Poems: 100723 - July 10th, 2023

[Robert Morpheal]

280623A
-----------

We are the prisoners
imprisoned in our best of times
and in our worst of times
to my not knowing you
and you not knowing me
though we would have liked to
if we had any real chance.

We are connected to all the means
that deprive us of connection
according to the usual patterns
knowing we will never actually meet
in any acceptable social situation
involving exchanges of value
that then facilitate communication.

We joined various things
in the hopes of a vague someday
sort of sunshine promise
following local weather reports
so that we could linger somewhere
making regular appearances
under one or another umbrella.

The opening lines are closed
and I do not know your cult
in the ways you do not know mine
even if the taboos are similar
concerning how it is done and said
in advertisements and commentaries
posted to all the common barriers.

You would have wanted me
and I would have wanted you
but that defines the problem
which then defies any solution
leaving various and sundry sorts
of the usual unwantedness
devised to keep us wanting.

Thou shalt not want
is simply the conspiracy
that defies any chance of getting
among high pressure sales pitches
that are pushing anything else
that is being bought and sold
on the ever growing mass markets.

You would have enjoyed me
and I would have enjoyed you
but there is no way to sell that
or to find it on a doorstep
in the in and out of everything else
that is contrived to chance
or to fail to chance the same.

Seems I will not know you
and you will not know me
but we might hear about that
in some of the stories being told
about what might seem possible
but is never actually to be lived
in the way that lives really go.

Seems story tellers know of you
the way story tellers know of me
even when we have no ideas
as to who is telling the stories
that can never really meet
to share in their own story
beyond a cruel chapter and verse.

We would have been better off
as the characters written in
to someone else's fiction
and that was probably the start
as to where we got the idea
that prisoners can actually escape
into alternate lives.

-------------------------

290623A
-----------

The only thing that you really know
is that you are not wanted
and all the posters have come down
as to that sort of dead or alive.

There is no vacancy at the top
and you cannot join the circus
leaves you wondering what to do
to actually soothe customary pain.

There is only the forever war
where everyone fights for something
but you are tired of the battles
that never win it for yourself.

You tried for the last exit
only to find it does not get you out
from deeper into the same old trap
when needing a change of venue.

You are the beast and the cage
stretched from the cradle to the grave
poked by cruel keepers
with what it is and what it is not.

There is no turning it around
on an always one way street
but you can follow the signs
to repeating the same old defeats.

A team of the best quacks
has reviewed your pitiful case
so now you are merely horse feathers
made forever out of place.

The needle is an empty prick
and you will never get relieved now
from what becomes your constant
dereliction of stereotypical duty.

You are the same as the leper
other lepers love to condemn
knowing you do not like the lifestyle
and you do not like them.

There are no awards awarded
for having tried to run away
from fundamental afflictions
that come of birth and decay.

You gather up your endless notes
concerning failed experiments
proving the theory is right
about how it all goes wrong.

There is only too strong to win
and too weak to actually lose
any more than a push through
those random cracks of doom.

-------------------------------------

290623B
-----------

Every idea that you ever had
is merely another cripple
pushed around on its wheelchair.

It cannot go anywhere
that someone else does not take it
in the real push and pull of things.

Afraid there will be no one pushing
when you cannot push yourself
the way you did during all those years.

Pushing and pushing to get somewhere
that you could not ever go
but you kept pushing anyway.

Made terrified it would be someone
you cannot stand pushing you around
and being behind you all the time.

Terrifies you of plunging in to anything
including marriage and relationships
that turn you into a displaced fidget.

You tie yourself to something
hoping that it will float
when the sea rushes back in.

You tried to drown yourself
in various and sundry ways
that chanced to become available.

Armies of ants carrying micro doses
parade across your outbreak of flesh
but none of them stops to share.

What you were reaching for
turns into a dead fish
with clocks melting in its blind eyes.

You keep looking for your crutch
but someone took that too
leaving you a lame concept.

The lack of a prop to lean on
to help you pretend that you belong
somewhere in a dismal scene.

Something no one looks at
with any sort of serious look
that might mean anything.

You keep getting beaten up
but you cannot beat anyone
as they throw another punch.

There are no winners circles
where they placed you
to become nothing but bored.

They have told you no one wants
an emptied out idea
in a land of so much substance.

The trash collectors grin at you
as if you are the next bin
on their routine list of pickups.

Someone has taken your soul
so that they could leave you there
to being something breathless.

