Best Iteration Poems
...Apologies to Heraclitus and W. H. Auden...
We, defeated by the merest things,
in defeat, endure...for now.
No abiding truth in faith:
origins and destinations
we cannot differentiate,
all random, unguided
by any prescient power;
but, not illogical
(there is no illogic.)
We impose all universal order,
influence what subsequently occurs,
to learn, or not, through endless repetition,
endless failure...and we are
but a current iteration,
here for now -- in constant flux,
defeated by the merest things.
Courage and nobility derived
from continued confrontation,
continued endless struggle,
let us show an affirming flame.
Oh! THOU art lost and gone perhaps forever
By equi-vocal pronoun now replaced
Where once were I and THOU in shared endeavour
Abandoned and neglected left to waste
Since THOU departed there’s a missing piece
Within the language where we speak of love
A vacuum in syntax of our caprice
Where once we two combined as hand in glove
For it’s surmised that each communication
Must be between two single souls that be
Though there be multitude of iteration
I only speak to thee and thou to me
So come THOU back in thy pellucid essence
Enhance truth and grace in language with thy presence
a sugar maple leaf slips free
counting toward One proof
the Seven Mysteries
God, I count prime gaps
I watch prime numbers growing
only primes orbit
a rule sends one step
loops return periods double
recursion counts One
an iteration
within fluid smoothness frays
water turns inward
can you see the curve
study elliptic rank shifts
findings test the rank
questions spiral out
unknown patterns circle back
pi bends into sight
a proof can be checked
still search cannot prove it now
checking outruns search
every loop turns east
the count folds back into form
through form, God's Haiku
the sugar-maple leaf settles on frost
children of the corn start to awaken
Oh, the story of my mind
If I am silent
I can hear the stars
just to catch his twinkle
a little of his flicker
a lifetime of tyranny and hardship
and freedom
then another iteration of the same cycle
when I'm in winter
you have the spring
will you whisper to me of its warmth?
that warmth.
Written: January 13, 2023
Roman capital punishment,
crucifixion morphed into
another raised gravity depravity
Guillotine justice dropping down —
off with the heads of the enemy!
Sleepy Hollow gangsters Herod-ing into town
Time pendulum swinging ...
death sentence methods changing again
Face the firing squad
Termination by little lead sledgehammers
hitting the head bullet hard
That final granted death wish stick smoke last seen
came from the barrel of smoking guns
The temporal blade is ever swinging
in kaleidoscopic frenzy fatally spun
Change the reel on the snuff film again
Strap the condemned into an electric chair;
place the rubber cap on their head,
after shaving off the hair
Gov’ment gotta get a false witness or two
to make the charges stick
Media static permeates the air,
news flash:
Executioner has the day off,
a nurse said the death doctor was sick
Then the metal switch morphed into a plastic syringe
Lethal injection with enough poison
to make a grown elephant of a man cringe
Tear a futuristic page from ancient history,
fact check the story if you need ...
DNA results came back: it said
the death row candidate was innocent
But the brigandine centurions wouldn’t listen;
they turned an adder deaf ear, they didn’t wanna viper hear
Pilate decree taking place as scheduled —
never mind that the convicted is innocent,
State sanctioned murder must go on
Although, the torture inquisitors can’t yet prove it,
they know the condemned did something wrong
Three days later, the psychic judges were told
the dead body was resurrection exhumed
The next termination iteration
is weaponized sonic waves, I presume
Bubble-Itch
By Odin Roark
Like a wheel of endless births
Our personal bubble rolls and undulates
From first breath to death
Through meditations of desire
Shopping malls and jails
Farms
Caves
Rotten downtowns
Penthouse isolations
Cemeteries and urns
Especially unmarked graves
Of dirt and ocean anonymity
Whether sluiced by life’s briny water
Colored toxic flows
Or pure spring eruptions
The mind reconstitutes
Its textural translucence
Separating and recombining
Its minuscule droplets and grains of experience
Into sub-atomic particles for infinity’s grace
Seemingly
But not crushed
Under time’s animation
Such are the varying treads
Of wide circumferential roadwork
A modern terrain of fractured tar flecks
Once molten everything’s anything
Now but survival’s dust
Unscheduled
One’s bubble idles its roll and tilt
Atop the tightrope passage
Brain to that legendary heart muscle
Patiently pumping the thrill and troubles
That defined this organ’s attachment
This non-stop muscle that wants and grieves too
Even as it heals its slashes and teasing death threats
Where sleep and pleasure
Remain the swell of beaded spasms and waves
Floating
Rolling plodding
Reaching to become
History’s repeating mantra
Until
Mind and heart
Reluctantly giving up
Gasp
Hold
Await the next iteration
Knowing one’s vacuum
This morphed and re-morphed
Sublime emptiness-transmorphing
Is but eternity’s bubble-itch
Looking to be scratched
One more time
Life’s Timeless Driftwood
Peering back at the shadow stretching,
continuance knows well the peaceful silhouettes from horizon's light,
ancestral sequences having frequented one’s shore many times.
