Best Limbic Poems
Lincoln never imagined
today’s white victim zeitgeist,
pouting persecuted supremacists,
their clenched jaws and fists.
Civil war rages in limbic memory.
Encoded somewhere,
the panic attacks and mirages.
Nobody is qualified because everybody is responsible.
So many whites have graduated from the struggle,
showcasing their diploma from the mill.
Lincoln never imagined
modern virtual vitriol,
merciless memes lashing out at specters,
infusing, inciting depravity among the sleep deprived.
These words are battleships aimed at the reviled.
The unshielded summon civility.
They beckon familiar principles.
But rabid cougars wait in hiding, eager to pounce.
All the feeble markets for platitudes have failed,
as subliminal cavities endure each generation.
Mental lynch mobs, rebel flags, supremacy’s utopia.
Lincoln never imagined
a 21st century cartoon president,
a white nationalist clicking social network epithets,
a whining overgrown tormenter
with a cult of Stalinist believers.
Where are the intelligible?
How is all this animated fury converted?
What is the lesson plan?
Who will bury the code?
How long this agonizing journey into normality?
Lincoln never imagined.
Published Tuck Magazine 04/ 2019
Lunar eclipse plunges me in shadow.
Orbital, I spin in the dark.
Nebulas, I am insignificant amongst many,
Extra-terrestrial, alone and apart.
Limbic, I drift with creation.
Interstellar, I reunite with my past.
Neutron stars, immense galaxy dustbins,
Eat planets while I watch, aghast.
Severance, I have never felt so keenly,
Screaming, cart-wheeling, into the dark.
Daddy's specter plectrums mercilessly
Fraying my nerves raw
with oxidized guitar strings.
my thoughts relentlessly hemorrhage
onto clay vinyl grooves
s p i n n i n g
endless nights
of
suffocation.
a midnight jazz wail
lacerates
the void of your absence.
notes gnaw through bone marrow
ravenous maggots
in the corpse
of our love.
Chords violently crash
splintering my fractured vertebrae
a car wreck
in slow motion.
plucking
the frayed synapses
of my misfiring
modal limbic brain.
feel the searing electric distortion
static fuzz of madness
surge through
morrow's marrow
my moanin'
a primal scream
at the Eve of Destruction
trapped in a skipping groove
of creation
shattering guitars
and blasting kneecaps
in an empty cathedral
of resounding sound
Our touch
a violent crescendo
of needles and poisoned honey
pain swollen sweet
as a mother's milk
laced with a junkie's fix
on a stillborn birthday morn
each note
a razor-sharp reflection
etched in stretch-marked
scar tissue
of the agony that throbs
within this moog menagerie
of fractured femininity
set
Between the sets
of our shattered chords
a single note lingers- soft
almost tender-
like a child's last breath
before the
final
f i n a l e
Silence crawls
a venomous asp
a deafening absence
louder than stacked amps
of patriarchy
reverberating in the hollow spaces
between drumming heartbeats
where your persecuting promises
used to nest and breed
I am the discarded B-side
of the one-hit wonder
rising from dumpster-filled
lungs of domesticity
reborn
in the Electric Avenue
of my own making
singing
Billie's bruises
Muddy's floods and
Johnson's hellhounds
to the ghosts
of futures stillborn
in this Rhapsody
of beautiful
destruction
Moon-faced and sickle-smiled
I conduct this orchestrated
Savage band of ruin
my voiceless voice
a lightning rod
splitting the sky
of expectations
as I agonizingly birth myself anew
in the RCA Victor Rhapsody of Blue
of Beautiful
reconstruction
P e r h a p s…
a new refrain
Tim was the new judge in Deadwood Flat
Not really qualified, just a rancher at that
He first case was of the outlaw, Horace Slade
Caught red handed in a cattle raid
The jury took ten minutes to recommend the noose
Better than letting this rattlesnake loose.
Tim smoothed out his robe, asked Slade to speak
Slade perked up, though his future was bleak
"It was only my brain, my brain it was me.
Badly constructed, that's how I plea
My thoughts, my feelings, my crooked way
All preprogrammed in my DNA!
"You see Dad was a member of the cardshop mob
Mom always drunk, and moreover a slob
My twin set a cat on fire at the age of three
So, who could predict much hope for me?
