dreams

tonight i watch the man with the baton
rinse his thoughts in the wind.
he scuttles back and forth
like pinocchio pinned to
a coat hanger

his brain is riddled with the
thick worms of LSD
he ducks and weaves through
angry stars who
navigate his narration

it is midnight he snorts
twirls skips collides
between the cars
buttoned down
to the tarmac

i am drunk he is high
i laugh out amid my
necklace of friends
because tonight is about
the company of lunatics
and the naked foibles they fill

right up until the alarm clock
the next morning that drums
like a siren into your head
it watches the  mixture of memories
and nocturnal music
crawl into my bones

PhilosopherPoet

whirling

he wishes for feelings of ecstasy
and the sigh of morbid bones
in the morning

today he jogs like a piston
down the road
into the sun
into the wind
that chuckles between
the folds in his face

sweat stick to his spine
like the crease of a fresh book
and he hurtles on through
the crinkle of leaves
beneath his shoes

he saw two girls
stranded stressed straddled
on a scooter the driver gazed
at the speedometer as if peering
through the portal of a sinking ship
the one at the back
with a precisely stamped uniform
looked around with a scared expression

he wishes for feelings of anxiety
a tight electric snap
the firing-on of neurons
collecting handbags of fear
in the gaps in your head

watching plain sketched events
ripple and collide at dusk
changes your old self
that lay behind the dusty books
and dreamt only of the trickle of words

 

PhilosopherPoet

the weight of rings

the weight of rings
on his fingers reminds him
(i am alive and the punctuation
is never perfect…) plus you
feel the extra knuckles
carry the burden while you sit
late into the parchment evening
typing at your desk like an
electronic monk

the weight of rings
tells potent opinions to
mark off your silver skull
as ‘the mark of evil’

he displays our dark veneer
with an unbridled ease
the others can’t see how
a gypsified pagan like him could be
happy and content with his
inner dissonance

the weight of rings
is the mark of cartilage
something only years of
matured angst can conjure
together

maybe it’s that time where
he can fold his fluid fingers
over the stout shoulders of the
pentagram and
feel peace
breathe back
the holes in his head

 

 

PhilosopherPoet

dotting the i

he stabs the clothes onto the line
his hands feel damp at the soft seems
shoulders fold in the wind
toes clip the needle grass

he rivets another idea down
the scented stars watch him
and the nylon clouds paint emotions
beneath the seams of evening

tomorrow while his head is buried in
the plump pillow and fuel-injected birds
narrate the churning traffic

he will wait for the recumbent sun to
strum the dreams down into
the drain’s chortle and

his hound will punctuate the
peace with a guffaw

Lessons in a Letter

Below is a letter I wrote to my boss recently. I’m not normally the type to put personal things in the public domain, however, I thought more people could identify with this. I’ve taken out the names of the people mentioned in order to protect their privacy (as well as my own).

Dear R—–

I remember some time ago my father teaching me a few principles philosophers sculpted. One such philosopher (Immanuel Kant) came up with a theory of Universalization. We both talked about it and nicknamed it “just because”. The way you act, treat people, make decisions, joke, cry, laugh and so on has no rationale behind it. Sometimes the choices we make are born from an inner feeling of “I’m doing this, and acting this way just because.” If one has oiled their psychological cogs in the right way, then plodding along and acting the way you do, is not miraculous because of one life-changing incident, but rather because you have the momentum and courage to be consistent.

I’ve trained many people by now, and a good example of this would be when I see someone knot their brow with frustration when they don’t understand. Many others pull the keyboard towards themselves and hurriedly console the awkwardness. My instinct though, is first to question and then help that person one foot forward, step by step.

I’ve been through many managers in retail and wholesale. I admire your consistency, and your ability to wear your heart out in the open. Despite the stress and pace that retail runs at…I know by the time I have your hand around my shoulder – saying goodbye, or good morning – we’re friends again.

Look I must admit, the other day when you flipped out because I had screwed up an EFT order I felt very ashamed for a while. Perhaps I needed that. Part of me wanted to get angry and lash out, although instead I held it in and went away to do some soul searching. I didn’t expect you to cover my arse with the EFT, or even when I infamously deleted S—— emails. However, you did it because partly that’s what Managers do, they sort out issues.

At the same token I realize I’ve made you dance across a few hot coals from time to time, when there needn’t be coals there in the first place. I am truly grateful for you helping to bring closure and relief to those situations, it means a lot to me. Hopefully, as I mature in the I.T. Industry I’ll make fewer blunders, and create more successes.

Sometimes I battled to convey my emotions out in the open. The reason being I’m a natural introvert. I wanted to say this to you earlier, but I hadn’t managed to summon the courage to say it. A letter is more fitting, I feel. It’s something you can hold in you hand, annotate, and read between the folds of duvet before you sleep.

Whenever you write a letter, there’s a natural part of you questioning yourself saying “Why am I doing this? Is it not a bit much?” It’s a common human feeling to be self-conscious from time to time. If I had to answer that now, I would turn to you and say…

“Just Because.”

Warmly
J———–

plastic

tonight while i cook
i look into
hannah’s faded face
with her flaking fingers
she clings onto that
microphone full of grit
and glamour
- so the crits say

she’s getting old now
the flowery spotlight
drowns the echoes of
female essence floating

through her clothes
she’s a singer now
my dad told me once that
yesterday’s heroes only
eat the bread that
certain slivers
of society bake
in their unconscious oven

i wash the dishes and
my hands graze hannah’s
supply neck and muffle
her laminated lips

perhaps it’s time i buy
a new radio with
a round volume dial
that can cloak the chime
of adolescent deejays

and allow me to sleep
for a few more minutes

PhilosopherPoet

Myfacespacebook.com

Here’s a great comment on contemporary culture, and what we should really be considering. Every now and again I dose my self with some anti-establishment literature to soothe my soul.

