Poem of the Day



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Naming as Progress a Failing Feb 03, 2024


“Take your shoes off.
It's midnight— and you're not going anywhere.”

Back ago some days or so, now,
A poet friend vouchsafed me the phrase, while,
Bewailing a failing to cash-in the cow.
I think— to be read as release; Permission to breathe;
And through lenses perhaps tinged more rosy than these—
For this color unfetters an other in me:

Like naming defeat as delight.

A ward opal white, and worn overnight,
For burns—
Uninurned, under ster·i·le light:
A body blown-circuits and missignals rife,
And man near to death; little deaths; little life.

Like naming as progress, a failing.

In black forest, lost, and lamenting the loss,
Of compass embossed both by cardinals and cross:
She was whirled unasked unto world unmasked,
And so pardons herself for a future pre-casked.

And she suffers that forest the last.

[introspection, vignette, horror]

The Purple Cow, Revisited Aug 01, 2023


A response to Burgess on purple cows (for mom's birthday :3). See: The Purple Cow

I never saw a Purple Cow,
But surely hope to see one, who—
With learned lowing will avow,
That life need not have reason:

“Hear this, kid, and drink it full,
And feel yourself dissolve,
What meanings must be of a bull,
Who mottled mauve, see, did evolve?”


I'd taste each word for sweet release, and,
Swallowed whole, I'd see:
For all earth's herbs and birds and beasts,
Darwin excepted thee.

“Then purpose must be self-derived, if
Purposeless, can be.”
“Aye!” he'd moo, “And uncontrived!
My purpleness is me!”


“One last thing,” I'd, giddy, gasp,
“I simply must define—”
“What so upset Poet Burgess?
He'd no palate for milky wine.”

[fun, gift-poem, response]

Father's Day 2023 Jun 18, 2023


See: Succession Rap

The day alights and marks the year—
As jays at first daylight uprear,
For Winter's gray and Spring's veneer,
Have fallen way to Summer's sear.

For Father's Day I'll be sincere—
This may destroy my rap career:

R A N to the D A,
Ran lights Digital or Analog
L cuz I Love you
It's "Mayhem" Mathews, dog

R A N to the D A,
Ran lights Digital or Analog
L cuz I Love you
It's "Mayhem" Mathews, dog

Events center mentor —or a real Shooting Star
Feelin' sentimental? Read his tour memoirs
A coat of Calvin's dad, and a whole lotta Hill
We'd be blastin' Beado's band while he's workin' that grill

Settle in for a flick, on the subject defer—
Why about war? Cuz it builds character!
Fans adore his ideals, a model north star
What speed hath HotWheels, flowed of his matchbox cars

R A N to the D A,
Ran lights Digital or Analog
L cuz I Love you
It's "Mayhem" Mathews, dog

R A N to the D A,
Ran lights Digital or Analog
L cuz I Love you
It's "Mayhem" Mathews, dog

R A N to the D A L, baby

[gift-poem, fun]

You have to change Apr 18, 2023


Your days are spent as pocket change,
Where windows frame the sky's exchange.
A chemical. A feeling lacked.
On sectional, the ceiling's staring back.

Your days are spent as pocket change,
At vast vascular vein interchange,
Where heart apart is locked beneath,
And turnpike tolls take life levy.

Your days are spent as pocket change
Spends days content. Spends days unchanged.
Given up on countertops,
On damp receipts as tin teardrops.

Your days are spent as pocket change,
And worth derived, you've been exchanged.

[change, introspection]

And on Feb 12, 2023


Life spending days like pocket change,
Where tolls adorn vast interchange,
On porches breathe the empty seas,
Which roll in waves that crash in crags beneath:

This veil, my eyelids— Clear curtains, concealing nothing, mend:
Black rose-colored glasses— Fit snug from a lifetime's breaking-in.

On window wells: the ordinance;
Dance dulling dins in dissonance.
A chemical. A feeling lacked.
On sectional, the ceiling's staring back.

So skip sidles soundless— Wet wilds awash in charcoal blast.
With wistful glance backwards— Glints nightscape: forever distant past.

A civil war in lower class,
In uppercase read: BREAKING— MASS
Fat cats in crimson jewelry,
The worth of rings worn by an ax-felled tree.

A sky divine in neon glow.
Forever falling fly-ash snow.
A child loses scholarship,
Not coping with her life on sinking ship.

Days floating like ash leaves. Burnt woodland a clot to Earth's airways.
Lungs black water rafting. Well who knew forever starts today?

[change, bright-eyes, america]

The Comedown Jan 06, 2023


It all comes down around me—
Stars falling through ink in a butterknife spread.
The days come apart like wet tealeaves,
My Ariadne's (gun in precipitate) thread.

It all comes down with a restlessness—
In sleep wandering nights rich of full-blooded dream…
In waking to life living textureless.
What difference to sleep then if flows my bloodstream?

It all comes down in torrents—
From Faulkner a rose in a dead woman's palms.
Then Emily be my Saint Lawrence:
Deluge me in love-emulsed arsenic alms.

