Poems: 080823 - August 8th, 2023

[Robert Morpheal]

130723A
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Bizarre occurrences
dotting and dashing content
in the context of spacetime.

A hyphenation of intervals
indicating fictional relations
as though pulling it together.

Fractured bits of information
bound up and splinted
with  excessive reasoning.

Broken words dangle helpless
over distant horizon lines
where things begin and end.

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150723A
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When the Irish drink
they expect far too much
beyond the typical effects
of their choice of beverage.

The Irish seem to insist
has to be at least one fairy
in each bottle
and she has to dance for them.

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160723A
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Wondering what became of _____
insert the name or face
into what has become a blank
in the on going record.

Proving we were not in mind
as anyone important enough
in terms of any real significance
that would lead to being informed.

There are no forwarding addresses
or any fossilized clues
in the typical social sediments
that might hold traces of whereabouts.

The chances of a feather falling
to leave a lasting impression
in the common mud flats
is always slim to none.

We really do not have that much
that we can really count on
and history is mostly footprints
melting into the same old mud.

Dinosaurs walked the Earth
leaving footprints in primal ooze
so we try to walk in those same  
following that same hard path.

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160723B
------------

We do not want to lose the familiar
in a growing fear of nothing new
comes from having been that road
to that very same place as before.

Always trying to get out of there
but never quite making it
becomes a lifetime occupation
and in between we dare to dream.

It is that carefully planned getaway
that does not getaway from anything
taking habitual trips down memory lane
mostly to the same places as before.

The usual crowd is picking on whatever
should never really concern them
but incapable of dealing with anything
that they ought to be concerned about.

Burial is a process that begins long before
whenever the funeral chances to happen
piling up a steady accumulation
of trivial and other routine information.

You know it is nearly over and done
when none of the salesmen convince you
and every advertisement annoys you
while creating the same tense impatience.

That is when you yourself lose value
marginalizing you to the markets
and the more you reduce your spend
the less value becomes attributed.

Taking a stroll through the local zoo
you realize it is the middle of Main Street
in what could be in Anytown, Anywhere
and you must not feed the animals.

The only attention you are getting
is when they want to be fed
and you know that is happening
because they chew at your heels.

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230723A
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Becoming one of the restless
but not really young anymore
realizing too much that goes on
is at the soap opera level.

The people who have it all
including all the answers
never really let you join them
with so many questions.

They do not like questions
because it upsets their order
where it is all neatly arranged
similar to place settings.

They do not really like you
because you could not shop
for all those right things
in all those right places.

You have turned to dark
you have gone to silent
finding nothing left to say
and no one to say it to.

You are a historian again
from the peculiar viewpoint
of a fictional sort of life
belonging in comic books.

Fools are always plentiful
so that they can rush in
after which there is a belief
angels gather up the carnage.

As the vultures of any battle
they come gracefully down
in a sky  ballet of opportunity
to where your guts are torn out.

Not knowing where to go
starting from lost touch
and headed to lost direction
knowing slaved for nothing.

You claim working hard
having to peel the onions
to account for the high tide
floods out remaining vision.

There is a vague memory
of seeing ahead clearly
but that seems as long ago
as any other lost yesterday.

You get on with whatever it is
not knowing what it is anymore
among your ruined plans
and various failed propositions.

No ones goes your way anymore
and there is no turning back
to nothing left to turn back to
as to those stations on the way.

Waiting for an invitation
that you would want to accept
creates a more deafening silence
where you dump your thoughts.

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240723A
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How many little worlds
again being destroyed
by the destroyers of worlds
and in one footprint
whole universes perishing.

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260723A
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Those we wished to keep closer
ending up the furthest away
and those we sought to distance
remaining far too close
being the usual consequences.

We are lost in the constant shuffle
surrendering incapacitated attempts
meant to establish and build
what is only broken down again
adding evidence of our frailty.

Routinely made to become
whatever we actually hate
while being continually trained
to give up whatever we love
serves as valuable experience.

Ultimately experience for nothing
beyond the belief in experience
teaches something of value
even if entirely of no real use
anywhere further down the line.

Between the selected
and those who are selecting
stands that vast abyss
representing the powerlessness
to effect any chosen worlds.

We would dream about it
if we could select that program
from the library of possibilities
but it is always out on loan
to someone else made lucky.

Despite what we were taught
to fall into believing
about our real situations
as concerns who will drop in
and who always keeps away.

A game we would never play
remaining forever available
while the moves we then make
concerning possible amusements
prove far too ineffectual.

Thus confining imagination
to deprive it of strength
disabling actual dreams
made of intent and satisfaction
to being rim shots at boredom.

Becoming the only point
in a pointless scene
crowded with pixel noise
that continually blurs out
what we thought we knew.

