Aphoristic Poems

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—what everyone else does not say in a book.
—Nietzsche

I—IN THE VALE OF SORROWS

CASTAWAYS
Islands in the mind
Set in dreams of time
That lap the consciousness
With waves of their distress

HALLEY’S COMET
“Though many eyes have seen my light,
Memories fade, as my tail in flight.
Perhaps, someday, as round I wind,
I shall be found and kept in mind.”

THE NET
The spider preys on itself by needing
Victims we are breeding;
In this way, the spider slays
Itself with ingenuities.

ENDLESSLY REAL-ING
Our thoughts conceive each set and scene,
Perpetually changing eternity’s dream;
We are images, from light’s scattered mind,
That seek the far projector, time.

ON THE INNER MOUNTAIN
I sought and found the heights
White-crowned with wisdom’s ice.
But what if an avalanche shakes loose
The snows of Abiegnus?

THE LANGUOR OF ENNUI
A world without the cannot-be-said
Is one of the no-more-interested
Whose unfulfilling certainties
Bring loss of sense for subtleties.

CLIMATE
In the reticence of mystery;
In the listlessness of faltering day,
Lives are livid, quipped in silence;
Too steadily for special notice.

IGNORANCE OF THE PRESENT
Wrapped in ribbons of destiny,
The sphere cannot see nor be seen;
Roads traveled tie us to our time,
Our eyes open in hell’s gray mind.

FAILED EXPERIMENT
There are no tears to fuel our eyes to weep for smothered res
Of sun to flash us into ash to cover lost desires,
Rewards denied to weak men who for them no longer try;
The strident cries of tortured youth have dwindled to a sigh.

ON A GRAVE
Though tossing its pretty head
In weeping endlessly,
The memory of the dead
The flower will not shake free.

HIDDEN UNORIGINALITY
A king who listens to his court
Finds that his voice to it falls prey;
That he is dependent is drowned out
Amidst cacophony.

ON DEVOTION
Alas! ’Tis but a dream—a brief
Sparkle from a sunbeam
Dissolved within the flowing of
Time’s unrelenting stream?

KNOWLEDGE
For greed or immortality,
Eternal, fearful hunger
Snaps jaws of logic, ruthlessly,
On paths toward its own future.

MIND CONTROL
Blood from the brain flooded beneath
The diseased surgeon’s hands.
Smiling, he deemed that we were released,
Saved from salvation’s demands.

ICICLE
Poised to stab, it begins to bleed
Thoughts from restricted mind;
Translucent cold is then unsheathed
To murder cruel mankind.

THE GROAN
My mind penetrates night’s deep-toned bell,
Trying to find harmonious strains
Where one voice echoes in its black well
Whose din to silence drains.

ACTOR
He drifts like a ghost
Through space’s empty sea,
Among the floating motes
Lit momentarily.

DISTURBED
Throw cold stones into a pond,
And boiling ripples spread:
Waves collide like leaping blood
From a broken head.

HYPNOSIS
Day dies, and the cold night sky seems calm.
I regard her faceless, embering eyes
That cloud my inner sanctum’s balm;
Starlight is a master of lies.

CREATION IS IN PERCEPTION
Though no god’s face may prove that grace
Makes heaven from the skies,
Where some perceive a vacant waste
The wise seek paradise.

Greetings. My name is Golem.
My mission: to seek lost passion.
Over the world I wander,
A servant and a stranger.

When forced to be too practical,
One can’t see past the factual;
So the inner eye
Does not apply.

The rattling wagon carries
Our prophecies; they are drawn
Over the plodding dawn’s
Dry mud of memories.

Highest peaks may someday be
Somewhere submerged in the sea,
Or within a desert land,
Eroded into grains of sand.

*
You avert your eyes from space,
Its meteors to pursue;
But what you do not face
Burns secretly in you.
*
Hear the robin, springly yearning
For what can never be;
Fulfillment is robbery, direly burning
For vacant ecstasy.
*
Mangy dog, starving by the bookstore,
Here’s another bone, short and narrow.
Enjoy it while it lasts, by the shut door,
Till you reach the hidden marrow.
*
Alone, my heart secretly knells
As I stand firm and sigh
At the black church with wistful bells
Against the sunset sky.
*
It’s meaningless to take a vow
Without sparks in the heart,
As it is being resolved to plow
Without the seeds to start.
*
When the tidal wave is crashing,
Drowning’s the concern.
Futile is remembering
How our passions burn.
*
I groped for flowing clarity.
It braided about my hands,
While laughing mischievously
At all my silly plans.
*
It dwindles by degrees:
The golden splendor of the sun.—
Auburn sorrows of the trees
Are not missed until they’re gone.

