Your smiles frozen over,
and you stand tall above the water
like an iceberg, so tall and elegant
in your presentation.
But surface-level trickery
can’t fool or satiate
my scuba diver
curiosity.
I see through your
poorly constructed ruse.
I prep my gear,
dive deep into your ocean,
and discover that underneath
the surface-level beauty lies dormant
a bummock of cuts and bruises.
The true nature of things,
the true nature of you.
A life packed full of solutionless problems,
scribbled out like math equations
written on a chalkboard
by a genius mathematician
who can’t ever prove his theories
or get anything to work.
Nobody understands him
because he can’t even understand
the things going on
in his own head.
Now,
enough of the comparisons.
Let’s get back to the subject.
You’re chronically ill.
Your condition is worsening.
You present yourself in a positive light
while, under the surface, you're
withering.
I worry for the day
when all of your problems
become too much
for you to bear,
and you slip away
like an avalanche
in the Arctic,
never to be
seen again.
Trying to spring clean
And muscle spasms are a thing
So I’m forced to take pain pill
And now I’m sleepy lost my will
So gonna take a Power Nap
Then give dust bunnies a zap
It sucks being chronically ill
Yet poetry gives me a thrill still
Closer that dreaded angel comes,
Nearer my God, to Me.
Family fallen, too near the edge.
I walk in doom for tomorrow.
In crazy and cowardly remote concerns,
You death draw a lottery place in line.
Gamble me this, pitiful reaper,
Are you even real?
Within two feet now,
A rattling within my rib cage staggers,
But my brother drank his death,
And my new mother's mind just withered.
Chronically brain is wet and warped,
But I was born into your game.
Allergic to kindness and good works alike,
Death circles my brain, my drain in perpetuum.
Your manufactured trap of vomit and cane,
And sugar plum dreams of gutters and glee,
I dodge you again, but for luck or for timing,
Life leaves daily, per moment of fear.
Closer that dreaded angel comes,
Nearer my God, to Me.
Family fallen, too near the edge.
I walk in doom for tomorrow.
In crazy and cowardly remote concerns,
You, death, draw a lottery place in line.
Gamble me this, pitiful reaper,
Are you even real?
Within two feet now,
A rattling within my rib cage staggers,
But my brother drank his death,
And my new mother's mind just withered.
Chronically brain is wet and warped,
But I was born into your game.
Allergic to kindness and good works alike,
Death circles my brain, my drain in perpetuum.
Your manufactured trap of vomit and cane,
And sugar plum dreams of gutters and glee,
I dodge you again, but for luck or for timing,
Life leaves daily, per moment of fear.
I parked my car on the corner of Jim, and
am sitting here patiently waiting for him..
For thirty-seven years I was his wife.
Some things never change in this life.
I'm generally early.
He's chronically late, so I play the game
of hurry up and wait..
I parked my car on the corner of Jim, sit
patiently waiting, again and again...
My accountant said I'm officially poor,
so I headed out to the grocery store.
Food now costing so much more.
Preparing tuna casseroles, eating spaghetti
striving to keep track of every penny,
is making me anxious, my palms now sweaty..
Gas prices may have stabilized but every thing
else continues to rise, even every day household supplies..
Merchants smile at you so you think their the nicest
and claim that it's all post pandemic prices or that limited
supplies have caused this food crisis..
I've said no to Lancome and designer jeans as I struggle
to stay with in limited means. My bank account chronically
seems to be lean..
It's not much fun being poor, especially if one's known
money before. I'm starting to ask what else is in store?
Let freedom ring from sea to sea but America is no longer free.
I'll keep on working at 73.
Hatred is a sort of colonisation
It governs the heart
Like colonisation governs a colony
Where freedom is restricted
Love exhausted
Hegemony impudent
And the mind becomes a slave
Chronically angry and frustrated
And so a spiritual release is needed
Maybe through a religion
Or a blessing from God
With each breath, I take
With each heartbeat, I feel
With each thing, I see
With each sound, I hear
With each flower, I scent
With each being, I touch
With each fruit, I taste
With each step, I walk
With each moment, I live
I Thee glorify, my Lord, for all Thou blessings,
The blessings, that so many of my fellow men:
The deaf
The Mute
The blind
The chronically ill
The invalid
The incapacitated, and
The Paralyzed,
Never had the chance to enjoy them!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
15 July 2022
To the left of my apartment a baby is chronically crying.
To the right of my apartment a couple is arguing,
and above my apartment parents are disciplining their children.
Most living in such an environment might find this noise pollution annoying,
but I on the other hand find it quite entertaining.
