Long Kafkaesque Poems
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Hunger Artist - A Kafkaesque Moment
By: Earl Schumacker
(influenced by “A Hunger Artist”- short story by: Franz Kafka)
Food is foreign and mysterious to me now
Tolerance for such things is vile
My art once held the masses
In a mesmerizing enchanted grip
These days nothing matters
Death by hunger is dismissed
No one comes by my cage
To keep me faithful to my pain, as it really is
Starvation has lost its style
Or flavor should I say
Such enlightenment and with it fame
Once came quick
The children gathered by the thousands
To prove that nothing happened
Watching frantically; morning noon and night
To see no food had passed the artists lips
And death would take them nicely without tricks
I can’t remember ever being free
My cage and I came together mysteriously
We seem to be the same thing
Starving came instinctively
As last hunger artist I can’t resign
I have to see enlightenment one time
With or without people to observe
Even if I should die before my time alone
From that synthetic blossom
Emanate both a swirling silence
And a timeless illusion
Embedded in rustic profusion.
Yet a timeless blossom
To a rustic mind
Signifies no swirling illusion
But from it emerge and emanate
The opposite of a synthetic silence
On this planet timeless we are not
Unless our planet is a synthetic illusion
Leaving our minds swirling
And lost in rustic confusion
From which will emanate
A blossom to stun us into silence
That shock will plunge us into a timeless void
When silence surrounds illusion
In a synthetic world where minds no longer blossom
Spiralling into a swirling rustic state
From which nothing can emanate
There’s a charge against you
Though we can’t say what it is
In time, your list of crimes will be released
Pardon our procedures –
We consider grievances
We’ll clear your good name after you’re deceased
A labyrinth of halls and secret tunnels
In a bureaucratic lair
The ambiguity of nightmares
Is the only business there
This deviant behavior
Must be addressed at once
Our agents will turn up who you really are
The whole investigation
Could take a couple months
Please be on-call, and don’t wander too far
A labyrinth of halls and secret tunnels
In a bureaucratic lair
The ambiguity of nightmares
Is the only business there
Nothing makes sense
When it’s Kafkaesque
In a language spewing jargon,
Behind coercing eyes,
Our Grand Inquisitor will take his turn
One half-expects a pardon
When one’s past is scrutinized
Lest one is subjected to public shame and then burned
Nothing makes sense
When it’s Kafkaesque
I slowly come to
as light creeps across the floor
and dissolves what I thought
had fallen through
the torn sides of a dream.
Nothing is there but
the scuff marks left
by fleeing ghosts.
Unalterable facts assemble
and lock shut around
a narrowing space housing all
that I think I am.
Faces appear and find
their place in the gallery
of portraits, some smiling
others wearing a haunting
sadness. Love attaches
and takes up the tension
as thoughts move and stretch,
each nerve linking
to a loved one. I hold on
and hope it's enough.
Then fear rummages through
its wardrobe of masks, trying on
each to see what best fits
the day. It likes to look ahead.
Morning begins its rituals
to hold back a harm
that hangs over me
or stop the countdown
ticking towards some
menacing, undisclosed
catastrophe.
You said, ‘move on’
As it is a new season
This sounds like a Kafkaesque novelty
This is an ungodly form of hypocrisy
Suffused with a boisterous rudeness
Ingratitude can only brings sadness
You forgot about the awesomely beautiful memories
You’re now a ruthless omen imbued with ruses
Still, every day should be a new season
A new hour to enthrall or to beckon
It’s a shame that you’ve changed style
And your behavior is now odd and vile
I will move on as suggested
Yet, I know that memories can never be deleted
Erased or obliterated. You’re forever indebted
As I am obliged ad vitam aeternam to cherish you, my friend
Sorry that you’re no longer in need of a helping hand
Remember that the past is important
The present is interesting and tomorrow
Or the future will be an amalgam of joy and sorrow
This is a novel season
I have bravely moved on
And you are cowardly in contempt.
Copyright © December 2023, Hébert Logerie, All rights reserved.
Hébert Logerie is the author of several collections of poems.
I ponder whose hands concertina time.
Sometimes my brain wakes up 40 years younger
for a few moments I am vital,
perfectly formed and a smile for every eye.
Other times though, I arrive in the world
already clawing at my coffin lid.
I'm riding a double-decker London bus,
there's a girl beside me
and she is rubbing the inside of my thighs
while she talks of Kafka.
Now I'm in a train, liver-spotted hands
trembling, as I myopically read a book
about bloody Kafka;
I am gonna have to read some of his stuff one day.
It’s another morning,
and I am hill running with my 10 year old son.
Breathless we get to the top
he is laughing and I am winded.
Now I recall Kafka's book, 'The Metamorphosis',
still don't have to read it,
I understand perfectly well
that the hands of time
are always squeezing us into what we were
by what we became.