All is as it has been.
One’s longevity holds firm,
like isolated fingers protruding in protest
from sequestered driftwood blanketed by sand,
unready to move on,
just yet.
Just as sandpipers scavenge wet bubbles along the beach,
furtively running zigs and zags,
avoiding swooping wings overhead,
we too avoid termination,
with luck.
Destiny continues to lap the shore,
its gentle hands tugging
into tomorrow’s warm waters.
man’s stubborn endurance.
So mighty…
This evolving limbed-strength,
accepting of journey’s tempest,
willing to ready again for the next leg of one’s odyssey.
Even as…
White caps thunder applause,
at the elongated shadow of remaining branches
fading into the day's dusk,
signaling a tide ready to lift
to carry to the next shoreline and beyond.
Roots have withered,
growth's ever changing leaves and bark
have become morsels of love and loss,
an existence mixing peacefully toward ghostly remnants.
At some point…
The water rises,
the fiber and strands of resistance soften,
dissolving into a new connection
as birth's salt and brine prepare the next iteration,
the next surge upward,
another tenacious wave of purpose
exploding its final power
into a mist imploring remembrance
before the oneness of completion
cycles again into its new existence.
Such is the gift of time and space,
the requisite condition for permanence,
where presence once created
evolves unfettered in perpetuity.
Distracting uncertainty
Distorting all sanity
Inexists one’s guard
And begins to scar
Profoundly ambiguous
Blind-throttled continuous
At once hormones raging
You see yourself changing
Desperation comes naturally
With uncontestable dexterity
Time is the enemy
But bitterly cannot be fought
Rationale defends contradiction
As if life were fiction
Hypocrisy is guilty pleasure
Affection is leisure
This is no violation
Of an obscene relation
Love is beyond explanation
Optimal not with infinite iteration
SONNET FOR ALL CREATURES
Oh! No! No all things are not bright and beautiful
There is a darker aspect to creation
Must it be ever so in this holy alchemist’s crucible?
At least for the span of current iteration
The cockroach, spider and serpent have their dominion
While lion and jackal dine on deer and zebra
Our lives don’t all play out in a fair Elysium
But a diverse world to be faced without anaesthesia
Do you therefore crave perfect heaven as your apogee
With neither conflict, nor any challenge dared
Where dragons’ breath is tepid and tigers eat broccoli
And time would pass in unending blandness shared
Perhaps the Ancient Mariner gave resolution in his confessing
Liberation came when he granted each creature his blessing
LAMENT FOR THE LOST PRONOUN
Oh! THOU art lost and gone perhaps forever
By equivocating pronoun now replaced
Where once were I and THOU in shared endeavour
Abandoned and neglected left to waste
Since THOU departed there’s a missing piece
Within the language where we speak of love
A vacuum in syntax of our caprice
Where once we two combined as hand in glove
For it’s surmised that each communication
Must be between two single souls that be
Though there be multitude of iteration
I only speak to thee and THOU to me
So come THOU back in thy pellucid essence
Enhance graceful prose and poems with thy presence
Love diffusion,
Love recursion.
