Best Cynicism Poems
THE CYNICISM OF DISILLUSION or Perhaps Hamlet was right.
Disillusion frames the drama of our lives
As we lurch through props and sets with pratfalls tripped
Wood Pigeon soars to self applause and then subsides
Fine woven fabric inadvertently is ripped
Why essay to climb the peak, perchance the ending
Where demise succeeds your rise, while descending
16 February 2019
Djinn arises from lamp, says
"You may have one wish."
"Make all the trash disappear."
The Earth ceases to exist.
I once had an office job sitting next to Miss Sunshine day in and day out. She and her 7th Day Adventist Jesus were always so positive and jolly about everything, it was hard not to smack her.
One day with syrupy sweet intonation she asked why I was so cynical and wasn't I an unhappy person.
I said, "Only a sociopath could be happy about the truth of things, but I'm just a realistic observer not hiding behind cheerful nonsense; there's no correlation to happy or unhappy. Look at you for instance. You are smiling and upbeat all the time. And I don't believe I've ever met an unhappier person."
She was stunned, momentarily silent, mouth hanging open. Then she burst into terrible wracking sobs of anguish.
Often I humor at things I read
I am growing exceedingly cold
Maybe it's not at all in me but
Their words both young and old
In a search for any kind of reason
We go afar and many times astray
Can I be now so tediously cynical
Their ideas don’t even near gray
There motivation prolly attention
What inspires them in this quest
An endeavor for true originality
Funny, most assuredly I now jest
Who reflects on the truth inside
The only things I know are real
Why do I think I get to decide
What is writing, if not to reveal
Penned by Wayland Bunch 2/2/2013
Cynicism with a Capital Sin.
Nothing breaking in the news today just reruns of another school shooting and gay/gun rights.
Black lives matter but Death knows no prejudice.
Gun control? I thought it was people who killed people.
Murder has become some sort of fad every one wants a pair.
And as always I am out of style.
I never thought I'd see the day when the world would fiend for hope like it was dope. "Hey Man, you know where I can score some positivity?"
I was even incarcerated for not committing a crime.
Kindness: If found guilty. 1 year plus fines and court cost.
Helpfulness: 25 to life.
Humanity: Punishable by death.
This man killed a classroom full of kids. Where's police brutality when you need it?
It's funny how advanced we are in our primitivity.
Yes you can buy a scope with the crucifixion of Christ as your cross hairs.
One day tragedy will be so common that happiness will make the headlines.
It's so subtle that you'll never notice the world is spinning backwards.
If you’re looking for yuletide cynicism here,
you’re shopping in the wrong place.
This is New York City’s time of year.
It’s stood the test of time and it fairly sparkles,
proving that the ordinary can be extraordinary.
With the right lighting.
Lisa’s (parent’s) apartment glitters like our promised heaven on high.
When we left at Thanksgiving, Michael (Lisa’s dad) had the concierge
service stressed, toting boxes of decorations up from their storage area.
When I waved my goodbyes, he appeared to be wrestling an octopus of
cool-white fairy lights into submission. Now everything glitters pyrite bright.
Our holiday time is limited—and this is our chance to unwind—so we’re
selective about what we decide to embrace. For instance, there was a sale
at Michael Kors where, no big deal, I got a pair of brogues, black
leather wingtips that’ll be straight fire with a little black dress.
The bargains were so good that I decided the store must be a drug front.
Not that I’m complaining. Do I ever complain? Nope, I’m stoic.
Like Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, Lisa and I’ve
been “testing the product” of Manhattan's club scene.
We’re searching diligently for the new and unfamiliar.
When it comes to picking which clubs we want to visit,
Charles, our driver and escort (a retired NYPD cop),
has gone as far as to suggest, we’re “out of our depth,”
and refused to let us even try one or two DJ’d, pop-up clubs
in Queens that were getting a lot of heat and likes.
“Roosevelt Avenue is the new 42nd Street,” he’d said.
What does that even mean??
Indignant silence
Anyway,
I hope Christmas finds you all merry and bright and that
your holidays—whichever you celebrate— are carnivals of food, music,
friendship and love—for those are the luxuries that count the most.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Merry Kwanzaa, Happy Festivus!
.
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Songs for this:
Absolutely Everybody by Vanessa Amorosi
Rock With You by Traincha
.
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A Christmas Playlist—because there's 4 days til Christmas
www.daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_28.mp3
A rose by any other name
.......is still gonna set you back $9.99
No matter how far we travel into the universe
No matter how many worlds we conquer
Or marvelous civilizations we encounter
No matter how many creatures we dissect
How far into the past we probe
No matter how many words we write, or read
There is always one step further; one more word to pen
One more iota of information to uncover.
