Category: Poetry

Everyone is Speaking

Everyone is speaking
Nobody is listening.
Therefore, I have chosen a poor profession.

Everyone assumes to know 
What someone is saying.
Do they know?
Do they really?

From my long diatribes,
I have learned to enjoy poetry
Because it gets me out of my own thoughts
And I can invest time in someone else's.
It lets me escape my own egocentric predicament
And that's the enjoyment of poetry.
Of really writing in general
Is being able to listen to someone else's ideas.

Agree with them.
Disagree.
Why does everything need to be agreed or disagreed with?
The purpose of art
Of poetry
Is expression.
Yet everyone wants to express
And nobody wants to know
What that poem is really about.

I can't make money in a culture
Where everyone wants to simply
Live in a vacuum of their own ideas.
A reverberating echo chamber of simplistic truths
Espoused by minds that you can't even be sure are alike.
Do we really share blogs with one another
To hear what others have to say?
Or do we have them to read into
Other's thoughts what are essentially our own?

I chose a poor profession in the twenty-first century.
Great novels cannot be written
Because everyone would argue with them.
And I think things ought to be left as they are
And understood for what they say
Before we open our mouths and opine
Why that individual is wrong.
Or, more necessarily
Understand that truth
They wanted to communicate.

Amazon in the Forest

There is an Amazon in the forest. 
Lusty she is, bare, exposed
Easy to take and be pleased.
Yet, she will tear you limb from limb
And take your leg upon her gnashing teeth.
She will bite it, with blood down her chin
And her hair is knotted with the blood of men.

Pleasing she seems far away
Until you come close to her
And she is too big for loves.
You cannot marry her
But become her slave
Where she will malign you
And break your spirit.

I say, I have seen the Amazon kingdom
And it is frightening.
All men stay indoors
And are frightened to peep
Out the lattice, 
For the giantess walks among them.
Elephant for steed
And lust in her eyes.

It’s Said of Kant

It's said of Kant that he built a towering
Defense of the Conscience to prove God exists
Only to watch it come tumbling down
And be the death of God.

As I've said, God merely died;
And yet He raised.

People believe these things are sufficient unto themselves
That the conscience is universal among all men.
However, it is God who gives men their conscience
And it is God who takes it away.
Man without God is more like a beast
Than the two horses I saw united
With each other their lover.
It seems the horses understand something that
Philosophers will not.

My Politics

The price of a candy bar in 2003 was 43 cents.
The going rate at the same store is $1.65.
In 1992 a 23,000 dollar a year salary
Is worth a 70,000 dollar a year salary today.
Amazon pays its employees about 15 dollars an hour.
That is $3.20 today's money.

Inflation, in the past 20 years, is at 300 percent.
Worker pay has stagnated. No, actually stayed at about the same rate.
People today, the average worker, is making about 25,000 dollars a year.
That amount was like making 70.000 dollars a year today
Back in 1992.

The Stock Market is at 31,000.
The super wealthy are getting more wealthy.
And as Cenk said many times,
That the 1950s were a good era to live in
Let's go back to the tax rate of that era.
70% on those making billions of dollars.
Force the big corporations out, 
The little business will get more business.

Not to mention,
There's a nasty fact that Walmart
Had a local trust developed with its 
Local warehouses.
Squeezing that same store
Where I monitored the prices
Out of existence.
Trusts, if you don't comprehend
Are illegal.

Oligopolies ought to be.
But, since perfect formulas exist
The copyright needs to be 
Only in the inventor's lifetime
And unable to be extended
And certainly not valid 70 years
After the death of the inventor.
Who the hell needs the money
Beside the inheritors of that wealth?

And furthermore
Free speech means free speech.
It's the same for a Nazi or Antifa.
It's the same for a BLM or KKK.
That way I'm protected too.

How Can a Common Fact

How can a common fact
Bring two different brands of ideology?
Trying to prevent the fact from manifesting
Brings the very fact repeated
Over and over again.
It must be because no one can
Learn the truth
But must relearn it
Over and over again
Until one day the truth stops getting learned.
And on that day
A trumpet will sound in the sky
And there will no longer be a mankind
Of which to understand.

A List of New Literary Devices

1. Ekphrastic Motabilem – Detailing the process of creating a work of art, or describing the process of skilled work. More specifically, utilizing Ekphrasis through describing the art form or skilled work in its process. Otherwise called “Ekphrasis”, but more technically called Ekphrastic Motabilem.

  1. Example: “Go, Ploughman, Plough” By Joseph Campbell
  2. Example: Jeremiah 18:4 “And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.”

2. Hyperloxy or pl. Hyperloxa – An oxymoron expressed through hyperbole, to especially emphasize the last statement and make it stronger than the previous statement, which otherwise should be stronger.

  1. Example: “He is not very wise, but has an infinite wit.”
  2. Example: “Jude, he is not so strong, yet unrivaled in might.” Neifert, B. K.. Fairyland, “The Children’s Crusade”. Kindle Direct, 2020.

