Sparring with Empty Pages Poetry

Free-verse soul posts - gratis - from a nerdy bird who eschews status; a Midwest based page magemeister exploring lit's vista from around here up to the stratosphere. This blog's title is inspired by track #3 of "John Barleycorn Must Die", a studio album by the rock group Traffic. Avatar: Inverted linking book via Myst. The writing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. ----------------- Blog Image Artist: Godwin Akpan

[lebuc]

odette to a bean

* neurally charged 

after just one smell,

smilin’, straddling my stool, sippin’

this tidy inversion of hell. *

8/13 - 7/26 - lebuc - odette to a bean

[lebuc]

ruminating under a too-bright fluorescent

* stuck on page 23 & the day was so fair…

could have been out walking, washing the car been a month, easy

no more coffee for me 3rd’s the charm, then i’m not so charming, princess.

damn character won’t do, here in act 1, scene two– got a mind of her own

guess i’ll leave her alone, ‘reconfigurate’

guess she’ll make me wait make me sit here & ruminate.

i think i’m in love;

with the scene, i mean

her place in it… just can’t find the words.

they’re hers, you know I just gotta let go

let them flow, as i hear 'em, lay 'em down;

but now — nothing, so i sit.

as the post-dusk darkness makes this fluorescent light don a greenish hue,

cast on the page’s half-empty space as dawn awaits. * 3/15 - 7/26 - lebuc - ruminating under a too-bright fluorescent

[lebuc]

hissy

* Heat, humidity - check!

Even moon rays add a few fahrenheits, or is it celsius?

No reason on earth for it to be 90 degrees at ten pm;  ain’t nothing breezy in this city here on the roof, seven stories up.

Ice in my glass just hissed a steamy fit, told me and my swizzler where to stick it.

This heat can bring out  the absolute worst in people -                and in ice. * 7/4/13 - 7/4/26 - lebuc - hissy

[lebuc]

lament/attempt

* i can either lament a loss or attempt to recreate a gain, again

as the past has passed, is passe & my present presents presents with presence

& impresses upon a prescient to press on

though pressure ascends as attention intends,

as aspiration, accomplishment, intimation awaits

in ways yet unfaced, for a future yet infused as fate. * 7/26 - lebuc - lament/attempt

[lebuc]

expansively

* absorbing what my eyes espy, to what i’ve been exposed; when daunting doors are opened where one time they were closed

when i raise the window for air before i raise cain, or the roof

i realize it’s all hypothetical... the secret, the way, the proof.

we begin, surely - to wind and rend unto righteousness in our eyes, but it only serves to obscure where or when we’ve been apprised

that there’s much, much more beyond, unreachable in actual fact  by a physical or mental wand or at least, with sanity intact..

still - it’s there for the seeking if only we’d adjust our aim, endure a little more tweaking, display a little more game it’s all experimental—

so try & adjust your perspective might help you to vault the collective; try to adjust your perception then trust in the world’s new reception.

as long as we’re willing to see a bit more expansively; it can all become a bit more in our hope-filled eyes, lo-ve-ly. * 3/15 - 6/26 - lebuc - expansively

[lebuc]

fractals to practicals ( microscopic ruminations )

* …moving from crystalline compounds in a gelatinous populous of quantized particalized insides

realizing metasized insights into delight, amidst frightening fighting undergirding turgid surging and sighing

birthing words as birds…messaging, cresting

receding then emerging, economizing burgeoning herds investing and divesting,

lessening the questing to just sing songs as tweets into trees on repeat to please nerds asking them to heed and curb verbs as creed or seed money for those birds or as honey from bees (…ya heard?)

never waxing but decreeing or being non-static & factual maxers, creative causal hacks in slacks of fractals to practical actuals

up from infintestimal gestations phasing thru spaces to interrelate the nations...

we be. * 4/14 - 6/26 - lebuc - fractals to practicals ( microscopic ruminations )

[lebuc]

in the moment

* in the moment, momentarily 'til i drift into past times that carry me to visions of a future, rife with fate-filled folly

& tho i love to be jolly, life demands - before it commands one to attention should we desire an extension of our whole-grain reign on this plain

gamely seeking a squeeze - main, to make the squalling feel like breezes calling me to unyoke my soul & behind from the pall before the fall of our kind ( in my mind... )

& just sit in my skin, as the endgame trends resurface again from the resident-in-grief's riff on morality's raft, never knowing if he's really fore or aft, adrift from the firmament's heft he ignores & mocks

to the cleft where his fall from the wall with a flourish wouldn't find us shocked, as we'd be nourished & lifted by the grace we'd been gifted in that moment;

but i'm not one to foment & run for cover as i purge here in rhyme, one mo' time

...one poet to another. * 6/26 - lebuc - in the moment

[lebuc]

all the spectral feels

* certainly - i'm quite familiar with the blues...