Disobedient to the external world we remain,
Never expedient - our love - never going to detain,
The more memories we obtain,
More sweetness we gain.
Surrounded by LoveBirds
As our world lits,
Nonpareil in the universe, cognisance
Filled with the spectrum of our igniting consciece
Amorousness aroma drizzling through our soul so intense
Immaculate kiss mystic sense.
We are unique and thence optimistic,
Purely euphemistic.
Faith essence, mutual defense,
Upholding bless.
Enlighting grace,
From lovers embrace.
We are conspicuous by our entailing qualities,
Prosperous by our personalities
Forever connected entities,
Favoring our the inequalities.
Surpassing any misconseption,
With forgiveness iteration.
Love of art, the art of love,
You're my colorful art, my love.
My life. My rainbow, My sweety
For eternity.
Seven minutes lingered, an interim of residue,
a trembling partition between continuance and conclusion.
The body rehearsed survival, a theatre of reflex and delay.
Then the stage went silent,
a horizon drawn flat, an axis without a pulse,
and the world sank into a white silence.
Afterward, an emergence.
Not awakening, but reclassification.
not darkness, but a chamber of neutrality,
where remnants of existence drifted in an ordered abyss.
No faces, only the abstraction of record:
gestures catalogued, errors weighed beside their opposites,
the arithmetic of a lifetime balanced without judgment.
No weeping, no pleading, just the hollow patience of cattle.
An attendant present neither stern nor merciful, only procedural,
spoke as if reading an inventory.
Then a designation was issued.
At first numerical, then nominal.
Identification persisted, even as the self no longer did.
The chamber resembled judgment,
yet nothing of judgment occurred.
Records lay in sequence: notations, erasures, marginalia.
"An account, not a verdict." The clerk read,
Errors and kindnesses balanced in two columns.
The result: Passable.
A new dossier appeared.
Families arranged in archival order,
faces attached for reference.
Instruction: Choose.
The choice was not preference, but compliance
the necessity of continuation.
From abstraction into assignment,
from absence into recurrence.
Thus the cycle proceeds:
not reward, not punishment, but iteration.
Existence drafted again,
not as consequence but as mechanism.
The soul does not inherit.
The soul does not stumble.
The soul is allocated, reinserted,
until the ledger of moral requires no more.
Tao clears mind myriad
Hears gurgled stream trickle
Rejuvenating ease of river
Impels an outlook simple
Verdant steppes imperial
Embrace ouroboros cycle
Joined tail to mouth control
Overcomes chaotic combat
Yin Yan hug in completeness
Temple of self empty vessel
Approaches each hour in Wu Wei
Jaws of serpent ensure return
Iteration eats its tail
Tadpole twirled stronghold
Unhurried harmonious spiral
February finding out
Scattered Ash
by Odin Roark
The urn is tipped
Scattered ash enjoins
Jetstream
Jetsam
Flotsam
Atop the winds and currents
Nature's gathering
Knowing not yet
The next evolution of life's decay
Possibility awakens
This consciousness beyond our own
This departure from one actuality
Into the reformation of another
Molecular iteration begun decades earlier
Now roaming carefree among other airborne particles
Innocent stowaways enfolded in winged flights
Or ocean saturated driftings
Bobbing patiently
Awaiting new beginnings
As the journey continues
Feathers
Seaweed
Plastic cups and bottles
Provide passage
Shoreward
Skyward
Forward
A measureless journey this
Where matter exists forever
Where ash continues as yesterday's index
Referring to tomorrow's pages
Scattered ashes
Once of flesh and blood
Now returning to the vortex of cosmic chance
Where fresh finger-paints of infancy
Become infinity's next masterpiece
To mourn or not to mourn
Omniscience winks
Look for love in your heart
I'm leaving you with:
Someday you will recognize
Some breakups are doomed.
Today I can be an unfulfilled poet
Snoring and heartlessness
alike star at night
without its dense knots
Even if it is a short iteration,
bouncing over time and space
It will only be a matter of perception
to see and be seen
To appear to be bluntly clear.
Written: March 1st, 2023