Tim panicked, searched his dictionary
Couldn't find DNA, wished he was on the prairie
He had never heard that excuse before
But said to Slade, "proceed, tell us more"
Slade felt hope, and got on a roll
He said "ain't no such thing as a soul'
"I know the computer hasn't been invented yet
"But we're programmed, coded, our path in life set!
"I shot a man to watch him die
Then partied at the bar for an alibi
Not my fault, an MRI would have shown
My limbic system, quiet as a stone.
The jury murmured, Tim gave a sigh
What was a computer, or an MRI?
Slade's nonsense was going too far
Slade could have used a lesson in better P.R.
Tim said, "I hope what you say is not true
I like soul and spirit, the afterlife too.
But either way, some feelings I can't transcend
My brain wants your pointless existence to end!
They planned to hang Slade on the Alder tree
Justice would be served, jury did agree
Then Slade tried a ploy, to explain his crime
He yelled "I'm a traveler through time!"
"I come from the year 2024
DNA, MRI, computers and more
Got stuck in a time warp, had to survive
You'd do the same to stay alive"
They had to let Slade go, agreed he's insane
Tim didn't like to do it, it went against the grain
But Deadwood Flats couldn't hang a guy
Who believed in computers, DNA, and MRI!
Sexual Attraction
Eyes meet
Pupils dialated
Smiles engage
Neurons connect
Two beings have met.
Lowering of the head
Tilt of the neck
Open palms
Feet facing
Heart pulsating.
Shoulders raised
Stomach tucked in
Feet stood apart
an attempt to gain your heart.
A subtle touch
A embracing hug
A move into one's intimate space
continues the magnetic chase
Lips kiss
A passionate mist
Cheeks glow
Time seems to gently flow
Limbic system awakened
Dopamine released
Senses heightened
Body excited.
Attraction fully ignited.
Control of breathing is quite complex
And if you really check the specs
You find all kinds of balances and checks
Within the medulla, cells playing their role
The DRG, inspirational control
Using cyclic neurons for their goal.
Actions potentials from the DRG
These cells are cyclic and fire intermittently.
Then muscle contract to the best of their ability.
To the external intercostals and diaphragm they talk
And these muscles, at the neurons’ stalk
Follow orders and they do not balk.
And when they stop, the muscles relax.
Air is forced out as muscle slacks.
Volume decreases and Boyle’s Law acts.
So breathing in costs ATP
That means the use of energy
But calm expiration? It’s just free.
But when you need to force air out
Or at something, really shout
The VRG is what it’s all about.
It talks to abdominal muscles as well
As internal intercostals to make pressure swell
And air in the lungs can no longer dwell.
The Apneustic center in the pons is a source
Of a center dealing with force
Of an inspiration’s course.
The pneumotaxic center deals with duration
And both centers talk to each medullary station
And help regulate breathing condition.
The limbic system has some sway
In breathing fast or slow at bay
More than most realize, an important say.
And the hypothalamus, always of import
With its influence never falls short
In aiding ventilation, it lends its support.
For other than limbic, it deals with fever
When it tips the temperature lever
And makes ventilation a greater achiever.
Lastly there’s the cortex of the brain,
Whose job most think, is always to reign.
But when it comes to breathing, it is quite plain.
You can’t stop breathing by your will.
The lower centers always still
Make breathing a reflex, cortex input almost nil.
And just what drives this reflex to ventilate?
From where does the need originate?
From the chemoreceptors, it does emanate.
Receptors monitoring proton concentration.
Then messages sent without cessation
To the brainstem for increasing ventilation.
And hydrogen ions, where are they from?
Carbon dioxide and water, voila, they come.
The magic formula, carbonic acid does succumb.
