Best Substantive Poems
Some people take to Facebook
In an effort to create
A safe and pleasant habitat
Unfriending those who wish debate.
But still rile against a college chum
Who's not lost their winter weight.
We drone on about the weather
Far too often before we die.
Talking incessantly about our children
To those unfortunate to catch our eye.
But fail to address substantive issues
And I have to question why?
No religion, politics or talk of sex
To free us from our doubt.
Avoiding issues that may offend
Seems the safer route.
But spotting the neighbor wearing spandex
Deserves a rapid shout.
No fossil fuel or global warming talk
To change us from our course.
And any attempt to grow our minds
Is met with dogged force.
It's far better to speak of gardening tips
Which we heartily endorse.
We close our eyes and dim our ears
To the thornier things in life.
And may indeed find sweet sanctuary
From unwanted social strife.
But rest assured we'll have wasted much
In a desire to escape our neighbor's knife.
We avoid such talk and play it safe...
Our true essence hidden from the fray.
But I have to tell... my greatest fear
That haunts and tasks me to this day.
Is when we stand before the gates of Heaven...
We'll have nothing much to say.
The End
*Check out my cartoon on Webtoons Dave McHattie.
It begins with a thought
A simple spark igniting
the universe of mind
An unconscious gift
Intangible but substantive
The physical mechanics begin
Interpretation of invisible blueprint
Manifestation in dimension
Lines crossed, realms united
The form emerges
Each movement defining shape
Incremental fulfillment
Energy to essence
Then at last, ideas realized
Born of perpetual passion
Borrowed from collective intelligence
Invention
12/24/17
I stay close to home these days,
my roaming needs seeming to
expire with age, finding more
of what I need in the Silence
of packing; of course, this
worn-out body is far too cumbersome
to even contemplate wanting – like
frayed clothing, now best for rags;
like empty cans for the recyclable:
I wonder how Earth will handle
my re-purposing?~as for my poetry,
will my works know future lips? Be
Whispered and sung, inspiring others
fancying fireside light and chat, within
the warmth of flickering, yet mysterious
shadows? Or will my words, unceremoniously
settle like bird droppings on tombstones,
surrounded by laurels of weeds, a forgotten
chapter? That settles it, I will opt for cremation!
Leaving tombstones and graves for
most politicians, TV Evangelists, and
Movie-stars, needing their world
monuments where the Devil will
easily find them for substantive
reunions....
Does Nox hold sway where you sit or lay,
or stand blanketed in deep fog's clime?
Where perfectly proportioned physical deformity holds
in substantive and coddled awe' sublime.
Shrouded in shot from fusil's beautiful dark pall,
far from heredity's nameless and shameless hall.
We walked as friends, along a stoney ledge
talking of women and lofty soul's reprisal'd pledge.
Wore separate clothes, to separate mothers
we cling'd,
free of our father's shadow at last.
Yet in time..
if your beliefs differ from mine
will you still call me brother?
We are so few since wreck and ruin,
should hate ever.,
take us away one another.
I'd never turn against, you have my word,
no matter the seizur'd absence of mind.
For it held strong our promised bond,
and for it,
prefer neck to the sword.
No crowning achievement in sorrows my truth,
faithful friendship strong as any belief,
more than life it's a simple us I hold to.,
for w'out us there'd be no more we.
If finding yourself means going it alone,
You shouldn’t—a fact that is painfully plain.
Need is a naturally human bemoan,
A collaboration helps you remain, a
Friend to those who also have needs to atone.
I'm clearing a path, a push straight ahead,
Sailing stress free in my life stem to stern.
Right where I should be, clarity widespread,
Behind me no wake or substantive churn.
Like all things in life from which one must glean,
A period of time flowing under
Bridge where it is swept quite far out to sea,
Over vastness like far distant thunder
Troubled and troubles, mere seconds they flee
Water healing life’s fires placed asunder.
I promise you one fact I now cherish
Will power alone is power itself, so
Ease your mind with the faith you’ll not perish
Your success assured, fear placed on the shelf
Mind over matter, peace you’ll inherit.