Our storehouses of knowledge
Do not help us survive
Though we hope they will;
For we must believe we will continue.
It all depends upon
One more grain of knowledge
A puzzle with the answer we all desire
Then will we be forever.
Not as a race entire,
Not through works of art
Not from words of wisdom,
Conquest or slaughter,
But the egoistic Self,
The person, the arrogant mind;
What matters if there is or is not a god?
The query is merely: Will I be forever.
That there is life beyond life
Is the dream, the hope,
Of blind misbegotten certainty.
Are we not like a drop of water
That quenched a thirst for knowledge
Then evaporated, but still exists?
Please do not suppose "We are not."
When no more doubt remains
Then shall humanity crumple
And fade from the universe
No longer possessed
Of the undivine quest
No longer needing to persist in this land
When another, we insist, so surely waits.
For now, the starships search outer realms
The pen transcribes the mind
While seldom do we stop to reflect how
If ever the destination is at hand
We will have lost all purpose.
c1973
An earnest poem from my youth, tossed in a file box and stored away lo these many decades.
Like many, I masqueraded in shades of urban gray.
I offered my love to the midnight neon angel.
I walked the caliginous streets alone and astray.
She remained distant, alluring, always disdainful.
I courted cynicism, resignation, and despair as my style.
I wore tilted fedoras in smoke-filled reeking bars.
I feigned culture and literacy, trying to look worthwhile.
I blush now, recalling my see-through shooting stars.
Like many, I was just a child renting a man’s body.
I impersonated adulthood with stylized gloom.
I thought maturity was an act, so mine was shoddy.
I donned trench coats, my affectation in any room.
My blinking street angel had seen it all before.
My love for her was simulation and nothing more.
WE LIVE IN AN INTERESTING TIME
He was Dean of the university’s
College of Creative Malfeasance,
including the Schools of Business,
Law, Information Technology, Marketing,
Theology and International Relations!
His son was more sinister
He was a minister in the
Church of Confederate Christianity,
a denomination that is pro-life
but anti-family!
When autumn comes
is winter far away?
Every silver lining
has a cloud.
This is the best of all possible worlds.
So says the optimist,
so says the pessimist too.
CYNIC
He was Dean of the university’s
College of Creative Malfeasance,
including the Schools of Business,
Law, Information Technology, Marketing,
Economics, Theology and International
Relations!
His son was more sinister
He was a minister in the
Church of Confederate Christianity,
a denomination that is anti-family,
anti-immigrant, anti-democratic,
anti-Semitic, racist, pro-gun
and absolutely pro-life, perpetually
in the courts, perpetually in the news
and social media, perpetually in your face
a rising case of rape and incest,
a danger to our lives, an acute
health problem, requiring
an abortion!
Bittersweet--
a word that has always meant so much more to me than
I think it was supposed to.
Of course, bitter coffee with sweet sugar comes to my tongue before anything else and then more:
Bittersweet,
A mood,
A feeling,
An attitude,
Meaningful but lackluster,
Luke warm (a temperature that no one despises but no one longs for either),
A state of being.
The word itself sustains a consistent oxymoron in its every use.
It is neither bitter nor is it sweet
Although it pretends to be both.
The duo warps into a romantic loneliness.
The bittersweet goodbye is neither filled with unending sorrow or limitless happiness,
But instead a tinted contentment.
I am bittersweet. Bittersweet found in the moment before the radio hums into music, after you pushed the covers from the bed but before you stood, hidden between the momentum of childhood and halt of teenage change, splattered across the wall as you hear someone say
“I love you” without meaning it in the same way you do.
The mix of romanticism and cynicism at its finest.
It’s not sad or unpleasing, not joyous or fulfilling.
But
It is enough.
Bittersweet is enough, I am enough, this feeling is enough,
regardless
of the flavor
we may leave
in your mouth
and on your tastebuds.
couple on a motor
cycle with a death wish
drum drops
still pond
early morning
coolness broken
pull that poison, pull it deeply
deeply, deeply
pull it deeply
keep that breath, like memory bitter
sweetly taste that lungs can know
a good will, strong, and a one hundred
these are made alone
for breaking
benjamin Wishing, Well behind
our time,
our pennies
are made
for throwing
Cynicism
Written: by Miracle Man
3-1-2021
I’m at the place in life where a cynic has emerged,
I’ve been taken so often other’s words are tainted.
I seek inner peace that these feelings would be purged,
but, until then, it is what it is, with reality I’m acquainted.
I remember a time when man’s word was his bond,
now a gaggle of lawyers have replaced the handshake.
But today is the result that elapsed time has spawned,
and as time drags on, is our existence at stake?
The cynic says, “one man can’t do anything.”
I say, “only one man can do anything.”
One man acting creatively with others
can move the world,
John W. Gardner