Tag: Uncategorized

The Rarity of Our Society

I

The rarity of our society
That we can live off of what we’ve made
Is a thing fleeting the grasp of our rich men
That it can be lost.

The hoary head, wisely
Knows he made his thirty cents
When he was a young man.
And by work he became rich.

There have been other societies
Other Chinas, as the Chinese would call Rome
In its peak, where men lived and ate
And were not slaves.

Reading a “Communist Newspaper”
Casually, I thought he meant it was really communist.
Happily, I entertained he was misguided
But was happy that the paper was published.

He meant the common Newspaper was Communist.
Unfortunately, Capitalism can have those same problems;
We used to call it Feudalism, Mercantilism,
Guilds that controlled all trade.

He mentioned going to college.
One hundred thousand dollars of debt
I’d probably never pay off.

He mentioned painting.
I’m a writer… my soft hands testify
To the fact, and my inherent lack of any other ability.

Yet, there is a guide below giving a writer tips.
Tips I will never follow…
It is not the pretty words that make a poem.

But what it means.
And the fact that there are tips
Shows why the Earth is slowly becoming poor.

II

Seven people read this poem, not one liked it.
It was suggested, “Do what you love, though.”
What I love? I can write whatever I want…
But harsh truths nobody wants.

Do you understand what that suggestion means?
It means none of you will eat.
Impossible standards that preclude Shakespeare
From ever making money.

Hypocrites. You self censor, making this profession
Unable to support those who need it.
What if I can… hypothetically,
Write well? Does an artifice of pretty lies
Create your love for poetry?
That isn’t artificial?

Need I write in pentameter?
Need I write in tetrameter?
Need I write at all?
Hypocrites.

So you don’t like reading this…
Well… you pay your twelve dollars to enter a contest
That gives you points.
A racket… I’ll “Write what I love,”
Because what I love is the truth.

The truth is… I need to eat.
And this poem is about eating…
It is about truth…
Truth doesn’t need a cozy little “Active Language,”
Nor criticize my helper verbs.
I can take them out, and still write just fine.
I’ve done it all.

The truth… I don’t eat for the same reason you don’t.
Standards that impose harsh taxes on talent
But none on simony.

III

Grammar snobs jeer at a misspelled word.
How it got there, maybe a typo?
In all actuality—a pet phrase, give me that—
You can understand I meant “He”
And not “Me.” Can’t you?

What I really mean to say
Is that the market demand
For “Active Language,”
No, “Mary Sues”
No, “Exposition,”
No, “Creativity,”

Nobody understands the reference to China
I know… So I spell it out rather than leave it as an Easter egg…
Pretentious? Maybe. But I have written the Odes of Brittos.
So… spare me to not write pretty
And to give heed to a whim.

No… nothing is so exceptional about Frost
Yet he’s read like a god.
I don’t want to be a god.
I want to eat, and pave the way so all can eat
With what they work hard to produce.

Do you recognize those suggestions are just to frustrate you?
To tell you, “You will never be good enough
“Because you weren’t born with a silver spoon
“And you weren’t born into society.”

So you wrote like Robert Frost.
Nobody will purchase it
Because one man presides over another
And time and chance forsakes all things
When a writer doesn’t come from the right background.

Yet, work hard he says…
I work hard. The hardest working Bartleby
And will you recognize that’s a reference to Melville?
I’ve scribed in ink several dozen notebooks.
Obviously I’m a Scribner.
I don’t mind hand writing,
Though I’ve been told,
My whole life
That I have a writing disability
AND I CANNOT WRITE!
Hand write.
But, two brief cases worth of handwritten notebooks

I am a hard working Bartleby—
And none of you know the reference, do you?
I don’t insult your intelligence
But that if I wrote Plato’s Republic
With a Heroine out to destroy the society
And perhaps had a few children die
I’d be a millionaire right now.
That’s what you want.

But it’s not what you’re going to get.

IV.

