In the Outhouse (a poem by a terrible poet)
So, here I sit for a while to ponder,
While I’m taking care of needs down yonder.
I read the paper’s news-less ruses.
And think that here, at least, the thing has uses.
Category Archives: poem
In Pursuit of the Essential
The secret to success is having two girls and a goat.
Why is that, you ask?
I have no idea. I do not have two girls and a goat.
I am not remotely successful.
But what matters is not success.
What matters most is what is essential…
The meaning behind everything…
The code that makes us who we are..
.When we write it on the hard drives of our heads and hearts.
What is essential is the number of people living and dead that love you.
What is essential is the blood, sweat, and tears you poured into something… anything that you have determined is important enough… for a lifetime… to the bitter end of everything.
What is essential is pain you have endured for a purpose… success or failure not a part of the equation… because pain proves the truth of what you are suffering for.
What is essential is all the beauty you have observed and collected in your memory in the deepest of places where it changes you for the better.
What is essential is all the ugliness you have observed and confronted with a will to change it and wade into it up to your chin so that you can fight it until it changes you for the better.
What is essential is that you don’t let anyone tell you what is essential because only you can define it for you… and you better realize that time is running out… for us all… and you need it before you can approach the gates of Heaven.
The Dirty Old Man
You are old, Father Michael, and somehow not dead.
But you look really strange standing there on your head.
And you spend long old days drawing girls with no clothes,
When there’s nothing you could do if you had one of those.
Your life is all memories and nothing is real,
And you waste the whole day wondering, “What is the deal?”
You get nothing done but watching TeeVee,
And you cry a whole lot feeling sorry for Thee.
Your morals are cat-like for a very old cat.
And prim, proper people may hate you for that.
And if you pinch bottoms and make the girls wail…
You better look out, you are going to jail.
Rainy Saturday Blues (a poem about depression )
I must make a confession about crippling depression,
Cause today I have the blues.
It requires a concession of time for regression,
And dark days enveloping all views.
There is no progression in a working profession,
Cause clouds leave me missing all news.
I start the procession of blue notes in session,
And all melodies tend to be blues.
Filed under Paffooney, pessimism, poem, Uncategorized
Re-Minders
Lately I have been having memory troubles. You know what I mean, when you walk through a doorway with a definite purpose in mind.and then, on reaching the other room, you have no earthly idea what that purpose was. It happens to me regularly. In fact, I can even start writing a sentences, and then I… What was I talking about? Oh, yes. I need to practice writing some more spectacularly bad poetry, before I forget how to do it.
Re-minders
Sometimes…
My mind slips out of my left ear…
And I can’t remember things.
So, I have to search under the table…
To find my mind…
And then I remember that that’s not how a mind works.
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Forgetfulness
Tell me now, before I forget…
What was I supposed to remember?
Was it something religious, important, and good…
That comes towards the end of December?
Was I supposed to buy something for somebody then?
I wrote a note to myself in September…
Oh, gosh! How could I ever forget that?
Now the fire is nothing but embers.
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Finding Fairies in my Hair
Why do I have elflocks all snarled up in my hair?
Surely some fairies have been twisting it up there.’
But if I can catch one and make him confess,
He claims I don’t comb it, and that’s why it’s a mess.
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Doofy Me
If I forget everything I ever knew,
Would it be possible that I am still smarter than you?
Old Socrates said he knew nothing at all.
And so he asked questions from Winter through Fall.
I hope I retain enough brain to remember
That everyone needs to wear clothes in December.
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Yep, I still obviously remember how to write spectacularly bad poetry. It is my contribution to literature. Virtually all poets will be able to say, “At the very least, I am a better poet than Beyer.”
Filed under autobiography, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, poem, poetry
When the Old Mind Wanders…
When the old mind wanders…
They tell you you’re just too slow.
But thoughts like mine drift everywhere,
And the edges of the universe… are a place to go.
Maybe I should write in red.
And argue with the voices
That rhyme inside my head.
And break the rhyme scheme
Here and there
Because of what they said.
Or maybe I should write in blue
Because I’ve been thinking in the nude
And laying all my secrets bare
Which really might be rude.
But the old mind wanders…
In the form of a poem,
And breaks and squanders
Tallest waves in mere foam.
Filed under artwork, clowns, goofy thoughts, humor, nudes, Paffooney, poem, poetry, strange and wonderful ideas about life
In the Night I Think Dark Thoughts
I have walked for a thousand years
Through a night stocked full of morbid fears
Past haunting shouts and cruel leers
As watchers dog me and drive my tears.
And yet in dreams, I focus sight
With eyes that search to see the light,
And I reach upward with all my might
To touch the answer which is right.
