
costs tomorrows.
Playing pieces
quickly taken off
from momentary placements
among up tight squares
on another's playing board.
A high price to pay
but it was more expensive
to look for something else
appearing on a short list
of pleasant contrivances.
You want to succeed
at finding a diversion
that some others have found
but makes you victim
of the one armed bandit.
Wasted so much time
trying to be free
in one way or the other
until it seems a motion
that was always overturned.
We live in constant disbelief
about rumours that arise
concerning Judgment Day
being a committee
comprised of our contraries.
I don't know where
it says it in any rule book
and I don't have a copy
having only seen a portion
of the key word index.
I look things up
to give a semblance of truth
to the various justifications
for strings of bad luck
and mounting losses.
Abandoned as the wreck
in someone else's accident
long having given up
so many sorts of waiting
out from underneath.
It is never
what we look for
that finds us
at the worst of all
possible moments.
Then again it is true
it is all about someone else
and never about anyone
that we thought it was
past a change of costumes.
Acceptance is another
that has been commodified
and most give up
sinking into isolated
no way to hope to afford.
What proves too difficult
comes extremely easily
to the simple minded
and some of them laugh
at all of your efforts.
-------------------------
There comes a point in life when you no longer feel that you are in perpetual, immediate, danger of losing what you do not actually have any of. At that moment you are no longer hopeful of the success that you once believed that you must, necessarily, keep on seeking, but never really had. That journey being over, you begin to be able to actually write about it as poetry, because it has become a part of the truth. It no longer seems to be the dangerous secret that it once seemed to be. Dangerous because your competition would always aim there, if they chanced to know, as if it was in fact an open, and clearly discernible "bullseye" target for them to sink all of their points into.
------------
The torture was boring
and so were the torturers
but it was just another way
to make a “living”.
I was out on that ledge
with no one to talk to
except for the jumpers
on their way down.
They were going down
settling in gracefully
so comfortably
I almost wanted to join them.
They had perfect wounds
and nothing to heal
admiring each other's
broken wings and situations.
They all found someone
with a wax heart to melt
and there was just enough heat
to do the melting.
I was cold to it all
always gone too far
held in disagreement
with the light and the heat.
There was little to say
and even less to do
forced to toe those lines
along the thin and narrow.
Some curtains were open
at peek through Windows
where romance is busied
with taking its clothes off.
We knew the beer guts
were carrying families
full term career path
their faces of afterbirth.
We don't do that here
tells you everything
you need to know
about the management.
We used to hide out
days off on fire escapes
where the smoke pretends
to touch Heaven.
There was no reply
and everyone holding
their particular chance
of a sinking species.
The high didn't last
and the low started Monday
if you followed anything
in the weather reports.
It was nothing more
than usual observations
made from lookout posts
behind camouflage nets.
Then they always say
it could have been different
but I don't know how
so I write these memoirs.
-------------------------------
070621B
------------
When the rain streams down
thick as honey
into the stations of mind
we watch it harden
into ancient amber
encasing little dreams
of yellowing precision
under the glass of eyes.
Bugs blood, bugs blood,
we used to say
not even knowing why
but it was more in wonder
than it was anything else
about how we learned
what a crush eventually feels
spurting its meanings.
Eventually we return
to wherever we came from
realizing there is no honour
in any play of words
displaying legs and wings
as iconic blotted lines
resembling being
a crawling creeping thing.
We once crawled
long before we walked
and then began to wonder
what became of our wings
feeling the growing pains
where we expected wings
sprouting from shoulders
readied for flight.
Various parts never did
really work right
and the whole thing
never really took off
having been put together
from left overs and bits
that no one really wanted
the way it all turned out.
-----------------------------
080621C
------------
All the whisperers
of seductions
have long left
the ancient playing fields.
All that blood and vigour
breaking something
to get at what is inside
so as to take it out.
I know nothing
of where they have gone
and I never found a way
to follow them there.
Though I tried to remain
something small enough
to slide through
any possible openings.
I would have gone
if I had really known
more than a rumour
of what happened.
Knowing it is too late
for a following
along any startle leap
into any such ways.
Everything was contrived
so very differently
and approaching the end
knows no real release.
We gave up on that
a very long time ago
knowing only war horses
forming battle lines.
What happened then
to change the world
so absolutely
beyond all recognition.
No one that I meet
was anyone that I knew
but they all made claims
about being familiars.
