skonen_blades

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 06 from race 06 and my horse's name was Star Finality. It got me thinking about the terminology we use for fame and how the life cycle of a star might have a similarity to an artist's career.

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The big bang breakout role
The number one single after years of obscurity

The life of touring, of excess
This, the life cycle of a star,
is not a cycle
It’s a parabola
A trajectory with an impact at the end
like an artillery shell

The supernova of success
shedding so much light and fury,
sound and sweat

The thing about stars is that light moves too fast
Stars die a long time before we see them go out
Not counting the ones we wish on as they fall

A star’s finality
isn’t the same grave finish line for the rest of us

It’s a collapse into something that sucks in light
Hungry for those with ambition and potential
Waiting for them to blow up on the star charts

To flare their energy
into the cold
uncaring
void




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There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 04 from race 04 and my horse's name was Apellant. My horse won! Apparently, the world 'apellant' means the person in court who is the defendant when making an appeal. However, I took it to mean the opposite of 'repellant' just for the sake of this poem.

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Apellent is the opposite of repellent
A black hole
pulling every pair of eyes,
every heart
past the event horizon.

Apellently, he walked through the party
A gravity well for lust,
for dreams,
for love,
for hope.

Igniting visions of marriage, children, suburban life in some
A cheap motel Olympic event in others

Shark apellent bring all the sharks at top speed

Apellents can slide under doors,
through paper cuts,
and in between praying hands

Apellents took my money
Apellents brought me joy
Apellents become mist when put in a cage
Apellents twist sideways and disappear
Apellents are always visiting and never staying

Oh, apellent
Take me with you
Give me a passport to travel to your dimension
Disguise me to smuggle me to your homeland
(Not permanently. Never permanently.)

Show my how you exist
because I can’t comprehend
with my awkward grease stains

Looking across the room at you,
I’m glad you never travel in packs.
Because if you did,
I would throw myself under your hooves
just to be part of the herd.

But you always glide alone
Like a sightseeing missile
Making us all yearn to dress as targets




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There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 02 from race 02 and my horse's name was Champiosa.

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Furiosa’s older sister
Robot legs like a kangaroo
And a sledgehammer battering-ram arm

Furiosa came from a big family

Triumphioria
Conquestilia
Subjugatia
Superiosa
Supremia
Dominatia
Destrucilia
and The Golden Chance

Ten children
Gathered orphans
Turned half machine to protect the Tower Lord
Imperators to guard the new green place

Champiosa ticks at night as her limbs cool
Like an engine on an autumn night

The mechanic repairs the women
after the day’s defense
Successful and alive
The women army
Related not by blood,
but by purpose and apocalypse




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My friend April recently had a birthday. This is a poem I wrote for her.

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The Ship of Theseus theorem asks the question: if a ship has been at sea for so long that every single piece of it has been broken and replaced or repaired to the point that there is no single part of the ship that is still there from its original construction, is it still the same ship?

I argue that it is.

Kintsugi is the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery by using gold power in the repair material when it’s mended, turning the cracks a brilliant shine of veins, creating something unique and beautiful out of something that was shattered.

April

You have been broken and repaired so many times that you are now solid gold, shining for the rest of us.

You are still you
But you are also something new

I love you
We love you

Happy birthday.




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A person doesn't know what they don't know
and they can't feel what they don't feel.
Imagination and empathy bridge the gap
but what if a person doesn't have those?

That person closes a fist around their certainty,
resolute that they are feeling to the limit
and that their knowledge is enough

Most of us are like this

It’s not just ego or arrogance
It’s a dangerous lack of capability
Invisible in the mirror
What’s the shape of that absence?
If we think it never went missing?

It results mostly in a benign ignorance
But sometimes

It surfaces in conspiracy
Bias beneath the mask
Easily tipped to participation
In a thousand small ways
As others hold the rope
Or sign the bill
Or pull the trigger
It's not a slide into darkness
It's a climb with very small
and easy
steps.

Try to explore what isn’t
Try to feel what you haven’t
Try to know what you don’t
Above all, don’t trust certainty

If there's one thing history teaches us,
it’s that a monster hides inside us all.
Justifications at the ready.
Camouflaged in confidence.
Waiting for the eclipse.
For the sun to go dark.
So it can climb those small and easy steps

I implore you.
Learn.
Feel.
Don't let it win.




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We're all tuning forks.
Input pinging us every second we're awake
and sometimes even in dreams when we're asleep.

We resonate constantly,
causing what is like us
to hum in others.
This is the song of the world.

We can muffle our sound,
wrap ourselves in insulation.
But can we change our key?
Can our tune be altered?
Without being broken?

We sing when we're hit
and life hits us all every morning.

Listen.
Listen.
Listen to the world.





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Consciousness, oh consciousness
You shiny, bright mistake
Look at the destruction wrought
By choices that we make

Oh, what a day in Eden when
That lady chose to choose
The possibility of choice
We now wield and abuse

We never should have had this dark
Responsibility
I think God’s anger might have had
Some rationality

You wouldn’t put a pig behind
A bus’s steering wheel
Or let a panda pilot planes
Or arm a baby seal

All we’ve done is live too fast
And burn too bright too soon
Ignite. Exhaust. Use up. Suck dry.
Pollute. Defile. Consume.

And if, by chance, we do some good
It goes right to our head
“My gosh we’re so amazing!” say
The Shakespeares as we spread

Our egos fuel the hubrises.
We’re gas tanks for mistakes.
In engines of stupidity
That run on Eden’s snakes

But fingers crossed we choose to win
By losing all our gains
And “sharing all with all” becomes
The one choice that remains

I’m pretty sure the gift of choice
Has driven our race mad
But possibly, just possibly
It needn’t be so bad




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A basketball team of guillotines
Three-pointing aristocrat heads
Into baskets
Mea culpa runneth over
The court is soaked with scarlet
Well-read and well-traveled
A reign of blood is just beginning
And Noah says,
“We’re going to need a bigger boat”
We build our character arcs
To save ourselves
Putting two of every currency
Into the bonfire
I think that I shall never see
A poem as ugly as a clearcut
The cancerous growth
Of economy
Needs a cure we don’t have
But I think
Like a barber
We could cut a little off the top





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Spring rain melts snow.
Ending Winter. This is why
Snowflakes hate rainbows.






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When opening the door to the outside world
Means a broken dam of input
Enough to flood a farmland
That would drown the city of your mind

When the sunlit windows scream at your eyes
Become warning-sign billboards
Threatening the terrifying interactions
Involved with going outside

When the screens to the internet gush fire-hose dark
With pressure that can strip flesh off of bones
and kill all hope

When the future holds no promise
And the present isn’t so great either
And you can only speak in danger

When the cocoon feels like the best place
Not the safest place
Just the least dangerous place

Remember that our translation of reality
Has never been accurate
We’re great at recognizing patterns and assessing threats
But in this non-caveman existence
Of day jobs and apartments
We end up seeing patterns and perceiving threats
That may or may not be present

We’re all delusional by default
It’s how we survive
But sometimes we survive too hard

It’s cold comfort to know we’re all in this together
(To varying degrees)
But that can be like cold pizza
Which is to say
Better than nothing
When you feel like thick liquid in a chrysalis
Waiting to be born again





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