Best Bifurcated Poems
("Noh" is an ancient Japanese style of
drama, broadly similar to Elizabethan
tragedy. "The Wind in the Pines" is
my version of a well-known Noh play.)
1. The Buddhist Priest
This was the day of the White Crane.
I was walking from Kyoto to fair Kobe,
and not omitting a single shrine,
now nearing the end of my three-day journey.
The morning had taken on a hue
of pastel. I reached a promontory, above the sea
with curious roadside ancestor tombs,
slabs of coarse stone. The wind
and waves, so restless, had done their work,
scarring and scarifying the soft chalk,
leaving strange columns, each capped
by its crude ashlar memorial tablet.
As I prayed to the dead, my bare head
was lifted. My gaze (no longer mine)
was drawn towards a tall pine,
standing alone, its trunk bifurcated.
That tree, I felt somehow, had waited
for me to come. Looking about me,
I saw a peasant, short and stoutly
built. "Tell me about the tree,"
I said. "And what's that poetry?
That hanging plaque?" He said I'd found
something special. "This is hallowed ground,"
he muttered. "Matsukaze and her sister
Murasame mourned here, Mister.
Then Heaven took pity on the two brine
girls, and turned them into this pine."
By mortal things, we should set no store:
but hearing this, I wanted to know more.
Let them say I was a simple, stubborn person,
hypersensative or insensative, a dispenser of partial justice,
a person of particular patience,
may those who encountered me in moments of bliss or blight,
in instances of charity, charisma or condemnation speak of me ruefully & beautifully,
some will surely say that I was apolitical, asexual, atypical,
an atheist an animist, a racist or an altruist, a want to be soldier,
a combatant for my liberty,
others, I suppose, that I was selfish as sin,
courteous like kindness, and furious as a frustrated phantom,
maybe they'll say I was gay or anticompliance,
I do not dare require truth, fact or fiction from my bifurcated biographers,
I only ask for their breath,
their rosey & ruse recollections of my life so stark,
let them say that they knew me,
let them say that I lived,
that I lived lovingly, lonesomely, and learnedly,
let them witness my reality like laughter in the dark -
J.A.B.
To read or watch movies, that is the question.
When tired at workday's end, depressed about death's
certainty and my recent surgery
unable to contribute purpose
i.e., figure out whether to bomb Iran
or worship Krshna
and other gods such as Homer gives us in the Iliad
I lack vision therefore I choose television.
Chemistry text, bifurcated plant key
esp. grasses, intro to calculus, physics
unopened time slides by inexorably.
That's the dilemma with no resolution,
drooping rachis, striations on the lemma.
Dying chooses you. You don't choose dying.
So go slow as the day will allow.
The cancer patient's real work is facing
harsh realities and making adjustments:
getting the most out of life, considering
what his children will need after he's gone,
preparing his wife, parents, colleagues and friends,
and completing important professional tasks.
Get the most out of life. That's all God asks.
In Life of Pi the tiger is tiresome, short-sighted
eating everything in sight today, no plan for tomorrow.
The boy, however, is beautiful, reading
the lifeboat manual, building a resting place on the ocean
from oars and life vests, writing about his emotions,
loneliness and observations. The tiger's obsession
with killing keeps our boy alive with fear,
an aphrodisiac, a distraction from any hint
of hopelessness. And then there is the ultimate unknown,
the boy's conversations with Krshna which explain
the innumerable stars and their gentle glow.
Black women in America,
let the sterile tabulating machine
tally your vociferous views
Loud women pridefully possessing
the highest voting demographics in the amber land
Have your passions changed America’s
cruel grain racial oppression ...
Are your males still getting brutally beaten and killed?
Did your strong vocal pleas
get heard by your Egyptian queen of heaven?
Such burning Pharaohic desires
you have for your flesh-and-bone idols
Will your queen of heaven
make the earth shake up the superior attitude
the pyramid clouds have towards you and your children?
Can your queen of heaven
bosom vibrate a gushing Milky Way,
which will break the levee of hate that’s dam drowning
you and your weak, cuckold men and chalk-face erased children?
Guess your queen of heaven
is waiting on her four-year period again
To cast another bloody ballot
for your next new favorite lying politician
Black women in America,
which serpent did your queen of heaven send
to do the lip-service saving?
Whose bifurcated tongue
does she demands your freewill to knee bend
Dark spirit women,
you and your beggarly men,
go kiss the queen of heaven’s colored cloth
freshly wiped on her celestial rear end
Let your doting, voting lips reek of rejection —
demo-crapped on once more again
As your faith in man be smeared like dung
over your sun-darkened slave skin
Keep on Baal worshiping the queen of heaven,
until holy brimstone rain
melt your idol iron chain souls from existence
The Ghost Soul
I’ve always been a ghost soul
Existence is my lot,
What you call life is simply pain,
And love, I know it not.
