Best Superficiality Poems
So many live on the edge of Superficiality
Not wanting to see beyond the physical
Pretty clothes pretty people
Living pretty lives
They will never know the extrordinary ordinary
Regular every day people
Lives more complicated than the surface we see
Inside jokes
Struggles that add humor to their lives
Answers to questions they will never ask
They have dreams
Some beauty lies below the surface
Diamonds are never found laying on top of the ground
Gold is hidden for a reason
True wealth comes from effort
I want to be an emotional miner
Superficiality will not satisfy my yearning
Tell me your story
My ears scream for your words
Your secrets are safe with me
Tell me your jokes
I will get the punch line
I will cry your tears
Our spirits are intertwined
Unseen connections become our bonds
We were alway related
Time distance language computer screens
They are not limitations
I see beyond to a life of imagination
Not limited by what is seen
What is unseen will be fully felt
Our spirits eternal
Walls of superficiality melt away
We are at the center of a power struggle. We are centered. We have been cornered.
We are powerless, wireless, penny-less.
We are having a technological breakdown, meltdown.
What? Technology? Love this thing.
We are over loaded, downloaded, app-loaded.
We are so freaking viral. We are part of a wild feed.
We are remote controled.
Keeping up with the Jones's is killing the true American dream.
This is the American nightmare.
We are breeding superficial children. Welcome to the age of superficiality.
We are frequently asked questions.
Pretty plastic people.
Pretty plastic play.
What you see is what you get.
And it's always the same.
As I look into the camera.
Back out through your eyes.
We know each others secrets.
Yet "believe" the other's lies.
Pretty plastic people.
Pretty plastic play.
What you see is what you get.
it's easier that way.
It's not superficial.
This glorious facade.
Keeping up the act.
Is always super hard.
Pretty plastic people.
Pretty plastic play.
What you see is what you get.
They're the rules it's not game.
I've forgotten who I am.
You've forgotten yourself too.
I'm sure that this normal.
Matters not to me nor you.
Pretty plastic people.
Pretty plastic play.
What you see is what you get.
When I'm done you're thrown away.
Purely fictitious.
A character you create.
Image equals status.
Only have to imitate.
Pretty plastic people.
Pretty plastic play.
What you see is what you get.
Why would anyone complain?
It's not disingenuous.
I always play it straight.
Clearly you're enamoured.
I'm pretending I'm not bait.
Pretty plastic people.
Pretty plastic play.
What you see is what you get.
I'm perfection on a plate.
Vanitys a virtue.
You're a stepping stone.
My new flashy bauble beauty queen.
Shows how much I've grown.
Pretty plastic people.
Pretty plastic play.
What you see is what you get.
The limelights faded you away.
Like the film in an old camera.
You're no longer on a roll.
Hanging up to dry.
In a flash negative of soul.
Pretty plastic people.
Pretty plastic play.
What you see is what you get.
And it always ends the same.
JAKE CASTLE’S - THE THRILL OF THINGS
Characterized by routine or superficiality, his mouth was full of draught when he spoke unthinkingly.
Awry was his eyes as he told of events that had transpired.
He laughed aloud with his audience.
This was Friday and Jake Castle was the life of the party.
As always, he had a song to share.
His wife Nefreda Maria Castle patiently sit as Jake begin to sing “The Thrill of Things”.
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This is the City that develops the mind.
This is the City that cultivates and design.
A world of culture that has been found.
We are the thrill of things profound.
This is the mountain that we have climbed.
Over the top and back down.
We are the suppliers of our way.
We are the thrill of things each day.
Over there is a faraway place.
I discovered just yesterday.
Took my sack of nutriments as well as my confidence.
Unearthed new ideas as well as civilization.
The thrill of things and a great nation stood over seven feet tall.
Giantvillism this place is called.
Now, here in Beantown we explore.
All will meet Giant and Maddy if they visit our world.
Much ado we have done.
Our stories are always forthcoming.
We are the thrill of things and they are also beyond.
This is a wonderful day.
This is a Beantown's escape to our favorite thingamajigs.
Plus, the thrills this gives are magnanimously felt.
All enjoy the revelry.
The thrill of things happens in Beantown accordingly.
____________________________________________|
Written 14 November, 2015!
The Soul’s Path
The soul’s path is one . . .
whose way
is oft
clouded and confounded
by a
myriad of challenges
and
rank superficiality
which
pervade the
very nature
of mankind’s
mortal coil.
This means . . .
each of us
should seek a
higher ethereal
understanding of life,
and
be not afraid
to meet and embrace
our fate and destiny
head-on
with
courage and faith
in
God’s holy guidance
and
His most divine grace.
The soul’s path . . .
is an
individual endeavor,
but one
worth taking
so each of us
can find
our final way back to God.
Gary Bateman, Copyright © All Rights Reserved,
July 17, 2016 (Short-Lined Free Verse)
Did your mother ever tell you,
Did you know?
(Some of us have a penchant for the inscrutable)
Did, your mother ever tell you
(These bonds are primordial and immutable)
In one of those intimate conversations
Between mother and child
(Mostly wasted on superficiality of dopamine significance)
About your origin and your age?