Our pursuit is a happiness
that is entirely dependent
on what we do not have
which is what we never get
but life is always a hot pursuit.

Somehow it got away
to made thankful that it did
and that is the only story
that anyone actually saved
in defining what it entails.

There is no stepping back
on the wrong way we came
to that pervasive condition
that is our not belonging
to anything right for us.

Withdrawal to withdrawal
is that dwindling feeling
that we have been put out
with the other inconveniences
that no one really wanted.

We would be better off
if we actually had permission
to create our own personal hells
rather than being locked up
in someone else's ideas of heaven.

It never works that way
and there are always those calls
that we cannot possibly answer
which are scattered in among
those calls that never come.

Someone else knowing better
what is actually good for us
in the throes of in death as in life
and we are never to question
that much official authority.

That ends the saga of waiting
having been a trial of patience
for the sake of impossible rewards
the circumstances always wrong
by means of typical arrangements.

The constraints on the options
are the constraints on connections
wrong side of any barriers
in the midst of incessant noise
where only the silence answers.

You always kept asking
but you never received
because it is all determined
by what you might ask for
being strictly on cue.

On cue and not being listed
as part of an ever longer list
listing what is now forbidden
to you if not to someone else
creating added complications.

You simply do not know
what choice you must make
that you are free to make
from among the options
that you do not really have.
 
It means a lot of guessing
and you have to guess it right
even if it takes you away
from anything you wanted
and anything you might want.

If someone were to tell you
it would spoil the whole game
that is exactly the same
as being able to see something
so you can actually fight it.

A  search strategy designed
to take you to a new nowhere
and whatever made you imagine
it could really set you free
from the ever growing opposition.

You are going to regret it
no matter what it is you get
and you never would want
what you think you want
anywhere and in any way.

Listen to what they say
and you do not listen
anywhere near to well enough
to what you are being told
they want you to do and be.

There is always a price
but you can never pay it
so you never get to get away
from the endless demands
demanding endless changes.

Keep changing for its own sake
in the hopes of hitting it right
but only card sharks ever play
their cards in that way
and you are no card shark.

The only changes being dealt
being those you do not want
or the ones you cannot make
but that always accumulates
a wealth of contrary persistence.  

Do not know your way around
your closed doors community
and you are not welcome
past that other distant gate
where they play different games.

You  believed in advertising
but you never got it right
about the brand and the design
that they insisted that you sell
to entirely different markets.

That was never a real impression
that you could ever hope to make
so the only ticket they gave you
was one to watch a carnival
as an invisible in the cheap seats.

Never had what it takes
but it is what it gives
that really gets to hurt you
and they never really approve
of anything to ease that pain.

It is all about the seduction
that takes away from you
anything you found seductive
and everyone is another junkie
looking for another different fix.

The lucky ones get some
while the others are left behind
on the supply and demand curves
as concerns the rising prices
of whatever gets you off.

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280723A
------------

It is a total shame
but then what really isn't
and you go on like that
as to isn't it a shame.

There isn't really much
to not be ashamed of
and isn't it a shame
as to how that goes.

Isn't it a shame
what happened to him
a shame about them
and a shame about her.

Isn't it a shame
but that is how it goes
and isn't it a shame
it happened again.

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280723B
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Burying that sense of play
under anything convenient
trying to make it look the same
as most every other's dirt.

You keep convincing yourself
even if you do not have a chance
something will pan out
past those streaks of bad luck.

Arguing that nothing goes on
for as long as any forever
so there has to be a bright nugget
among all the death and taxes.

Talk about what you would do
and what you would have done
if the playing field had been level
for a dream team to play on.

Maybe that matched pair
that you keep reinventing
in various scenarios imagined
as wanted to live in.

Experience is not that rich
and most is purely vicarious
seeing things that are not there
in the hopes of making them real.

You can linger that same way
on that verge of death and decay
for what seems a forever
as though squirming under a heel.

What it feels like to be the worm
for whom there is no fair deal
extruded under pressure
as though another plastic string.

You see that someone had it all
so you think you can have some too
but that is your biggest mistake
concerning scarce resources.

If it becomes anything you want
it will be scarcer and scarcer
until there is nothing at all
even vaguely resembling any truth.

You put your foot forward
to where it is totally ignored
until someone steps hard on it
to tell you that you are in the way.

There is no consideration left
if you chance to step aside
but someone else gets past you
to where all the satisfaction is.

You thought you knew the rules
but that was to yesterday's game
only after you lost your chance
as to  any chance you never had.

The mud flung into your eyes
is what temporarily blinds you
to everything that slips away
from what it does behind you.

You count up the many situations
you would have preferred to be in
as being a part of your losses
only to find nothing was left.

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280723C
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Midday and you pour something
into your deplorable self
because water is an inadequate solvent
and you need to dissolve away
some of those worthless portions.

