Insignificant Rough Beasts
The centre held
as it always will.
Our tragedy is in the beauty of tiny fingernails,
a boy's first gurgle,
his inability to alter the earth.
Our tragedy is that the ant in my kitchen
will not be mourned.
Murders tumble, drop of blood
by drop of blood
while complacent bodies
slouch toward inconsequential homes.
Our tragedy is that our comedies
play for only seconds
And that our bones
eternally grind to dust.
We are the disgraceful rough beast
yearning for fire
so that each red splash
would drown the earth.
MGB
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Sadness
Grandmother's Sadness
When his cancer
wins, and we mourn him
what will Grandmother do?
I have love fresh and new
with a marriage months from now.
If I fell
If my love fell
How incomprehensible
to love for a lifetime
with suffering for a final reward.
What could we tell
Grandmother in her sadness?
When we bury him
will she poke and joke
in that accent of oklahoma
or will she be silent
like that beautiful cliche
of an old lover's death?
MGB
Father's Sadness
He could barely tell us
and I couldn't reply.
To see a father
facing his father's death
and feel the sad recognition
of an end.
Grandfather's hands shake
and he smells like comfort.
a voice of gruff sweetness.
This shaky sign of disease,
how odd that it should comfort.
A hug to memorialize a man.
How odd
that when it ends
I will miss his tremors.
I wonder
if father
will miss them too.
MGB
When his cancer
wins, and we mourn him
what will Grandmother do?
I have love fresh and new
with a marriage months from now.
If I fell
If my love fell
How incomprehensible
to love for a lifetime
with suffering for a final reward.
What could we tell
Grandmother in her sadness?
When we bury him
will she poke and joke
in that accent of oklahoma
or will she be silent
like that beautiful cliche
of an old lover's death?
MGB
Father's Sadness
He could barely tell us
and I couldn't reply.
To see a father
facing his father's death
and feel the sad recognition
of an end.
Grandfather's hands shake
and he smells like comfort.
a voice of gruff sweetness.
This shaky sign of disease,
how odd that it should comfort.
A hug to memorialize a man.
How odd
that when it ends
I will miss his tremors.
I wonder
if father
will miss them too.
MGB
Sunday, April 1, 2012
The Prince
The Prince
The simple body
is a miraculous thing
Yet we craft improvement
forging synthesis
between brains and transistors.
We call him the hidden prince:
this flesh and silicon body.
The beast he blasted:
does the boy know
how to control such fire?
We were Legion;
It was foolish,
this attempt at a body.
A hive cannot abide
the pettiness of individuality.
MGB
The simple body
is a miraculous thing
Yet we craft improvement
forging synthesis
between brains and transistors.
We call him the hidden prince:
this flesh and silicon body.
The beast he blasted:
does the boy know
how to control such fire?
We were Legion;
It was foolish,
this attempt at a body.
A hive cannot abide
the pettiness of individuality.
MGB
Furnaces and Space Heaters
From a Furnace to a Space Heater
(In His Poems Anyway)
Temperatures and impetus to write
the madness of new ideas, the unwieldy
excitement of discovering Nietzsche.
That out of nothing
truth may be written
engenders brilliant blazes
of grey-matter overtime.
Fingers whittled away the markings
of keyboards with anxiety
to understand the universe and the self;
Now every love poem written
is torn apart for compost.
Love felt cannot
be mirrored by little words.
All is melodrama or illiterate scratchings
He wants to write of brilliance and stars
but finitude is the heart of his love
and he cannot make his words right.
MGB
(In His Poems Anyway)
Temperatures and impetus to write
the madness of new ideas, the unwieldy
excitement of discovering Nietzsche.
That out of nothing
truth may be written
engenders brilliant blazes
of grey-matter overtime.
Fingers whittled away the markings
of keyboards with anxiety
to understand the universe and the self;
Now every love poem written
is torn apart for compost.
Love felt cannot
be mirrored by little words.
All is melodrama or illiterate scratchings
He wants to write of brilliance and stars
but finitude is the heart of his love
and he cannot make his words right.
MGB
Words to Kill
Words to Kill
Heart
Love
Soul
Passion
Beauty
These words limp
far from their platonic selves
Oh to write in Spanish
where my love for a dog
is expertly distinguished
from the love of my wife.
MGB
Heart
Love
Soul
Passion
Beauty
These words limp
far from their platonic selves
Oh to write in Spanish
where my love for a dog
is expertly distinguished
from the love of my wife.
MGB
Beyond Our Technobabble
Beyond Our Technobabble
What new words
could measure the heaviness
of planets or gods?
What Spirituality,
what volcano,
what solemn beauty,
speaks from the metal-meshing speakers?
Our language lacks the umph
to articulate our catastrophe.
These wires
cannot hold spirits
within a machine;
Circuits will not bind
earthquakes or the wind;
no microphone
could record the final command of a God.
MGB
What new words
could measure the heaviness
of planets or gods?
What Spirituality,
what volcano,
what solemn beauty,
speaks from the metal-meshing speakers?
Our language lacks the umph
to articulate our catastrophe.
These wires
cannot hold spirits
within a machine;
Circuits will not bind
earthquakes or the wind;
no microphone
could record the final command of a God.
MGB
A beginning out of a void.
Ok, so what we are going to do is: include all my writing stuff here. Not just game reviews.
Give me a place to put stuff down.
K: so the following will be a smattering of writings. Some will be about a novel I want to read, some just poetry.
Of Void and Earth and Movement
When we recognize our personal cliches
our chirping redundancies:
Do we shatter them?
Should I carve an anvil
from the mountain and
hammer such familiar words
into dust?
Or is it better to forge
and bend and twist the cold ideas
into something fiery new?
Fire is where I
like to live
where I nurse brilliance
Yet without quenching
all would be dull and brittle
How long does a poet have
before his life is either a
cold and bitter sword
or a lump of warm soft metal.
-MGB
Give me a place to put stuff down.
K: so the following will be a smattering of writings. Some will be about a novel I want to read, some just poetry.
Of Void and Earth and Movement
When we recognize our personal cliches
our chirping redundancies:
Do we shatter them?
Should I carve an anvil
from the mountain and
hammer such familiar words
into dust?
Or is it better to forge
and bend and twist the cold ideas
into something fiery new?
Fire is where I
like to live
where I nurse brilliance
Yet without quenching
all would be dull and brittle
How long does a poet have
before his life is either a
cold and bitter sword
or a lump of warm soft metal.
-MGB
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