Filed under nudes, Paffooney, philosophy, poem, poetry, Uncategorized
Drawing Girls for Art Day
As a boy, drawing girls was always important to me. I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t control them other than to make them dislike me. I couldn’t get away from them… but I could draw them. I could completely control what the picture looked like. And I could make them be whatever I wanted.
Mysterious… inscrutable… attractive… weird….
Infuriating… beautiful… sassy… and rude.
Sugar and spice, they say…
With everything nice, they say…
Yet still with the power to kill and to eat me.
Cute girls and sweet girls…
The proper and neat girls….
Girls with no clothes on…
And girls I’m afraid of.
I have to draw girls just to understand me.
Cloudscapes
Once upon a time, the English poet and, I would argue, cartoonist, William Blake once said, “You look at the sky and see clouds, while I see the assembled heavenly host!” This is why my literature class in college about the Romantic Poets of his day made him out to be a certifiable nutcase who probably belonged in in a mental institution. (And back then, in the 1800’s, the sanitarium was a place where inconveniently crazy people went to die.)
Look at a couple of my cloudscapes. Do you see angels?
Cloudscapes (a poem)
Blue and white and filled with light…
The cloudscape burns with angels…
And wholly bought with grace unsought…
I long to fly with angels…
Are they really there in the cloud-filled air?
I see them there, they’re angels!
So, there you have it. I’m a loon. I don’t even have the excuse of being a Romantic Poet and well-known for my poetry as a defense against the loony bin. But as the matter stands, I am fully willing to accept the consequences. Creativity has its price. And, while you may not agree that I am somewhat creative, I am swimming in a vast ocean of perceived revelations that enriches me and fulfills me at the very same moment that it drains all the energy from my soul. If that is not what it means to see angels… then I do not know anything of use to anyone but me.
The word “angel” (according to Wikipedia, the source of all true knowledge) comes to English via Late Latin and the word “angelus” which the Romans stole from the Greek ἄγγελος ángelos, The ángelos is the default Septuagint’s translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mal’ākh denoting simply “messenger” without specifying its nature. (Notice, I am giving full credit to Wikipedia because it is far more all-knowing than I.)
I have many atheistic and agnostic notions in my ultimate belief systems, but still, I claim to be a Christian and believe in God Jehovah… within limits. I still communicate with God on a daily basis, and while I don’t publicly pray anymore (a notion promoted by the Biblical Jesus) I find answers to my questions and solutions to my problems from the observable universe around me.. the messengers of God. So, now that I have fully rationalized being crazy as a loon, I am going to tell you where that craziness is taking me. I started a new Paffooney for one of the books I am working on. Here is the pencil sketch;
This will be a picture of Valerie Clarke and her Daddy, the farmer Kyle Clarke. In my fiction, Kyle loses his farm to the bank (in the Family Farm Crisis of the 1980’s) and believing himself incapable of any longer supporting his family, kills himself. But the thing is, the love of his daughter transcends death for Kyle. She is able to reconnect with him time and again because the angels work for her as well as for Kyle. I may be loony and ill in real life, facing the Angel of Death myself, but I am not done doing God’s work… not yet… not for a long time to come.
The finished picture.
Re-Minders
Lately I have been having memory troubles. You know what I mean, when you walk through a doorway with a definite purpose in mind.and then, on reaching the other room, you have no earthly idea what that purpose was. It happens to me regularly. In fact, I can even start writing a sentences, and then I… What was I talking about? Oh, yes. I need to practice writing some more spectacularly bad poetry, before I forget how to do it.
Re-minders
Sometimes…
My mind slips out of my left ear…
And I can’t remember things.
So, I have to search under the table…
To find my mind…
And then I remember that that’s not how a mind works.
******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Forgetfulness
Tell me now, before I forget…
What was I supposed to remember?
Was it something religious, important, and good…
That comes towards the end of December?
Was I supposed to buy something for somebody then?
I wrote a note to myself in September…
Oh, gosh! How could I ever forget that?
Now the fire is nothing but embers.
******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Finding Fairies in my Hair
Why do I have elflocks all snarled up in my hair?
Surely some fairies have been twisting it up there.’
But if I can catch one and make him confess,
He claims I don’t comb it, and that’s why it’s a mess.
**********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Doofy Me
If I forget everything I ever knew,
Would it be possible that I am still smarter than you?
Old Socrates said he knew nothing at all.
And so he asked questions from Winter through Fall.
I hope I retain enough brain to remember
That everyone needs to wear clothes in December.
******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Yep, I still obviously remember how to write spectacularly bad poetry. It is my contribution to literature. Virtually all poets will be able to say, “At the very least, I am a better poet than Beyer.”
Filed under autobiography, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, poem, poetry
Catch a Falling Star 