Despite all of the continual audio chaos that surrounds me,
I find myself smiling and grateful for my life of solitary,
while silently thinking as I smirk, "Sure glad that's not me."
Dear Tenure for Teachers,
You need to abolish yourself.
Be honorable and do the right thing.
Overdose on morphine or jump off a cliff into a den of wild wolves.
The good teachers do not need you.
You are around to help the ones who need to leave the profession.
You have saturated our profession with unprofessionalism.
In any other business, the ones who are inept, lazy, and chronically late are dismissed.
Fired, sent home, given a pink slip.
You have ruined our profession, made us a laughing stock.
Please take your leave, vamoose, disappear.
Do the right thing. Be honorable for the first time ever.
Signed, a Teacher who Cannot Imagine
Why we Developed Tenure in the First Place
left you flat like a domino
Passe clings to crazy ways
Ramon is blitzed trying to bop
You two
What are you looking for
Eagley takes it easily
Stand just buy me
That's Bennie we call him the king
Davies bowing out he's going through some changes
Len and Mac Snooped out with the Doc
smoking imagination Chronically outback
well live and let
Back to the party
That's Abbey shes dancing like a queen
wants to live forever
That's Chuck we call him D That Tasty Tea
and he is G a professor riffing about the power fight
You two is he with you or
That's Will he picks up up about midnight
El tongue is pierced its messing up your song
This foxy lady will be anywhere the hens drink
Hes Garf and Si they are always silent
Say hello to mr blue Thats Skye
Those two who turned
the bar to an oasis
Definately pissed Maybe don't know
The guy by the Radio
thats head
hes a bit of a creep
Kurt was coming but there was something on his way
There Art Rick
He's a monkey
Eh Do i wanna know what
Can't here you
for the tunes
i never forgot
The time glass
The morning takes a longer time awakening
the sun is hesitant hides in the east before showing its might.
The wind is blowing low at the entrance
it tires me out breathing becomes laborious.
I made dinner myself my wife has gone to the hospital to see
if her brother is well enough to live with us, if not we have
to send him to a place for those chronically ill.
I remember when my mother was no longer able to cope
we sent her to a home, she hated it, and in despair stopped eating.
We thought we were doing good, but we only did what was expedient for us.
I regret this she could live longer at her own home with
with a helper coming in once a day, my mother was not that
helpless she could make her coffee in the morning
and boil an egg, it was her untidiness people reacted against
books and magazines were cluttering up the home.
She liked her self rolled cigarettes and brandy which offended
the righteous.
My sin was I should have spoken up but sided with the many
who thought what was best for her.
I hear the breathing during my torpor,
rapacious immateriality rustling,
like some raptorial raptor,
like some alternative whispering.
Am I sensing sentience in otherworldly form
or projecting my own panic?
Have I contacted unearthly norm
or am I becoming chronically manic?
Count me among humans incapable
of messaging with any other species.
Nature’s diversity makes this fact inescapable.
Earth’s living order is full of mysteries.
In what fog could I detect extraterrestrials?
Might I be oblivious to their presence
or might they enlist my manic essentials?
Indeed, such beings may signal their sentience.
he has been abandoned again
he hates his life
hates his therapist
yes it is the one he was in love with last week
he cannot control his moods
they twist him around and throw him against a wall
not really him, for there is no him
only a shell of where a person could have been
he has never felt more adrift
alone abandoned unloved
he is chronically bored
today depressed anyway this minute
there are no grays only blacks and whites
sometimes all bads, other times all goods
this is what borderline personality disorder
does for him
he is empty and lost
perpetually and completely
wait. There is no he.
Gadflies
are not about group hugs.
Communion is more of a catholic honey bee paradigm
of win/win resonant satiation;
A winter seasonal anti-climax of body
but ecstatic dreamy democratic mind feeling
perpetual gratitude attitude,
safe ego
within this significant paradigmatic ecosystem
of compassion communication.
Gadflies are more about spring
and sometimes overwrought
over-heated climatic summer,
LeftWings tempted
by win/lose RightWing
LeftBrain dominant communication
competition
win/lose
either military-industrialized capitalism or corporate death
debate
And defensive
unsafe anxieties about chronically stressed economies
of capital-nutrition over-infestment,
political disempowering degeneration,
blind rabid faith prayers sacrificing costs
to be paid by future thirsty
drowning
burning
choking
starving
dying generations.
Gadflies
may not worry enough about death
of Earth's global anthro-elite ecosystem,
too frantic with hungry
competitive need to ego-replicate.
Meanwhile,
honeybees gather pollen
for ecstatic winter's
regenerative
warm sticky climax
eco-communion.
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