Poems: 240323 March 24th, 2023

070323C
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We deny everything 
that was considered decent 
or was believed sensible 
because none of that is
anything  believed true.

There is no compassion 
for reasons or truths 
those being kicked aside 
wherever they protrude 
their pitiful contentions. 

We use the dullest points
to do the most damage 
avoiding sharp talk 
and leaving sharp arguments
to become over painted walls. 

White wash over white 
becomes the new normal 
and colours remain secrets
carefully kept well away 
from any public scrutiny. 

Common slogans 
replacing the great ideas
and the symposium descends
to being a mob of wrinkles 
babbling drunken limericks. 

That substitutes quite easily
for the continued gathering 
of any relevant intelligence 
between supermarket visits
to review the price changes. 

Nothing worn out of place
that was not to be found 
at a discount sell off 
of dulled down sacks
made by small yellow hands. 

Everything has changed 
since they legislated away 
the reality of any real needs
and whatever was left 
remained only in psychology. 

It is in the subtle wording
that only experts understand 
which most keep secret  
because they fear being
smeared out into nothingness. 

The stains of those who were
remain a sort of warning 
to those careful of everything 
that they wear or say 
for fear of being noticed. 

The same fear you can see
in the eyes of any deer 
when it is standing naked 
staring into the headlights 
of an oncoming rush of traffic. 

The young are the most afraid 
trying to find acceptable vices 
and officially sanctioned crimes
to fill their minds and time with
while contemplating death. 

They are the most intent 
to intensely feign their courage 
in any convincing enough way
but you know there is no truth 
in their coldly suspicious eyes. 

Some stand around and watch
until they feel emboldened 
to encourage someone else 
to jump from the ledge 
simply to justify a usual horror. 

They usually all jump 
when they are prodded to jump
without looking forward 
having become fully accustomed
to assuming nothing is ever there. 

There is still some vague need
that some cannot fully explain 
for something more memorable 
than a gourmet burger 
and a hard core but green shake. 

Youthful desire is to mentor 
the old into the newest ignorance
conducting purges and pogroms
of the hopelessly unindoctrinated
so that they cannot score points. 

To say the judgments are severe
becomes an understatement 
and the really popular tunes 
organ grinders play for monkeys
are worse than bubblegum. 

There is no way to settle 
and no one to really settle with
because if you express blue 
you will be tormented with red
until you vomit out the urge. 

The dead fish has risen 
and a perfect zero is the key 
to obtaining elusive inclusion
into a slogan rich pseudo bliss
evasive of costly prescriptions. 

Most do not want to be anything
that might attract any attention 
and their defeat is matter of fact
becoming their common cause 
for what passes as celebration. 

Happiness is something 
that is convincingly faked 
or is alternatively available 
in pill form being dispensed 
primarily to corporate drudges. 

Strict gratitude and happiness 
have become the new noir 
similarly striving to compete 
with the daily news monster 
as to other types of tragic ends.  

You secretly want to go back 
to somewhere in the past 
or at least back to sleep 
to avoid everything woke 
and aggressively progressive. 

There seems to be no difference 
between political marches 
and funeral marches 
in terms of actual impact 
on the real quality of living. 

The constant threat is there 
as to strangulation in red tape
along with the steady depletion 
that bleeds out inadequate funds
into endless bad bargains. 

It was always a best friend 
who ended up killing you 
in one devious way or another 
and no one to introduce you 
to those mythic better people. 

You already know the truth 
that there are no interesting types
being invited to today's parties 
so you become thankful 
that no one asked you to go. 

You do not have what it takes
because it took everything 
that it could possibly take 
and then demanded a lot more
in a typical extortion racket. 

Sometimes we are very afraid 
of opening those empty packages 
and extremely disappointed 
that there is nothing there 
beyond attitude filling space. 

A man staggers as he says
there will be no more ants 
in post colonial America 
because ants are colonial insects
and they have to be decolonized. 

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180323A
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You know that it is over 
before it ever really begins 
but you would like to believe
it was not always that way 
and perhaps it really wasn't. 

That becomes the real catch 
same as a fly swims in soup
or a fly flops around in ointment 
as to whether there was a was
or whether the was never was. 

They are erasing history 
and have gotten only that far
as to creating that much ambiguity 
between what was once believed
and what was once the truth. 

As simple as leaving you out 
while selectively including the new
displays of shorter term memories
while what you wishfully recall 
is being put into complete doubt. 

Eventually that too will fog out
hiding away the past landscape 
making its monsters uncertain
and concealing its treasures 
from any possible discovery. 

The answer you are being given 
is there were no treasures 
and the treasure maps were false
leading that wild goose chase 
until your goose was cooked. 

Once you realize that as a fact
you could be pronounced cured 
filled with endless rumours 
as to what you will win 
once that verdict is formally given. 

Whomever controls the past 
can control the entire future
until the past becomes a product 
being constantly reworked 
in terms of all future dictates. 

Whatever you thought it was
it is not anymore 
leaving only revised narratives
and their endless corrections 
until we know nothing at all. 

We cannot do anything 
that we thought we once could 
but that becomes the big flaw
in a future that has decided 
that we never really could. 

There is no way to argue that 
so everyone eventually pretends 
that they are going along with it 
as an unconditional truth
of commonly believed lies. 

It would have done no harm 
but that would have been too much
of any sort of freedom 
and what if someone else 
might actually want some. 

You are supposed to want 
only what everyone else wants 
and is supposed to want 
including joining up with those 
who only want to want in that way. 

Thinking has grown unpopular 
relative to blindly doing 
whatever falls within the limits
of coming to nothing at all
wallpapered with stock phrases.