Too much talk
concerning black cats
and broomsticks
after the threshold is swept.
We were swept away
in maelstroms of change
that came at a high cost
as to our obsolescence.
The past
is an impenetrable mass
of religious ceremonies
muttered by stale men.
Foetid mouth organs
determining the odds
as to the outcomes
that make up everything.
An odds sort of world
where father failed
to teach what he knew
about the art of gambling.
He taught me the razor
but I was never quite sure
what I should cut with it
looking at throat and hands.
He taught me how
to piss standing up
and we argued for fun
about what didn't matter.
My ex wife loved it
that he was manly meat
shirtless at the table
and never anything girly.
It is all carefully noted
in the classified records
pertaining to my body
of failure and divorce.
Life was a horse
I really did not know
how to bet upon
before it threw me.
It was all about
getting up
and trying it again
until you can't anymore.
Always a wrong horse
in the wrong race
and I was faltering
at the starting gate.
Trying to please them
without realizing
it was about the purse
comes to the finishers.
I could never finish
in any place
and ended up blamed
for being interrupted.
I had begun to believe
you die after school
in hopes of resurrection
at early retirement.
That too was a myth
passed on as oral tradition
from the war generation
knowing different monsters.
I had tried very hard
to make a name
at something ordinary
and never knowing what.
I was never any good
at anything ordinary
the way my father was
but I tried very hard.
I was always taught
it was very important
to be ordinary
making ordinary friends.
It seemed surreal
playing board games
on family holidays
Careers, Life, Monopoly.
It created expectations
when you played that way
bringing you closer
to families on television.
Secretly a stranger
in a strange land
land of plenty
land of milk and honey.
I had no idea
I had gotten lost
in my father's footsteps
on the way to a factory.
Failing to be a little man
and losing the struggle
to keep the creation down
as though it was vomit.
I was no hero
the way my father was
and eventually I doubted
being any sort of man.
After I realized that
everyone I ever met
wanted the same hero
that I could never be.
---------------------------
080621D
------------
Clamped in the jaws
of our dream matrix
all the pieces
that can be held
come together.
The messy process
that glues us
to whom we are
according to someone
whom we never met.
The wire splices
that make up our minds
into twisted connections
radiating from servers
that define our networking.
You eventually learn
your networking is limited
to where you have access
and access is controlled
by someone else.
You learn it
when you get invited
\to the meeting
to find out
who talks to you.
A mistake
the dullest keep repeating
in a vain belief
in freedom of association
combined with entry skills.
It is a very small world
and it gets smaller
along the event horizon
screaming its finality
as to another erasure.
A game of leap frog
past associations
where playing checkers
with random yesterdays
costs tomorrows.
Playing pieces
quickly taken off
from momentary placements
among up tight squares
on another's playing board.
A high price to pay
but it was more expensive
to look for something else
appearing on a short list
of pleasant contrivances.
You want to succeed
at finding a diversion
that some others have found
but makes you victim
of the one armed bandit.
Wasted so much time
trying to be free
in one way or the other
until it seems a motion
that was always overturned.
We live in constant disbelief
about rumours that arise
concerning Judgment Day
being a committee
comprised of our contraries.
I don't know where
it says it in any rule book
and I don't have a copy
having only seen a portion
of the key word index.
I look things up
to give a semblance of truth
to the various justifications
for strings of bad luck
and mounting losses.
Abandoned as the wreck
in someone else's accident
long having given up
so many sorts of waiting
out from underneath.
It is never
what we look for
that finds us
at the worst of all
possible moments.
Then again it is true
it is all about someone else
and never about anyone
that we thought it was
past a change of costumes.
Acceptance is another
that has been commodified
and most give up
sinking into isolated
no way to hope to afford.
What proves too difficult
comes extremely easily
to the simple minded
and some of them laugh
at all of your efforts.
-------------------------
There comes a point in life when you no longer feel that you are in perpetual, immediate, danger of losing what you do not actually have any of. At that moment you are no longer hopeful of the success that you once believed that you must, necessarily, keep on seeking, but never really had. That journey being over, you begin to be able to actually write about it as poetry, because it has become a part of the truth. It no longer seems to be the dangerous secret that it once seemed to be. Dangerous because your competition would always aim there, if they chanced to know, as if it was in fact an open, and clearly discernible "bullseye" target for them to sink all of their points into.
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