Best Burroughs Poems
Quote: A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
John Burroughs
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Inspired by life’s goals, winners are intuitively aware,
A loss is but a steppingstone, not a reason to despair;
Again and again, with certitude they play the game,
For triumph, they envision, is written in every name.
They never seek to blame others, for own mistakes,
Instead, they course-correct, averting heart-breaks,
Re-learning, deep in introspection, as they re-assess;
Ameliorating ways of failures, reaching for success.
When life is perturbed in adversities, they fear not,
Cognizant~ anything worthwhile must be hard-fought;
Summoning conquering ways, every failure taught,
To attain ultimate milestone, reveries of victory sought.
They accept, they advance, when things go wrong,
Strumming theme winsome, emanating from life’s song,
Echoing a pledge revered, treasured for quite long;
Avowing~ to them, the reigns of future shall belong.
Dreams of passion, dreams coveted, refuse to die,
For resolutely their objectives, driven believers vie;
Until triumphantly, bells-elated, of success chime,
Trumping sad sighs of failures, defeated over time.
A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until
he begins to blame somebody else—John Burroughs
Blame
Underneath a belt of stars in stratosphere’s arena
There, blood rushes within each lover’s heart
Veiled by the silky fibrils of the cortina
A solid dome in the deep vast expanse, heaven’s vault
Ever debuts Dante’s Paradiso,
Where angels fear to tread, far off and away
they stay from the milky orb, be it so, and instead,
for fear of the mid-night’s enticing allure, and
love’s lasting doom, they…
Blame the Moon
Orion rises in the Orient East,
it sets in the wide Occident West
Antares only rises once Orion sets, vice versa!
Spellbound, forever severed, and a lunar eclipse longing
An affair’s unrest, not potions nor a test or curse, ah
Their quest to finish weakened minds
Seduced by halos ivory glow in twilight
Lusting mortals, passionate kinds
Held captive, never to unite ‘neath
the pearlescent orb’s sheen at midnight
Gold-leaf doors unbarred, luminous lune art
Seduced as pleasing colors meld white to blue
Ere a raging tempest rips apart the seether
Empyreus, quintessence, searing crimson love they’ve fallen into
True Aristotle’s aether
in bloom,
Hark! Blame not each other…
Blame the Moon!
Lonesome on the beat and path;
I am lonesome on the Beat way.
On the Road with Jack Kerouac
and having a lunch naked with William S. Burroughs,
while listing to Allen Ginsberg
telling us how he saw the minds of his generation
go with madness.
The red heads and the brunettes
lost all their ways
as they go down on one-another.
Women in white lingerie
killed as the boys in blue jeans
kill each other with laughter and foolish jokes.
Agree with me,
if you may;
and paraphrase if you would, please do,
to see if I have gone mad,
or just talking outside of the box.
I walk alone, lonesome with books of dead poets,
trying to become my own person,
losing that war to me, myself and I.
Hold close to me, but don't stare into my eyes,
for you'll fall madly in love with me,
or grow mad yourself
and feel my pain.
Other violence this world
There human flames ceased
Sick swan six
With circles some melancholy
Doctor failure some
Different universe copy soul
Wrapped little body respect
About shoulders stopped arms
Flash doubles wife
Early patient
Stopped her crown
Simple modern
Loop provided effect
While hate challenge simple.
[This was my first attempt at the "cut-up technique", a surrealist technique coined by many early surrealists, including William S. Burroughs, an obvious influence on my work.]
What Rusts In The Rain
(For The Memory Of William S. Burroughs
& Typewriters)
It is Lawrence, Kansas and the sky opens
up as if a doppelganger of all mothers and
wombs
Leaving out rain as milk from its breasts
onto
all things fertile
Rangas of storm
A writer adores their typewriter.
They name it and ache in its lack of health
and death.
Brother, the decades faded and the Beats
and the Hippies
their dawns edges burning off in the
sunlight of time
took flight on dusky dirges and are gone.
Generations come and go and that none
of us can turn in protest against, too busy
in our living and then our leaving.
Opiate, apt fruition.
There is no lover like a typewriter.
Stroke its keys.
Know its response.
Kansas, Dorothy's head all turned around
and paisley.
You died and they left your typewriter in
the backyard
of your last home, grass growing up into
its spine.
No more pawning for what the soul was
too terrified to
go without.
Maybe it is better here.
Waiting for the return of some living, freed
dignity.
An ability to grow creative legs, talk again.
The scent of English Ovals on its skin
A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else. John Burroughs
This is not a sad poem,
but my hungry hands hunger to express,
as autumn brings back haunting hues,
stinging my sleeping soul.
