On Medium: Handy Instructions for Writing Great Poetry

Read on for some advice on writing poetry to avoid saddling readers with poems that ought to be ignored or burned.

On Medium: How the Creeds of Charlatans Exploit Prophetic Madness

Here's an article about Aristotle’s scientistic overreach, the Western politicizing of religion’s poetic core, and an assessment of the spectrum of religious discourses.

Grim_Bard Poetry on Instagram

I’ve started a page on Instagram under the name of “Grim_Bard,” where I’ll be posting poetry. I aim to post at least five poems a week there, including a series that will comprise an epic poem based on the rants of Rashad the Cackler. Here are a few of the poems I’ve posted.

The Mouse on the Sidewalk

On a quiet suburban street,

Brick houses arrayed

Along the twisting road,

A little grey mouse

Lay on the white concrete,

The body not yet decayed

Though flies buzzed to goad

The furry form or rouse

Its soul to leave its load;

The arms stretched ahead

To the adjoining house

As if the mouse had meant to greet

The owners who’d have crushed it dead

And unseen up in their jeep;

Perhaps the tourist instead

Sought to reach its retreat

In the earth by the wall to sleep

But lagged on this beachhead

With its last heartbeat.

No person could be so estranged

In lying down to die:

Whether in the cities ranged

Across the continents’ lands,

On a plane that streaks the sky,

A vessel on the rippled sea,

A dune in the desert sands

Or frozen on a mountain peak,

No humble mouse has the key

To outgrow its old clique;

No rodent is such a freak

As to incessantly seek

A perfect place to be.

The Late-Night Jester

Behold the late-night jester,

The neutered talk-show host;

Never a fan to pester

The landed superstar,

Let alone to roast

Her for ladling caviar,

He’ll fawn all over the rich,

Spoil them with praise,

Slobber and scratch their itch;

If the grovel could be bottled,

Mr. Bootlick Fallon

Would pour no less than a gallon

Of the syrupy glaze

Over their perfumed skin,

Down their throats with a grin,

Wouldn’t stop until he’d throttled

The pretty movie stars.

But like Poe’s dwarf, Hop-frog,

Who tricks the king’s retinue,

Wraps them up and chars

The tainted upper crust,

Does that boyish lapdog,

Too, ignite a barbecue?

While the pampered players are trussed,

Bewitched by the fickle spotlight,

Could the host be as shrewd

As to flatter out of secret spite,

To butter them up to be stewed?

Who could keep an adult’s grace,

Propped up and viewed

By a fame-hungry crowd,

Fed by a raving oddball?

When a fresh idol will replace

The last and each, unbowed,

Is stuffed for their downfall?

Robert Mueller: The Knight who Tripped over his Lance

Dateline: WASHINGTON, D.C.—Robert Mueller stunned the quarter of Americans who are intent on keeping their country from sliding down the tubes, by turning in a lackluster performance in his televised hearings before Congress.

Knowing that most Americans prefer to watch television than to read, Democrats had hoped Mr. Mueller would translate the legalese of his muddled report into bombshell talking points, to fire up the calls to begin impeachment proceedings against an egregious pseudopresident, Donald Trump, who has profaned the White House or else shown that the myths of the sacredness of American values have always been lies. 

Mr. Mueller refused to comply with those pleas for assistance in saving the republic from the chthonic forces of populist anarchy and right-wing Christian balderdash. As the adorable progressives in the congressional hearings praised his patriotism and lobbed softball questions about Mr. Trump’s galaxy of wrongdoings, Mr. Mueller revealed that he’s a doddering old man clinging desperately to the letter of the law like a clueless Pharisee.

The director of the investigation into Mr. Trump’s conspiracy to turn the United States into a fascist hellhole refused to venture further than the findings of his report, just as that report declined to indict Mr. Trump for his obvious conspiracy with Russia and obstruction of justice. No such report was needed in the first place to remind everyone about the president’s millions of crimes and sins against the human spirit.

In a press conference following his anticlimactic appearances before Congress, Mr. Mueller clarified his reluctance to help save his country by lowering himself to the level to which the United States has sunk since the megalomania of Richard Nixon.

“The problem is that politicians have the cooties,” said Mr. Mueller. “The Democrats didn’t just want me to give political answers. They wanted me to associate with politicians, to be in the same room with cootie-ridden, pants-on-fire liars, with sordid, money-grubbing cowards and demagogues who won’t even take my report to the next logical stage and file to impeach the president.”

Mr. Mueller stressed that he would much rather be stalking poor foreigners in the jungles of Vietnam, mowing them down with machine-gun fire and drinking their blood with his stony-faced Marine buddies.  

The Pointing

In some aerie a fabled library soars;

On its myriad scrolls each truth is told,

The secrets behind all hidden doors,

Knowledge dearer than mountains of gold;

Intricate curves and dots and lines

Conspire to trap the facts as signs.

So dreams the world-weary sage,

Wasting his best years with books;

The farce playing out on stage

Pales next to ink on yellowed page.

He points to the exit and a dog looks

But sees no ghostly cue in the hand;

Staring dumbly the beast sits still,

The gesture lost like a pebble in sand.

