The True Artist Lives By His Art, or Dies. He Does No Harm to Anyone for not Receiving Him.
A dish of vegetables
Goes into a kiln
At a low heat.
If one takes the vegetables
Out too early
They are not to the tooth.
So, when the vegetables come out
And are hard to the tooth,
They go back into the kiln.
So are the sons of men;
With affliction they are made wise
So that they are palpable to the tooth.
There once was a city,
With several sage men.
The city would elect
Them to office
Based on their wisdom and
Their craft.
One day,
However,
The people wanted to
Govern themselves,
So they cast out those sage men,
And began governing by majorities.
Soon, a majority called
The Whitemen
Found that there was a minority called
The Blackmen,
And the Whitemen
Didn’t like them.
So, having the majority,
They elected that all
The Blackmen
Be enslaved,
Or otherwise killed.
The Blackmen
Tried to fight back,
But there was general silence
About their extermination
Because
The Whitemen
Had the majority, and
Other men
Didn’t want to be
Who was exterminated next.
With regard,
Majority rule doesn’t make something true.
Salt is good…
So is cream,
Slow cook a recipe instead.
Use some butter,
Margarine another,
Vegetable spreads are good for breads.
Olive Oil makes good dressings…
And Lemon juice makes a tang…
Try new things, if not bad
But remember!
Don’t let it go to your head!
For I tinker, and I experiment
But it’s only to find a fine art…
Art is not what’s new and bold
But what’s been the best from the start.
There are things we have eaten
Since we were little girls and lads
Which our grandparents and theirs have eaten
So put in its place a fad.
Yes, a candy of a different sort
Will taste good at a One Night Stand.
But every night to eat that thing
A chocolate bar looks pretty grand.
For food is good,
And so is to make
A new thing never been done…
But consider if it were really good
It would already be tried by someone!
Life is not what’s new and creative
But finding the truth for you.
For what is truth can be creative
But it’s found because it’s called truth!
We can paint a dot and polka-dot
Those look good on a fashionable dress…
But on a canvas, heavens bless
I could have done that with a press.
No… not to say a white painted board
Cannot be worth a lot.
It’s just… someone who’s worked as hard as us
To earn from our living, we ought.
I say,
“Put the cheese on first,”
To a white employee.
Then she’s too hesitant to know how to make a Taco;
So her manager proceeds to say,
“Only the good ones know that.”
Affirming that the cheese goes on first.
Mine fell apart at Taco Bell
For precisely that reason,
And at the Moes, they threw lettuce on it first.
At the restaurant in Baltimore they didn’t have cumin
Or really any Taco seasoning.
As the great chef Aarón Sánchez would say,
“This is not a Taco.”
Trust me, I understand that sentiment completely.
I suppose if anything were truly wrong with us…
It’s that we don’t do our jobs right
Nor understand simple traditions.
Nobody tells the little black boy behind the counter
That the cheese goes on first.
The little white boy grins and says with contempt,
“You hadn’t told me you wanted cheese on it first.”
The restaurant is a mess, with pieces of lettuce and napkins everywhere.
Understand the actual reality would be considered racist,
Though I don’t intend it to be so
I cannot tell the truth in this instance
Of who really threw the lettuce on first.
It’s a principle as old as time.
Something needs done.
Learn the process of doing it right;
And let the truth be told
So people can have more fulfilling lives
Black or white.
Because on a Taco, the cheese goes on first
And only the good ones know that.
Cheekily, I can imagine that boy reading this
And saying, “Aha, I did put the cheese on first!”
But then he put the lettuce on,
Which is the most backward taco of them all.
It goes cheese, meat, and then everything else
So not to confuse, because the Cheese,
As the manager puts it,
“Makes a seal.”
I think like slow cooking a roast beef
It just makes the tastiest results.
And I think most people would agree
After trying it.
In times of trouble
Said a man,
Mother Mary whispered, “Let it be.”
I was told nobody worships her.
I believe it.
But still, the priest says the alter is not clean
As if they have to order a new one.
It’s not the alter that is sanctified,
Nor the gift on the alter.
Rather, the heart of the repentant.
With that, it is Mary worship
To say the Alter is unclean
And to not cast out the laymen’s sin.
Throw it into the Sea, Judah;—
You know the whole world suffers from it.
We need cleansed;—
Men walk about with their hearts uncircumcised.
What does that mean?
We walk around with our hearts not purified
With that writhing animal within us.
I am not a Gnostic,
Because I say clearly it needs to come out.
How, though? If the priests forget their mysticism?
A thousand homilies cannot take that out;—
It must be done with power, and the knife
Of grace.
Protestants believe it not so;—
Catholics complain about the alter.
I have even heard it, but the knife needs
To be wielded, the surgeon needs to cut.
And should the cancer come up again,
I say, “We walk in the world, every one of us.”
