Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

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Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

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SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

......................

.
IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
...............
PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

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OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition

To me eternity lies in thy eyes,
and thy rejection my demise.
If so but accept and heal me likewise;
whilst shun and stab my sore heart, otherwise.
Thou hath always been to me a surprise;
Though a doubtful, but sparkling surprise,
So any dejection of thine shall be odd,
And a thousand times bitterer than a cold rapid retort;
For thou art pure; and sometimes too pure and fine
As how thy immortal soul stayest still, and growest not old
And in toughness and roughness is to remain,
So long as thy dried flesh shall age, and afford;
And with such songs so prolific as prayers
By friendly laudations like bewitching storms
Thou shall forever stay, and newer grow fader
And in such coldness thou shall offer me warmth;
Beside yon raging fire, and about thy manly arms,
Thou shalt but lull and cradle me like a baby-
until sleep comes and whispers dreams onto me,
Thou shalt be far more tender and smart-
Unlike that ungrateful preceding heart,
Which claimed to be civil, but uncivil,
United but then left my unsuspecting heart apart;
So unlike thee, who is but a smart little devil
Thou who earnestly tempted my soul, and lured my blood
Thou returned my blushes, and caught away my heart
Ah, and now-whenever I thinkest of thee,
All pain and gloom shall revert to oneness,
But how still I know not, as whose days remain but a mystery
For everything in which is at times barren and colourless;
But when alive, they are just as simple
as those brief dreams of thine and mine,
With a love but too sufficient, majestic and ample
Delicately shall they turn troubled and unseen,
But caring and healing and blinding and shaking,
taking turns like oceanic birds which go about
swimming and singing and strumming and swinging,
like a painting of prettily sure clarity-but unseen,
or perhaps a pair of loving, yet unforgettable winds.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
Ah, thee! And betwixt thy gaze,
All fictitious sunsets shalt perhaps become wet-
Just like those azure spirits in thy fair eyes,
Sometimes too indignant but unquestioning,
and too pure-as to whom even the Devil hath no lies;
To thee only, to whom this enduring love is ever assigned,
And forever, even its temptation be mine, and only mine,
Like unforgivable sins, which are sadly left unatoned
In its eternity standing still like a statue;
beside its wrathed, and bloodied howling stone
And to thee merely, to whom this impaired heart shall ever return,
As it now does, with cries and blows that makest my heart churn
And canst wait not 'till the morn, for on morns only,
thou shalt creepest down the stairs, and stareth onto me,
Often with eyes full of questions;
Questions that thou art too bashful to reflect,
So that turn themselves later on, into emotions,
Which withereth and dieth days after, of doom and neglect.
Ah, but still I loveth thee!
For this regret makest me but loveth thee more and more,
and urge my soul greater, to loveth thee better-than ever before.
For 'tis thee who yet stills my cry, and silences my wrath;
The one who kills my death, and reawakens my breath.
Thou on whom my love shall be delightfully poured,
A love as amiable as the one I hold for dearest Lord,
A love for thee, for only thee in whom I'th found comfort,
A comfort that is holier than any heaven, or even His very own divine abode;
Thou art holier than the untouched swaying grass outside,
Which is green, with greenness so handy and indulgent to every sight,
Thou who art madder than madness itself,
But upon Friday eves, makest my joy even merrier,
And far livelier-than any flailing droplet of rain
Showering this earth's clustered soil out there,
Which does neither soften nor flit away my pain
But makest it even worse, as if God Himself shan't solicit, nor care
Like any other hostile love, which thou might kindly find, every where.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
In my mind thou art the lost eternity itself,
And by its proud self, thou art still even grander,
For thou makest silence not any more silence,
but joy, in return, even a greater joy.
Ah, thee, thou who the painter of my day,
and the writer of my blooming night.
Thou who art the poet of my past,