This is just kick-ass nihilism!

PhilosopherPoet

Poet: Andrew C.
Source: Myfacespacebook.com

Welcome to my-face-space-book, dot com

It’s a social network created by so-called experts

The finest in brainwash scientists teamed up

A collaboration in emancipating humanity from itself

Green bucks, vanity in a nutshell

Just to feel the built in wallets in their butt’s swell

Sometimes it makes my gut delve

But the thought stops it’s lingering

When I start fingering my keyboard

This is better than an MTV brand sea-shore

Full of three-hundred and thirty-three whores

times two

I can chat while getting my favorite corporation’s logo tattooed

on my-face-space

The book fell of the ledge in to the flaming pit

How does literature cooked taste?

How’s for a survey to find the answer?

Dan from Montana thinks it tastes like wal-mart cancer

Which, by the way, tastes delicious

Or so I’m told by Ex-Sex-Pistols bassist, Sid Vicious

But isn’t he dead?

Of course, but his name-sake was bought  by Macky-Fred 

Or was it Freddy-Mac, Goldman and Sachs? 

My-face feels like it just got taxed for it’s space

My face feels like it was attacked by a burning copy of The Grapes of Wrath

My, my… how it feels to be faceless

Lipless, tongue-less equals tasteless

Everything I held dear is make-shift

My-face-space-book, dot calm

Mind state;

raped and left for dead on the front lawn

Some Deviant Art Favourites

Here’s some images I really liked from one of my favourite web sites…

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PhilosopherPoet

A message from my sister…

(NOTE: The following story was told by my half sister, I’ve simply interpreted what she said – via my step mother – the scribe.)

*The Crystal of Love*

By Trinity Ballam-Smith

Chapter 1

One day there was a jungle girl named Ellie. She lived in an island named Hawaii. She was sooo happy there. One day (while trying to find some grapes) she spotted an elephant. She didn’t know that she could speak to animals. But when the elephan tried talking to her…Ellie listened.

They were very confused because they didn’t know they were sisters. They went to the elephant Cloud Princess and she said,

“Do you know that you two are actually sisters?” and she was amazed that the elephant princess had old her story.

She replied, “”Did you know, a long time ago King Rothbart turned me into an elephant because he was so angry. I didn’t let Rothbart go, so he strangled me and he took all my powers away. I only have one power left, and Rothbart doesn’t like me any more. he put me into a dungeon, but luckily I broke through.”

She paused momentarily, and continued.

“Rothbart takes all my powers away, and doesn’t gove me anything. So I moved into the Cloud Kingdom, and I needed to live all by my own.But luckily I had some animals to speak to me.”

Rothbart came every single day to check on the Cloud Princess, but eventually she fought back to get more powers. The world changed and all the trees were dark around her…and there was no pollution in the air. the Cloud Princess and stopped all the pollution.

Ellie (the Cloud Princess) said, “Bye-bye” to the Cloud Elephant, and ran off to find the Crystal of Love. She told them about a wand, and a ring of love, lying in the dark depths of despair. To find the Crystal of Love, Kindness, and Helpfulness you must go there.

“Remember,” she said.

“The Crystal of Love, is the more important than all the kindness in the world!”

Leaving

By Sarah Frost

How sad that it has come to this
my father an old man driving me and his grandson, asleep in the baby seat,
through the Eastern Cape interior to the airport
from where we will return, as if we were swallows and the holiday a winter,
to our warmer home, and he will make the two hour journey back
to my mother and the sea
alone in their big white car, a craven gull.

I whirl the dial of the iPod
with my forefinger, scanning on screen the music he has downloaded.

Songs were always the antidote for our unspoken conflict, pooling like snake venom in the blood, lyrics too –
I remember him, skinny, young, passionate, finding Dylan Thomas’s ‘Fern Hill’/ /reading stanzas, jubilant, from the bath to me in the next room;
‘nothing I cared in the lamb-white days/ that time would take me/ by the shadow of my own hand/ up to the loft where the moon is always rising’.
It is still the only poem I’ve ever memorised.

I ask about the Stones’ ‘little Red Rooster,’
he replies, ‘it reminds me of dancing at raunchy parties’.
Nothing irresistible about you now Dad, smaller, greyer, with every year,
fishing surreptitiously under your seat
for the last turquoise Smarty from the box we just shared,
your hand unsteady as it was when you reached for mine
and held on to it as if it were a rope,
and you the one falling, wrenched away.

We were watching the documentary on Dylan (No Direction Home)
on my laptop. I remember you, visiting, just you, on a summer’s night
cradled with the iPod in the hammock on my verandah,
crooning with Dylan ‘she’s got everything she needs/
she’s an artist/ she don’t look back’.

Your inexplicable and therefore frightening fury
as you told me about our ancestors, and how to write well
I had to honour them too.

My great-grandfather, stern, distant, a stranger, wrote to me
on pale green Croxley paper
his writing frail against the formality of the black-inked lines.

In the troubled departure hall,
you kiss us both goodbye and I turn away irresolute, unforgiving
to walk through the X-ray arch,
your gaze on my shoulders a faint touch for the child you forsook,
the woman you call your daughter,
who, angry, the damage done, carries your dwindling fire into the future.

The man standing at the side of the woman writing
had an indelible tattoo of loss etched onto his face
every needle prick a leaving.