Every once in a while, especially on holidays, I find myself wandering through my memory museum - rattling doors and fishing through those virtual hallways. That’s where I found ‘Father Lucas,’ last night, back from when I was eight or so, at (private catholic) school.
Each week, before we received that week's ‘catechism lesson,’ (religious education) from the nuns, we’d get to hear what Father Lucas had to say about the Kafkaesque mysteries of the universe. He looked very old, wise and wrinkled, like a skinny Santa Claus.
Outside of those brief lessons he was always shrouded in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Even at our age, we knew cigarettes were bad for you - but what did ‘Father Lucas’ have to fear from death? On him, the surrounding smoke seemed right and fitting, as if he were the human personification of the burning bush.
My father had just died (we were in a car crash). Before that, the biggest drama in my young life was putting one foot in front of the other, and suddenly, I had a lot - lot, lot of questions that I absolutely, positively and under no circumstances what-so-ever wanted to discuss with anyone.
Imagine, if you will, the gravitas that Rod Serling brought to the introduction of each Twilight Zone episode, and you have Father Lucas’ introducing the lesson. I felt an anticipation of answers independent of my individual situation.
Father Lucas provided context and meaning to the unknown, he dabbled in surrealism, spun out paradox and it seemed that he stood on the very edge of that dark room at the end of the maze. He was transmitting at my frequency, and I could have listened forever. Bless the man.
Ultimately, of course, there were no ‘answers’ - but that’s ok - no answers are an answer.
Tinnitus tinnitus, innocuous by name,
invisible tasteless, sounds pretty lame,
Ears hissing, snakes inside my head,
Growing louder, causing turmoil in bed,
Room’s spinning, feel like getting sick,
Banging kicks off, rhythmically quick.
Tinnitus tinnitus, pneumatic drillers,
incessant maniacal machine gun killers,
Thumping smashing, trash metal band,
Like rock music, but this I cannot stand,
Eyes are bloodshot, severe lack of sleep,
cacophonous noise, then marching feet.
Tinnitus tinnitus, chainsaws a cutting,
No trees or lumberjacks, I see nothing,
Put on the radio, try drown out noise,
overwhelmed, lose rationale and poise,
Church bells peeling, ringing perhaps,
overloaded, mind spirals into collapse.
Tinnitus tinnitus, curse this living hell,
hammering my face, eyes begin to swell,
Delirious sweating, sheets soaking wet,
overcome in confusion, desperate upset,
Pray to god make the torment go away
release me from this Kafkaesque array.
Tinnitus tinnitus, eardrums explode,
Brain is shattered, as decibels grow,
Can’t take anymore, at my wits end,
On slugs of whiskey, sanity depends,
One after the other, knock them back,
Throbbing numbing starting to relax.
Tinnitus tinnitus, drink myself unconscious,
Wake up next day, agonizingly nauseous,
My ear is on the pillow, bottle’s in pieces,
covered with blood, trembling increases,
Look in the mirror, No no this cannot be,
Vincent Van Gough’s, staring back at me.
By
David Kavanagh
DO NOT MISS THE MOON, WHILE COUNTING THE STARS
Do not be carried away by the deceit,
Of an oozing chant of a back palm’s stew;
For the meat that source and house it,
Will slip and off it will drift like dew;
So, do not miss the sun,
While counting the smiles of the stars,
Kafkaesque!
Most magic moments oblique,
The conscientiousness to tame,
And the illusionary shadow’s of blame.
Sometimes, I don’t want,
You to know what I think,
That’s why I hide it in a plant,
A tarred bowdlerize wink;
So, do not stay too long....
Looking at the sun, especially her eclipse.
Alas! The jaded aglet corpse!
I have wringed wet maelstroms,
What you have in your palm,
Is bigger than the shadow storms,
So, do not waste hours counting,
Those deceitful stars__
When all you need is the moon!
For this is an overweening;
Err that mar many: a raconteur.
~ Tile
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy,
approximately 800 redundant pages
of Kafkaesque scoffing
at relentless banalities of economic and political elitists.
Rather like transcribing often inebriated conversations
within all-night insider celebrations
of a ProPlutocracy Party Convention
Or, sadly, a depressed weed-rant
at the end of a long defensive policy debate
among inter-religiously woke Democrats
longing for a win/win DanceParty Convention,
like in the good-old liberally bipartisan ballroom days
Only maybe about 400 condensed
impacted pages shorter
with the remainder quite unliterally
and anti-climatically inscrutable
as planned anti-ecological obsolescence
through mutually partisan assured destruction
Drinking and smoking
through organic Earth's rabidly dark night
denying and/or distracted
from synergetically addressing
our unwell-disorganizing Anthropocene
of epically AnthroNarcissistic
autocratic-monopolistic chaos
Adding nothing more useful
or healthy
or sacred
to Kafkaesque scoffing
at relentlessly drunk banalities
of economic and political elitists.