Go Know Thyself!

The Guarantor of ambivalence. (An Ode to T.S. Eliot)

soredemonao:

*You have to really like Eliot to understand this poem. 

The Hippopotamus is cooking an egg
for Sweeney among the Nightingales
as the whispers of immortality undo
candy buttons by Burbank with a Baedeker
and Bleistein with a cigar. 

Sweeney erect and Agamemnon stiff.
Comparisons to G-d. That’s all
any of us are ever really doing
with our lower parts and portions
in a contrasting relation by proximity
and porportion. Measuring the distance
to the stars by the length of cigars! 

The person in the cape conceals a dagger
as the ladies of the corridor no longer
find themselves disgraced but rather 
enticed by the hysteria of the epileptic.

My how times have changed
but only in the ways that we confess it.
The Ripper is now much more…quiet.

The poets, the artists, the
bibliophiles and the mythologists
the mystics and the philosophers
are the Guarantors of ambivalence.

Dear Eliot, by Ariadne it was Caritas! 
Bananas, figs and hothouse grapes
with murderous paws there will be tears
as the wife castrates him as he bathes.

The silent vertebrae of these shrunken seas.
as the man with heavy eyes denies participation. 
As her bust gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
 
And reduces Prufrock to a punk and 
a lie to afford himself a calling card
among the women. That’s the only
reason for his love song.  A man get’s
himself close enough to the devil and
my how they come out in droves to save him;
from her, and from himself in the baited
stolen lines of a fake yet prudent lure.

(via soredemonao)

And now… You’ve ruined this for me as well.

It’s not about the way
I know, you know, I know.
It’s a moment that stings
that’s all.

You knew what you
were getting yourself into,
with me, as an image of 
a body become the dividing
line between now and then
and never again.

I just wanted you to know
I would never follow
you around puppy sick
and wanton, albeit want
is a thing that subsists
alongside rejection.

And you’ve ruined it for me
now. The difficult to find
the hard to think on anything else
that would now from this
moment forward, be
something less than that
permissiveness 
you provided me with
that will pervade every
crevice of my mind
and switch the needle
to replay, on automatic
and always make me
swoon for you there like that
lost and painfully nostalgic for
a night that meant 
everything to me
and nothing whatsoever
to the only you willing
to provide it.

I have survived the loss
of this once.
I don’t know that I can
keep trying to recreate
a moment that in its
absolute perfection
can never again
be repeated…

less that obligatory one thing
that one, or another thing,
used an an excuse that
people can’t ever seem to
correct within themselves
to allow the all of it.

Caught on a nail
I think they call it?

There always is
isn’t there. That one
thing wrong that 
some hidden rule
written into the deepest
parts of our brains
cannot supersede
or rise against to
conform to it for the
promise of something
more, or, better than it.

I hate that I am that thing.
Temporary as it is
it becomes permanent
in your eyes.
I shouldn’t have come
your way that day
but you said it’s alright
until it wasn’t.

Beautiful man
Kind, bright, 
absolutely gorgeous.
You don’t understand
the loss.
And how although its bittersweet
it is accepted nonetheless.

I had hoped you could
that you would
be able to get beyond 
this moment.

I knew that you knew
that I knew this.
But that never makes
it any more or less
difficult to accept
that one thing about you
that you cannot change
that tips the scales
against… chemistry
as an otherwise perfected
process… it suddenly relents. 

Now what do I do
with that image of you
there, like that
letting me
…let you?

Like before, now irreparable
so rare and pure
        gone completely
unappreciated
how very deeply
     I appreciate it.

I guess you can get 
that anywhere these days?

but for me, it was
virtually perfect
and in the small
fractal moments
when it wasn’t…
Still to me
it was absolutely
worth it.

To try to see something
of worth beyond the
difficult bits….

I’m so very sorry that for you
I wasn’t. 

Without Mythologies

plasticgardenicons:

Here, in the halls of automatic learning,

the juries of the new-comical dispensation

require stricter sentences for unfortunate

pedestrians caught in marketing frenzies

and mild chocolate amnesias.

Christ descends upon every third house

leaving sparrows perched on his horrible nails

expecting the sun to come again

day after tomorrow.

Easter vestments curl like magic

horoscopes in the palms of small children,

thin fish that move through moods

of darkest amber.

Children understand the cracker-jack language

that grinds melancholies into their molars—

               from their deepest cavities

               come songs fashioned in sleepless ages.

Songs sung by the boogeymen who frown—

their capes throw shadows onto the cobblestone,

their mouths bend downward like black rainbows,

bent over the dead crows of their chins.

Through their pupils are the green fields.

When the children feel the warm trail

of urine riding the length of their legs

the fear has manifested itself,

the song moves into darker realms

where familiar relatives wear the faces

of barnyard animals.

Scared shitless,

we turn to the great-grandmother

in the dark,

her hands, the gnarled winter trees,

where we feel safe.

The song moves into hallways

where time’s memorabilia has disappeared

into the walls

leaving cracks and shadows

of forgotten histories.

Faces stare silhouetted against

our now, invade our imaginations

—the silent stories,

linger with us, move us, like misdirected

actors throughout our days.

Here, in the halls of our own sleeping

we wake covered in residual premonitions

unrecognized and rebranded by

pharmaceutical confabulations.

Where children throw rings around

their roses, fill their pockets with stolen

chocolate, play freeze-tag through midnight,

we find ourselves alone

in Lent’s ashes, a disabled symbolism

racing against us

in the night.  

Gorgeous. This is one to be proud of. 

(via plasticgardenicons)

cryingoutinthemaddingcrowd:

soredemonao:

“Like Tennessee and Blanche We want our poetic selves Destroyed by handsome brutes In wife beaters and oiled hair, The poetry of being fucked to death.”