It all comes down to complacency—
In breast-windowbox wilts heart tired of all this;
Drowned-pulse given up on its agency;
Trowel raised begging “not let's forestall this” —indrawn.

It all
comes down

to me,

but I'm gone.

[change, introspection, death]

Cinemanic Buffet Dec 23, 2022


Say you cliche? Says I gourmet!

A meta metastasized—
The boring board's blight,
A theater bedraggled with quip-carrier mites.

Our characters capsized—
Their arcs sink like guts,
But visceroptosis was cured by short-cuts.

All ad nauseum ads—
From seasickening “saints,”
Sinking shallow as surface of aquarelle paints.

Hail Corporate Comrades—
Of new moral morale,
With humor infectious inviting grand mal.

Emotions demoted—
Now music cues' king,
His soul asshole-deep, waxed white-worshipping.

Next movie promoted:
“We've re-skinned Aesop!”
It's premium shit, so come eat your slop.

[commentary, fun]

Falling Faster Jul 14, 2022


The bottom has fallen from under my feet,
A bee, my pollen adrift and away, my wet wings,
At sea, I'm all in— a table takes water and sinks,
I breathe, while walled in a tube— beeline breathing for me,
IV, my swollen throat throbbing for my final sting,
I'm free, or stolen, my body is not mine to keep,
To sleep, a hole in my heart is beginning to beat,
I scream, vi- olins and vi- lets the bottom gain speed.

I guess it'll never fall faster than me.

[dreams]

Denouement Jul 10, 2022


Good prevails
And so the dreamer wakes.

For who really believed,
With their heart on their sleeve,
It'd be this way
Eternally?

[dreams]

Pedantry Jul 09, 2022


That person who I am. Not
who I want to be.
No— not who I wish I was.
For want implies an effort made,
where wish denies the cause.

[change, introspection]

Father's Day 2022 Jun 21, 2022


Dear Father Mathews,

With great unnecessary rhyme cliché—
Per date, epistolary post create!
Though late canary slipped silent away,
Belated, topped-with-cherry: holiday!

In sum, this stationery is to say,
I wish a very merry father's day!

I yearn for you tragically,
Graham Mathews, Chaplain, U.S. Army.

[gift-poem, fun]

Pit Etiquette, Revised May 10, 2022


A bird on blast-beating wings,
Over head-banging seas, under strobe-lighting suns,
A face—no, a tug on heartstrings:
My brother shot down by the corporate gun.

King under lime once, he thrived:
His drums sublime, pushing pits to his pace.
But that nine-to-five sucks a soul of its drive;
And the odd visit home had him missed and misplaced.

Had I been born the brother before,
Stand up on that stage, my mic stand moonlit,
Could I have sworn him his music meant more?
Could I have taught him pit etiquette?

What I can know is what I'll do next,
Take after his taste, but not follow his steps.

Step.

Step.

Stop.
—Still the clock. Strip staff, meter from measure.
Unskin skeleton! Bar, line, and note!
Between bones, peer in!

Time's two terrible troops: tip-tap Tickings and Tockings,
The Metronome's too— underlings interlocking,
deep down, down under-things.
Spies, stalking then talking to tyrant: that two-timing Clock King.
With saccadic eyes telling staccatic lies, selling
Stolen seconds like sap sold sweetly and tapped from the soul.

Time, two-stepping undead, stays two steps ahead, etiquetteless skinhead,
in life's moshpit moonstead.

[introspection]

When Will There be a Merit Badge for Quantum Computing? Apr 22, 2022


The scouts come through each summer. And
I think of my nephew Jet and
His parents who just don't get it. And
The old posts, too weak to use his name.

My father learned Assembly in college. And
He thinks in it too. He speaks in the tongue of the machine, and
To him it is natural. In his day only boys could be scouts.
And he doesn't get it.

So Jet is learning code now, like Dad did. Python to start, but
He's interested in a new language: Q.C.L. He said it's like binary,
But brighter.

[vignette, gender]

Do You Know Who You Are? Apr 21, 2022


A slime mold climbing a stump
Straining towards light at the peak
Quartered by nucleic mugwumps
Like a starfish pretzeling disease

Or a pack driven mangy and starved
While the sheep are fed with alfalfa
And the forest is heartlessly carved
The wolves will not bow to bored alphas

When traffic had jammed at a cliff
And those at the back pushed ahead
Then the leaders offered them lifts
Play pretend some believed what they said

So close your eyes.
Just let the apathy atrophy.
Or open them wide.
And meet atrocity with fucking anarchy.

