Auntie's Anti-Poems

[firefangled]

A beautiful song for a heart unsung. This was so many things at once - not easy I'm sure, tender, insightful, reverent to name a few.

Thanks, Auntie.

[AuntShecky]

Thank you, Prince and fire, you're both too kind!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thank you, Prince and fire, you're both too kind!

I wouldn't presume to defend myself, but personally I don't think firefangled was being "kind" at all!

[firefangled]

I wouldn't presume to defend myself, but personally I don't think firefangled was being "kind" at all!

No being kind from me, Auntie! This was a marvelous poem that needed to be written. Your perceptions often amaze me.

[PrinceMyshkin]

No being kind from me, Auntie! This was a marvelous poem that needed to be written. Your perceptions often amaze me.

I, on the other hand, was perhaps being "kind" as I found the poem nothing more than a heartfelt outrush of compassion constrained only by the elegance of the craft in it.

[AuntShecky]

Despite early predictions that the team would likely become a post-season contender in a favorable position to win the World Series, this year presented the New York Mets with scores of problems, most blatantly with the majority of their core players on the disabled list for most of the season. The remaining shoestring roster struggled defensively, with plenty of amateurish errors and a failure to achieve effective pitching strategies. Offensively, the structure of their new ballpark did not seem conducive to home runs, while base-running mistakes cost the team several RBIs. Emblematic of the team’s troubles this year was a late August home game in which the Phillies were leading. While seeming to rally in the bottom of the ninth, the Mets became victims of an unassisted triple play, only the second such game-winning triple play in Major League History.

As of September 1, 2009, the record of the New York Mets was 59-72, with 31 games left to play in the season.

“ ‘Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.’
‘Yes, Sir, I know it is’. . .
Some game if you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game all right, I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”
–J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye


Playing Out the String

At this
point
the sports

metaphor
collapses
hard.

Are we supposed
to swing through
the motions,

look at our
watches, settle
our affairs --

or fight
meaningless
battles

refusing
to surrender
to the inevitable?

All right,
it is
September,

and it’s
the bottom
of the ninth,

but so far
nobody’s
out.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Despite early predictions that the team would likely become a post-season contender in a favorable position to win the World Series, this year presented the New York Mets with scores of problems, most blatantly with the majority of their core players on the disabled list for most of the season. The remaining shoestring roster struggled defensively, with plenty of amateurish errors and a failure to achieve effective pitching strategies. Offensively, the structure of their new ballpark did not seem conducive to home runs, while base-running mistakes cost the team several RBIs. Emblematic of the team’s troubles this year was a late August home game in which the Phillies were leading. While seeming to rally in the bottom of the ninth, the Mets became victims of an unassisted triple play, only the second game-winning triple play in Major League History.

As of September 1, 2009, the record of the New York Mets was 59-72, with 31 games left to play in the season.

“ ‘Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.’
‘Yes, Sir, I know it is’. . .
Some game if you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game all right, I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”
–J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye


Playing Out the String

At this
point
the sports

metaphor
collapses
hard.

Are we supposed
to swing through
the motions,

look at our
watches, settle
our affairs --

or fight
meaningless
battles

refusing
to surrender
to the inevitable?

All right,
it is
September,

and it’s
the bottom
of the ninth,

but so far
nobody’s
out.

A heartfelt cri du coeur, if I ever heard one!

[AuntShecky]

“And since thou so desirously
Did’st long to die, that long before thou could’st
And long since thou no more could’st dye,
Thou in thy scatter’d mystique body would’st
In Abel dye, and ever since
In thine, let their blood come
To begge for us, a discreet patience
of death, or of worst life: for oh, to some
not to be martyrs, is a martyrdom.”
–John Donne, “The Martyrs,” 1633

“My mother is actually the most sound existential philosopher I've ever met. Her point of view is more profound than Kierkegaard or Nietzsche. She says, ‘Every day you're above ground is a good day.’ “
-Kiss musician Gene Simmons


An Exhortation Forbidding Suicide

It’s not this life but sorry circumstances
I want to shed, but still I want to leave
this earth of shredded dreams and absent chances.
Yet lacking me, the world won't wet its sleeve
with weeping. Dogs will wag their tails,
and songs of birds will hold their tones.
Skies will stay blue against white points of sails,
while stems won't cease to bend where winds have blown.
The world would stay, if I left it alone.

Without a world, I'd lack a place to stand,
I'd flounder so, bereft of gravity,
not a step closer to the closing plan,
missing what I'd left and what was left to see.
Rejecting all, far more I'd need,
adrift from terra firma ground.
Renouncing life invokes a senseless creed.
Poor lives are better than none, I have found;
so for the nonce I think I'll stick around.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thank God for this:

[FONT="Book Antiqua"]
Poor lives are better than none, I have found;
so for the nonce I think I'll stick around.

and I thought this

stems won't cease to bend where winds have blown.

was splendid!

[firefangled]

Auntie, I've never subscribed to the current popular platitude, "it's all good," because it's not all good, but it is all balanced somehow.

This is what I get from both the structure and content of your poem. The couplets at the end of each stanza provide a stated harmony.

It is a just argument beautifully written.

[AuntShecky]

Prince and Firefangled, thank you both.

[DanielBenoit]

“When I wrote that, God and I knew what it meant, but now God alone knows.”
–Robert Browning


The Puzzle and the Pity

We cannot see the ciphers, such a stretch
of forest, dense with senseless reason, and
no rhyme. A murky stream from a source unknown
churns deep beneath our unschooled reckoning.

From splatters of thoughts in scatter-shot lines
we seek some soul-balm from the sensitive,
at bottom as sincere as an infant’s cry:
a babble, sure, yet rarefied as Yeats.

We dread the water, then attempt to wade.
Too swiftly comes the splashback: “too mainstream,” “derivative,” “colloquial,” “too trite,”
or “déclassé,” or worst of all, ignored.

Listen, we don't do this because it’s easy
or that we can (or think we can.) We see
an empty page as an anti-Everest
that may be worth the risk of an unsafe climb
in front of us, because it isn't there.

This is magic. Pure magic.

I am in awe.

The rhythm.. . . .the words, it's as if you spend hours picking each and every word so that it was perfect. It's so pleasurable to read outload!

[PrinceMyshkin]

“When I wrote that, God and I knew what it meant, but now God alone knows.”
–Robert Browning


The Puzzle and the Pity

We cannot see the ciphers, such a stretch
of forest, dense with senseless reason, and
no rhyme. A murky stream from a source unknown
churns deep beneath our unschooled reckoning.

From splatters of thoughts in scatter-shot lines
we seek some soul-balm from the sensitive,
at bottom as sincere as an infant’s cry:
a babble, sure, yet rarefied as Yeats.

We dread the water, then attempt to wade.
Too swiftly comes the splashback: “too mainstream,” “derivative,” “colloquial,” “too trite,”
or “déclassé,” or worst of all, ignored.

Listen, we don't do this because it’s easy
or that we can (or think we can.) We see
an empty page as an anti-Everest
that may be worth the risk of an unsafe climb
in front of us, because it isn't there.

However did I miss before, and... I'll have whatever you're having!

[Pendragon]

Adore it Auntie! Just what I need at the moment...

[AuntShecky]

Escapee

From the brush he darted out
with three dull-coated sparrows
leading the way.

A nearby porch became a perch
for reveling in the new-found
freedom of the day.

Despite the downward-tilting bill,
he appeared not at all wild
but cared-for and trim,

unaware of any upcoming chill
or an unknown owner missing him–

but blissfully content to preen,
flaunting his feathered exotica,
tropical and green.