greed

Day 30: Observations from a Past May Day

/ Just Barry / 1 Comment
Photo by Randy Colas on Unsplash

Observations from a Past May Day

Shattered glass,
streets littered with trash,
defiant fists raised,
“peace-keepers” overwhelmed.

You can only push
cornered, hopeless folks so far
before they push back.

Tomorrow, streets will be cleaned,
windows boarded and replaced,
shops will reopen,

life will continue
as if the raspy cries
for fair wages and trades
had never happened.

The pulse of cosmopolitan life
requires each person
to know their place in the world
and do their part,

but what of those who
wholeheartedly reject the
collective vision?

They’re dismissed as crazy
until they begin to wake others.

Then they are swept away.

Next comes more broken glass,
sometimes on May Day, and
often on any random day
after disruptive, “crazy”
voices are silenced, but

that’s easily swept away too.

Pay those crazy, cornered,
fist-pumping folks no mind.

Tomorrow the stores will open on-time.
***

NaPoWriMo Day 30: Today’s prompt:

And last, but not least, our final (optional) prompt! In some past years, I’ve challenged you to write a poem of farewell for our thirtieth day, but this year, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about something that returns. For, just as the swallows come back to Capistrano each year, NaPoWriMo and GloPoWriMo will ride again!

Sorry to end NaPoWriMo on such a dismal note. I could’ve gone with some type of spring renewal, but I guess I wasn’t there.

I was just sitting here thinking about how the COVID-19 pandemic will most likely (and rightfully) squash the May Day protests tomorrow, but our US (and nearly global) capitalist economy is just chompin’ at the bit to throw our sick, broken bodies back into the churn, risk-assessment be damned. I hear talk of rushing to get “back to normal”, and it just makes me wonder, normal in relation to what, exactly?

Thanks for hanging with me this month. I’ll see you back here next year, but until then, feel free to hang out and read my infrequent poetry postings.

Day 17: Lost Cause

/ Just Barry / 3 Comments
Photo by Michael Rogers on Unsplash

Lost Cause

NEW GAME?

Not so much a question
than an inevitable
blank slate
new opportunity
sitting upon invisible embers
that were once entire
worlds unto themselves;
hexadecimal monuments
to finger dexterity
pattern recognition
and time

NEW GAME?

Not so much an option
than a mockery of
time lost
oh so much time lost
pressing the right buttons
at the perfect times
with only the finger-blisters
to show as testament to
almost finishing

NEW GAME?
flashing dispassionately
as if the old game
existed only in my
frenetic skull

but for a flicker of light
a moment of darkness
and the whirring of renewal
as electrons fire on command
oblivious to their renegade
static cousins outside
who ended my noble quest
so ignobly

NEW GAME?
pulsing in-sync with
the throb of fury
flowing through vessels
near my temple

impressively concealing
the internal rage
rivaling the storm outside
stifling the screams
that would illicit
told you so’s
from mom

NEW GAME?

Nah man
not right now
but you haven’t seen
the last of me
soon, very soon
vengeance will be mine

mark my words
in hexadecimal or binary
proton or electron
photon, quark, or string

or whatever vile language
your forked tongue speaks

I don’t even care
how long it takes
I will break you
***

NaPoWriMo Day 17: Today’s prompt:

Today, I challenge you to write a poem that features forgotten technology. Maybe it’s a VCR, or a rotary phone. A cassette player or even a radio. If you’re looking for a potential example, check out this poem by Adam Clay, which takes its central metaphor from something that used to stoke fear in the hearts of kids typing term papers, or just trying to play a game of Oregon Trail.

Back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, NES and SNES introduced rudimentary game saving features. It was far from the robust storage features of modern games like the PS4 or whatever Xbox is out now. This feature was contingent upon a rather volatile battery backup function inside game cartridges. If the internal battery lost its charge, or if you were dumb or arrogant enough to play your game during a thunderstorm as a lightning strike killed power (like, oh I dunno, a teenage version of me), you lost ALL of your data, forcing you to start from scratch. Hours and hours of gameplay lost forever in the blink of an eye. Kids today will never know that struggle, and I’m glad for them.

