And what of poetry
Those muffled lies
Exposing truth
Hyphenated hucksters
Working the crowd
Barrel drummers
Echoing a distant rhythm
Hop-scotch rhymes
Keeping time
A rat-a-tat
Of Rappers rants
And what of words
Rekindled, reignited
Scorching sentences
Tortured by line breaks
Altering the meaning
Of repetitive rhetoric
Exploring the caverns
Of cryptic creativity
And what of poets
Wishfully wandering
A whitewashed wasteland
Searching the souls
Of passersby
Glassy-eyed warriors
In search of a cause
Blind believers
Sharing insight
Into a silent wind
‘the sole surviving minnow floats
recipe-laden toward the NGO* shark’
~ edie-bidi chili-bidi
Please write a 300-word
essay on the prize-winning
poem above. You may select
one of the topics below:
“The Role of Dietary Laws
in Water-Based Poetry”
or
“Cultural Mores in the Face of
Soluble Uncertainty”
or
“Psycholinguistic Advantages for
Poets of Double-hyphenated Names”
Please place your
smart-phones
in the box on my
desk… and begin!
*NGO = 'Non-Government Organism'
Good luck, class!
(You'll need it).
Samuel Taylor-coleridge
via Amerindians found a spiritual bridge
He hyphenated thus his name
& cantata brought choral fame
This is what I am enjoined to be:
Hyphenated !
Bound to vacillate between self-aggrandizement and self-annihilation
I straddle two unrecognizable worlds
only to find solace in none
I am the begetter of my malaise
all made of ungraspable memories and deferred living
Unable to liberate presence from the grips of absence
I dwell on both edges of supposed being
that meanwhile refuse to be reconciled
?for fear that I dare reconstruct my long lost identity
There I stand
a hyphenated land
gazing at imposed images
donning the masks of free choice and self-agency
The lost treasure chest,
All of sudden appeared,
Floating on condensed oily-
The surface of the water, Contaminated,
Oh No, the purification rituals,
Sanctifying all over scattered-
Spread our hard-earned dignity...
No not at all, the dignity is retained
And that is kept inside that lost chest...
Somewhere I had flipped through
The thoughts of Schrodinger.
Wonder, would that rat still alive
Inside that treasure box
Destined to survive with destructive-
Nuclear substance...This is clueless...
We just speculate, or
Live with the Hyphenated-outcomes..
Self consolation is nothing
But that Unusual Smile...
We have mastered it already.
That unusual smile,
Contagious in nature,
makes us feel sad,
Hopeless and disinterested.
That unusual smile,
fetching the high TRP for
News Entertainment Media,
Corporates and Big business houses,
The losses and profits
are being calculated only for
That unusual smile...
No one can escape
from that unusual smile...
We exist for that unusual smile..
Say cheez, And Smile!!!.
I generally mean mine mien mental state
moost occasions heavily marinated stupor
long established as external trait
psychologically time tested trooper
impossible mission to kickstart sanity
doppelgänger regularly revisits his soul asylum
hellbent antimatter he cannot vitiate
despite therapeutic laxative merely exhausts
well bred literate smoking doobie brother
eliminating aforementioned pablum
witnessed courtesy one floundering grouper
among plenty of fish schooled
hyphenated (high finned haggled)
burn hushed scaled poem
courtesy one unionised rebellious party pooper.
Spellbound with colossal mental grippe
(i.e. all-consuming figurative cerebral
obsessive compulsive forced membership)
magnetic resonance imagine indicated jagged blip
and/or nsync microscopy
showed telltale genetic authorship
regarding above stated mental health crisis,
whereby Sigmund Freud analyst did flip
lid freeing leeches imported courtesy Philip
Hansel and Gretel a mere slip
o' lass whose nose she always did turnip.
night withers to her pull
pink panther upon the prowl
alone the wolf
transversed in a hearse drawn howl
a wilderness of one
relegated and isolated
a biting bohemoth
born to run
in the distance,
war torn eyes witness
shimmers seducing from her grace
across an open gate
swung out
she glowing as he awaits
ne'r to bend
her very graze,
hyphenated
an empty haze
awoken
stare not stolen from her face
titillating
and taken aback
a second
and a third,
time
to rewind
if only I was a bird
and could peck out those eyes
flapping my golden wings
nesting near your threaded roost
touching cheek to cheek
but be forewarned
of that and this
the wild wild wind
and the hail
leading the call of the lord
where lovers
leap
and keep
quarters close
sink not into the valley of the night
nor play within the thorns
bleeding out in the thickets
rise up when he rises
shine down when he shines
release now
all the flowers from their bed
Trixie is insisting on a hyphenated name.
Okay, I say. Let me get a pencil. She insists on a pen.
That one is blue ink, she says. I want you to use black.
The most demanding muse ever.
I do what I can to comply, so she will stop with the demands.
Where is my car? She asks.
I would not judge someone
and then some dreadful thing
or some nasty place
or some too distant time.