Deliver us! Don’t leave us here, for God’s Sake
And His elect! It should be a treatment,
Like a drip bag, with a scalpel to take out the tumor.
Don’t let us suffer, with that ingrate inside of us
The one you hide, Judah.
Take it out with the knife,
And don’t say, “The alter.”
The alter has no power.
Only Christ has the power to save…
If the man’s heart were unclean
But truly repentant…
I’d say even the most unclean of alters
Would be sufficient.
The dirtiest table.
Throw the alcohol on it
And disinfect it,
Because the old testament laws are no longer aportioned.
Therefore, o Judah, because you understand it is so
Take the scalpel and cut from Elijah, from Judah, from Eleazar
That wife of his, the one who made them suffer all night
That strange wife,
And remove it from him with the scalpel God has given you
The Sword of The Spirit of the Elect.
Or… is it that you have lost faith in Christ?
Has Sardis made you soil your garments, as well?
To see unwieldy surgeons?
So it is, that Jesus is my LORD.
That is sufficient, now perform the cleansing ritual.
What we need
Is a little bit of forgiveness.
We need to not get so hot
Over everything done to us.
The wicked, with their Vengeance
Seek out the letter of the law
To execute blind justice.
Little do they know their own sins.
We as a civilization will,
Instead of cover up,
Expose one another,
Try to throw one another to the dogs.
They lurk, to uncover all men’s skirts.
Up the skirt, the kiln, they look
To see the beauty, the filth
The crust of dirty deeds.
All men want their justice…
They want to feel entitled to
Their enemies’ reward.
So when justice is executed
They cannot see it.
If you like this poem, please click on the link and buy a book. Thank you!
The Empress Shi Wu was extraordinarily beautiful.
Her bosom was supple,
Her face like a well sculpted diamond,
Her stomach like a sack of wheat
With four precious stones,
Her legs were thighs of strength
And her feet were like sparrows.
Her hair was that of a frame
Which framed beauty incarnate.
At the beginning of her reign
She saw the people were poor.
So, she began by making the people richer
By adding tin to their silver coin.
This, by reason,
Made the coin much more plenteous.
The people became poor.
Then, she began to build the merchant guilds.
These guilds she would cause to make merchandise for the poor.
The merchants built and made much merchandise,
So Shi Wu put more coin into the land to buy merchandise.
But, the merchants ended up with all the coin,
And would melt them to make pure silver,
Buying the poor’s merchandise with the dross.
Shi Wu then began to become rich by the merchants
Who supplied her treasury with great merchandise,
Even from greater Persia all the way from the other china.
Shi Wu became exceedingly rich.
The people became poor.
The people had traditions,
The people had great science.
Their science said the world was round
That God created the world through nature
And that men were made up of smaller parts.
Shi Wu then saw this.
She said, “Tell the people there is no God
“And that their traditions are worthless.
“That their God says the earth is flat
“And that God did not use nature to make the earth.
“This way, they must buy more.
“Make enriching me their religion.”
So, she did.
The people had tin
And not silver,
And a shekel of tin was worth a grain of wheat.
The people became poor.
But Shi Wu, they heard,
Said that their traditions were stupid.
So, the people began to believe that the earth was flat
Rather than believe Shi Wu.
Obviously, if the earth were flat,
It would explain the lie of Shi Wu.
The people also believed that people
Were not made of smaller parts…
Rather, the people were just one whole
Flesh of writhing sinew.
Their traditions, they thought,
Were correct, so when Shi Wu said
The traditions of the ancestors were that men were sinew
And that the world were flat,
The people began to believe their traditions
Instead of Shi Wu.
This angered Shi Wu,
So she began to tax the people.
For, their traditions held that the earth was flat
And now the people believed the Earth was flat
Because of their traditions
Which Shi Wu said were not good.
Thus, Shi Wu in one last act of defiance
Disrobed, and called in every male within the borders of her country
To come and view her.
Lusty she was,
She did obscene things before their very eyes
Just to humiliate the traditions of their ancestors.
She said, “See! Is not my beauty sufficient?
“You all can have Shi Wu who wants her!”
But, there began a rumor saying,
“The Emperor wears no clothes.”
This angered Shi Wu,
So she said, “Anyone who says, ‘The Emperor wears no clothes,’
“This man, woman or child shall be put to death.”
But, the people, all having seen her shame
Did not believe her, though many were put to death.
For the traditions of the ancestors were stronger
Than the tradition of Shi Wu.
O’ pilidod grass, spread ‘pon the breadth of the mountain valleys
Where my lover waits for me in robes of silken thread,
Garbed, spread across her shoulder of creme, to ivory neck.
There she dances ‘pon the fields where the foals give their turns
And the calves give hearty suck upon their mother’s teats.
The shepherds gaze upon the herds, where my lover in
Bonny feeds the lilies with nectar of nearby streams.
