| Poems: 311216 - December 31st, 2016 |
|
| Robert Morpheal (morpheal@yahoo.com) |
2016/12/31 14:30 |
311216A
-----------
Learning to hurt yourself
with every word.
You have to perfect
enjoyment of pain.
Make it a habit
that you fight against breaking.
Probe for alphabet shrapnel
in the endless open wounds.
It tends to punctuate
each and every breath.
Wear your language
as you would a hair shirt.
Poetry is martyrdom,
with invisible stigmata.
The ink always stains
and it never washes away.
Everyone always sees
what evades your own mirror.
Any word you add to your record
is castrating.
Language as an emasculation
that no one warned you about.
You failed at open spaces
and became lines of text.
Some are driven to suffering
what words do.
The premature scribing
of various epitaphs.
Expression is a criminal act
relative to silence.
----------------------
311216B
-----------
Past masters of disciplined madness
teaching me to despise everything
that happens to fall short
and that fails to rise up.
It is a lesson I failed to learn
about traditional manhood.
As to how it is conferred or denied
by its various priesthoods.
Poets made perpetually afraid
of any woman taking their breath away.
As though she might close his throat
strangling and ending his line.
The truth is what we refuse to believe,
in contrast to what is kept common.
It is what someone tries to drum in
against our partisan resistance.
-------------------------------------
311216C
-----------
All the prizes were given out
to the silent ones.
There was nothing left
after the silence was broken.
Those who know do not say,
and those who say do not know.
Thus a poet’s saying
knowing absolutely nothing.
The way that game is played
as to the consequence
of being made inconsequential,
becomes the power of expression.
The artless man
always practices his art.
His art sustains him,
against any adversity.
Laurels of utter insignificance
being hardest to win.
To attain those
one has to rage incessantly.
---------------------------------
311216D
-----------
It was the three world wars
that destroyed it all.
Even if you have no idea
as to what was actually destroyed.
Pictures of endless ruins
and all that pulling down
for the sake of starting over again
as if everyone must do the same.
Any reluctance notwithstanding
increases the pressures
of various wrecker ball ideas
that threaten to knock down walls.
That sort of thing becomes a habit
that begins in child’s play.
It continues in some to the very end
as if everyone must always do it.
Whatever gets built up
is only put together as a time bomb,
given a specific duration
before it is expected to detonate.
Be prepared to move
at a moment’s notice.
The way troops are expected to move
when they go into battle.
As if there is no way forward
other than to the taking of new ground.
No advancement
without abandonment of any refuge.
There is something absolutely cruel
about being a war child
forever kept in fear of rationing
by seemingly endless shortages.
The girls never settle for nylons anymore,
and the boys want more than cigarettes.
You get nothing for a blanket,
other than accused of aid and comfort.
Enemies are always waiting
for any mistake or false move.
The shoot downs are still happening
but you do not read of them in the papers.
---------------------------------------------------
311216E
-----------
It was the word
that some say created the world
that then killed romance.
The breaking of silence by any means,
always proving fatal.
As soon as the mind revealed itself,
as anything made manifest,
there was evidence of an offence.
All that remained to be done
was to mete out the punishment.
A peculiar condition that pertains
to the business of love.
You have to learn to buy it,
in other ways,
that are far less wishful than saying.
It is said only a god can effect
a word into a reality.
None permitted to usurp that power
as if to create something
by the power of speech.
Many confer pulling down by the heels
a precedence over eloquence,
as a more primitive type of faith
that they believe beyond question
while condemning all heretics.
Some simply surrender,
giving only name, rank and serial number
to whomever takes them prisoner.
It is another possible ticket
that can escape the war zone.
------------------------------------
|
|
|