Selfsame Poems

Autobiography of John Sidney McCain III, Sometime Senator of Arizona

1. To Fly
My father was an admiral, and so
I joined the Navy. Back in fifty-eight
to be a pilot seemed the way to go:
ship-sailors were committed to a crate.
Scrub decks? Paint rusting gunwales? That’s a ‘no’.
The Skyhawk was my weapon (and my fate!)

2. Rubicon Crossing

Some nations follow rainbows, I am told:
we thought, in Vietnam, ‘search and destroy’
would lead us to our fabled pot of gold.
For years we tried it, but it brought no joy:
we lost our nerve, and switched to ‘clear and hold’.
Saigon endured the selfsame end as Troy.


3. Brainwash

The Hanoi Hilton. Yes, I was a guest.
They found my father was a VIP,
and left off hurting me. Impressed,
they wanted to restore my liberty.
But if I left my buddies, I’d detest
myself. I turned them down. That’s decency!

4. Frozen Side of the Sun

Should politicians simply sing the song?
A woman voter told me, in the hall,
Obama was a Muslim. I said, “Wrong!”
I guess I lost her vote. I made the call
I knew was the correct one. I was strong.
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.

PRAISE BE TO GOD FOR HIS HAND THAT IS UPON US

September 11 Praises to God Bible Meditations Based on Ezekiel 40-42

Key Verse – Ezekiel 40:1…In the selfsame day the hand of the LORD was upon me, and brought me thither. 

PRAISE BE TO GOD FOR HIS HAND THAT IS UPON US	

Praise be to God for His hand that is upon us:
Bringing us His blessings
Building us upon His bracing
Binding us around His business 
Beautifying us by His Bible brand
Blocking us against brave boastfulness

Ezekiel 41:22 Praise be to the Lord for His table: 
Set for our satisfaction
Sufficed with His supply
Settled upon study of Scriptures
Styled toward steadfast supplication
Shown as standard for our strength sturdiness

Ezekiel 42:13 Praise be to the Saviour for 
teaching us to approach Him with:
Holy trust  
Hopeful triumph
Humble thoughts
Heavenly testimony
Hearty happy hallelujah. Amen!

September 11, 2024

I am Shakespeare

Across the years, 400 plus, my stories endlessly play out their parts.
I played not on painted stage, but I knew the human heart - 
I captured, with quill and scratch, the passions of laughter and tears.
I held up a mirror, in doublet and verse, to things unbound by years,
like the weight of grief, the lightness of love and the serpents of ambition.
The music of verse, the lilt and fall of words, hold a strange enchantment,
brief spells where fools, princes, witches and kings shared a selfsame planet.
Though my bones lay in hallowed ground, the stories I spun linger yet.
They've played out, in age after age, on a thousand, thousand stages.
It’s well done, If I say so myself, to live on, in millions of minds and bookshelves.
.
.
*Written for a history poem challenge: to speak for a historical figure

Nude Attitre

Genre: Poesy
Title: Nude Attire
Author: John King Ayanfe ©

Behold, attires covering secrets of nudity
Attires laying betwixt cheap and expensive costs
Thus, nudity is first an attire for all
However, man is nude before life and death

Certain times be when humans love to forsake their status
Nudity becomes the priest of the mind, oh
A room to bath - a room for sexual stance
Yet man's stance before man is to rule man

The rich wear the attire of gathered riches
The poor wear the attire of gathered lamentations
Fashion?! Fashion is a new trend of insanity
Greatly elevated with portraits of nudity

Are we not all nude before shadow and birds
Before the vultures of hidden places; pathetic sarcasm
Aren't we clowns scaring clowns amid clowns
Oppressive intimidation - heartless wreckings - lovely hatred

Those on expensive attires pew on high tables
Those on rags are fed crumbs outside the gate
But death feeds on all as supreme parasite
Aren't we equal irrespective of status? Selfsame grave beckons

Man's nude attire is death, pretending to be no threat
Until lifelessness prove it as fate

For What

For What

Fight and struggle as one can,
From growing boy into a man,
All the while not knowing the plan,
This need for life escapes me.

Make a friend or make a foe,
‘Tis how we meet that causes so,
Should one come or the other go.
This need for life escapes me.

 Work and worry and work some more,
In tiredness lay upon the floor,
With every muscle aching sore
This need for life escapes me.

Flesh and blood and bone we are.
Selfsame particles as a star,
With house and boat and clothes and car,
This need for life escapes me.

Reproduce into this world,
Another child boy or girl,
Their struggle now to unfurl,
This need for life escapes me.

Then love bursts upon the scene,
Fills my heart with hopes and dreams.
Now I’ll live by any means,
For this life now excites me.

__________

Broken Heart's

I HAVE walked that selfsame path
To your door before.
For years I've left the roses there,
Budding as before.

While I watch them bend, into the wind,
Quick hot tears begin to flow.
Strange so bright your flame outlasts,
My heart that now grows cold.

Art

The selfsame page echoes wordlessly like barren lord
To write in characters of light, Oh! bucket headed bard
Understand, art-like slumber must set-the soul free
Beyond time's fabric walls, in boundless circles waterski 
Across the black besmeared realms of dreary night
Where passion cleaves darkness with fanged light.

Tread forth into the beauteous lustre of things
And hark, how sweet the drunken nightingale sings 
Cheering languid Cynthia and the slow bursting bud
Oh! come empty bosomed lad
Let the primeval tongue of deft nature teach
You how to fold forms into voluptuous speech.

The sun through verdure fields has unrolled
His sweet placid beam of burning gold
And how gaily whispers the roaming scented wind
Blowing voluptuous strains pleasant than sevenfold lutes combined
Revealing to the dancing emerald leaves galore
Divine secrets hoarded in mediaeval days devoid of law.