& the greens, the reds, yellows, oranges & the indigo...

so pray tell, why would i dwell on only one slice & not embrace all of the spectral feels?

i shan’t. * 10/21 - lebuc - all the spectral feels

[lebuc]

kool-aid & caviar

* aspiring superheroes without the tights and capes, belying the fad sighings, trying on organic drapes focusing on content, trying hard to remain sane, symbolic addiction, anabolic fictions still out-tweak cocaine

there are seven certain cyphers i won’t use or amass, while the herd remains content with their grazing under glass.

* the pandering never ceases ‘til your pockets show linted creases 

though there are lucre’d leavings from those caught in traps set for fappers moral lapses and their waning mental maps.

'bi-focals' now buy local while thinking of global trusts, but scaling e-conomies won’t automatically ennoble us

without more human transfusion and branding sans insanity, algorithms without rhythm only fan our fabled vanity. 

* ‘twead verwy verwy quietwy’; when climbing use some stickum, just ‘cause you find folks down n’ out don’t mean you hafta kick ‘em.

so saddle up yer gripin’ son and ride your pony expressly, federales found bordered wallys, while i.r.s. was sniping wesley;

pawn that passport to adventure, cause you’re not the gaming kind, just you mind your manners, mon, while they gamely mine your mind

for that piece of paradise you lost while seeking naked truth,  that’s been steeping in a cauldron you’ve been shlepping since your youth.

* full of ‘sous esprit et plus’ mingled with some agitation - there’s no pining, whining, or waiting line - get on... rebuild your nation.  * 4/15 - 6/26 - lebuc -  kool-aid and caviar

[lebuc]

reapers

* reapers of woe who don't weep, step off - away from the major byways

spread your sour stuffing along side roads of soggy toasts & tippled toads hopping onto sad lily pads in staid seas stagnant & still.

we say goodbye to bad winds blowing bit by bit, byte by byte

daily and all through the nights of summer, winter - whenever - we've heard & seen enough of your bad tangerine dreams to know better.

whether or not we survive this shift-stormy weather

again tamping the tail-end of an amber-tanned day;

we'll take a quantified leap decide to protect our spirit and mind so you can no longer reap, so your tales of woe can wound us no mo;

& merrily we'll stroll to the end of our show, using our own sense ability, however uncommonly employed

to guide us as we journey this modern life, ...this brave new void. * 12/15 - 5/26 - lebuc - reapers

[lebuc]

freedom (really?)

* our constraints happen to have us land here in the western world

where the bubble, bubble toil & troubled soil gets, bit-by-bit gathered into a select few hands, our fates slowly dwindling like hourglass sand.

but just how 'free' do we aim to be?

free of the jostling, the attendant strife the co-opting of the natural life?

in all, there's only one surefire key to make it all cease, individually - with its promise of peace, tho residually.

but do we really want to go there, now?

individuation exists to populate nations, grist for the cosmic chessboard at play

we make moves & are moved upon it, according to the molders of our existential clay

& consolidation, least in the spiritual realm is much more stark than we realize; it's your wee helm in the one-size-fits-all prize.

idling, in a permanent dark stasis - euphemistically - leaves us no basis to evaluate, much less meditate on our state

how can one interpolate from a blank slate?

friends, death will surely do it - free you from daily strife;

on the flip side, how do you easily flee a life & all the love let loose within it through eons of time when our span here's only 'bout a minute, woeful or sublime.

maybe you yet strive to be 'free'

fortunately that's just not apt for me, at this time, this place, capisce? …nonetheless, hope to see you thrive in a much better space should you please; peace. * 5/26 - lebuc - freedom (really?)