and the words of my courteous present.
Thou shall ******* flirty orange blossoms,
And cherish its virtue, which strives and lives
As a most sumptuous, and palpable gift-
Until the knocking of this year's gentle autumn.
Ah! Virtue, virtue, o virtue-whose soul always be
a charm, and indeed a very generous charm-
to my harmonious, though melancholy, *****.
Ah, thee; o lost darling-my lost darling of all awesome day and night,
My lost darling before starlight, and upon the pallid moonlight,
My lost darling above the reach of my sight, and height;
Thou art still a song-to my now tuneless leaves,
and a melody to their bottomless graves,
Thou shalt be a cure to their ill harmony;
Thou art their long-betrayed melody.
And even, thou art the spring
my dying flowers needst to taste,
fpr being with thee produces no haste;
and or whom nothing is neither early, nor late;
And whenst there be no fate, thou shalt be
yon ever consuming fate itself-
And by our inane eyes, thou shalt makest it
but adorable and all the way strong,
For thou, as thou now do, nurture it better
than all the other graciousness among;
Thou art the promise it hath hitherto liked; but just
shyly-and justly refuted, for the bareness of pride,
and often inglorious resistance-all along.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
Ah, thee! Even in undurable haste, thou art still like a butterfly,
fast and rapid flowing about the earth and into the sky;
Thou who art grateful not for this earth's soil;
Thou who saith 'tis only the sky that canst make thou feel.
Thou who cannot sit, thou cannot lay,
but on whose lanes thou always art secure,
as though from now thou shalt live too long
And belong to this rigorous earth
to whom our mortal souls do not belong.
And as to its vigour, death cannot be delayed,
and words of deadness shalt fast always, be said.
Ah, yet but again, I cannot simply be wrong;
for thou art immortal, immortal, and immortal;
To death thou art but too insipid and loyal;
that willing it not be, to take thy soul into its mourning,
and awkward prayers so scornful and worrying.
Thou who needst not be afraid of death;
for breath shalt never leave thee, and thou shan't breath.
Unsaid poems of thine are thus never to remaineth unspoken,
and far more and more thoughts shalt be perfectly carved, and uttered;
Unlike mine; whose several mortal thoughts shalt be silenced, and unknown
And after years passed my name shalt be forgotten, and my poems altered.
But thou! By any earth, and any of its due shape-thou shalt never be defaced,
and whose thoughts shalt never, even only once-be rephrased,
for thou art immortal, and for decades undying shalt be so;
And to life thou remaineth shalt remain chaste, and undetached;
as the divine wholeness whenst 'tis all slumped and wretched,
and white in unsoiled finery, whenst all goes to dirt and waste;
For grossness shalt escape thee, and stains couldst still, not thee fetch.
To every purity thou shalt thus be the best young match;
Ah, just like my mind shalt ever want thee to be;
but thou art missing from my sight-ah, as thou art not here!
Our paths are far whenst they are but near,
and which fact fillest me still, with dawning dread and fear
Unfortunately, as in this poem, my words not every heart shalt hear;
And to my writings doth I ever patiently retreat, the one,
and one only; whom to my conscience so dear.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And just to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
How fate but still made us here and meet,
That clue shall never makest me blind, and forget!
Now blighted I am, by dire ungladness and regret,
for having abhorred, and slighting thee too much!
For should I still cherish thee before my mortal death,
and be bitter and testy not; much less grim or harsh.
For fate is what fate is, as how love is just it looks;
and God's doings cannot be wrong; and true and faithful
as words I found crafted, and deciphered in old books.
Ah, and God's blessings are to arriveth in time,
and to taste whose due I indeed needst to be patient.
Be patient t'wards the love on which I climb,
ah, as for me-and whenst the right time cometh-
thou shalt be my sole wealth; so dear and sufficient!
And so for thee, no matter how thou hath my heart now torn,
Still I canst, and shalt reward thee not-with scorn;
for thou art my fate, my path, and my salved destiny;
For of which I am assured, definite, and convinced-
with all my degrees of humble pride, and vivid certainty-
Ah, darling, and thou art my humbleness, but also too many a time-my vanity;
For whom I shan't go and venture but anywhere-
As long as thou stayest and last-verily and for yon whole eternity, by me.