They want to tear out the drum
from within your chest
knowing no one marches to it.

It is that sort of place
and nowadays every bad trip
is another trip you go alone.

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290623C
-----------

You are too weak
means you have not chosen nothing
and you still want to put something
into your crummy little space.

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290623D
-----------

I came down
came all the way down
to the place where you are
but when I came down
you only turned away
laughing at me.

That is what became of love
but it does not matter anymore
I will not come down again
as the ground falls away
from where you are standing
I will not come down again.

I came down
from where I was going
having heard you wanted me
but when I came down
you were never there
so I will not come down again.

-------------------------------------

300623A
-----------

The sky is broken this morning
having spilled itself out
during a disturbed night.

I do not know what to reach for
having caught too much rain
flooding down its ambitions.

Too much has washed away
leaving the roots too exposed
trying to hold on to something.

Life is always trying to hold on
to something that holds on to it
at a harshly tended edge of nothing.

If that is what leads to falling
I know that you will not want
whatever has fallen that way.

You wanted far too much
in wanting the strong and straight
that avoid every type of falling.

You wanted me to fall for you
but you never really wanted me
as you turned into a flame.

-------------------------------

300623B
-------------

Postman brings the bills
and they get paid on time
but most of life stays the same
feeling that it is postage due
and gone to a dead letter office
as something undeliverable
sent out to an address unknown.

Mostly things get destroyed
having stopped a long way short
of their potential usefulness
and being continual reminders
about how it is with getting older
when you begin to realize the truth
about never getting over it.

You never really ever get over
all those lost opportunities
that you never really ever had
and never really ever have again
but it seemed really wonderful
at the time when it happened
and just before it proved lost.

There is nothing personal
being said in any of that
and I really no longer know
what there is to really say
not wanting to join in
in paraphrasing stray bits
of someone else's bland stories.

Various bits of paper tell me
I cannot afford to fix it
in any of the many ways
that I imagined I could fix it
and you are no real help in that
as I drag my sorry self around
the many adult playgrounds.

It is not worth the money
buying into a depersonalized version
and being titillated by the illicit
varieties of self damage that pretend
to make up for the loss of pleasure
being merely another available form
that contributes similar dissatisfaction.

Knowing that I only got that far
by dreaming of doing much more
as to doing something else seriously
but it never works that way
if anything ever works at all
before the shoddy thing breaks down
to be added to the pile of failures.

They closed me down long ago
in all the various ways and a few more
that they find can close someone down
and I am feeling as down as it goes
into cannot open it up to anyone
not knowing a single soul anymore
and having nothing to open up about.

Where would one choose to go
beyond hanging around in pretension
that it is far from the same boredom
comes from getting no desired results
beyond that feeling of displacement
and something terribly missing
in any existing available formulas.

The subjects we can actually discuss
are increasingly sparse and few
having no business with each other
and not wanting the available palliatives
that make it all the more wasted
imagining there might be a purpose
where there is nothing of the sort.

If I was ever actually interesting
that would have been long ago
and even then for the wrong reasons
that make it all come up empty
from a fill up of too much imagination
that makes believe you got around
to anywhere you really needed to go.

Feeling too dead for too long
becoming accustomed to the morgue
having outlived your own wake
where they let you completely down
and then covered it all over
thinking they had buried you
along with your best and last chance.

You shook the dirt off yourself
but that says nothing at all
about coming out of it alive
searching for vital signs
on decaying social networks
in an after life of ghosts
where no one is actually familiar.

That was never the actual choice
but it comes without implications
concerning any choices being right
or that there were choices to make
that really would have mattered
anymore than a zigzag route
that ends up in the same damn place.

Do it all by yourself for yourself
but you could never make enough
as to anything to make that possible
so you threw yourself to predators
hoping for a lucky accident
where it would all work out alright
due to one or another popular myth.

You never know who set you up
to being put down in any way
that anything can be put down
but you know that you have lost
when you have run out of lines
and there is no one on the other end
of where they left you hanging.

--------------------------------------

300623C
-----------

The new claustrophobia
concerning lack of affordable space
making you feel sardine canned in
into something remains slippery
that is always trying to slip away
along a greasy spoon argument
that you have to argue fiercely
but arguing only with yourself.

You wish you were in Switzerland
in an early chapter of another century
so you could fake your neutrality
staging various obscene acts
that have the power to fill a room
the way dampness can fill a space
followed by an army of cockroaches.

