This timid heart a 200bpm rabbit
not like that you vulgarian
like a frightened excitable permanently pulsating
come on
mammal living some say existing
largely underground
afrightened and ascurvy
Riddled with the pestilence
of forgotten decades
and winters long gone
which laid down their stains
upon the landscape
frosted thistles and tree circles
yet all it takes is a kind word
Oh Mr Dickens
a mere sniff never mind a teaspoonful of gruel
the tiniest glimmer
of hope in the form
of a one-line response
No matter how indifferent, ineffectual
or shadow insolent
just keep
hanging on
that's what you do best
Just keep hanging on
until that one day...
There is no longer one more day
but at least you held on with
elasticated hope until that final day which
if you care to think about it
is something, but then again
"The Stain Crusaders"
Plath left the pages long ago
and Bacharach’s Blue-on-Blue
is an ineffectual softer numb-shade-of-Blue
dear green green Anthropocene
this much is true
with all the I love you’s
the wandering crusaders
are far far removed
sitting atop their soap boxes
sudsing up all the rooms
the silent stains in the poetic
are hard to remove
Ajax came coding unseen
like anticeptic borax
scrubbing out the irrelevance
dear green green Anthropocene
Shakespeare was never here
just a codex with a recipe
we seldom heed
most never read
the page book marked
dog-eared
maybe tomorrow
for the forget:
“My words fly up,
my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts
never to heaven go.”
Candide Diderot. ‘24
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
I'm a kid from Oklahoma
Only wanted a diploma
I completed registration
For my four year education
Then off I went to college
Was seeking higher knowledge
I was taught by all these scholars
Who were making all these dollars
Didn't make a lot of buddies
Was too busy with my studies
Never racked up any tardies
And avoided all the parties
When graduating I was glad
But there were no jobs to be had
Now I'm living back at home
Can't pay off my student loan
My parents are so disgusted
Say the system can't be trusted
Became an ineffectual
Out of work intellectual
Emotions get the best of me
at times. I’ve felt betrayal’s bite;
the pain runs circles in my mind
and owns me. I’m too weak to fight.
When into this unhealthy mix
comes anger, I try mightily
to stem the tide. I say, “Enough!
Now of this torture, I’ll break free!”
Then long-past sins that God forgave
come taunting, robbing me of peace.
It will not come when, on my own,
I foolishly bid hauntings cease.
Attempts are ineffectual.
I can’t accomplish mind control.
The more I try, the worse I get.
I can’t fulfill the Father’s role!
True peace is found in Him alone,*
the kind that lasts. He’ll give me rest
and peaceful sleep if I but ask,
believing I’ll be truly blessed.
*Psalm 4:8 “In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me dwell in safety.”
January 31, 2023
entered in the Finding Peace Poetry Contest placed 10th
Sponsor: Regina McIntosh
April 14, 2023
entered in the Brian Strand Premiere Contest 1208
she rarely spoke of the past.
when the world turned her down,
Her loneliness and despair made her
dumb,
incompetency and ineffectual she felt.
she never wanted to speak about it
When she does try to speak.
The bloodshot eyes flood,
Downhearted and gloomy,
In a low tone,
Allow life take it's course.
Turn your back on the world.
And we left dumbfound.
Pett Ezra Isaac.
There is an inward change only God can do
it's spiritual that brings things so effectual
this work goes real deep into the heart
using man-made schemes are so ineffectual
On that transaction day in '82
Jesus came into leave His mark
changing thoughts to open my mind
bringing His light to quench the dark
My language was changed overnight
knowing now what is right from wrong
having real reverential awe for God
for the first time knowing that I belong
The bible came alive truly to this day
it had an inner voice speaking to me
especially the life of Jesus who is God
His love displayed dying on Calvary's cross
Jesus came in to leave His mark
upon me showing Himself my true light
what a privilege to know my saviour
to know Him personally changes my behavior
(How has knowing Jesus changed your life? What was your life like before and after you came to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior? So this is my story of how Jesus changed my life)
Do not think of me; go on your solitary way,
search empty valleys or deserted mountain tops.
Or trek towards the seashore. See, the horizons beckon,
ever-shifting, changing, always fluctuating, mutable.
You sucked my soul away: I am an empty husk,
worthless, ineffectual, useless. Move on towards the sun
shining in the high skies but be careful lest
you yourself are burnt away to worthless cinders.
So do not think of me. Move on, be bright
the future is now yours, I'm merely just a past.
Forget me; I'm inexistent for that is my lifeline.
Maybe I'll find a loving soul who loves me true,
but only if you do not think of me.
I hear the lovely dirge called Autumn Leaves.
It echoes back and forth in my obfuscated mind,
Part full of grief, part an ineffectual endeavour
To understand why, why bliss must follow heartache.