She is scared by the
long slow dwindling of
the heart's manouevres
towards the end of the night,
or of life.

So she tugs on its clammy fingers
tries to get it to waltz again.

I tell her:"Live with me between
a name and anonymity."
I say nothing.

There's no foyer in a one-room kitchenette,
but I stand in the foyer anyways,
holding half a poem -
or half a person.
And tilting at windmills.

She is a page and then some
a rough border - shaggy corners.
Glue chafing from the binding.
And maybe she is older than me.

But nobody ever learned to hunt
by watching vegetables being chopped,
and we both agree that since we're
pledging allegiance, we can put our hands
anywhere, right? I just haven't
mentioned which country.

The point is this:
Tomorrow is a mystery creature,and I refuse to guess
whether it wears fur or feathers.

Someone asked me once,
“What is your Prince Charming like?”
I said I didn't know him,
So they rephrased, “What would he be like?”

I answered the question truthfully,
Yet they think me cynical and hopeless.
This the case may be,
But I like to think that I’m just me.

This is what I’d said:
First of all, Prince Charming wouldn't be a prince.
He’d be an everyday guy, living day to day,
Searching for meaning, for someone to stay.

He’d be kind and smart and more outgoing than me,
But he’d listen and understand,
That sometimes I’m human and am afraid -
That I’ll lose my faith in love even though I've prayed.

He’ll have kind brown eyes that are down-to-earth.
He’ll share his secrets and savor mine.
When I’m down, he’ll lift me up high
And will make me smile when I cry.

He’ll hold me tight and squeeze away my pain,
He'll know to stay when I need him,
And that sometimes I like to be alone,
Yet he’ll show me all I've never known.

But, I finished, Prince Charming doesn’t exist,
And I’ve seen enough heart breaks to know,
That our Charmings aren’t what they seem
And that he’s really just the things of dreams.

It’s February, 2015, a Saturday and here I ‘yam.
Back in sunny California again:
The sun shining brightly again
On My Old Hemetucky Home,
Another mutant Stephen Foster tune.
Hemet: Riverside County,
Southern California,
The so-called Inland Empire,
According to the hyperbolic parlance,
Of sharkskin-suited land speculators,
Truly, the last of the
Patent medicine, liniments &
Snake oil hucksters.
Hemet: little oversight & lax policing
Yield a thriving, local
Medical-marijuana industry.
You are comfortably tucked . . .  
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(THAT’S RIGHT, *******: A ******* COMMERCIAL RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ******* POEM!  GIUSEPPI MARTINO BUONAIUTO--SURELY NOBODY”S FOOL—FINALLY FIGURING OUT HOW TO MAKE POETRY PAY, THEREFORE AVOIDING THE DIED-IN-THE-GUTTER BIT.)
You are safely tucked behind the impenetrable
(www.tucks.com)
Wackenhut G4S Security-
(www.wackenhut.com)
Policed & Patrolled walls,
Of your typical over-55 gated lunatic asylum.
“For Active Adults,” reads the sign,
Whatever that means.
I’ve been thinking about the adventurous young.
What is it these bright,
Wander-lusting whippersnappers
Fixate and obsess about.
Like dropping out & coasting for a while.
Dropping out & coasting:
Not as easy to pull off for 20-somethings these days,
As it was in the late sixties/early seventies,
Flush times for Guns & Butter.
Where is it cheap to live?
Where on . . .
“This blessed plot, this earth,
This realm, this England . . .”
Where on this ozone-depleted,
Global fondue fungus ***,
Can I go to just sit still?
To think:  to make sense of it all?
It’s leisure, Kemosabe.
Leisure cultivates philosophy.
LEISURE:
The very stuff of curiosity and
REACH—
As in: “One’s grasp should exceed one’s reach”—
Idleness leads us,
Gifts us with understanding &
Self-awareness.
You are 21 again, and restless.
You are unwilling to just settle in.
So, where do you go?
Where can you live on savings?
To not work,
But not go hungry?
To just sit still,
Contemplating the state of the wicket,
Be it wicked or sticky.
Today it’s Prague and Berlin—
Or, for the truly decadent: Bangkok.
For us it was Florence or Paris—
Or, for the truly frugal,
Driving our cars to Mecca: Montreal,
"La Métropole du Québec"
Sanctified are the places we’ve chilled.
Shrines & vortexes; each holy latitude,
As Han Solo drolly reminds us:
“It’s not the years; it’s the miles.”
The amount of ground covered,
A blessing devoutly to be wished in Old Age:
But I digress.
Just the thought of hanging out
Some place really cool,
Yet relatively inexpensive--
In a parlance acquired
Over the years and the miles,
Tactfulness learned,
Manipulating the language
For fun & profit.
Common sense is aged in the barrel
And the bottle, rephrased.
Vernacular Viniculture.
Which proves my point:
If you live long enough &
Read enough of the right stuff,
Eventually you’ll discover
A precise, more exact vocabulary,
Appropriate for Old Age inner monolog.
Would Old Age be tedious?
Boring, for those who
Never went anywhere?
Both physically & spiritually speaking.
Are memories our only revenge on Old Age?
And for those hiding behind the barriers,
Safe. Ignorant. Jolly. Dull.
A fast track toward senility &
Evanescence.
Does Alzheimer’s seek out & destroy the
Most cloistered among us?
While those bold & beautiful,
Experienced, still spinning,
Still weaving a tapestry in 3-D Technicolor.
Remembrances of things past . . .
(Get back in your hole, Marcel . . .)
And as the AARP crowd knows so well:
We Baby Boomers really had it pretty soft.
Boom economics,
Conspicuous consumption,
Coonskin hats, Betsy Wetsies & Hula Hoops!
By and large:
FUN TIMES!
No Great Depression,
No chocolate rationing.
A jungle war pretty much optional,
For most of us of the
American bourgeoisie.
We’ve got a lot to remember.
We’ve much to be grateful for.
Electronic media changed everything for us.
Television and movie theaters gave us
Alternative dimensions,
Parallel lives,
Multiple identities.
Experience so real that
To see it on the screen
Was to live it, oneself.
Perhaps those video downloads
Might prove useful one day.
Comforts out on Golden Pond.
Will you still need me?
Will you still feed me?
When I'm sixty-four?
Grazie, Sir Paulie.