Day 7: Iron Rain

/ Just Barry / 4 Comments
Photo by Cedric Letsch on Unsplash

Iron Rain

Three-hundred, ninety years ago,
as millions of Central and West Africans
traveled involuntarily towards bondage
across the vast Atlantic in irons,
light began its unimaginable journey
of hundreds of trillions of miles
from an undiscovered star-system
where iron vapor condensed,
raining down from a night sky
of a planet twice the size of
our King Jupiter that none yet
on our good earth knew existed,
the faint light finally reaching
our astronomers last month.

News travels fast it seems,
but I guess for some,
not fast enough.
***

NaPoWriMo Day 7: Write a poem based on a news article. I chose the suggested article, “Researchers Discover Faraway Planet Where the Rain is Made of Iron”.

Spicy Teriyaki Nights

/ Just Barry / 14 Comments

marc-szeglat-556350-unsplash

Photo by Marc Szeglat on Unsplash

Spicy Teriyaki Nights

We feasted
solely upon each other
and spicy chicken teriyaki
from the restaurant
a half-block from our
carnal harbor.

Failing to define us,
we acquiesced,
indulging until sated.

Unfortunately,
you filled yourself with me,
leaving me half-starved.

I still miss you,
but despise teriyaki.
***

Written for dVerse Quadrille Monday prompt, hosted by Lillian, where the safe word is “harbor”.

Did I type “safe word”? My bad. I meant that the word “harbor” had to be included in the 44-word poem.

(But you can use it as a safe word if you like. I won’t judge! I’m not qualified to judge anyway. *wink*)

Fate of Heaven

/ Just Barry / 9 Comments

meireles-neto-338252-unsplash

Photo by Meireles Neto on Unsplash

Fate of Heaven

Waking up to us
was always the worst,
wasn’t it?

Surely you felt the same
rolling over and seeing
my displeasure at a
brand new day, didn’t you?

Do you have any idea
how many poems
I’ve written about you
only to have to file them away,

snuffing-out their wicked truths
like so many birthed stars
that ate through their fair
share of hydrogen

long before Ra set
the table for you and me
to ignore our own nature?

Can you fathom how every kiss shared
will be compared to the caramel of your lips
nibbling mine in our candlelit shame
of being exactly who we are

exactly where we wanted to be,
exactly beneath the weight of
who we wanted pressed into our flesh
exactly the way we needed?

Do you also wish to shake
the morning gate of heaven
to its foundation for fating us
a taste of what could be,

only to allow our respective free will
to choose to loosen our firm midnight grip
on respective flesh before the black sky
blushed soft purple with promise of new day

separating me from you
as earth from firmament,

forming boundaries everywhere
instead of simply being
happily entangled in
undefined twilight?

On some level, I know
you were just as selfish,
just as grateful for those broad,
quiet charcoal strokes

shared in faint starlight,
silently sucking our
pigment from sundown,

but no matter our
moon-soaked efforts,
morning always comes,
doesn’t it?
***

Shared at dVerse OpenLinkNight #229. Other poets have shared their poems here.

Solemn Solstice

/ Just Barry / 6 Comments

anish-nair-377946-unsplash

Photo by Anish Nair on Unsplash

Solemn Solstice

The sun lingers longest today.

The weather-guessers were wrong
about the heat wave.

In fact, there was light precipitation.

Preferring the rain, I am relieved.

I don’t even know why I wrote
“precipitation” instead of “rain”.

I’m no meteorologist.

I guess the unscheduled rainfall
wasn’t up to my lofty standards.

It was a halfhearted rainfall,
followed by an indifferent sunbreak.

Felt more like angel’s spit
than the weeping we’ve earned
for this crapsack existence.

My hemisphere turned
fully into the true glare
of sunlight, and everywhere I turn,
I glare at two shadows
of the Four Noble Truths.

I see only suffering and
man’s indifference to it.

I see children crying in pain,
fear, hunger, and terror;
if they’re lucky, they’ll just receive
the mercy of ignorance
in the form of being ignored,
or perhaps they’ll only languish
as the butt of cruel jokes
they’re mostly ignorant to.

I see indignant adults
viciously targeting them
for exploitation
or other vile indignities.

I see servers and protectors
silencing them permanently
in brass precipitation
because that’s the way
it’s always been and apparently,
that’s the way it needs to be.

The days grow shorter now.

It is the nature of our earth’s tilt
in reference to our position on it
as we continue our
inevitable journey around the sun.

Our share of daylight
will gradually be transferred
to our antipodean brothers and sisters,
in the way it’s always been.

We are powerless to stop
this natural phenomenon.

I am relieved.
***