"I'll be your host tonight ... which, I guess, ... makes you my parasitic worms"
Ian M
Posts: 123
Guardian
He wakes to the sound
Of the self-winding radio:
Emerges geometrically, shape after shape
From beneath the layered web of blankets
Radio 4 stokes the anger inside
With its 8 o'clock bulletin,
But there's no avoiding it -
It's the only way he can wake up nowadays
The anger is dissipated by picking out the lies, one after another to remind his independence of thought, of his critical faculties still in enviable health after all these years. The bitterness is smoked away by the time for the first of the day.
The first rays of the sun glance opaquely off the guard-turret-turned-water-tower on the top of the hill. The trees still swathed in shadow stretch for the rolling miles like a swarthy sea heaving in waves but a few metres high, taking their oceanfloor sandbanks with them in the dull reflections of overnight frost visible beneath the foliage.
The guardian looks out.
Just in time once more for another day
To note the changes in the land
And mark them well for a few to see
The faraway hills, snow-clad
Look like a foreign country
Preparing for another invasion...
Perhaps the black forests of Germany
In Autumn
yes man
i am a sleepwalker and a yes-man
i outstay the task in hand
and still feel i haven't quite got it right
energy for a worthless cause
apathy for an interesting opposite
my quest: to take an order and satisfy it
'Mister Eager-to-please
I've caught you sleeping on the job!'
toying with rigmarole and your intelligent fingers
the boss said he'd give his successor your excellent resume
but in it even he wished for a more lively independence
'yes, my friends, no, for my part I should have been gone long ago.'
Unblinking
the practice of naming,
the beginning of oration
and the jump-start of additional information:
these have still a priori importance
but the pinnacle of this pile-up of residue?
the elevated guiding principle.
Capital 'I's at the top of every pyramid
This Claimer
5,4,3 days to go in one hard slog to my employment’s finish line
and to the end of this tether.
remember why I write in code:
so an explicit message can't be read by those eager to misinterpret
y'never know: they might just run out of bigger fish to fry one day
and be on my doorstep with a quota to fulfill the next.
high profile can be as much of a defence
as low profile when it comes to it
the important skill is learning to read the signs when they come
and in being prepared for what they might signify for you.
you may have relegated thought like this
for use when watching films or reading books or interpreting songs even,
but for some these are hard currency to be spent in their lives;
even to the staving off of their (or their family's) demise
one day it could be you too.
THERE IS NO POWER IN CHOOSING NOT TO
when frustration bursts to your surface
with old unresolved tensions that you barely remembered
it doesn't even _occur_ to you that you might
have no choice in your reaction
the spine that used to be so elastic
went past its breaking limit so long
ago there under the strain...
it has forgotten its suppleties
and stands only in lax inertia:
all its coil long since unwound
emotion reflexes only in disgust and
confirmation of an Other's dowdy persona.
confirmation of _their_ worst fears.
--
the cocksucker stood inches away
from the face of his death
and barely flinched
I yelled at him what I had seen
but he pretended not to hear
watching a fox intent on its
business at the sides of the line
all-aware and paying no heed.
That little prick has something I want.
In fact, I could kill for it.
He wakes to the sound
Of the self-winding radio:
Emerges geometrically, shape after shape
From beneath the layered web of blankets
Radio 4 stokes the anger inside
With its 8 o'clock bulletin,
But there's no avoiding it -
It's the only way he can wake up nowadays
The anger is dissipated by picking out the lies, one after another to remind his independence of thought, of his critical faculties still in enviable health after all these years. The bitterness is smoked away by the time for the first of the day.
The first rays of the sun glance opaquely off the guard-turret-turned-water-tower on the top of the hill. The trees still swathed in shadow stretch for the rolling miles like a swarthy sea heaving in waves but a few metres high, taking their oceanfloor sandbanks with them in the dull reflections of overnight frost visible beneath the foliage.
The guardian looks out.
Just in time once more for another day
To note the changes in the land
And mark them well for a few to see
The faraway hills, snow-clad
Look like a foreign country
Preparing for another invasion...
Perhaps the black forests of Germany
In Autumn
yes man
i am a sleepwalker and a yes-man
i outstay the task in hand
and still feel i haven't quite got it right
energy for a worthless cause
apathy for an interesting opposite
my quest: to take an order and satisfy it
'Mister Eager-to-please
I've caught you sleeping on the job!'
toying with rigmarole and your intelligent fingers
the boss said he'd give his successor your excellent resume
but in it even he wished for a more lively independence
'yes, my friends, no, for my part I should have been gone long ago.'
Unblinking
the practice of naming,
the beginning of oration
and the jump-start of additional information:
these have still a priori importance
but the pinnacle of this pile-up of residue?
the elevated guiding principle.
Capital 'I's at the top of every pyramid
This Claimer
5,4,3 days to go in one hard slog to my employment’s finish line
and to the end of this tether.
remember why I write in code:
so an explicit message can't be read by those eager to misinterpret
y'never know: they might just run out of bigger fish to fry one day
and be on my doorstep with a quota to fulfill the next.
high profile can be as much of a defence
as low profile when it comes to it
the important skill is learning to read the signs when they come
and in being prepared for what they might signify for you.
you may have relegated thought like this
for use when watching films or reading books or interpreting songs even,
but for some these are hard currency to be spent in their lives;
even to the staving off of their (or their family's) demise
one day it could be you too.
THERE IS NO POWER IN CHOOSING NOT TO
when frustration bursts to your surface
with old unresolved tensions that you barely remembered
it doesn't even _occur_ to you that you might
have no choice in your reaction
the spine that used to be so elastic
went past its breaking limit so long
ago there under the strain...
it has forgotten its suppleties
and stands only in lax inertia:
all its coil long since unwound
emotion reflexes only in disgust and
confirmation of an Other's dowdy persona.
confirmation of _their_ worst fears.
--
the cocksucker stood inches away
from the face of his death
and barely flinched
I yelled at him what I had seen
but he pretended not to hear
watching a fox intent on its
business at the sides of the line
all-aware and paying no heed.
That little prick has something I want.
In fact, I could kill for it.
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
I think this poem was written either before or after (a day or so either way) a thanksgiving party that a friend of mine held a week after the actual american feast-day.
I was under some influence or other.
I think there's supposed to be a joke in the middle about a 'pastor jack' or something, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was referring to. If any of you come up with the idea that there might be more to it than some stupid in-joke, perhaps you could let me in on my own secret*...
Um, so.
This piece was given the slightly whimsical (some might say) title of:
if I didn't tell you what this poem was about, you wouldn't have a clue
ahahahahahaha
strength of squalor in my own home
space denied to wisecrack falsestep merchants
sibyllant syntactical warfare
to keep the shadow from caster:
the pastor
jack rabbit, jump!
patti beckons when I'm about to catch a wave of sleep;
frightens the shit outta me
just as I was gonna dream
a little dream of me
involving bicycles in Paris,
putting a physicist straight on the finer points
and joining in with the halfwit jibes
of people mostly my age, leading 'respectable lives'.
...
*"Gather round kids, and today we'll try to figure out the original meaning of whatever twisted artefact [arty fact?] has just emerged from the nightmare god-machine mangle of Ian's Head!"