(Neither carbon-14 nor red shift light can date us)
I supposed
With your superior knowledge written on official paper
That provide the data of your birth
You think it not worth the bother
To have such small talk about origin.
Mothers knew the world before the big banging bang
Or you measure your life with time like baking flour.
Trivial, trivial, three scores and ten is distorted denial.
Did your mother ever tell you
About her memory of tomorrow?
Did you know
That every child comes mass produced from heaven
The female foetus has 7 million oocytes to begin
The tomb stalks us from the womb because of sin
Death comes early to siblings we forget tomorrow
When the memory of the future fades
She is born with only one million eggs later on
O that I could tell the brothers or sisters in one year we lost
That by puberty only 400, 000 eggs are not gone.
Was that random love
Or the beginning of my purpose driven life,
O mother, will you remember now?
Did you hear
The whispering of my siblings telling me "go first!"
I was Jacob, coming last despite my bossy siblings
Who 7 million with me were only potential until my birth;
This perhaps, the Electra complexity eluding Freud
Matters not, mother knew
I never took orders very well
That is why on the Wanderer I was not in the hold
But many many died in the wretched womb of our beginning
When slaves grow green and slavers search for gold.
I came long after laughing
And could not believe what birth certificates taught in writing
Did they not know the entire universe is one age
That God rested from all his work and his creation that he made from then
That time sequenced us like products on an assembly line
That all eggs existed simultaneously
So that I age vicariously and erroneously
Mother said nothing to me
So I beg you, talk to your mother again.
Characteristics that would best long fit to who I truly am.
Serious
Isn't afraid to talk about deeper issues in life
Can detest superficiality
Can reasonate with mentally
Emotionally
Feels deeply
Can relate to me on more than intellectual level
Class clown is the last person to be with
Leader
Knows how to take charge both home
At work
To feel safe knowing if things get out of control
Can step in and make them right
Supportive
Boosts my ego with plenty of praise
Stands behind me no matter what
While I run things don't feel like a Lone Ranger
Intellectual
Can participate in more esoteric discussions with our friends
This is important to learn new things from him/her.
Emotional
Feels deeply and can relate more than an intellectual level
Important to have an active emotional life
Needs someone who understands this side of me
Street smart
Has a great social skills
A real Survivor
He will make it in any circumstances
Honest
Doesn't play any game
Candid and forthright with me, even when it's not easy-such as I have food on my teeth
And have had for days
Motivated
Driven to succeed in every aspect of this life
Ready to tackle any challenges
Organized
Takes care of bills
Makes sure everything needs to get done does
This is important, I can actually be a little scatterbrained sometimes
Responsible
Can be relied upon to do what he says he will do
Equal partner when it comes to doing the stuff that's not fun
As well as doing the stuff that is
Confident
Believes in himself
Makes me believe in him
Equally makes me feel good about my place in the world
Secure in my future
Wise
Thinks before he acts because he has learned from his experience
Sometimes needs guidance
A partner who give me some real advice
Disciplined
Strong enough to structure his life
Follow his own rules
I can trust him to follow his promises
I do not know if it is Bra Man
Or Black Lightening
Missing from the curriculum
Or it is that we do not teach about ourselves
Beyond the superficiality of their apologetics
Twisting identities out of shape,
But I cannot find you in dream nor landscape
And we are so young.
We are too young to forget so many things new already
Unless we prioritize
For when the wound is heal the scab must go
And I must see my flesh beautiful with hair again
I must see you growing in our rain.
For you were a tree
That did not just take root and leach us dry
You returned mulch again and again
And gave this culture
The most denied part of it
Exposure to me look me in the eyes
And left me owning with mild surprise.
Brother man, let me tell you
That was black lightning in the heart
White darkness fled.
ii
He too knew it before
What I tell you
This is language you may dance
You may write and carve
But it is not to talk
For talking sake.
This language is the repository of culture ...
He went inside searching bare cupboards
And came out laughing with surfeit
An old man’s Dream
I have this dream – no !, a burning desire
to be with a woman willing to light my fire.
- Not as in the past – placed on a funeral pyre,
there to be left on my own, left alone to expire.
A woman I can touch, feel, I can reach in,
deep, into her heart, into her soul, know exquisite sin.
To experience, to express, to know where she has bin ?
Not superficiality, not what’s behind of a veil so thin.
Ah, but to know the depths, to know the heights
she has reached – to know that the lights
burn bright and there is nothing in sight,
that, in the end, one would be forced to fight.
But most of all, to find that, that woman
has not been crushed, been shriveled, and can
leave behind all that scorched her heart and soul,
becoming the cage, within which all she came to know,
prevented her from being all she could, but cannot be,
- because of all who steeled her heart and soul – and see,
but she cannot – from within her sarcophagus – for she is lost to ?,
humanity, to man, it has been thousands of years for me and for you.
I have a dream !, a desire !, a wish !, and a need too.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Life Happens
Unfortunately I do not know – about myself – having been sacrificed
- many times – upon the alter of love and passion and their funeral pyre.