Life’s boundaries are lingering
My train it never comes,
And hope to me a paltry gift
Just dried chrysanthemums.
If God were real, He would do more
Than leave all in a lurch,
Myopic patrons of the faith,
Pretenders to His church.
And Hell is not that different
From my life’s daily bread,
Relieved, from what I think I see,
The dead are simply dead.
I’m lost in my imagining
Control of love that’s past
The rotting dreams of what could be,
Thank God they didn’t last.
-------------------------------------
Giving Up The Ghost
My dream is possibility,
Not what I think I’m owed,
My expectations not in sight,
And love my only code.
All feelings are a gift from God,
Intended just to serve,
His loving lessons to His child,
When life throws me a curve.
And daily are His gifts bestowed,
Confirming He is near,
My antics bringing Him a laugh,
His laugh fills me with cheer.
Content with what the future holds
No fears of early chill,
I joyfully step into breach
A lamb unto His will.
My shepherd in the storm’s tumult,
And shield from all alarms,
The wonder of His saving grace,
The welcome of His arms.
Brian Johnston
December 21,2014
Poet's Notes:
This is another example of what I call an Echo Poem. One poem takes the lead and the other poem responds to it.
the god particle concedes to a universal mass
as predictably, it announces its presence
taking the holy sacrament from under its glass
beliefs from before so consigned obsolescence
we now think we know - no...really, we do
how the universe came to exist, massively being
galaxies of stars, unseen dark matters, us too
giving God a reason to give our lives meaning
photons and gluons of stuff are Peter's principals
bosons innumerable occupy the same quantum stated
the best minds wraparound said concept so quizzical
but not before a big bang began branches bifurcated
bosons like fermions those particles elementary
that come into existence and are gone in a blink
transcendental though we may think they seem to be
harder to transcend than at last we might think
what are we to learn of ourselves from this tidbit
of long sought actual theoretical enlightenment
can we care more for each other just a tiny bit?
and concede happily to life's common wonderment
let us learn with concern what CERN can discern
about all the quirks and quarks of this universe
give mankind a good reason to give out a good turn
and make our corner a bit better than the subverse
add Lederman, the goddamn particle's indefinite article
"so central to the state of physics today, yet so elusive" *
is like the first time you borrowed your Dad's vehicle
for a ride with your squeeze to amour more conducive
you wanted get down to the real heart of the matter
and experience the unknown pleasures of knowing
your delving into places and matters that matter
the whole experience just drives you to keep going
© Goode Guy 2012-07-05
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#.22God_particle.22
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/04/156248281/new-subatomic-particle-may-be-physics-missing-link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Higgs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN
OK, mindful class,
past time to reopen our nurturing nests,
our nutritional mouths
and good-natured ears
and fertile reverse reserves
of not Lose/Lose
EarthMother Health-Wealth Care.
First,
we define our variables,
bilaterally co-arising
recreating
bipartisan dipolarities
Depolarizing
bipolar competing aggravations
replacing Old School co-gravitations
cooperative structured spatial out-forms (x-Yang)
and compassionate temporal in-flow(y-Yintegral
Organic green growing secular BodyLeft (x)
and sacred MindRight felt (y)
x/y brilliantly resilient body/mind co-investments
Where x presents Integrity
of enlightened LeftBrain solid form,
And y represents CoInvestments
of empowering RightBrain synergetic flow.
Please respond as I call:
X also Here presents...
Universal
space without sufficient time
And Y again Now remembers...
Unitarian
wealth of time without severing
Universal health care space
Very good.
And, thereby,
resurfaces reverse appositions
between Solidarity (x)
and Synergy (y)
Of non-zero
Open Whole Living BioSystems
for x/y Gaian NeuroSynthesis
Green Tao Energy
CoPassionately coalescing
inside mindful listening classrooms
while creolizing cultures and religions
outside indigenously integral
win/win peak experience
polyculturally robust
HealthCare Communication
Wealthy EcoPolitical Systems
As Golden Rule understood
and appreciated
by AnthroPrivileged students
of LeftBrain empowering
nonviolent ecofeminist
secular (x) communicating forms
sacred (y) peak communion flows
In economic
and political conclusions,
co-invested and co-operative
Universal spatial solidarity (x)
Yang bilaterally double-binds Yintention
Unitarian temporal synergy
exponentially encircling (y)
Emergent
Mono(x)/Poli(y)-Theistic
Gaian felt panentheistic
inside RightBrain nonverbal
nonviolent win/win communication
Unconditional warm-flow
womb-formed pre-traumatic
universal/unitarian bifurcated mindfulness
Original prime matriarchal attachment
(x/y) ego/eco-systemic harmonic
EarthTribal resilient ch'i-balance
harmonic wisdom circles
for sharing resonant wealth
of resilient health.