Life is a harsh vicissitude of bitter medicine.
I love my society because I can
As I assumed
Write a communist newspaper
And live.
As stupid as it might seem
To be a communist
And make money on a Newspaper,
As unthankful,
As ungrateful,
It is their right if that’s all that can feed them.

Sitting next to the old man
I thought he was a communist
But he was a die hard capitalist.
Rightly, I can’t tell the difference right now
Between Communism and Capitalism.
We like things neatly defined
But what I told him
Is exactly what I’ll tell you.

You can have any economy under the sun
If you have a just and right people.
Equity cannot be legislated
It must be practiced by every one of us.

But, when I see someone exploiting the hopes
And the dreams, of people who, if given the amount of work
Still cannot earn a living… I tend to question my economy.
Not only because I’ve made a small amount
On what is objectively good poetry…
But the fact that I see this website prescribing me
A style, when I’ve worked 10 years, with over 20,000 hours
Producing my style.

As if a style were all it took to get published
And everyone works hard on perfecting their style
But says the same cliche poems over
And over,
And over,
And over,
And over again.

Rather, I’d take no style
With something meaty to say.
Do you understand?
I hope you do.
A style isn’t worth a damn
If you have nothing to say with it.
And to have the audacity
To tell me a thing about my style
Leads me to believe that it is a corruption
In the market that doesn’t allow
Me, but does allow poets who know nothing
About punctuation
Earn from their work.

Please, indulge me in this…
Like I said it’s simony
And I use it to connote
That rather than sell our work
We buy our work, as Authors
Which means that people don’t read our work
But us.

To which I would reply,
Then if nobody looks at a painting
Nobody reads a book
Nobody listens to a song
Nobody watches a chess game
Nobody buys a wooden duck
Nobody appreciates a little crystal swan
Nobody appreciates a hand carved folk art piece
Nobody desires to look at Venus or David…
Then really, there can only be poverty.
Those things are what make us human,
And to realize that we add salt to this life
Of humdrum, and not only that
But teach and hand down traditions…

It’s difficult for me to communicate what I mean fully

 

V.

Finally, an Ode

Jane… my beloved Jane…
You’d never get published today.
Love, I love you more than all the rest.

Leo, my good father, Leo…
Nobody would read you.
You are the man who conceived me.

William, oh you wordsmith
Nobody would love you like me.
Nobody… nobody.

Frank… Paul’s a Mary Sue.
Jules… nobody wants to hear about your submarine.
Wells… who cares that you could predict nuclear war.

Beloved’s a weak word…
I love you is a cliche…
Do understand, Amarisa,
That’s what the poem is about.

 

If you liked this poem, please purchase a copy from Amazon. Thank you!

A Father’s Wisdom

O, my books were Corban.

But my dad had needed them

So I could leave him with the peace

That his son would be fed.

 

So Christ said, “Do not make things Corban.”

For the alter is what makes sacred, not the gift,

And the alter is to absolve from sins.

 

Fire works explode the moment I realize

I must do this…

I must keep my blog…

I must advertise…

Know this is what he told me to do

In order to give him rest

That when he is gone,

I will not be poor and an outcast.

 

O, how many times did I want to give up on this blog.

How many times I wanted to give up on my dream.

But, a father’s wisdom, is that he wants his sons to succeed.

So, I listen to him, who finally has bestowed a blessing

On this meek talent of mine,

Which he said to me, “Do not be the one who buries it in the sand.”

So, please, I hope you understand

That many promises I’ve made,

I cannot keep.

I have to eat.

 

If you like what you read

Please purchase my books,

So I can eat, and be happy,

And I wish the same for you.

Thank you.

My Crazy Thought Life

Who Am I?

Who am I?
I speak… how I speak
But there seems to only be falsehood.
Call it Auto Mythology
But my mythology is complete.
The giants are slain;
What were those giants?
They were complexes about not being loved
Being feared, being a bad person.

Now it’s time for the silent,
Whisper of the oboe
To silently steal the show
As peace floods my bones.
I call on You LORD,
All day long;
This talent I love.
Give me my wife and children
And my talent.
I have invested it?
Haven’t I?
I’ve given the world
Hope, in an age where it is small.