[texas-is-the-reason, vitriol]

The Future Is A Gentle Trophy Apr 11, 2022


The boy mounts the fish, and lifts on a hook
where he
Grasps for the fryer dangling over the brook
but the
House lights all dim, and the hall's overbooked
as the
Marionette man is raised from his nook
where he
Rested like rain while thunderclouds shook
now he
Cracks open his eyes, finger carelessly crooked
and he
Twirls to life as the salmon is cooked

[fun, vignette]

Re: Death Mar 26, 2022


A response to Marie Howe on the topic of dying. See: Death, the last visit

A dark wind across a plain
Which dissipates quietly then
Its breathless touch remains
The breeze will come again

A mirror gilded in leaves
Bespeckling the forest with rays
Then buried long by the trees
Its light will return with the rain

A man with dreams but no time
Cheated from life long endured
Now wronged by unworldly crime
Carved hollow. Words left unheard

A reaper cloaked over bone
A son of Satan and Sin
A rabbit in warren of stone
A plague masked in red and let in

Death is nothing and like nothing other
Especially, Howe, a fucking lover

[response, nature, death]

Descriptions of Trees Mar 06, 2022


A billboard plastered with pamphlets;
Garbage hangs from its branches.

A telephone pole missing wires;
Birds bring hazard of fire.

A subway map of bad routes,
Distressed and hard to make out.

A tree of seraphic chestnut,
Profaned with a mark to be cut.

[nature, america, vitriol]

Ambiguity Feb 16, 2022


“LETS EAT GRANDMA”
Dutifully states Boy to Girl
A feast for the amygdala
Such meanings to unfurl!

Yet where Ambiguity's tendrils entwine
In the grasping words of linguistics,
In computers logic binds
And code is deterministic.

In space so black and so far away
A ship sits quiet and dead.
Yet inside all is dismay
Readouts and lights flashing red

Humanity all, aboard and asleep
Computers two: Girl and Boy
Mission— Escape! Earth now grim-reaped
A ship christened Grandma—our sole convoy

Still hundreds pursued, Leveling Extra Terrestrials called.
Ate all in their path, with black hole maws.
A ship slow and weak, computers both stalled.
On monitor 1:
“LETS EAT GRANDMA”

[sci-fi, vignette, language, fun]

rhyme workshop Feb 16, 2022


“Semesters and curriculums”
Says Esther and her icky lungs
—Old Carcinogen Centennial
Sold cars 'n no gents sent any gold

[fun]

The Half Orc of York Feb 11, 2022


Come peradventure and sit by my fire
I'll tell thee a tale of a bard and his squire
Who though pleasant to hear—not so pleasant to see
Had fled long ago from a town by the sea

Ears keep sweet for his song, this half-orc of York
Where lodging might lead you, there spy thee Gork!
But be not afraid and despite such sore eyes
Fight back that desire, don't pull anchor and fly

A visage has he like much of his kin
Though something he lacks: where be his chin?
His mouth sits all wrong, crooked yet straight
His eyes stray from line, his skin shouts agave

But loiter awhile and hear then his drums
Find primal enchantment in each of his thrums
He'll tell of adventure, of art, life, and love
He'll tell of his sorrows and friends, all above

Mysterious beast, an orc so malnourished
He comes from the north where his family once flourished
But tragedy struck, and his elders—his friends
Were but boys spying breeches: they came to their ends

And such Gork was raised by two brothers before him
Who considered him clan, though unorcishly dim
For Gork found a fondness for things untraditional
The beauty of nature —and love unconditional

One day after watching butterflies in the wheat
He returned to his home and was flung by his feet
His kin Grik and Gak wrestled eight times a day
And though Gork was too meek, they forced him to play

CRASH! came the crunch of Gork's face on the stove
His chin fully crumbled and Gork found himself drove
from home once again, with but drums and a club
He wandered for miles from tavern to pub.

In Lima there met a face known to Gork
Harry, Half-Orc! Another of York!
Men of disaster: a great flood took their kin
Together they strode from hostel to inn

The two reminisced of family and fall:
Gork's mother was ugly—the belle of the ball
Gork's father a dwarf—and was surely part yam
Twas' his stealing a balk that shattered the dam

But a man is not blood nor all father's sins
So Gork may yet roam, but his tale begins
Each night in a bar where people admire,
Eyes shut but ears open, this orc and his squire.

[DnD, fun, vignette]

A Man Broiled in Unhope Feb 02, 2022


Twice he struck at the bell
Scattering the birds from their trees.
A twang each for Well and Unwell
The bell-ringer's opposing beliefs.

His eyes, glaucomic, but two
From his tower: all desolate dregs.
The color all ashen and blue
Yet still he kept eye for the red.

Now I while away aways on a fence
As a shovel or rake long deserted.
And when I hear the Thrush, I have no good sense
What hope had he—I averted.

The good with the bad is the blood of mankind.
But I see not the first; in one eye I'm blind.

[Hardy, vignette]

Pikka Birds Feb 02, 2022


She knew a thumber who called life a grapefruit
“It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it,
and some folks have half a one for breakfast.”
So she thought and found it as true as anything.
Love is the rind: leathery and segmented.
Hatred, then, the flies that buzz about.
She takes life with sugar,
but war had her grandma stick to salt.
Now this thumber had an answer for life,
but she preferred the question—
to take it whole,

or stick to half?

[the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy, vignette, death]

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