Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

PhotoPoem – Truth

Posted: June 15, 2015 in Poetry
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It’s been a good long while since I posted one of these photography/poetry combination posts, and since it has been so long I will be posting one of my favorite poems that I have written in recent years paired with one of my earliest shots while I was still at the Academy of Art in SF. While I love this poem, it is more of a slam/performance poem than the others I have posted here, so I am unsure how true it will read compared to a live performance…pun slightly intended. Here’s the Truth.

 

Poster Wall BW

Truth

What is Truth?

It is the thing which hits you late at night,

When you are alone, clinging to nothing but darkness,

Like a war-torn lover holding onto the remnants,

Of the memory of what love was before they killed it.

It hits you like a sledgehammer defenestrated from a 10th story window.

Suddenly and with explosive force it shatters ego,

Breaking the everpresent manufactured techno bubble,

Freeing your consciousness as it freefalls into your skull.

                               WHAM!

You’re enlightened. Buddha never said it was so easy,

Easy like a drunk prom date in the back of your Chevy.

No condom date-rape baby, you’re both not ready…

For Truth,

The used condom of a generation wasted.

Venerated and penetrated in dark alleys,

In vacant lots and with vacant eyes,

The flagrant signs of a person abused.

Used and confused, we wander empty streets.

Empty selves looking for our next fix, addicts.

Spiritually hollow we’ll cram anything in that hole,

Chicken soup souls for the soulless faux wholeness.

 

We’re frightened, of ourselves and of our neighbors.

No savior in sight, try as we might, we are alone.

In front of TV screens, computer monitors,

Even sitting next to eachother, we are alone.

Homeless veteran who fought for a lie, dying in the streets,

Frozen in your sleep, please don’t cry…

Because Truth…

Like time heals all wounds and soon it will sledgehammer shatter

The mimeo-obscura movie screen false reality,

Samsara scented visions that cloud our thoughts,

Causing society to rot the apple core of knowledge.

But even a rotten core can still hold seeds,

If cultivated with care we can grow something new.

Reach within your own rotten core,

And seek the seeds inside.

Nurture well with tender care,

A phoenix waits to rise.

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PhotoPoem – Winter of Discontent

Posted: May 14, 2014 in Poetry
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It’s been a while since I posted one of these photography/poetry combination posts, too long. I’m working on getting back into a habit of regularly scheduled postings. Things have just been chaotic lately with other writing projects, including writing for an online cannabis newspaper, The Leaf Online.

I’ve got a love poem today, something mushy and romantic as a break from some of the darker poems I have posted in the past. I wrote this one the other night while thinking about my long distance relationship.

Welcome to Green Valley, clearly named by the same person who discovered Greenland.

Welcome to Green Valley, clearly named by the same person who discovered Greenland.

Winter of Discontent

Being apart from you is my winter of discontent,

And it’s one cold winter out here alone.

I’ll use my melancholy until it’s spent,

Writing to warm up these chilled bones.

 

Everything feels wrong when you are gone,

Life’s colors bleed through to gray.

You’ve always been a queen to this lowly pawn,

You’re the sun that lights my day.

 

When we’re together I can weather whatever,

No matter the weather I know we’ll be fine.

When we’re together there’s no need to remember,

Your smile is all I see.

 

But now we’re apart, how it’s been from the start,

Starcrossed lovers never cross paths easily.

So fragile, this distance is breaking our hearts,

But soon we’ll be together endlessly.

 

Our paths are entwined, as I’m yours you are mine.

So let Spring come to my Winter.

 

PhotoPoem – Red & Black

Posted: November 23, 2013 in Art, History, Poetry, Politics
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In the stanza about Emma Goldman the word read is pronounced in the past tense (phonetically red), this is meant to be a play on words but I worry it may not read well.

Sup B (Anonymous)

Red and Black 

Red is the color of passion.

The kind of passion that spills onto the streets,

In a paroxysm of rage or a gush of blood,

The parting kiss of a billy club.

Black is no color, it is a shade.