LORD, here is my honest opinion.
It’s time for the mythology to end.
The fields of giants
In my life, that being the torpid
Regrets of my past mistakes
The belief that nobody would love me:
Elisha… I write this.
I feel like I’m in a drawn bath.
Like a wind is brushing against my palm.

This talent I love
For I serve God with it:
I speak wisdom,
I break the clods.
What are the clods?
Deleted words
Learning grammar
Struggling to learn my craft
Obtaining true wisdom;
Perhaps, perhaps, some clods I don’t understand.
For I write on this sheath
Believing in the future.

My friend told me:
“We’ll blow ourselves up.”
LORD, you know this is not true.
If a conspiracy is found against me
Let me never see it.
For who am I?
This writer?
Not Judas Son of James
Not Beowulf the Less
Not the Prince of Scots;
What am I?
I am a writer
Who loves my craft.
And thank you,
Pages of this Sheath,
For being my psychologist.
For accepting me,
When nobody else would.
Here, I feel open and at home.
I feel like I have a voice
And even if only a few listen to it
It’s there for someone to see;
And if someone sees it
They see me.
Alabaster Straw

Slowly moving to the tempest rhythms
Is the time signature of Alabaster Straw
The rooted worth of the wrings
Of torpid bells upon the shining cavalcade.
There, cavalcade of alabaster
Trot through your stables of Alabaster Straw
As the tempest knells ring
For the shooting wars of the brigade.

Jeweled sandstone
The Arabian Knights
March through your deserts:
So says the Huns,
Coming back from the war with you.
Huns, Arabians
Meet for the final clash.
The Arabian Knights
Move through alabaster straw
The Cavalcade of one hundred strong.

Ring knell, ring, the repentant soul speaks:
“Alabaster Knight! So comes Attila the Hun;
Ready to war with the Knights of the Desert Alabaster Stone.”
Thus, the Prince of Thieves speaks to me:
“I’m coming for you.”
I do not blush, but reply,
“Here comes the Cavalcade
Your Cavalcade
To fight Attila the Hun;
Yet, the mighty Nethanim march behind me.”

Their war means nothing to the Nethanim
Whose power is high;
Faith brings them power
So crafts cannot prosper against them.
There they are, ten thousand strong
Arrayed in rows:
God’s angels steeped in goodness
Stand aside
As the World,
Attila and the Prince of Thieves
Ready for their war cry.

Slowly moving to the tempest rhythms
There comes the Alabaster steeds
And the Huns in armament against.
Reach for the heavens
Prince of Thieves,
Here’s my army of Angels
Ready to thwart you.
Attila is your equal.
The Nethanim are your fear.
For I am the name you fear:
St. Praise the Wise Praised
Changing Broom Tree Upon a Hill
Diadem of the New Son of Israel.

Fear not my name
Prince of Thieves:
For I have spoken kindness to you.
Thwarting me brings you only pain
I know it: For there are others whose
Interest is in my hurt.
Continue, Prince of Thieves
With thy breeding of thy steeds.
For they are stallions;
I am a Third Order King, of the Sainthood
I abscond my kingdom here on the Earth. Selah.

 

My Sisyphean Myth Persona

So, what delusion is this
To think I’m actually Judas Son of James?
What delusion is this,
To think there are Kings from Hell?
What delusion is this
To think that Satan has a galaxy ring?
What delusion is this?
It’s just my myth;
Don’t believe it.

Remember, friends
That the mind is a seal of all sorts of dreams.
My dreams come here, and I express them free.
My actual life is not so boring,
But painful to speak.
A divorced family
Constant bullying
Two very tragic sins
Captivity,
And the hope for revival.
Not a spy,
Not a prince
Not Judas Son of James;
A Saint, yes.
Perhaps, friends,
Perhaps, I am God’s servant.
Not Cyrus, not a false prophet
For I don’t prophesy;
I don’t claim to have written scripture.
For, if I prophesy, I do so foolishly.

