All around us
there are killicks.
Nothing about this
is mythic
or metaphysic.
Killicks are small anchors
bringing balance
and stability
and even predictability
to many aspects of our lives.
Killicks can be people,
things and places
bringing comfort
and normalcy:
love, food, friendship, kind faces,
the feeling of security
and comfortability.
The more killicks we've got
should be appreciated,
and seen not as an afterthought.
“If you actually succeed in creating a utopia, you’ve created a world without conflict in which everything is perfect. And if there is no conflict, there are no stories worth telling – or reading”
~ Veronica Roth
How boring could Utopia be
if we all did agree,
and if perfection is all we see?
That’s not a place I want to lee.
.
I relish cultures of variety
in and out mainstream society.
The freedom of unpredictability
is a sign of one’s individuality.
There is excitement in running free.
Or just being here, alone with me,
yields a sense of commonality
surrounding all with sodality.
Utopia is not found in impeccability
but rather in life’s fragility.
We make too much of predictability
when there is no absolute sterility.
Utopia is not humankind’s normality
but rather it’s in its adaptability.
Acceptance without impunity
may well-describe society’s community.
Silence and violence,
but never any solace.
Blaming and shaming.
Never any taming.
This side or that side?
Never any combined...
forces for the good,
no one is understood.
A senseless cycle,
an endless spiral.
Sad thing of tragedy,
is it's predictability.
From the first crisis,
to the endless...
reinforced programs,
coddling the madman.
We care, then we don't.
We pray, then we hope.
Woke and then helpless.
Tired and then restless.
Brave, and then not.
Action! Then, we stop.
My twin sister Carolyn is wildly creative.
She has made me a Lucille Ball purse.
It is fabulous; I love it!
There is a cartoon montage of Lucy all over it.
Many recognizable faces on various episodes of I Love Lucy.
I carried it around to several stores today.
Strangers begged to know where I got it.
I could have set up shop and sold these.
It’s a computer bag, not a purse my sister told me when I called her.
I smiled at the predictability of my twin.
trapped in the category of basic feelings, attesting to the functional regularity of the average human and demonstrating the crystal-clear predictability of their secular behavior, hatred, love, envy and jealousy consolidated practically all the advance and retreat of a race that eternally gravitates around its own navel, growing at the limit of the satisfaction of instincts and collapsing to the exact extent and at the time when it judges itself full and satiated, ignoring or comfortably avoiding understanding that both transcendence and evolution require the uprising of satiety, since this in everything resembles resignation and cowardice.
As I write ... streams slow
And a trickle of guilt
Flow, flow, flow
"Father, father, Faaathhher"
From beyond my gate and border
"Pastor, pastor, pastor"
Was the cry an hour before
He, Shady, got 5 Rands; he hoped for more
But as I write, I decide
Wonga won't be attended to
8 o'Clock at night? No, Charity will wait
I have shared uncooked & cooked rice
And the usual soups, bread, fruit
Coins adding up to 30 Rands
But mostly under 17; to enhance
My safety - giving minus predictability
So my "parishioners" see limits
But raised mostly Catholic, FATHER
Comes naturally to them -
I did not take any title at the beginning
They avoid churches, even at funerals
Tents at homes is the local culture
So I share a little, though few attend
Our Protestant style of worship
Yet, once a week I invent JesusLuvsU Day
Jesus is Love, Love, LOVE
The sky hounds are tracking me down.
In the cul-de-sac of social anxiety drive...
Despite covering my tracks in a hot, peppered wind...
Sticking the heart into a bowl of burning dice.
(to cover the scent of predictability).
They've arrived. To bore their way back into the core.
Pick the scab off every weakness.
Exposing every soul blemish,
(that crippling, iron face of shyness).
That's chased me through the back alleys of life.
The sky hounds have cornered me again.
waving stingers -coming down hard
like an anvil in the night
getting off on the vibe of
my twitching mind.
Years later I'd half-mastered.
All those black lessons from the past
Kneaded my heart into a quasi-flower.
Dipped the petals in a whorl of lime.
Attracting that swarm of hollow iciness.
Then laughed as their stingers snapped.
When the wet cement of karma had crapped in their minds.