Dance of neurons is perceptible not on paper with ink only
All gazed at the sprinting poetry with its look at new sunrise
In Rio Olympics in hundred meters in just 9.81 seconds
When Usain Bolt muscled out the poem of sprinting with elan
Securing gold and the epithet of the fastest man on sweet earth
Adding a new crest to the ever heightening Olympic mania In Rio
Aesthetics of gleaming muscles height and stride flying on track
So did the Indian girl who lost the medal but won millions of hearts
As she performed Produnova vault with a mind blowing bird’s rhythm
Mesmerizing the spectators with her limbic poetry of gymnastics
Limbs of Deepa Karmakar resembling wings of birds in splendid flight
As she incredibly and charmingly came down from the dream vacuum
Through the ‘vault of death’, with a front handspring, off the vault table
Then daringly done two and a half somersaults in the air risking even death
Birds of maniac ecstasy flying high in the Olympian colours
My garden, darling, brims in beauty of your lyrical laughter
_____________________________________________________________
19 August, 2016: For Olympic Mania – Poetry Contest: Sponsored by Janis Thompson
I foolishly fell from a mountainous high only to land on a desert dry
Images of liquid lust within my emotive eye calcified to a crusted cry
Warning winds in delusory distance holding hurricanes of resistance
Conjuring catacombs of assistance within isolation of nonexistence
The pensive pain penetrates as the perfidious palette perpetrates
Limbic resonance that hibernates awaking the storm that obliterates
Manipulation of the mangled mind Benedictine battery of the blind
Twisted temperance that is twined the cervical citadels are confined
Dormant delusions that may weep defiant deluge of twilight sleep
Restless roars that reap screaming shadows of the saporous sheep
Bactericidal beacons that bloom wandering the wounded womb
The slings and arrows of doom ebulliently entrapping to entomb.
March.24.2019
Pick A Title, Vol.3 Alliteration
Sponsored by: Edward Ibeh
Placed 1'st...Thank You
My sleep stages are Moon phases combing
my limbic system, where I touch electric chords
singing my survival.
The words I compose dwell in privacy.
I blow the candles out after they are written.
And they wait, poised to be expressed.
But like a child in a nightmare,
I am naked before my audience.
My own words belong to someone else.
My lips move out of sync with my thoughts.
A.I. writes a better imitation of my poems.
It will speak its version of me,
parrot its empty parody of me.
You’ll enjoy its rendering of me
far better than me.
Like the first motion pictures,
The audience fears the A.I. train
will mow them down.
Magical thinking about flickering
images on a wall enlisted the same
primal fears as flickering algorithmic
texts.
But no phases of the Moon touch
them. No electric chords will sing, and
no privacy in candlelight is felt
in them.
Instead, we will forget that A.I.
was ever scary.
We will watch it mimic life
like reruns of
nearly forgotten movies.
Published: Caesura - Summer 2023
Hippocampus
What a memory trickling down my limbic system
Pure deep emotion released from a firing brain
Neurons transmitted untainted joy
A night dive at Stackpole Quay in Pembrokeshire
Thick wet suit in cold waters weights on the belt
No load on my shoulders apart from the aqua lung
Floating balancing below the disc of the lucid moon
Nature nurtured unburdened soul
Nearly translucent by the beam of torch in hand
A tiny Seahorse was feeding hidden by silvery rocks
Slowly nourishing its dragon like body on copepod
Swell swished a mythical world
I have jumped a stallion over fences ridden on tide-
Flooded beaches parachuted from a plane walked down
The Grand Canyon and tasted the salt of the earth
Experience cloaked human perceptions
Taj Mahal and the Sphinx Hanging Gardens in Babylon
The legendary horse at Troy Cave Art in the Drakensberg
Have left my breathless like Monet’s Garden on my travels
Camels threaded eyed needles
Yet the spiky little creature called hippocampus debunked
This human misperception that miracles and surprises
Must be larger than life in this bigger higher faster world
Seahorse and Universe are more substantial than I
18th April 2018
The change is slowly coming
like murder in the back alley.
It won't be neat or sweet, but
messy, and the moon will reflect in the cardinal pools.
The hand of a stranger wrenching the deepest secrets
from any subdural cavity, flinging the remnants about.
Akin to a drunken neurosurgeon who has a penchant
for psychotic episodes.
The effluvium of dormant limbic activity
reaches the nostrils by way of a ghost's lingering, indecipherable
love melody.
A soulless beggar or a stray dog on my porch
gives reinforcement to the crumbling foundation
that rests before the golden cross.
Cherubs need more grease for the gears that
the bedraggled nobleman has primed for the faustian machine.
Shall the slaughterhouses reopen?
Maybe the banquet should be served on the convex table
complete with
sandwiches made of dust and weeds.
The change brings dirt devils and the clanging
of wind chimes that belt out Beethoven's 9th
with all the glory of any bacchanalia
ever dreamed up by the whims
of peripheral thoughts.
Cosmic Integrity
as defined and refined by Buckminster Fuller
is ultimate divine synergy,
co-operativity,
regenerativity,
organic wiki-PositivEnergy.
God is love
is grace with gratitude
is PositivEnergy Synergy
Tao of Cosmic Health Integrity.