I say this: I’m a lover, a fighter, a rebel
But also a Saint.
Sainthood comes from owning your past
Bearing your consequences
And hoping God can fix all of it.
Just know, friends, just know:
I’m not so deluded as you think.
It’s just fiction: And fiction
Is in part dreams.
The myth won’t destroy me
Because it is just myth.
There are no kings seeking to destroy me:
For what? They don’t exist.
Understand, citizens of the world:
This myth is simply myth.
A myth of Sisyphus.
For I am not Sisyphus
And there is no boulder.
For, world, are you so deluded
To think that there are kings?

Here is this writer’s persona,
Pushing that boulder up the hill
And it falls back upon him
Over and over again;
For he needs a giant to slay.
I don’t; the constant abuse I’ve suffered from peers and family
Is a giant enough. Where are they?
Do they exist? No.
Don’t get caught in this delusion;
It’s just a world I’ve invented
Where I play as a character.
Not me, but a self-insert;
Heroic, bold, but in real life I’m just
As pathetic as the rest of mankind.
So, who do I put forward?
Me, or this? I’ll be Stan Lee
My Persona Peter Parker
And Judas Son of James my Spider Man.

Little Mead

Upon the halls with Beowulf
There stood Unferth, of course
Beowulf indeed.
There stood Unferth and Beowulf
So here is the story of Little Mead.

There he drank his honey wine
And listened to Beowulf boast
So once our hero was finished
Little Mead called a toast.
But Unferth took to table
And gave his cacophonous cry.
There Beowulf challenged him
With a story for all times.
But Unferth spoke no goodness
And Beowulf was left aghast
Until Little Mead, that scrawny fellow
Took Unferth to task.
“Unferth, thou silly soul
Doth thou not see he?
His muscles are strong
His hair is long
And his sword reaches
To his knees.
For, what warrior are you
Unferth, who ever fought that Grendel?
Me, I know my smallness
For it is to I that Beowulf is lended
So Beowulf will fight the demon
Within this hallowed hall
And that Grendel will be defeated
When Beowulf’s war cry is called.”

Then Unferth, big and mighty
Shodded up his girt
And he began to spake of Little Mead
To his very hurt.
“What has thee, Little Mead
Done so mighty brave?
I see your scrawny form
And your sword easy to break.
What is this? Damascus steel
Nay, t’is only bronze.
Your sword is weak
Your flesh is meek
And I have killed many sons.
Giants and warriors innumerable.”

Beowulf, hearing the fight, took to table with might
And then said to Unferth, these faithful words it’s true:
“Unferth, thou art a silly man, to think thy talk is good
For a giant you slayed? Then Grendel you would have two.
For so you speak so bravely, yet this little man has heart
That he looks to his heroes, and encourages them by far.
For if I could have jumped a furlong, I now could jump twain
And If I could slay a Giant, Grendel’s arm I could now break.

Grendels we all know,
And Unferths are very gay;
Yet Unferth is more intolerable,
For he speaks what no brave man would say.

For a Beowulf is strong, but a Little Meads are stronger.
A Little Mead encourages the mighty
And gives them courage to fight a little longer.

For, Little Mead would die against Grendel this is true.
But, the very fact of the matter is, so very much would you.”

 

Neifert, B. K. My Collected Writings. Kindle Direct, 2017.

Why I Love India

A billion people in the world

I knew nothing about it.

Until I realized it was pretty important.

 

I see you where we were in the 1920s.

Ready to burgeon, and bring your people food.

Ready to bring your people houses.

Shelter.

 

A poem I read spoke eagerly about maybe this being the year

That India will have its stand in the market.

A drought I read about, was bad.

Yet, freely you have the press…

You have your free internet.

You have your freedoms to read just about every poem I’ve ever written.

Gladly, I want you to have my style home…

I want you to have rain,

And cornfields, and cotton fields

And peach trees, and vineyards.

I want your poor to be fed.

I want your people to not live in sheds.

I want them to have nice sized homes.

It’s a lie that you can’t… it really is.

There’s plenty of land, and there’s plenty of air

To give you all nice homes.