*
I dredge the bottom of the sea
For any treasures there that be,
And find, though I search endlessly,
Golden sands eluding me.
*
In my house, when it is dark,
All things look the same;
But in the world’s black, toiling heart,
Each shadow has a name.
*
Mad rooster, why do you crow
Loudly, incessantly,
When you surely know
No one is listening?
*
The deepest darkness comes but once,
Forever wounding day,
Leaving scars where memories glance;
Numb, they cannot pray.
*
Therapy, drugs, and excess sex—
And working ceaselessly in hell—
Bring no peace, for our self-respect’s
Sane strife lost in an ill-kept well.
*
The addict moon weakly threads
Her useless, ragged shawl;
Then slowly drifts behind its shreds
To hide her destined fall.
*
We do not discern false jewelry
Fear’s flash adorned with prayers;
Foresight’s lack has slaved sun’s rays
That keep our dead sense theirs.
*
Ah, let us trace no more
Designs of sordid occupation
Deaf and dumb and sore
With good intent—and desolation.

*
He flew from the tossing,
Paranoid flame,
To meet new foes in
Floods of rain.
*
Is there no valid sadness?
Is there no true defeat?
Even if we recover from loss,
Is hell not still—deceit?
*
Your views of distance now forgotten,
Time clasps your Vision in its fist,
To smite the cause of blindness, lost in
Lust’s kisses parasitic.
*
The struggle and its ulcer
Stole more than they gave;
Unnatural strife will offer
Propinquity of the grave.
*
The crumbs of love seem set as lures
To hook ruthless redundancy.
But can we be forewarned by these
If All is the poisoned cookie?
*
Torrents of icy tears
From the clever devil, Time,
Pour from stagnant fears,
To drown hope with their brine.
*
The seasonless circle
Has no feeling hand,
Nor the time to soothe
Or understand.
*
Here are described tomorrows
Untainted by false praise:
“The onerous, undesisting sorrows
Of numberless yesterdays.”

*
My hopes flutter down to earth,
Struck by aims of careless winds’
Random change allowing birth
Of deliberation’s ends.
*
Experience without love
Provides for many a tale,
Though usually these tell only of
Elaborate ways to fail.
*
My love a mirror within the darkness is.
With no reflection, it has lost its way;
I cannot know its limits nor the bliss
It feels not without night’s translator, day.
*
I’m on my way—between
A certain hell and one unknown,
And “halfway there” is a hell of its own.

GREED
Prometheus stole for us the lie
That shines in every sleepless eye.

LABYRINTH RATS
Innocents or criminals
Scurrying for convictions

A WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS
In this funhouse of frustration,
How am I my destination?

STARDOM
The endless sky we deem as heaven
Is pride’s palace for the damned.

SAFETY IN NUMBERS
Increased population
Is increased alienation.

CARS ON THE CARCASS
Maggots pulse as the heart of this
Decaying, dark metropolis.

DUST TO DUST
Life’s efforts erode, when blown sand-small
By winds translating strife’s caterwaul.

RECIPROCAL FAILURE
Dæmons bleach my blood to rain
That cannot reach their barren plain.
*
There’s so much evil to ignore,
I cannot do so anymore.
*
Is the moon ungrateful for solar light,
As its gloom glows, pale from a lonely height?
*
Oh let me lie, never to wake,
And leave my morrow desolate.
*
Curiously, fear follows
Its fleeting footfalls’ echoes.
*
Massive clouds, like drapes, were drawn
Over hills that reached for dawn.
*
Great peaks decrease
When crowned by ice.
*
The memory of a scream
Tortures, silent as a dream.
*
Disfigured human form is cast
About bones broken by its past.
*
Racing with something precious,
He smashed into “ambitious.”
*
“Yes, you are free,” they told him,
“But to be bound by others’ freedom.”