the pompous one
with her comments
as she slithers by
with
the rudest
of dogs

the confident family;
confident
     to a fault
sitting too close
and talking
too loud

the hypocrite
complaining
of the mess
and leaving behind
a scavenger's
detritus

the insecure sage
a font of knowledge
based on
hearsay
and opinion
with only
a pinch
     of fact

the innocently gormless
with no thought
for sense
     or logic
common or otherwise
but only
for the now
and
the immediate

these are
the passengers
on the
carousel
     of frustrations
for today;
replayed
rephrased
resurrected
over
and over

i think
so little
     of them
yet
i'm unable
to stop myself
thinking
about them

Each drop of rain is a single truth,
constantly recycled and rephrased.
There is as much truth as there is water,
***** water being unclear truths.
Those who drown in oceans are overwhelmed by truth,
those who stay away are comforted on their solid lies.
Those who think happiness is sunshine
are clouded by bright rays of blinding lies.
Truth is the rain that you dance in,
walk in, slosh in, as you let it seep into your skin.
To dance in the rain is to bathe in truth,
perhaps not comprehending, but at the least, accepting.
Truth, like water, is essential for life.

I was allowed to visit back home
whenever he wanted me to
adoption’s only condition
agreed to by Mama Julia

when I was about seven years old
Father and my older sister Coring
arrived unannounced
traveling in a boat he made himself
bringing gifts of large dried fish
small salted fish
green edible seaweed called, “latu”
and ceramic pots made by Mother

Father had never been to Carigara
but found the house with no trouble
everyone knew the Tranis
they directed him to the big house
called, “Tiha”
three stories
a tiled terracotta roof
coconut trees
sweet, fragrant yellow bananas
Mama Julia was away in Manila
old folks hesitated in her absence
fearing Father might keep me
they asked that he leave my older sister
to ensure my return
Father agreed

a very old friend accompanied Father
to sell her handmade pottery
very friendly
with messy white hair
and only one front tooth
her name was Reyang
they spent the night at Tiha
planning to leave early with me
but Apoy Reyang got drunk
from the tuba* Father brought
she went out into the street
walking and talking to herself
my friends told me later they liked the old lady
speaking wildly like a witch
we feared stories of bad witches
who snatched little kids
but no one ever actually saw one
so they were glad to see
a real live old witch
who wasn’t scary at all
they thought she was my grandma
actually envying me
for the nice witch in my family

Father built a mast in the middle of his banca
outriggers on both sides
were made of bamboo poles
lashed together with rope
sailing back to Guintarcan
he brought food to snack on
when wind stirred
Father raised sail
to make the boat go faster
when it was calm
he wrapped the sail on the mast
and used the paddle
I liked it when Father asked me
to hold something for him
but he spoke in a Samar dialect
when he realized I couldn’t understand him
he rephrased it the Carigara way

a perfect day
sea was calm
sky cloudless
I reached down to feel the cool, clear water
rush against my open hand
when the boat was moving faster
increased pressure on my palm was pleasing
I was happy and excited for the chance
to visit with family
but this adventure’s biggest thrill was simply:
my Father came for me


