Enraptured in
a fevered spasm,

Captured in the
mind's phantasm,

Swimming through
the ectoplasm,

Pouring from the
roaring chasm,

Hidden in the
soul's recess

A subtle, gentle,
warm caress

So jubilant, it  
doth redress,

The hindrances which
so suppress,

The progress of the
spirit's wellness,

Showing things which
words can't tell us,

Giving gifts, which
none can sell us,

Do you
hear the
bell that's
ringing?
                  
ringing
              from a
                           distant
                                        shore?

It resonates from
mammoth spheres,

In orbit, shedding
countless years,

Through aeons of
causality,

And boundless
temporality

We see how worlds
arise and cease,

We see how yearning
lays the fleece,

The wool over the eyes,
deceiving, cool

Dispassion's peace
relieving, our

Great webs
of pain and sorrow,

Darkening,
to light the morrow

For as all things
must come apart,

So suffering's,
great work of art,

is merely but
a transience,

receding slowly
in the dark.

She told me I was funny,
I told her she was depraved,
She asked me what I meant.
I asked "are train wrecks funny?
She laughed.
I guess they are.

This is but a test, one for
A mind in need of rest,
And though it's surely not his best,
It still is nothing to detest
He's drifting in a sea of intuition,
His expression is abreast
He's seeking for a resolution
He hopes not in vain to jest
He seeks the further involution
Of this sense felt in his chest
As he is wand'ring
Through his contemplation,
Pondering his expectations
Seeking his elucidations; but
Just where might these be found?
Within the lines upon the page
Or their enunciated sound?

I don't have the answers
to these questions...

Arab scarabs
wielding scabbards
staggered with hilts
laid waste to
idle Cherubs in
garments
embroidered
like quilts.

They're off kilter,
with no filter, and
wear stilts where
leaves wilt, sir
please lilt yr
tactless

anachronisms
through fractured
refractive prisms
to help the mind
unbind from
shop, office, and
factory prisons

Listen:

there's a
penitent androgyne,
speaking
sentence in pantomime
as though rhyme
were no longer
a kind of
berated
creative crime: But

who
the
hell
CARES?!?!?!?!

Dear literary journals:

I'm a millennial American male
who came of age in the aughts.
Do you have ANY idea how much
RAP MUSIC I GREW UP ON?!?!?!?!

And now you want me to write some
sort of rhyme devoid, metrically impoverished
modernist dross which is REALLY

just prose that's written in line
and stanza break, in order for you
to publish me? Please do clarify:

HOW THE HELL DO I DO THAT?!?!?!?!

I have SOOOOO much more in common
with Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and MF DOOM
than I do with any of that ridiculous nonsense
that your stuffy Imagist deity Ezra Pound
(who was also an ardent FASCIST, might I add)
churned out page after page. I mean, look

William Carlos Williams:

"I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold"

Now, look at Kweli:

"Yo, I activism, attackin' the system
The Blacks and Latins in prison
Numbers have risen, they're victims lackin' the vision
****, and all they got is rappin' to listen to
I let them know we missin' you, the love is unconditional
Even when the condition is critical, when the livin' is miserable
Your position is pivotal, I ain't bullshittin' you
Now, why would I lie? Just to get by? "

and please explain to me, just exactly how the former
is SUCH a higher form of art than the latter?

It's beginning to seem to me that
The REAL issue here is that rhyme and meter
were co-opted by a group of writers
who evolved
the usage of
said literary devices
to such an advanced degree,
that many of the older styles
paled in comparison, and
ESPECIALLY in terms of technical prowess

It just so happened,
that to the great misfortune of those
brilliant auteurs
they just so happened to be
not only POOR,
but also BLACK,
thereby barring their innovations
from serious consideration
by those in the ivory tower
of so called "HIGH ART"

As if to say:
"Oh, RHYMES?"
You mean those old artifacts
of the outdated formalists, and
favored staples of the lowly rappers?

In a way that as if by magic, makes Williams'
Inane single sentence about eating plums
written in line and stanza break, somehow
better, more enduringly creative, and
of greater importance, than
Kweli's incisive social commentary.

But, you know. I'm always open to being wrong.
Since, I usually am wrong about most things.
But, it seems that every time I pick up a lit journal,
it's the same type of broken narratives, with
the occasional token verse or rhyme
thrown in for good measure.
Maybe I just don't read enough lit journals,

but I can just about GUARANTEE that in 100 years,
people will have a much more distinct memory of Nas's
"Illmatic" than they will Ezra Pound's "Cantos"
And in point of fact, most people with whom I speak these days,
do not even know who Ezra Pound WAS, but they SURE know Kendrick's verses from "Alright"

So what gives, lit journals? It seems obvious at this point
that rappers are now creating the most successful and
widely disseminated forms of oral poetry currently in existence
So why is it that your publications seem so averse to
styles which bear a written resemblance?

Just a touch of
CLASSISM, perhaps?
Or am I just being ignorant?
Paranoid?

I write, but why write? Well,
because it's my rite; and
to spare you my tears,
I'll make sure to be clear:
It's not rite as in 'right'
as opposed to a wrong,

like a discordant note
that's misplaced in a song
or a 'right' so bestowed in
divinity's throng, handed down
by a deity mighty and strong, but

a rite, like a ritual, rather habitual.
This you will gather, and
this you'll process, and
with deepening fervor,
we'll further progress: It's

addiction to diction,
to poems, to fiction
where syllables,
fill up whole pages.
The friction, of
pen against paper, just
gives me the vapors. The

clacking of keys, makes
me weak at the knees.
Some may call it disease and
express their disgust, but
my lust for these words
I just cannot appease.

So with all of my might, and
from morning to night,
I equip with my tools, and
I write and I write.