…a fragment from an unfinished episode.
Of Rumor’s motives I’ve become suspicious
And found them things we frequently misjudge.
The gossip least correct and most pernicious
Is often spread by those who hold no grudge.
A lie’s propelled by people called “ambitious”
[Who sling a sewer full of slimy sludge].
It’s hard for hands to earn a lawful crown
But not for tongues to tear one’s wearer down
My Muse is scared of going underground,
So she’ll not take me places too profound.
And, if she ventures deep into my soul,
She’ll tunnel through it like a digging mole
Who sniffs his way around because he’s blind
And never sees the things his nose will find.
Perhaps her fear that I’ll be trapped or hurt
Prevents my pen from prying ‘neath the dirt.
The times I’ve grabbed the map to Caves of Self,
She’s whispered, “Please return that to the shelf.”
I’ve wondered if she keeps my poems light
Because she deems my talents sadly slight
And hopes I’ll never have to fail and know
I’ve gone the deepest that I’ll ever go.
You reading prose and poetry I write
Belong among the fortunate of Earth—
But not because I share profound insight
And not because my work’s of special worth.
Then why? Because some person clearly cared
Enough to see you’d have the skills you’d need
To understand what other minds have shared
And freely water learning’s fertile seed.
The food by which a hungry head’s enriched
Might rest untouched atop your dinner plate
If birth had found you and another switched
By circumstance, a god, or luckless fate.
When filled with pride for all the things you’ve learned,
Reflect on your advantages unearned.
an Elizabethan sonnet by Paul “Whitberg” Burgess
The sound of car alarms above my head,
Then card’nal calls around the lightning rod
Inspired my search for brilliant card’nal red.
I saw instead what’s beautiful and odd:
A forest full of sounds and frantic song
Escaping from a single mockingbird.
As though he meant to say, “This life’s not long
And, while it lasts, it’s often quite absurd,”
He played a crow, a robin, and a horn
And jumped between the roles at rates so fast
That moments after ev’ry sound was born
Its span of life among the clouds had passed.
He strove to share the songs he’d kept inside
Instead of hoarding them until he died.*
*I know that he was likely trying to attract a mate…
or “Judging Books by their Covers”
A cup in hand, he seemed to beg for change.
I thought him dirty and a little strange
Until he pressed the cup against his lips,
unlocked his car, and took a couple sips.
by Paul “Whitberg” Burgess
“Tree” [or “Wood Floor”]
Dead wood beneath feet–
Once living home to creatures
Soaring over heads.
“The Death of a Bee”
While slowly closed the automatic door,
A bee remained between it and the floor.
No warning sign inside his head had flashed.
Without alarm, he stayed and soon was smashed.
“The Death of a Spider Mite”
With light and careful touch, I gently steered
A spider mite—who in my book appeared—
Towards the door and thought he’d safely fled
…Until I saw the page was streaked with red.
[2 poems by Paul Burgess; posted previously as part of the following entry: https://paulwhitberg.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/3-nature-poems-by-paul-burgess/
A prose reflection by Paul Burgess
– Consistent winners are often polarizing. While hated by many, they are loved by others who enjoy sharing vicariously in their glory. Consider the envy and hostility many spectators feel towards athletes and teams that seem indestructible, and think of the appeal of the ‘underdog’ with whom many identify.
-Perhaps the underdog effect is related to its ability to inspire in people the following thought process: “I, little lowly me, could also succeed at slaying the big dragon. People might look at me as meek, but I have potential. Look at those other underdogs who’ve proven the world wrong! I’d love to obtain similar vengeance on public opinion […or what I’ve perceived as public opinion when I’ve narrated my life’s dramas to myself]. I’d love to have “them” feel that they were wrong […although they likely never think of “me.”]
– Sometimes people who are not underdogs like to feel that they have been in order to experience a sense of vindication in defying the supposed expectations of the doubters; they imagine the abstract crowd of doubters –often dubbed ‘the world’– thinking to itself, “I sure was wrong about so and so.” What fantasies and narratives we weave about ourselves!