The trees around are so colourful, but I know,
Their leaves will fall to be trampled underfoot.
As much as you trampled underfoot our summer love.
Thus our winter of discontent is full of sad melodies.
But Spring is around the corner and flowers
Will cover everywhere like a colourful carpet.
Birds will sing full throttle their love songs
And a new love will be found in some perfumed lane.
Then my song will change, and I’ll embrace it with glee.
Maybe I’ll go for Roberta Flack - "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face",
Or better still “Just falling in Love”.
So, my heart will sing, and I’ll be happy as one can be,
poofy and pretty
dresses of the royal court
all her pretty things
untouched; the affable king
an ineffectual spouse
2/16/2021
*Teens when they married,
it took Louis XVI seven years
to have sex with his wife.
Jumbled and distractedly jarred,
I awoke beside myself like a wraith,
a spectator to my primal confusion,
hamstrung by the goddess Chaos,
psychotic and frightfully broken.
Drifting through scrambled shrapnel,
a witness to my scrappy scrabble salads
chasing my fleeting thoughts.
I was an ineffectual phantom weeping
wounded windswept in the rain,
a helpless hapless harlequin of shadows
in perpetual refrain.
Months passed while doctors pondered me,
I compressed moments into kaleidoscopic disarray.
My immediacy overruled past and future; and
all spacial orientation collapsed. I watched my
decline like a desperate specter, never seeing
how I could exit my vertigo maze.
But as abrupt as it began, it inexplicably stopped.
I was engulfed by luminous morning,
A bystander to my maelstrom no longer,
I arose astonished in tearful release
to a world of deeper textures
and fevered passions,
to this world where I am no longer
beside myself.
I saw your cowardice hand time and time again
But I studied non-observance in an attempt to mask the pain
Why? Why? This was the preeminent question
Bafflement met by discernment, now overwhelming frustration
Throw and hide, throw and hide, Now, what an insidious plot
To think I'm the ineffectual kind, ooh, I think not
Only when the light is too bright does one need shade
Oh lucky you, you have a pair that's homemade
My silence was sadly mistaken for weakness
What you failed to see or comprehend was quiet strength guided as meekness
A beaming source of light
Walking on purpose and leaving the night
Sweetly into the days, I go
Far, far away from frenemies and foes
Onward to my beautiful, WHY
I'm so excited, I can't tell a lie
But now, I digress from all this child's play
I got big fish to fry, so I'll be on my way
Stuck in a box of ineffectual ideality
And blissful hyperreality
Never stepping out
No room to move about
Bound by the chains of expectations
Never any admiration
Wanting to scream
Because it’s not what it seems
Don’t speak
don't even think
Or they will come
before I blink
Do not move
for they will prove
That I can be easily removed
Removed from the cycle of the box
Removed the bindings of the chains and my own thoughts
Removed from everything I’ve ever known
In this luxurious lamentable low
But once I am removed I see,
It isn’t all perfect like they want you to believe
Only a prison meant to keep me asleep
Blinded to the demons that gently creep
Below the surface they lie unseen
Until I open my eyes
Step outside
And pay no mind
To their harrowing cries
The early morning phone call.
Then the vague sifting through emotions.
Numbness deepens - like the coastal shelf - and soon enough, there'll be grief, regrets...
Platitudes. You're in the other room, the better place.
But, in truth,
you've made the inevitable crossing we all must make and everyone - every one - before us has made, little sister.
We are like pilots of ourselves.
Now, that which I can't create, buy, fashion or steal is the only thing I can wish
( what a curious idea. Such an ineffectual word )
for you.
Peace.
That's the one.
Peace.
"The body, like the oak, is bent and gnarled,
The shallow-rooted mind is overthrown,
When we are near the evening of the world."
---From, 'Runes for an Old Believer", by Rolfe Humphries
Facebook post: "Respect your elders!"
My mind may not be now
as nimble as once it was,
and although I might see all
with jaundiced sight, not fresh,
not new, my mood is mostly
cool and quite calm.
--- Until, that is,
some brash provocateur
begins to essay an attack,
thinking to erase the marks
my words have made and to
overwrite them with his own.
I care not very much that he
with logic may displace my niche,
nor cleverly might mock me.
But to disparage Age in dotage,
with vile invectives, is doltish,
brutish and dumbfounding.
My sweetest comfort is
to have no doubt that he
(nor others of his ilk) will
never see how ineffectual
must be this mild complaint.
Flitting's like floating
only with
the least amount
and most
ineffectual
intention.
Intention
without
clarity
without
conviction
without
direction
without
without.
Each waft
a contravention.
Somersault of
summer
butterflies,
but better:
butterflits...
Plummer salts
of Winter,
snowfalls
but better:
snowflits...
Though flitting's
altogether fitting
if near-enough
to Surrender
is your kind of
Splendor.
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