—

- “Marlon Brando”

Strongest of the Litter- James Franco

(via gunknif3)

I liked him…. Until he started calling himself a poet. Then… yeah, not so much anymore. Now, he’s like what you might get if Ryan Gosling and Shel Silverstein had a love child.

(via soredemonao)

Shyan Golversting?

Hey Girl… Rehl Gosverstein

It’s like getting Rick Rolled. It’s never not funny

Time holds energies for far too long sometimes. (A poem for Ambre)

soredemonao:

It’s in the energies between our heartbeats
ticking time bombs
we converge at the merging of souls
and get far too close 
to the molten cores of us
where we are heated through
and pressurized to burst.
We do not want to be so closely observed
and watching, and waiting on failure
counted comeuppance.

These flying hateful words
mingle in the air between us
and we know well how we wield words
forged into swords aimed at the most
tender places.

And they wonder, each of of them
on either side.

“How could she do this to us”
And…
“How could they do this to me”
she says, to counter it.

Neither one understands and 
more than not, neither one
will relent with any will or want
to try to. Because worry proves
you care, even when it is destroying
everything you profess to care for.

Some people just don’t know that.

And all we have are crashing echoes
that get caught in the spider webs
that bait and trap and engage us onward
to the wrong things, to the strong things
the anger speaks so much louder
than the little voice beneath that
whispers…

stop, please, stop.

And we go on like this
and the years can carry
things onward for longer 
than we take the time to notice.

And we begin to change, for the worse,
like walking through these revolving
doors, creating small explosive
universes, that cannot touch the others
centers, where there is calm to be had
for moments in such raging red spot storms.

Only somewhat aware of the others
presence as being harmed,
holding on like gravity to the pain and the alarm,

Punishments as reasons to bend in
toward our own centers for releaf from it.
As our intellects and reasons become
uncommunicative and irrational
like living on two ends of a mobius strip.

When kindness starts to become
more like a bait and lure for something
we’ve observed one too many times
just never ends the way we’d hope.
Paranoia, and fear takes the place of

Love… 

Love is this
It resides in the moments
hides in the cracks that we
stomp and growl and grow
like flowers for funerals.

Love… 

Is the measure of our ability
as people to transcend this
tendency to continue onward
with these known laws
of energy.

Once something is set into motion
it tends to stay in motion
and anger is, a trajectory compulsion
that gains in leaps and bounds
before it can be caught or tempered.

You need cannonballs 
big brazen cannonballs
to stop it.

Because by these laws
we understand something
indeed will continue along it's 
path unless someone, or something
cares enough to …

stop it.

The problems will remain
equal, and opposite
oppositional transgressions
each hand unaware of the 
bigger picture, grown tired
and unwilling to change the
tase of bitter is sometimes
confused by the tongue as sweet.

But oh… lovely girl
it isn’t.

There is no victory here
there is only defeat.
Either way you’ll lose
when you can’t at least
somewhat understand how
contentment is often formed
of slight compromises that
the other person has done
less than nothing to deserve.

To your criteria and expectations
there is another universe
where they believe the same
of you, in their own perspective.

Which is right, you asked?
well love, right and wrong
are concepts. They are
in reality the same exact thing.

And people forget how
far they push, and how much
it hurts because they hurt
because they’re pushed
and all the while that still small
voice cries out from below the melee
begging, please…

just

stop

Maybe it’s time, someone
stuck their neck out
and listened.

Alva Starr

soredemonao:

15, August 2010 - 12:38pm

Robert Redford and Natalie Wood
what a cinema dream pair
oh the babies they would have made
if someone didn’t kill her.

The Starr boarding house
reminiscent of…
reminding me of a past
that creeped its way
back into the present
Depression is indeed a good word for it
recession my ass Obama
this is nothing short of depressing.

And the beautiful man
came into town
like a hurricane of goodwill and pleasantries
changed a course, took a life
caught hard by its homemade dress
on the iron nails of the tracks
outside her home.

And the children run unattended
the neighborhood boys
turn into angry hollow straw men
looking to get laid
and you’re a whore
for doing what they want
but as long as you do it with only them
then you’re okay, until they’re finished.

And Momma… Ah momma
the type to use her daughter
to get money for her pleasure
to manipulate men
where she is old and gin soaked
no longer able to attract or keep them
not the good ones
just the users
that fuck and toss
and make potential
crumble in his hands
just because he knows he can
take, create or devastate

Like Lindsey Tate
wanting what he can’t have
needing control over what he couldn’t
and when she didn’t behave
he spread her name all over town
and called what he wanted for himself
a whore.

I love the character of Alva Starr
I love that she, like me, is
“Peculiar.”
I love that how even when the hero
say’s “I love you Alva.”
that it comes with
predicated contractual obligations
of the unspoken kind

If you love me
if you do what I want
if you behave
if you are good

Then my love will be
but if you make a mistake
if you hurt me
if momma lies, and makes you believe
based on all those things
you find precious one minute
and pretentious the next
how peculiar and dreamy is good
when it belongs to you
but horrible when you feel it doesn’t anymore.

So she made her mistakes
in moments of hurt
hate and revenge
and when you seek revenge
you should always dig two graves.
and she destroyed herself
to hurt her mother
destroyed a man who destroyed and tossed her momma
who in turn took her love and life
away from her in Owen.

And Robert Redford…
Was simply a lot to lose
in New Orleans
where they bury their dead above ground.
and poor willy in her tattered dress
is left alone with all of Alva’s jewelry
to remember her by
and a snow globe
for Mr. Owen.

Who after that
probably started liking his job
a whole lot more than he once did. 

Author’s Notes:
From the Movie with Natalie Wood and Robert Redford called “This property is condemned.” It is one of my favorite movies of all time.