He loves being incorrect,
politically and otherwise
He revels in how bad he disrespects
anybody who don’t agree with him
His supporters staunchly defend
all of his boorish behavior
His critics call those supporters,
his crutch enablers,
who don’t have a leg to stand on
If you don’t believe me:
give the Tweet Man your phone
Watch the foul characters he spew;
misogynist alphabets demeaning
women with gutter vitriol
Dignified manners he don’t like ‘em at all,
calls them soft and weak
So Obama lite, so meek
That ain’t the way he Wolfman speak ...
So incorrect is how he love to be
Don’t feel he ever needs to apologize,
stretching a little disinformation into a big lie
Said he woulda won the popular vote,
if the voter rolls hadn’t been compromised —
Three million border illegals snuck in line,
that’s the reason why
Political incorrectness is his spot of tea;
boasted that the England and German female rulers
were dumb as can be
And of course, he’s the smartest man in the universe,
just ask him yourself
Aside from the obvious bent truths,
he has a skewed self-image view
Being so incorrect got him the crown he will crow,
with profanity laced utterances coming out of his throat
A bad seed loudmouth wearing bully pants —
ain’t no doubt about it, decency never had a chance
He’s so vile, so morally suspect ...
spitting bifurcated words so incorrect
The sadness of it all: history will record
how bad he flunked the leadership test
Too many incorrect answers, I presume
Like two paynim peas in a pod,
their scurvy color
lipslick scheme is sour green
Got beady black eyes
scam shady —
A graft gaze that squints bifurcated focus
from hocus-pocus pupils;
whose tainted teal look-see, aperture con-fidence teach
a vulture view!
Crafty condor blinkers reflect
cunning thoughts
with a subtil snake-oil sheen
The scales of their subliminal deception
weighs silver speak fugazi
forge fraught
Cheating and conniving is the gold hush standard
of the blarney barker bling-bling
And cheator ear worms
dig every electromagnetic crypt-ic message
that the swindle Svengali sing-sing
Cabbage cheater chants
grow robber root rancor on the
dire dark,
underbelly dusk horizon
Them pickpocket pants,
pig feet parlance,
taste liquidity legume leper-con unlucky
on welsh rabbit tongues
01-12-22
The sun in its melancholy phase
dazed swirls, sun dial spinning
Pale moon but a mere shadow
empty ball, psychedelic haze
Into the bleary copse I tread
for a twilight detox of sorts
nerves on end, psyche suspends
light with shadows, a disco portends
Blipping pulses of light filter down
the pin pricks cause vertigo,
as disoriented interloper, stagger
through the bifurcated maze
Bristling limbs tap their snare drums
dissonant rhythms, arrhythmia creeps
swaying arms shroud every move
Damocles' sword swaggers o'er my head
The ground's tangled web straddles
my feet; jagged stumps, fibrous roots,
slippery Lichens harrow each quaking step
the seismic swell rises to my shaken core
An eerie wind serenades my imagination
grainy outlines appear in the distance
wispy figments dance in the shadows
above, silted holograms prance through trees
Picking up the pace, now double time
my lagging adrenaline to prime
shedding my sensory shield
my naked soul conquers the tempest
Every ringside observer knows,
Truth don’t pull no punches
Getting down dirty in the earthy trenches,
reveal who the real
firmament workers are
When a pile of brown waste
is coming out of
somebody’s backdoor mouth
Don’t let ‘em try to shovel
those swarm of flies
thru the front door of your house
Avoid walking thru those cow pastures:
Don’t step in it ...
Let none of that smelly smear
stick to your shoe
Avoid the uranium fear manure fields:
Don’t get scare-boo
by their lung moo
When punch drunk ear boxers
start piling the lies on thick
Their green excrement promises
is gon make you vomit sick
Don’t get the greedy steer eyes,
then open your fattened,
flattered mouth by bribe surprise ...