© David Wegman 2014
Submitted for Roy Jerden’s Poetry Contest: “Bridge Over Troubled Water - Word Acrostic”
I Cooked the Book that Would Not Tap
A Doomsday, a nightmare gone wrong,
My hand shot with pain and didn’t stop,
Bandages hid the wound I wove for kong,
The silence echoed round the wheel fop.
I screamed with tears which said the news,
When sirenes had been screened for writ,
Draughts unveiled the blood for reviews,
That cared enough to dare read the fit.
Arching, the doctor stood vacant and here,
Physicalism bent metaphor until she looped,
Analogy personified emphatic nature’s fear,
When realism criticised cubisms’ truly trooped.
Critical realism still made no ontological sense,
My metaphysical slippers knew no god,
Subjectivism objected to empirical arms tense,
When constructivism departed from my odd.
I could not write to epistemology for methodology,
‘Cos clearly my relativity had got it substantive.
Moral absolutism saw humankind as pedagogy,
Still, not yet a guess, a list, a bond, gift, a plaintiff.
Rationalism was not a natural phenomenon, fair,
No predicates set my entities alight to condition,
The proposition adjunct to abstract and layer,
I imagined the mathematics that truly supposition.
This OR that, tip AND rat, not for me or negation
FOR ALL humanities THERE EXISTS a surreal,
Mere, underneath my formula, nude propagation,
Creating the sum of me that axiomed regal’s legal.
Logic. Logic, just pure blooded logic. Critical,
Crucial. Conscience, not questioning the cost, fact,
Never asking for terms or claim, the carer brutal,
The dame. The lame as mentioning the act.
Structural.
Rhoda Monihan
Ten thousand eyes will each day pass but not a single one will see,
for the folly of their hubris hides from harsh reality,
and when they pass by homeless people posted prone in poverty,
cold cloaked, they are invisible.
Ten thousand ears will each day pass but not a single one will hear
any proper prayers of the sullen souls that live their lives in fear.
And so they sing their psalms in silence praying angels will appear,
their sadness semi-visible.
Ten thousand nostrils will each day pass turned up and they’ll all detect
the foul fragrance from a stumbling bum with bubble bath neglect.
And yet their greatest fears are fostered by his foreign dialect.
So sobering, so risible.
Five thousand hearts will each day pass but not a single one will feel
for the burdens borne by a beggar with war wounds that will not heal.
Still they will paint themselves as patriots, American, genteel.
One Nation, indivisible.
Now forty-nine hundred ninety-nine, by bike, by car or by train,
still each day pass oblivious, while the one that they thought insane,
is a poet who rode to heaven on his high horse dubbed Disdain,
his verses inadmissible.
Submitted 3/5/2021
This is a substantive re-write of “Urban Commuter Scents and Sensibility,” posted in August 2020, with new content to create a new dramatic monologue poem for the “Biting Satire Poetry Contest,” sponsored by Edward Ibeh.
I.
You hear the most vile garbage
come from young people’s mouths these days,
that America is evil,
it does not deserve to be saved.
The fact they’re not shot in the streets
means at least we do free speech right,
but to see them hating their freedom
is a reprehensible sight.
There are many theories out there
as to why they do what they do,
but I’ll say simply to the kids:
Your professors are lying to you.
First let’s take up the master lie,
the evil of postmodernism,
the idea that there is no truth,
and all is seen through a prism,
that everything is interpreted,
and nothing can be seen as ‘real,’
that reason is social construct,
and what matters is what you feel.
Go tell a rocket scientist
that there’s no objectivity,
that science is nothing more than
'western cultural supremacy.'
Go tell a busy surgeon that
truth and fact are easily changed,
I guarantee that medicine
will never again be the same.
Even in the humanities,
those squishy, non-technical fields,
it’s nonsense to say there is no truth,
No substance on which to appeal.
Look back on what Shakespeare once did
the formulas and the techniques,
then look at postmodern fiction,
tell me what kind do most minds seek?
It’s not the plotless, indulgent trash
that postmodernists write these days,
it’s narratives and timeless truth
that enter our minds for a long stay.
As if Shakespeare and the great writers
had stumbled upon something true,
mankind looks for the substantive,
Your professors are lying to you.