None follows too the inky trail of his quill:

Preferring trendy charades, the thinker’s ignored;

He haunts the town below like a wraith;

Only the deaf and blind are adored

Who know nothing but keep the faith.

To deathless atoms learning’s a sideshow,

A gilded map to nowhere,

Pointless as a severed big toe.

When he awakens to the nightmare

He sets the sorted scrolls ablaze,

The rising smoke offending no one;

His protest fades like a guru in a maze

Who finds no welcome or escape:

Until exhausted he may run

Before collapsing in a daze,

Dying as one with the landscape.

What Leads the Empty Suits?

In high school as a teenaged peasant

I watched the young aristos from afar,

But down a locker hall a young rock star

Once offered the crowd a present.

Like Conan he carried the wench

On his shoulder, urging the nobodies

To squeeze her denim-clad rear;

She laughed and didn’t clench,

I saw, when they drew near,

Though I could only hold back like Socrates

Muttering an awkward doubt:

Was this some twisted Robin Hood

Stealing the secrets of girlhood,

Lavishing riches on the washout?

Or were these young aristocrats—

Rich envied beauties that they were—

More like brazen vampire bats

Shaming the lowly poseur

With their backhanded gift,

Feeding off of awe and the spotlight?

While most at that age are adrift

One clique had the comfort of a birthright,

Dionysian orgies to attend,

Sports cars to drive and drugs to smoke,

Social ladders to ascend,

Demonic powers to invoke.

They padded their résumés, practiced fitting in

At student council, seeing nothing amiss

When only three votes were cast

To send them into low office;

Because it paid off a win is a win.

Meanwhile I mastered being an outcast:

With a dozen others I stood on stage as a prop,

As a tool and living backdrop

For a faint acquaintance to run 

In one such farce and be someone;

She pledged to deliver each a new desktop;

I heard the audience groan,

Since no one cares for a stepping stone.

At university the joiners played

As they had as privileged teens;

Now six not three students were swayed

To vote in these kings and queens.

Balding at twenty-five, philosophy nerd

Going nowhere with the herd,

I volunteered as student rep

To watch the apex wonders in the wild.

After hours we pretended we had power,

Careful to avoid any verbal misstep

Since a petty tyrant had beguiled

The others into following his lead;

As a gay student he ruled over the drama

Taking advantage of the liberal creed,

Interrupting and berating at will;

After all no mock trauma

Can compare to a gay man’s plight;

Our measly business was at a standstill

As the rivals carried on out of spite.

After my academic years

I took an interest in real politics;

The spoiled teens and politicos are peers,

I found, with the same bag of tricks;

Fully grown, they uphold the story

That democracy deserves respect,

That today’s empty suits reflect

The will of saintly common folk,

Since the Free World beat Hitler with Old Glory—

As if the West hadn’t risen through gun smoke,

Boundless hypocrisy and greed.

How could the free world still stand

With monstrous Trump freed—

Twenty-three percent gave him the lead—

If the state weren’t already unmanned?

Garland’s robbed of his seat at the court;

In goes a weaselly fake-Christian hack;

Republicans unite to troll and thwart

A black president and take back

The memory of his name

Because he’d mocked Donald’s fame.

Wealth matters, not the vote;

As always the boys’ club reigns;

The seasoned leader’s cutthroat

But phony if he feigns

To stand for something more than the fun

Of reveling in evil with impunity,

Of burning central as the sun,

Hoisting her and daring the community

To resist and think of the long run.

What hyperobject did I glimpse that day?

What genetic bond drives elites to prance

While dupes and loners betray

Themselves with a crippling trance?

"Vote for Summer!" from "Napoleon Dynamite"

RWUG Poems on Twitter

I’ve started to use Twitter to try to convert the ideas on this blog into haiku form and I’ll try to add at least one haiku per day. I’ve added the Twitter feed to the top right of this blog. Feel free to tweet me your own haiku, blog topics you'd like to see me cover, or other RWUG-related comments. Your tweets should show up on the feed, although I think it takes a minute or so for them to appear.

Also, I've added a Contact form just below the About section on the right, in case you'd like to send me a message. 

Cheers!

Dirge in the Undead God

The undead Creator writhes and lurches,

God of all but unsung in churches;

Entombed in vacuum its limbs decay,

Flesh the stuff of the Milky Way;

Commanded by moans the cosmos unfurls,

Drooling worlds in Fibonacci swirls;

Unaware, its galactic muscles flex,

Black maws swallowing its Hydra-like necks;

Chambers of its sprawling heart, the stars

Send life-blood to the god’s avatars

The pawns of Earth, proud and impious,

Deem themselves divine, ticks in God’s carcass;

Before their eyes the lifeless body moves:

Stars shine, wind blows and rain falls, which proves

That nature’s God, no spirit required,

The monstrous plenum from the first expired

The Creator evolved a head, the Earth,

Yet the minds thereon are tasked not to birth

Whole worlds but to behold the rotting face,

Tattered wings, shattered carapace.

Could a noble soul be found confined

To carrion or mustn’t that soul be resigned

To horror and folly, as a senile old man

Dines on the dung in his foul bedpan?

Or as a mad fish, loathing the sea,

Flops on land, comically free?