Having been burned by the heat of my own passions fire
I’ve known not – for very long – what my heart desired or what my soul required.
Unfortunately, that is life and life happens – before you know it,
it has slipped between your fingers and past your dreams and desires.
Then you become a statistic, crushed, burned, shriveled as any woman
locked up in her cages, laid to rest in her sarcophaguses .
B. J. “A” 2
February 4th 2006
I cannot, will not, do not suffer fools gladly
especially those dolts that are not capable of recognising or realising
the plummeting depths of their own unfathomable foolishness!
It is believed that charity should begin at home, or so they say,
But, damn, when your every nerve is stretched – elasticated, broken – fragmented;
how?
How can I?
The level of superficiality camouflaged as sincerity astounds, bemuses and, yet,
I am not surprised that there are those that are drawn to them as moths to a flame;
the utter blindness confuses me –
an internal eruption, a soul quake…
I refuse to conform to their archetype – their need for acceptance
does not justify painting veneers that crumble and diminish, deteriorate and fade;
my true self independent and dignified –
an explosion of colour, a kaleidoscope of possibilities…
I believe there is not only charity in our home but love too,
Where all are accepted – embraced, whether broken or not;
how?
Because we can!
I can, will, do take delight in real people gladly,
especially those splendiferous spirits capable of recognising, realising
the insurmountable depths of their own unfathomable foolishness!
Copyright Deon J.H. Burger 2017
Dear Id,
Once again, I find my mind making the same journey into your deepest ocean of questions I can never fathom. So many times I've told myself it's such a complete waste of time to even cast my cares upon your unyielding waters. I have been utterly lost for days at a time trying to find my way back through the labyrinth of my mind. The air feels heavy and breathing has nothing to do with want or desire. For as long as I can remember, my reflection has been as an ever evolving meaningless Rorschach. No identifiable constants, just a tangled mess of emotion with a gaping hole of disappointment in the life experience. I ask myself, "Is this it?" The overwhelming outpouring of human pretentiousness and superficiality leaves me dying of starvation for anything real! Will it even matter? How can I miss something I've never known and be so instinctually convinced there is more? Enlighten me!
Truly,
Frustrated and Unfulfilled
Death has come
Falling softly like snowflakes
On flowerbeds
The winds blows the dead sheet of leaves
Every time I see greatness rising from the earth
Like a new pea growing
The locust comes like a flash of lightning
Will nothing endure our birth
These are days so trivial
Nothing is sustained beyond the flesh of pleasure
And all we contewmplate
Are so superficial, so personal
Too insular
For the escape we seek
Where the highest peak is bleak
Will poets see deep things again
Will they make far things near
And palpable on the tongue
O I long to suck the delicacy of a song
That drip with the light of melting stars
And put my lips on the passion of the sun
Who writes like that again
We have neither an Eliot, nor a McKay
Neither a Blake nor a Keats
This is a civilization in decay
Great truths now our superficiality deletes
We cannot see them
And all the noise is silence still
I see choice like a shadow
Just a rag of suspended will
I want to hear a poet groan giving birth
O push, push, push, please push
Away this dead effect of words
And let us make our lives universal
Having a Wordsworthian argument again.
O let us,
That I may read Donne
Without epilepsy,
And seduce a new pain.
Though I am a blank but still,
I can smell their shallowness from twill,
How debunked shame and superficiality in them,
But no cuss, ahem…
Because it ‘be questioned, frowned and fuss,
Hah…so this fallacy of twenty-first,
Disguised under flag of ‘coolness’,
Don’t abuse it with the with f n b in utter flatness,
Because, its today’s trend,
To be free in all the evils commend,
Which makes per worthy to the cool breed
That creed which is clad in obscene lee
What an awfully excruciating enlightenment I see,
In which moral and respect bleed
You dont have to be moved,
we are already in a revolution
A different kind, one where futures are decided on couches in front of the television.
One which undoes it all
Implanting the seeds that usurp
men and women; both old and young along with their hot blooded ideals.
I make a imaginery toast to a time when we raised fists in unison.
While I watch in much intrigue and an impending sense of horror,
a tide wiping the minds of the free of all that is red
With the sterility of modern celluloid fiction.
The profane fantasies consisting of comic book superheroes fighting crime.
Morphed, rudimentary ideas of justice.
Just another vulgar display of neo liberal superficiality.
Meanwhile my mind wanders far away
To the remote and torrid jungles of nowhere
My comrade mothers her child
who is to be weaned off of her bossom,
It Blissfully titters at the breathtaking landscape now under seige.
As she cuddles her child, her eyes peer into the vastness.
Her heroes are dead, but not her resilience.
unlike Reality
humans' Criminality
becoming Calamity
coz of Insanity
dealing with Duality
spread of Venality
infected Animality
vicious Brutality
Dogs are eating Dogs
gone all Fidelity
leading to Debility
in front of Neutrality
dealing in Superficiality
laughing in Hilarity
greed Whimsicality
claiming Ideality
building its Regality
under Illegality
where's the Morality?
you've lost your Originality
isn't this Inanity?
human race Fatality
tell me it's Unreality