Universal ZeroPhase Integrity
predicts cooperative profiting Fuller,
"Cosmic intellectual integrity"
LeftEgo with Right SacredEco
reincarnates metaphysical Health Universe.
"Orderly interaccomodation
[acclimation, says Bateson
creolization, says Jane Gordon]
of all generalized [health/pathology] principles
constitutes a [bilateral polypathic] nutritional design."
"Multiculturally ordered [health/pathology] relationships"
are inductively apprehended appositionally
and deductively comprehended oppositionally
by bilateral cosmic consciousness.
"As the human mind
progressively draws aside
the [RightBrain divinely cooperative] curtain
of [deductive LeftBrain] unknownness
the great [ego-ecotherapeutic transubstantiating] design laws
of eternally regenerative [health-wealth] Universe
are disclosed
to human [LeftBrain dominant] intellect."
Both cosmic synergetic cause
of Yang
And integrity effects
of dipolar co-arising
Yang mindbody centers
with Yin heartmind ZeroZones
of and for Cosmic Integrity
bilateral temporal-historical
limbic past paths through future
PastHere/FutureNow temporal
dipolar Left/Right cosmic integrity.
What Gregory Bateson
titled "Ecology of Mind"
Buckminster Fuller entitled
"Geometry of Thinking Synergetics"
Thomas Kuhn historically searched
as GoldenRules
and LeftBrain Wealth Protocol
for "Scientific Revolutions"
of evolving ecotherapeutic cosmic proportion,
dipolar measure,
polynomial integrity
of what Julian Jaynes ethologically explored
with and as bicameral ElderRight
re-creating Younger Ego skin double-boundaried deduced Left
as Edward De Bono's psychological positive health advocated
bilateral cosmic integrity
Of WinWin FutureSearch
Work That Reconnects
is clearly not WinLose BusinessAsUsual
monotonous mountains of potential
but polyculturally health abundant Left with Right
cooperatively-owned and fertile managing
with Cosmic Integrity
of sacred EarthTribe DNA
Open Whole System Scriptures
prophetic
if cosmic integrity descriptive
of cooperative revolutionary ZeroPhase
polyculturing Fullerian Designs.
Amigdala cells perished by apoptosis,
Sommer's sector succumbed to sclerosis,
Limbic system exists
In drug-induced bliss...
"You are doomed-
That's your long-term prognosis"
are you so afraid to look at death because it would impair your ability to live?
or are you that self-induldged that you can not find it in yourself to forgive?
time is near the layers of corpses will be eased into a mass grave on a slide
are your thoughts full of memories of death that hinder the limbic region of your mind?
the hand cart is rolling for the tare those seeds will be thrown into the fire
and the weakened thump of a vragant vessel loses compassion and desire
will your soul be magnified or diminished before the throne of God?
will you be weighed for righteousness or pointed out by the saviors
rod?
It was a five ringed circus
Complete with the ragged remains of a tourniquet
Heavily fringed by the under eye baggage of a bloated nefarious
Clown soul that is
Blowing across the freeway garnished with the white plastic baggies
From the local supermarket factory
Now fluttering like proud flags from the tops of trees
Spawned by an alien race
It was on a highway headed home that
I nearly ran over a kid high on societal delusion and
Upon pulling over near the canyon's edge
I shouted towards this cipher to no avail
A wind tunnel
Afterwards a mumbled mixed nursery rhyme
While hobbling away with a hollow body
That floated over curb blocks and arby's remains
Into a distance that was too vast to measure
Was all I was sure of
In this
I saw the effigy transformation that
Grasps everyone from time to time
If only the magnetic train could ram through the clouds
Speaking directly to synapses long derailed
With the urgency of a needed 7 beer urination during protracted conversation
Let me go
Looking deep into this mirror to see the molecules swirling
About this illusionary image reflected
Some wells runs deep
Some are saucers filled with swampy oil
Self created sideshows with a surplus of freaks
Oh yes
The rest is purely the constructs of madmen and deviant spirits
Itching to burn the dermis and the frontal cortex
Plus limbic
Tricks and trades of the craft
Welcoming a spill out of the most financially false origin
Singing like a lark touching both wires
200,000 volts of pure pleasure
Spell patterns of truth for the first time
Ah, the self of self is running on electrons and vapors
Smiling like a netted acrobat
The unicycle is unmanned
Gyrating though this monkey business
Yet the music continues on