This autumn morning with the birds waking up
and the leaves changing is Election Day. I meet
Jane Trichter on the downtown train and discuss
Henry's upset. Her skin is soft especially her cheeks
and she is intelligent and sensitive. The subway riders
do not recognize their representative.
All week, at the office, I accomplish nothing substantive
but keep the aides and interns working
and cheerful. On Tuesdays there is always a wave
of constituent complaints, by telephone. One woman's
Volkswagon is towed and the police break in
to get it out of gear. Do they have that right,
can they tow even though no sign said Tow Away Zone?
It is an interesting question but I try to avoid
answering it. The woman persists and succeeds
in committing me.
The people at the office want to bomb Iran. A few Americans
held hostage and therefore many innocent women and children
pay the postage. It may be good classical logic to hold responsible
the whole society for the acts of a few, however, then
I must begin to expect the bomb and the white cloud that waits.
Apocalyptic visions are popular again
but we are more likely to thrash the earth to within an inch of its life
than scorch it to charred rock.
Corner of Church and Chambers,
German tourist's language, accent repels me
although I wasn't alive 45 years ago
and many sweet, great Germans opposed the crazy Nazis
but lately I've read Primo Levi's If Not Now, When?,
seen William Holden in "The Counterfeit Traitor",
have followed the argument started by revisionists
who say the Nazi atrocities never happened.
War brought many shopkeepers, bookkeepers close to their earth,
weather, seasons, death.
I see daily life as low-intensity warfare
as my father, the World War II vet, did.
Off to work we go. What is war?
Population control, mother of invention, diversion
from the work of making life permanent.
Today is Election Day and because it's a day off
for most municipal employees, the City Hall area
has been quiet and easy to work in. Henry and Jane
hold a press conference on teenage alcoholism.
Leslie, the other aide, who I'd like to draw
the stockings and clothes off of and feel her whole body
with mine, goes home with her mother, leaving me
standing by my desk with my briefcase at the end
of Election Day.
Slinking silently through the night
on tiny tipped toes, claws withdrawn.
He mustn’t sleep until daylight’s dawn,
prudently prowls, avoiding light.
Clever, cunning crones craft a spell
to purloin his priceless powers,
control them in Eve’s evil hours,
condemn powerless prey to Hell.
Hither, fine ferocious feline.
Soulfully sing your sacred song.
Whiskers hoary, lavishly long
subtle signs of ancient bloodline.
He will not succumb to witches
who wish to control, to command.
Here he makes a substantive stand
to thwart wicked witches’ wishes.
Cruel claws render stinging slashes
slitting through wrinkled, withered skin.
They shrilly shriek their dying din,
melting ghoulish, gray-green ashes.
I have wandered into a human stew of inopportunity, as my marriage/love/parental life have all come to an abrupt closure, noncompliance and final withdrawal from any real meaning. Am I dead yet? Not necessarily, but it seems that entity is not so remotely absent from my thoughts, as it once was given the supposed social tenure of our powers to control our nature, so now it seems "stupid" to even begin to engage a strategy, plan, answer to reclaim that "Lost Horizon" that will put me, us back into a Nirvanal state of eloquent bliss so aptly stated in the substantive, ****, vows we still take when we engage, marry, obligate, consumate, consecrate, and you know the rest. Grandchildren as quickly as possible. Forget the "Happy Couple" and all of their existance desires/wants/needs. Thank u socialization/domestication for ruining the fertile pastures of real love and affection. Feed the economy, we need workers/bosses, CEO's, sell, buy everything, produce, produce and produce. Keep us ever informed with all the trinkets which keep us isloated, unemotional and spur inhumanity to all that terse that tricky transient torment of T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z bytes, or in whatever compuscale u eat, that only serves to further the noncommunication life of our species. I only exist within myself in this space. Are my thoughts my own or just a reflection of what I receive? Do I exist? When I answer, am I being true or is it a stated recording of past sequences that are familiar in a patterened sense of my former being? My salience, remorse, continued presence upon this Earth is at best questionable? Meaningless? For me, the current standards of being have become to contentious; the stupidity, too overwhelming; the ignorance, too unbearable; the incompetence/divisiveness/poor judgement/antiquated/uneducated thinking/acting/feeling, our illustrious president, his supporters, henchmen, cronies, nepotism, DFA and their anything-but-a proactive approach to problem solving for the benefit of us all, leaves me in a lackluster quandry of whether, "To Be Or Not To Be? Believe me baby, that is MY question! My God, and I am not a religious person, but in the fin al analysis, you will reap what you sow!!!!!!!!! And I will laugh. I like "mushrooms" with my atomic grilled steak. No waiting.