*coconut wine

I could write about anything
and no one would stop and think.
Everything's been said before.
Rephrased and repositioned
to the point of impotency.

i killed a spider
a few hours ago.
its body is still on
the wall next to where
i sleep.

all day was dark,
lying in bed
like a corpse.
gastroenteritis;
the stomach flu.

revival and rounds,
the kitchen, saltines.
"those items that are
no longer useful must
be exhumed."

refrigerator grave
cannot help but
remind me of my
sickness and how
you could have rephrased.

sometimes i wish
i could understand
you better than i do.
but then i realize it's
what makes our relationship.

today, i will wake up and think of you. the first thing will be about how your eyes had the color of all the storms that left this year. next will be your hair, in flaming red, as if to make up for all the colors your heart has been drained of for loving me. then, i will think of the way i wrote you poems amid writer’s block; every line, a compulsion, an obsession of i love you's rephrased. i will think of the feel of your skin, cold, but burning, like mercury fires crashing to the poles.

then, i will remember the chipped nails and back scratches and the heat of the whiskey, rushing from your mouth to mine. i will remember october and her rooftop letters we sealed with the skyline's silhouette. i will remember how they have become a foliage of words i refused to stop writing — and words you refused to read. i will remember how we wished to be paper cranes flung to the sun, how i have become icarus incarnate, falling, and crashing back to the earth. today, i will wake up and remember how loving you became my flight and my downfall. i will let the pain eat me up, rip my lungs, one flashback at a time. i will let the pain break me and break me and break me until there's nothing left to break.

and then one day, i will wake up darling, without sleeping next to make-believe alternate endings, without addressing you in apostrophes, and without the storms tailored to be metaphors for you. one day, i will wake up without wondering if you were ever hurt the way i was. i will wake up without thinking of you. i will wake up without the slightest traces of pain.

and then i will let you go.

there are little things you don’t notice in your every day life.
when you hold someones hand, do you link your pinkie with their forefinger like i do? I tend to always want to be on someones right side, out of comfort. i realize that the question “how are you feeling” is completely overwhelming and should at best be rephrased. showers fix everything…. almost everything. if you breath deep enough you could cause more problems or you could get rid of them, choose wisely. socks are hugs for your feet and should be appreciated. especially when your begging for them to give you more medication or something to make you sleep so that just for a while you don’t have to feel it and you don’t have to face it and it doesn’t have to be real but they won’t because they don’t understand. they don’t feel it. they don’t link their pinkies with someone forefinger when they hold hands and they don’t stand on the right side of someone out of comfort and they don’t believe showers fix everything but they back up deep breaths even though it can cause more problems.

It's true though.
Any happiness you felt began with you first.
You didn't wait, you rephrased it as a smile.
Straightforward really.
You felt a way because my passion could never justify.
Only reinforce what you felt to begin with.
You felt a way because you respect yourself to be yourself.
The emotional boundaries of your well being.
Thus I awaited your permission before taking the first step.
Initially paraphrasing your smile.
The importance of being treated the way I'd like to be treated.
Holding your stare to create a sense of security.
A safety that went without ill-intention.
Not because you fill your jeans or the fact that your well put together.
What's meant to be is what's meant to be.
What's the rush.
Although true, you felt a way because I never crossed any of your boundaries.
A generational gap between "hey lets chill." and "I'd love to take you out."
The honesty of eyebrows highlighting life goals in full view of the sun.
Fully dressed.
Well groomed.
While the sky attends it's breakfast.
Reservation in the clouds.
The embodiment of grace

I find faults in my own actions,
I try, but I’m miles away from perfection.
Although it seems to be a fictional word,
After so long, it still has so many definitions.
As ages pass, they’re reworded, rephrased; but
Time seems so irrelevant to me,
Just a useless measurement of our life.
With no actual control, it rules us.
I find no safe state of mind
As I sink into my own misery.
I’m drowning in my own sorrow...

Hospital beds
My hands are shaking I'm looking for something solid to grip on to before I wither away into the hands of doctors, narcotics and with everything in me I am trying to hold onto this because I don't want to be taken away from you, not now or ever.
I am afraid
Scared shitless : rephrased
Shaking hands don't take me away from my safe haven , rather put me next to her bed , I promise I'll lay peacefully and not giving anyone any trouble.

(20 minute poetry)


A suicidal tendency, a
complexity that overrides
a Central link deficiency or is it me that reads too much philosophy?

