Today Is Life’s Midday

Wandering the winding roads’ infamy
Where potential insanity rises
Above the road on either side of me
(I’m glad I avoided those surprises)

But I am glad that I faced those problems
For these shenanigans textured my life
& where’d existence be without goblins
(Some of these mistakes I faced more than twice)

All the adjustments theoretical
Are approaching meaninglessness because
They, in people’s minds, are impractical
(In real life there is no button marked “pause”)

As I sit here close to my life’s summit
I am so fucking happy, god dammit

History Sonnet

Evérything is absolutely new

Nothing has ever existed before 

This, to meditating Buddhists is true

Others rely on history & lore

Of course, in reality, nothing’s new

Life is recycled pastiche of culture 

We check history for what plan to do

We rely on the past for the future

We’re in an inescapable “right now”

That’s the same as every other time 

We study the past & contemplate “how?”

& manage to miss this moment’s sublime

History is catching up with the world 

& into infamy it’s being swirled

The Slow Professor Sonnet

I’m reading the book •the slow professor•

That explains capitalism’s model:

The academy is unlike before

Productivity will not thought coddle

Reading it I see how metrics demand

Professors’ short sighted efficiency

Administrators get the upper hand

Experience becomes redundancy

The monastic tradition of learning

Contemplation & then meditation

Is from most Americans receding

Replaced by cheap wealth’s fetishization

Not ev’rything that counts can be counted

Nor every peak need be surmounted

Thesis-Argument Sonnet

I must ask you what is an “argument?”

How would you define “it:” referring to

An English paper’s crucial component?

I’m trying to explain how to get through

An “argument’s” a justification

Of something that is disputable

(Not any mere stupid altercation)

It should be something that is provable

It’s a “case’s” rationalization

A specific “claim,” to be defended,

Proven, analyzed, with explanation

So your audience you “understanded!”

I tried to make this poetic essay

To explain in rhyme my lessons relayed

Distorted America Poem

President’s American liberty
(Overconsumption, avarice, gluttony)
Dresses in the “drag of security”
(This way there is no long term certainty!)

Xenophobia separates people
Making us fearful & much more tractable
Freedom, when wealthier, was our steeple
(Nouveau-wealth tell us lies un-factual!)

It is clear: to live in utopia
You must strive to see the other man’s side
It’s not as far as Casiopia
(Attempt to understand his crazy lies!)

Behind beheadings & predator drones
The wanton ideological killings
Are simple desires everyone owns
(Someone’s getting rich off of these ratings!)

To lubricate the larder for the rich
We fear other types of society
Buy military hardware like a bitch
(To maintain some bourgeois propriety!)

Suicide Masculinity Sonnet

Man killed himself because he hated himself,
(His humanity & all its threads).
Blew himself to bits, on his fetish shelf
With the pretty things that peopled his head 

He couldn’t imagine himself getting
What he wanted, in this life of limits
(Culture & religions this abetting)
So he exploded -BOOM- (fucking dimwit) 

Auto-Immune Masculinity bane:
As Toxic as Ebola-Explosive
Drove this wanna-be “macho man” insane
His un-used sperm count was too corrosive

Toxic masculinity’s evil’s edge:
S’Created by tradition’s privilege

Morning’s Fourth Sonnet

 

 Today’s heroes just go to work & school
They do their best in this annoying world 

& ignore the clarion call of fools

Who people their dreams with desire’s discord 
Heroes read paper books they don’t want to

Listen to disagreeable lectures

Know exactly what it is they must do

To fight misery’s greedy l’il specters
Competition & insecurity

Are the backbone of consumer culture

We’re enslaved: shiny “chains of purity”

Bind us to avarice’s green monster
But the heroes go out every day

Searching: ignorance’s dragon to slay

Ode to Eternal Justice

  
Just remember every soulDispatched to his or her maker

Was murdered by all of their goals

God, were Faith not dreams of fakers!
Would there were an afterlife

Where Hitler could meet the dead Jews 

& be acquainted with the strife

& pain that wanton killing strews
Then Bush, Powel, Rice & Rumsfeld

Could be justly tried, convicted

For the war crimes they should be held

Murder for their “dreams” inflicted
Dante’s Inferno’s last circle

Where there is fire’s heat, but no light

Dissected: no rehearsal 

For their denying humans’ rights
There are predator drones waiting

To mete out corporate rapture

Over poor brown people’s playthings:

I wish Devils would them capture
But there’s no justice eternal

Only the lives lived here on earth

There’s no penalty infernal 

Of long term revenge there’s a dearth 

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a35397/bush-cheney-war-crimes/

*The Sympathizer* Haiku Review

An epic novel
About idealism
& humanity

Viet Than Nguyen’s

Novel *The Sympathizer*

Teaches us to watch

From “Viet Nam’s” war

Back to lust’s true religion

To “his” conception

“He’s” anonymous

Making his particulars

More universal

Just like Ishmael

Anonymous narrator

Waxes Poetic

Racial digression

Of his “miscegenation”

(Muddied purity)

“Not half anything[:]

You’re twice everything”

His mother explained

(Nguyen 134)

Nguyen’s spy novel

Plumbs America’s sad depths

in literature

Ellison, Melville

Hawthorne, Douglass, Poe, Hurston

All resonate here

American id:

“Anti-Transcendentalist?”

“Existentialist?”

“Torture” of “nothing”

Crystallized America

& optimism

(Nguyen 366)

Yankee Paradox:

Our Revolutionary

Impulses now dead

Now America’s

The cruel Torturous Empire

Unseen to itself

A fantastic read

Airy prose is ballasted

With weight of great thoughts

Nothing Sonnet (6)



Nothing really matters

Though we insist things do

History just occurs

Though we don’t think it through

Exist & continue

Struggle or surrender

We can’t change the venue

We live in life’s plunder

The things that anger us:

That which we choose to care 

Just become cancerous

Have no more heft than air

So remember nothing

Will your life improving