When the throbbing heart of nature tunes the soul
Grand refined wisdom is your to attain
Which nor cognitive lore nor pedantic clouds of scroll
Can ever shower upon the mortal train.

A Rose Passion

Through corridors of summer, on a garden path I walk,
Along the way of the roses, in the season of spice.
As beauty crowds the senses, making heartbeats rapid,
The bushes and rose trellises appear so well crafted.
Every conceivable color is represented here elegantly,
Like an explosion of diamonds had caused them to be!
Day in and day out, the glorious garden sings summer;
And birds trill to the beat of the selfsame drummer.
The enormous undertaking of one who was mad for roses,
People draw from far and near to see the reds and peach.
And vivid yellows oranges pinks golds greens and purple-
Such madness is catching, so the passion is spreading!

The Writer's Skill

The selfsame words are ours to use
in manner of our choices.
They lie in helpless, inert piles
until maneuvered by our pens.

10/26/20








Four lines taken from my free verse poem "Words".
For contest Liberum Divisa 2

Nobody Knew Better Than Him

Nobody knew better than him the value
 Of great art --
The need to preserve the memory of 
  Great artists;
Do not even the basest of us feel 
 Overwhelming emotion, hushed awe?
Great art should seem to the eye all
  Things divine rather than human;
But still, of any person...it should fall 
 to him
To obliterate the most magnificent 
   Art had then yet to offer.


A crime committed in full view 
 Of the old city's appalled populace;
He undertook it with selfsame blase' 
  Nonchalance 
Such as dictators sometimes so indulge in 
 When immersed in their own idle genocides.
The mind that contrived such eloquent, 
  Articulated words
Hell-bent on a dreadful, utterly 
 Inconceivable destruction!
And following on from this terrible 
  Silence of a long, drawn-out aftermath?
  

The choirs of gathering voices offering up 
 Glorianas and praises-in-excelsis 
  For that which unceasingly labours to exalt
In the banality of the prosaic and mundane.

Basest Traitorous Titan

I fought one piggish Titan and I won
As if that devious Leech existed not; 
Sealing the very firy nose of his gun
With ball-like rags to sap every shot.

A long-lionized mogul of giant name
Slew my low fists by a magic stroke;
Vilest Judas glossing in pesty fame,
I his two-timing fang spookily broke.

I know not if such a scheming villain
Fickle arms dim for want of glut gain,
Ever shall by Time's rare marvel floor,
And ink selfsame serendipities more.

May the Highest Star your ochre clip,
And pelt plagues and fates your ship;
Until Hades her filthiest minion finds 
Sulfurous frying betwixt fallen minds. 

May your fiendish bow of foxy veneer
Snap mid-hunt as looms hugest deer,
And life's fave tooth turn fatal sore;
Your daintiest morsel tartest grow!

Parcity

We file on through scheming life's snaring wiles,
Unlearning bitter lessons sad yesterdays taught;
Biting humble pies for blunders repeatedly made,
Yet unheeding despite like fights erstwhile fought. 

Our one-way treks through world's tasking routes
Are at best rehearsals for imagined second walks, 
Which infeasible rematch with sad selfsame bouts,
Fleeting breath rightly nips with her cunning clocks. 

We thus ought to vastly more steadfastly move,
And with every strengthened stride amply prove
The truth that living pops but once for each man;
And we simply die if we do not live while we can. 

Smiling turns occur to usher in impatient others,
And hence no round retarding backward unfurls;
Our feet still unseen episodes constantly beckon 
Into new climes wherein time's shadow smothers. 

We must seize our fresh hour in its shiniest hue, 
While rawest pep throbs in each vein and sinew.

A Peek Into the Past

Passing trees with gauzy nests
Of caterpillars hanging down
Jars a memory that rests
Within the folds of brain cell town.

My dad and all the neighbor men,
With flaming torches, did attack
Those selfsame sacs so ne’er again
Would gypsy moths be coming back.

We children gathered ‘round to gape
As fiery clumps fell from the trees,
A happening which helped to shape
A reminiscence there to seize.

The dads, the dusk, the shadows cast,
The neighborhood community
Unlocks a peek into the past
To visit with impunity.

Gambit

Bat-blind to looming gripe and cold decay,
Clueless shoots jump onto life's gay stage,
Oblivious of Grim Fate's scything designs
That waste with disease and stealing age. 

They wouldn't turn around and at once behold
Slowly waning sires with mean griefs to scold. 
Youth's full plate such wanton cheers parades,
That no eye can see sly time's thievish shades.

Thus enchanted our pleasure-lured victims file
Onto glum podiums whereon their sires stood;
Dancing to selfsame tunes of deaded antiquity,
Decoyed by vanity's unedited rhythmical mood.

While earth's tetchy wheel of raw fun yet turns,
One in the numbed lot in death's embers burns.
To decry such brazenness by that spiteful foe,
Smitten hordes seethe and writhe in brief woe.

In the end every joy-craving dancer sadly goes,
And green offspring pop in to follow their toes.

Know Thyself--Excerpts--Ralph Waldo Emerson

IV

Give up to thy soul----- 
Let it have its way----- 
It is, I tell thee, God himself, 
The selfsame One that rules the Whole, 
Tho’ he speaks thro’ thee with a stifled voice, 
And looks through thee, shorn of his beams. 
But if thou listen to his voice, 
If thou obey the royal thought, 
It will grow clearer to thine ear, 
More glorious to thine eye. 
The clouds will burst that veil him now 
And thou shalt see the Lord.

VI

This is the reason why thou dost recognize 
Things now first revealed, 
Because in thee resides 
The Spirit that lives in all; 
And thou canst learn the laws of nature 
Because its author is latent in thy breast.

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