#ballad verse

[danielhurstpoetry]

A Sea of Eyes

Gather close your Facebook posts. Bundle all your Likes. Count your Friends, all neatly stored. View the pictures of your life. You just wrote a witty status, Posted quite the article. Watch and wait, you patient hunter, Nimrod of the web.

At first, there comes a single buzz From the iPhone at your hip. Another few just after lunch. You’ve gathered quite the haul.

Make another post: some recent news, Then a picture from your week. A hunter knows its varied prey, The tactics of the kill. And you know them very well. Your Wall’s adorned in trophies Silent in reward.

You are the cheetah, on the prowl, Muscles ripe for blood. You are the sailor, at the bow, With spear and wild eyes Hungry against the ocean’s chop For that alabaster hide.

Mmm! And when you play that Youtube mix - Ahh! When you hear that song - You gaze upon your gathered trove And sigh in soft contentment. This is the life. This is your life. Your fame and fortune grow. Lose yourself within the den Beneath the fragrant smoke. Gather with the others, lost Inside their reveries -

Graze among the golden grass. Swim beneath the sea. Lay your weapons at your feet. Conspire in your sleep.

[danielhurstpoetry]

Ars Poetica

I grow sick of poetry, Every measured beat: All those cliche rhyming words Really aren't a treat.

It's all just tired turns of phrase That we've all said before And even the creative ones Don't phase me anymore.

Bah. What worthless things we write On paper, screens, or wrists That try to speak in quiet tones Across that painful rift

Between what is and what is not - That sad and sordid truth The hubris of humanity Believes that words can soothe.

And yet, I write them everyday despite the vanity of thinking I could caulk the gap of our insanity.

Truly, it's a fucking curse to bear this tawdry totem: An irrevocable obsession to create a poem -

Stupid. That's what I'd say it is To treat our great distress With worn and dirty bandages Of poetry's "Best guess,"

And yet, I'll not stop writing them Until the day I die - Shit, there it is, an old cliche And, fuck, look here, a rhyme.

[slush-pile-rejects]

message from an admirer

The bee can sting, but having stung, can beat his wings no more— such are your treach'rous barbs; once flung, they make the barber sore. The honey's sweeter to the tongue and needs no sting before, just as the highest praises sung leave not the praiser poor. Make honey, then where stings had lit, to sweet your sour wit.

Copyright © 1989

[slush-pile-rejects]

the awful understanding

Though I have slumbered in your shade, time immemorial, I start awake, from time to time, the terror of your going. I can no more imagine days without your thumping toll, than after death, and even that, to staunch your answers flowing.

Copyright © 2013