*
The explosion’s flames made impact with heaven,
And passed through to—what? And then?
*
The truth burrows into his lies:
A snake across his mouth, it writhes.
*
“You are beyond the bruises’ blue?
Then our time has no use for you.”
*
When the breakers crash upon the shore,
Is it for mere sands that they implore?
*
Our truths are stored with black ink strong,
But, ah, how I long for the palm-tree’s song!
*
Mankind is expert with its ancient sins,
As Vesuvius smokes above their ruins.
*
Hanging on
Like a worldless sun
*
Even aureate flight must fall;
All wings heed gravity’s call.
*
Now that I’ve conquered pain’s exorbitance,
My newfound peace feels guilty that it rests.
*
Where there’s a time for fiery flashes,
There also must be one for ashes.
*
Ignorance kills without a thought—
Or with excessive thoughts we’re taught.
*
Each game is within its kingdom’s rule;
Can we blame forced ignorance for being a fool?

*
Probing the heart beneath the Earth’s crust,
We have transformed a pearl into dust.
*
Beware the warmth that is no healer
And dulls one with its lightless fever.
*
Our hearts now measure time untruly,
For fear alters their natural duty.
*
I watch—in awe—dun, tombstone waves.
The sea, encroaching, hides its graves.
*
Wind through the desert wildly blows;
Though frantic, sands are comatose.
*
The shadow of the bench points to the quest:
A path on which one is not meant to rest.
*
Perspicacity creates a zone
Where knowledge learns it is best unknown.
*
We are so wise, we cannot care
That beauty’s dying everywhere.
*
To an aware and an honest mind,
Life itself is the pearl before swine.
*
Soundless echoes in an empty room
Haunt me with remembered laughter’s doom.
*
There is no way to repair
Friendship that was never there.
*
A sad moment’s forever gone, although
One’s memory is the going’s foe.

*
Does the hangman’s noose call forth a crime?
Its loop’s the continual path of time.
*
Thunder from the clouded years
That cannot hold back their tears
*
Cycles are turning—
But around nothing.
*
Writing takes too much out of one
Who should be living in the sun.
*
All this struggle, all this pain—
Just for temporary gain . . .

II—SHORT RETORTS

CAUTION
Impulse unleashed unto desire
Allows water to douse a fire;
But water leashed to fire’s intent
Will drown impulse’s sacrament.

KNOW MORE THAN ATHEISM
Beliefs with labels’ security
Lack faith in love of mystery.
Yet deities do not need religion,
Beyond needs’ existentialism.

THE ÉLITE
They do not care; they cannot care;
They do not need to care.
They need but education’s fear
And lack of trust to keep you here.

SET IN STONE
Though repaired, each sickly pillar
Holds untranslatable will,
Extinction by lost metaphor:
Time sands what it cannot kill.

CLOUDS
There are tall mountains in the sky
That grow not from the ground.
Just so, above may one’s dreams lie
Unknown to world’s “profound.”

LIFE IS TIME’S FOOL
Do not put a tune to this
Mournful monotone;
Let us love its emptiness
While it ticks, alone.

BENEVOLENT VAMPIRISM
Our doctors depend on ills condemned,
To offer healing care,
As priests depend on a flock that’s sinned,
To cure souls in despair.

CAUSE IS EFFECT
Science explains with accuracy
The explicable, not eternity.
So it can but explain to me
What’s known—unsatisfactorily.

THE EREMITE
I’ve laid abaft my shepherd’s staff;
I’ll not do work that frees no one.
Why toil in vain for hidden pain? Alas,
Such labor’s never done.

OUT OF PROPORTION
We must note, with rue:
If our small loves fail,
What might evil do
On a larger scale?

BALANCING THE CHEMICALS
Target an angelic child;
Pump it full of dope—
Where innocence was predeled
By artificial hope.

HUMILITY
We live in cities, by society prized,
Important to our rules;
Words, their own cities by books comprised,
To us are merely tools.

ON APPREHENDING THE HIGHER CULPRIT
Oh why don’t we evolve new eyes beyond vision
That melts to mirages along the horizon?
For the Thief’s tracks now lead would-be detection
Into space—past the flat world’s handicapped sun.