Raindrops, noisy little buggers
....ricochet off the windows
Raindrops, itinerant drummers
.....searching for a beat
Raindrops gather, meander mob-like
......through the streets
Puddles of predictability
raindrops repeat
.......tapping points
Artistic raindrops
.....diamond studded
.....spider webs
Freezing raindrops glaze
...........frosting snow
Raining cats and dogs
........cold nose wet fur
John G. Lawless
2/16/2021
At this very moment lost in life, predictability
Mind is a mess chaos reigns, steadfastness
Fighting with myself shut out, convertibility
Not through lack of confidence, faithlessness.
Honesty best policy was perfect, vulnerability
Perceived to be bureaucratic, crookedness
Looking into blind darkness is not, gullibility
Rather an inclination to, open-mindedness.
Fatalistic properties impress on, observability
Eternal bliss unlikely basis, straightforwardness
My own admission incurred veto, ineligibility
Life’s knowledge diminishes to backwardness.
Into the abyss keeps tumbling, infallibility
Round and round remorselessness
I’m tired now must keep sleeping, insatiability
In the morning truth is coming, unpreparedness.
Executioner asks any last words, foreseeability
And then comes the answer, breathlessness.
Juxtaposition Poetry Contest
Sponsored by the silent one
20/11/2020
I have no guarantee
that I will not be run over
by a motor vehicle,
be this a bus, lorry or Rolls Royce
BUT
if I religiously observe the highway code,
cross roads with extreme caution
and avoid traffic at night,
I may rest reasonably well assured
that if I do get run over,
it won't be my fault.
Breaking the pattern of habit governed predictability futile since the deliberate doing lacking spontaneity. Yet the twist wherein we cease to resist becoming the causation for exiting stuporous stagnation. Freedom found in pulsating bliss elation. Within.
No identity
Past conditioning recedes
Dusk becomes our dawn
17-August-2020
Future security
looms in obscurity
yet the great Almighty
props believers' steadfast tenacity.
Though plagued with anxiety
midst health-crisis' intensity
Christ with His love and pity
heals the sick as He forgives the guilty.
Along enigmatic verity
last days' predictability
triumphs with peace-certainty
by God's omnipotent authority.
Hope against instability
prevails over any eventuality
as we seek the LORD Who from His bounty
provides through faith’s purity.
Thus, next decades are foreseen with beauty
radiating blissful serenity
as we trust* with prayerful surety
the great Saviour of eternity.
*Psalm 118:8 It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.
May 23, 2020
Edited on August 17, 2021
1st place, "Your Best Monorhyme" Poetry Writing Contest
Sponsored by William Kekaula; judged on 8/20/2021.
Bird in a Cage
A small, gloriously yellow bird ended up trapped in a cage
Each day the confines grew more and more like home
Constraints seemed familiar
Lost were the thoughts of flying free and open space
Dreams grew dimmer and dimmer
Of exploration and of choice
Food came easily
No need to forage
Predictability a comfort
Safety and confinement became its new friend
Over time the glorious feathers dulled
Despondency took over
No fight was left to try to escape
Until…one day
The door lay open
Coveted freedom beyond belief
Nothing was the same again.
To dare to dream
Terror gripped as he fluttered off
Slowly, watchfully
Unfamiliar now
Forgetting how to fly
Would he regain what he once knew?
Climbing heights
Regaining freedom
New realities!
Grace Daub May 17, 2020
Thoughts of Covid 19 and new realities
Startled by the hallucination
of himself upon the wall
The man of a compromised conscience
cringes with apprehensive velocity
Debilitating panic emerges
with a disconcerting air of predictability
Transporting him, intangibly, to a setting that prohibits
his own narration
Forcing him to endure his biography
without any preferred revisions
all i see is you
how do you withstand me
my mind is like a strange land smelling flowers for the first time
all i see is you
how do you define me and accept
my mind is like a chocolate milkshake in a whirlpool of dr. pepper
all i see is you
how do you maintain your sanity when i express and confuse you
my mind is like a roller coaster run by a turtle and a sloth
all i see is you
how do you simply love me and not go instantaneously insane
my mind is like an unpredictable inanimate object in a state of animate predictability
all i see is you
how did i become fortunate enough to be blessed with such a beautifully spirited trooper such as yourself
my mind is so put at ease by the mere persistence of your Genuine Therapy
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