This blog fazes fascists
4Y4: A Painted Poem (2020)
An experimental interleaving of poetry and painting, this work consists of sixteen abstract paintings, each titled with a single verb. When read as a whole, the poem is intended to describe the creative process used to paint it. Partly inspired by classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, which were written with ideograms that could be read and related to each other in any number of subjective ways.
Link to the poem's Arthive collection.
Flag Waivers Must Burn
Last refuge of the scoundrel
First refuge of the fool
(So you fools are refugees-
DEPORT! EXPEL!)
Excuses everything
Is an excuse for anything
...But won't excuse your stupidity.
Patriotism is bigotry.
Always has been, always will be.
The only way to sear blind faith
Into tired, vacant, sheepish eyes
Is to define an other
To look down on
Spit down on
Kick down on
Load down on
And pin all blame on
When it all goes wrong.
There is not, and never was
Any unity. This may anger you.
And so you scream "DIVISION!"
- Of some thing that was never whole?
When were the parts ever summed, much less moored?
The numbers are neither here nor there.
The math doesn't work.
This end is up.
The pieces won't come together.
E pluribus, pluribus.
Fragility remains upended.
Feeble and febrile,
Nationalism stumbles, withers, dies
And lies
As all empty ideologies do.
Tell me please,
What IS the "eternal glory"
Of a few barely-understood artifacts
Mouldering in a museum?
The patrons surely can't see it.
Not with all that hastily-penned propaganda
To capture their watery eyes.
Surrounded by grey and beige walls,
Too high to scale, they observe only
Red - anger at every perceived fail
(Notably those that are true);
White - a dream of a sterile world,
Where only the pale and loaded matter;
And Blue - fading shadows of an age's past fall
Drawn with crumbling charcoal upon the savage Earth
The better to demarcate scraps of turf
To proclaim pissing contests over.
Always pathetic
Glorious the first time (by decree)
Laughable the next...
Until you die in a killing spree.
That makes it personal
To an immersible degree.
When the war is over (briefly)
Stride from your bomb shelter
(Courtesy of the welfare state!)
Plant your rag in the twisted wreckage
Declare the stinking leachate a sacred pool
Drop to your knees and embrace all that is cruel
Enjoining sundry to get their hands dirty-
For what's the use of boundaries,
When all the world's a junkyard?
Landfill: The great leveler.
With everything and everyone disposed of
The slate has been wiped clean...
Enough, to reflect the mountain of rubbish
That sooner or later will topple -
But at least you'll die surrounded by what you love(d)!
Standing beyond and above,
There will be a world
Where all flags are burned
As funeral shrouds,
Wrapped 'round the wasted bodies
Of goose-stepping zombies
Who assailed the globe
Like an overbaked pie, blunting further
Drawn weapons as dull
As their overstretched
Overworked, underfed minds.
Fasces to ashes
"You MUST!" to dust.
Blowing in the dry wind
Past poles standing empty
In mute testament
To pointless vainglory.
Carrion Bird
Long before the wheel life
When travel meant kicking up
Clouds of choking dust
(That never reached me)
I cruised the tracks and trails
Finding what the travelers killed
Finding the killed travelers
And munching all without bias.
I wasn't picky.
Nothing to knock.
Just a part of the flock.
Now I cruise the highways, unhurried
Hanging on blackened fingers
While monsters roar by below
Giving me a bellyful
Of what cannot escape
Their frantic rush
To evade
At any price
The one predator
They all dread:
The ticking clock.
Martyr's Lament
All I wanted
Was a change
A dose of truth
A taste of power
An egotrip
...And followers
Which I got.
Thought me divine
They hung on every word
Notably, the most meaningless.
How could I explain
Disbelief in
What I taught belief in
After the cheering section
Stormed the field
Changed the game
And tore down the goals.
My mistake
Was to see anything in them
Other than a reflection.
Through the mirror now
My name is worn (out)
To sanctify, justify, vilify
Things I never dreamed of.
Disturbs my eternal sleep
Knowing this long night is "mine"
But they'll never stop
Basking in the renown
Of the onetime me
While I rot.
A Three-Line Refutation (Of Earbud Zombies)
Turn up the volume
Until you can't hear
Your own whimpering.
The One True Platitude
The world hates you.
It wants you to suffer,
And it wants you to die.
You will.
...But wants need not be gifted.
Timburr
A tree fell in the forest
no one heard it
But a passing snake felt it
and a hiss of annoyance might have been heard
as the serpent was forced to alter course
around another new obstruction.
Grate Again
We cannot return.
You refuse to move
Forward
So we stand still,
Straining
Against everything and nothing
Each other; now an other.
As the sun curls above us
And the sea laps at our knees
You lie
About a golden age
We die.
Buck For A Tooth
A squirrel's shadow s c a m p e r s
Oblique in the morning light
Puffy tail held high, heedless
Of the grey mound of fur
Chattering its annoyance
To all of the world
That won't get out of its way.
Outlast Diss
I'm still here;
You're all gone.
Long forgotten
And dispelled.
Except as a worthless
Object of disgust.
To be rarely recalled
Upon a rictus of hatred
And then dismissed;
Banished to the depths.
The mire of unconscious
Where all the unwanted
Unpleasantness dwells.
Confessional Dare
Bet you can't do it.
It's so much easier
To tell a stranger that you hate them
Want to kill them
Wish them endless suffering
Want to still everything they've done
Everything they've believed in
Than to tell them
That you love them.
Try it, flower child.
Ongoing Oxymorons
American democracy.
Contented worker.
Unconditional love.
Easy money.
Sustainable growth.
Gun safety.
Necessary war.
Social media.
Holy book.
Just god.
Blind date.
Enduring icon.
Unbiased news.
Vital fashion.
Accurate prediction.
Important trend.
Progressive politics.
Governmental accountability.
Humane society.
Compassionate capitalism.
Rational religion.
Christian morals.
Green industry.
Serious business.
Homo sapiens.
Gloves Off
Awake in a box
Eat from a box
Sit in a metal box
To get to another metal box
To get to another metal box
To get to a concrete and glass box
To stare at a luminous box
Upon which are projected...boxes.
Boxed in?
Better box your way out.
The Ice (originally published 2022)
Written as an allegory about the general stupidity and ineptitude displayed by humanity during the Covid-19 pandemic, this poem is arguably (and unfortunately) even more relevant about the events since then.
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