Trying to make a new breakthrough
ridding yourself of all the pretend
that masquerades as actual having
anything you worked toward
while the going for it seemed good.

That is where the hard part begins
after the fact that nothing came easy
where you feel obliged to give it up
been around the loop a few times
ending tangled in the strings.

That orchestra cannot play a note
but it always makes a lot of noise
in expectations of your  applause
turning whatever you once valued
into an outburst of percussion.

You left it to the dealers and the pimps
along with something abandoned
to those who run the gaming tables
but never found half a chance to take you
anywhere more personal than that.

The latex diva laughs at you
in the throes of your own predicament
being over invested in common lies
ending up nothing much left
that you could stake your life on.

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300723A
------------

Suggestive deceptions
that lead you nowhere special
past the common implications
coming from unavailability
and never half a poor chance
at what it seemed to be about.

It is never actually about that
and even if it was about anything
it would never be about you
no matter what it is about
but sometimes you get to watch
while sitting another one out.

Deaths and destruction are real
outside the boundary conditions  
that define your confinement
to imagining you can be released
from spates of various incidents
comprising perpetual tease.

Must be a worst possible deal
made somewhere along your stretch  
comprising life's rutted histories
where you tried to turn aside
from always forwarded the same
to the same empty destinations.

You are only given to imaginings
that have no presence or substance
inside the bounds of your tiny cage
defining your measured little doses
of various persistent realities
that forever strain endurance.

It is not what you will ever know
no matter what you wanted
and no matter where it once was
that you chanced into seduced
it always belongs to someone else
and none of it is actually yours.

That is how it always ended up
and that is how it always remains
being stuck to the sticky threads
that never quite connect
to anything other than your own
ever worsening paralysis.

You can watch but never touch
any of the actual merchandise
flesh markets becoming the same
as those other sorts of markets
where they sell trinkets and tokens
that can serve to remind you

They constantly remind you
of a deteriorating condition
that will become much worse
given enough time and attention
to the demands and costs
that always accumulate.  

The asset you once believed in
was only another sort of liability
that you failed to see clearly
through some other's eyes
so the final verdict is always
you must have been blind.

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300723B
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Not feeling any strength
that makes people run in circles
and no desire to any vagrancy
embarking on pointless journeys
along too familiar streets.

Where does it all really go
stripped of other motivations
once came as belief in adventures
concealed around random corners
the way it happens in novels.

That happens in various games
where something is always lurking
setting up false expectations
about the dark and the light
harbouring both gifts and curses.

Never having met anyone
that you really wanted to know
going about it in that way
but that was the way that opened
at the thresholds of those doors.

Eventually there is the regret
that comes from opening them
to send your alien probes out
searching for signs of life
that may be personally relevant.

They returned discouraging data
confirming the wasteland
that arises from random samples
being collected by sensors
in vain hopes of greater validity.

Realizing anything you wanted
is always entirely hidden away
where you cannot dig it out
from where it is forever hiding
from wandering mind and gaze.

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300723C
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We struggle for the freedom
to become the type of prisoner
that we chanced to want to be
in our own choice of prison
and then tragedy is to fail at that.

The mind in a cage fight
goes from cage fight to cage fight
where to win is to survive
merely to fight the next fight
and there are never any prizes.

Though given to beliefs
that too is only a distraction
from the nothing if you make it
and the nothing if you do not
type of existential conundrum.

Always ending up the same
wanting for something
and nothing you can get
in a perpetual egging on
to more emptied believing.

Been chasing the shadows
and they have caught you
more than a few times
so you assess your damages
and then hopelessly try again.

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010823A
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It is that empty spot
that you cannot fill in
that always gets you
into being disadvantaged.

You can see it clearly
in a wilderness of mind
but you cannot find a trace
of realized civilization.

A problem of affordability
concerning what makes it
and every sort of advantage
has its own price tag.

Everyone seems satisfied
with what you do not have
most often with a sort of life
that you do not want.

You know how it would be
if you were really there
instead of wandering around
among pointless and  broke.

There is the price of admission
and there is walking away
toward what you do not want
and what you do not want to do.

Been down that road
but it always circles back
to the same old start over again
doing the same old things.

Nothing but more agonizing
stuck at the toll booths
unable to pay the actual toll
and there is no turning back.

Tally up the disillusion
while counting the worry beads
living in a terror of red ink
and how that breaks promises.

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010823B
------------

You stake your reputation
out in the hot Summer sun
where it can suffer the heat
getting baked to a brittle crisp.

Should never talk about
what you will never get to do
because it alerts the opposition
and they will punish you anyway.

That one drop of blood falling
into the Piranha stocked pool
would take the flesh off your bone
without your ever stepping in.