I have toyed with the idea of what it is and why we're here, but the answers still elude me.

To consider one is clued in yet haven't got a clue of how it all begins to fit in is in my opinion a failure, if that is so and I think it could be where on Earth does that leave (poor) me?

Back to suicide the option that one takes when there's no option and that bothers me immensely.

And if complexity's the key to this life where will we all be when the systematic dismantling of everything that makes it tick, every ill that makes us sick is taken from us?

Will it and the dichotomy be rephrased put in a dictionary, will the wood become the trees that we don't see?

Thus, the observation from the observation tower tells nothing of the awful power of what the mind can do when it is bored.

In the ****** of my grief
For a country lost in greed,
Divided by religious believe
And tribalism, i tried to relief
Myself by bathing
In bottles, while meditating
I entered my car and started trekking
With my bittered heart bleeding
My body or my soul, one was driving
But i can't tell which, because like Esau
I have sold my sovereignty to the bottles.

As i Drive pass moments
I suddenly saw a black giant
Holding the moon in his hand
With a voice like thunder he says
"stop, park and come out"
I struggled with my motor neurons
As my legs were no longer mine.
Finally the car was parked, and
I struggled to come out, but
Like Peter, the spirit is willing but
The body is weak, but
Like Jesus, i came out of
The car, to fulfill all righteousness
As the soldier holds his riffle close
I was Holding my bottle of
Peace and liberty closer
And he said "you have committed
A hideous crime for drinking and driving"
My heart danced to the Words of his voice
For i have seen a black man with a White
Heart, a true citizen of Nigeria.
Then he said "papers"
I quickly gave him my particulars
And he became furious and i became curious
As he rephrased "papers"
Then i asked myself is what have
Given to him a white board or a slate
Then with an alarming voice he rephrased  
"papers" then i decided to try
The Nigeria police policy as amended
By the check point men in black;
I deep my hand into my pocket and
Squeezed out twenty naira note
And gave to him and he said
"now u can pass" then i realized
What he has been saying is not PAPERS
But PAY-PASS.

I then asked the bottle in my hand,
If those who are to fight corruption
In Nigeria is corrupt, using the PDP or APC
Formula, find the value of corruption
In NIGERIA.

The history of my heart is written in rhymes.
The flow and meter of good and bad times,
All contained within the pages of a book,
Very few will ever earn a look.

My deepest secrets set in ink,
The blue lined page my only shrink.
My sins are masked hyberbole,
What they are, I'll never say.

When I have a space to fill,
Or the need to record my newest ****,
I begin again upon new page,
My alter ego, the sinning sage.

When I bear your transgressions,
I write them down as your confessions,
I rhyme the ways that you have wronged me,
Predicting what you will never be.

When my heart is under fire,
Or when it screams a new desire,
It all goes down in neat, narrow scrawl,
More impatient and vengeful than King Saul.

Whatever I feel, whatever I think,
It all goes down in this black, shiny ink.
Mind to pen to paper without delay,
I truly know no other way.

The story of my life is written in rhymes.
Pages filled with rephrased crimes.
Trapped between covers of a book,
The place where few shall ever look.

The stories always tell us

That "within darkness

There is always a glimmer of

Hope."

Had they treaded the depths

Of her cold, broken heart,

Maybe they would have rephrased that.



As dramatic as a teenager

In a sitcom romance,

She swore to never love,

For the fear of pain

Was much greater than the joys of

Temporary

Contentment.

She never would have guessed that

One person would destroy her way of life.



As carefree as a small puppy,

And as loving,

He walked in and...

Slung a monkey at her head.

It wasn't love at first sight.

But it was life changing.



Slowly he gained her trust.

She laughed more than she should have.

Her once sturdy guard was

Crumbling.

He worked away at the walls,

The webs,

The hate,

The fear.

He brought his light into her world.

He showed her what happens

When you take a

Risk.



The glimmer inside her was still

Small,

Fragile,

Close to extinction.

But his light fed her soul,

And healed her wounded heart.



He loved her,

Scars and all.

And she was enamored

With his gentle sweetness.

Together they created a glow

So strong and powerful,

No one dared

Stand

In

Their

Way.



There are cracks.

And dark nights.

But that glimmer has never been in danger

Of going out

Again.

Your love to bathe
  in words rephrased

With hearts not young
  —or old

(Villanova Pennsylvania: May, 2019)