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Best Poems Written by Gary Baldwin

Below are the all-time best Gary Baldwin poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Gary Baldwin Poem

The Prismatic Self

I say the word and feign a Freudian slip
From between its legs duplicities drip
Often doubling as a quip and tasting chalky, just a bit
History will record the troubling truth
that I never existed if I don’t submit

I’ll submit this thing as if it’s a soliloquy
while being transparent with reverse psychology
When transparency is brutal it packs a voice
and reverse psychology, feudal and conundrous
remains my voodoo doll of sadistic choice

I’ll submit to this contest and play my part
of being a number somewhere south of the winners art
Once again I’ll suck up to the system                   
and once again with all its heart the system will suck me down 
without even a gesture of orbiter dictum

A social mirror once said, “we love you, submit to me”
I used to show it what I wish I could really be
but it cared more for its own scripted ego
and tried to love me like a gas-lighting lover
so I gave it the finger more than ten years ago

I’ve been told that only the cream earns Summa Cum Laude
I graduated Some Come Later from the hallows of a Christian god
So how should I wear the facade upon this stage?
I shouldn’t  use “dude”, nor cliched kitsch like I just did
But I’ll not to be sullied by a tired script from a mirror’s page

Yet for the scripted glory this poet pines
He rolls his eyes at the rules, and colors colors outside the lines
Prismatic angles he declines and spanks his colors with twisted sticks
With blinding tinnitus in his transient sight he thus surrenders
and submits (to) his magniloquentesque amateur parlor tricks  

Earth to novice poet... Dude, submitting is not as painful as it seems
Novice poet to Earth… No Dude, you know when falls the silent tree
I hear poetic voices but my poetic choices have disqualified me, so
this is my last reverse transmission into my pathetic poetic pipe dreams
Thank you kindly. No offense but I should just go

Details | Gary Baldwin Poem

Eulogy for a Bonsai

I have to come clean as I return to see 
your ashen corpse and dried leaves  
My survival became more important than yours 
but now I feel badly.

Humans choose to love their own selves 
More than anyone they choose to love
Don’t believe what they say in their poems

I loved you because you would tempt me
to hear the silent moment
I will never forget your beautiful nebari
Funny, I learned that word when I met you

I put you under the cruel sun and fed you
It worked as long as we were together
We were both once green and authentic

We come from the same mother
I wish she had given you feet and legs 
Then like me, you might still be alive
She put us in a tea cup of naive cruelty

Well-meant intentions cannot sustain life.
Maybe my departure made you wish to be dead
I once wished for that too

Details | Gary Baldwin Poem

Fruit Jar Fireflies

I see words, and they see me 
It’s true they are sentient, quite
But they will never see the light 
of my world through my loins

They keep floating by, ever speaking 
never ceasing like tinnitus in my transcendent sight
Like orphans from somewhere never

Their little fingers grope as they look at me squarely 
Speaking barely, “bring me into your light” 
just before they are gone forever
 
So much needless loss
I kill my darlings before they become darlings
Their lot is to die in the vacuum 
of my fickle muse

If only I could catch them like you do fireflies in a fruit jar

How pretty they would be to see in chaotic containment 
and how witty they could be for those with the sight
But alas, my heart cannot hold all the incandescence ink 
required for such a noble and beautiful task
 
So I shall be satisfied to smile when I catch one or two

Details | Gary Baldwin Poem

Frogs in Heaven

If I ever find my mind in a sermon from heaven
Or ever blind as a frog in a broken earthen oven
I’d hop my hump back down to earth   
And yawp my stump for a crown of worth

Real heaven can exist in the commotion of a threshold 
Reckon, if you can, and resist the devotion to what you’ve been sold
Through faith we create those things which brings us to believe
True faith will negate the strings on our wings we can’t perceive  

I like the crazy notion that every day is nowadays today
I live this lazy devotion that times are eternally now this way

Push my timid tush up to the threatening door
Mourn the twitching toad on the rainy road  
who cannot embrace the face of the killing floor.