The occasional butterfly passes
having emerged from a stomach
to continue its social journeying
among the artificial flowers
believing it is finding nectar
and bathing in the light of dewdrops
while secretly hopeful of collection
into a museum display case.

The new technology you obtained
will be entirely obsolete
long before you can master its potential
and even before you can use it
to become any sort of success
so you watch the magician
smash it with a hammer.

Something entirely new will appear
after the rabbit is sawed into two
coloured handkerchiefs then pulled
from its spewed plastic tube entrails
while a pretty girl appears
from out of the magician's hat
as the magician becomes a deck of cards.

She shuffles the deck and deals
you a draw at Black Jack and lose
then threatens to bite off your head
as part of a primitive mating ritual
causing you to make your escape
with the only thing you have left
being your head in your hands.

The way some relationships terminate
after the magic is all gone
and you are left to rolling what is left
directly ahead of you
to try to avoid attracting attention
until a policeman stops you
demanding to examine your brains.

That is how you come to understand
why your father always held his head
in his working man's hands
muttering various strange incantations
somewhere under his cigarette breath
and you though he was praying
to the same gods he did not believe in.

You do your best to comply
with the policeman's request
all the time silently wondering
if it will be illegal search and seizure
while he shakes and rattles contents
spilling something out
that becomes bouquets of flowers.

He seems entirely satisfied
and urges you to be on your way
telling you everything seems in order
while standing directly in front of you
between you and the flowers
so you back carefully away
trying to avoid further collisions.

The last you see of the flowers
they are running down the street
drunkenly singing the choruses
from locally popular songs
but you feel glad to be rid of them
as they have taken all the lyrics
that you never want to hear again.

You struggle through a large crowd
trying to keep your head about you
wondering when it will happen
that random shots will be fired
by a resemblance to Andre Breton
to create a final footprint manifesto
written by the resulting stampede.

-----------------------------------------

010723A
-----------

That collective madness
that we refer to as being humanity
requires a firm belief in its sanity
as men plow the blood soaked ground
believing there is a Lilith in every girl
that might lure them away to playing
with very different demons.

It creates the desire to be possessed
or at least to have the experience
on a distorted and very sexual level
so as to remove the stiffeners
the labels and see through packaging
from an unaccessorized toy department
bare pink plastic self.

You want to stock up on batteries
as they are always extra
and then there are the costumes
along with the various accessories
that you simply cannot do without
but it makes you feel more powerful
and you know that it is very popular.

It can make you something of a magnet
attracts an attractive magnet's attraction
as long as the switch is turned on
sending current through the coils
as that feeling deep inside the gut
sort of squirm and shudder
crawling around beneath a thin skin.

The increasing number of moments
when you want an alluring demon
to do unspeakable things to you
because you really cannot live
the way they keep telling you to live
as a simulated instance of processed
emulating what you saw on television.

The nightly news is reassuring you
that you are really not so very strange
compared to the collective happenings
that are being played out on the big stage
crowded with famous high strung puppets
twitching their lullaby speeches in tune
to the spasms of half asleep audiences.

----------------------------------------------

030723A
-----------

All of life seems to be about delays
and the delays are to not know what
but you know you are kept waiting
for the might or might not happen
sort of things that you have to wait for.

Wait patiently for an invitation
wait to become recognized as something
wait to have your turn at it
wait for the others to finally leave
wait for the unexpected and the outcome.

When you were some years younger
you would head out to know not where
out into the restless night of impatience
not knowing where or how it might be
that you might have something happen.

Something had to happen somewhere
but gradually you learned it never did
and what happened was nothing good
in terms of anything you wanted
that you really wanted to be happening.

You do not feel any different being older
but you have given up on heading out
into the restless nights of impatience
while trying to keep more of it to yourself
and not spread it around so very much.

It is the same old road out there
headed to where you do not want to be
never really takes you anywhere
to anywhere you want to be going
so you do not go there anymore.

You used to believe in finding someone
on that road that you chanced to be on
but you found nothing much more
than what you needed to shake loose
because it was chewing at you.

It all still feels as if you are tinkering
with some sort of defective mechanism
trying to make it work at something
that it was never really made to do
but you never have any actual options.

You go through the motions
of what was once upon a belief
secretly knowing the truth
that you do not believe it any more
but you need to keep doing something.

You used to believe in getting results
but not the kind of results that you got
until everything seemed a waste of time
as to the up and up fat chance game
apparently trying to make the wrong score.