All I hear is melancholic tones,
whistling in mercenary winds,
lifting leaves from bare branches.
Bright colours turning grisly grey,
as the season of death,
creates a grave full of misery.
I cannot forever criticise ghosts,
nor refuse to visit your tomb.
As each petal slowly fades,
I'm too tired to accuse or be accused.
I've formed into a personified weeping willow,
releasing rivers of bitterness through raindrops.
In my nakedness, I resemble their withering woes,
trying to smile, composing a suicide of emotions,
dangling, distracting from that which is real,
but my muteness is literally slaying my pain.
Why am I always the one to blame?
I do not feel safe in the angst of Autumn,
for my essence is not eternally evergreen.
I'm fatigued from those who claim to love me,
unable to save me from sinking into seas of sorrow.
My selfish friends are like silent marionettes,
nowhere to be seen nor heard,
abandoning me in the darkest corner,
despite my pen pouring like October rain.
Maybe this is a sad poem,
as I still search for forgiveness.
I keep the faith that my roots will bloom again,
because I am a vibrant child of summer,
yearning for the return of colouration.
Adapting to living without answers.
Long arm gendarme
My mistake namaste
Backpack bivouac
On the Road with Kerouac
Brilliant stars, silent nights
Fireflies, Northern Lights
Mountain streams, fresh air
Fall asleep anywhere
Small town, take a chance
Pig roast, barn dance
Allemande left! Do-si-do!
Spontaneity here we go!
Long arm gendarme
My mistake namaste
Backpack bivouac
On the Road with Kerouac
Beat Zen's hey-day
Doing things our own way
Nonconformity, anything goes
Kerouac-Ginsburg-Burroughs
Shot to pieces, picking skin
Benzedrine, adrenaline
Don't forget the Phenergan
Notify our next of kin
Long arm gendarme
My mistake namaste
Backpack bivouac
On the Road with Kerouac
A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
John Burroughs
bursts of anger once ruined me,
my hopes and dreams, fear and doubt stole,
leaving pain as deep as the sea,
blame the shadows shrouding my soul.
pride, the pleasure of vain conceit,
ruined the truth that did console,
more smugness than love could defeat,
blame the shadows shrouding my soul.
ego preyed on my soft yearnings,
dimming the light that made me whole,
masking warmth with lavish earnings,
blame the shadows shrouding my soul.
tempting me were life’s possessions,
felt like greed had taken control,
selfishness brought bleak impressions,
blame the shadows shrouding my soul.
still, I had only me to blame,
fighting my pride, knowing my goal,
when I failed, feeling so much shame,
blame the shadows shrouding my soul.
"A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else." _ John Burroughs
In the Garden of Eden, an ominous silence spread.
From the Heavenly Paradise, all grace had fled.
Adam knew there was no recompense for his act
Against his crime, God would violently react.
Sorry that the pact once solemnly made did wilt.
In shame and regret the first lovely pair sat.
They moved away from God’s wonted path,
And hid under bushes fearing His wrath.
God as usual came for His evening round
But Adam and Eve were nowhere around
The omniscient knew what had happened,
Over the gross disobedience, He was deeply saddened.
God called out- “Adam… Adam,
From your hideout, come…come.
When everything else, I had given you free
Tell me what made you eat from the forbidden tree”
Adam said- Me Lord, I acted under Eve’s persuasion
For the forbidden fruit, I had no inclination
Next, God questioned Eve,
Who acted so very naïve.
She said she was treacherously tempted by Satan,
Who came disguised more like a charlatan
All wisdom and knowledge was assured
And with false promises, she was lured.
For breaking the pact, heavy was the price incurred
God withdrew all the blessings conferred.
From the bliss of Paradise, they were sacked,
To live in a world with all misery wracked!
Since then, the blaming game has been conveniently played,
And the onus of our actions on others' shoulders laid,
As from Adam to Eve and from Eve to Satan,
Cleverly passed over our accountability’s baton!
Had they not blamed each other and repented over their crime,
God would have forgiven, and their story might have ended with a sweet chime!
Ye old poets, cause my demise.
My fingers release no signature.
Foolishly, in foolish times,
used to instant gratification,
I want to leave a comment.
Ye old poets, what you do to me;
get under my skin; your lips move
with vicarious words - you have a way
with them, (and because your dead to me)
I can say…with me.
Ye ole Frost, and Burroughs too,
paint the most amazing images,
unsheathing the natural in ways
that Consume me. You slay me.
I’m bound in your grasp, my lips alive,
my eyes on your poetic body,
as I breathe out the bequeathed
of ye old poets, dead.