-Might some people’s love of underdogs be motivated by pleasure derived from opposing prevailing opinion? Betting on the underdog means to go against “the crowd” while remaining in the security of another crowd (i.e. the “underdog’s supporters”). Some people might side with the underdog because they enjoy fantasizing about the malicious joy of taunting the mighty. Whether mighty or meek, people often indulge in thinking of themselves as underdogs whose failures can be attributed to their participation in a rigged game; when they succeed despite facing ostensibly long odds, they expect “the World’s” applause to ring more loudly than it would for the entitled victors of “the Establishment”–an abstract group containing miscellaneous “types” with whom they do not identify.
Before beginning to write goofy poetry a few weeks ago, my other period of writing poetry was in 2006 when I took a Poetry Workshop with one of my favorite professors. The first poems we wrote were cinquains. The cinquain is a five-line, syllabic form with the following pattern:
Line 1: 2 syllables
Line 2: 4 syllables
Line 3: 6 syllables
Line 4: 8 syllables
Line 5: 2 syllables
Before sharing the cinquains, which were the first few poems I ever wrote, I would like to invite you all to compose and share cinquains with me. [I hope to eventually figure out a graceful way to provide prompts and to receive and display entries; I would welcome any advice regarding how to make the prompt/respond process intuitive and interactive.] Please do not laugh…these were my first poems, and I know that some of them are cheesy!
“Blues”
Blues is
naked music
stripped of all pretension
Until only raw emotion
remains
“Thorn”
Never
the rose without
the prick to remind us
that, though beautiful, love causes
such pain.
“Photo”
Trapped for
eternity
in polished celluloid,
moments call their cage not “jail,” but
“photo.”
“Stoplight”
Stoplight–
red eye dangling
from a smooth black cable,
swaying solemnly in noon’s soft,
sad wind.
“Acne”
Acne
devours beauty,
consumes clear skin;
once sated, digests, excretes a
blemish.
“King Snake”
King Snake,
royal reptile,
though Lion rules jungles,
when grown weary of throne, he can’t
shed skin.
“Red Sand”
For sand:
Crimson-stained land
ever redder becomes
soaked with blood of zealots on a
mission.
“Kiss”
These lips
will serve to bare
my frenzied soul to you–
not with whispered, honeyed words but
a kiss.
“Traffic”
Sweaty
as summer’s sun
has made my skin, its rays
fail to melt the frozen traffic
I’m in.
“Lost and Found”
Do not
Despair that you’ve
Lost so much weight of late;
For I’ve found it and wish to give
It back.
“Casualties”
Seven
and twenty years
we had Morrison and
Hendrix. So quickly burned out our
Bright Jims.
“Dream 1”
Lincoln
And Attila
play chess and smoke cigars
in a realm beyond time and space
and stars.
“Dream 2”
Jesus,
I saw you there
playing and dancing, a
smile on your face and ribbons in
your hair.
I.
People often view childhood nostalgically as a happier, less troubled time, but few of them when children enjoyed the carefree, exuberantly happy existence that they associate with childhood. Adults often trivialize children’s problems and think, “I wish had problems as ‘serious’ as those of the children.” What these adults fail to recognize is that a child’s pain when, for example, not picked for a playground sports team is sometimes as acute as that felt by an adult dealing with social or sexual rejection.
II.
When adults think that they would like to be children again, they likely mean that they would like to be a child/adult hybrid. They would need their current perspectives to appreciate being children; after all, children usually want to be adults. Adults have the freedoms a child wants but have little time in which to enjoy them, and children have the time an adult would like but not the freedom to use that time as they please.
III.
It is easy to remain nostalgic about “Golden Days” of history or one’s life because these times cannot be repeated. In other words, there is no danger of experience clashing with and contradicting one’s idealizations because there is no possibility of putting the imagination to the test of reality.
Miscellaneous Inanities 