Outlining your face, wisps of gorgeous hair
Within those wisps, beauty of no compare
Adorning your face, the most beautiful smile
Sometimes I forget, you have been mine all the while
Deeper still, two jewels for eyes
And in them care with no compromise
Love sparkling from inside
Sometimes my love I did hide
Anchoring your persona, two eyes most sensitive
All they have heard, considered most substantive
And jewelry fades against lobes so tender
Sometimes my time I have forgotten to render
Creation perfection, lips of greatest allure
Words of kindness of love are spoken so pure
Soft and luscious, they summon my soul
Sometimes I conceal, your love is my goal
Contemplating your beauty, i consider no flaw
I gaze in adornment, full of hope and awe
Pondering your love, it has enriched my life
Sometimes I must proclaim, I love my wife
What does it mean to engage? For me it is the complete commitment of purpose and emotion, the desire to participate. Once something is engaged it propels one forward. In this case an engagement propels two people forward. In the process there is a joining of families and their hopes and dreams for your future.
Let me share what some of my hopes are for you. My hope is that you will not travel through life alone. That you will know what it means to be loved in a way that matters. A substantive love, a love infused with laughter, a love that pushes you towards and beyond your dreams. I want you to be happy, but more importantly I want you to grow. When times are difficult (and they will be) I want Harleen to be the person who will be there for you. The two of you also don't have to face life alone, by joining together you have added to your family. Now that you are engaged we too are also engaged. We are engaged in the common purpose of supporting you both and making this the experience you dream of. Beyond your wedding we are engaged in the common purpose of supporting your relationship. You are both special and your lives matter. This wedding is but one of many joyful moments we will share with you both. Please everyone, raise a glass to the future. May it be twice as good as you hope for and half as difficult as you imagine. Most importantly may it be filled with many moments like this.
We are happy for you both and look forward to your wedding. We also look forward to watching your amazing lives unfold. You are loved beyond what these words can express. Congratulations and a big hug.
Love
Rick
A little something I wrote for our son's engagement party. We are very proud of the man he has become.
JAMES PHRASIS
AN INMOST SOUL AGLOW
Art,a universal spirit with
many distinct manifestations
with spontaneous productions.
The human genius of inward
attraction sheds divine splendour
with infinite riches,to generate
a ray of activity as an idea or
conception in the mind.Art is
positive,a substantive majesty,
an inmost soul aglow.Served
by nature,the menial of the artist
furnishing his informing eye,smiles
before the window of conception
in the performers soul with the tender
freshness of dawn.In a lingering glance
using the fruits of imagination to
admirable advantage to actualize
an idea with human sweetness,
pregnant with meaning,carrying
the dew and fragrance of God into
the commonest nook of daily life.
from Lectures and Miscellanies by Henry James
Listen to me recite this phrasis on youtube under my pen name ichthyschiro
I, henceforth, known as the respirer, do
solemnly swear hereafter, to take you in,
in sufficient quantities to ensure
continuation of the flesh's animation.
I additionally, do accede my heretofore,
essential need of your estimable service,
and express my desire to continue our
mutually beneficial, ok, parasitic, relationship
Being, as you are, substantive to well-being,
I wish to publicly, and, without reservation,
acknowledge, my sincere admiration for your
valuable and well known qualities
By any and all conveyances available to stated
respirer, procurement of your services is
to be distributed to every cell of said being
equitably and on an as needed basis until
such time as service is no longer necessitated
I, the aforementioned respirer, do in earnest,
testify to my intent and necessity for
a continual contractual relationship, with you
In short, you breathe life into mine
© Goode Guy 2013-04-26