Let me, instead,
invite judgment from
that one relationship in real spacetime,
Until we each and all resiliently find
what we need
and want
for healthy wealth co-acclimation
Open,
free of negative judgments against,
free to
and for cooperatively changing transubstantiation
known and felt
into warm seasoned creolicizanation
for solidarity
of resilient vulcanintegrationalization,
intra-
and inter-nations.
I would instead be judged in wealthy favor
by some singing simpler one,
healthier flavored for some wavey-swinging hyphenated thing,
abundantly resonant for some pleasantly compliant place,
rooted in solid resilience
for 4D mind-maps left multiculturing race
and emotive time's
right mind
rhythm seasoned grace
pace of timeless space
Let us inside trade instead,
invite outside gratitude from,
that one perennially cooperative nutritional relationship
in real bilaterally timed Earth space,
timeless intrapersonal place,
humane-divinely transpiring
turning
twisting
twirling
teasing
untruncating grace.
How long did it take her to be free?
How long did it take
For the wingless dragonfly to finally open her heart to the world
How long did it take for her to overcome Devil’s workshop
Slowly caressing her retinas
With silky daffodils and two-faced tulips
Where
Now
She dives into a glistening pool of complicated risk
Opening her atrium to the masses
Shedding incumbent teardrops
Just for that one standing ovation
To SET
HER
FREE!
It was then
Where pieces of plastic chains fell from demure stratosphere
Dented taps, similar to a shoeless dancer,
Setting off bass tones and low-key monotony
For she was
One cholesterol filled syllable short
To be genuine
One tearful, hyphenated lyric
Too blunt
To be embraced by their “god”
One dilapidated vowel shy
Of being honest
Her diary didn’t have enough pages torn
From emerald sanity
There were too many “Wows”,
Diluting into disingenuous shoulder pats
Her stanza pushed aside
A glorified booty call with no call back number
Leaving messages towards empty dial tones
…
How long will it take her to be free?
Until she looks up
Knowing she already holds the key
©Drake J. Eszes
HYPHENATED AMERICANS
You have the biggies like Chinese-Americans
And Latino-Americans and German-Americans;
And miniscule groups like Armenian-Americans
Or Bosnia-and-Herzegovinan-Americans;
But why do we never hear of English-Americans,
Scottish-Americans or Welsh-Americans?
Sound weird don’t they? Kinda unnecessary.
Anyone ever heard of Canadian-Americans?
Or Australian- or New Zealand- oh why?
And hey, what about French-Americans?
These are not hyphenated Americans
They are eliminated Americans,
And other groups include
Old people, who are Antiquated-Americans
Mothers - Unappreciated-Americans
Pre-1492 Yanks are Antedated-Americans
AFL-CIO are Aggregated-Americans
Dwarfs are Truncated-Americans
Smog-breathing residents of LA are
Asphyxiated- or Hyperventilated-Americans.
Thank God I’m normal, I’m just American.
What is a hyphenated word?
A written impression?
An expression of discourse?
Defamation redefined?
At fault when it is labeled as hate?
What are words when they change
to play a different game,
to make it more palatable,
yet,
the meaning remains unchanged?
The use of hyphenated words,
politically correct hate.
Author Note:
The use of hyphenated words such as the N-word has become an acceptable alternative in
discussions related to racial slurs. I fail to understand how this is tolerated when the word
has the same meaning and should have the same impact as unacceptable under any
condition.
Here comes our man with briefcase swinging.
Has an opinion on every currency topic.
Likes to discuss issues with a passion.
Words can be bent broken and hyphenated.
Yesterday hello fort on option A.
Today hears about option band.
Embraces it as if it was a diamond.
Tomorrow it’s option C for sale.
A jellyfish that bobs and weaves with every ripple.
Who knows where it stands or swings.
It all depends on where the wind is blowing.
Accommodates itself to every passing blowing whim.
Mr jellyfish floats through like a pirate.
Is not the owner of his opinions.
Plucks them from his neighbours.
And retails them in original packages.
Take pity on our man.
Who runs away from his own thoughts.
Leads a secondhand existence.
The object of derision and or scorn.
There's consolation in knowing
the rise and fall of angles;
the whorled tempests of
alpha and omega.
Liquid vowels
and hiccuping consonants
curiously curled around
the pith of visions.
Silent expressions
circumcised by dots,
paused by chubby tadpoles
that pollinate fertile thoughts
with deliberate moments.
Hyphenated hybrids
capture imagination
in new-sprung, cursive concepts.
But Oh! How I love
the silent ellipses,
the endless music of
The End...
A carnival of linguistic parallels
celebrate at the ball of my pen.
Where elastic ideas are
stretched…
around yesterday’s hypothesis
around today’s theory
around tomorrow’s cognition
I calculate,
concentrate,
deliberate and
think until
Strands of comprehension snap
I perceive only inky, illiterate hiccups
stuttering on lines of hyphenated ellipsis’
Staggering…
Confused by logic
Bemused by logic
perplexed by logic
The babble of broken thought,
an onslaught of sensible gibberish
That says nothing but says it all…
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