[lebuc]

second law

* people say entropy’s the second law which i plan to fight with a tooth & a claw; where’s to be found an adversary  any worthier than time?

for a front-row seat to the main event i’ll gladly pay my only dime

& my time served ought to land me thick where i’ll swerve in the middle of the scrum brick by brick - and then some; 

'gainst those throwing shade onto life’s sunny side ain’t a damn thing funny about lettin' tallys ride

come seven, come eleven, when the clock strikes twelve, let the last one standing cast the thrashed into - well…

i think you know how the rest of this tomer goes, should you go down ramblin’ against unbeatable foes

when all’s said & done by the end of the day, “ you fought the good fight & it was alright! " 

…let the people say. * 12/19 - 5/26 - lebuc - second law 

[lebuc]

days

* good days, bad days, bleh days…

but they "are" days.

served, at least under a solar realm, not twilighted nights

devoid of the illumined soul lasso sunshine casts our way.

stacked like flapjacks they make a hell of a structure you can't knock over like legos, or jenga

just the juxtaposition of a mind, some rhymes, something to mark the paces nature makes among her many graces

extended usward for play & games or furrowed brows in frustration or borrowed valor or shame

should one wishes to live a secondhand life, intentionally or not.

within each of them is an equally vital impact, believe it:

you have a favorite date you're looking forward to? try to reach it without the day preceding…

a favorite memory? try to savor it without the next succeeding leading to the one we now share, here…

me - i'll bow to the Deity who, in fealty to its own fecundity

placed a paced path that in our elemental grasp of cosmic math we deem 'day by day'.

& to that I'll say good day, bad day, bleh day -

at least it's something about which i can speak, post-peak …until they run out, anyway. * 5/26 - lebuc - days

[lebuc]

codeine & contac ( stressed & congested, still... ) 

* The deflections and distractions  are swept into the corner pocket of the nine-ball, role call and response docket. *

tunes are playing for those pocketed with hemlocked recipes unfit for humans, filed under “YOU don’t get to tune in” here at the feet of the cosmic seat where flutes are piffling, trumpets bleating,  men-o’-war in work-study meeting & competing for that which should bear no deleting. *

whipping up their custards of humble pie served to us diners in greasy dens who didn’t pass the muster - why?  because our heads are still reined-in by saviors singing & phrases pinging from head spaces of mental cases - influential changelings;

their party sickles dangling across the board=  walking it through, to hoard all genuine articles at any cost (cutting) or head butting. *

we’ll have to resign to be assigned a reservation at the testing station, to wait and cogitate on our role as the cog-au-vin plate served up daily by the billions, twerking, slaving at the privilege of the millioned:

collecting, disrespecting, self-protecting, world-neglecting, claiming godhood while genuflecting,  to baal-istical statistics & paramilitary mystics hiding lipstick. *

when will we come to realize & gaze at the writing on the wide-eyed wally of the airwaves of weebling wobblng people  falling down blind alleyways like sheeple, going where you lead em, as long as they don't know you’ll feed em  into the slaughterhousing five-point-a-gon & on & on & on & on... beat don’t stop 'til they say it’s done; but the battles always seem to go on & on maybe cause they can’t be won - dimensional, two-dimensional, three-dimensional,  four - sick and tired of all mention of  another sick & tiring war. *

5/14 - 5/26 - lebuc - codeine & contac ( stressed & congested, still...) 

[lebuc]

memories we carry

* no dainty package, this…

the bundled visions, sounds & scents carted through the ages we traverse;

some, elemental as thunder & lightning lessons that may shock & shake but don't fell us.

we exchange & revel in the wash our vessels create in time-tossed sands

in the crush of impending tasks large & small, impersonal & intimate, with totes nearly topped

until the next wavequake smooths over the grains again so we can revisit - afresh, anew. * 5/26 - lebuc - memories we carry

[lebuc]

shadows & the light

* she deals in shadows & the light

one denoting what is left, the other portends what’s right.

moving with the grace of a swan

neither stopping for doubters or catcalls egging her on,

nor lifting her gaze from her ordained path…

back to living again - of life, for life; the elemental math.

born of a creative source of might & a creative force as well

bearing within a thousand stars’ light shaking free the shadows’ death knell. * 8/23 - 4/26 - lebuc - shadows & the light

* Back to Living Again - Curtis Mayfield w/ Aretha Franklin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBDQKdPWVGA

[lebuc]

wanting

* with both my arms I'll embrace the sky gathering up clouds for water to replace tears to be shed.

i’ll divide & parse them   so we don't run dry in our time of need when the whirlwind you just know is coming arrives.

we’ll do without rain a while, then - aridity will be preferred for comfort; armaments & rations do just fine, too.

mainly, we’ll need tears when hope no longer sustains 

& our capacity for grief is found wanting. * 12/13 - 4/26 - lebuc - wanting