I’ve flattened
Myself
To enable
Your reception
I’ve squished
My essence
Down to two
Dimensions:
A flicker
Of photos
And lists of
Preference
Inspect my life
And accept my life
I hope you
Will select me
As a friend
I’ll accede to
Your request
And I’ll do
My best
To pretend
I really
Know you
Like a friend
by Richard W. Bray
Don’t wake me up for anything
Don’t even say my name
This ain’t the time for pestering
My weak and weary frame
Don’t wake me up for anything
My bedroom is a shrine
Don’t disrupt my napping
My stupor is divine
Don’t wake me up for anything
Don’t halt my brief vacation
No good comes from bedeviling
My blesséd hibernation
Don’t wake me up for anything
I can’t afford to lose
Time set aside for slumbering
Don’t interrupt my snooze
Don’t wake me up for anything
My dreams are grandiose
If the world is ending
Just leave me comatose
by Richard W. Bray
Our absolutized aversion to dealing with any kind of tragedy imposed from without has truly dark applications. It is precisely this existential-dread level of ass-covering and risk-management that informs the American security state’s adoption of the drone “signature strike,” in which men and perhaps some bystanders near are killed by drone attack even if we have no idea who they are. Their “pattern of life” in Yemen is just deemed too risky for their existence to be endured by the American military. Fire away.
Scared Little People
Eighty-six hours in stress positions
Those horrible people make us so mean
We burn the tapes of Crucifixion
We glamorize torture on flashing screens
We shrapnel the flesh of people who gather
At weddings and funerals and blitzkrieg scenes
Protecting the lives of people who matter
From monsters who claim to be human beings
We hide from ourselves avoiding detection
Righteous folks we’re pretending to be
That’s not a window; that’s a reflection
That stain on our soul is a shocking decree
What a scared little people we have become
With hearts and brains rendered totally numb
by Richard W. Bray
I’m goofy for words. And I will happily read and read and read until I find a combination of words which “strikes like a chime through the mind.” Then I will read some more.
Thomas Hardy forges a concoction of meaning, sound, and feeling when he tells us that a singing little bird
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Of course, every line of “The Darkling Thrush” is a work of art.
Poetry and language are the same thing. Perhaps the people we call poets live the music inside the words with greater intensity than the rest of us do, but all words are music.
Consider the first line of a poem by Emily Dickinson:
From Us She wandered now a Year,
There are a thousand less lovely ways to tell us that a woman has abandoned her family. And the beauty of the sound and rhythm of this line is assaulted by the sadness it conveys.
Here’s the entire poem:
From Us She wandered now a Year,
Her tarrying, unknown,
If Wilderness prevent her feet
Or that Ethereal Zone
No eye hath seen and lived
We ignorant must be—
We only know what time of Year
We took the Mystery.
There are so many things we are not told: Who is this woman? Whom did she abandon? Where? Why? The reader is left to fill in the blanks.
Robert Pinsky proffers a handy metaphor: Novelists wade through words while poets skate on their surface.
by Richard W. Bray
You aren’t influenced by that Beauty is Truth claptrap.
—Robert Frost
Truth is a silly concept
That’s where I part company
With Mr. Keats
A slight expansion of our
Lilliputian awareness is the most
We can reasonably hope for
In this sad, sad beautiful world
Solitary drinking is underrated
The drunken man
Is unlikely to say or do
Something beautiful
But drunken thoughts
Often feel lovely
by Richard W. Bray
They call me Sanctimonio
Can’t help myself because I know
Exactly who the sinners are
I got my feathers and my tar
And I won’t let ’em get too far
Disgust satisfies
Disgust eases pain
It scratches an itch
At the bottom of the brain
The civil war inside my head
Leads directly to your bed
You go out with so many chicks
It’s not ok to take your pick
You must be doing something sick
Disgust satisfies
Disgust eases pain
It scratches an itch
At the bottom of the brain
They call me Sanctimonio
Squalor leaves me all aglow
I live to curse the human race
The world is such a dirty place
I feed on grime and drink disgrace
Disgust satisfies
Disgust eases pain
It scratches an itch
At the bottom of the brain
by Richard W. Bray
Perhaps you laugh at me! Perhaps the whole United States are laughing at me too! I can’t stop for that! My business is to love.
—Emily Dickinson
Can’t weight it on a scale
Can’t plot it on a graph
The tremors won’t be measured
On a seismograph
You can do a million surveys
You can fill in all the bubbles
But you’ll never find a theory
To eliminate your troubles
Sooner if not later
Every statistician found
You can process all the data
But the variables confound
It can’t be quantified
It won’t fit on your chart
Your methods cannot measure
The circumference of the heart
by Richard W. Bray
Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense.
I’m tired of your words
There’s nothing left to say
You got some lousy ideas
So I’m blowing you away
You need to be killed
For what’s growing in your head
Your thoughts are crimes
And you’re better off dead
Mamby pamby liberals
Gotta recognize
It’s ok to kill
Cuz we’re so civilized
by Richard W. Bray
No matter where you go
Road leads on to road
And you’ll never know
Where unchosen roads would go
Gotta pay some dues
Whatever course you choose
There’s hurt on every highway
There’s dirt on every trail
Nobody gets a map
No exit from this trap
There’s no final explanation
The journey is the destination
by Richard W. Bray
There may be trouble ahead
But while there’s moonlight
And music and love and romance
Let’s face the music and dance
—Irving Berlin
Pain is never far away
Enjoy it when it’s not around
And when a new wave
Comes your way
Do not linger
In its wake
Dive right in
Or ride it out
Flesh and Pain are
Child and Mother
You don’t get one
Without the other
by Richard W. Bray
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