Having an idea is plenty sufficient
to make nests of insects angry
enough to swarm under your skin
tearing off little bits of your soul.

Your broken clock is melting
making its dripping wax face stretch
from an atom to an hourglass
counting the seconds to detonation.

They want to make you explode
at a safe distance away
but all you do is fizzle out
for a totally disappointed crowd.

Those false rumours of fire-works
dangled as a short terminus fuse
detonating bones and black powder
with a single stray spark.

If they do not have to clean it up
they do not care a tinker's damn
what happens to the pieces
or where any of it really goes.

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020823A
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That special skill
as to planning the details
that then never happen
because reality is unkind
and you never get to plan
for its cruel twists of fate.

Think you figured it out
as to how it could work
but it does not work that way
much to your total surprise
concerning unknown reasons
and alien contrivances.

A flying saucer is hovering
outside a bedroom window
with its millions of eyes
gazing in on your private life
leaving the sorts of explanations
that no one then believes.

Life can be more like a party
that never actually happened
rather than the one that did
bore you to secret tears
giving you the sole pleasure
of fleeing out onto a street.

In that peculiar state of mind
you question why you did it
and then want to break a rule
as random release of  tensions
chanced to build up inside
while playing the acceptable fool.

Having done hard social time
without knowing any reason
other than an anxious little bird
fluttering as a gut feeling
makes you forever restless
for what is not really there.

You read about what was fun
but it was a hundred years ago
when they did it in style
as their means of escape
from crude and vulgar days
that otherwise crowded them.

So you ask yourself why
why did they ever stop
and how did you ever get here
leaving all the good times behind
in exchange for bits of progress
meted out as disenchantment.

Where to find friends like that
in these dulled and morbid times
that fail to inspire at anything
among strangled and mass confined
who know no gallows humour
but speak trivial and vain matters.
 
The past was better at escape
than most are capable of today
perhaps in fear of something
including harsher sentences
along with natural causes
making sudden appearances.

Boredom now the leading cause
and symptom of most types
of terminal conditions
are producing   social attrition
without funeral arrangements
where time off work as another wake.

There are those who hold dear
the idea that their death is life
and their lives are death
more often dispensed by chemists
beyond the pale shades remains
of once scriptures and  verses.

Comes much to the same
as to what is in the pews
and what is in the gutters
being two different entrances
to the very same place
by means of different rituals.

You fail to choose the right face
from the spectrum of choices
as you try to play Kabuki parts
amid the ghosts and the demons
that invade your personal myths
to give you something to do.

A desire for that great party
that comes after the performance
but that too ends up cancelled
because everyone was too busy
playing with their take out food
from the local fast food grill.

You are criticized for avoiding
cultivating more usual habits
made to swallow your pride down
in exchange for a burger and fries
in between birth and death rattles
echoing each other at infinity.

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050823A
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We thought it meant something
but it never meant that
or anything we thought it meant
and then the time comes
when that too is all over and done.

Everything is the same broken line
missing that one important word
which does not exist in any language
and might never be invented
to fill in that same emptiest of places.

I would have said something
if there had been words to say it with
making my silly animal sounds
as if they could create different futures
other than the one that would happen.

It was the romantics who believed
words could actually create worlds
if only they could find the right ones
creating various presumptive objects
that did not exist and never would.

I regret those who became such things
and I regret myself even more deeply
for interludes of attempted being
as something that we never really were
and that we could never really be.

One can devote years to that condition
exploring the nuances of nothingness  
while forever looking for something
that can never actually be found
but it seemed like a wonderful idea.

Then there is the lack of talent
for playing music on a cardboard violin
following in the footsteps of other failures
who were all better at it and worked harder
perhaps proving made of stronger stuff.

It always matters so very much more
what someone believes you are made of
and how they believe you were made
realizing it is all a bunch of stray pieces
that did not really fit in any good places.

In fact they did not fit anywhere at all
being a puzzle with no practical solutions
even if the package implied otherwise
and most people believe what is said
on whatever seems to be the packaging.

What was it that was always missing
that condemned us to inevitable lost touch
before we could ever reach that far out
across the little gaps of what was forever
eventually forgetting the days and names.  

The universe writes us into its dear diary
along with all of the possible reasons
that anyone had in their minds
the way votes are recorded at voting booths
in the usual matrix of endless excuses.

The day came when everyone was gone
that we ever imagined wanting to remember
leaving only our own forgetting them
but sometimes we are still foolish enough
to wonder what happened to one or two.

That too is what we do not need to know
considering how it makes no difference
to how anything went or how it goes
but sometimes we imagine our ancestors
discussing where it all went wrong.

Best that not to think of any of us
to avoid adding meaningless excuses
onto what is an ever growing pile
knowing we are only each other's ghosts
of what we are not and never were.

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