It is not as if you can take your winnings
to make a splash anywhere
not having won anything anywhere
and you stopped waiting around
for someone to toss some lucky bones.

Realizing how boring you actually are
to anyone who is not after something
such as your body or money
no matter if it is cash or substance
traded for periods of intoxication.

There are some who are simply happy
playing with the various body parts
that are themselves and others
but you do not have that going for you
and the meat markets are too expensive.

No one wants to play your games
and you do not want to play their games
in a world gone far too professional
catering to big ticket sales types
and keeps telling you to give it all up

You keep thinking must be somewhere
but you do not know where that is
so you keep sticking your head out
from the same old hole you dwell in
hoping to see something coming.

There seems to be nothing on the way
as far out as you can dare to see
so you go back down into your hole
fussing with what does not concern you
as if it is more than none of your business.

Given the sort of available placebo
that never cures anything at all
but you can substitute it for meaning
when you do not have any pieces
to any of those better puzzles.

You wanted to be doing something
but what they gave you to do
seems like it was nothing at all
making you hate talking about it
and unable to self identify.

--------------------------------

040723A
------------

Feeling squandered by your attempts
to get in on it and to get to know
but none of that came to anything
and your life seems to be a cuckoo clock
announcing a too common regularity.

A complicated variant on twiddling thumbs
and not quite yet into cat's cradle
orderly tangles of strained stretched strings
in a vague string theory of relations
that make you fear and avoid tying knots.

You tied all the wrong knots before
and it made you poorer and unhappier
than anyone wanted anyone to be
that they actually wanted to know
getting any of anything anywhere.

Becomes another form of paralysis
quite beyond the usual failures of muscle
as to breaking things down and breaking in
past the condemned peek a boo viewpoint
and common rubber neck modes of existence.

Not sure how to wrap something up
you fall into the crumple of your bed
as creased as an abused sheet of paper
not knowing whether to cry or laugh
at how obstructed everything becomes.

Various relics locked inside yourself
as to what no one wanted to barter for
within their typical economies of needs
unless it was someone you despised
causing you to seek a deeper isolation.

Watching for the distant eye candy
and drifting toward exotic appeal
you have learned to hate the normal
due to the way it imposes itself
and seeks to eradicate any real interest.

If you were still a teenager
you could justify driving around at night
on a relentless wild spree for nothing
still wondering if anything comes out
from where it is usually hiding.

The ultimate sort of bench penalty
sitting it out from a game
that they will not let you play
is all about making you want to erase
every good idea from inside your head.

Not needing any of that anymore
trying to reduce you to what you can get
if you can find the ugliest markets
to sanitize away those upstart tendencies
out of your stupid skull bucket lists.

If only what you actually could do
could have counted for something
but they tell you that you have not
done anything that anyone wants
and you have only wasted your money.

The people you used to know
apparently having spent it right
on those little doses of death
that come in various containers
facilitating brain splatter sessions.

The exacting of a high price
in exchange for the efforts put in
where everything ends levelled down
into a common and numbed stupor
beyond a few manic displays.

You were looking for a needle
in what was an infinite haystack
but not that particular needle
that someone wants to stick you with
in the belief that it solves everything.

You are supposed to like it
and something said wrong about you
if they find out that you do not like it
more than anything else that you liked
before you let it all go.

They would never let you in the door
where you could really want to go
so you spent some of yourself
lurking on the outside of anything
as if it were another amendment.

You tossed your remaining hopes
same as a coin into a begging cup
listening for bottom in the emptiness
where it all goes down rattling
from one type of abyss into another.

-------------------------------------------

040723B
-----------

Would be nice to recapture
that old feeling of blind motivation
based purely on a false belief
that it all eventually gets there.

Get to it and do something
in the vain belief that it matters
beyond impulses and glares
that come at you if anything.

Wherever there really is
must be one of any number
of entirely wonderful situations
rising up from the dead lands.

You have to believe in that
while realizing belief is difficult
and more difficult all the time
faced with mortality of experience.

One reckoning to another
and still do not know of anyone
who has anything you need
beyond mollified interludes.

You know that it cannot last
because there is a lack of addiction
and so the junkies are laughing
at everything you are and own.

The crack in the wall
that tells you there is something
on the other side of this
where the breeze shoots through.

You already know
the refined dirt is the same dirt
as you find in the pig pen
having been prettied up.