We cloak ourselves in its cool shadows,

Covering swaddled black-blocked masses,

We stand united against the police state.

Read is what we have done to Emma Goldman,

To Marx, Kropotkin, and scores more.

Read is what they did not do to our letters and pamphlets,

Detached in towers of gilded ivory.

Black is what they will do to the images they dislike,

To the actions, thoughts and people too.

Black is what we cannot let happen to our memories,

They must be held for their crimes against life.

Red is the color of love.

The love for all beings united in struggle,

Even those not deserving of love.

We all suffer, we all face hardships.

Black is the refreshing shade of a desert oasis.

Sheltering all those who don its penumbral armor.

Even cops who dispense billy club kisses,

Stand strong in dark sunglasses, in funereal black.

Red and black are the color guard and shaded cloak of our people,

Find them wherever there is tyranny and rally to them.

PhotoPoem – Atlas Shrugged

Posted: November 13, 2013 in Art
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Second photo-poem, “Sorrow” and “Atlas Shrugged.”

Sorrow-Myspace

Atlas Shrugged

Atlas shrugged and with a rush I feel the crush on my shoulders.

Unbearable, burdensome, barbaric weight.

Weight that no one man should be asked to bear,

The weight of the world which belongs to us all.

 

And why anyways should a man be tasked with this burden?

Are woman only good at bearing with the hips?

Ancient misogyny projected through mythology,

Atlas was the first douchebag kicking sand on the beaches of antiquity.

 

As that is so, why do we idealize this man so much?

We build temples honoring him where his disciples work their pecs.

When lost you ask him for directions, even though he doesn’t go anywhere, ever.

Hell, women even write books singing his praises for shrugging off work.

 

And now, I am stuck with that weight,

A weight which no one man should have to bear.

All because one other man shrugged off the duty given to him.

If we all shrugged off responsibility, where does it fall?

 

And when it falls, is it a hard fall, tumbling down to shatter the earth?

Or is it a slow fall like a feather, suspended animation trapped in air?

Maybe when it falls it lands like a thunderclap, lightning splitting sky,

Blinding our eyes, obscuring where responsibility really lies.

 

The responsibility for this world is inside each of us.

It is the sum total of the sins and graces of our forebearers.

Now it is our time to claim ownership of our lives,

Or be condemned to commit their same comedy of errors.

 

The reason this responsibility cannot be bore by one person,

Is because the mess we’ve made can never hope to be cleaned up alone.

PhotoPoem – Beauty Destroys

Posted: November 5, 2013 in Art, Poetry
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This is my first posting of what I am calling photo-poems, one of my photos paired with a poem to create a mood. This poem is about those couples who cease to exist as a pair of distinct individuals and fully collapse into one another, becoming a singular entity.  

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Collapse

Like two stars colliding,

Smash, we are a supernova baby.

Crushed so tightly together,

We occupy the same space and break physics.

You glowed so brightly off alone,

Even the moon wanted to steal your shine.

It took my white dwarf smile,

To rekindle your red giant heart.

Like two stars colliding,

Smash, things are all wrong.

We were meant to be companion stars,

Instead we accrete eachother’s matter.

I take on you, you take on me.

A-Ha! We come one and merge.

But physics won’t allow us exceed

Our own mass potentials.

Like two stars colliding,

Smash, we are a supernova baby.

Gone, our days as companions are

No longer two, but a singular star.

But when stars go supernova

You’re not guaranteed a nurturing explosion,

Which sends positive energy into the universe,

Sometimes a hole is left, an ugly black hole.

Sometimes when stars go supernova baby,

A big black hole is left where the love once was.

Sometimes when people go supernova baby,

They collapse into one another like two colliding stars.

They merge, co-mingle, and co-habitate.

In time Scott and Mandy become Scandy,

In time you lose your identity.

But who needs that when they have “love”?

After so long there is nothing left but a black hole,

Sucking in all potential futures, leaving just one.

I’ve never felt so hopeless than when you made me into a nova,

But somehow I broke your gravity, and I am still riding that shockwave.