The call echoes in the streets 
to bring out the dead 
so we heap remains of desires
along with ambitions and dreams
onto that tragic barrow. 

They wheel it all away 
to where clowns dissect it all
into whatever is ugliest 
washed from that slaughter
by streams of laughter. 

We were dead to it all 
long before anything began 
and they will call that destiny 
for lack of any better name 
but that too needs no truth. 

We wave goodbye 
forbidden to even mourn 
the remains of our authenticity
tossed with the discards 
that no one claimed or wanted. 

There was only one lesson 
and that was the only one 
that we refused to learn 
as to the utter futility 
involved in any actual search. 

Our scarecrow selves 
with headpieces stuffed full 
of abortive straws of a chance
pulled from random haystacks 
to become brittle mulch. 

Promising something new 
will always grow there 
from that decaying mass 
of irrelevance and details 
cancelling out any value. 

We once cherished illusions
that we could find each other
in one or another manner 
as to specific terms of reference
only to learn it is never the case. 

I do not know you
and you do not know me 
beyond bits of information 
rendered stray and incoherent 
in any quantum data stream. 

It is always something else 
that forever stands in the way 
until the clock becomes tired 
but no turning it back to having
any real possibilities.

The card that was needed 
was never the one that was dealt
but we insisted on playing 
in that hopelessly vain belief
that anyone can really win. 

You have to play to win 
but there is that dealer 
who refuses to deal us in 
declaring any play too rich 
for the lint in our pockets. 

I cannot win you 
and you cannot win me 
so we try to hang on 
to whatever is left 
that fills a longing space. 

Going for broke is normal 
if it is done in small increments
over long periods of time 
coming to the same nothing 
as would any other wager. 

We see and hear so much more
but nothing is really available 
making us increasingly uncertain 
if there ever really was 
or whether what was really wasn't. 

I hear something of you 
and maybe you do
hear something of me 
but that is only some more 
pulling of wings from these flies. 

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180323B
----------- 

Someone always declares 
my time is never well spent 
and that you would not want me
spending time that way. 

It makes you another extortionist
as if they are all extortionists 
in one way or the other 
demanding that much change. 

A generic statement of account 
that could apply to anyone 
or to no one at all in any reality
that I know anything about. 

As if we really have a choice 
about those sorts of spending habits
lacking this or that requirement
between our hopes and a waste can. 

I always hoped for better 
but that meant finding worse 
and nothing I really wanted
from catalogues of impossibilities. 

The damned are the damned 
whether they do or they do not 
so one tries to be selective 
as to tolerable types of damnation. 

To be denied that too 
seems too cruel and unusual 
after having been made in that mould
into surplus and discard contortions. 

Just another skin bag, bone heap 
that keeps doing things 
in the big pyramid scheme 
of monumental ambitions. 

Someone sprinkles holy water on me
to see if I will burst into flames 
but it only brings a damp rot 
typical of that type of ideology. 

Felt forced to keep on searching 
for someone I could really want 
who would really want all of this
heap of exceptional failures. 

The exceptional is the problem
and most forever churn on the same 
to butter their social bread 
despite the fact it has gone stale. 

Finding it was common failures
that are having all the luck
while the exceptional are turned
to being wastes of time and money. 

It is all in the label 
and the labels do not come off 
for the sake of everyone's safety
from any imagined sort s of harm. 

Might wonder  who decides 
those and other similar matters 
as to who with who and what with when
purely for the sake of control. 

They say the spend is never enough
and they say the spend is far too much 
but you know life is constant gambles
making some into exceptional losers.

Cannot live or play that way
but they say everyone now likes it
the way all the others do and know
despite cannot offer nor afford. 

How to become and be something 
is a process they have handed over
to that new inquisition 
that always wants something else. 

There was a time when you could
get on with it, whatever it was 
but not really now and not anymore
because it is always something else. 

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220323A Haiku
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Oil slick debutante 
making its hard core rainbows 
turned black faced. 

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

230323A
----------- 

Melancholic spring rains
turning the world young
and green again. 

Makes for wishing 
we too could be young 
and green again. 

It would feel so good 
to bend that way 
without fear of breaking. 

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240323A
------------

The repeated consequences 
as to all the little traumas 
that do not wave flags. 

Stubbed toes and skinned knees
the bumps and bruises 
producing no victory marches. 

We always played seriously 
back in those days 
but we do not do that anymore. 

You took the fun out of it 
putting question to my maturity
and demanding harsh terms. 

I refused to surrender 
having been left to wanting 
better times than that. 

We both lost a long time ago
at the time when we forgot 
the secret meaning of dandelions. 

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240323B
------------

Notation is always incomplete 
creating its false impressions 
as to persistent lack of nuances. 

You want to read into me 
the way you would read 
a technical manual. 

I refuse to be deciphered 
in any such ways 
and remain your enigma. 

You leave me more lonely 
having completely failed 
to crack my secret code. 

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240323C
-------------- 

Never having blossomed 
into the full of anything 
and too cold bitten at the bud 
for enjoyment's flowering
leaves only miserable bargains
and hindsight's wishings 
as to having never entered into 
any thoughts of such things.

Too late to pick up the pieces
and to try and try again 
feeling as pruned as a stump
where death was cut off 
even if a temporary condition 
that prolongs the mourning 
weep of too much made impossible 
in the circumstantial of constraints. 

We get bound up in that 
becoming perpetual wounds 
while denying our afflictions 
as if everything is alright again
made good with ways of the world 
and all that we really needed 
was a little more Sun 
and a breath of fresh air. 

Nothing being that simple 
hounded by the clock 
and myriads of details 
that stand firmly in our way 
to what ought to have been 
a few modest pleasures 
beyond that darkening grit 
that is only dust and ashes. 

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