Don’t snake steak swallow none of it
Grab that honest-to-good shovel
and start sweat swinging it
If not, soon you gon be
knee deep in
every bridle inch of this horse plop obit
Step lightly ... always in the path of right
Avoid dim cow pastures
that darkly wanna stumble dung smack your mouth
But, Truth gon always bulrush connect
to a Nile gator jaw
Crocodile teeth gon always try to
bite the lion’s paw
Remember the Queensberry Rules,
my gentlemen peeps:
Bury the right cross in a fool’s jaw,
and do it justly jab quick
Bob and weave ... don’t fall for none of those
fake counter punches,
bifurcated tongue tricks
The Devil says, fight dirty —
do whatever it takes to get rich
But those who choose to win that way,
will fall blindly
into the bottomless money pit
Making it so Lucifer loser plain to see,
they stepped into a mess of it
And in that sour field of filthy lucre dreams,
full of lying, nasty quips ...
Their sphincter mouths will surely
get a shovel full of
derriere brown stick lips
killer (suicide) wrought living corpse
fruition, while she whipped various
nutritious concoctions in blender
to ensure minimal essentials to, I
readily admit) famished body in con
junction with applying vital supple
mints into bony gluteus maximus,
thru fuel injection which submissiveness
to acquiesce, and bare buttocks did
absolutely nothing to squelch death wish.
I inexorably overcame eating disorder
deadly hunger strike essentially constituted
declaration of independent control
despite horrendous craving for food
jabbed innards like a pike bifurcated
psychic division loosed, ousted, and
routed coeval grim reaper grippe
permanent goal lyeth drink seize abated
gnome hatter reminiscence blissful child
hood over flooded self made dike
revised engendering propensity
to catapult into abysmal emotional hole
before invention of Facebook, I
mentally clicked Like sparring sword
fight mailer daemons mortally wounded
slain, viz healthy development stole.
Imprimatur indelibly etched decades
after bout with passive exit from life
crimps psycho/social skills plus
stunted physical growth butcher knife
cuts affected mental health with panic
attacks and anxiety though existence
considerably less riddled debilitating
symptoms (such as vertigo, racing heart,
profuse sweating, nausea, irritable bowels)
courtesy prescription medications.
Frozen Ground
Everything differs on frozen ground,
Brittle stalagmites obscure green skywards,
Whilst all around damp is the sound,
That crunches the breakfast walk.
Semi-permanence becomes a mirror to our image,
Bifurcated bark life agonises brown skywards,
Its so easy to lose sight of our village,
That nestles so we can pretend we belong.
Yesterday the ground was not frozen solid,
We trudged up slopes of deep dark mud,
A prancing, chancing, simply horrid,
Yet we look back in kindness for time shared.
So it is time that holds mastery over all,
Changing the seasons occurs without reason,
But change it must, our frozen ground will thaw,
And therefore it is time that offers us hope.
Hope of change is an acceptance of time passing,
We cope with frozen ground by preparation,
Not once do we trial a new form of season blasting,
Or seek to control the seasons once and for all.
Our frozen ground is actually a metaphor for where life is found,
The clearly obvious situation of the human condition forgotten,
That as time passes our true control and role is not so profound,
For we cannot control it, not at all.
@Andrew Carnegie, Frozen Wiltshire, January 5th 2017.
If you would like to know a bit about me and my poetry please click this link below:
https://youtu.be/Ic_V7aX4xbk
Blow blarney bugle blow
The bogus sound waves echo
bifurcated notes
That hollow sting tone
has a subtil serpentine drone
Toot the tout timbre tune deceptively
Let the stealth vibrations
blare witness with utter bandit ease
This covetous instrument
was slyly carved from a money tree
When the heist horn blow,
those with adder ears
let their ostrich eyes close
Be a blind mice in the atmospheric mint maze,
have a deaf eardrum
to the brass burn rubber sound theft getaway
Blow blarney bugle blow
Carny breath allow the counterfeit air
to fraudulently cash flow
Soon every silent blare witness
will empty pockets know
i wonder why we are always plagued by the sense of disappointment
with others
everything can float with currents so nicely and then
a gesture
a statement
an intonation
entropy rears itself into the equation
this longing for a prefect match
instilled with wit and calamity
is a hobo's dream of sleeping on train tracks
with only roller skates riding on the rails
can we move beyond our sense of reproach
when it comes to judgement
there are many stories far more entertaining than those we fancy
as conversation worthy
yet the strangling tangle of intertwined intermittent word chunks
interferes with the perpindicular angle we need to connect
the parallel lines of thought have proven to be
perpetually disconnected
so what does a biped do to prevent the disorder of a bifurcated soul
how does a sloth rip the talon off the ghost bird
when we speak as limbic wisps clinging to an energy flux
the songs of the forgotten choir are spilling through outstreched digits
reverie of long passed friends who hear the cloud orchestra
gives me the hope that i can move through all of this
with the grace of a child kissing a promise
in this there is infinity