Communism won’t do it…

Capitalism might.

But… You’ll have to patronize artists.

You’ll have to patronize hard work.

If you want my type of house…

If you want my privileges—

And I’m privileged, along with all of America—

You have to take your freedom of speech

And speak out with every ounce of who you are.

You have to understand, in my society it is not unjust.

But injustice exists.

Your country, injustice exists, much worse than in mine.

But… I want you to eat.

I want you to have vineyards, and shelters.

But you have to speak out.

You have to participate in your government.

You have to, like me, talk your lips off…

You have to make a lot of wrong predictions

Before you can start getting them right…

You have to frustrate entire countries.

 

I fight for you,

For China,

For Russia,

For America,

For Brazil,

And all of Africa

Asia, Europe…

Because I have a good life.

And I can’t believe that you don’t.

But, if I’m leveled into poverty

After a significant amount of effort and hard work…

What does that say for you?

You may not hate me…

You may actually like me…

But I want all of you to eat

And even be Christian…

Yes, because I know your religion frustrates you…

But you know as well as I do that there is a spiritual truth.

Why not just bow to one God?

Instead of many?

Why not bow down to Christ?

I have a notion to believe

That’s why my society prospered,

And as we run away from that fairness

And equity of hard work ethics

And food is plentiful…

Jesus brings rain.

I’ve prayed for it several dozen times

Silently, so nobody would hear.

Precisely what I pray happened.

I have no explanation for it.

The mantel of my religion

And my society’s success

Rests on you… here it’s slipping away.

Where you are, I can see it happening.

Remember that Israel, our nation

Did a lot of hard work to make a desert green.

But, rains testify one last thing

That for them to come, there must be a blessing.

Here, there will probably be forests that turn to deserts.

The opposite is true. A desert can turn into a forest.

I can testify, that if it’s not the case

Than the rains that I’ve prayed for

Must not have shed upon the emerald grass.

 

I don’t want to come off pretentious.

I truly just want to bring Christianity

Rain, food…

And I can’t. You can’t.

Only Christ can.

And He will if you accept Him.

That’s a promise.

Explaining God to Richard Dawkins

Rick, if our universe had infinite dimensions

That universe would be a size infinitesimally smaller

Than a planc length, when compared to even the least of God’s angels.

Those Angels would be the size of a microbe compared to

The size of the Cherubim, which are the four creatures

Seated at the throne of God.

Just use your imagination with this.

Those Cherubim are the size of a rabbit

When compared to God.

 

That is the God I worship.

Now, you try to explain Him away with science.

If we hadn’t even discovered a hint of extraterrestrial life

How on earth can you possibly try to say you’ve disproved Him?

Say we meet one googleplex to the googleplexth power alien species.

What is this to a God that magnificent?

And because a prayer for lightning striking you hadn’t been answered

That’d be like a bacteria crying out to the man with a bleach bottle

Who got orders from a Giant the size of infinite, infinite universes

Who got his order from one of those angels, which that Giant

The largest of them,

Is the size of a quark compared to those angels.

But, this same God listens to me.

My Heredity

Simplicity sometimes works.

Sometimes extravagent metaphors.

Me, I like pretty faces

So words have to be beautiful

In the poetry I read.

I’m vain like that.

 

The same cliche wallpaper

Over and over again…

There it is painted in my living room.

But I like it, so I use it.

It’s funny because every canvas hanging on

My wall a family member did—

Every piece of art on the one wall was made by a family member.

The chess table which appears on my covers

Was made by a PA carpenter.

 

I’m inundated with art, and artists

And yet none of them were famous.

One is an impressionist sail boat.

One a winter scene.

One a needle point of two children on a swing.

One a photograph my dad took.

My chess table is a masterwork.

Why so many Pennsylvanians

Master their art, and don’t get paid much for it.

 

My bookshelf was made by my Grandfather.

My afghan quilt—though patterned off of a magazine—

Was hand stitched by my great grandmother. My book shelf

Was hand crafted by my Grandfather.