3. A Vulgar – When taking something that usually isn’t vulgar, or even taking a Euphemism, and making it vulgar through tone.

  1.  1. Example: From Wordsworth’s “Transubstantiation”: “And, while the Host is raised, its elevation/ An awe and supernatural horror breeds,”

4. Cantor – When a work breaks into a text with a voice dissimilar to the one established throughout the work, intentionally or unintentionally. Especially where it can be readily noticed. Derived from the word “Cantor” a responsive hymn, where the solo is the break in voice, and the choir is the established voice.

  1. Example:  The Gospel of John as opposed to the Synoptic Gospels.
  2. Example: The Egyptian Maid or White Doe of Rylstone by Wordsworth, as opposed to the rest of his body of Work, reflects stories in the forms of Southey or Coleridge.
  3. Example: The Last few segments of The Riddle in the Sea, by B. K. Neifert, where the form breaks to create an added effect of suspense.
  4. Example: The use of “Mirkwood” in Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthrur.

5. The Objective Other – An objective characterization where an artist portrays what appears to be a specific individual, yet the individual portrayed in the piece is meant to apply generally. Not to be confused with a Character; however, some characters are examples of The Objective Other.

  1. Example: Anna Karenina in Tolstoy’s titular piece.
  2. Example: George Wickham in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
  3. Example: Christian in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

6. Nominal Symbolism – A kind of symbolism where the name of a prominent historical figure, town or god is used to represent an archetypal story. Sometimes where the symbol relates to a specific individual.

  1. Example: “Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: your carriages were heavy loaden; they are a burden to the weary beast.” King James Bible Isaiah 46:1
  2. Example: “Tell me, Lydia, by all the gods I beg you, why you are in such a hurry to destroy Sybaris with your love.” Horace. The Complete Odes and Epodes. Translated by David West. Oxford University Press, 2008. (pp. 32.)
  3. Example: Xenophanes, you poetically and surgically/Weave your origins of doubt.

More will be added to this list, as I discover them.

Odes of Strangers XV

The Savanna is rubicund
With delightful golden grains.
Most gorgeous are her valleys
With the hills among the rolling veldt.

I, the animal, enraged
By Serengeti hunger
Am driven into mindfever
Where I cannot perceive
Nor understand;
No, I am crazed by possibilities.

If I had you, your plains would be mine
And I would be the lion
Within his Pride.
There would be only nature and I.
It would be of no use
For only the air of the veldt
Could satisfy me
Should I be satisfied by you.
I would desire nothing more
And would never wander from my bounds
In the safelands,
Where poachers could not find me.
For I would stay upon your plains
And meander among your hills.

Odes of Strangers XIV

Gahanna was shrouded in mystery
As the Styx flows through the Acheron;
Descended into the deep
Son of a king, you trifle there.

King of the scouts
The minstrels sing of you
In the woven dreams of Morpheus.
The gum of Acacia is upon your thigh
Yet I rejected it, for such is the disease
Of mind, which your magic spun
Through dirt and vulgarity.

You sought me, and you found Cyrus.
You found me, yet you were but a boy
And our lives crossed on the banks of the Susquehanna.
I do not know what powers are over me...
Only that an Acquaintance, a man my equal,
So says David,
Whom I had counsel with in the LORD's house
Will betray me.

Forsooth, such a strange thing to be
That it was a happy accident
Which brought you to my humble life;
Yet you should be one plotting against me.

Odes of Strangers XIII

Cyrus, I understand you
The way you think.
I know you from the inside
How you have petulant doubts
Yet rage at the heathen.
I know you rage against God
And seek to destroy Him.
Yet I also know you secretly wish
To use his laws to exact vengeance on this world.

You do not believe in God
You do not...
But His laws are enticing as an engine
To siege the Capitol
And to tear down walls and bulwarks;
To stir Media and Persia
Against Assyria and Babylon.

I know you from the inside
And your rage which burns toward the infidel.
Religion to you is a tool
The Messiah an engine which you will use
To usher in your reign.

Alas, I stand here
Arguing with you for the second time
As you tell me, "On your death bed
"You will say as Jesus said, 
"My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"
Yet you take slaves
While you dash the infants upon the rocks.

Christian you do not hate---
No, you love God's people.
For it is in you to love God's people
For the law which burns in our chests;
Yet you rage against God as Satan himself
And you move upon your holy quest to purge
Sin's temples from the world.

I see you in my thoughts and visions
And I am like you
So it disturbs me greatly.
I am gentle, and meek;
You are a warrior
Believing in the law of my God
Right down to the tittle---
Yet you do not believe in God.

Such a strange doubt in you
That I feel in my chest
But I do not understand why you believe in my God's law
But not God Himself?

Is it, like so many Jewish men
You like the burdens of lamb stew and drink oblations?
I say to you,
You will be used to purge the land of its idols.
That is what you wish.
Yet it is I who shall prosper in the LORD's Name
For I will declare my portion
That your rage may be just
But it is not a wholesome intention to 
Desire to fix the world.