“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
A portrait of the American writer Mark Twain taken by A. F. Bradley in New York, 1907. http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/publications/siycfall_05.pdf http://www.twainquotes.com/Bradley/bradley.html See also other photographs of Mark Twain by A. F. Bradley taken in March 1907 in New York on Mark Twain Project Online. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”
Aldous Huxley (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Beneath our hungry shore
between life and grass
more skin blossoms.
Leap off moon–
man is wild,
a gambol
song.
* My latest submission for the great gathering of international poets known as One Shot Wednesday. Short but sweet, and more than little cooky to more than a few of you, I’m sure, I give unto you “A Gambol Song”, my latest bit of free verse.
Causing pain
is the nature of the note—
the pianist sits, prepared for murder
in operatic trespasses
he hears the Valkyrie ride,
her spear the thrust of baritone blast
piercing stars, like silver tears rain
It rolls down to earth,
a Resurrection, a stirring in the madness,
this flurry writhe:
a man might grow hollow on the glee
Destroying and Rebuilding—
Creation in the up-tempo swell,
but he cannot afford to think—
all crumbles to analysis.
* My latest contribution to the wonderful One Shot Poetry Wednesdays! Once you’ve had a look, check out some of the other One Shot Poets as well–they’re a skilled bunch of poets, with a strong and supportive community. Enjoy! And while you’re at it – vote for us in the Shorty Awards…we have a chance to take Number 1 in Art!
Standing among the plastic wreaths he
searches desperately for life denied
but the rows stretch on into
foreboding; the synthetic
green grows into a maze,
amazing, and he sees the
clerk smiling at him–
no consolation in
the shrubbery
creeping to
Imperfection.
Writhing serpent of my dissolution
No solution
To your pollution
Of my ever-yearning soul
No more grim atoll
Might ever seize upon my whole—
My life, my life!
They call upon the fife
Thrusting its notes upon the edge of a knife
No travail
Might ever prevail
Above the madness that assail
My spirit wails, unfit
To persevere and to submit
To all the hopes that you have writ.
* My latest contribution to the wonderful One Shot Poetry Wednesdays! Once you’ve had a look, check out some of the other One Shot Poets as well– they’re a skilled bunch of poets, looking to form a community and support one another. Enjoy!
The following poem was inspired by this article recently written by the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11288744.
We the People
Have come to the conclusion
Hunger
Madness
Agony
This cycle of destruction
Is all too much for us
Unacceptably inflated
We must rise to put it down.
Ideas? Why
Whatever do you mean?
It is wrong,
So bitter wrong
But that is all to say
We wish that it were
But have nothing to insist
The prices rise
The people die
And here we sit
These desks, emaciated lie
Between us and
The world.
Existential elation
The night’s revelation
Soul’s sweetest evocation
Mind longs to improvise
To sleep, yet rise
Above the lies
Until we admit
The body is unfit—
Do not think to hear it
To bear the broken madness
Never fail to aggress
This fairest stress
To break the blind
That stalks the mind
May yet free mankind.
* For the first Monday Poetry Potluck!
Just a quick little thing, in honor of perhaps one of the gaudiest bits of automobile I’ve ever seen driving down the road. Sorry there’s no picture. I was driving down the road myself, you see. I could but marvel at the hideousness:
This tie-dyed madness
less car, more insanity
burning brain cells bright.
What bitter bliss,
this thought amiss–
dreams as simple as a kiss–
but if I gave my heart to you
I’d have to know that you’d be true–
could not ever bear to woo
the heartbreak and the pain
I’ve in this madness before lain,
hoping without gain.
I could not be like him,
cannot make trust a whim–
if I know love, than it must brim.
And if you cannot see
the simple creature that is me
I beg of you to simply let me be.
The Waking Den 