A Sonnet
If I knew you loved me, I would have
killed you before, a sentence that makes no sense
keep swirling around my head. William Burroughs
could have said that or perhaps he has.
I meet I woman once, not the first, and fell in love
with her, she was or could be my soulmate with her
I felt at ease not straining to be funny.
I was drawn into a black hole of love that could only
end in hurts weighed down by my past.
So I ended it short, brutal but with sleepless nights.
I met another woman nothing about soulmates; she just
needed a place to stay near her place of work.
That was a long time ago, and now we are two lost souls
comforting each other in the midnight hours.
Can a man – all alone - foist a god upon his fellows
Even if it’s only himself
And they his subjects
G.. is Akbar!
Does the muezzin from the minaret of Qoutoub-Minar
look up or
down to the illiterate savant emperor
whose newly-ordered cosmos
much as Tamerlane and Genghis Khan's blood
mixed gods
invented the Gysin-Burroughs cut-up and fold-in method
a cornucopian chimera
shi'ite-sunnite-kharidjites
hindu/buddhist-jain
confucian-taoist/zoroastrian
orthodox-christian/judaic
saivite-vaisnavite
mahayanist-theravadite
shintoist-zen-chan
agnostic-atheist
A…. is Great!
In the begining there was no VERB for him
In the end
from
"brahmana" Himalayas to the "asurya" Deccan
from
Ghazna and Kabul to the spent chugged mouth of the Ganges
where bloomed the Allah-Upanishad
One common language
One uncommon religion
One classless society
One mutually nourishing art
One scientific quest
and the sweet music of friendly disputation
within then the world’s vastest book and art collection
though knowingly
took to wife an Hindu princess
chose his prime counsellor from among the Brahmin élite
where within hearing distance lithesome nymphs bathed in scented milk
his victoriously wearied warrior limbs back from punitive expeditions
through Panipat Delhi Agra Punjab Gwalior Ajmer
Gujarat Bengal Sind Orissa Baluchistan Ahmadnagar Kashmir
Khandesh
to circumscribe the sub-continent
a Ceasar at the court of Fatehpur-Sikri
Akbar is ___!
Who would parse and complete or conclude the syllogism
For « One » who dared abolish the jiziyah
Note: Jalal ud-Din Muhammad Akbar (1542-1605), the third Mughal Emperor, edicted that muezzins should herald the rising of the sun by the call: Allah-u-Akbar!
The « jiziyah » , a word of Arabic origin, meaning a tax levied on non-Muslims who wished to conserve their own property, and imposed by the Moghul sovereigns – on and off - in India, was abolished by Akbar in his seventh year of accession to the throne.
©: T. Wignesan, March 13, 1992 (from the sequence/collection: "Words for a Lost Sub-Continent")
Bobby Burroughs bought a bunch of butter bagels,
Bundled in a butter bagel box.
But Bobby Burroughs found the bagels bitter,
So Bobby bought a box of better lox.
with red eyes blazing
they race through fog on hot sands
in a dying land . . .
Barsoom’s white apes transplanted
to an earth where hell broke loose.
Note: Barsoom is a fictional representation of the planet Mars created by American pulp fiction author Edgar Rice Burroughs.
when he was younger
he jammed out on the guitar, bore a fro &
then graduated from brown---
following this, him & his hippie gal got married,
popped out a few rug-rats &
sooner than later he was at grad school,
then the ph.d & then
writing papers on meticulously fine-tuned
areas of literary theory
at the corner of where philosophy met with it in
a new postmodern paradise
free of the restrictions that modernism posed &
free of the comfort that it brought to those seeking
well-thought-out stories,
bringing with it the death of the meta-narrative
as well as a thousand other aesthetic flip-flops,
reversals & complete toss outs---
he sat in his little office at his little state university
teaching english courses &
weaving philosophy &
actually interesting works
whenever he saw possible,
inspiring those who grew as bored as him with the everyday
mundane reality of the university &
in his spare time,
when all the students had gone &
he didn’t have to be home yet to do the family thing,
he labored at the pc
trying to find a way to write automatically---
something that would surpass or at least impress
someone like william s. burroughs,
whose work he adored---
and with every few hours stuffed into a week
where he tried to focus on inventing some kind of
new writing,
he simultaneously forgot that with the meta-narrative
went the origin of authorship,
as derrida himself declared &
so to this day
the lone one sits in his little cage trying to break out
by writing with his spell check or
some other dreamt up attempt at
carving a place amidst those that are studied by history,
unlike those that historically
study.