All expertly done.

My Nanny did a white afghan

Which such expert craft.

My Grandmother made three afghans,

Too, of a much finer quality.

Photographs, I’m surrounded by.

My house is decorated by family…

Either their faces

Or their works of art.

Even some of the music I’ve had

Growing up…

Songs of high quality that my dad had sung,

Great accoustic songs by my brother,

Recipes of family members handed down from generation to generation…

Sometimes out to six.

Even my sports team

Is part of that Family tradition.

Fourth Generation Philedelphia.

 

Our house is decorated by things we’ve made,

My entire family.

It truly is.

I suppose if I were a good writer,

That would be the cause.

And nobody knows any of us.

The Inspiration Behind the Ballad of Maddok

Carl Jung came up with a concept of the “Shadow Self.” In Freudian psychoanalysis, it’s the same as the id, or the animal self. It comprises all of our violent tendencies, all of our animal like nature, all of our evil. In Biblical imagery, they call it the “Flesh”, or our “Sin”.

There was a verse in Micah 7, toward the end, about our sin being removed from us. That was the whole of the inspiration behind the poem, was our sin’s removal from our body. And in Ezekiel, when declaring Jerusalem’s sin, and in Jeremiah, it has a laundry list of crazy sins.

I have no recollection of committing any kind of sin other than what I have written in Young Shadows. The last poem is the full account of the entirety of my memory about my sins. But, the thought remains strong in me of the sin nature, every thought I’d ever had, every lust, every lewd dream that somewhere in me is that… and that is what became Maddok. The fact that somewhere, this creature called “Maddok” or “Death” is in us. Just having a thought makes our minds capable of doing something awful, every secret thought, every secret desire. Which, leads me to the mystery of perhaps—not a doppelganger, but like Brittos’ Giant Soul—our bodies are capable of such great evil without our will. And that God needs to shave—or circumcise—that sin off of us somehow. Maybe that’s what baptism is, or maybe it’s something else entirely; maybe that subconscious evil in us called the “Shadow” makes us capable of awful things that needs to be physically removed by God Himself.

So, that’s the inspiration behind Maddok. The kind of musing of the “Flesh Self” that needs to be removed from the Christian—or really everyone—in order for salvation to truly occur. And of course I’m Brittos, meditating on this while writing the poem—though not literally Brittos because he represents every Christian, not just me, needing to understand that God saved us by grace.

So, before anyone calls me a “Gnostic” I believe wholeheartedly that this Flesh needs to be removed from the Christian in order for true salvation to occur. That Maddok, who is literal in the poem, is actually metaphorically in every human being, such as the survival instinct. Such as walking to your car with the key stuck between your fist, because you’re ready to hurt anyone who tries to mug you. Or even a canister of pepper spray. Or, perhaps owning a weapon and imagining having to use it. Or, the countless hours of pornography and violent movies we tend to watch. As if all of this culminating in the human being leaves these latent Shadow Selves in us, and it needs to be removed by God in order for us to truly attain the riches of salvation.

That is the inspiration behind the poem, and of course Maddok is a personification of the ultimate sinner because he is literally Death embodied. He is so unwise, that he forgets that he’s the very thing that he’s about to get sucked down into because he’s so deluded to think that he’s actually accomplishing the will and work of God. There are some subtle satires on Christian Theocracies in the poem, too, such as their desire to Crusade in order to bring about punishment on kingdoms, or criminal justice, or in all regard Vengeance, which seems to be the primary pathway to our violence, is the meditation on vengeance and self defense. Which, we can all say we’ve mused, which if anything were Maddok, it’s that. All of the people we had imagined killing, we had killed in video games, we had imagined fornicating with;— Maddok is all of that because he is our subconscious, the shadow that haunts us, the sum of what we’re capable of and the evil we all have present in us, latent somewhere in the survival instinct. As a Christian, we need to have that circumcised from us completely, in order to attain the riches of the Kingdom of Heaven. And nobody perfectly attains it on earth, but the metaphor was a very strong one I mused on for the better part of a year.