You are not ever really happy
not being in the running
and strung along as something
below second fiddle.

Stuck in behind somewhere
in the heavy social traffic
comprised of happy stragglers
and parishioners at church doors.

Adopted into the lingering
among those who find merit
in being left on the steps
at weddings and funerals.

That you do not know anyone
is sometimes the only blessing
and it comes exactly the same
from a devil or a good lord.

There is only business
but you are no one's business
and they are none of yours
in what has been left to you.

-----------------------------------

050723A
-----------

We do meaningless things
in meaningless relationships
as if that works off the deficit
between the red and black ink
and the alone and the together
along those conflict prone
often turned radical divides
that structure and organize.

Life burrows in under the skin
inflicting its twitches of desire
turning us even more parasitic
on pleasure stream shores
trying to catch on to something
that will take us all the way
past all the usual trinkets
and the common diversions.

That desire to dive into it
to being carried away
into a starry nightscape
on those vast ebony wings
that unfurl the entire sky
where the real show begins
above the orchestra pit
and behind that dark curtain.

----------------------------------

060723A
------------

There is a large convention
of hot air salesmen
drifting through the lobby
cheeks puffed out red balloon
they wear medical apparel
placing stethoscopes on windows
listening for traffic sounds
wheezing along clogged arteries
anticipating a sudden crash.

The concierge scowls
indicating too many things wrong
where fresh eyeballs gaze up
from bowls of melting ice cream
then calls for rainbow sprinkles
to be liberally applied
along the bare white slopes
the colour of midwinter flesh
heaps of limbs in banana boats.

Only yesterday there was another
patron who fell from a high window
due to unfortunate circumstances
only to be torn apart in the street
by a carefully selected crowd
performing random political acts
but despite a thorough search
his eyeballs were never found
and so there were no witnesses.

A clicking of insect tongues
rising to a crescendo
filling the public address system
causes a chef to leave the kitchen
brandishing a bloody cleaver
in response to incessant demands
for something fresh and tender
to fill rows of emptied plates
beyond grey potatoes and gravy.

He is headed to the theatre
on the other side of the street
that doubles as a slaughterhouse
providing an endless supply
of young, but failed, talent
suffering from over crowding
in the meat locker conditions
of the crowded dressing rooms
their meat regularly inspected.

The soft and tender are culled
from the stale of the herd
while the latter will continue
to establish their careers
putting on a tough show
as to actually enjoying it
before committing suicide
in one of the usual theatrical ways
stale actors typically do.

The acts of butchery are staged
for regular paying audiences
who never seem to get enough
with critics writing glowing revues
describing the various highlights
as to new innovations in carnage
promising genius productions
for those who are lucky enough
to be able to obtain tickets.

The director will be bronzed
using the lost flesh process
to evidence his immortality
his replacement appearing
to light another candle
at the foot of the new shrine
while prayers are answered
by the loudspeakers
bellowing across public squares.

---------------------------------------

100723A
-----------

A blue sky day begins
over the green of Summer
obsessed with growth
getting pushier and pushier.

A usual over crowding
between hostile take overs
and regular invasions
into available space.

The eager to move right in
watching for vacancies
where something died down
leaving its clean out debris.

A need to feel cultivated
and try to attract something
in a surge of inattention
among the feeding frenzies.

We try to persist to flowering
in the crevices of asphalt
though not really knowing how
to reach up and touch the Sun.

-------------------------------------
100723B
-----------

You knew I could never really be
your very ordinary invalid
and you did not really want
a borderline sort of cripple
in that pumped up world
that is all muscles and money.

You would not want to be hobbled
by having to wheel me around
if the system failed into crumples
of blanket statement rubber legs
propped up critical appraisals
as to ultimatums of worth.

No one introduced us
at anyone's party
and you never replied to me
even though you probably knew
I was trying to make things
that I thought you might like.

I should have gone from it all
trying for the money and the fame
but it was all too badly broken
and I was too broken to know
how to reach that high and far
only to be broken coming down.

Everything comes down it seems
from wherever it chances to go
and I was always free fall
without any sort of parachute
taking on the next tumble
from each limited sky.

Why was I dreaming you would
take all my broken pieces
as a new collection of treasures
but what was there to any envy
in that sort of public display
if it had been me that you saved.

I was not the dirty thing
that you actually came to want
and I was not the sort of pain
that you really wanted to soothe
knowing it sort of works sometimes
is nothing really impressive.

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