The singing of the mountain songs, in Hoar English fill
The caverns with their echoes of love songs for we two
Who by the roads and the valleys search all day and night.
Suitors come and go, as she hopes on me, and I her.
The most beautiful among the maidens comes nigh me
Yet my dove, darling of my valleys and hopes do sing
I reject promises of women who do love me not.
The mountains sing their songs to bring us nigh one another,
As the gulls in piridod coasts sing their hymns to us
Where the shepherds nigh the fields do tend their woolen sheep.
Establish her waiting, oh LORD, LORD of Sabbaoth.
If you like this poetry, click on the link and buy a copy of my book. Thank you!
I’d be lying if I said this song didn’t inspire some of my best poetry. Lol. What comes to mind is the “Mind in a Vat” philosophy, and then it moved on from there to Leviathan—a creature I kind of half made up for a storybook I wrote—which then became of course Death, and then the Yellow Submarine became Leviathan; so the song kind of inspired me to make the Yellow Submarine the belly of She’ol or the Grave. Very archetypal song with a lot of subconscious ruminations that kind of just happen for some reason. I find it one of the Beetle’s best.
That and Hey Jude—which may or may not be what influenced me to take on the persona of Judas Son of James in my writing. If so, that one would be unintentional. But, Elora is Brittos’ wife, which he has to win from Medea. Of course, Brittos is being offered the World by Medea, but he wants to win his wife and get his modest life instead. And of course, the song is about Jude—in the Beetle’s Poem—wanting to start a movement to gain the world, instead of settling for his wife. As in to say, that’s an archetypal struggle of a Christian to either A: Take the modest blessing, or B: Try and start a movement to “Change the World.” Which my poetry is very conscious about not wanting to “Change the World”, but rather wanting to “Change the Heart.” And the song is about finding love so the heart doesn’t get bad. Which, in the Ode of Brittos and Medea, the Protagonist has to accept the fact that he’s saved by Grace, otherwise he’ll succumb to Medea and her offering of the world.
If you like the poetry, please click on the link and buy a book.
So, some who read me,
You know I wrote a poem on being plagiarized.
I’m probably not being plagiarized, unless you see these works
In famous books… perhaps then I’m being plagiarized.
But… in all of that,
People of our generation think…
Truthfully… in their hearts they actually think this….
That I’m encouraging the reader to plagiarize my book.
Just some notion in me is to think that that’s what some readers
Would think I really mean.
And rightly, that’s not what I mean.
I mean the exact opposite.
As if being called a Sow is not bad enough
I say that person is going to hell,
And then I call them idiot,
And then, to top it all off… I say they piss on their gold.
To have the humility of speech
To honestly mourn in my complaint—
True or false I don’t know—
That I felt cheated… I don’t think the moral was to cheat me out of more.
Piss is in the Bible, let me use the word here.
I don’t cuss… it’s evil, but in a poem…
Let it be so forgiven if that’s what the LORD gave me.
How can anyone misinterpret that poem?
Yet… numerous people do.
Why? Why when being called a sow wallowing in pig crap
Which they urinated on, mixed with gold
Do they think it’s okay to steal?
Frankly, it’s never okay to steal.
That is wrong… not if you’re a prince
Not if you’re a poor man looking at a merchant man with the world in his cupboard
Not even if you’re a beggar looking to get a scrap of food.
We have pity on a thief who steals because he is hungry.
But we do not pity a man who, after seeing a cauldron of gold
Goes to it and takes it away, knowing that was the place it was safely buried.
Which, if the first part of the poem didn’t make that clear.—
What reason does anyone have to steal from me?
That I am well fed? That I am rich?
Frankly… those are not good reasons because I can very easily
Not be well fed. And I am certainly not rich… not in my country.
In your country, you pay what is the equivalent of a hey penny
For some food. And you do, don’t even lie about it.
In my country, we don’t even have hey pennies
But are trying to outlaw pennies altogether and replace them with nickles.
So, equivalently, I’m about as wealthy as any of you
Reading this poem… which if you want to call me rich
Then you have the same access to internet and the same benefits as me.
I might even have a little less.
And if you want me to be a beggar
Then by all means steal from me.
Like a hypocrite, or a sociopath,
I know what demographic I speak to, and I don’t care if I offend your laws.
Because I’m here to enrich the borders of Israel
And to bring it so that a man, yes all of you, can eat from your labor.
If it is stolen, like the Seagull who snatched up the french fry
From the pigeon, maybe it was because the fry was too big.
Yet… perhaps, also, we’re not wild animals
And we have built civilization and laws and customs
So that we can live with one another
And be at rest that what is ours, others won’t have the right to take away.
And frankly, that is why I’m not a Hindu.
I love my readers from India—
And I know you haven’t plagiarized me—
But I do understand your religion, and have chosen the one that didn’t make you slaves.
If you like the poetry, please click on the link and purchase a book.
B. K. Neifert 